Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Brilliant-Resource14]

I'm looking through starlingdb just because and what the hell is this.

[Travis B.]

I'm looking through starlingdb just because and what the hell is this.

It was created by the Starostins, so...

[Brilliant-Resource14]

I'm looking through starlingdb just because and what the hell is this.

It was created by the Starostins, so...

Yeah that's fair

[Brilliant-Resource14]

StarlingDB be like: I wonder what vowel this is...

Eurasiatic: a
Afroasiatic: a
Sino-Caucasian: a
Austric: a
Amerind: a
Macro-Khoisan: a



StarlingDB: Hmmm... let me reconstruct *HV

(true story btw)

[Travis B.]

StarlingDB be like: I wonder what vowel this is...

Eurasiatic: a
Afroasiatic: a
Sino-Caucasian: a
Austric: a
Amerind: a
Macro-Khoisan: a



StarlingDB: Hmmm... let me reconstruct *HV

(true story btw)

Just the idea of trying to connect all these dubious macrofamilies into one super-macrofamily is insane.

[Brilliant-Resource14]

StarlingDB be like: I wonder what vowel this is...

Eurasiatic: a
Afroasiatic: a
Sino-Caucasian: a
Austric: a
Amerind: a
Macro-Khoisan: a



StarlingDB: Hmmm... let me reconstruct *HV

(true story btw)

Just the idea of trying to connect all these dubious macrofamilies into one super-macrofamily is insane.

I should lowk try to do Borean with the latest reconstructions of the constituent members

[Travis B.]

StarlingDB be like: I wonder what vowel this is...

Eurasiatic: a
Afroasiatic: a
Sino-Caucasian: a
Austric: a
Amerind: a
Macro-Khoisan: a



StarlingDB: Hmmm... let me reconstruct *HV

(true story btw)

Just the idea of trying to connect all these dubious macrofamilies into one super-macrofamily is insane.

I should lowk try to do Borean with the latest reconstructions of the constituent members

I hope you're being sarcastic there.

[jcb]

So if neither the radical analysis nor the conservative analysis is right, then what? Do we chalk the concept of phonemes and phonemic awareness up to the influence of literacy? Do we dismiss any notions of phonemic awareness having any reality and declare supposed evidence for the conservative analysis, such as restrictions on word-coining and borrowing and effects of suffixing, up to a mixture of the influence of literacy and frozen historical sound changes?

It kind of sounds like you're reinventing phonological theory. I've certainly seen theorists who do think phonemes are more a corollary of alphabetic writing systems than a real thing, and others who think that phonetic realizations are laboriously put together by applying rules that look like the last few centuries of sound change.

How do speakers of a language that's normally written with a non-alphabetic writing system (like Chinese, pinyin notwithstanding) perceive their language's phonology and phonemes?

Personally I find the standard idea of phones and phonemes pretty useful. A universal about brains is that the brain does a lot of things that are not directly accessible to consciousness. (A cute example: most people can't explain how they change lanes in a car, in a way that would teach correct behavior to a robot. Maybe they knew in driver ed, but now they just do it without thinking.)

Another example: Recognizing people from their faces, beyond listing conspicuous things like skin/eye color, hair color/length.

Michalel Tomasello has pointed out that children seem to learn language construction by construction, not following adult rules at all. I wonder if this has been applied to phonology. Brains don't have to operate like grammar books, with a systematic, coherent set of rules. Maybe there are separate phonologies for (say) words learned early on, words learned late on from hearing, and words learned from dictionaries.

That's an interesting possibility!

[Travis B.]

How do speakers of a language that's normally written with a non-alphabetic writing system (like Chinese, pinyin notwithstanding) perceive their language's phonology and phonemes?

Traditionally, Chinese people have broken their words into syllables, in turn separated into initials, finals (composed of prevocalic semivowels, nuclei, and codas treated as single units together), and tones rather than onsets, nuclei, and codas.

[Brilliant-Resource14]

Just the idea of trying to connect all these dubious macrofamilies into one super-macrofamily is insane.

