Search found 174 matches
- 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...
- 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...
- 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
- 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...
- 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 :)
- 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...
- 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
Indeed, it seems like I missed that fact. It does seem that the causative is a lot more general than "agent".Frislander wrote:the causer need not be the same as the person actually eating the fish.
- 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, ...
- 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...
- 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...
- 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...
- 24 Apr 2015 02:35
- Forum: Conlangs
- Topic: Proto-Avestan
- Replies: 6
- Views: 4896
- 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...
- 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.
- 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...
- 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...
- 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...
- 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...
- 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...
- 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...