Zompist Bboard Again

Perhaps from an active-stative system? The trouble is that the scenario is caseless predecessor with a plain old nom-acc alignment. You're not giving yourself much to work with. :) And pure nominative markers are kinda rare. The fact that IE originally had nominative markers in the first place is r...

• strange, oha
• less, fewer, gak

Yaa ha ximaamutha ha taye ⟨ʒ⟩ oha gak gabi yoh.
would COMP think-AGT.1.S-HAB-NEG COMP COP-PRES ⟨ʒ⟩ strange less exist-ABL yogh
I would not think that ⟨ʒ⟩ is less strange than the yogh.

Meine deutschen Vorfahren sprachen wahrscheinlich Platt, da sie aus Pommern stammten.
My German ancestors probably spoke Platt, as they came from Pomerania.

Perhaps from an active-stative system? I recall that I may have seen such a suggestion for how IE got its -s and -m markers for nominative and accusative.

Ik kann ok öven! Ik heff nich bemerkt, dat de Thread aktualisiert worrn harr. I can practise too! I didn't realise that the thread had been updated. Ik wünsch, ik kunn ümsüns studieren (un Medikamenten ümsüns opschreven warrn, wat dat bedraapt). I wish I could study for nothing (and get prescribed ...

• problem, teelat
• speak (trans.), laxa

Taye teelat ⟨z⟩-t ha laxaleekanum zo nuuxa xacagyi.
COP-PRES problem ⟨z⟩-GEN COMP speak-INST-AGT.3.P.ANIM-HAB-INV PROX.1.S.INAN people write-NOM.PAT
The problem with ⟨z⟩ is that people spelling-pronounce it.

Can you even be precise about how many registers a language has? I would have thought whether a language has, say, three or four registers is a matter of interpretation. This is especially true of a language like English which does not really have grammaticalized registers. 'snot true. Elipsis of f...

Raphael wrote: ↑Sun May 19, 2024 12:10 pm Can you even be precise about how many registers a language has? I would have thought whether a language has, say, three or four registers is a matter of interpretation.

This is especially true of a language like English which does not really have grammaticalized registers.

How many distinct registers do you all build into your conlangs? I've done up to three, but most often zero. Martin Joos believed there were five registers in English, but I've never worked out that many for a conlang in any detail. Honestly I haven't really done much of anything with register in m...

After all we've tested this with (say) planes and spacecraft, to say nothing of particles circling accelerators: they all go slower from our perspective. We even have tested that the speed of particles affects their decay times. For instance, this is why muons can reach the Earth's surface ─ from o...

Of course, any physical object aside from an elementary particle at a 0.99c speed in an orbit would not be able to maintain any kind of structural integrity and would rapidly disintegrate as it approached the object it was orbiting around.

The idea therefore being that nouns are unmarked when they appear in their expected position, and marked when they appear in a position which contradicts their animacy. The basic idea is really ‘marked vs unmarked’, not ‘ergative vs absolutive’. (You can even merge the accusative and ergative cases...

I’d go a bit further here, and say that the ‘typical’ animacy-based split looks like this: mouse-∅ runs mouse-∅ bites man-ACC mouse-∅ bites cheese-∅ pillar-∅ falls piller-ERG crushes man-ACC pillar-ERG crushes cheese-∅ The idea therefore being that nouns are unmarked when they appear in their expec...

I have a number of verbs such as icha 'please' which have the experiencer as a patient, this results in an awkward situation where (typically) animate experiencers are marked when they would actually be unmarked given that, well, experiencers tend to be animate. Yet at the same time, I do not want t...

On second thought, this system seems different from mine in that my direct case is unmarked, being the bare stem without any ending, and both my ergative and accusative cases are explicitly marked by their very nature (hence why I named them such), whereas in Vrkhazhian there are really are no unmar...

Man in Space wrote: ↑Fri May 17, 2024 11:02 pm On Wikipedia just now, I have found a natlang (Bai) that spells /ɯ/ as e (/e/ is ei). I am quite astounded.

This is probably inspired by Hanyu Pinyin, in which /ə/ by itself is written ⟨e⟩ but is actually pronounced [ɤ] while ⟨ei⟩ is pronounced [ei].

[kj] > [c] [còːd.dʑé] 偽 | へうりぇう | ひょーっぎぇ | 허러 | hyōggye Kanji | Traditional Hiragana | Reformed Hiragana | Hangeul | Romanization "perjury; alibi, especially if dubious; (military slang) cover story, pretext, what’s released to the public (especially if fabricated)" [tʰ] > [tsʰ] [ka'tsʰeə̯...

• special, fooka

Ichaziyema ha mad ha xacaleemetha zo xacagyim fookalaa.
please-AGT.3.S.INAN-PRES-PAT.1.S COMP able COMP write-INST-AGT.1.M-PRES-NEG PROX.S.INAN write-PAT-P special-P
I like that I can write this without using special characters.

people (coll.), nuuxa all, aana bear a child (trans.), d'awaa free (as in liberty), agim equal, qaala dignity, ayet right, denti endow (with an ability) (trans.), loobe think (trans.), ximaa conscience, yuuri act (intr.), thinna each other, aq'at spirit, eekan brother, jalli D'awaataxayewi nuuxa aa...

Yorkish, yorkis emph. (adv.), t'a German, jerman north, haakha mutate (lit. change) (intr.), wiib'a Ichazinumam t'a yorkisa. please-AGT.3.S.INAN-HAB-PAT.1.S EMPH Yorkish-ERG I do like Yorkish. Nawizinu zona fad'a jermanse haakhat wiib'aja. appear-AGT.3.S.INAN-HAB DIST.S.INAN-ERG language German-ADJ...