Search found 2979 matches

by Salmoneus
28 Mar 2024 21:29
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
Replies: 1110
Views: 282424

Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Another of my 'speculative' questions... How might a language develop an animate/inanimate (or any other binary gender-like) distinction, on demonstratives specifically? I ask about demonstratives, since they are likely one of the first points in the development of a gender system (at least accordi...
by Salmoneus
27 Mar 2024 14:08
Forum: Conworlds & Concultures
Topic: Clothing and Clothing Inspiration for Concultures
Replies: 9
Views: 279

Re: Clothing and Clothing Inspiration for Concultures

I'm a bit confused by the economics/ideology here - is this a totalitarian state of some sort? How have you broken the universal human need for status symbols? If something is expensive, people will powerfully want to own it. In our world, for instance, ownership of white goods, cars, even houses is...
by Salmoneus
23 Mar 2024 23:40
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
Replies: 1110
Views: 282424

Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Not an expert, but since we've raised the question, I'd guess there are three reasons why Latin developed mostly-free word order: a) the word order was probably ancestrally never totally fixed anyway. Strong SOV tendencies in the earliest records may be in part a literary decision, a style of "...
by Salmoneus
22 Mar 2024 23:54
Forum: Everything Else
Topic: The Sixth Conversation Thread
Replies: 762
Views: 193847

Re: The Sixth Conversation Thread

Just encountered a beautiful Irish sentence glossed for me: An t-ealaíontóir gur mhór aici an damhan alla agus gur mhór a cuid damhan alla, Louise Bourgeois, fuair sí bás ar na mallaibh. Literally: "the artist that big with her the spider and that big her lot of spider, Louise Bourgeois, found ...
by Salmoneus
22 Mar 2024 23:43
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
Replies: 1110
Views: 282424

Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

I'm afraid I don't know any syntax (in a linguistics sense, imaginary trees and brackets and anagrams and whatnot), so I probably can't give the sort of answer you want. Thank you very much for this! To be honest, my knowledge of syntax/"linguistics" is very rudimentary, and I favour comm...
by Salmoneus
22 Mar 2024 18:16
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
Replies: 1110
Views: 282424

Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

I'm afraid I don't know any syntax (in a linguistics sense, imaginary trees and brackets and anagrams and whatnot), so I probably can't give the sort of answer you want. [from my position of ignorance, your business with the complementizers seems counterintuitive, since at least in Germanic and I be...
by Salmoneus
21 Mar 2024 23:19
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
Replies: 1110
Views: 282424

Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Yep - well, I don't know if "reduced" is the right word because I don't think the short vowel are centralised, but yes, it's a 3-vowel system with length, historically, but where a quality distinction has been introduced by the long and short vowels shifting slightly. The long mid vowels i...
by Salmoneus
17 Mar 2024 22:04
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
Replies: 1679
Views: 347474

Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Just to give a look, I think /s/ and /ts/ will merge in codas - dance and pants already are getting merged ("the dancing pants"). I think /r/s will change, as per usual. I also think English will split really hard - maybe not now or in 30 years, but it's already starting to happen. East c...
by Salmoneus
17 Mar 2024 20:34
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: Cultural differences and features of perception of slogans (All welcome)
Replies: 12
Views: 499

Re: Cultural differences and features of perception of slogan (All welcome)

I'd also note that "conservative" and "liberal" are antonyms for Americans, but not necessarily for the rest of us, and both terms mean very different things in the political language of different countries. [eg in the UK there are politicians (and voters) who consider themselves...
by Salmoneus
17 Mar 2024 20:25
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: Cultural differences and features of perception of slogans (All welcome)
Replies: 12
Views: 499

Re: Cultural differences and features of perception of slogan (All welcome)

I answered your questions, but . . . is "democratic" really a perfect antonym for "authoritarian"? According to thesaurus.com 'democratic' is acceptable and at least clear to all people. Moreover, we can not use synonyms having too negative connotation like t*rannical and t*tali...
by Salmoneus
16 Mar 2024 16:58
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
Replies: 1679
Views: 347474

Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Say that's 2050 then. I've actually changed my document to reflect that, and I can see why you say that - basically all I did is "monophthongize" some glides. What might happen afterwards? What mergers and splits could you see happening? I can see the food and book sets merging. It's hard...
by Salmoneus
14 Mar 2024 18:33
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
Replies: 1110
Views: 282424

Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

I've recently stumbled across the Gutenberg Project release of Chronicle and Romance: Froissart, Malory, Holinshed , by Lord John Bourchier Berners et al. The original documents date back to the 15th century, so written roughly at the change from Late Middle English to Early Modern English, but thi...
by Salmoneus
13 Mar 2024 22:30
Forum: Everything Else
Topic: Web 1.0 nostalgia
Replies: 6
Views: 158

Re: Web 1.0 nostalgia

I'm nostalgic for several different Web 1.0s! There's the web I gradually learnt about as a child in the early 1990s - a weird, small selection of mostly pointless websites like Blue Dog Can Count and Blue Pig Won't Oink*, big business websites that looked like they were designed by a child, and ter...
by Salmoneus
11 Mar 2024 23:38
Forum: Everything Else
Topic: The Sixth Conversation Thread
Replies: 762
Views: 193847

Re: The Sixth Conversation Thread

How are people able to use LibreOffice for conlangs? I can't find any easy way to use diacritics in it. In Word, it couldn't be easier. You select a symbol in the insert symbol box, and then you can enter an easy shortcut - for instance, I use alt+- as a prefix key to put a macron on a following vow...
by Salmoneus
06 Mar 2024 14:40
Forum: Beginners' Corner
Topic: Adding a naming system to a "normal" conlang?
Replies: 11
Views: 669

Re: Adding a naming system to a "normal" conlang?

Worth saying maybe that it's not always that gods are "named after" their qualities - that's kind of an abrahamic way of looking at things. For the Greeks, for instance, divinity was the same as being an abstract noun - any abstract noun could be the name of a god or goddess. Not because t...
by Salmoneus
05 Mar 2024 23:29
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
Replies: 1679
Views: 347474

Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

If a language only has a singular/plural distinction, but descended from a proto-lang that marked dual and Paucal (3-5) on the noun, how naturalistic would it be to say that if a noun phrase has 2-5 as a numeral, the language does not require plural marker on the noun? Or is the opposite more natur...
by Salmoneus
04 Mar 2024 00:03
Forum: Everything Else
Topic: What are you listening to/watching?
Replies: 322
Views: 88410

Re: What are you listening to/watching?

I rewatched the first season of The Americans. It's an almost perfect season of TV. It shows what the show is about, but is still accessible to a wider audience (it's more episodic and action-packed than some of the later seasons were). Watch it! But now I'm rewatching the second season, and... holy...
by Salmoneus
26 Feb 2024 17:01
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: would rescuing an endangered language have a similar effect to israeli hebrew?
Replies: 28
Views: 1275

Re: would rescuing an endangered language have a similar effect to israeli hebrew?

Conveniently I work in language revitalization for Indigenous languages in North America, that's my full-time job. Thank you for your service! Perhaps what you're really asking is whether the process of recovery would cause this development to happen faster than it does for languages with many spea...
by Salmoneus
22 Feb 2024 21:19
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
Replies: 1679
Views: 347474

Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

But I'd also say: bear in mind that Latin hadn't even eliminated its own stress irregularities - there were a whole bunch of words that didn't obey the normal rules and weren't regularised. So expecting immediate regularisation of a whole heap of new irregulars may be unrealistic. I didn't know tha...
by Salmoneus
21 Feb 2024 16:13
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
Replies: 1679
Views: 347474

Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Yes, I think I'd agree with that. EDIT: I'd also add, a lot of stress shifts aren't really about creating new stresses, but about reprioritising existing stresses - primary stress shifting to a syllable that has some stress already. I suspect "move to initial stress" is common because ofte...