Search found 1398 matches
- Wed Feb 14, 2024 3:46 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4731
- Views: 2105869
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
Around 3000 BCE IE had not yet taken over Spain, Italy, Greece, Anatolia, Iran, or India. And it still hasn't totally taken over Spain, Anatolia, Iran or India - in fact it seems to have lost ground in the middle two. And I really wonder how we actually know "there were more families here"...
- Mon Feb 05, 2024 7:30 pm
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: Conlang Random Thread
- Replies: 3051
- Views: 2866938
Re: Conlang Random Thread
I've read a reddit guide on tonogenesis but it doesn't tell you how to manifest tones from closed syllables or syllables with dipthongs or syllables with onset clusters or all three. I was trying to write up something, but in the process I discovered this paper which looks quite comprehensive: http...
- Mon Feb 05, 2024 7:14 pm
- Forum: Ephemera
- Topic: Elections in various countries
- Replies: 1099
- Views: 611268
Re: Elections in various countries
Just in case you didn't hear it yet, Northern Ireland seems to have an Executive again, because they somehow managed it to get the DUP to temporarily stop sulking. I must be extra thick these days because I've read over the new agreement and still don't quite understand what concession from the Bri...
- Mon Feb 05, 2024 7:00 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4731
- Views: 2105869
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
The precedent for not assimilating the first <c> would be Old French acciun , 'action', if it is truly inherited. A more typical pattern would be for the first <c> to vocalise to <i>, but that seem undependable - compare façon , inherited from factionem - and too deviant to have fed back into Latin.
- Mon Feb 05, 2024 2:58 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4731
- Views: 2105869
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
The number of 35 is widely bandied around; I note that Wiktionary has 36 Proto-afroasiatic terms.Nortaneous wrote: ↑Sun Feb 04, 2024 4:55 pm Isn't Afroasiatic mostly defined by shared morphology, with hardly any accepted cognates?
- Mon Jan 29, 2024 4:13 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: English questions
- Replies: 1406
- Views: 453601
Re: English questions
Do I get this right that the statements " I have never done [fill in bad thing here], unlike certain other people " and " I have never done [fill in bad thing here], like certain other people " mean basically the same thing? There may not be a prescriptive rule on the matter, bu...
- Sat Jan 06, 2024 6:50 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: A guide to writing systems
- Replies: 138
- Views: 289130
Re: A guide to writing systems
The text really is riddled with scannos. I can't help wondering if some of them are deliberate jokes, such as 'r' frequently being misalphabeticised as 'l'. Hah, funny… except that I checked a bunch of random words, and ⟨r⟩ always seems to be transcribed as ⟨r⟩ (except for one word where it became ...
- Thu Jan 04, 2024 1:24 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: A guide to writing systems
- Replies: 138
- Views: 289130
- Thu Jan 04, 2024 1:16 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: A guide to writing systems
- Replies: 138
- Views: 289130
- Thu Jan 04, 2024 6:54 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: A guide to writing systems
- Replies: 138
- Views: 289130
Re: A guide to writing systems
Usually, I do find that I can comprehend French papers in linguistics. (Although weirdly, Spanish is easier.) But for some reason this one seems to be a bit more difficult to read — fewer technical terms, I suspect! Fewer technical linguistic terms, perhaps, but the paper seems unusually rich in wo...
- Wed Jan 03, 2024 7:43 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: A guide to writing systems
- Replies: 138
- Views: 289130
Re: A guide to writing systems
Ferlus offers answers to most of Bradn's questions about Thai. …in French, a language I don’t speak. (I do have plans to learn it soon, but that only helps so much.) I must say the French looks very English; it's not like a newspaper. Also, there are a lot of pictures. Still, it may be a lot of wor...
- Wed Jan 03, 2024 1:01 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: A guide to writing systems
- Replies: 138
- Views: 289130
Re: A guide to writing systems
Ferlus offers answers to most of Bradn's questions about Thai.
- Wed Jan 03, 2024 3:33 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: A guide to writing systems
- Replies: 138
- Views: 289130
Re: A guide to writing systems
Khmer had 2 orthographic vowel notions, <a> (null glyph) and <ā>, to cover 2 degrees of aperture and 2 lengths. They prioritised aperture. I don’t quite understand this… consulting Wikipedia, it looks like all Khmer vowel sounds are written separately? If you look at the notes in the vowel table, y...
- Tue Jan 02, 2024 10:06 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: A guide to writing systems
- Replies: 138
- Views: 289130
Re: A guide to writing systems
Hmm, so you consider ‘alphasyllabary’ and ‘abugida’ to mean different things? How so? (I tend to agree with masako that most people use them as synonyms.) Bright's definition of an alphasyllabary and Daniels' definition of an abugida are quite different. That's why Meroitic is not an alphasyllabary...
- Tue Jan 02, 2024 4:59 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: A guide to writing systems
- Replies: 138
- Views: 289130
Re: A guide to writing systems
Another innovation from that area is the use of matres lectionis in an abugida, not an abjad. The subscript letters for Indic /a/, /v/ and /y/ are used for representing vowels (Khmer and Tai languages) … The Bengali writing system has also developed a mater lectionis. I don’t find this particularly...
- Tue Jan 02, 2024 4:21 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: A guide to writing systems
- Replies: 138
- Views: 289130
Re: A guide to writing systems
Now these two points are interesting… they remind me strongly of how consonant-doubling gets used with the Latin script (especially in Germanic). What vowel quality difference does consonant-doubling achieve in Thai? The consonant doubling made the vowel of the closed syllable into /a/. Without the...
- Tue Jan 02, 2024 3:21 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: A guide to writing systems
- Replies: 138
- Views: 289130
Re: A guide to writing systems
Of course, these definitions are not the only possible ones. I know that many people consider the essential component of abugida-hood to be the writing of C+V in a single ‘syllable block’ (as I’ve been calling it). By this standard, scripts like Lao would be abugidas, while Meroitic and 'Phags-pa w...
- Mon Jan 01, 2024 6:47 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: A guide to writing systems
- Replies: 138
- Views: 289130
Re: A guide to writing systems
Well, what I was thinking is that a consonantal grapheme would represent either a single consonant or a single syllable. But I’m leaning towards the ‘null grapheme’ analysis, for the same kinds of reasons you mentioned. I hadn’t heard of Pali Thai specifically, but I know that Hindi Devanagari does...
- Mon Jan 01, 2024 12:33 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: A guide to writing systems
- Replies: 138
- Views: 289130
Re: A guide to writing systems
In the Thai writing system, subscripting stopped a long time ago, and now we even have a Thai parallel to alif otiosum. Hmm, what’s alif otiosum? Searching the term online turns up nothing helpful. Also known as 'guarding alif' or 'separating alif', which are translations of the Arabic names. When ...
- Sun Dec 31, 2023 8:41 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: A guide to writing systems
- Replies: 138
- Views: 289130
Re: A guide to writing systems
But I dislike thinking of blocks as part of the definition: rather, I define ‘alphabets’ and ‘abugidas’ by which unit of language their graphemes represent. Whether they have syllable blocks or not is then an entirely orthogonal property. I commend Bright's term 'alphasyllabary' to you. I’ve alread...