Zompist Bboard Again

Neat question! I have a few of these in Verdurian— e.g. pronoun hopping, tag questions, constituent dislocation. (Search for these in the grammar if you want examples.) Plus slang, of course. There are things that go the other way, too— genteelisms that no self-respecting working person would use, n...

I found this an odd sentence: "Some government officials wonder whether anyone organised the protests—possibly fuel smugglers, political rivals or powerful families that benefit from the subsidies." Using "anyone" in that first clause implies to me that the default assumption is...

Arguably this happens in the Germanic language English:

the house by the sea
that day a few years ago

Admittedly we don't normally think of "ago" as a postposition, but I think we should.

Ah well, haven't done one of these in, as the Brits say, yonks. Basics Username: zompist Name: Mark Rosenfelder Other nicknames (including good stories, if you have any): Horselover Fat (back in the DFC days) Birthplace: Lagrange, IL (my brother likes to say I was born in a barn) Place of residence:...

The main reason I prefer giving the paradigms first is for my own reference. It's annoying to scroll through pages and pages of text just to remember how to form the 3s past form of conjugation III. I also find that if I start to get into usage, it's hard to know when to stop. E.g., cases usually ha...

To reduce confusion, here are my present goals: Retain posts on this board, from now on Make posts from the old board available in some form That is, given last week's experience, I'm extremely reluctant to try anything that messes with the one working board we have. And I'd rather people not be ten...

Some positive advice You can post your work in Conlangery. By all the gods and goddesses, keep a local copy . Never assume that a server you don't own will keep your stuff around forever. Look around, be friendly, get to know people, and look at their work. Got questions? Great, ask away! If they'r...

Getting started with linguistics and conlanging (Conlang = constructed language; conworld = constructed world.) For making languages , see the Language Construction Kit . For a very basic and short introduction to languages and linguistics , see the sci.lang FAQ . I have a bunch of books out on con...

How to join The registry process will ask for a secret code. You can e-mail me at markrose at zompist dot com to get one. Unfortunately, when we don't go through this process, we get a steady pile-on of spammers. Seriously, I used to open registration for a few minutes at a time and I'd get five sp...

Miscellanous info You can change your username and password yourself. Email me if you have trouble, preferably using the email associated with your account. As a policy, I don't delete accounts just because someone is leaving. It's your responsibility to remove contact information if that's your co...

House Rules 1. Don't be a dick . This is probably different from other boards you're used to. Deal with it. Don't call each other names; don't get into long meta-discussions of each other's poor arguing skills; don't gang up on someone with unusual views; don't feel that you have to respond to thin...

I started the board in order to provide a place for people to-- * ask questions about Almea or to try out Almean languages * learn about language and linguistics * see each other's conlangs and help out with conlangs and conworlds As you can see, three of the forums directly correspond to these goal...

Test text