Search found 174 matches

by Ithisa
22 Apr 2022 06:21
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Konsloviensky: a boring Interslavic descendant
Replies: 0
Views: 1172

Konsloviensky: a boring Interslavic descendant

Recently, as part of a larger conworlding project, I've been working on a rather boring Slavic language. In-universe, it's a naturalized descendant of an auxlang; that auxlang is essentially the Interslavic language. This initial post is basically a dump of my current notes; will organize later. Som...
by Ithisa
22 Apr 2022 00:39
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: Why does English not have a word for "which one out of these"?
Replies: 4
Views: 1137

Re: Why does English not have a word for "which one out of these"?

I think that the problem is that neither "which" nor "which one" can be comfortably said in the same rising, emphatic tone of "Whaaat?", "Whooo?" etc Eh, I think I've sometimes heard "Which one!?!?" said in a very emphatic way. Sure, the -i- of &quo...
by Ithisa
20 Apr 2022 21:18
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: Why does English not have a word for "which one out of these"?
Replies: 4
Views: 1137

Re: Why does English not have a word for "which one out of these"?

I think that the problem is that neither "which" nor "which one" can be comfortably said in the same rising, emphatic tone of "Whaaat?", "Whooo?" etc
by Ithisa
20 Apr 2022 18:39
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: Why does English not have a word for "which one out of these"?
Replies: 4
Views: 1137

Why does English not have a word for "which one out of these"?

There is something that occasionally trips me up as an L2 English speaker. Most English pronouns and pronoun-like words ("correlatives" in esperanto terms) have an "interrogative" version: - he / she / who - it / what - now / then / when - here / there / where This can be illustr...
by Ithisa
04 Jun 2017 20:06
Forum: Teach & Share
Topic: Curiosities from the languages of Italy
Replies: 15
Views: 17210

Re: Curiosities from the languages of Italy

Not surprising that the Urheimat of Romance languages have the most interesting diversity of them :)
by Ithisa
01 Jun 2017 18:55
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: Interaction between ergativity, pro-drop, and causatives?
Replies: 18
Views: 6262

Re: Interaction between ergativity, pro-drop, and causatives

"I force-feed fish" would be "1-ERG fish-ERG eat", with a pro-dropped thing that's getting eaten. That bit is problematic, usually in ergative langs the absolutive NP is mandatory, or at least more mandatory than the ergative one. I would expect that to be able to express “I for...
by Ithisa
01 Jun 2017 17:59
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: Interaction between ergativity, pro-drop, and causatives?
Replies: 18
Views: 6262

Re: Interaction between ergativity, pro-drop, and causatives

Frislander wrote:the causer need not be the same as the person actually eating the fish.
Indeed, it seems like I missed that fact. It does seem that the causative is a lot more general than "agent".
by Ithisa
01 Jun 2017 17:11
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: Interaction between ergativity, pro-drop, and causatives?
Replies: 18
Views: 6262

Re: Interaction between ergativity, pro-drop, and causatives

Generally speaking ergative and passive sentences look more or less the same, the only exception being that a passive would be clearly a derived structure while an ergative sentence is an underlying structure (hence passives being marked with some form of construction). In most ergative languages, ...
by Ithisa
01 Jun 2017 15:53
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: Interaction between ergativity, pro-drop, and causatives?
Replies: 18
Views: 6262

Re: Interaction between ergativity, pro-drop, and causatives

Adding a causer/agent to a passive verb is usually just called 'reintroducing the agent' and the result is sometimes 'agentive passive'. Agent Patient Verb <- Active voice Agent Patient Verb-Passive <-Passive voice Patient Verb-Passive Agent-OBL <-Agentive Passive construction If you used a causati...
by Ithisa
01 Jun 2017 15:30
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: Interaction between ergativity, pro-drop, and causatives?
Replies: 18
Views: 6262

Re: Interaction between ergativity, pro-drop, and causatives

My point with causatives is that "to be eaten" / "to eat" can be reanalyzed as "is eaten" / "cause to be eaten"; so removing an ergative from a transitive sentence to express the passive can be reanalyzed as adding an ergative to *any* intransitive sentence to...
by Ithisa
01 Jun 2017 04:32
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: Interaction between ergativity, pro-drop, and causatives?
Replies: 18
Views: 6262

Interaction between ergativity, pro-drop, and causatives?

