Zompist Bboard Again

[…] my point is that both English and French are generalizing the default pronoun— making it more default, as it were. Well, my definition of ‘default pronoun’ was precisely that it is generalised. So wouldn’t this just be a circular argument? You could probably argue that the default pronoun in Sp...

Got some inspiration: reflexive markers. They only refer to the subject. So if the word order in a reflexive clause is fixed to S REFL V (and reflexion is doubly marked), that could over time be interpreted as S=NOM V, after other case suffixes have appeared. Finally, the nominative enclitic would ...

"Default" might be a better word here... I do agree that "me" etc. is the default form in English (and "moi" in French)! OK, ‘default’ is a far better word here. Then ‘marked-nominative languages’ might be better termed ‘default-accusative languages’, and so on. The ke...

Starting with the most important point first: You'd probably have to explain what notion of markedness you're using. To me the form used in clefting and emphasis would be more rather than less marked. (Note that in French the clefted/emphatic form is different from both nom. and acc. pronouns.) Esse...

Even English is arguably marked-nominative. How so? Basically, what Glass Half Baked said: Citation form for the pronouns is the object series: me , us , them , etc. The object series is used after prepositions The object series is used for emphatic subjects and topics The object series is used aft...

Got some inspiration: reflexive markers. They only refer to the subject. So if the word order in a reflexive clause is fixed to S REFL V (and reflexion is doubly marked), that could over time be interpreted as S=NOM V, after other case suffixes have appeared. Finally, the nominative enclitic would ...

This is quite an interesting resource: 𝓔𝓿𝓸Sem, a database of diachronic semantic change. Could be enormously useful for my conlanging!

That sounds like a good idea. Great, then I’ll implement it when I get time. Please badger me to do this with all the families I've done so far. No need: I’m working from the same papers, so I can add the examples myself. The rest of the suggestions I fully support but they sound more like coding p...

The World Lexicon of Grammaticalization is strangely mum on the issue. Probably because nominative markers aren’t hugely common in the first place. In many nominative-accusative languages, the nominative is formally unmarked. I can’t recall ever seeing a discussion of the origin of explicit nominat...

Today the ID came up in the course of a discussion I had with Alexandre François (who I hope won’t mind me mentioning his feedback here). He seemed very interested — in fact he said it’s an idea he’s contemplated before, due to how useful it would be. He found even the old ID impressive, especially ...

There’s formal markedness, and then there’s functional markedness. I wonder how they determine "least marked" in languages without null marking, like, say, Akkadian, where nom is -u, -acc is -a and gen is -i. It comes down to, essentially: which case is chosen when none in particular appl...

[…] at giare wi scien, gis Ȝ i sannen ceike wel asammen the anner lettrer sam wi ha them? […] does yogh really look good alongside the other letters as we have them? Type rnos towaŋkbuy! Sey: [‘type’ ʒnos to.waŋ.kbuj | sej] type r-nos to-wa·m·kbuy! sey type ACC-that.ANA DEF.SG-AUX·AUX·different! li...

Firstly, ‘split-ergative’ is a dreadfully imprecise term covering many different alignment systems. Secondly, there’s also the direct–inverse subsystem to consider. imprecise to people who spend all day splitting hairs. For me and possibly lay people, the term is enough to convey "syntactic or...

doctor shark wrote: ↑Fri May 17, 2024 7:09 pm I feel a bit like a fool for not noticing these things earlier...

In fairness to you, ‘this listing is an elaborate scam’ is not necessarily a possibility you’re considering. If anything, I commend you on picking it up before anything bad happened!

It's split-ergative. The only difference is that the accusative and absolutive share a morpheme instead of the nominative and absolutive sharing a morpheme. Firstly, ‘split-ergative’ is a dreadfully imprecise term covering many different alignment systems. Secondly, there’s also the direct–inverse ...

I'm not sure what the name of the alignment is, but there's got to be a name somewhere. (I personally like this alignment and have a tendency to use it, alongside direct-inverse marking, in my languages.) I’m tempted to call it the ‘Conlanger Inverse System’… If I call the absolutive an accusative ...

Emmin ceiks the ʒouk letter sam ei latin letter. At least the ezh letter looks like a Latin letter. Yogh nib butowa-Latin-ndo aŋ! [joɡ.nib bu.to.wa.laˈtin.ndo.aŋ] yogh nib bu-to-wa·Latin-ndo aŋ yogh FOC.CONTR but-DEF.SG-AUX·Latin-more INT But yogh is even more Latin! Meir latin? Tha ska kanner fork...

(Re Ahzoh and jal’s later posts, I’m still trying to marshal my thoughts on them. I do still mean to reply to them.) So, this is what my table would have to look like in order to be consistent with your analysis while avoiding unnecessary empty cells: […] It's not very pleasant compared to the my o...

/b x t x d x c x k x q x / b' t' d' c' k' q' By the way, what are those x 's supposed to signify? I tried looking up the extIPA for those but the page I got on the Wiki rendered much of such things as blocks. I interpret them as simply heterorganic affricates — e.g. [tx] is attested in Navajo.

Why the term Adnominal rather than Determiner for that particular series? Just curious ‘Determiner‘ in IE grammar generally refers to a syntactic slot which can be filled by a whole range of different items: articles, demonstratives, possessives, quantifiers, etc. Eŋes doesn’t have any single slot ...