Zompist Bboard Again

Iau and Skou propably among the most Papuan, even though this is of course more of an areal thing. ‘Most Papuan’ doesn’t really make sense to me given the typological diversity of that area. (Iau isn’t even the most Lakes–Plains, let alone the most Papuan). Furthermore we have a natural bias toward...

Swahili is NOT the most Bantu, it is probably among the least Bantu. Maybe Chichewa or Kinande are in the top five if you exclude Nguni languages.

Iau and Skou propably among the most Papuan, even though this is of course more of an areal thing.

I frequently confuse Indonesian and Spanish words. I guess it's because from a French/German/English perspective the two languages are phonologically similar.

Pbase is useful, because it's the only database of allophonic patterns. It has some shortcomings though. L means left-hand context and R means right-hand context. '+' is a morpheme boundary IINM. You could check Jeff Mielke's website. I think the database is explained in some of his publicatiobs (ma...

Lebenslange Freiheitsstrafe für Raubmord am Hamburger Michel

Sounds like someone murdered either a person called Michel from Hamburg or a church, but it's really the place where the murder happened.

[...] But I also have relative subject verb markers that are basically composed like this -n<ēz>a "1cs<REL>" and -t<ēz>as "3ns<REL>" so I'm wondering if the morphemes can harmonize to -nēze and -tēzes So I'd have a verb form kā-nēze "I who am" and it doesn't become kā-...

Yes. These are found in languages if West Africa and Oceania, IINM. They often have slightly different properties and look less regular/natural though. I would need to check my notes to give you more details, though.

1. There is also "all die Bücher" 2. Theoretically, there should be a sentence *"Was entspricht das Wort?", but this doesn't work, maybe because "was" cannot be marked for the dative case. If you make the question about animate entities it kind of works: "Wem entsp...

I think the most natural option for me would be the following for the last two sentences.

Manchmal fahr ich am Fluss Fahrrad.

Ich zog meine Turnschuhe an, um am Fluss zu joggen.

Maybe the right vowel system for a starfish alien conlang.

I would say in emails and on the internet, I never capitalize 'du', etc.

What do you call /ji/ → /iː/? It's meant to be a regular synchronic sound change in some of my noun declensions when the /j/ follows a consonant (the /j/ is in the stem with the consonant before it, the /i/ is in the case marker), but I swear the general sound change along with /wu/ → /uː/ is commo...

Is it because it contains more than a short vowel before the glottal stop?

I’ve never heard of this terminology before. Could you give a source? On the other hand, I do know that a ‘checked’ syllable is one ending with a stop (in SE Asian linguistics, especially Sinitic), so perhaps ‘smooth’ refers to a syllable not ending in a stop. (Oh, and there’s a typo in the title.)...

Papua Indonesian is similar in that it has existential copula ada but no real predicative copula. The existential copula is usually not used for locations though. Ada orang di depan pintu. EXIST person at front door. There is someone at the door. Sa di rumah. 1SG at home I am at home. Anjing sendiri...

As for German, this is a hotly debated topic. Concerning your specific question, some people use frau (note the lack of a capital letter).

Also, I think lively/lebhaft vs. dry/trocken keeps the metaphor under the assumption that it's from leaves of a tree or something were dry is the opposite of lively.
Fesselnd, unterhaltsam and kurzweilig might also work in German.

How about thinking of phonemes as sets of allophones, like we do for living languages? Maybe more than one answer is accurate?

Isn't it less plausible simply because (non-contextual) fortition is less common crosslinguistically?

I notice there's a bit of an oddity with semantics in two seemingly-synonymous phrases: "I had an unfair shot." implies the unfairness works for the speaker. but "I didn't have a fair shot." implies the unfairness works against the speaker. Is there a term for this? Or at least,...