Zompist Bboard Again

Do you think there's still artifacts bearing evidence of historical Indo-European languages waiting to be found which can improve our reconstructions, or is it more likely that we have everything we'll ever get and the best we can hope for is philologists finding specks of gold in their pans? It is...

Does anyone have any unconventional ideas on the pronunciation of laryngeals? Since I know people here will at least get a kick out of it: here is one recent article draft / essay by Alexis Manaster Ramer on an "Efficient Theory", which seems to be suggesting vocalic values of laryngeals ...

Which constructions exist, which cases are used with them, and the extent to which they matter. You mean things like the AcI or the absolute ablative? Don’t know what the ‘AcI’ is, but not really like the absolute ablative: rather, which case is used for the arguments of the non-finite verb itself....

This finally went online ! (Took long enough...) Great! Do I get this right that in "It is found that perfluoroalkyl diacids and pillar-[5]-arenes rapidly and strongly complex with each other at aqueous interfaces, forming solid interfacially templated films.", "complex" is the ...

"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. But ma...

I also started learning English at 10 - and like you, I am thus not a native speaker. My point was an attempt at a reductio ad absurdum of the idea that Europe, during the centuries when Latin was a widely used language of liturgy and scholarship, had native Latin speakers. Or that modern Copts are...

If Europe had native Latin speakers in the Middle and Early Modern Ages, wouldn't that mean that, by the same logic, I'm a native English speaker? Were you raised bilingually in German and English? No, I started to learn English at 10. Which is probably not that much later than when medieval Europe...

Raphael wrote: ↑Wed May 22, 2024 11:47 am If Europe had native Latin speakers in the Middle and Early Modern Ages, wouldn't that mean that, by the same logic, I'm a native English speaker?

Were you raised bilingually in German and English?

bradrn wrote: ↑Wed May 22, 2024 6:51 am This is quite an interesting resource: 𝓔𝓿𝓸Sem, a database of diachronic semantic change. Could be enormously useful for my conlanging!

Thank you! This looks interesting and useful.

Ist das Platt? Is that Low German? Jo, so twischen de Skandinavischespraken för miene Jorkischespraake studeren, un miene Famieljengeschicht söken, ik dache, dat ik versöken wull, en beten von dat Platt to lernen. Yes, so between studying the Scandinavian languages for my Yorkish language, and look...

Thank you, that looks useful!

I seem to remember reading somewhere that there is archaeogenetic evidence of two prehistoric migrations from the Near East back to North Africa, one near the end of the last Ice Age, and one in the Neolithic, but I can't find any reference. Can anybody around here help me find it? Of course I tried...

Where does Swedish-Norwegian-Danish -en definite article come from? ON inn, which IIRC further back was originally a demonstrative, which is also reflected by South Jutish æ even though that comes before the noun under WGmc influence (I have heard that Jutland was originally WGmc rather than NGmc-s...

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.

London? Westminster? WTF? Historically, this conurbation should rather be known as Ossulstone

To me as a non-native English speaker, math are sounds wrong, but maths is is odd, too. Maths sounds like a plural to me, but math is definitely singular. To me, maths is is the only acceptable form. ‘Maths’ behaves like a mass noun, and ‘math’ does not exist as a word. Yes. Maths is not as definit...

I'm no expert, but I do have a Larousse, which says the word was singular or plural till the 18th century; while Etymonline says the English word became plural in the 17th century. I don't think it's random: it's "math" in the US and "maths" in the UK. While 'math' might always ...

You must not forget that PIE was no pristine isolated language, but was in contact with other languages around it, and thus probably contained loanwords that were borrowed into the language at a late stage when /a/ and /b/ had become phonemic. Such loanwords need not comply with the reconstructed wo...

As for PIE lacking post-velar consonants other than the laryngeals, Proto-Semitic is reconstructed in a similar way (though some Semitic languages at least have shifted /k'/ to /q/), and this is indeed the reason why Indo-Europeanists call them "laryngeals". Thing is, the *k *kʷ *q hypoth...

As for PIE lacking post-velar consonants other than the laryngeals, Proto-Semitic is reconstructed in a similar way (though some Semitic languages at least have shifted /k'/ to /q/), and this is indeed the reason why Indo-Europeanists call them "laryngeals".