(L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here [2010-2019]

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

Post by alynnidalar »

Frislander wrote:Enindhilyagwa appears to have an interesting lustrous/non-lustrous distinction.
This got my attention. I was able to dig up a thesis on this language, and here's the section on Nouns for the interested. (and here's all of the parts) The noun class section begins on page 227, and is both interesting and complicated.

According to this, the split is:

singular animate human masculine
singular animate nonhuman masculine
singular animate human feminine
singular animate nonhuman feminine
dual animate
plural animate
visible "lustrous" inanimate - e.g. birds with shiny/bright-colored feathers, clouds, fog, things related to fire, "shiny" body parts (heart, liver, lungs, face), fresh water
visible "non-lustrous" inanimate - e.g. birds with dull-colored feathers, things with dark markings (such as some fish), dark night, "non-shiny" body parts/covered by hair (brain, spine, ear), saltwater
invisible inanimate - e.g. language and speaking, winds, sicknesses

It seems the dual/plural animate prefixes are also always used for certain things that are viewed as being in groups, like spirits and some animals (e.g. dingoes, mice, ducks).

This whole system is fascinating! I'm so glad I looked it up. [:P]

(ETA: Anindilyakwa is another name for Enindhilyagwa; they're the same language)
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Parlox »

How do i use a custom font that i made for my conlang?
:con: Gândölansch (Gondolan)Feongkrwe (Feongrkean)Tamhanddön (Tamanthon)Θανηλοξαμαψⱶ (Thanelotic)Yônjcerth (Yaponese)Ba̧supan (Basupan)Mùthoķán (Mothaucian) :con:
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elemtilas
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by elemtilas »

Parlox wrote:How do i use a custom font that i made for my conlang?
What do you mean?

If the reading is the obvious, you engage your word processor, select your font name from the list and begin typing...

But I suspect you mean something else! You will need, of course, to install the font first. (That can be searched for easily enough, based on your operating system.) Once installed, then it should be easy for you to find and use.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by GrandPiano »

Are there any known instances of Latin words ending in -x being inherited into Spanish? It seems like almost all Latin words that ended in -x were nouns and adjectives that only ended in -x in the nominative form, which didn't make it into Spanish because Spanish nouns and adjectives are based on the Latin accusative. The only exception I know of is the preposition "ex", which AFAIK did not survive at all into Spanish.

The reason I'm asking is because I'm curious about how Spanish diachronic sound changes would handle a Latin final -x.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by qwed117 »

GrandPiano wrote:Are there any known instances of Latin words ending in -x being inherited into Spanish? It seems like almost all Latin words that ended in -x were nouns and adjectives that only ended in -x in the nominative form, which didn't make it into Spanish because Spanish nouns and adjectives are based on the Latin accusative. The only exception I know of is the preposition "ex", which AFAIK did not survive at all into Spanish.

The reason I'm asking is because I'm curious about how Spanish diachronic sound changes would handle a Latin final -x.
Well, from my knowledge, desde came from de + ex + de, and it seems to me that dex was the first "merger" if you will. So final x became s.
Spoiler:
My minicity is [http://zyphrazia.myminicity.com/xml]Zyphrazia and [http://novland.myminicity.com/xml]Novland.

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

Post by GrandPiano »

qwed117 wrote:
GrandPiano wrote:Are there any known instances of Latin words ending in -x being inherited into Spanish? It seems like almost all Latin words that ended in -x were nouns and adjectives that only ended in -x in the nominative form, which didn't make it into Spanish because Spanish nouns and adjectives are based on the Latin accusative. The only exception I know of is the preposition "ex", which AFAIK did not survive at all into Spanish.

The reason I'm asking is because I'm curious about how Spanish diachronic sound changes would handle a Latin final -x.
Well, from my knowledge, desde came from de + ex + de, and it seems to me that dex was the first "merger" if you will. So final x became s.
Ah, forgot that one. Anyone know of any other examples?
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KaiTheHomoSapien
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by KaiTheHomoSapien »

GrandPiano wrote: Ah, forgot that one. Anyone know of any other examples?
Archaic Sp. abés apparently came from Latin ad + vix.

Also, what about seis from Lat. sex?
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Omzinesý »

Is the rikssvenska long <u> a back vowel or a front vowel?
So is there three high front-vowels or two high back vowels?
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
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Xonen
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Post by Xonen »

Omzinesý wrote:Is the rikssvenska long <u> a back vowel or a front vowel?
Why should it necessarily be either? At any rate:
The relevant Wikipedia article wrote:Central Standard Swedish /ʉː/ is near-close near-front [ʏː].[4] In other dialects it may be central.
So certainly not back, at least.
So is there three high front-vowels
Well, not exactly, but kind of:
Wikipedia wrote:Type of rounding is the primary way of distinguishing /ʉː/ from /yː/, especially in Central Standard Swedish.
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Omzinesý
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Omzinesý »

