Zompist Bboard Again

The bug should be fixed now. (At least in the code; I won’t update the website until the next release.) The problem was that the target @1 [ɛ ɔ] is referring to category 1, but that category doesn’t exist in the target (which just matches a single grapheme). The code shouldn’t crash in that case any...

I tried a backreference and I think I managed to crash the parser, since I got "exit with exit code 1" Now this shouldn’t happen at all: I’ve never managed to crash Brassica. What sound change did you enter that triggered this? a / @1 [ɛ ɔ] / _ C @1 Open OK, I can replicate this. This is ...

Although to be fair I mostly ignore the difference between /e ø o/ and /ɛ œ ɔ/, and between /ɑ̃/ and /ɔ̃/, so maybe I'm not so good after all La liaison aussi c’est difficile pour moi. /la ljɛzɔ̃n‿osi sɛ difisil puʁ mwa/ Also, liaison is difficult for me. (Si je pouvais corriger ton français, il fa...

I don't have a → key on my keyboard, but I do have programming fonts installed which include a -> ligature. Would it be possible to recognise the -> digraph to separate the input and output as well? I see no reason why not. I’ll add this to the list. I was trying to implement a toy version of a Nor...

Je vois que cet fil a été revécu ! /ʒə vwa‿k sɛ fil a ete ʁɛveky/ I see that this thread has been revived! J’apprends le français. /ʒ‿apʁɑ̃‿l fʁɑ̃sɛ/ I am learning French. J’inclus la prononciation car je lutte encore avec l’orthographie. /ʒ‿œ̃kly la pʁonɔ̃siasjɔ̃ caʁ ʒə lyt ɑ̃kɔʁ avɛk l‿ɔʁtɔɡʁafi/...

Reviving this thread, here’s a rather interesting example of analogy:

ColinWright wrote: JH Conway used a different technique which I have swutch to when computing days in the current year.

Because in Latin, the ‘default’ pronouns were instead the subject ones! Which is precisely the usual situation for a nominative-accusative alignment, where the nominative case is ‘unmarked’ (to use the usual terminology). Now that strikes me as circular. :( I'm no expert on Latin syntax, but what's...

[…] 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? Not if the language has changed. I don't know enough ab...

[…] 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...