The CBB

As for personalizing your language, here are two of many ways: 1. My "Palo" has six grammatical numbers, singular, plural, neutral, singulative, mass, and unique. Nouns fall into different classes depending on which numbers they can take. Although unique number marks nouns as being proper ...

Thanks to all who have posted or will post answers to this question. You've all given me some interesting leads.

Hi, Everybody!

What is the most unusual system of pronouns that you have ever encountered in a conlang or a natlang? Could you please describe it?

Thanks in advance to all who respond?

--Jim G.

Consider this a survey question. Have you invented a novel scheme for morphosyntactic alignment? If so, what is it?



Jim aka Rainchild

1. I don't think that there is any general semantic or syntactic reason. Some English verbs take infinitive complement clauses and other English verbs take gerund clause (not participle) complement clauses. Then, of course, there are plain old "that" complement clauses. Some people might s...

Dear Boehijt,

I favor the third vowel system down, namely ...

/i u o a e y ɵ æ ɯ/


:-)

Jim

Sorry about the mix-up on your name. Your idea still sounds good. :-)

Hi, Runic, Temporal case sounds like a good idea. And nouns that stand for temporal units wouldn't be the only nouns to take that case. Nouns that stand for acts and events would too. At sunrise. At the time of the party. At the time of the Roman Empire. In my view, temporal case sounds like a case ...

Thanks, Julanga!

I don't see why you couldn't mark the two types of appositives in the manner you describe. Reversal can be fun. If you find it fun, I say go for it.

@ Julanga: Judging from the fact that you use an adapted EBNF notation to describe your conlangs, I think you know more about linguistics than I do. So if my reply seems off-base, please rest assured that it's because of my relative ignorance, and does not reflect any attempt on my part to be faceti...

I'm experimenting with this notation. Can you see any problems with it? { } Surrounds symbols for mutually exclusive constituents, which are separated by commas. e.g. {N, A} = “N or A but not both.” --> Means “consists of.” e.g. S --> NP + VG means “S consists of NP then VG.” >> Follows a constituen...

Here's a survey question. What notation do you use to abbreviate your grammatical structures? For instance, do you use notation such as "NP --> {(Det) N, Pro}?

I tend to make up dedicated names. Palo. Nu. Ceka. Goesk.

Hi, GBR: I don't know how to display tables on this list either. Wikipedia's list of Finnish cases might help you. Here it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_noun_cases That said, if you have adpositions, you don't need to name them after Finnish cases. At some point, you'll need to decide wh...

Hi, Everybody, I haven't been around for a while, ironically because I've been very busy conlanging. But I needed to surface again to tell you about an excellent natlang resource. Some of you already know about the Linguistics Stack Exchange. It's a moderated Question and Answer Bulletin board. Alth...

Thanks, Eldin,

I also look forward to more input,

Jim

Hi, All, I've never really quite grasped clause chaining, so I'm issuing this challenge: Please write the words to the Star Spangled Banner in a nonce version of English that is just like real English *except* that this nonce version of English has clause-chaining instead of embedding. I can't wait ...

Hi, Trailsend, You mention atelic vs. telic verbs. But isn't telicity a property of predicates rather than verb roots? Witness this example from Wikipedia: Fine: "John built a house in a month." Bad: *"John built a house for a month." → built a house is telic Bad: *"John bui...

I have always found it difficult to hear the difference between initial unaspirated /p/ on one hand and /b/ on the other.

--Jim G.