Resources Thread

[bradrn]

I was trying to write up something, but in the process I discovered this paper which looks quite comprehensive: https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2022.2157675. It looks like it should answer most of your questions. (I can send you a PDF if you can’t access it.)

I think this resource should be linked to from a “Resources” thread!

[sasasha]

I would like to share a project of mine: palasimi. It's a website with graphs of colexified concepts, similar to those in CLICS and A Conlanger's Thesaurus. It doesn't quite have as much linguistic information as CLICS, but every concept in palasimi is annotated with a short description, which I hope can be of use.

This is awesome, I love it.

[WeepingElf]

I would like to share a project of mine: palasimi. It's a website with graphs of colexified concepts, similar to those in CLICS and A Conlanger's Thesaurus. It doesn't quite have as much linguistic information as CLICS, but every concept in palasimi is annotated with a short description, which I hope can be of use.

This is awesome, I love it.

Seconded.

[bradrn]

I was linked to this impressively accessible grammar of West Greenlandic: https://oqa.dk/assets/aitwg2ED.pdf. It’s a little eccentric in its presentation, but then again West Greenlandic is a little eccentric too, so it works well.

[Travis B.]

I was linked to this impressively accessible grammar of West Greenlandic: https://oqa.dk/assets/aitwg2ED.pdf. It’s a little eccentric in its presentation, but then again West Greenlandic is a little eccentric too, so it works well.

From just reading the first few pages this seems much more "fun" than the average grammar.

[bradrn]

I was linked to this impressively accessible grammar of West Greenlandic: https://oqa.dk/assets/aitwg2ED.pdf. It’s a little eccentric in its presentation, but then again West Greenlandic is a little eccentric too, so it works well.

From just reading the first few pages this seems much more "fun" than the average grammar.

Yes, indeed. The author takes every opportunity to sneer at what he calls ‘Grammaric’ writing which uses too much terminology; I don’t think that’s right, but it is certainly true that the average paper is very dryly written.

(From what I can tell, his background seems to be CS rather than linguistics, which may or may not be a factor.)

[Zju]

I was linked to this impressively accessible grammar of West Greenlandic: https://oqa.dk/assets/aitwg2ED.pdf. It’s a little eccentric in its presentation, but then again West Greenlandic is a little eccentric too, so it works well.

From just reading the first few pages this seems much more "fun" than the average grammar.

Yes, indeed. The author takes every opportunity to sneer at what he calls ‘Grammaric’ writing which uses too much terminology; I don’t think that’s right, but it is certainly true that the average paper is very dryly written.

(From what I can tell, his background seems to be CS rather than linguistics, which may or may not be a factor.)

"I call this kind of technical language ‘Grammaric’ – like ‘Greenlandic’ – because it really does seem like a whole new language one has to learn, in order to learn Greenlandic."

10 pages later

*starts talking about morphemes and phonemes*

8 pages later

*introduces readers to graph theory*

[Man in Space]

Does anyone know how to contact the late Gary Shannon’s estate? He had a list (in-progress, sadly not completed before his passing) of derivation operations that I find useful, and others may too. I’d like to contact his next of kin to seek permission to expand on it and maybe publicly release it.

[Glass Half Baked]

Try asking around computer hobby forums. He's known for being one of the first employees of Apple.

[bradrn]

This is quite an interesting resource: 𝓔𝓿𝓸Sem, a database of diachronic semantic change. Could be enormously useful for my conlanging!

[WeepingElf]

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.

[linguistcat]

This is quite an interesting resource: 𝓔𝓿𝓸Sem, a database of diachronic semantic change. Could be enormously useful for my conlanging!

I have been looking for something like this. Thank you

[Zju]

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?

[bradrn]

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?

Personally, I’ve come to feel that any discussion about ‘polysynthesis’ should be dismissed if it doesn’t begin with a discussion of why the author thinks that ‘polysynthesis’ is a meaningful term in the first place…

[Zju]

Alright, disregard that question.

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

[bradrn]

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…!

[Zju]

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 discuss this aspect of French morphology?

[bradrn]

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 discuss this aspect of French morphology?

Clitics are morphemes… I’m wondering if you perhaps mean ‘affixes’?

In response to which I submit that ‘clitic’ and ‘affix’ aren’t actually meaningful concepts at all, in a cross-linguistic sense, because ‘word’ isn’t a meaningful concept either. (One of these days I mean to write a more in-depth post on that topic.)

[Travis B.]

Um, French verbal clitics are already morphemes, and always have been…!

Really? I thought they were still clitics. So what are some papers that discuss this aspect of French morphology?

Clitics are morphemes… I’m wondering if you perhaps mean ‘affixes’?

In response to which I submit that ‘clitic’ and ‘affix’ aren’t actually meaningful concepts at all, in a cross-linguistic sense, because ‘word’ isn’t a meaningful concept either. (One of these days I mean to write a more in-depth post on that topic.)

From that POV there is no distinction between morphology and syntax then, and one should regard, say, Mandarin and Kalaallisut as having no practical difference from one another.

[bradrn]

Really? I thought they were still clitics. So what are some papers that discuss this aspect of French morphology?

Clitics are morphemes… I’m wondering if you perhaps mean ‘affixes’?

In response to which I submit that ‘clitic’ and ‘affix’ aren’t actually meaningful concepts at all, in a cross-linguistic sense, because ‘word’ isn’t a meaningful concept either. (One of these days I mean to write a more in-depth post on that topic.)

From that POV there is no distinction between morphology and syntax then, and one should regard, say, Mandarin and Kalaallisut as having no practical difference from one another.

Haspelmath has seriously argued that this is the case, but I’ve come to think it’s wrong. Rather, I’ve come to sympathise more with the position of Adam Tallman: some languages have very robust candidates for ‘word’ units which yield a sharp division between syntax and morphology, whereas others show no evidence for ‘words’, and consequently display a continuum from ‘more syntactic’ to ‘more morphological’ layers.

(If you want to know more about this stuff, I highly recommend Tallman et al., which despite being an unfinished preprint is one of the most fascinating books I’ve read recently. In fact it explicitly analyses Kalaallisut, and finds very strong evidence for the usual definition of ‘word’ within that language. If you don’t like preprints, there’s also his earlier paper focussing on Chácobo.)