What have you accomplished today?

[WeepingElf]

Drafted new verb paradigms for Proto-Hesperic, which still need some fine tuning, though.

And I have decided to toss them again because they are too cumbersome.

[Lērisama]

And there was me hoping that was you posting them. Good luck with the replacement – I hope they are more satisfying

[fusijui]

Drafted new verb paradigms for Proto-Hesperic, which still need some fine tuning, though.

And I have decided to toss them again because they are too cumbersome.

That was QUICK, man! I admire your speed and ruthlessness!

[WeepingElf]

Drafted new verb paradigms for Proto-Hesperic, which still need some fine tuning, though.

And I have decided to toss them again because they are too cumbersome.

That was QUICK, man! I admire your speed and ruthlessness!

Thank you! I have decided to keep things as simple as possible (without falling into minimalism, though, I want some richness and complexity, but not too much). For instance, Proto-Hesperic now has only four noun cases, after up to twelve in some earlier drafts. Also, Proto-Hesperic is meant to be closely related to Hittite, which also has a rather uncomplicated verb morphology.

That said, I am usually a rather slow conlanger, finding it difficult to decide on something. And sometimes, I come up with something but soon find a problem with it and discard it again.

[Man in Space]

I actually got an SCA to work today.

[Man in Space]

I had an extremely productive day conlanging today—and one of the best experiences I’ve ever had with doing sound changes. (The only reason I halted was because I had to go to the studio.)

[bradrn]

Now I’m curious to know which SCA worked so well for you.

[Man in Space]

Now I’m curious to know which SCA worked so well for you.

Ultimately, Brassica seems to fit my needs best.

[bradrn]

Now I’m curious to know which SCA worked so well for you.

Ultimately, Brassica seems to fit my needs best.

It makes me very happy to hear this!

[Ahzoh]

I finally got this template to do everything I wanted it to do:
https://linguifex.com/wiki/Template:Vrk ... e/G-strong

It can account for a root's "weakness" and conjugate appropriately. Which also means I don't need three to twelve additional templates to account for weak roots.

My user page has test tables:
https://linguifex.com/wiki/User:Ahzoh

[WeepingElf]

I sometimes have my best ideas late at night, so again this time. I got up and jotted it down. So here it is:

I have found out how PIE ablaut and vowel autosegmentality interplay in Old Albic. Vowel features are connected to morphemes, and the vowels are inserted into the consonant string by phonotactic rules. There are two sources of vowel features: ablaut grades, and semivowels and laryngeals. There are four vowel features, three qualitative and one quantitative: [+open], [+front], [+round] and [+long]. They can combine freely, though I don't know yet whether all combinations actually occur.

The vowel features provided by the ablaut grades are thus:

Zero grade: none
A-grade (< PIE o-grade): [+open]
I-grade (< PIE e-grade): [+front]
Â-grade (< PIE ô-grade): [+open][+long]
Î-grade (< PIE ê-grade): [+front][+long]

Syllabic semivowels also contribute:

*i: [+front]
*u: [+round]
Laryngeals: none

Post-vocalic semivowels the same, plus [+long]

Vowel positions in morphemes without vowel features attached borrow their features from the nearest vowel with features. In a final step, [+long] is deleted in unstressed vowels and in vowels in closed syllables except in monosyllables.

Let's see how this works in practice.

Consider the Old Albic word for 'father', in the agentive singular. The consonant string is ph3-tr-h, and the ablaut grades of the three morphemes are 0-i-0. Thus, the second morpheme carries the vowel feature [+front], while the first and the third morpheme carry none. The resulting word form is phitiri.

The dative singular consists of the consonant string ph3-tr-i with the ablaut grades 0-0-i. So the last morpheme carries [+front] (actually twice, one from the i-grade, and one from the semivowel, but twice the same feature equals once the feature), while the first two morphemes carry no features. This results in he form phitri.

There is also a derivative of this word, the word for 'teacher', which is the consonant string ph3-tr-3n-h and the ablaut grades 0-0-a-0. The laryngeal in the third morpheme contributes [+long], so the result is phatrána.

All this is of course just work in progress, and may be modified later.

[bradrn]

It’s always great to see new twists on triliteral roots!

[Lērisama]

I descovered that I did in fact already get a search function working on my dictionary, so I don't have to sort that out

[xxx]

DIY idea: Lexember Advent Calendar...

[Man in Space]

DIY idea: Lexember Advent Calendar...

One for each of the 25 days in December and letters of the alphabet—except no "L".

[WeepingElf]

DIY idea: Lexember Advent Calendar...

One for each of the 25 days in December and letters of the alphabet—except no "L".

I count twenty-six boxes, and "L" is there - the left box in the second row counting from the top.

[Man in Space]

DIY idea: Lexember Advent Calendar...

One for each of the 25 days in December and letters of the alphabet—except no "L".

I count twenty-six boxes, and "L" is there - the left box in the second row counting from the top.

The joke was that it ought to be 25 with Noël.

[WeepingElf]

One for each of the 25 days in December and letters of the alphabet—except no "L".

I count twenty-six boxes, and "L" is there - the left box in the second row counting from the top.

The joke was that it ought to be 25 with Noël.

Ah, I understand now

[Emily]

spent way too long figuring out the words for various vegetables and getting full entries loaded into anthologica:

• spinach: spainakjo -> spenazus -> spenazus
• pea: arwuts -> arwudz -> arwuds
• carrot: maurho -> more -> mores
• parsnip: maurho; pasternek -> pasterneks

[xxx]

One for each of the 25 days in December and letters of the alphabet—except no "L".

I count twenty-six boxes, and "L" is there - the left box in the second row counting from the top.

The joke was that it ought to be 25 with Noël.

it rather ought to be 31 with lexember...

but since we'd be filling rather than emptying the calendar,
we could double-fill 5 letters...