Zompist Bboard Again

Anthony Yates recently argues that the reason *χ ≤ *h₂ was geminated but *s wasn't is that *s was unspecified for voice, while *χ contrasted with *ʁ ≤ *h₃. I suppose this could be taken to imply that there was an (allophonic) change *-s- > *-z- before the voice-to-gemination shift he defends. (new n...

In Estonian this only occurs for C+/r l/ clusters (and C+j clusters turn into /Ci/), but in Hungarian this occurs for most heterorganic consonant clusters. The so-called "syncope stems" hence also include plenty of level or falling-sonority consonant clusters, e.g. from *rm: három : hárm(...

While we're discussing syncope: what could happen after V > Ø / _# in multisyllabic words? Oddly enough the Index Diachronica reports this change quite frequently, so it appears to be plausible, but I'm worried it could result in lots of weird consonant clusters at the end of words in cases like e....

The personal possessive is formed using a prefix which is gender and number specific. 1SG 2SG 3SG 1PL 2PL 3PL Masculine ni- lin- li- nima- nani- limi- Feminine nu- lun- lu- numa- nanu- limu- Neuter la- lima- The 3PP ones are an interesting divergence from predictability; going by the apparent segme...

Looking quite lorthy ;) Vowels (Diphthongs) I'd probably put in here /e oɪ/ rather than /eɪ ɔɪ/. Consonant clusters are still somewhat a mystery, but so far this is what I have discovered: It would seem that you are additionally going to get a full scale of /nC/ clusters from the 2PS possessive suff...

While we're discussing syncope: what could happen after V > Ø / _# in multisyllabic words? Oddly enough the Index Diachronica reports this change quite frequently, so it appears to be plausible, but I'm worried it could result in lots of weird consonant clusters at the end of words in cases like e....

So besides "victual" and "indict" (and placenames like "Connecticut" and "Mackinac"), what other English words are there with silent <c>? Yacht . It's almost as though there is/was some weird second dialect of English, perhaps a low-prestige common-man form, ...

So these are complementary sets. In English we don't really have a natural-sounding common word for members of a complementary pair, other than "mate" perhaps. Conjugate. Ask a child what the opposite of "dog" is and they will likely answer "cat". Horse/cow, also. Perh...

Clearly an old loanword from Finnish pihi 'id.'

æ e i ɯ > e i ɨ ɨ i > ɨ is unrealistic unconditionally. You should restrict this. Seems perfectly fine in this chain shift context to me. (If you wanted to, you could assume a few intermediate stages: e i > e ɪ > i ɪ > i ɨ.) ej > i / _# i > ɨ / j_ or _j æj ej > i ɨj /_# sounds strange to me This is...

qʲ > cˠ > tˠ A bit unexpected, but good for "color". If I saw this as a correspondence in the wild, I'd assume something more breaking-like such as *qi > *qje > *qtʲe > *tˠʲe > tˠe though. e o > i u pʲ mʲ sʲ tʲ kʲ nʲ > p m s t k n This is the main "shit goes down" stage. Summing...

There's also the suggestion that some clicks arose from consonant clusters - quoth Wikipedia: "For example, the Sandawe word for 'horn', /tɬana/, with a lateral affricate, may be a cognate with the root /ᵑǁaː/ found throughout the Khoe family, which has a lateral click. This and other words su...

Somewhat close to lowering: Southern Khanty has chainshift blocking triggered by uvulars: by default *a *o *u > o u y, but aQ oQ uQ all remain put. (There's also a more direct lowering shift where *ɯQ > *ɤQ > eQ, versus *ɯ > i by default). (it may be interesting to note that the Proto-Khanty uvulars...

C.f. oak, ash, elm, plane, yew... in fact, among native trees that aren't "-nut" or "-berry", I think monosyllables are the rule in English (though of course some monosyllables are longer than others). I guess holly and hornbeam are exceptions. Maple, aspen, rowan, willow, sallo...

Regarding the "but they only share a few soundchanges so it could be coincidence!" line of attack, which can be applied against ANY suggested family relationship - what do you expect? When you're talking about very close dialects that had only very recently diverged from the parent, you w...

It is unusual that Germanic shares this characteristic with those languages... but given that it lacks their other (more unusual) innovations (like shifting the palatovelars forward, merging labiovelars with velars (except in Albanian) and RUKI), it's more likely that this is areal influence from B...

Irrecoverable from casual inspection, perhaps less so once we have some reliable reconstructions. I would think the merits of top-down versus bottom-up depends a lot on what we're doing. Reconstructing a family top-down is generally a good idea since, for language families that don't have an establi...

People here might be interested to hear that Alexis Manaster Ramen has recently been uploading several backcatalog (mostly 90s) review/method papers on Nostratic and Altaic on academia.edu. I'd recommend as a starting point the following two: On Illich-Svitych's Nostratic Theory Glass Houses: Greenb...

Even if they don't, they still seem to have slightly different diachronic behavior due to different values of ±obstruent: ɬ <> s, ɬ <> tɬ or ɬ > t are common, ditto l̥ > h or l̥ <> hl, but probably not most of the opposite options without an l̥ <> ɬ overpass first. In other words, if we need to keep...

Ooh, that's an idea for a conlang: an otherwise modern language transplanted into the past and evolving alongside ancient languages and affecting them. I once considered the concept of a conlang with cyclic history, be it by time travel or weird cosmology; it would through convoluted paths end up a...