Zompist Bboard Again

Here's another dissertation: Gouskova (2003) [pdf] on syncope. That article looks very interesting as well, but it looks very jargony - I can't understand it because I don't know Optimality Theory. Could you give a summary, or at least point me to some resources to help understand it? While we're d...

I may have been the first to equate βɑʒɪteɾjɪ: to vegetarian in a PM to Sal about three weeks ago, but dropped the idea and didn't run with it.

Though somebody else was probably first.

Chiptune A E F T H E T I C

This seems thoroughly plausible, but it should probably apply to all geminate-singleton pairings.

Proto-Abazi is thought to have had the opposite shift: *T: *T > D T (?!)

Newbie question: if lenition, or "softening", is one of the most common sound changes, then how do languages ever become "hard" in the first place? (Yes, this could have gone in the Linguistic Miscellany Thread, but I'm asking it here because the reason why i'm asking it is rela...

isn't that just Old English

The first passports without "European Union" on them have been issued. In a shocking betrayal, they are not blue.

If I came across a context that made me think it was French, it would be [ɹoʊ'ʃa:d]. If I came across a context that made me think it was Spanish, [ɹoʊ'tʃa:de(j)]. It would not occur to me to think it was German.

Aaaand Brussels has said no to May's request for an extension. Nine days to go.

Babe. I got you babe. I got you Babe. So, so much this. Sometimes, it honestly feels like being in... well, not even a quirky romantic comedy, but an outright horror film. She's like the fucking Terminator of negotiation. It feels like the entire nation is being gaslighted, or trapped in, as you sa...

You seem to have missed that the -ɪz suffix in B has an exact cognate in C -s/z, and similarly B -ɪð ~ C -d. I can cite 5 certain word-equations, and a handful more likely cases, showing the correspondence. If these suffixes are clitics, then they're common to BC. I hadn't missed them so much as pa...

I'm offering to sit down with the Leader of the Opposition to try to agree a plan that we would both stick to, to ensure that we leave the European Union and that we do so with a deal. Any plan would have to agree the current withdrawal agreement. Does she not realize that these two adjoining state...

Where did C ə:s go in B? Based on the vowel correspondence alone, I wonder if it could actually be the cognate of B ɔɪdɪː. -ɪː seems to be a suffix in B, and based on B ɣɪtɪz ~ C ɣes, I suspect that C underwent a simplification *ts > s at some stage (for B -ɪz ~ C -s after a voiceless stop, see βəg...

- However, the pair seg ~ ʃək in 11 suggests we are dealing with a chain shift *ʃ > s, *tʃ > ʃ in B IMO a better explanation of this is that C actually palatalised *s - the vowel correspondences A ɛː ~ B e suggests a pre-C *jə (cf. ɛː ~ eb ~ jəp, ʔɛː ~ eg ~ jək). A similar case of palatalisation ar...

I don't think that there is sufficient analysis to group A,B,C into subfamilies - we need to figure out the order of changes first and which if any could be areal This has not stopped Sino-Tibetanists, Africanists and some Americanists from doing exactly this. It's clear that A is just plain weird-...

It is obvious from eyeballing the sentences that B and C form a subgroup opposed to A or, at the very least, that if they do not that A is unusually divergent and that comparisons of B and C are lower-hanging fruit. Let's take a look. First, initials. These line up well enough that no real table is ...

Intuitively [baɪ.'jɑpɪk], but I'm not sure if I've ever heard it spoken out loud. When I figured out it was an abbrevation of biographical picture I started wondering whether it was supposed to be ['baɪjoʊpɪk]...

Yes, I'm interested. I think a number of us have been waiting for language number three.

I see Meaningful Vote Three will be held tomorrow.

In fact it may have trailed off even further west, as late IE *ō gives Proto-Celtic ā.