New CBB

Thanks!

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

= | = | =

Thanks for saying "thanks"!
The cockles of my are all warmed now.

_________________
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.

What would SOV word order be correlated with?

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

= | = | =

If a language does not distinguish number within it's nouns, will it also not distinguish number within its pronouns?

_________________
"We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it's forever."

No, that is not the case. Mandarin is a counterexample; it does not mark number on nouns, but it does on pronouns.

_________________
任何事物的发展都是物极必反，否极泰来。

To give another counterexample: Navajo distinguishes plurality in its pronouns, but not in normal nouns. (Well, technically there's the distributive affix, but that's not what you mean.)

_________________
♀♥Ø

_________________
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.

Well, strictly speaking, you can attach the plural marker -men to some nouns (those with human referents, primarily), but yeah... Number marking is at least more regular on pronouns. And anyway, there are plenty of languages where pronouns distinguish, say, case while nouns don't, so I see no reason why the same couldn't apply to number in some language out there.

_________________

Is that the rule? I haven't read up on it, but I didn't mention it because I've gotten the sense that the non-pronouns you can mark number on are very restricted. E.g., I've never heard anyone say

*xuesheng-men
student-PL

*laoshi-men
teacher-PL

*fuyuan-men
steward-PL

(or any other occupation-based term)

*zhongguo-ren-men
china-person-PL

(or any other compound ending in ren)

*nüzi-men
woman-PL

*fuqin-men
father-PL

(or just about any other family-based terms)


But I often hear

pengyou-men
friend-PL

haizi-men
child-PL


Again though, I am not a native speaker and I haven't read the literature on this. I'm just sharing my own experience with what I've heard.

_________________
任何事物的发展都是物极必反，否极泰来。

I'm no expert on the subject, either, but this exact form occurs in my beginner-level Chinese textbook, at least.

EDIT: No, wait, that could've been tongxuemen; I don't have the book at hand right now, so I can't check. Anyway, Google gives 1060 hits for xueshengmen, and over 31 million for "学生们".

_________________

Is there another quite agglutinative language than Georgian with as conlex verb?
Of course there is, but what?

Sorry? What do the phrases I colored amber mean?



Look at http://wals.info/feature/combined/20A/22A, and at http://wals.info/feature/combined/21B/22A, for agglutinating languages with complex verbs.

Look at http://wals.info/feature/combined/22A/20A and look at the languages Koasati and Wichita. Are they the kind of thing you mean? Their verbs are more complex than Georgians, I think, depending on what you meant by "complex"; and they're listed as "exclusively concatenating" verbal morphology.

And/or you might look at http://wals.info/feature/combined/22A/21A and look at Imonda and Ingush.

Or, look at Awa Pit, Aymara, Burushaski, Maricopa, Quechua (Imbabura), or Squamish. Their verbs are as complex as Georgians, and they are as agglutinating as Georgian.

_________________
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.

Yes, I'm unclear.

The georgian verb is guite agglutinative - the affixes are visible - but they don't bear simple meanings. To form a grammatical form you have to change several affexes. all kinds of present/future dtem formants and preradical vowels that don't mean anyhting on their own. Complexity was a wronh term.

So, there must be other languages with the same property.
But maybe I can begin with checking you links, thanks.

Navajo marks aspect on both the verb root (which is changed unpredictably to reflect a change in aspect) *and* changes the prefixes on the verb, and also the affixes that convey the morphological agent are often changed. In some cases the verb will become almost unrecognizable with certain changes.

Just when I think I come up with something inventive, Navajo has to invent something new.

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

= | = | =

That's called "ANADEW", which stands for "A Natlang Already Does Even Worse".

_________________
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.

1. Are there languages known to have cases, but that lack a proper accusative case? Other than Finnish, please.

2. Are there languages that while having an accusative, use other cases for the direct object as well?

_________________
UNUS•ET•UNICUS

Dear Natlangers:

This was originally a conscript question, but since most languages have some sort of writing system attached to it, I believe I can pose the question here, also. Specifically it deals with classifying writing systems by direction. Is "boustrophedon" the only name for a specific writing system's direction? Do any (nat/con)languages have specific names for, say, vertical writing that starts from the left, vertical writing that starts from the right? For example, my Rozwi conlanguage writes in vertical columns that go from right to left across the page. This is a lot like Japanese tategaki style writing, which I learned in college Nihongo class. Is there a name (in English, Greek, Esperanto, etc) for that kind of writing?
Has any philologist/linguist/calligrapher been connected with starting his/her own system of classification. Maybe I'm splitting hairs here?

I posted this with the conlangers as well.

Wondering,

Lambuzhao

@Lambuzhao; see http://aveneca.com/cbb/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=75#p92180.

_________________
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.

...and then go back in time to install it earlier.

well, now we know where all the TARDISes went after the Time War.