zompist bboard

I don't remember. It might have been mostly on the i and u.

I was also thinking of something like this: although I don't know enough Japanese people in real life nor has my father (who lived in Japan for 3-4 years) to confirm if this happens in real life, I do know that in Japanese media (anime in my case), for instance, a girl would address herself as boku...

What I don't understand is why some texts use breves and macrons simultaneously. It gives the impression that there's more than a dichotomy between long and short?

The change /s/ (→ /z/) → /∅/ is also attested in Early Middle Japanese before the high vowel /i/, a change which was retained most prominently in true adjective endings. /kasite/ (→ /kazite/) → /kaite/ /sasite/ (→ /sazite/) → /saite/ /kawajusi/ → /kawajui/ → /kawaii/ I'm not sure the last one count...

That's a matter of style and taste, yes. The most amusing thing about the system is that you can use arbitrary spellings if you have the capability of typesetting furigana. Some authors employ this to convey subtle nuances which would otherwise be conveyed by context or background, e.g. spell "homet...

I generally classify phrases which don't take a case particle as an adverb of some kind. A less natural, but perhaps more enlightening translation might be "Of students, there are three here."

It occurs to me that cardinals and quantifiers are used in two distinct ways in some languages: English, for instance, distinguishes between "the three men" and "three of the men" in a fairly obvious way - the latter is partitive, the former is not. (Is there a word describing the former usage? I'm ...

There's finally enough data to draw a real cognate table for Peninsular! There are some interesting trends: First, consider the 1SG pronouns: PPI: *fŋ-(rix) G: /vúʀɛ/ M: /həʁeh/ K: /hɑ̃rɛ/ V: /ɦʉdrɛː/ L: /we/ It looks like most languages adopt the -rix ending, and all lenite */f/ in one way or anoth...

It looks like Lotoka in a few ways (open syllables, no consonant clusters), but I suspect it won't really be close enough to be related. To be honest, though, I don't see how it could realistically not be related. I mean, the Lotoka pretty much have to have travelled via Fmana-hŋ-Talam to get to wh...

oh boy! Lotoka looks cool. I was just thinking the other day about what the Fmana-hŋ-Talam language should look like - it should presumably be closely related to Lotoka, right? The Lotoka would have been an offshoot of that northern-migrating branch of Peninsular. I guess they hit the Dagæm Islands...

Vylessa is shaping up nicely! It really captures the flavor of Ancient Greek (I'd probably romanize /k kʰ/ as <k> though), and I'm looking forward to see how the grammar turns out. Thanks! I'm slightly annoyed by how long the words are though. cateretasséloi to be "will be talking" seems a bit much...

After more than a year of inactivity, here's yet another tweak of Vylessa: árro phī́nī, thuirerá lerysthó hynā́nī phī́ne hyméōn tothyriscḗchō de títiri mē fixên mē thyrithélesco. fíxe ictṓ catérisco. "thuirerá lē, mýrēs hýmē títiri mē fixethé áveri mē. výon fernēsḗmē, cērembrílō m...

Perhaps it's sporadic. The only other example I've seen is hieros < PIE *ish₂ros. (I see the aspiration also jumped there...)

1. It is mentioned that Attic/Ionic raised /a a:/ to /e E:/ - under what conditions? Everywhere except after /e i r/. That's what's said for /a:/, but it doesn't seem to be true for short /a/. For instance, why is it Artemis (cf Doric Artamis ) and not ** Ertemis ? Why do we have catalysis and not ...

I have a few questions: 1. It is mentioned that Attic/Ionic raised /a a:/ to /e E:/ - under what conditions? 2. It appears to me that /y/ does not occur as a final vowel - is this so, and why? 3. Does /n/ regularly disappear before /s/? 4. What are the sandhi rules (in phonological and spelling term...

In the office and other formal settings, perhaps. I certainly doubt peers would bother otherwise. (Disclaimer: my personal experience is very limited. I've only ever spoken at length with two native speakers as peers - one consistently used polite forms and the other consistently used plain forms, a...

mataku (which is along the lines of "darnit/troublesome mattaku . I wouldn't call it a swearword at all. It's an adverb meaning completely / utterly. "Good grief" would be a better translation for the interjection. You missed out chikushō , which is probably the only word I've ever heard exclusivel...

(But Firefox generally does the right thing with font substitutions anyway.) I have never read a more blatant falsehood. It is especially true on Linux, but there I can set up fontconfig to do the right thing as well for all the apps that use it. Less true on other operating systems, yes. (I wish I...

I'm sure there's a Firefox extension to do what you want. (But Firefox generally does the right thing with font substitutions anyway.) And perhaps a Chrome one as well.

Ah, Lotoka. Was anyone actually working on the language? I probably should do more for PPI first though... but I've been working this summer.

This leads to the question, how minimal can we make a syntactic word? Are there syntactic words which only surface as suprasegmental features? Certainly there are morphemes like that (even in natlangs, I gather), but I don't know of any clitics like that. (Actually, Ndak Ta's copula has an essential...

Classical Japanese sort-of had this: For example, the transitive/intransitive pair akeru / aku used to both be aku in their predicative form. (Full conjugation: ak-e-, ak-e-, ak-u, ak-uru, ak-e-, ak-e / ak-a-, ak-i-, ak-u, ak-u, ak-e-, ak-e)

More examples are found in the numeral system: hito-ri , futa-ri , san-nin , yo-nin , go-nin ...; tsuitachi , futsu-ka , mik-ka , yok-ka , itsu-ka , ..., tō-ka , jūichi-nichi , jūni-nichi , ...; is-sai , ni-sai , ..., jūkyū-sai , hatachi , nijūis-sai ... I'm afraid this means nothing to me. Can we ...

Japanese has ii "good", which comes from an earlier form yoi which is still used for conjugation, so: ii "is good" yokatta "was good" yonai "is not good" yonakatta "was not good" though not sure if that really counts It doesn't count. It's just the result of irregular sound change. This is suppleti...

The verbal complex is very nicely done. It's the sort of thing I've always wanted to do, but never worked hard on.