Xonen wrote:
Omzinesý wrote:Is the rikssvenska long <u> a back vowel or a front vowel?
Why should it necessarily be either? At any rate:
The relevant Wikipedia article wrote:Central Standard Swedish /ʉː/ is near-close near-front [ʏː].[4] In other dialects it may be central.
So certainly not back, at least.
So is there three high front-vowels
Well, not exactly, but kind of:
Wikipedia wrote:Type of rounding is the primary way of distinguishing /ʉː/ from /yː/, especially in Central Standard Swedish.
OK tank you.
I have tried to read Wikipedia. But somehow it gets messy there.
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Vlürch »

Does anyone know if a list of words of unkown origin in various languages exists? If not, would anyone be interested in working on one together collaboratively on this forum? I mean, the reason I'm asking right now is because I came across this on wiktionary and remembered this, etc. Wiktionary is pretty good in this regard, but what would be interesting and useful would be an alphabetical list of all the words with an unknown etymology in all languages, or at least the languages of Eurasia, ordered not by the language that the word exists in or any other way except by the words themselves. The language that the word exists in and its English translation would be put in parentheses after the word, eg. mëkresë (Albanian - tombstone), ördög (Hungarian - devil).

Should a new thread be made for this, if there's no such list and anyone's interested in making one? I personally wouldn't be able to do much, except going through the words on Wiktionary and excluding ones that have a clear "probable" etymology, though... but a list like that would be really cool to have, I think, both for comparative historical linguistics and conlanging purposes.
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KaiTheHomoSapien
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by KaiTheHomoSapien »

Vlürch wrote:Does anyone know if a list of words of unkown origin in various languages exists? If not, would anyone be interested in working on one together collaboratively on this forum? I mean, the reason I'm asking right now is because I came across this on wiktionary and remembered this, etc. Wiktionary is pretty good in this regard, but what would be interesting and useful would be an alphabetical list of all the words with an unknown etymology in all languages, or at least the languages of Eurasia, ordered not by the language that the word exists in or any other way except by the words themselves. The language that the word exists in and its English translation would be put in parentheses after the word, eg. mëkresë (Albanian - tombstone), ördög (Hungarian - devil).

Should a new thread be made for this, if there's no such list and anyone's interested in making one? I personally wouldn't be able to do much, except going through the words on Wiktionary and excluding ones that have a clear "probable" etymology, though... but a list like that would be really cool to have, I think, both for comparative historical linguistics and conlanging purposes.
I'm very interested in this. Sorry I can't really answer your question, but these are the kinds of linguistic phenomena that fascinate me. I'd love to see a database of words of unknown origin in various languages, especially IE languages.

You can find some of this info in articles like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Greek_substrate but it's just a sampling, really.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Sumelic »

Anatoly Liberman's Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology is focused on words that have traditionally been considered of unknown origin in English, although part of the purpose is to explain his favored etymologies for them.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Vlürch »

KaiTheHomoSapien wrote:I'm very interested in this. Sorry I can't really answer your question, but these are the kinds of linguistic phenomena that fascinate me. I'd love to see a database of words of unknown origin in various languages, especially IE languages.
Then the practical question before even starting is what qualifies as "unknown enough", right? For example, would every word with several possible etymologies be included, such as zirgs (Latvian - horse), or would that make the list too inclusive and not really about words with an unknown origin? If not, then there comes the problem of whether words that may just as well be loanwords from unknown languages or native to the particular language without known cognates are included or not... and if they are, would that open the door for literally every word from language isolates? Either way, the inclusion or exclusion of particular words from language isolates based on nothing but etymological guesses like "this noun in language X could be derived from a verb in language Y spoken nearby" would be counterproductive... so there could be either too many or too few words to "slip through" on or off the list... [>_<]

Another issue is the availability of materials. If a language is thoroughly researched and still spoken by tons of people, it's more likely to have words with unclear etymologies that people just can't agree on for one reason or another, but that doesn't mean they're unknown; Japanese and Armenian for example have loads of words that one guy will say are obvious loanwords that went through various sound changes and another that they're native words that became borrowed into the language that the other guy is certain they were borrowed from, and there's no way to ever conclude which one is correct or if both are wrong and it came from a third language. So, technically the word has an unknown origin, but if both sides provide equally plausible etymologies, it probably is one or the other and as such it's not unknown... [:S]
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by GrandPiano »

Why is it that Latin /ja/ became Spanish /e/ in iactare > echar and ianuarius > enero, but became Spanish /ʝa/ in iacere > yacer?

Also, is there a pattern to whether initial Latin /g/ in stressed syllables became Spanish /ʝ/ (as in gemmam > yema) or /x/ (as in gentem > gente) before Vulgar Latin /e/ and /ɛ/?
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Sumelic »

GrandPiano wrote:Why is it that Latin /ja/ became Spanish /e/ in iactare > echar and ianuarius > enero, but became Spanish /ʝa/ in iacere > yacer?

