Zompist Bboard Again

I've seen him play before.
I'd love to watch them fail..

I almost thought of calling this a pivot construction but it's really not.

My syntax classes were too many years ago and frankly I don't want to reopen a textbook. What is this construction?

Xurnese has a verb kapi derived from the same verb in Axunashin. How does it conjugate? Is the stem kapi- and it's third conjugation? (so, kapiú, kapi, kapiom...) Or should it actually be kap in Xurnese?

Are there languages where a complement clause always precedes its main clause? I'm thinking of examples like eating fish likes Rachel or that the weather is warm knows Jeff.

I've often wondered why European French uses sex-related swearwords, whereas the Quebecois go for religious words; but I never found a satisfying explanation. This might be recent. "Nom de Dieu" feels quaint now, but it was still relatively serious in the early 20th century. I don't reall...

Speaking of Tocharian I know there's conjecture that Germanic "wife" (ie. "woman") goes back to PIE and is cognate for the Tocharian word for "vulva", but I don't know how well-established that is.

Compass directions. I was thinking of dividing the compass rose into six basic directions rather than four. I was trying to think of any particular reason why it should be four by default. The best one I could come up with is - body plan and bilateral symmetry. If you orient yourself towards one dir...

Another stray typo: The Flaidish transcription of the sentence Baub kroog ʔy chunt doesn't display the glottal stop correctly.

It has been argued that there was variation between dialects of Old English in the voicing of word-initial fricatives. I am personally sympathetic to this belief, but the mainstream view is that initial fricative voicing in the dialects of Southern England and the the south-western Midlands only oc...

When did a voicing distinction develop in fricatives in Germanic? Look at cognates like English see compared to German sehen. I understand that the rule in (standard?) German is that if the initial <s> is followed by a vowel, then it's voiced. Phonetically, this makes sense. Originally (I understand...

I suspect that, to be perfectly naturalistic, a conlang grammar should be as unreadable as possible. Ideally the author should redefine most linguistic terms, and introduce his own terminology and conventions, which he will force on the reader. These conventions should flout any and all conventions...

So... this was exploratory, and fun. As this text is not actually attested in-world in Munkhâshi, the only way I can really use it is if there is a group of Gelalhát purists who re-construct Munkhâshi and try to conduct 'authentic' ancient rituals. Or as the opening of a metal concert, or something...

Australian languages sometimes use "sit" and "stand" in a similar way to "be". Bardi is one example. There is one language (unfortunately can't remember the name!) where the correct verb, for inanimates, depends on the shape and position of the object - it could be any ...

Somebody help me. I'm trying to find a definition for "cod fantasy" which I gather is a kind of (maybe?) overblown or cliche fantasy writing? But I can't find any definition that doesn't talk about C a l l o f D u t y. "Cod" has a meaning "fake", e.g. "cod Latin&q...

we also see no Gothic-inspired languages in Middle-earth as far as I'm aware. To the contrary! Taliska was modelled on Gothic. Based on what I had read, I had assumed that it was Gothic, in much the same way that Old Norse was borrowed to furnish names for Dwarves and Northern Men, and the language...

Somebody help me. I'm trying to find a definition for "cod fantasy" which I gather is a kind of (maybe?) overblown or cliche fantasy writing? But I can't find any definition that doesn't talk about C a l l o f D u t y.

A very handsome instrument!

Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Dec 26, 2023 7:39 am Good luck with you plumbing issues, So Haleza Grise!

Thank you very much, and dobri cuendi!

We bought the current apartment we are living in about 5 years ago. I always knew there were signs that it had previously suffered some damage from water but couldn't figure out what the source was. Since then, whenever it rains heavily (which is every second summer or so), the small external tiled ...

Ahh, so that's where "nashtorî" comes from! Lol.

Something I was meaning to ask - did Zanuy have some kind of important D&D role? I think I saw it mentioned in a couple of Verdurian materials but AFAIK there wasn't an Almeopedia article about it.