Zompist Bboard Again

ÜberBen wrote: ↑Sun Sep 02, 2018 2:58 am#1448549904, Jagwkwohugwtjagwh [gʲægʷkʷɔhugʷtgʲægʷʍ]

I take it this is Fhqwhgads's native language.

I like the aesthetic of the language. Makes me want to go read Beowulf.

If you're set on /sP/ and willing to take the long way around, what Tropylium describes makes sense to me.

I'd expect something more along the lines of /sP/ > /Pʰ/, /P/ > /Pʼ/.

/oʊ uː/ and especially /ʊ/ are not fully backed (/ʊ/ in particular seems to be quite centralized). This seems to be the case for most people here. My /oʊ ʊ/ are likewise very centralized, but my /uː ɒ/ are back. In the dialect here /oʊ/ is typically less centralized than /uː/, which undergoes allop...

/oʊ uː/ and especially /ʊ/ are not fully backed (/ʊ/ in particular seems to be quite centralized). This seems to be the case for most people here. My /oʊ ʊ/ are likewise very centralized, but my /uː ɒ/ are back. Likewise my /r/ is generally not pharyngealized in most cases but rather either plain u...

Actually, it's not that odd for /p/ or /g/ to be missing--or both (see Arabic). As for missing /p b/, lacking labials is an areal feature of the Northeast (mostly restricted to Iroquoian specifically) and broadly in the Northwest, but seems to be rare elsewhere. Of course, the Pacific Northwest spra...

I've never perceived them as pharyngealized or heard of them being so outside this forum, but pharyngealization does pop up in random places sometimes. At least one of the languages of Pantar Island in Indonesia has a phonemic voiceless pharyngeal fricative. Most people I know have /r/ [ɻ] (includi...

Why are the American English liquids so strongly pharyngealized (I suppose some people have velarized [ɫ], but mine at least is distinctly pharyngealized, as is my /r/ [ɹ̠ˁ])? It seems like an odd development in a language so lacking in dorsal sounds (/h/ and a non-phonemic glottal stop notwithstand...

malloc wrote: ↑Sat Sep 01, 2018 3:08 pm Putting aside lexical accent, what kind of effects can affixation have on the position of accent? For instance, can a heavily agglutinative language treat inflectional suffixes as extrametrical?

At that point aren't they better considered clitics rather than affixes?

Bajor's 26-hour day was one of the little details I appreciated about DS9. Shame that the Bajoran language was just gibberish. i've been drafting star trek languages occasionally based on what's "spoken" in the episodes. cardassian and dominionese are in the works :D Remember that passive...

So Haleza Grise wrote: ↑Mon Jul 30, 2018 6:48 amtwenty-four hour days

Bajor's 26-hour day was one of the little details I appreciated about DS9. Shame that the Bajoran language was just gibberish.

Persian does it and it is IE. Turkish was once written in Arabic. However just because a natlang does it doesn't mean it's good.... I've heard Persian script described as the worst of all natlang scripts. The turks ablolished theirs. What's more fascinating is Middle Persian using Aramaic as a logo...

Trying to develop an interesting accent system for a polysynthetic language. Fixed accent (on the penultimate for instance) feels rather unsatisfying when words can easily reach a dozen syllables. Yet lexical accent complicates things considerably, without even the ability to reliably distinguish m...

As an aside, I have recent idea on the Kartvelian "*čk-cluster" series (which yields clusters /čʼkʼ čk džg/ in Svan and Zan, but plain /čʼ č dž/ in Georgian). Given (1) *w > /g/ in Armenian, and (2) velar/uvular + *v clusters being common, I suspect that PKv should be reconstructed with l...

Of course there's that element to fantasy, but a lot of fantasy is, of course, garbage: costume dramas populated with modern people in thatched roof cottages with swords and dragons. See Dragon Age 2 for a particularly egregious example (not that it's overly cheery, but there's not a single pre-mode...

Treaty brides are one thing, but the Dothraki are also portrayed as raping their own women as part of a wedding celebration, and that's not history, it's authorial masturbation. That's why I despise GRRM. If you need that much shock value to sell your story, is your story really worth telling? My i...

what are the military applications? If my studies of the history of technology have taught me anything, this is the first and foremost question to ask when thinking about any fictional/futuristic technology. Sometimes there aren't any, but when there are, the military will be there. This is why I'm...

To be fair, aristocratic men didn't really have much choice, either. "Oh, Henry. Your brother Arthur died a week into his marriage after extreme illness. His bride said they didn't consummate. You're the husband now!" Oh yes. It could get really traumatic for both parties. And just to mak...

From what I understood Daenerys was a sex slave of sorts (also queen with all the power and respect that the position has but still bought without her consent) but Drogo wanted her to actually love and respect him at the same time. Yes, I see your point — though I'm a little uncomfortable with usin...