This question is really about whether a feature in a conlang I'm making is realistic or not, so sorry if it belongs more in the conlangs board. But it is also about how real-life languages with ergative-absolutive alignment work, and it seems like the conlangs board is just about showing off conlang...
by Ithisa
24 Apr 2015 02:35
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Proto-Avestan
Replies: 6
Views: 4896

Re: Proto-Avestan

by Ithisa
23 Apr 2015 21:37
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Yay or Nay? [2011–2018]
Replies: 2876
Views: 447004

Re: Yay or Nay?

Mawacin doesn't have tense. Should it have an aorist aspect to denote the aspect in English "He walks across the building"? Does syncreting this into the gnomic (which applies to sentences like "I love you" and "the Earth is big") make any sense, or would doing so be re...
by Ithisa
23 Apr 2015 21:35
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: What's your favourite word in your conlang?
Replies: 81
Views: 16220

Re: What's your favourite word in your conlang?

In Mawacin it's probably ėšıš [jeʃɨʃ] is walking. I dunno, it just sounds like walking.
by Ithisa
27 Jul 2014 19:10
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: Zsebemben sok kicsi sárga alma van
Replies: 1
Views: 1533

Zsebemben sok kicsi sárga alma van

The title contains a Hungarian sentence cited quite a few times by Turks who try to argue that Hungarian is Turkic. Apparently the Turkish equivalent is "cebimde çok küçük sarı elma var". AFAIK, Uralic and Turkic are not considered to be related. What is the mechanism behind the regular si...
by Ithisa
27 Jul 2014 17:02
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Loglang mutually intelligible with Japanese
Replies: 14
Views: 4475

Re: Loglang mutually intelligible with Japanese

Verb conjugation classes There are three main verb classes in LogJ:monograde (MN, itsidan ) and quadrigrade (QD, jodan ). There is also a marginal r-irregular (Irr, ra-hen ) verb class containing various auxiliaries. Using the traditional Japanese principal parts (this may be extremely confusing fo...
by Ithisa
27 Jul 2014 16:49
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Loglang mutually intelligible with Japanese
Replies: 14
Views: 4475

Re: Loglang mutually intelligible with Japanese

Can I ask for a little clarification? You claim Japanese to be similar to a loglang but you didn't list at all the reasons why you may think. In my opinion, Japanese is not more logical than English, Hindi or Proto-Ugric. What is the special factor of logicalness that it has more than any other lan...
by Ithisa
27 Jul 2014 15:31
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Loglang mutually intelligible with Japanese
Replies: 14
Views: 4475

Re: Loglang mutually intelligible with Japanese

I like what I see. :D Extra points if you can weasel in Classical Japanese stuff like nari/tari :P Relative clauses & advanced verbs coming soon will lug in so much CJ that the language is more CJ than NJ :P Here's a sample (LogJ is actually finished, just writing about it takes time): Nerusi i...
by Ithisa
26 Jul 2014 17:47
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Conlang Conversation Thread [2010–2019]
Replies: 8666
Views: 1442449

Re: Conlang Conversation Thread

Ezuxtov, Japonic conlang spoken in Hokkaidō and Kamchatka in alternate timeline. Мотюр памать! Пуккару амамі мотіт, варай умін пірокарь намим. of.course hamachi! deep-ADN be.delicious-INF hold-GER, me-ERG sea-GEN be.wide-INF taste-CONJ Of course, hamachi! It is deeply delicious, and I feel like I am...
by Ithisa
26 Jul 2014 16:43
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Conlang Conversation Thread [2010–2019]
Replies: 8666
Views: 1442449

Re: Conlang Conversation Thread

"LogJ". Unambiguous stack-based logical language trying to maintain as much back-compatibility with Japanese as possible. Still complex sentences are probably impossible for Japanese speakers to follow correctly. Boku wa rokugatsu de Nihon e ikitari, iroirona son uwo niku motte tsukurareru...