Also, is there a pattern to whether initial Latin /g/ in stressed syllables became Spanish /ʝ/ (as in gemmam > yema) or /x/ (as in gentem > gente) before Vulgar Latin /e/ and /ɛ/?
I think /g/ > /x/ is not a native Castillian sound-change. As far as I know, it is a sign of a borrowing, either from another Romance language or from Latin. According to "History of Spanish Consonants" (Mackenzie, Ian. 1999–2017. The linguistics of Spanish), Latin palatalized /g/ became /ʝ/ word-initially in a stressed syllable, and was lost word-initially in unstressed syllables (e.g. hermano).

Old Spanish seems to have had a form with the expected reflex, "yente". You can also see some discussion of it on this page.

As far as word-intial Latin /j/, Mackenzie says it becomes /ʝ/ before stressed /a/; the development of the vowel /e/ and the loss of the initial consonant in echar and enero seems to be due to lack of stress. Latin /j/ does seem to have sometimes regularly developed to /x/, before back vowels (as in juego).
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by GrandPiano »

So, if <g> representing /x/ before front vowels is purely a feature of learned borrowings and not of native words, where did the idea of having <g> represent /x/ in that position come from? Was it based on French or Italian practice, with soft <g> originally representing /d͡ʒ/ or /ʒ/ which ultimately shifted to /x/? Even if that is the case, why not just have <g> represent /ʝ/ before front vowels, which would fit with etymology?

Interestingly, the first source you linked was actually the one I was reading that led me to ask these questions.
Sumelic wrote:As far as word-intial Latin /j/, Mackenzie says it becomes /ʝ/ before stressed /a/; the development of the vowel /e/ and the loss of the initial consonant in echar and enero seems to be due to lack of stress. Latin /j/ does seem to have sometimes regularly developed to /x/, before back vowels (as in juego).
So, any idea why it's echar and yacer rather than echar and ecer or yachar and yacer? Both are verbs that alternate in stress position based on the conjugation: echár/yacér (Lat. iactáre/iacére), écha/yáce (Lat. iáctat, iácet). Was it somehow the case that echar was based on the infinitive form while yacer was based on one of the present-tense forms with stress on the first syllable? Was there a point where these verbs had an irregular stem change in their conjugations (echar/yacha, ecer/yace) which was eventually regularized somewhat irregularly?
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Sumelic »

GrandPiano wrote:So, if <g> representing /x/ before front vowels is purely a feature of learned borrowings and not of native words, where did the idea of having <g> represent /x/ in that position come from? Was it based on French or Italian practice, with soft <g> originally representing /d͡ʒ/ or /ʒ/ which ultimately shifted to /x/? Even if that is the case, why not just have <g> represent /ʝ/ before front vowels, which would fit with etymology?
Modern Spanish /x/ is the regular development of Old Spanish /ʒ/ and /ʃ/. I don't know if there's any evidence indicating that /ʒ/ was /dʒ/ even earlier, but that seems possible. I don't know enough about Romance languages to say where exactly Spanish got the convention <g> = /ʒ/ before front vowels from. Regarding <y>, Spanish spelling isn't particularly etymological. There's also stuff like <ch> and <z> that reflects other consonant changes.
GrandPiano wrote:
Sumelic wrote:As far as word-intial Latin /j/, Mackenzie says it becomes /ʝ/ before stressed /a/; the development of the vowel /e/ and the loss of the initial consonant in echar and enero seems to be due to lack of stress. Latin /j/ does seem to have sometimes regularly developed to /x/, before back vowels (as in juego).
So, any idea why it's echar and yacer rather than echar and ecer or yachar and yacer? Both are verbs that alternate in stress position based on the conjugation: echár/yacér (Lat. iactáre/iacére), écha/yáce (Lat. iáctat, iácet). Was it somehow the case that echar was based on the infinitive form while yacer was based on one of the present-tense forms with stress on the first syllable? Was there a point where these verbs had an irregular stem change in their conjugations (echar/yacha, ecer/yace) which was eventually regularized somewhat irregularly?
I don't know. That sounds plausible. French has similar types of leveling of stress-based alternants.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by GrandPiano »

Sumelic wrote:
GrandPiano wrote:So, if <g> representing /x/ before front vowels is purely a feature of learned borrowings and not of native words, where did the idea of having <g> represent /x/ in that position come from? Was it based on French or Italian practice, with soft <g> originally representing /d͡ʒ/ or /ʒ/ which ultimately shifted to /x/? Even if that is the case, why not just have <g> represent /ʝ/ before front vowels, which would fit with etymology?
Modern Spanish /x/ is the regular development of Old Spanish /ʒ/ and /ʃ/. I don't know if there's any evidence indicating that /ʒ/ was /dʒ/ even earlier, but that seems possible. I don't know enough about Romance languages to say where exactly Spanish got the convention <g> = /ʒ/ before front vowels from. Regarding <y>, Spanish spelling isn't particularly etymological. There's also stuff like <ch> and <z> that reflects other consonant changes.
I know that Spanish spelling isn't always very etymological, but it seems that <g> /x/ doesn't even reflect a sound change - it's just a made-up convention for borrowed/learned words. It kind of makes sense if it was originally /ʒ/, though, I suppose.
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