The CBB

When in a conversation between two persons, for example, P1 and P2, how does the language keep the same entity index assigned to the same agent (e.g. one of the several swimmers nearby) between the two talkers? Or when different entity indices are assigned, how do they know they are talking about t...

Yes, you are right. For some embedding verbs like tigo 'after' the order if indexes matters, whereas for others, e.g. lulum 'while, it does not matter.

Thanks for asking. I thought, I'll just make a post about it. 5½ Intermezzo: What the hoopoe is an index? So, I talked about indexes and what they do or how they are used but what ARE they? Are all (functional) morphemes indexes? What is the closest equivalent in natural languages? Let me start with...

Can choice on thematic relations depend on tense/aspect/modality? Good question. I don't think so. Did you have anything specific in mind? What can happen is that related meanings take event indexes or not. I am still not sure if I want to make these different lexemes (like English 'swim' (event) v...

Sonunu, an event-based engelang Okay, so this is an engelang that was 'burning under my nails'. I really wanted to get this out. The basic properties are pretty free word order words can take up to two index agreement suffixes for entities or events thematic roles are indicated by particles that ar...

I think there are two possible outcomes for clitics in general. Either they stay in their linear position and switch their direction of attachment. Take German contracted 's 'it'. It usually attaches to the left. Ich weiß nicht ob's wieder passiert. I know not if=it again happens 'I don't know if it...

But the same collaps can lead to tone in agglutinating languages, right? How many language families have tone and are analytic/isolating? Sinitic, Austrasiatic, Kra-Dai, Hmong-Mien How many languages families have tone and are not isolating/analytic? Chadic, Omotic, Khoe, Kx'a, Tuu, Nilo-Saharan, At...

No. Why would you think so?

Nominalizations IV peN- derives agent nominalizations. penduduk 'inhabitant' (< duduk 'to sit') penumpang 'passenger (related to menumpang 'to ride along, to catch a ride') penonton 'viewer' (related to menonton 'to watch') pekerja 'worker' (< kerja 'work') pencinta 'lover' (< cinta '(to) love') peN...

Particles Particles do not take any inflectional or derivational morphology. They perform functions that combine the well-known categories of prepositions and conjunctions. This means that they link nouns and/or clauses in any combination. Unlike precategorical roots, they can never change their pa...

Oh, so like serial verb constructions? @LinguoFranco: Are your verbs inflected? And if so, for what?

Just because the terminology is confusing me. What us a co-verb again?

I was thinking about a conscript for Omlüüt. I don't want a logography (it does not fit the vibe) and the syllable structure (CCCVCC) is too complex for a syllabary with all possible syllables. So I was thinking about a katakana-style mora-based script (Omlüüt poetry is mora-counting). The idea woul...

Damn typos. I should be less tired when writing posts. Thanks for catching it

Nominalizations III The circumfix peN- -an derives action nominalizations. penulisan the act of writing (< tulis , menulis to write ) penerjemahan translation (< terjemah to translate ) pembacaan reading (< baca, membaca to read ) pendaftaran registration (< daftar register ) pembangunan developmen...

Well, at least not liberal parlamentary democracy in the way it is practiced. In theory, soviet communism was based on a council system (similar to the way I pictured it), recall voting, and the absence of any division of power or checks and balances. Of course, in practice it was very different. Go...

I was thinking of a barony as roughly between 5 and 70 km². A county would be around 200 km². A duchy/dukedom would be around 5 000 to 15 000 km². A kingdom could be between 15 000 km and 70 000 km². The Empire would then only be around 200 000 km² to 500 000 km². Of course, the size of any subunit ...

Pronouns Pronouns are special in that they do not take any regular regular morphology, but still show (mostly) suppletive allomorphs in order to express number, person and case. Syntactically, they occur in the same positions as nouns do. Subject and object pronouns occur when the argument of a ver...

Ah, thank you. Yes, the second thing is what I think is closer to what I thought of. The first thing seems to be more realistic though, as their was at least some kind of common land in feudalist systems.

Hmm, crazy. Neither do I but it seems it's free in my country. Feel free to PM me and I'll see what I can do.