The CBB

Yeah, on the occasions I see discussion of the CBB elsewhere, people often refer to you by your old username, Aevas.

Just noticed another bug: the divider of major intonation groups isn't converted. How to reproduce: input: || (two vertical lines, as available on the US and US-international keyboards) expected output: ‖ (U+2016 DOUBLE VERTICAL LINE) actual output: || (U+007C VERTICAL LINE, U+007C VERTICAL LINE) An...

I'm wondering if I could work with on of: /t/ > /?/ > /0/ /t/ > /θ/ (> /h/)? > /0/ /t/ > /s/ (which would merge it with already existing /s/, but that could be interesting) > /h/ > /0/ /t/ > /r/ (again, a merger which could be interesting, but would make a lot of things very confusing very quickly,...

Is that true? Positive and negative commands are generally considered to have different modality. Is this not also the case for interogatives? Maybe if the morphology suggests it... I mean, in European languages the positive imperative is often considered a distinct mood because it often has unique...

Japanese had a lot of /k/s disappear at one point of its development, especially before /i u/ (tho /k/s were reinserted before /u/s in most dialects, or some verbs and adjectives had forms with a /k/ and forms with it dropped). Question: could there be a similar sound change for /t/ in some languag...

they don't get categorized as separate positive and negative interrogative moods. That is also possible. Maybe the clitics become so enmeshed with the verb phonologically and grammatically that they become conjugations. "Mood" is not the normal word for such a thing though, but "polarity". Japanese...

Not at all a stretch! In fact, I'm quite sure I've seen the possibility of a connection between these two debated multiple times on several different fora. They're extremely similar both phonetically and in actual use (if not in original meaning), the Spanish shortening from vuestra merced to usted...

I think this points towards stop clusters being unstable. Sometimes they can last a long time though. English and Spanish still have the [st] of PIE *h₂stḗr 'star' in star and estrella, and that'd be what, maybe 5000 years? And similarly, the cluster [nt] of PIE *h₁énteros 'inside' is still there i...

For this reason, I wonder if it would make sense to analyze /ai/, /ae/, and /oi/ as diphthongs and other sequences as two monophthongs in hiatus; in other words, to analyze taósu as three syllables but háiru as two syllables (I think /ui/ may be another sequence that behaves as a diphthong, but I c...

Only the first word can be projected back to PIE: Latin cortex is from *kor-t-ek-. If it existed in PIE, the proto-form was indeed probably *korteks, which would yield *kortek in Proto-Slavic (there’s also *kora “crust”). The big unknown is the accent, which is not preserved in Latin. The Greek roo...

Lure them in with a conworld and stories.

The idea of /t/ > /c/ > /k/ has the problems that: a) /c/ is rare b) /c/, despite being more back than /t/, is often associated with high or front vowels, rather than with backing c) /t/ > /c/ is no more motivated than /t/ > /k/ would be, and then you're left with also needing /c/ > /k/ - so too we...

- lots of derivational affixes . Having a few derivational affixes is something almost languages do. Having four or five or six is not uncommon. But having fifteen fully productive derivational affixes is unusual. English has a huge number of affixes - but largely because we've taken all the produc...

Probably just an idiomatic translation. Translations between Japanese and English frequently need to take a lot of liberties to get natural text in the target language. Plus, kami-sama can be used to refer to the Abrahamic God anyway. The plurality in Japanese is ambiguous. That is reasonable, but ...

Another question about Japanese: I've rarely watched much anime, but I've been watching some this year, and I'm surprised to see kami-sama is very often rendered "God", with a capital G!, as if misleadingly suggesting a reference to the Abrahamic god in English... On occasions I've noticed it doesn'...

Looks like Salmoneus' wording clarified what I intended. 陥るochii'ru (to fall into) 食い入る kuii'ru (to eat into. NB compound of ku'u "to eat, vulgar" and iru "to enter") (I have found no native Japanese words with -i'i- aside from the noted above) By "the noted above", do you mean うれしい [ɯꜛɺes\iꜜi] ures...

ETA: With a quick check of this site , there are near minimal pairs for words that have a moraic nasal as the second mora for all accent patterns. I haven't found any for long vowels but I also literally only checked for <あ> without getting farther. I also know there are words that end the same but...

I'm having difficulty coming up with any four-syllable/four-mora words that cannot be further analyzed. Accent is not general bounded, although it's more likely to be towards right right. A lot of words with far-left accents are loanwords レストラン rèsutoran "restaurant" パンフレット pànfuretto "pamphlet" イン...

I don't know Japanese to tell, but 1) are there any native non-compound words that are four syllables or longer?, and 2) are there any limitations on where the pitch accent can fall if it's in the middle? If it does not occur on the third syllable in words of four syllables, nor on the fourth syllab...

On topic: Arabic borrowed English "to shoot" (in the context of soccer), some time ago, as present-tense yaʃu:tˤu, past-tense ʃa:tˤa, verbal noun ʃa:tˤ. This hilariously matches both the English inflection and related noun (shoot, he shot, a shot) all while using a perfectly native inflectional pat...