Zompist Bboard Again

(Nort's second text is still open, and it's a good one...) No it isn’t: 2 is Agarabi in the old orthography. yes Ah, I missed this. But at least I did get the family right :-) Anyway, I found another text, although I’m not sure how hard it is: ʔuyil cnu fdix̣qac̓it. ʔa ba fdiqbaq te uyil bk̓olidit ...

Anyway, I found another text, although I’m not sure how hard it is: ʔuyil cnu fdix̣qac̓it. ʔa ba fdiqbaq te uyil bk̓olidit ʔa. Heqada bṭeqa ʔuyi šiškidit, ʔol da fdiqas ʔa. Mṭun ʔa mey, paʔšem muṭin walqat, paʔšem muṭin ke walqat, x̣q̓omfo ʔux̣qat kʼli qat, wiy sen mey blomat, ʔumtimfo beqat. ʔaꞏba...

I've got a /i e a u/ vowel system that I'm trying to collapse into /i a u/. The easy route is just to merge /e/ with /i/ and /a/ in various environments, but that's kinda boring. Any ideas as to something more interesting I could do? Ci > Cʲi (as Pabappa suggested, maybe only for certain consonants...

/sik ᵐbas bal ᵑɡən ˈfawət͡ɬ || məˈt͡sʰuɬ bəj ˈsuʔəɣ ⁿdəl/ 1. Sik mbas bal ŋgən fawətɬ. Mətshuɬ bəy suʔəɣ ndəl? 2. Sik mbas bal ngen fawetɬ. Me=tshuɬ bey suʔeg ndel? 3. Sik mbas bal ngen fawetł. Me chuł bey suʔeg ndel? 4. Sik mbas bal ngen fawetl. Me chulh bey sueg ndel? this new 1s POSS language. E...

I'd actually like recommendations for other books which bring together chapters on a single functional area by language experts. I would love some too — I’m always looking for such books to expand my linguistic knowledge. (I’ve even been thinking of making a thread to collect these sort of recommen...

Voiced plosives to ejectives after nasals? How? mb > bb (> ʔb) > ɓ > pʼ etc. appears to be the most likely path IMO, but I don't know if that's what happened in Sesotho. (It could be, because it would go along nicely with mp > pp > ppʰ > pʰ for the voiceless counterpart.) Would you say that mp > pp...

Through a process of pervasive devoicing affecting everything adjacent to voiceless consonants, could nasals devoice to a glottal stop? So NC clusters eventually become glottal stop + C clusters, and from there ejectives? Sesotho NP NB > Pʰ Pʼ Voiced plosives to ejectives after nasals? How? mb > bb...

So, putting it all together: h-əy<ʕ>₂ə<z>₁zən<y>₃ə́-t 1SG.NOM-give\PL.ACC<PF>₁<NEG>₂<2.DAT>₃-F.ACC I have given them to you Does that make any sense at all, or is it just too over-complex? Yes, it does make sense, and the complexity is probably necessary. A few ideas: - I would probably gloss the i...

It's interesting that basically none of these use a dedicated construction like English "the more ... the more ...". Does this mean that people tend to avoid creating such a construction in their conlangs? And is this avoidance correlated with a lack of such a construction in most natlang...

I was trying to do a translation of "The North Wind and the Sun" for Pñæk, and I'm still unhappy with my translation of this sentence: Then the North Wind blew as hard as he could, but the more he blew the more closely did the traveler fold his cloak around him Correlative clauses could w...

For anyone who's interested in seeing things through the eyes of the virus: https://xkcd.com/2287/

The balloon went up so high that it was lost to sight The blow sent him flying so far that he slammed into the wall behind him [...] The verbs 'to go' and 'to send' are not copulas. If they are not copulas, they can't modify the subject. While in the 3rd sentence, it's clearly the balloon that's hi...

Thanks a lot for your work!
I think we could go even more bare-bones (at least if those queries turn out to result in errors), because all we really need are the forums, topics, posts, and usernames. Things like sigs, avatars, ranks, view options, and attachments could just as well be left out IMO...

I'd love to participate in an inverse translation relay if there's enough interest! One thing to note though is that the languages must be documented fairly well for this to work, including a detailed syntax section. (Of my own conlangs, probably only Ronc Tyu has reached this level so far. Buruya N...

More ambiguous names! The Jarawa language is of course spoken on the Andaman Islands… unless you’re talking about Jarawa, a completely unrelated language spoken in Nigeria. You should be careful not to confuse either of these with Jarawara, an Arawan language of South America noted for its unusual ...

Also, it's worth pointing out the ergativity in English. (i.e. My reading vs Troy's destruction by the Greeks). In English, action nominals seems to have a split intransitive alignment. Compare above with "My singging the Marseillaise" But you can just as well say "The Greeks' destru...

I really like this story (and I would love to see a glossed conlang version of it )!

For example, the language allows possessors of objects to be marked as oblique argument: e.g. she cut his hair --> she cut him the hair. This specific process is called "external possession" or "possessor raising". Here's a paper about it , which states that the process happens ...

Knit Tie wrote: ↑Sun Feb 16, 2020 7:22 am Does VjCV, VwCV to VCjV, VCwV metathesis work as a regular sound change?

Yes, especially if there's an intermediate stage VCʲV, VCʷV.

I've increased the restrictions on minor (unstressed) syllables in Pñæk so that in normal words the shape can only be CV and the only vowels are i, a, u, r̩, n̩. The issue is that I have a number of clitic or "particle" forms (e.g. agreement+TAM markers) which don't comply with these rule...