Zompist Bboard Again

I get the general idea that if the agent is higher than the patient in a person-hierarchy so 2nd person is higher than 1st in Algonquian languages you have a direct marker. On this point, it’s well worth reading Oxford’s Algonquian Grammar Myths (of which this is one). More reading :D Thank you eve...

Can I ask a completely unrelated question - but this is a miscellany thread after all. How do direct-inverse systems handle indirect objects? I get the general idea that if the agent is higher than the patient in a person-hierarchy so 2nd person is higher than 1st in Algonquian languages you have a ...

How does it manifest? As a handy setting for fantasy-like fiction, which also allows plumbing of existential questions of the type more akin to sci-fi. As a bunch of scrawled notes, maps and Google Docs amassed over 20 years, weathered by time and obscured by the billowing shrouds of ADHD. At some ...

Roughly 1000 years later, the Notalin Empire has broken up – in fact it lasted not quite 50 years, the three kingdoms have become one, the Kingdom of Melland. The story begins with the birth of a demon lord (Kaarok) in a wood on the tastar plains. In fact, this is the scene I first thought of that s...

6000 years later Teldar-Rantor King of Rakh had united the kingdoms of the Notalin archipelago, a volcanic archipelago situated on an oceanic hotspot in the Rymersea (a bit like Hawaii). He was now turning his attention to the divided peninsula to the west. Instead of three city states surrounded by...

The Destruction of the Preternaturalists: The Tormelike Empire which had been founded some 8000 years previously by the refugees from Tormelil had spread south and west from the cities they had founded – Bizkanotral, Okotril and Tokai-Niril. On the continent of Khetinda the N’Dakwa Dominion had spr...

I haven't read most of it yet, but the idea of the Creator himself having been created in an act of random chaos sounds interesting, and not like something Tolkien would have come up with - it would have been against his religious beliefs, after all. That I suppose he would never have come up with,...

So now I understand a bit of actual linguistics which I didn't when I was much younger... I have toyed around with redoing a language I devised (Notalin) from an old fantasy setting. Now the mythology is a bit silly in places and derivative in others, but I find I am not fussed about revising it now...

lastly, below is the indefinite article ains; the competing indefinite article saums declines exactly the same except with the stem /sɔm-/ instead of /ɛn-/ When do you use ains as opposed to saums or vice versa? dual and plural forms of the indefinite article? Curious how that works. How would you ...

“The money that is given charities” pretty unambiguously means the money … and someone gives charities to that money, somehow. The only reason it doesn’t parse is because it’s semantically nonsense. No. It pretty unambiguously means the exact opposite. Someone gives money to the charities, but I gr...

Is "the money that is given charities" grammatical to you? I'd require "to charities". No, but I would still say that money was the theme and the charities the recipient. If you want it the other way round I'd say "The charities to whom the money is given." "The c...

X jumanu Y ja Z = the Z that X gives Y to. X jumanu Y shi Z = the Z that is given to X by Y. X jumanu Y tu Z = the Z that is given Y by X. Hang on I think the translations are ambiguous because I don't read them quite the same as Imralu, but I still don't get it 1) X gives Y to Z (same as Imralu - X...

Alas, I have little to say about that, except that it looks like the work of a beginner. That's fine, of course - we all did rather unsophisticated worlds and languages when we were young. And it does take a little bit of guts to chuck it out there not knowing what people will say.... Personally I'...

I have finally managed to complete a first draft of my novel - The Warriors of the Sun - set in my conworld (the one with the Vedreki - https://www.verduria.org/viewtopic.php?p=15310#p15310 ). Not quite as long as I'd hoped at 80k, but I think I can add some stuff at second time round. Now for a bre...

I was thinking about control constructions and object raising I ordered Alice to come I ordered Alice to give the book to Bob (these I understand to be a control construction in that a component of the first clause - the main clause - determines an argument of the second subordinate clause. Alice is...

You could leave them all out...

The wind blew through leaves and over fields. Clouds floated in the sky

It's the year of the four chancellors, but will it be the year of the three prime ministers? You couldn't make it up...

Vedreki
ulemottaq - to overwhelm (literally under-push; the Vedreki live on an archipelago so the image is of a ship being sunk, pushed under the waves)

Next to crown (as in "The king will be crowned in June.")

Sorry. The second back unrounded column should be back rounded. Typo. (I hate doing tables; there's always something wrong with them first time round) I've corrected it now, but you both are right that æ does not have its IPA value, but neither does it have it in Icelandic... (For purposes of what I...

I've been trying to come up with a sound change to wreak havoc with. I'm returning to an old fantasy setting and redoing the language of Notalin, essentially spoken by a race of elves living on an isolated archipelago in the middle of the ocean. I'm aiming for a Norse/old English-y feel to it so I w...