Zompist Bboard Again

Argument raising and impersonal passives This post is about an operation that I'll call argument raising, and an impersonal sort of passivisation that it can feed. I'll start with an example that'll look like dative shift. Here's a ditransitive sentence with neutral word order: kipaja apatu hwati m...

Bessunire wrote: ↑Wed Sep 26, 2018 5:36 pm Next: tasurolla [ˌtʰasuˈɾolːə] to be modest, meek, unassuming

tasurawa [ˌta.soˈrau̯.wə], to lack pride

Next: jakikwai [ˌja.keˈkwai̯], clan hall

next: enterprise Next: inflection / declension / conjugation Akiatu nahwami 1. (v intr) to wake up earliest 2. (v tr) to wear on the head or face (of hats, ornaments, pigment...) 3. (n) an affix (I started thinking of how to combine the two before I noticed that hwatting had noticed bbbosborne's co...

Passives ( A change of custom: I've decided it's probably more confusing than helpful to represent orthographically the lengthening of short vowels that get main stress, so I'm going to try not doing that. ) In this post I'll talk about a few ways to construct passives in Akiatu. Now, Akiatu allows...

masako wrote: ↑Tue Sep 25, 2018 6:42 am next: to be sentimentally attached to somebody or something

akimau a _____ kiha: to be loyal to, to believe in, to trust (lit, to stand below)

Next: to be tired, used up, worn out

Oh, cool. (At some point I read someone doubting whether any of the reported cases could be genuine, but I don't have enough of a background in phonetics to assess such things.)

Voiced uvular consonants are definitely a thing IRL, they just tend to be very unstable. But phonetic voiced uvular plosives ? I'm actually not sure if they are or not, only that most languages with uvular stops seem to have /q'/ and /q/ at most. I'm pretty sure /qʷ/ is also reasonably common in la...

mèþru wrote: ↑Wed Sep 26, 2018 8:08 am next: mveh мԝэx [mwex] - blood

mwaihi [ˈmwɐi̯.he], to bleed

Next: marukwai [ˌmɐ.roˈkwɐi̯], to be at home

I was under the impression that, phonetically speaking, voiced uvular plosives aren't really a thing---they crowd into back velar territory, or get realised as fricatives. There's not much room for either of those options here. (UPSID shows only one language that contrasts a voiced uvular plosive wi...

Direct objects So the idea is that the direct object usually precedes the verb, but there are various obvious signs that it's moved there from a position following the verb. (That's where you'd expect it to be given other word-order facts about the language.) Talking about this will require some at...

next: east, sunrise First, two adjectives (of which Akiatu has about 15): uñu : white, light-coloured, clear (of eyesight or weather) sakija : red, bright Directions: uñuta : east (the direction of sunrise in this world too) sakijata : west Events / times: tiwana uñu : sunrise tiwana sakija : sunse...

masako wrote: ↑Sun Sep 23, 2018 8:01 am next: to draw out by suction

kjakihaumati, v. to suck venom out of a snake bite

Next: subtle, easy not to notice

masako wrote: ↑Sun Sep 23, 2018 7:11 am next: sound of waves

hahwasi, n. a crashing sound, as of ocean waves or a tree falling in the jungle
sawani, n. the sound of waves lapping against the shore
sawaru, v. of waves, to lap against the shore

Next: ceremonial hat

asawi : nearby, at a short distance . It can just be an adverb: hjaaci tawaani tawaaru asawwi Hjaci song sing nearby Hjaci is singing nearby More commonly, it modifies a preposition phrase: hjaaci tawaani tawaaru asawwi hu awajakwai wati Hjaci song sing nearby ABL village DIST(LOC) Hjaci is singing...

More about resultatives perfectives I was going to post more about resultative complements, to set up a discussion of aspect; but then I decided I should rename them as perfective complements (I'll explain why in a moment); and a certain amount of stuff about aspect got mixed in. Here's what I came...

That's really interesting about noun incorporation, bbbosborne and Zaarin, I'll have to look into that more, it's really relevant to some things I'm trying to work out.

Are there natlangs in which incorporated nouns can be inflected for number? (I don't mean that as an implied criticism, just hoping to learn more.)

I actually like the code-block tables. It helps if you compose your posts in another program using a monospace font, so you can see how the columns will line up. You can also go back and edit the post to line things up correctly (you'd want to take some spaces out of the bottom three rows of your co...

Resultatives Thanks! I'm glad you're enjoying it. Here's another instalment, about resultative constructions. It's fairly directly inspired by Mandarin, though it starts looking a bit Englishy at a couple of points. So it's common in Akiatu to have two verbs in sequence, the first one describing an...

It's a bit complicated by definitions, but many Bantu languages probably count.