New CBB

If I have the construct state, must it only be marked on definite nouns?

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"Wait for the starvation of glaciers, chicken hamburger Noel Weber Arthur."

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That's up to you, but, generally, if something is possessed that means it's definite, or at least specific. (Exactly what makes something specific and exactly what makes something definite varies slightly, in details, from one language to another.)

But, AIUI, in Semitic languages, the construct state is a third alternative; there's definite, and there's indefinite, and there's construct. You might want to do the same; that would mean that nouns in the construct state would be neither definite nor indefinite in your language.

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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.

Also when you have a 'regular' genitive case, you have a choice how to mark definiteness in genitive constructions. In English it would be ungrammatical to say 'John's the house', but in some languages it would be normal or even required with a definite marking of 'house' in that situation.

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constructedlanguages.net

How should I mark complementary distribution? The mark ~ apparently means free variation.

Is postulating a representative of the phoneme the only choise?
If I want to say [t] and [d] are allophones of one phoneme, how I do that?

I am reading a nice book about historical Finnish morphology, and the author there says that there are languages that don't mark comparative degrees on adjectives at all; instead they use constructions like "I am than you good". Does anyone know when I can read more about this? Also, how do such languages express the superlative, then?

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UNUS•ET•UNICUS

http://wals.info/chapter/121 for comparatives. Superlatives, not so sure.

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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. I don't know why I didn't think to look there.
However, information about superlatives would be appreciated, too.

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UNUS•ET•UNICUS

Which is that book?
Jùfjox own faj ònno?

It's in Russian; "Historical Morphology of the Finnish Language" by D.B. Bubrikh.
He also wrote a "Historical Phonology of the Finnish-Suomi Language", but I can't find it anywhere.

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UNUS•ET•UNICUS

I repeat my question from the Uralic thread:
I've read that Proto-Uralic and some modern Uralic languages don't mark number on nouns marked for case.
So that, singular and plural is only distinguished in nominative (and maybe accusative?) case, but not in other cases.
Can someone point me on further information about this feature?

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UNUS•ET•UNICUS

This one is a bit theoretical I guess.

In languages that have contrastive vowel length, it is usual to analyse these long vowels as separate phonemes. So that, for example, Norwegian has both /a/ and /a:/ as independent vowels.
However, I never encountered similar analysis for geminate consonants. Why, if a certain language has phonemic consonant length, these long consonants are assumed to be only variations of the short counterparts?
My guess is that whereas long vowels are tautosyllabic, geminate consonants are heterosyllabic. Hence, I wonder, is it plausible for a language to have tautosyllabic geminate consonants? Are such languages known to exist?

Addon: How languages that contrast long consonants in word-initial position are analysed?

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UNUS•ET•UNICUS

IME it's at least as common to analyse long vowels as 'double vowel', two short vowels following one another, rather than as separate phonemes. But I guess this may be pretty much a pragmatic issue, what analysis provides the simplest analysis of the language.



I'd be plausible at least if the geminates occur word-initially or word-finally.

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constructedlanguages.net

I do, and got into a massive argument with some idiot on the ZBB because he kept acting like analyzing long vowels as seperate phonemes was incorrect or something like that.

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Banami bhjaddhos rafi mau cy vyaja cecerror.
Fools do not see the sun nor sail the seas
-Azenti Proverb

Do you analyse all long vowels as separate phonemes? Or does it depend on the general phonology of the language?

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constructedlanguages.net

Only one that are phonemic.

My analyzation of long vowels is that they are long only relative to other vowels. If a lang does not distinguish vowel length, it doesn't have long vowels at all.

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Banami bhjaddhos rafi mau cy vyaja cecerror.
Fools do not see the sun nor sail the seas
-Azenti Proverb

But among this languages that contrast vowels of different length, do you always analyse the long ones as separate phonemes? Could you never analyse them as 'double vowels', as two adjacent short vowels?

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constructedlanguages.net

In Finnish phonology it is common to analyse long vowels as sequences of homogeneous vowels, and diphthongs - as heterogeneous sequences. The same goes for geminate consonants. But with Finnish this analysis fits neatly the morphology of the language, so it seems only appropriate.

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UNUS•ET•UNICUS

No, because some languages like Japanese, distinguish long vowels from vowel-vowel sequences, "Hoō" being an example (it may be "Hōo", but the idea still applies).

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Banami bhjaddhos rafi mau cy vyaja cecerror.
Fools do not see the sun nor sail the seas
-Azenti Proverb

How would you analyse the long vowels in Finnish?

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constructedlanguages.net

They're long vowels. It doesn't matter what native Finnish speakers analyze them as, if they're pronounced long and distinguished from short vowels, they're long.

Native speakers' opinions are worthless. Only the cold, hard facts matter in any kind of science.

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Banami bhjaddhos rafi mau cy vyaja cecerror.
Fools do not see the sun nor sail the seas
-Azenti Proverb