Zompist Bboard Again

Well, I suppose if the plant species died out, maybe through over-cropping. That's what actually happened to the medicinal leech species in some areas.

The ablaut reduplication rule I-A-O doesn't seem to hold *within* words: rabbit, blarney, over, tuna, wallet, loony, only, etc are all counterexamples. None of those are reduplicated, so why would it? Neither is Big Bad Wolf. I may be wrong about this, but I have the impression that "English&q...

The ablaut reduplication rule I-A-O doesn't seem to hold *within* words: rabbit, blarney, over, tuna, wallet, loony, only, etc are all counterexamples.

Has anyone seen this article?. A work colleague showed it to me, but it seems to have turned up in a number of blogs over the last couple of years. Interesting.

Now, can anyone think of any similar rules in other languages? Or any exceptions in English?

Rounin Ryuuji wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 8:53 am I'm more of a fan of [y].

Good point. Or [ɯ].

I don't like the human-alien cross-breeding stuff for the same reason Justin B Rye doesn't - it's biologically impossible, obviously, blatantly, in-your-face impossible. But I've thought of a workaround. Let Spock be a full Vulcan, but let Amanda have been orphaned as a baby and brought up by humans...

The Viksen gendered endings are masculine -u and feminine -i , which they could either combine ( -ui , but that might still be seen to "put males first" so the most progressive might go for -iu instead) - this would still work phonologically - or to replace with a "neutral" vowe...

He's probably not as bad or as atypical as he thinks That could well be true. Perhaps the others in the class have had extra drawing tuition, so their better skill just means they have had several more months of practice with the pencil in their lives. Deru's parents either didn't know they ought t...

Something more subtle: have you thought about Deru's parents yet? Perhaps he is an only child, or an only son, and his parents spoiled him without meaning to - without either him or them being aware of it. Perhaps also, he was the star pupil of the small dame school he attended before coming to the ...

zompist wrote: ↑Sat Aug 14, 2021 5:30 pmWhat I need to work out is what Itep saw in Deru to start with. So far Deru is kind of a jerk.

Simple ideas first: maybe he's just very handsome, with dark eyes and thick curly hair.

Off topic, but just out of curiosity: do Almeans get male pattern baldness?

In the period of the Prose Wars (3230s), people were a lot more zealous about Revaudo and the feeling was still that royalists were villains. Oh, and that reminds me - when can we expect to see JotPW?The Xurnese grammar whetted my appetite. For one thing I'd like to know how Deru and Itep get on (o...

And I haven't yet been able to pay with a prepaid card.

Poor old Ružeon. I feel sorry for him sometimes.

I noticed that in the Proto-Eastern grammar the word for land; xūn-s , listed in the masculine verb table, is realised as ʔün-z in the Obenzayat column, but is ḵün-z in the equivalent table on the Naviu page. Does that represent an early draft of Obenzayat, or an alternative such as Proto-Naviu or a...

Great Christmas present, Zompist!

Of course, we see the suffix -on , as found in Yukon, Oregon, Washington, Cimarron, Trenton, Carson City, Jefferson City, Jackson, Boston, Baton Rouge, Houston, Arlington It seems to have three allomorphs: -ton after s or a nasal, -son after s, r (possibly assimilated in Cimarron). Incidentally, Go...

Examples of broken slabs have been found with an internal "green slate" (to use the term favoured by Professor Branestawm) which is usually decorated with what appears to be a type of cursive writing, whose major characteristic is that it consists of straight lines, metal dots and rectangl...

(Could we have the old wordpress theme back? Please? I can't stand the hamburger logo and sliding popup window!) I changed it again. It's a different theme, but it doesn't break the pictures and has no hamburgers. Thank you! Huge bouquet specially for you, Zompist! And, do you know what?CTRL++ seve...

(Could we have the old wordpress theme back? Please? I can't stand the hamburger logo and sliding popup window!)

And the icelani, if they are the Almean equivalent of australopithecines, they are essentially just upright-walking apes, no way smarter than chimps or gorillas, because that's what australopithecines probably actually were. They are very smart by "beastly" standards, but just as incapabl...