Zompist Bboard Again

Sorry for misogyny, but is it possible to derive diminutive into feminime gender? Proto Garaudawa initially only has 2 genders, and it is reflected in Rkouic and converted into Proximate-Absolutive in Asent'oan, but split into four genders in the rest of language, taking original diminutive. (No lo...

In Proto-Eastern Philology, Obenzayet is described as reflecting *bekt- and *klāg- both as ɣläɣ- in past definite forms except on third person plural.

Sorry for misogyny, but is it possible to derive diminutive into feminime gender? Proto Garaudawa initially only has 2 genders, and it is reflected in Rkouic and converted into Proximate-Absolutive in Asent'oan, but split into four genders in the rest of language, taking original diminutive. (No lon...

Do you know how to create a fusional language? My declension of Proto-Garaudawa looks too agglutinative to me:

Explain why the word iron in Proto Sino-Tibetian and in Proto-Balto-Slavic are related. They're 5000+ km away.

I feel like I'm only poorly impersonating a conlanger because I'm too indecisive and unable to come up with ideas to actually Make A Finished Conlang. For example, I can't even decide if long vowels in Classical Āirumāli should have an inherent tone, and if so what (the language otherwise has three...

It is very common for a language to combine applicative and causative into one suffix based on verb. Usually a transitive verb or an unergative verb gets an applicative meaning, while intransitive verb and unaccusative verb gets a causative meaning. How to derive that from a language that has neither?

I feel like I'm only poorly impersonating a conlanger because I'm too indecisive and unable to come up with ideas to actually Make A Finished Conlang. For example, I can't even decide if long vowels in Classical Āirumāli should have an inherent tone, and if so what (the language otherwise has three...

What does a proximate/obviative contrast have to do with interrogative pronouns here? In my language, question words are exclusively sentence-initial. However, also in my language, the typical word order is Proximate > Obviate. It causes problem if interrogative pronoun happens to coexist as SAP pr...

I know this as well. I was asking in the specific case of a transitive copula with adjectival predicate in a polypersonal language. If you really want to force it, adjectives are often treated as substantives themselves anyway, so they can be declined either to agree with their noun or otherwise. I...

In a proximate-obviative language, is it possible that interrogative pronoun must be word initial? And how to resolve conflict if there is SAP pronoun in the same sentence?

If my language has two cases, Direct and Oblique, what case is more likely to mark an attributive noun? An oblique case, direct case, or the same case as the head noun? How about possession if I decided to use his genitive?

I mean /*ɰ/ turns to current /w/, so it appears that /w/ turns into /ŋ/ while diachronically, it's actually /*ɰ/ turns into /ŋ/ when nasalized, but /w/ elsewhere. Okay, I can see how that would work, but I actually like [w̃] and would prefer to keep it, my worry is about [ʋ̃]. One possibility is th...

akam chinjir wrote: ↑Thu Mar 07, 2019 10:02 am But I've got /ʋ/, not /ɰ/. (I do have ŋʷ though.)

I mean /*ɰ/ turns to current /w/, so it appears that /w/ turns into /ŋ/ while diachronically, it's actually /*ɰ/ turns into /ŋ/ when nasalized, but /w/ elsewhere.

If I've got progressive nasal harmony, and among the consonants that this can affect are ʋ and w , and the language also has m , how likely is it that ʋ̃ will be/remain phonologically/phonetically distinct? If you have /ŋ/ or /ŋʷ/, then it's likely that it will be phonologically distinct. For forme...

Furthermore the phonology in my conlang seems remarkably inefficient in terms of feature usage. There are only twelve or so phonemes, making it comparable to Hawai'ian or Cheyenne in scale. Yet the language needs ten features to distinguish all these phonemes and some of those features only disting...

How do you change the genitive construction so this construction. warrior-SG.GEN axe-SG.DIR Turns into: warrior-SG.GEN 3SG.SG.GEN axe-SG.DIR I guess this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_genitive Also, the Classical Chinese possessor marker 之 was actually a 3rd person pronoun, and is the preceden...

How do you change the genitive construction so this construction.

warrior-SG.GEN axe-SG.DIR

Turns into:

warrior-SG.GEN 3SG.SG.GEN axe-SG.DIR

Do you know any language outside Indo-European, Semitic, and Oto-Manguean to have fusional grammar? The best I know is Navajo, but it sounds like if you combine agglutinative part with the fusional one.

Everything about this phonology is frustrating me. It seems remarkably hard to pin down the technical details of the phoneme inventory or justify key phonological rules. In particular, the phonemes /s/ and /l/ are difficult to classify by features and require implausible or complicated sandhi rules...