Zompist Bboard Again

Of course, I use ergative and accusative in non-standard fashions to refer to marked arguments of intransitive verbs in a fluid-S arrangement along with antipassive and passive verbs, where agentive S is direct for animates and ergative for inanimates and patientive S is accusative for animates and ...

I personally, as you can see from my currently-unnamed new language (but I have used similar schemes in other languages as well), like to have three cases, a direct case, an ergative case (even though I often call it an agentive case), and an accusative case (even though I often call it a patientive...

What's that in referrence to? If you define it as ‘verb + object’, you’re forced to conclude that VSO languages don’t have predicates — and therefore their clauses don’t have any head at all! ‘Head’ may be an ill-defined term, but to me, that’s going a bit too far. I.e. the idea that objects separa...

I am personally of the view that resorting to logic and theory to justify how languages act, and questioning if something attested in a given language is possible when it does not correspond to said logic and theory, is probably not the greatest of ideas. What's that in referrence to? If you define...

Here is my latest language, with some examples taken from this board: <a aa b b' c ch c' d d' e ee f g h i ii j k kh k' l m n o oo q qh q' r s t th t' u uu w x y z> Yooriwim nitkun xaalat saha. Ruuhraatac'a q'omahi fera hat gich tik'aa. Yooric'am aqwa ficcat cola. Wanniziyetha sun ha qhamaniziye fad...

I am personally of the view that resorting to logic and theory to justify how languages act, and questioning if something attested in a given language is possible when it does not correspond to said logic and theory, is probably not the greatest of ideas.

One thing to note, is that in addition to being fluid-S, this language uses the ergative with inanimate subjects of antipassive verbs and the accusative with animate subjects of passive verbs.

jal wrote: ↑Wed May 15, 2024 3:06 pm I wasn't familiar yet with the "seven kill stele", surprised or not. Also it seems it's fake.

Qhamaniziye sigaa mut'a.
bore-APSS-AGT.3.S.INAN-PRES stele-ERG real-ERG
The real stele is boring.

I mentioned the Arnold Palmer incidents to my parents, and they were concerned that I'd've come off as mocking the barista's ability to understand English by pronouncing Arnold Palmer super-carefully, with an un-elided [n] and real-live-voiced [d], in order to be understood (they pronounced Arnold P...

exist, existential copula, ga yogh, yoh reason, nayad any, le real, mut' use (trans.), bak vocative particle, a A Znex, gadila nayad le ha bakimyetha yoh mut'? VOC Znex, exist-DAT-YES/NO reason any COMP use-AGT.1.S-PRES-NEG yogh real Znex, is there any reason you don't use the real yogh?

Another note is that predicatively adjectives behave like inanimate singular nouns and are used with the equational copula ta.

I am changing how how equational copula ta works, such that, unlike other verbs, if both the "agent" and "patient" are animate or inanimate and singular, they are not marked on the verb (and both arguments are in direct case). However, inverse marking still applies.

One thing that should be remembered is that in many modern English varieties, should is not a past tense/subjunctive counterparts to shall but rather a modal by itself because shall is primarily limited to high registers and is effectively moribund in everyday speech (in this way it reminds me of wh...

This particular construction does make sense to me. You just need to notice that English modals don’t really have past tense forms — so if you want to place a modal in the past, you need to use a perfect, and there’s only one syntactically valid way of doing that. That's a tad difficult when they d...

"If I had had that cake, it wouldn't've gone mouldy" definitely works for me. This is just standard English, surely? This to me is standard English. It does not exude any of the auxiliary funniness that is present in these other examples. So does "If I had've known, I wouldn't've eat...

At leuthes oʒsa atsʒen harthle bedruiccet, cens thasʒen aull ret? It also sounds rather depressing, are you feeling okay? :? please (trans.), icha carry (trans.), q'in Ichazinumam ha q'inta niiha sigat t'awraadat yola! please-AGT.3.S.INAN-HAB-PAT.1.S-INV COMP carry-PASS above stele-GEN die-CAUS-ACT...

jal wrote: ↑Wed May 15, 2024 4:14 am Yu kip way Ingles sentms.
You omitted the English sentence.

• would (intr.), yaa
• include (trans.), k'ay
• obvious, alle
• too, jo

Yaa ha ta ha k'aytaa zon alle jo.
would COMP COP COMP include-PASS-PAST.IPFV DIST.3.S.INAN obvious too
Including that would have been too obvious.

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Wed May 15, 2024 9:59 am

foxcatdog wrote: ↑Wed May 15, 2024 4:41 am *m *n *nʲ *ɲ

Are you sure you mean *ɲ and not *ŋ? Those tailed n's are easy to confuse with each other, and a phonemic opposition between *nʲ and *ɲ seems weird.

Agreed - a contrast between a palatalized nasal and a palatal nasal seems very strange to me.

Just because a sound change is attested does not mean that it is not evil!

surprise (trans.), coxi need (trans.), mag explain (trans.), lehha seven, yola stele, monolith, siga Coxitaleeyema ha magta ha lehhataye ha ta siga t'awraadat yola. surprise-PASS-INST-PRES-PAT.1.S COMP need-PASS COMP explain-PASS-PRES COMP COP stele die-CAUS-ACTION-GEN seven I am surprised that it ...