The CBB

A few questions about Measure Words: Can a language without measure words borrow a limited amount of MWs wholesale, instead of developing its own MWs from its own vocabulary? I don't see why that wouldn't be possible? lots of measure-y words in English are loanwords, from words for small quantities...

Specifically, the way you can tell if something is only an allophone or actually a distinct phoneme is, usually, through a so-called "minimal pair" test. If your language contains two words with different meanings that are exactly the same in pronunciation EXCEPT that one has [ɣ] and one h...

[ɣ] ─ or, as you're describing, possibly something like [ɣʲ] or [ɣ͡ʝ]? I'm not a phoneticist ─ is not a phoneme, but it is a phone that occurs, and an allophone of /xʼ/. So it depends whether you want to have a chart of your phonemes or of all of the phones that occur in the language. I'd recommend...

:lat: Latin NUNC "now" :esp: Spanish nunca "never" < NUMQUAM It's nunc or nunca ... Venī strictē mē tentum :wat: Google Translate suggests that this is Latvian? Goes to show how much it knows; I am sure it is Latin. Yet is this a pun of some sort that I am not getting? I have lo...

ETAONRISHDLFCMUGYPWBVKJXQZ Traditionally, it's considered to be ETAOIN SHRDLU CMFWY PVBG KQJXZ (the letters of a linotype keyboard). Wikipedia also gives the orders (putting the trad version next to them for easier comparison): ETAOIN SHRDLU CMFWY PVBG KQJXZ (trad) ETAOIN SRHDLU CMFYW GPBV KXQJZ ET...

Using a word gen, having troubles deciding what order of frequency my phonemes should be in. Learned that phoneme distributions tend to follow a Yule-Simon distribution pattern. So I have a bunch of questions whose answers i think will give me insight on what to do: 1) Would sonorants/resonants be ...

That's not a fallacy, though. That's all totally logical. It leaves one premise (the reason to not want something to happen in a certain place) unexpressed, but the argument itself is logical. Premise 1: some people don't like it when other people kiss in public [kind of implied by the very fact of ...

I tend to slightly overcook everything - due to a combination of laziness, poor timekeeping, and paranoia (it's better to slightly overcook and be disappointed than undercook and be vomiting!) - and unfortunately quinoa does not respond well to being overcooked. But properly-cooked quinoa bought fro...

This seems rather over-egged. Playing a noise game - which you can do with a cat or a dog - is not the same as having a conversation. Even if whales can speak, they wouldn't necessarily use speech when playing a turn-taking noise game. I don't have any resources off-hand but you can search for them ...

I think you're kind of coming from the wrong direction and getting trapped as a result. Languages don't work on the principle of "here's a cool label a linguist invented - I guess I'd better work out where it most logically applies!" They work on the principle of "this is what we do, ...

Voiced codas can lengthen vowels, but I wonder if long vowels can voice codas? In my conlang, Middle Wenthish, a Germanic language, I voice consonants after long vowels - and, since this isn't something that comes naturally to me or that I've done in any other language, I presume I had a good reaso...

Another odd thing about having a language from an entirely different biome is stuff like "ribbit". There are no frogs that sound anything like that here, just "gronk gronk gronk", "reeeeeeeeee", "wark" and "ree-kit-kit" ... some that just make a lou...

Do the triggers also have to be back?

Please don't use the word "experiencer" for 'intransitive subject'. It's WRONG . Rather, "experiencer" is a semantic role that may or may not be an intransitive subject. Many, in fact, most intransitive subjects aren't experiencers. [:x] [:$] [>_<] Thank you; I've looked it up, ...

Does anyone have any advice about how to make a reference grammar of a conlang in the style of a real reference grammar? (Aside from reading a lot of real reference grammars.) How should it be organized? What should it include? It should include whatever is necessary to fully describe the language,...

What do you think of this vowel harmony system? Is it plausible? It's /a e i ɤ o ɯ u/ /o u/ are rounded /ɤ ɯ/ are unrounded /a e i/ are neutral /a/ is usually unrounded/back in rounding/backness harmony systems and paired (or re-paired) with a back rounded or front unrounded vowel. Are there any ot...

I don't think anything and everything is the correct answer. I know of no language that uses only word order to distinguish person, number, tense, aspect, modality, or evidentiality. But I might be wrong of course. I can't name any, but I'd be surprised if there are no languages that at least secon...

lurker wrote: ↑13 Mar 2024 20:53 Does anyone miss the "old" internet? I mean before about 2005 or so, definitely before the dot com bubble burst?

FWIW, though, the dot com bubble burst in 2001.

Late 19th and early 20th century Russia was an amazing time period, culturally. Diverse political engagement, and a fantastically rich artistic culture - graphic art, literature, music, architecture. There's various modernists, alongside both conservatives and populists, all in dialogue with one ano...

Another of my 'speculative' questions... How might a language develop an animate/inanimate (or any other binary gender-like) distinction, on demonstratives specifically? I ask about demonstratives, since they are likely one of the first points in the development of a gender system (at least accordi...