Zompist Bboard Again

I really like Auenland and Elben in the German translation. I think I once heard a story about Tolkien really loving Elben

Just wanted to chime in again to mention that many languages of Papua have a contrast between voiced prenasalized and voiceless aspirated plosives, which are transcribed as voiced vs. voiceless by convention. I recall a footnote in some work on Dani where the author said that he considers Ndani as a...

Ningera consonants are something else p k b d m n ʙ ʙʷ l w ᵐʙ ᵐʙʷ Like what the fuck? A THIRD of the consonants are bilabial trills?? The source is this , the same one that gives Biritai as /b t d ɸ s/. Donohue's done a lot of work on Papuan languages before so I can't see a reason to doubt him. Th...

Well, except if adjectives can head a noun phrase on their own and 'inherit' case marking only in these cases, even if they do not usually agree with the head noun in case. Right?

Are they speaking Jakarta Indonesian (lu, gue/gua) or Java Indonesian (aka medok, (a)ku, (ka)mu)? Because Java Indonesian sometimes inherits weird voicing stuff (stiff vs. slack) from Javanese plus a tendency for some pairs if stops to differ in minor place of articulation. I think medok /d/ is furt...

Shakuntala Mahanta reports in her Dissertation that none other than Peter Ladefoged mistook Assamese high back rounded RTR [ʊ] for low back rounded [ɒ]. She provides phonetic and phonological evidence that this is indeed a high vowel. So maybe height in non-front vowels is very difficult to hear in ...

I think in the latter case, the German word order is the same (i.e. postponed adposition), but like English it uses a directional adposition ( hinein ). Second opinion on German: certain Northern German sociolects have a combination of (a) obligatory reduction of weak definite (i.e. non-anaphoric) ...

Moldania, Moldonesia, Moldia, Moldistan, Moldiland, Moldenbourg, Moldina, Moldmark, Moldian Guinea, Moldesia, St. Molda, Moldaco, et, etc...

I recently heard a nanosyntax talk where someone cited generative work that assumes a universal set of abstract roots (which amounts to a universal lexicon, IINM) in a minimalist syntax plus distributed morphology framework. Close to zero people in the audience, which mostly consisted of generative ...

Maybe its similar in use to 'Angestellter'?

Sorry if this sounds dumb, but how does non-phonemic stress evolve? One possible source is intonation. You have a strong-weak (or high-low) pattern at the end of a phrase and extend it to words (which can have effects on subsequent changes). Of course, the question is then how intonation comes abou...

In one of my less developed conlangs , consonant-final nouns require a lexically determined vowel before a case suffix. At the time I called this a ‘thematic vowel’, but now, having read a little more about PIE, I realise that term isn’t quite correct — PIE thematic vowels aren’t lexically determin...

Damn, I had this idea floating around for some time now, for my conworld's Nazi/Prussia/Japan/Klingon-conculture. It looks very tidy.

a) I ordered there to be a party b) I expected there to be a party According to wikipedia and the papers it cites sentence a) is wrong. Sentence b) is fine. As a native English speaker I don't see the problem... sentence a) means I ordered (somebody but I'm not telling who) to have a party... This ...

Linguoboy wrote: ↑Wed Dec 21, 2022 12:24 pm Do you have a special name for the day after Christmas? And does it vary depending on whether this is a legal/bank holiday or not?

2. Weihnachtsfeiertag in German. Not a joke, I actually use this frequently and I have no shorter version.

According to wiktionary.org there is a verb to contracept. Maybe this blocks contraceive.

I once saw a differentiation between a five pointed star shape and an actual asterisk with the former being reconstructed forms.

Reference mark maybe?

masako wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 9:58 pm I'm looking for natlang examples of epenthetic consonants, I would appreciate info from anyone that knows, thank you.

Peter Staroverov's dissertation has an appendix with a list of natlangs and their epenthetic consonants. Starts on page 410 IINM.

(Colloquial) Indonesian doesn't really talk about sunshine a lot. In theory most weather expressions are independent one-word expressions, in practice they are usually combined with an aspectual particle e.g. lagi or the phrase di luar (LOC outside). Weather words in these expressions are not noun-y...