Zompist Bboard Again

obligatory xkcd

Look, if we relied on evidence and facts, this thread would be four posts long. Every single one of you has a pet etymology based solely on vibes. If we relied on evidence and facts, this thread would be four...ty pages long. There's plenty to talk about while maintaing some discussion even a few n...

But what would be the origin of 1800s sweetard?

hwhatting wrote: ↑Sun Jun 02, 2024 7:00 am

Creyeditor wrote: ↑Sat Jun 01, 2024 1:40 pm This lools so cool

Seconded.

Thirded. Is there some sort of compilation or index of these manuscripts?

Isn't sweetard a portmanteau word of sweetheart and retard? If not, where'd sweetard come from?

It looks uncovincing to me. Opinions hold zero argumentational weight. Well, to be fair, most diachronical argumentation ultimately boils down to ‘it looks convincing/unconvincing to me’… Sure. What's also true is that when there is an established hypothesis X and a fringe hypothesis Y, saying 'X l...

Although I don't fully agree with Gamkrelidze and Ivanov, I think the mainstream theory doesn't explain the origin of s-mobile, which IMHO could be some kind of fossilized (i.e. no longer productive) prefix. The usual explanation is that it's a fully phonological process where a final -s on one wor...

Well, as it happens, the post you’ve replied to is one which summarises the strong evidence that it is in fact PIE-native. I strongly recommend reading Fenwick’s papers here and here — they’re quite thoroughly interesting, and very well-worked-out. Not exactly. On the first hand, the Hittite and In...

Alright, disregard that question. Is anyone aware of some paper that discusses the potential grammaticalisation of French verbal clitics to morphemes? Um, French verbal clitics are already morphemes, and always have been…! Really? I thought they were still clitics. So what are some papers that disc...

Alright, disregard that question.

Is anyone aware of some paper that discusses the potential grammaticalisation of French verbal clitics to morphemes?

Discussion of polysynthetic tendencies in French - is anyone aware of some other paper on the same subject, which does something more than a passing mention that je and the like are clitics?

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? I soo...

Got some inspiration: reflexive markers. They only refer to the subject. So if the word order in a reflexive clause is fixed to S REFL V (and reflexion is doubly marked), that could over time be interpreted as S=NOM V, after other case suffixes have appeared. Finally, the nominative enclitic would ...

Got some inspiration: reflexive markers. They only refer to the subject. So if the word order in a reflexive clause is fixed to S REFL V (and reflexion is doubly marked), that could over time be interpreted as S=NOM V, after other case suffixes have appeared. Finally, the nominative enclitic would b...

From what can a nominative case suffix or marker develop? Esp. if there were no nominative markers so far and there's few cases to begin with. Maybe a demonstrative or an intensifier?

What are the s-mobile variants of *h₁yaǵ-? Wiktionary lists none.

Why do you think it's not made "with the intent to change one's native language"? Because the intent to sound cool or prestigious is a different (kind of) intent than the intent to conlang. Besides, 'coolness factor' borrowings are a subset of superstratum influence, and speakers aren't a...

To me this sounds like someone saying it's a totally different thing to draw faces from life, and to draw invented characters, so we should strictly separate "natfaces" and "confaces." Except that if you say that drawing an invented character is an analogy to conlanging, then th...

People making naturalistic conlangs are, well, trying to be naturalistic. Often that means simulating natural changes. E.g. you take a word list, run it through some plausible sound changes, and see what havoc that does to your morphology. That in turn suggests changes to the syntax. All this is pr...

[j] > [c] ['œcɕ] eoisc "(to a woman of higher rank than oneself) Mrs., Ms.; (with titles of office) madam; (of judges, justices) your honour" Voiceless vowels drop with compensatory lengthening of the previous segment ['ɟ͡ʝec͡çː] giecia "(to a woman of higher rank than oneself) Mrs., ...