Lé

[zompist]

The Lé grammar is up.

[masako]

Very nice.

[Bob Johnson]

I'm confused by the phonotactics. You give the syllable structure as "(C)(r, l)V(V, r, ŋ, n, s)" but "The only allowed diphthongs are aɔ and ae" -- so does that mean the coda V may be only <ɔ> or <e>?

But then there are words with both a diphthong and coda consonant: <màɔr> "getting on in years" -- is the diphthong entirely in the nucleus? In that case, why list V in the coda at all?

Or is that two syllables /ma52.ɔr22/?

[dhok]

Also, there's some cases where the combining diacritics didn't line up right.

[zompist]

There's only a few exceptions, but as the diminutive -r can be fairly freely applied, I should modify the formula a bit.

Dhokarena, you'll have to be more specific. There are a lot of diacritics...

[dhok]

There are a few cases in the table with the numbers in it, and...that's it. I thought I'd seen it somewhere else.

[Thomas Winwood]

I believe Dhokarena is talking about this line

To count 1-8, you use the fingers, starting with the left little finger (indeed, the fingers are named jûhɛ^ŋ, ròhɛ̂ŋ, etc., up to rɔ`rhɛ̂ŋ, the right little finger). As a corollary, perhaps, Lé point with the left little finger.

which looks more like an artifact of typing it out using carets, apostrophes and backticks and then composing the glyphs later. Those should be jûhɛ̂ŋ and rɔ̀rhɛ̂ŋ.

e: also krɛ` and bɛ̀nɛ` in the table of numbers should be krɛ̀ and bɛ̀nɛ̀.

ee: also Ânhɛ` in the introductory paragraph (Ânhɛ̀) and bɛ^n in the lexicon (bɛ̂n).

[WeepingElf]

Zompist rocks again!

[Mornche Geddick]

Caught a couple of typos.

Personal Pronouns

éŋ she jéŋ those two drèŋ those few łéŋ they

Shouldn't that be dréŋ?

In the Noun Phrase section

pɛčó júŋ lùná je sɛ̀ nɔ
temple river by city in
the temple in some eastern city

What's júŋ doing there? isn't it the plural marker? Shouldn't the gloss be "temple PLURAL east of city in" and the translation "the temples in an eastern city"?

[Cedh]

Looks really cool!

In the section on honorifics, the first one is given as îr in the list, but then appears as ír in the text several times.

[Cedh]

Found a few more typos:

Injǔŋ sɛs sɛ̌n júŋ sa na lɔ łu.
pirate ABL woman buy some wine OBJ woman PAST
As for the pirates, some wine was bought from them by a woman.

"Woman" occurs in the gloss twice; the first instance is probably superfluous. (That seems to be the original position though, so am I right in assuming that Injǔŋ sɛs lɔ sɛ̌n júŋ sa na łu would mean "As for the pirates, the woman bought some wine from them"?)

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Ŋar hós sɛ̀ pùŋ nɛ̀ łu.
Ŋar go.by.foot city be river across PAST
Ŋar came to the city across the river.

"Be" in the gloss has no counterpart in the sample sentence. I'd expect a dative marker in that position though, at least if the intended meaning is "Ŋar [went to the city [by crossing the river]]": Ŋar hós sɛ̀ re pùŋ nɛ̀ łu. On the other hand, if the meaning should be "Ŋar [went to [the city across the river]]", I'm surprised not to see a dative marker at the end of the place NP: Ŋar hós sɛ̀ pùŋ nɛ̀ re łu.

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In the section on negatives, right before the last example you write d́ŋ instead of dɛ́ŋ.

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In the section on subordination, "girl" is variously written as dâr, dǎr, and daǎr.

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In the section on comparatives, the last example should probably contain łɛ́ŋ instead of dláɔ.

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In the table of pragmatic markers, Ɔ̌ is written capitalized while all other markers are in lower case. There's also a spacing diacritic in the dɔ̀n example sentence.

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In the section on the day, the kí is defined as "1/908 (i.e 1/72) of a brɔ̀r". That should probably be "1/90₈ (i.e. 1/72) of a brɔ̀r".

