Zompist Bboard Again

mèþru wrote: ↑Fri Aug 17, 2018 10:12 am Did I join some kind of cult?

You're on the ZBB why are you surprised?

Also "animacy heirarchy" is a bit of a misleading term, because typically it's about who the speaker cares most about/who is most important to the people in the conversations, which is why 1st and 2nd persons are at the top (because they're of course the people those involved in a conversa...

"Having said this, the sailor laughed" is syntactically and semantically pretty much the same as that Greek phrase, isn't it? It's just that Greek (and Latin, FWIW) uses such constructions much more freely than English does. I know that, but that's not a counter-argument to my point. I'm ...

Vijay wrote: ↑Thu Aug 16, 2018 12:16 am I can't think of any actual linguists who are against Frislander on this.

Are you implying I'm not yet an actual linguist? (Not a criticism, and it's true I guess, but given that Linguistics is my degree and intended career path it won't stay so for long).

On another note, I'm currently learning Ancient Greek over the summer (for an Indo-European philology paper I'm taking this year coming up when I go back to university), and I'm currently rather intrigued by the syntax and semantics of the participles. Quite often they appear to be functioning more ...

But the difference is still salient for the fricatives. e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewe_language#Consonants has /f v/ vs /φ β/. I'm not saying bilabial fricatives are impossible - far from it! Just that it's very easy for them to become labiodental, and with good reason, and is what leads to...

@hwhatting: Very true what you say about the typological diversity of Indo-European. Most people who say "IE" when it comes to typology of conlangs in fact mean "SAE" (Standard Average European), which in itself is poorly defined and controversial. True enough, in fact I'd proba...

Why is the idea that Grassmann's law was either inherited by both Greek and Indo-Aryan or an areal feature a thing? Dissimilation is pretty unlikely to be an areal feature so why can't it just be an independent development? You'd think, but borrowing sound changes is attested. My main beef with an ...

Yeah, to be clear, there are plenty of Dothraki names from GRRM and quite a few sentences that had to be accommodated. (E.g., khaleesi is from the books, so right away you're faced with either challenging his orthography, or giving it a really weird pronunciation.) Well sure, but I have some issues...

Oh come on Hunt! You failed a test so simple that no one even thought it would be a test. Bloody hell that was a fuck-up and a half, but hey at least it's an actual slip of the tongue in a way, not a bare-faced lie like all the times he claimed the government was investing in and cared about the NH...

Because it is a lot easier to get complete closure between two lips than it is between the lower lip and the teeth. In fact before the advent of modern dentistry I reckon true labiodental stops would have been impossible for many people because of gaps between the teeth allowing airflow, when in ord...

I'm just gonna start this thread as a place to post minor feedback on the Virtual Verduria website and the Almeopedia. This is mainly intended to be focused on technical issues and other related matter rather than the content of the websites themselves (i.e. this isn't intended to be n Almea discuss...

I think it's a matter of the relative strength of articulation and the loudness of the different consonants. In particular the bilabial fricatives are really weak in comparison to the labiodentals, which I reckon might be something to do with the fact that the passive articulator (the upper lip) is ...

So, after a year and a half, it was decided that this would be our negotiating position for the remaining six months of negotiations - a negotiating position everyone in the UK could agree to. To enforce this, the Prime Minister had another cunning plan: calling all her ministers to Chequers, her h...

Actually it's not just Zoque, Southern Highland Mixe has it too.

Can I just comment on the phonology a little bit, if mainly to say how much I like it myself and I think it's really nice. I particularly like some of those assimilations. I would like to see some rules for what happens when/if vowels come into contact; is this how the front-rounded vowels are creat...

Basics Username: Frislander (not Frieslander as I've seen sometimes) Name: John Other Nickname: none that I know of Birthplace: Hexham, Northumberland, UK Place of Residence: Cambridge during term time North Yorkshire/Teeside otherwise Any particular reason you live there now? Former for university...