Zompist Bboard Again

I've cobbled together Chapter 3. And Chapter 4. Good job! Just about halfway there? I hit 40k words on my novel last night, including drafting one of the hardest chapters. Now I have full working drafts of the entire first ten chapters, as well as a random smattering of chapters from the rest of th...

Just giving an update so I don't totally let it slide...

My friend essentially gave me an hour and a half impromptu presentation on this, including pulling up her recent book to show me more examples (I definitely asked the right person!). I took a bunch of notes and need to summarize them for you.

Reviving this very, very dead topic with a new áhash story. This one is typologically unusual among áhash stories, as it features Remehind; usually these two strands of Tehemne mythology (Ausheninh/the Halxeida and the áhash) stay relatively distinct. This one has been banging around my brain for a ...

Caught a spoonerism in the wild at 15:50 in this video. The speaker doesn't even seem to notice.

I have a friend who is a linguistics professor whose primary research is exactly on the tendency in Japanese towards bare nouns or copulas vs other types of predicates. She's pretty busy but I'll ask her for her explanation on this next time I talk to her, in a couple weeks.

Thanks guys! Another 2000 words yesterday even though I have a cold and expected to just stare foggily at my laptop screen. I've had a novel in progress (term used generously) for about seven years now. Work has been achingly slow, but in the last couple weeks I've come entirely unstuck and am makin...

I've had a novel in progress (term used generously) for about seven years now. Work has been achingly slow, but in the last couple weeks I've come entirely unstuck and am making quick progress. Currently around 27,000 words and growing fast.

I drew my influence for this particular idea from Ojibwe, much further afield but which I also have a background in (yet more so than in Malagasy), which can have totally unrelated verbs for the same action depending on verb type, such as "eat" ( wiisini (VAI) vs miijin (VTI) vs amo (VTA)...

My Malagasy background Oh? It was my Field Methods language back in university. Again, absolutely wildly rusty, but I did study it intensively for a year! It's a truly fascinating and bizarre language and is worth looking into. I should refamiliarize myself with it. Maybe I'll have separate lexical...

Cool I noticed there's an agreement suffix, only for the dissonant location. Plus VOS became VSO. Is that an oversimplification like you said, or is it representative of the actual forms? It's kinda like split ergativity, if I squint my eyes. And instead of ergativity it's uhhhhhh locativity or som...

I've long been intrigued by the idea of having location feature prominently in the grammar. In that case, may I repost these publications: Firstly, Ameka & Levinson’s The typology and semantics of locative predicates: posturals, positionals, and other beasts . (This is actually the Introduction...

Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue Jun 23, 2026 9:04 am South Eresian's orthography has an awfully Hispanospheric feel to it. Is ⟨x⟩ /ʃ/ in it?

It is! This is something I went with a super long time ago and I just stuck with it. Notably ⟨j⟩ is /x/, which totally gives that away. :p

Obviously this reflects poor writing on my part since I didn't really consider how a regime could function if it constantly wastes resources on ill-conceived pet projects and so forth. Yet whenever I reread the books, I am reminded of Trump and techbros. Yes, but fiction has to be plausible . Alas ...

I've long been intrigued by the idea of having location feature prominently in the grammar. I am certain nobody remembers any details of South Eresian but it features prominently a verbal applicative voice that promoted the context (especially location, though not exclusively) of the verb to the sub...

Nánuvai is the primary language of the Tehemne people, spoken in the northeastern region of the main island of Níhi in the Eresian archipelago. Some quick phonological notes, more or less copypasted from my old thread: Nasals: /m n ŋ/ ⟨m n nh⟩ Stops/affricates: /p ᵐb t d k q~ʔ/ ⟨p b t d k q⟩ Fricati...

Arrakum! Wow, even I barely remember it to be honest. I hope my notes for that turn up somewhere. Bet it's in my old Dropbox account, which should also be recoverable now... Well, I helped upgrade the old ZBB some time ago, and I think I should have the backup of all the posts somewhere. If want me...

I’m sorry to report that we still see it on occasion, though my personal opinion is that he’s slowly improving. Anxiety is a difficult beast to handle (as I know well from my own personal experience). Wouldn't expect otherwise, though in my recent lurking I've thought he seems a lot more flexible a...

(I apparently can no longer use BB code and am making a mess, ignore)

Meanwhile all this is reminding myself of how old I've gotten. It's remarkable to consider that this forum has existed in some form for over twenty years. I have so many formative memories of this place, from introducing my wildly unbalanced click languages, to arguing for socialism years before it...

It's great to hear from you again, Risla! How are things with you now? Broad question! Life has been a lot lately but is pretty good right now. I've been thinking about just how long I've been a member of this forum. I joined when I was sixteen (or possibly seventeen at the very latest). I am now 3...