Zompist Bboard Again

One thing that should be remembered is that in many modern English varieties, should is not a past tense/subjunctive counterpart to shall but rather a modal by itself because shall is primarily limited to high registers and is effectively moribund in everyday speech (in this way it reminds me of who...

This particular construction does make sense to me. You just need to notice that English modals don’t really have past tense forms — so if you want to place a modal in the past, you need to use a perfect, and there’s only one syntactically valid way of doing that. That's a tad difficult when they d...

"If I had had that cake, it wouldn't've gone mouldy" definitely works for me. This is just standard English, surely? This to me is standard English. It does not exude any of the auxiliary funniness that is present in these other examples. So does "If I had've known, I wouldn't've eat...

At leuthes oʒsa atsʒen harthle bedruiccet, cens thasʒen aull ret? It also sounds rather depressing, are you feeling okay? :? please (trans.), icha carry (trans.), q'in Ichazinumam ha q'inta niiha sigat t'awraadat yola! please-AGT.3.S.INAN-HAB-PAT.1.S-INV COMP carry-PASS above stele-GEN die-CAUS-ACT...

jal wrote: ↑Wed May 15, 2024 4:14 am Yu kip way Ingles sentms.
You omitted the English sentence.

• would (intr.), yaa
• include (trans.), k'ay
• obvious, alle
• too, jo

Yaa ha ta ha k'aytaa zon alle jo.
would COMP COP COMP include-PASS-PAST.IPFV DIST.3.S.INAN obvious too
Including that would have been too obvious.

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Wed May 15, 2024 9:59 am

foxcatdog wrote: ↑Wed May 15, 2024 4:41 am *m *n *nʲ *ɲ

Are you sure you mean *ɲ and not *ŋ? Those tailed n's are easy to confuse with each other, and a phonemic opposition between *nʲ and *ɲ seems weird.

Agreed - a contrast between a palatalized nasal and a palatal nasal seems very strange to me.

Just because a sound change is attested does not mean that it is not evil!

surprise (trans.), coxi need (trans.), mag explain (trans.), lehha seven, yola stele, monolith, siga Coxitaleeyema ha magta ha lehhataye ha ta siga t'awraadat yola. surprise-PASS-INST-PRES-PAT.1.S COMP need-PASS COMP explain-PASS-PRES COMP COP stele die-CAUS-ACTION-GEN seven I am surprised that it ...

Direct-inverse is pretty simple. The personhood/animacy/topicality hierarchy is as follows: The first most basic hierarchy is the personhood/nominal hierarchy: 1st person 1st+2nd person 2nd person demonstratives proper nouns common nouns The second hierarchy after that is the animacy hierarchy: anim...

sky, siima give, yaalu things (coll.), d'at myriad, yiseka nurture, wohade humankind, gaare have, own, possess, enna good, wot return, eeta die, t'aw Yaaludinuya siima d'at yiseka ha wohadetafa gaare. give-DAT-HAB-PAT.3.P.INAN sky things myriad COMP nuture-PASS-PAT.3.S.ANIM humankind Ennadinutha ga...

• new, gani

Taye zo fad'ama gani.
COP-PRES PROX.S.INAN language-POSS.1.S new
This is my new language.

Demonstratives and interrogatives: sg. du. pl. prox. anim. da kit ki prox. inan. zo gat ga dist. anim. dan katan kan dist. inan. zon gotan gon inter. anim. fa rot ro inter. inan. be nat na Note that there are no non-demonstrative independent 3rd person pronouns.

equals, copula, ta language variety, fad'a to bore, qham bad, yoh to mean, wanni just, merely, sun Wanniziyetha sun ha qhamaniziye fad'a ha taye yoh. mean-AGT.3.S.INAN-PRES-NEG merely COMP bore-APSS-AGT.3.S.INAN-PRES language COMP COP-PRES bad Just because a language is boring does not mean it is b...

Here are some nominalizers: action: - daa agent, instrument: after a vowel, add - k and shorten the vowel if long, after a consonant, add - uk patient: after a vowel, add - gyi and shorten the vowel if long, after a consonant, add - yi place, after a vowel, add - hwa and shorten the vowel if long, a...

Another example:

• a moment ago: cola
• pizza: ficca
• a moderate amount: aqwa

Yooric'am aqwa ficcat cola.
eat-LOC-AGT.1.S some pizza-GEN moment.ago
I just ate some pizza

Here is another example: burn (intr.): ruuh house: q'oma lightning: tik'aa complementizer: ha when (lit. time): fera hit (trans.): gich Ruuhraatac'a q'omahi fera hat gich tik'aa. burn-CAUS-PASS-LOC house-POSS.1+2.P time COMP.GEN hit lightning Our house burned when it was hit by lightning.

This language makes heavy use of relational nouns, which are typically also body parts, combined with applicatives. Here are some examples: above (lit hair): niiha top (lit. head): qot front (lit. breast): zet'a middle (lit. stomach): goole back (lit. back): yoxa bottom (lit. buttocks): fakha below ...

I am in complete agreement here with the above.

I should note that this language also exhibits fluid-intransitivity for a subset of verbs (i.e. those that are lexically intransitive, as opposed to lexically transitive verbs which must take antipassive or passive marking to reduce their valency).

bradrn wrote: ↑Tue May 14, 2024 3:51 pm Was this by any chance inspired by the conversation with Ahzoh over on the Conlang Random Thread?

Slightly, but I do like playing around with alignments a lot.