Search found 98 matches
- Wed Nov 28, 2018 7:04 am
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: SAE phonology and grammar tests
- Replies: 97
- Views: 86195
Re: SAE phonology and grammar tests
Viksen (at least "Viksen 2010 edition", which is the most recent "complete" grammar ... maybe it's time for an official updating) scores about 21 on grammar, though I was unsure on some of the points (because I never explicitly addressed them or because I was unclear whether some...
- Sat Nov 03, 2018 4:17 pm
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: [PSA] Language Creation Conference 8
- Replies: 17
- Views: 8186
Re: [PSA] Language Creation Conference 8
Dare I ask if staying at a hotel for a couple days would be out of the question? Perhaps with a fellow participant? I think some people have done that in the past. Probably not: I'd be moving all of my stuff out of my student room on the Saturday, and we're just not insured to have all that left in...
- Wed Oct 31, 2018 10:58 am
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: [PSA] Language Creation Conference 8
- Replies: 17
- Views: 8186
Re: [PSA] Language Creation Conference 8
Thanks for this; I usually only find out these are happening after the fact. And this one is a couple of miles from my house so I should probably go.
- Wed Oct 17, 2018 4:12 pm
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: Do you know conlang software tools?
- Replies: 33
- Views: 24979
Re: Do you know conlang software tools?
The one big advantage of doing maps on the computer, I find, is being able to use layers to quickly customise the map for different purposes.
- Sun Oct 14, 2018 11:04 am
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: Do you know conlang software tools?
- Replies: 33
- Views: 24979
Re: Do you know conlang software tools?
I just use Excel or Google Sheets, honestly. Yeah, I used to use LexiquePro as dedicated dictionary software, but now I just do them in Excel. Grammars I do in Word. Why about LexiquePro? Also do you know application to create a conmap? LexiquePro was pretty good, but in the end I just found Excel ...
- Sat Oct 13, 2018 3:30 pm
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: Do you know conlang software tools?
- Replies: 33
- Views: 24979
Re: Do you know conlang software tools?
Yeah, I used to use LexiquePro as dedicated dictionary software, but now I just do them in Excel. Grammars I do in Word.
- Thu Oct 11, 2018 9:13 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Why do you avoid passive voice?
- Replies: 43
- Views: 30522
Re: Why do you avoid passive voice?
What I think (probably most of this has been said already): (1) There are a limited set of occasions where the passive is best avoided (because e.g. the active is more concise and/or easier to understand, or because it's being used deceptively to disguise the identity of the agent*). (2) This has le...
- Tue Oct 02, 2018 8:05 am
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: Things Decided for Stupid Reasons
- Replies: 86
- Views: 61628
Re: Things Decided for Stupid Reasons
In a future English (sort of) I'm working on I collapsed all of English's diphthongs just because they kept interfering with my sound changes, since SCA2 parses <aɪ̯> as <a> + <ɪ> + <◌̯>. I could have gotten around it by rewriting my diphthongs using single symbols (and have done so before plenty o...
- Sun Sep 02, 2018 11:12 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: On the fitness of abjads
- Replies: 23
- Views: 20444
Re: On the fitness of abjads
Whether or not PIE fits the definition of a consonant-root language is quibbling over terminology which is irrelevant to the point; the degree of variation permitted in the vowels has no bearing on the argument made. In PIE, as in Arabic, the meaning of roots themselves is basically carried on the c...
- Fri Aug 31, 2018 3:26 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: On the fitness of abjads
- Replies: 23
- Views: 20444
Re: On the fitness of abjads
I am not sure how big of a problem this would be in practice, particularly in a language like Latin whose vocabulary is mostly derived from a consonantal root language.
- Thu Aug 16, 2018 12:17 am
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: DJP criticisms
- Replies: 81
- Views: 41834
Re: DJP criticisms
TBH, it triggers my inner rantor when people complain about the "IE-ness" of languages. IE languages cover quite a typological range, some have split ergativity, some are VSO or strict SOV, it's quite likely that PIE or its preceding stage had active alignment... I'm not sure Dothraki is ...
- Wed Aug 15, 2018 3:15 am
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: DJP criticisms
- Replies: 81
- Views: 41834
Re: DJP criticisms
I agree about phonology and orthography; my criticism is of the morphosyntax. The thirty-odd phrases that appear in the books (source) create a few constraints in this regard, but not many.
- Tue Aug 14, 2018 6:56 am
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: DJP criticisms
- Replies: 81
- Views: 41834
Re: DJP criticisms
I haven't read the book. My impression is that he's a competent conlanger, but hardly of stellar talent. I guess it's easy to feel it rather unfair that he's profited so much from language creation when many others of equal or greater ability have not been able to.
- Thu Aug 09, 2018 4:19 am
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: Affixes
- Replies: 4
- Views: 5029
Re: Affixes
Try Cinque (1999) "Adverbs and Functional Heads", esp. sections 3.1, 3.2. It's on Google Books; there's also a 1997 "working paper" version you can download online somewhere, or at least there used to be.
- Mon Aug 06, 2018 4:26 am
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: How to describe morphosyntax?
- Replies: 10
- Views: 11917
Re: How to describe morphosyntax?
I think it's often unhelpful to have all the morphology together followed by all the syntax. So you have paradigms for verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives etc. before you get around to explaining how any of them are actually used. I'd generally rather have the verbal paradigms followed immediately by...
- Wed Aug 01, 2018 8:51 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Innovative Usage Thread
- Replies: 556
- Views: 662031
Re: Innovative Usage Thread
I'm going to share a piece of data I overheard a while ago and have been (strictly metaphorically) shouting from the rooftops ever since. [...] And with the verb "nut" in the sense of "ejaculate" being a fairly new zero-derivation (as far as I know), it goes to show that this an...
- Wed Aug 01, 2018 8:48 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Element theory
- Replies: 4
- Views: 6424
Re: Element theory
[h ~ ç ~ ɸ] are arguably more acoustically similar than they are articulatorily similar. I think the sound changes that led to this split (and similar changes in other languages, which are quite frequent) happened for acoustic reasons.
- Mon Jul 30, 2018 2:45 pm
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: Grammar Nazis of Your Conlangs
- Replies: 23
- Views: 20039
Re: Grammar Nazis of Your Conlangs
"Golden Age" Viksen of a couple of hundred years ago had some extremely strong prescriptivist trends, affecting syntax in particular. For one thing, "simple" or "naturalistic" styles were preferred over the elaborate constructions of previous centuries, but at the same ...