The CBB

Quick go at a branch of Semitic spoken in Georgia. Exact sound correspondences from PS are done; this might be revised in the future though. Intriguing! I'd be interested to hear more about the grammar of this language. *i → /i/ თ *ī → /i/ თ Do you mean ი ? *ʁ → /ʁ/ ... *ṱ → /sʼ/ Some graphemes are...

Does anyone know of a language/languages where arelative pronouns differ depending on the (theta) role of their referent in the matrix clause? i.e. if the relative pronoun refers to the subject of the matrix clause, it's "x": but if the relative pronoun refers to the object of the matrix ...

So is the generalization that you order the person markers according to the animacy hierarchy, but they still encode case? That seems reasonable. In very many languages, though, 1>1 and 2>2 combinations are ruled out and you have to do some kind of reflexive strategy. There might a special reflexive...

Person–animacy hierarchies are pretty stable cross-linguistically: 1/2 pronoun > 3 pronoun > human > animal > inanimate, and/or 1/2 > 3 > topical > non-topical. I say "1/2" because in some languages 1st person outranks 2nd, and in others 2nd outranks 1st. Occasionally there'll be something...

Perhaps the difference between /ɨ/ and /ɯ/ and /ə/ and /ɤ/ is that /ɨ ə/ interrupt vowel harmony while /ɯ ɤ/ do not. I'm intrigued — can you expand on this? What's the nature of the harmony system, and what do you mean by interrupt? There might be allophonic palatalization, labialization, etc. of p...

I made a nightmare language with over 100 vowels but only 11 consonants. It is called Hööˤñÿăăˤ : /æ æː ɐ ɐː ɑ ɑː e eː ø øː ə əː ɤ ɤː o oː i iː y yː ɨ ɨː ɯ ɯː u uː/ <ä ää ă ăă a aa e ee ö öö ĕ ĕĕ ë ëë o oo i ii ü üü ĭ ĭĭ ï ïï u uu> /æ̃ æ̃ː ɐ̃ ɐ̃ː ɑ̃ ɑ̃ː ẽ ẽː ø̃ ø̃ː ə̃ ə̃ː ɤ̃ ɤ̃ː õ õː ĩ ĩː ỹ ỹː ɨ̃ ɨ...

One of my conlangs has dental, dental ejective, and nasal dental contour clicks. With my preference to [ʇ] for the dental click, are [ʇ͡s], [ʇ͡s'], and [ʇ̃͜s] acceptable transcriptions thereof? If not, what are? Why not simply [ʇ ʇ' ʇ̃]? What is the [s​] part supposed to represent? My understanding...

Could you tell me which languages have object affixes near or fused with voice affixes, so that I can see what it looks like (especially the ergative ones!)? Well in the South Caucasian languages object agreement prefixes appear right outside of voice prefixes (though this characterization simplifi...

holbuzvala wrote: ↑11 Apr 2019 19:00 Also, what’s a way that an applicative might arise?

Incorporation of adpositions or grammaticization of a verb like give.

There are indeed pretty good crosslinguistic generalizations about morpheme ordering. For a suffixing language (it'd just be mirrored for a prefixing language) you'll typically have: Verb Root – Incorporated Root – Voice – Aspect – Tense – Mood The position of agreement is very flexible, but object ...

I've looked into Kēlen a good amount (the website is fairly detailed). My view on it is that it's a language with a closed, very small lexical class of verbs, rather than having no verbs at all. Essentially it has four auxiliary verbs ("relationals") that encode lexical aspect and help est...

Adjunct clauses are non-obligatory subordinate clauses that modify other clauses. In English, they can be introduced by words like when , if , and because , and can occur in a peripheral position (like at the left edge of a modified clause). They contrast with (i) complement clauses, which are intro...

Like wh-questions, you mean? Afaik, most (nearly all?) languages indeed use some species of wh-pronouns. But there are a few loci of variation. The syntax of wh-questions: Do wh-pronouns appear in canonical argument position (≈ Pat ate what? ), at a clause-peripheral position (≈ What Pat ate? ), or ...

I'm bored with simple phonotactics CVC but also "unstructured" allowing of all consonant clusters like in Georgian is boring. I wouldn't like to be SAE either. How would be phonotaxis /consonant clusters that aren't like those? I know this is a badly formed question. Georgian's consonant ...

Georgian ნურც მე ნურც ჩემს შვილს ნუღარასოდეს დაგველაპარაკები! nur-c me nur-c čem-s švil-s nu<ġa>ra-sodes da-gv-e-laṗaraḳ-eb-i PROH-TOO 1SG(.DAT) PROH-TOO my-DAT child-DAT PROH<ever_again>-when PVB-1PL.B-APPL-speak-THM-NPST.1/2 I'm not really sure how agreement works with arguments in a "neithe...