Zompist Bboard Again

Sumerian/Akkadian had base 60, and WALS adds Ekari. The Mesopotamian languages also make use of tens. But they did have a positional notation, in which (say) a sequence of four numbers meant four different powers of 60, and this extended to fractions. (That is, you could write a number as <units> <...

You're probably thinking of someone else's page. Must be, unless you’ve just forgotten, which seems unlikely! What I have is here — search for 'base'. Thanks! You include examples of bases four and five and six and eight; and maybe others. I never heard of a natlang with base two, except that Yagua...

According to Wikipedia, early computers used words containing 6, 12, 24 or 36 bits, making octal (with 3 bits per digit) an ideal choice. Of course, today hexadecimal is more popular, with computers having 32- or 64-bit words. The Space Cadet keyboard depended on nine-bit bytes. And there was a mac...

On the parallel thread on the other board, THC claims that the subscript is always to be written in letters, never in numerals. While I find this unconvincing as a statement of fact about common practice, it does make sense to me as a way of reducing the potential for confusion. Your last (compound...

From a RWV song I posted in the other thread: I'd probably encountered the word "lave" before, maybe even looked it up, but if I did I'd forgotten about it. [a crowd, or the remainder; also to wash (which I did know), to draw up water, to bail or throw out, to give bountifully, to hang or...

“Fleam” is a new word to me.
It’s pretty much a drastic contraction of “phlebotome”.
It’s an instrument used in phlebotomy.
(Or venipuncture.)

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Man, how does Diana Gabaldon even have room in her head for all these words?

Curlyjimsam wrote: ↑Wed Aug 14, 2019 9:18 am I have languages which historically used one base, and then partially shifted to another after language contact, creating weird hybrid systems.

Didn’t something like that demonstrably happen to several natlangs as well? On several continents, in several millennia?

It’s Deseret , one of many attempts at English spelling reform. According to http://2deseret.com/ , it means ‘I think English needs more than a remote spelling reform’. (I would have preferred to translate it by hand from the Wikipedia table, but I don’t have enough time to do so right now. I’d app...

Nortaneous wrote: ↑Sun Aug 11, 2019 8:58 pm 𐐴 𐑃𐐮𐑍𐐿 𐐮𐑍𐑀𐑊𐐮𐑇 𐑌𐐨𐐼𐑆 𐑋𐐫𐑉 𐑄𐐰𐑌 𐐩 𐑉𐐨𐑋𐐬𐐻 𐑅𐐹𐐯𐑊𐐮𐑍 𐑉𐐨𐑁𐐫𐑉𐑋 (^:

???

In languages with case which are both Ergative-Absolutive and Secundative, does the role of a 'Donor' typically get marked in the Ergative case or do they typically show it some other way? Subject: Linguistic Miscellany Thread In languages with case which are both Ergative-Absolutive and Secundativ...

Isn’t it true in the Red Chinese military individuals have no rank? Rank attaches to their assignment rather than to the individual themself?

I learned what harled stone is, and what harling is.
I’ll bet you can guess which series I’m reading!

With the vowels having eight marked tones (seven short tones and a long high tone), the syllabary will be limited to one tone per vowel-inclusive glyph. The marked tone will always be on the small glyph of sounds like [çʌ] (<sju>). Keeping that example, if the [çʌ] glyph includes the diacritic for ...

Unlike inflection, derivation is also accomplished with a fourth type: 4. Compounding – one word is attached to another word. Languages with compounding differ in what they allow. Verb+verb, verb+noun, noun+verb, noun+noun etc. And what the product of the compounding results in differs. I might cla...

Do you guys see a box the inverted ts glyph (ƾ), Greek stigma (ϛ), both, or neither? I need to know because I'll transcribe Imperial Creole's moraic consonant as the more widely-seen glyph as their linguists based the phoneme's shape off the local syllabary's character for it, with those two being ...

I very much admire your work!

I'm wondering if it's necessary to have a derivation morphology structure. Probably not necessary per se. But, maybe desirable. IIANM, more languages do have derivational morphology than don’t. You might count it as “derivation” whenever it changes the part-of-speech; or still call it “inflection” ...

The least complementary true thing I can say about these recent posts is, they are very entertaining and thought-provoking!

Pabappa, the whole point of Object-Oriented Programming, is that the meaning of a polysemous verb, is controlled better by the nature of its object, than by the nature of its agent.
Does that affect your thinking about what you’re trying to do?

I’d be fine with having this thread merged with that one.
But it’s true I couldn’t tell from that topic title that this post should go there.
It (the topic title) looks as though someone wanted one thread to contain the entire subforum .
Does the opening post clear it up?