Zompist Bboard Again

What's the mechanism for supraregional organization. For example, who manages rail infrastructure across the continent of Africa? It feels as though there would be utility in creating explicit regional bodies for effective administration and construction of large-scale inter-provincial infrastructur...

Two noun-related systems I came up with (please tell me if it’s unnaturalistic). What number markings a noun can take depends on the animacy level of the noun. (level 1 animacy) Humans, gods, spirits, large animals: Singular, paucal, and plural (level 2 animacy) Small animals, water, weather, tools...

I go through so much pain over this in my conlanging work, I'm constantly changing up chapter sections and hierarchies as I work through the material. For me, the experience of conlanging is like discovery. Once you've settled on your "core parameters" and you start writing, it often feels...

That's interesting to me considering that OVS isn't terribly unusual for German. ?? German is typically analyzed as SOV in "underlying" order, V2 in "surface" order; fronting is also possible, which in combination with the V2 rule leads to surface OVS order in clauses where the ...

Also— I'm not sure where I got 'experiencer', but words have multiple meanings, and I defined exactly what I meant. FWIW there's a lot of variation in this area... e.g. what you and I call a "semantic role", Fillmore originally called "Case" (groan), and Chomsky calls theta role...

The closest to strictly monovalent I've seen in a natural language is Coptic, the latest and final stage of Egyptian. Every object requires a preposition, the ones that are called direct objects get /ən/ or [insert other preposition I have to check on when I get home]; both of which can be dropped ...

The closest to strictly monovalent I've seen in a natural language is Coptic, the latest and final stage of Egyptian. Every object requires a preposition, the ones that are called direct objects get /ən/ or [insert other preposition I have to check on when I get home]; both of which can be dropped i...

I think I've had three panic attacks in my life. Maybe four, maybe two. I remember two clearly. The most recent one was actually really strange. I was at a bar, probably 2019, watching RuPaul's Drag Race and someone had a fluffy puppy with them. As the show went on, I started to get extremely allerg...

I would add that grammarians name things mostly by analogy. Given the fuzzy nature of meaning and the lack of a small finite set of perfectly replicated cross-linguistic categories, I'm not sure what the alternative is, except to invent a unique terminology for every language. The way we do it is p...

I don't think the sociology around a taboo word is entirely analogous to what's happened to thou. Thou was the informal pronoun, it got overtaken by the you. Eventually it became something people only associated with Shakespeare and period pieces and the like, and assumed because of the often aristo...

It has occurred to me that Dhekhnami-style ranking could be introduced into German... in many cases simply by using High German for the higher rank and Low German for the lower. Just an amusing note. Then there's how "thou" disappeared in English because it came to be seen as low-rank. (U...

This is interersting but I gotta say, I'm very dubious of universal claims in syntax in general, because they stem out of Chomsky's very flawed framework. Chomsky did a LOT for the description of English, but his followers in particular have done a great disservice to the description of other langua...

[ʒ] > [z]

[ˈzeː.ɟe]
jiégie

I don't think I ever say the first two but the last one seems plausible in for example "I've not done that before" and "I've not really tried that."

ɕ > x

[ɐ lʲý sʲáɐ ktsí tsý]
N lú syár ktsí tsú

[ɐ kɨ́ xáɐj mʲí sɑ̰́ɐ]
N kóu kyárlu mí sáon

[u ftá vu tɑ́ nʲý]
O ftá vou táo nú

Nasals become syllabic preceding [a], [a] is lost.

[n̩ lý sɛ́r ku.tí tsý]
[n̩ kú kɛ́r.jy mí sɔ̃́n]
[o vý.tá vu tɔ́ ný]

A wave of word final voicing whooshes across the land.

Language 1:

[siɣ]
zich

Language 1.5:

[ʃix'xai]
Scicchai

Language 2:

['keːiz]
tiais

Language 3:

['ʃyː]
Schüh

Palatalization of velars before front vowels.

['cʼærdə]

k'ärda

['kʼɒrdə]

k'årda

Palatal fricative becomes [f].

[ɕɛː.sɪ̇f]

New orthography remains.

Śêsich

Trills become flaps.

['saːkɾataːh]