zompist bboard

I'm having trouble grasping the concept of "external possession". For example, the German Tim hat der Nachbarin das Auto gewaschen "Tim washed the neighbour's car" (lit. "Tim washed the car to the neighbour"). How does this differ from regular possession, using something like the genitive case or a ...

Next: lacking or having forgotten something because it is so basic you forgot about it completely (like me and my tendency to forget to bring a comb when I travel) Í cuirbhe séon craefen, ar séon peadhan mairr [i: kʊɾʲvʲə ʃe:n krɛfɪɲ aɾ ʃe:n pʲaðɪn ma:rʲ] "He packed his shoes, but forgot his feet."...

When you have some idea, have made some decision, or have had some thought, then something momentarily distracts you and you forget. Ṡimtā: Markintattas "Fairy-thought" In Ṡimtā, the word markō , "fairy", derives from the verb marō "to shimmer". Fairies in Pīrzānas stories often appear and disappea...

At an early stage of my language, [s z] contrast allophonically with [s h z h ]. Currently both later merge with [s z], but I'd like to add something to leave a trace of their former pronunciation. So, what are some changes that can affect [s h z h ]? Thanks. My first thought is debuccalisation res...

At an early stage of my language, [s z] contrast allophonically with [s^h z^h]. Currently both later merge with [s z], but I'd like to add something to leave a trace of their former pronunciation. So, what are some changes that can affect [s^h z^h]? Thanks.

Somewhat related, is this *-mno- participle also responsible for the "-men" in Latin words like "culmen", "fulmen", etc? No, that's a different suffix *-men. "Fulmen", at least, is from PIE *b h lg h men What does this suffix signify/mean exactly, then? My source says it's "agentive", but that's as...

Terra wrote:Somewhat related, is this *-mno- participle also responsible for the "-men" in Latin words like "culmen", "fulmen", etc?

No, that's a different suffix *-men. "Fulmen", at least, is from PIE *b^hlg^hmen

Next: to go apeshit: to react in a bizarre, irrational, unpredictable, possibly violent manner Ṡimtā: ēnas dō ṡemē knutē horālīċe “to rage for a trinket” The phrase carries connotations of childishness and violence, like something a toddler would do. Next: "to take pains to make sure someone doesn'...

Next: To be two-faced Ṡimtā kā ṡiṡtrā ēmē kum motum ēmē āṡliġenċe "His hands put the lie to his mouth." From the phrase ē kaibis ṡiṡtraibis telpċe "He speaks with his hands", i.e. his actions match his words. Thus, being two-faced is saying one thing and doing another. Next: "To give your all, know...

Small correction: the perfect participle is in *-wos/us-, not *-wo- (which was a verbal adjective formation). The contrast between the participles is the same as the contrast in the finite forms of the verb. *-nt-participles are the default, and indeed the most widespread. The *-mno- (or *-meno- or...

PIE had verbal adjectives which we generally call participles, though I've read that it wasn't until PIE split up into its daughter languages that they started developing into participles. The two everyone knows about are -to- and -nt-, the "past" and "present" participles (please excuse me if I'm o...

I was standing on the grass around a public pool with friends, and a man was standing outside the chain-link fence yelling at us. He wanted us to let him in, since for some reason he wasn't able to get in himself. When we asked why we should, he said that he was Clyde Stubblefield. We didn't believe...

legolasean wrote:Next: to become famous and rich and forget where he did come from.

“To cut off the roots in favor of the branches”
Kās rādās dō kēmas baiġōmas pāśkarānō

Next: to be deliberately and repeatedly obtuse and unhelpful, simply for the amusement of driving someone crazy

legolasean wrote:Next: I came, I saw, I won [alt.- conquered]. ( vini, vidi, vici )

Jē birrum ka hālum nemā
[ʒe: birrum ka ha:lum nema:]
"I took mountain and valley."

Next: to stubbornly refuse something, simply because of who's giving it to you

Next: get a life! I'm gonna take this as "to focus on trivial matters". Kē pelās śemē sarastā [ke: pela:s ʃeme: sa'rasta:] "A bear's hairs" Technically, this refers to any trivial matter in general. It comes from the phrase Kerra sarastes drapinćes caz, kē pelās kemme bābē ammē daildre ([kerra sa'r...

What were some ways that PIE and PIE languages formed frequentive/iterative verbs? All I've been able to find is *-ey- used with an o-grade, which was also used to form causatives, however the daughter languages seem to have different suffixes, such as Old English -lian- (PGmc *-el-) and Latin -t- (...

clawgrip wrote:It's a common form of hypercorrection among Korean speakers, since the Korean language has no [f]. I hear it from time to time.

Interesting. I'm gonna keep an ear out now, since the college town I live in has quite a few Korean residents.

I talked to a Korean guy (I assume he was Korean) today at work who replaced the majority of the p's in his speech with f's. For example, at one point he said that his bike squeaks when he fedals. However, his last name was Park, which /p/ he had no trouble pronouncing. I've never heard of an accent...

In Australia, it's very common to use come and seen as the past tense of come and see . This would be fairly typical of a news interview with a bogan who witnessed a crime: I seen 'im go down there, and then 'e come up this way again. I do hear these kinds of things in North American English at tim...

Potential vowel inventory:
[a e i o u]
[ɛ ɪ ɔ ʊ]
[ɨ ɪ̈ ɘ ɜ]

Having never used central vowels much in my conlangs, does this vowel inventory have an unrealistic number of them?

I've been playing around with a conlang idea recently, and part of the sound changes is getting rid of all /Cw/ clusters. So far I've got the following: /kw/ -> /t/ (before a front vowel), /p/ (before a back vowel) /gw/ -> /w/ /tw dw/ -> /p b/ All of which are attested in natural languages, so they'...

What is the origin of Latin 5th declension nouns, e.g. fidēs, effigiēs, diēs? Does the declension go back to PIE, or is it an innovation?

Interestingly enough, *nisdos, *pisd- "vulva", and *osdos "branch" are all formed in basically the same way. The first is *ni-sd- "place for sitting down (for a bird)", the second is *pi-sd- "something sat on (by a woman)", and the last is *o-sd- "something sat on (by a bird)". What's the *pi- in *...

When a language such as Old English, Latin, etc. uses the genitive case in a partitive function, how does the adjective itself work? For example, the phrase manig manna "many men" in Old English uses the genitive plural on "men", and so the phrase is more literally "many of men". But is manig here d...

O.E. nest "bird's nest, snug retreat," from P.Gmc. *nistaz (cf. M.L.G., M.Du., Ger. nest), from PIE *nizdo- (cf. Skt. nidah "resting place, nest," L. nidus "nest," O.C.S. gnezdo, O.Ir. net, Welsh nyth, Bret. nez "nest"), probably from *ni "down" + *sed- "sit." Used since M.E. in reference to variou...