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In the section on despective words for men, třtɛ is missing a vowel letter. A bit further down, in the bulleted list with female-perspective-terms, krúprô should be bolded. And in the list of despective terms for women, slìs seems to violate Lé phonotactics.

[zompist]

Thanks for the corrections! I uploaded a fixed version.

That seems to be the original position though, so am I right in assuming that Injǔŋ sɛs lɔ sɛ̌n júŋ sa na łu would mean "As for the pirates, the woman bought some wine from them"?

Yes.

Shouldn't that be dréŋ?

No, the dr`- element brought its tone with.

[vec]

I love the idea of lack of deixis in time and place adverbs.

ŋɛpo this thing

Is this in any way related to the male pronoun pô?

Nitpicks:
bǎmother → bǎr mommy
—missing a space'

Jansɛ̀ pâ dlindlin as prɛ́s čɛ̀ŋnɛ (łu).
—the space between prɛ́s and čɛ̀ŋnɛ doesn't show up (in Chrome, at least).
same things happens in the entire chapter Time NPs

[dhok]

I doubt it; the default pronoun is feminine,

[vec]

The problem with the spaces before the blue words keeps happening throughout. I bet it has to do with the code. I checked it but I don't understand the way you're structuring it so I can't be sure.

I doubt it; the default pronoun is feminine,

The "this person" pronoun is ŋɛr which seems to be ŋɛs plus the diminutive or something. But then "this thing" has the element of the male pronoun, and I'm wondering if that has something to do with male objectification or age-old female chauvinism.

[zompist]

I can't see the missing spaces... there is a space there in the html file, and it looks fine in Firefox, Safari, and IE8, so I'm guessing it's an incorrect rendering in Chrome.

(There were some spurious font commands which I removed, so maybe that will help.)

IIRC pô and -bo were intended to be related; it's been awhile since I did the pronouns. It's not necessarily sexism-- demonstratives and 3rd person pronouns are often related.

[dhok]

By the way, the navigation bar that has a different colored square for each language needs to be updated for some of the older languages. Also, Western's suare gives a 404 link- y'might wanna give it a placeholder page like Obenzayet and Luxaija.

[vec]

Is "female older cousin" čɔ̌ŋ or čɛ̀ŋ? There seems to be confusion. Also, what's the reasoning behind the term sàtɛ čɛ̀ŋ? I don't get the logic: younger.cousin-husband older.cousin.

Does the term ôn refer to both males and female ancestors?

What does hifalutin mean?

Finally:

Trǒ̌tɛ in the list of bad words for men has two diacritics.

Great job overall. I particularly like the chapter on semantics and the chapters on time and place indication. I like the phonology, too. I'd love to know about some dialectal variation.

[So Haleza Grise]

jû his jɔ̀ŋ dlǐ is given as "that one smart bird" - but according to the rules listed above, shouldn't it be his jû jɔ̀ŋ dlǐ?

[So Haleza Grise]

What does hifalutin mean?

It's old-fashioned US slang for someone who's pompous or showy. Other spellings are high-falutin' or similar.

[zompist]

Is "female older cousin" čɔ̌ŋ or čɛ̀ŋ? There seems to be confusion. Also, what's the reasoning behind the term sàtɛ čɛ̀ŋ? I don't get the logic: younger.cousin-husband older.cousin.

čɛ̀ŋ means ’all’.

Does the term ôn refer to both males and female ancestors?

Not really. The men are just consorts. A Lé's father of record (nás) might not even be the biological father.

(That's for matters of genealogy, I mean. If you want to say something like "Our ancestors bravely fought the sea monsters," of course you can include the male ancestors.)

--

I fixed the typo as well as the word order problem pointed out by SHG. I also added a couple of .wav files, though I am not entirely happy with them.

[roninbodhisattva]

Are the case markers derived from serial verbs?

[Thomas Winwood]

I also added a couple of .wav files, though I am not entirely happy with them.

The example sentence ("If you love Kebri so much...") is missing the pǎe which is present in the recording.

[tezcatlip0ca]

And also add a placeholder page for Sarroc and Dhekhnami.

[Drydic]

Also Proto-Curymo-Lebiscurene.

(seriously, lacking deadpages isn't that big a deal...)