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Most of these "particles" (I'd really just call these adverbs here) are just used to add some kind of aspectual or semantic difference.
I would assume that many of these meanings would just be covered lexically in other languages.

Even English does this for some of your examples.
"I threw the food up." --> "I vomited the food." (I'll admit that vomit used transitively sounds a bit weird to me, but it's apparently acceptable.)

In "Calm him down" the "down" is really just reinforcing the idea that to calm is to bring someone to a lower energy state (I've been thinking about electrons lately, sorry). I think this is really equivalent to "Calm him".

Are there minimal pairs or is the phonemic classification arbitrary?
(In other words, why couldn't we count them as allophones?)

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Języki sztuczne i lingwistyka, po polsku.

I also don't see on that page anywhere it says the syllabic consonants were stressed in Sanskrit.


How can you tell what are the syllables and which one is stressed?


Not at all. In my terminology /ɚ/ and /ɝ/ are vowels, not consonants. That's why they can be stressed.
So we have an irreconcilable disagreement based on speaking different terminology.

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I am not responsible for the accuracy of my sources; they're responsible for their own mistakes, if any, and also responsible for defending their own statements if you disagree with them.

Stress, according to this article, falls on the syllabic /r/.

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You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.

This might be a stupid question, but I can't seem to find the answer on the internet. It rewords it to something else. I have been reading a lot of Linguistics books and decided to talk about it with few people yesterday (one was a friends, the others strangers) when someone said something about "collective pronouns". At first I asked if he meant "collective nouns" because I never heard of collective pronouns before. But he and his friend said they existed. So I have spent a while reading what I have and reading on the internet, but it has failed. All I can find is collective nouns, even if I type collective pronouns.

Is there such a thing?

Thank you for reading!

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To deceive a diplomat speak the truth, he has no experience with it. ~ Greek Proverb

Fluent = | Learning = | Next =
Conlang: Čáluŋka

A quick search turned out this. I'm not sure how much it helps since it only deals with English, but it seems that collective pronouns are pronouns referring back to collective nouns. How that's handled in other languages I don't know.

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You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.

To my knowledge (native English, ten years formal German), they aren't minimal pairs ever. It probably is best to think of them as allophones of /e:/ really.

Thank you for the reply, Sangi39!

Yes, I found that site as well, but it was after I read some other sites saying 'collective pronouns' don't exist, but are just pronouns that refer to the collective noun.

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To deceive a diplomat speak the truth, he has no experience with it. ~ Greek Proverb

Fluent = | Learning = | Next =
Conlang: Čáluŋka

Yeah, looking a bit further I think they "don't exist" in the sense that they don't have distinct forms, i.e. they're identical to the 3rd person pronouns. Maybe there's a language that does make the distinction...?

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You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.

Looking for terminology, but haven't found it.

I'm thinking of inflecting verbs (in a language not yet invented) according to "stating facts/ideas" and "making value judgements".

Neutral/indifferent statement: I see you.
Negative statement: (It is bad/I like that) I see you.
Positive statement: (It is good/I like that) I see you.

The first I can relate to indicative, but the other two I'm not sure about. Qualitative of some sort?

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Theosts Twiand adth Noss

Liviñ on Ëth iz ekspensiv bät it iñklùdz ê frì crip êraund dhê sän ìc yie. Anon

I've read it called affect.

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Up in blue sky silly blimp goes by
Where it come from where it go
Ziggy-Zaggy it fly high

Thanks, that's it. So I have (potentially) inflections for neutral, perjorative and approbative affects on my verbs.

What's the grammatical opposite for "volitional"? (another idea for inflection, this language could get psychological, lol)

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Theosts Twiand adth Noss

Liviñ on Ëth iz ekspensiv bät it iñklùdz ê frì crip êraund dhê sän ìc yie. Anon

@sangi39:

That's what I assumed. I have been searching some more and still couldn't find a direct answer. I even checked out my local library, and couldn't find anything. I just had a feeling "collective pronouns" didn't exist, and were just pronouns.

What would be the best way to describe that to someone? Or would actually calling them "Collective pronouns" be the best term for it?

_________________
To deceive a diplomat speak the truth, he has no experience with it. ~ Greek Proverb

Fluent = | Learning = | Next =
Conlang: Čáluŋka

Some English dialects merge /ɑː/ and /ɒ/, but keep /ɔː/ distinct.

Others merge /ɒ/ and /ɔː/, but keep /ɑː/ distinct.

Yet others merge all three of them - /ɑː/, /ɒ/ and /ɔː/.

Is there an English dialect that merges /ɑː/ and /ɔː/, while keeping /ɒ/ distinct?

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constructedlanguages.net

I just found out something I think I should have known a while ago.
"omega" means a long or large or big "o".
"omicron" means a short or small "o".
The Greek morpheme "psil-", as in "psilanthropy" (the doctrine that Jesus was only human), means bare or mere or naked or plain or simple.
"epsilon" thus means a mere "e".

So here's my question.
"epsilon" contrasts with "eta".
Does "eta" mean some kind of "e" as well? What's the etymology of the word "eta"?

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I am not responsible for the accuracy of my sources; they're responsible for their own mistakes, if any, and also responsible for defending their own statements if you disagree with them.

Huh... that's interesting. I don't know myself but it would be cool to know.

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I speak English and a touch of Gàidhlig.
I am creating a conworld, which I refer to as the Carrion Series, that will contain three languages, Iriex, Dvoen and Maxna.

I know that "eta" comes from "heta", because it was indicating a [h] at first. In phoenician alphabet, where the greek one originates from, it's [ħ] "het", which means wall.
See here and here

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Creyeditor
"Thoughts are free."
Produce, Analyze, Manipulate
1 2 3 4
/w/,/l/;/ɭ/,/f/;/c/,/k/;/t/;;/e/,/u/;/i/

@ Eldin -

Just as E epsilon means "simple e"

Y upsilon means "simple, naked u". Originally, upsilon had a value of [u], but it gained a higher, thinner [y] sound. The more robust, lower [u:] sound was taken up by the Greek digraph OY.

That was how my old Greek Teachers explained it. But apparently, Wikipedia sez that
upsilon acquired the name to distinguish it from the digraph OI which originally was pronounced [ɔj] but acquired the sound of [y:] over time.

I like the latter explanation b/c it jives with how I made my Iveriki change final -OI [ɔj] into -YI [yi] {like a tense version of French oui} , and -OIΣ [ɔjs] into -YΣ [ys].

Different question, tangentially related to Eldin's (via Omega) -

Are the words maha-vakyas of the Upanishads cognate with magnae voces, and μεγάλα ἔπη ???

According to the etymologies given for magnus and vox in Wiktionary, the answer would apparently be yes.

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