zompist bboard

Example of differences between the dialects, with recordings of Classical, Galilean, and Diasporal dialects. (Click for soundcloud links). Glosses to be edited in later. English: His lovely wife took down the bottle, and poured out a drink for us Classical: təjabállī-ma himraʔtajú tāb̥ta bīḫam, təjb...

Topic: Modern Sebastic, phonology, verbs, nouns Modern Sebastic Modern Sebastic comes in three forms. It includes two colloquial dialects, referred to as Galilean and Diasporal . The Galilean dialect belongs to the largest concentration of Sebastic speakers, in the southern Galilee region, who also ...

Pronouns in Classical Sebastic are pretty simple. They are primarily enclitic. There exists independent pronouns as well, which most often appear as subject pronouns. Independent pronouns 1 hamā́ku íḥmu 2m hámka hámkim 2f hámki hámkir 3m júwa jim 3f jíya jir Enclitic subject pronouns 1 -ku -ma 2m -k...

Just some things to add: As David Rabinowitz already alluded to, the range of function of aspect is going to be language dependent. Copulae seem especially versatile in languages that mark aspect. Usually it's best to deal with these matters by looking at TMA systems as a whole. In your particular s...

That's actually a great idea. I'll think on it a little, and decide what to do, but I believe I'm tempted to do as much. My problem with υ of course is that if it did not represent /u/, then it would basically only appear in the combo ου, because all other instances of υ are now written ι. But υ for...

Dump:

Auld Lang Syne

Dump: Every year around New Year's, I have a tradition of conlanging and translating Auld Lang Syne into my conlangs developed throughout the outgoing year. I've been trying to get the tradition going on the zBB for a couple of years now. It gives the community a nice 'museum' of our progress over t...

Bump.
[Probably premature, but I am very busy at the moment and know I will not add to this thread for a while, and I've lost threads on this board in the past by erring on the side of not bumping prematurely, so...]

Topic: Verbs, Syntax To be fleshed out! Watch this post for illustrative examples. Topicalization Verbs can be topicalized by the addition of -ma . This is perhaps typical in sentences with more than one verb. In sentences with coordinated verbs, it is usually attached to the first verb in the seque...

A Psalm of Elias : The Sebastic biblical canon includes a number of poems attributed to Elias the Prophet in the psalms. The following is one such psalm, which seems to make reference to Elias' competition with the priest of Ba'al. Christian Sebastic theologians note the parallels of this psalm wit...

NOTE: The native demonym as given below is no longer correct. To be fixed. Brief History of Speakers of Sebastic The Chiqqēl (sg. Echqīl, pl. Echqīlīn) are a Semitic people of unknown origin. Though they seem to have settled in the region of Canaan, they do not seem to be Canaanites themselves. Inst...

Dump (sticky notes for up-and-coming posts):

taʔmá, f. (ə)tʔámta 'delicious'
ʔalā́y 'god'

To-Do:
internal plurals
script
transliteration and transcription
verb modality

Topic: Nouns, Adjectives, Substantives Watch this post! This post combines a number of "working" features liable to change, and thus there are known uncertainties. Types of Nominals Nouns identify a person, place, or thing. Adjectives qualify a person, place, or thing. Sometimes, adjectives can be u...

Topic: Morphosyntax, Verbal System Note: I used fake roots for the following, in order to better demonstrate the paradigms comparatively. Class II Verbs (First radical historical emphatic) G-stem Imperfective: yúsakkim Perfective: yáskim D-stem Imperfective: yúsakkam Perfective: yásakkim C-stem Impe...

Topic: Morphosyntax, Verbal System Subject marking Person is marked with a prefix. Plural number is marked with a suffix. Feminine gender may also be marked with a suffix. Dual verbs have already disappeared by the Classical Sebastic era. The only two dual forms (2m, 3m) would have been identical wi...

I'm not sure anything has been published in one place, which may be why Lipinski's book is so popular. John Huehnergard has a great overview of Proto-Semitic in The Ancient Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia that I would recommend. He gives a state-of-the-field bibliography at the end of useful...

Interesting! But unlikely. mārum has clear cognates in other Semitic languages, including Arabic and Aramaic. That by itself makes it unlikely, although Akkadian > Aramaic > Arabic borrowing has happened in several instances. But also, even if b > m could be explained by a nasal sonorant, the nasal ...

This may be a good time to add a disclaimer that I am not aiming for accuracy in relation to the Semitc languages so much as plausibility. Note, further and unrelated to the previous disclaimer, that Sebastic is neither East or West Semitic, but is intended to be the earliest branch of Semitic. Thu...

I'm wondering if the prosodic effect sounds plausible. As far as I can tell, this is shaky territory because the relationship between pitch, tone, and accent, as well as between articulation and pitch & tone, seem to be something that is still uncertain.

I'm working on reworking my Semitlang from scratch. One of the things I've worked on tonight is phonology. I'm not quite sure what I want to do with the emphatic consonants. I wanted to do something with dissimilation, and had the idea to use it to mess with stress patterns too. Except at the beginn...

TC: Our Father Πιεζμ πατσέαρας Ο νεβές τεν ίσε Σφατ συ υάνμα διν Συ βασίη έρχεδινα Νίετσικ νεβές τεν κε ηι στο Πιεζμ επηύσι ετμέακ μάς δίδε Κε πιεζμ οφίημας μας σίνχορε Νίεστικ πιεζμ οφιλέτις σίνχορονη Κε πίερασμυς ις μας άηενη Αλά κάπ εοπ μας αδιάζε [piεzm pa'tsεaras] Πιεζμ πατσέαρα-ς [nε'vεs tεn '...

I apologize for formatting issues in this post. I'll work on it in the future to make it neater. Verbal Paradigms The following are the verb paradigms in Vlachian. "/" is used to reflect dialectal variants. ">" indicates before-and-after sandhi processes that affect form. These come from a lot of in...

Thanks, Burke! Today I worked out the verbal system, pronouns, and started work on syntax. Here's hoping I'll recall all the diachronics of the verbal system when I write up a post on the diachronics... which will probably be a while from now. Scratch Post Sentence dump: μι ση'άγεοπ [mi 'ʃaγəop] 'i ...

Scratch Post [/u] (i.e.: To be emended, edited, cleaned up, etc.) Phonological Processes - Internal Stage 1. Lengthening of stressed vowels Stage 2. Breaking of long vowels into off-glides Stage 3. Shift of stress i. Stress shifts to the first heavy syllable: a. To a closed syllable (C)CVC(C) b. To...

That thing happened to me where I wrote up a huge long post and then accidentally lost it as I was trying to post it. So here is an abbreviated version of what I wrote up this afternoon. I think it touches all the main points, though. Note: You will notice inconsistencies between this post and the ...