Zompist Bboard Again

Things like passive and applicative are commonly used by languages to turn things that can't be relativised into things that can. E.g. if you can only relativise subjects, the passive lets you turn objects into subjects so they can be relativised too. Yeah, I'm already using the passive voice for s...

A list of all ISO 639-3 (2019) languages by code and their corresponding name on Wikipedia. Two mirrors: - https://controlc.com/ca7d884a (ControlC.com, will expire in a month) - https://pastebin.com/B42yGTwp (Pastebin.com, erroneously detected as having "offensive" content, maybe due to t...

I have this one dictionary for a conlang that I started years ago. During its creation I've changed my mind about how to do it several times. Some changes I have carried out through the whole dictionary, and some I've just done partially. So the dictionary is a mess really. Then, some half a year ag...

This is actually tragic, but I saw this headline on TV and thought it could have been phrased slightly differently to avoid a weird interpretation:

BBC World News wrote:At least 7 people killed in Ganja attack tonight

Norms of all kinds were violated here, so it could be confusing. So: the sign tells us that dudes were using their penises to press the buttons. The garden path interpretation is that the buttons have genitalia. Oh, okay. And for some reason, at first I was thinking of female genitalia, so that did...

Are you not getting the pic to load or something? If so, it shows an elevator panel with a sign reading "DO NOT CLICK BUTTONS WITH GENITALIA / Cameras are watching. / University of Alabama". No, I saw the picture, but couldn't understand what it was supposed to mean. And the comments were...

mèþru wrote: ↑Sat Oct 03, 2020 12:32 pm Hi everyone. It's hard for me to return here because I get anxiety when I try to return to a space I haven't been in for a long time. I really want to be active here again though.

Oh no! >_< Why is that?

Mongsen Ao of Mangmetong /p t ʦ ʧ k ʔ/ <b d z j g h> /pʰ tʰ ʦʰ ʧʰ kʰ/ <p t c ch k> /m n ŋ/ <m n ng> /m̥ n̥ ŋ̊/ <mh nh ngh> /s z h/ <x s h> /w ɹ l j/ <w r l y> /w̥ ɹ̥ l̥ j̊/ <wh rh lh yh> /i u ə a a̰/ <i o e a a'> /wàzàʔ tə̀luʔ la tsəpàʔ məsəm wa || təɹ | kʰə̀liŋlì, təɹ wàzàʔ təniŋ à li || təɹ kʰə̀l...

Does this pose any more problem than loans from English or Russian? I doubt any IAL is equipped to transcribe "strength" or "zdravstvujtje" accurately. The bigger question would be what are Chinese speakers listening for when they try to understand foreigners speaking their lang...

I had an idea for a conlanging challenge, where you have three lists of features and pick one feature from each list, and then create a conlang (or a sketch of a conlang) with those features. The idea is to try to create something that doesn't quite look like any natlang. I have so many things going...

Consider this sentence: I know the boy whose father died, and he told me he had a secret. My question is, who had a secret? I've noticed that pretty much all ancient Latin distinguishes this kind of thing, using is or hic for the last one mentioned (the latter = the father) and ille for the previou...

Allright, thanks! I think I have figured out now how to do this. Now I just need to write it down in my grammar... I'll post my solution to the above sentence, without any explanations, even though no one asked, just so I can feel like I've accomplished something. ;) 1SG.M-NOM know DEF.SG.M boy 1 -A...

zompist wrote: ↑Thu Oct 01, 2020 4:32 pmhttps://twitter.com/NataliaAntonova/sta ... 4328387584

I don't understand what any of this means.

Yesterday a coworker gave a presentation via Zoom and I'd never heard so clearly how heavily he aspirates certain stops. Word-initial /k/ before back vowels consistently sounded like [kˣ], and his initial /h/ even tended toward [x]. /t/ and /p/ were fairly heavily aspirated, too, but not to the poi...

Hmm, I thought so. I had another tussle with the relative clauses in a conlang, and I was trying to figure out what to do when there is something that can't be relativized. (I know that sentence had more to do with anaphora than relative clauses, but anyway...) What should I write in a grammar? Shou...

Only the first graph? Hmm, I can see it fine and that link also works for me. Thanks, and yes, I was interested in that first graph. It didn't work at all at the time of my post, but now it's working again. Ah, okay. Maybe the site was down at that moment or something. Btw, I realized that I have a...

Normally IALs favor simple syllable structures of (C)(C)V(C)(C) and relatively small phonetic inventories. The issue with Mandarin words is that the relatively complex phonotactics would result them being altered heavily. For example take the following inventory: /p b t d k g/ /f v s S h/ /m n l r ...

Hmm, even if you allow more different consonants in the coda, you're still going to have the same problem that the language is heavy on closed syllables. Since I don't know exactly how the syllable generation works, and I'm terrible at math anyway, it's hard for me to give any advice on that. But yo...

I think this is totally okay. F3 is often harder to measure and interpret anyway. It also disorts the nice two-dimensional chart :D Ikr The beautiful graph you made doesn't load anymore, without failing immediately either, for some reason: https://postimg.cc/sBz1D4g9 <- your link Could you re-post ...

Consider this sentence: I know the boy whose father died, and he told me he had a secret. My question is, who had a secret?