I should lowk try to do Borean with the latest reconstructions of the constituent members

I hope you're being sarcastic there.

i would do it to see if it's even potentially real

[Travis B.]

I should lowk try to do Borean with the latest reconstructions of the constituent members

I hope you're being sarcastic there.

i would do it to see if it's even potentially real

Considering the dubiousness of supposed nodes well below that, such as Indo-Uralic, to jump past them when even those nodes are not adequately reconstructed if they are real at all is certain to result in something even more dubious.

[bradrn]

I hope you're being sarcastic there.

i would do it to see if it's even potentially real

Considering the dubiousness of supposed nodes well below that, such as Indo-Uralic, to jump past them when even those nodes are not adequately reconstructed if they are real at all is certain to result in something even more dubious.

Yes, well, you are talking to a person whose first posts here were asking for feedback on his Indo–Uralic ‘reconstruction’…

[Brilliant-Resource14]

I hope you're being sarcastic there.

i would do it to see if it's even potentially real

Considering the dubiousness of supposed nodes well below that, such as Indo-Uralic, to jump past them when even those nodes are not adequately reconstructed if they are real at all is certain to result in something even more dubious.

I found a "paper" on Academia saying that Elamite was an Indo-European language close to Germanic. like no it is not

[Brilliant-Resource14]

i would do it to see if it's even potentially real

Considering the dubiousness of supposed nodes well below that, such as Indo-Uralic, to jump past them when even those nodes are not adequately reconstructed if they are real at all is certain to result in something even more dubious.

Yes, well, you are talking to a person whose first posts here were asking for feedback on his Indo–Uralic ‘reconstruction’…

my first post on here was actually a suggestion for the ID redux, but I digress

[jal]

I found a "paper" on Academia saying that Elamite was an Indo-European language close to Germanic. like no it is not

What age is that paper? Because that's batshit crazy.


JAL

[Brilliant-Resource14]

I found a "paper" on Academia saying that Elamite was an Indo-European language close to Germanic. like no it is not

What age is that paper? Because that's batshit crazy.


JAL

https://www.academia.edu/43984902/Elami ... to_h_?sm=b

[Richard W]

Considering the dubiousness of supposed nodes well below that, such as Indo-Uralic, to jump past them when even those nodes are not adequately reconstructed if they are real at all is certain to result in something even more dubious.

You sound like someone who believes that pairwise reconstruction is necessary. More distant relatives might shed light that a pairwise reconstruction does not yield. I believe Verner's law as applied to Germanic is an example.

However, Afroasiatic is another cautionary tale on how little vocabulary can be expected to be reconstructed. A relationship of Semitic *libb- 'heart', Egyptian 𓄣 ꞽb 'heart', majority PIE *yókʷr̥ 'liver', Armenian leard 'liver', Proto-Germanic *librā 'liver' can start to look good. One working gloss for the reconstruction is 'squishy organ'; my suggestion is 'organ that is the seat of the emotions' . (The Indo-European forms can be united by assuming a PIE consonant sequence /lʲ pʷ r/.)

[jal]

url]https://www.academia.edu/43984902/Elami ... to_h_?sm=b[/url]

2020? My god, what was he smoking...


JAL

[Travis B.]

Considering the dubiousness of supposed nodes well below that, such as Indo-Uralic, to jump past them when even those nodes are not adequately reconstructed if they are real at all is certain to result in something even more dubious.

You sound like someone who believes that pairwise reconstruction is necessary. More distant relatives might shed light that a pairwise reconstruction does not yield. I believe Verner's law as applied to Germanic is an example.

If Indo-Uralic were partially substantiated I see doing this -- but Indo-Uralic is very dubious in and of itself.

[Brilliant-Resource14]

I found a "paper" on Academia saying that Elamite was an Indo-European language close to Germanic. like no it is not

What age is that paper? Because that's batshit crazy.


JAL

https://www.academia.edu/43984902/Elami ... to_h_?sm=b

https://www.academia.edu/3801969/Etrusc ... n_Language found some more bullshit