The CBB

Would it make sense for a subject/agent noun to take the nominative case if the verb is stative (transitive or intransitive) and the ergative case if the verb is dynamic (transitive or intransitive)? And would it make sense for inanimates to possess nom-acc syncretism but maintain a separate ergati...

WeepingElf wrote: ↑25 Jan 2024 22:48

Creyeditor wrote: ↑25 Jan 2024 18:25 Btw, elves and wizards are of course both humans.

Yeah - my Elves are just humans, too.

And the wizards of course also. In my conceit, wizards are not a "race", they are a profession - and their spells rarely work

Creyeditor wrote: ↑25 Jan 2024 18:25 Btw, elves and wizards are of course both humans.

Yeah - my Elves are just humans, too.

So an abugida is a specific kind of alphasyllabary, I guess?

Thank you. So I was mistaken in assuming that they are the same thing.

regenbogen9 wrote: ↑24 Jan 2024 16:49 What's the difference between an Abugida and an Alpha-Syllabary?

I think it depends on whom you ask ;) It seems to me as if both mean more or less the same thing; at least, I consider them synonyms.

I also worked on verbs!

Do they use those telepathic parrots as biological mobile telephones?

Arayaz wrote: ↑22 Jan 2024 21:55

regenbogen9 wrote: ↑22 Jan 2024 21:41 What do you mean by featurility?

The fact that it's a featural system. (i.e. that its glyphs express specific phonological features, rather than sounds)

Precisely.

And what is a different script? I think defining that would knock India's number down a drop, or increase Europe's. Indeed, the various abugidas of India and Southeast Asia are all just surface variations of a single original abugida, Brahmi. The difference between India and Western Europe is one i...

Hard to say. Tibetan looks gorgeous. Mkhedruli (Georgian) is also beautiful, as are Egyptian hieroglyphs. Hangul (Korean) has an extra coolness factor from its featurality.

Logographies don't have a single symbol for every existing thing; they have symbols for roots. Compounds are written with as many logograms as the word has members, and there are ways, usually by syllabic signs, to write affixes, particles and the like.

Well, Proto-Quendian did not have the same phonology as PIE - it lacked voiced aspirated stops, and instead had voiceless aspirated ones, which, however, were still reconstructed for PIE in Tolkien's time (only later, Indo-Europeanists managed to explain them away by means of laryngeals). This diffe...

Wasn't there some discussion on this in some other thread in the (recent) past? Also, is this thread supposed to include a discussion on the language or will you be trying to construct a possible Hwenti? I don't know about an earlier discussion, and I currently have no plans to construct a Hwenti l...

J. R. R. Tolkien, as is well known, was not only a Germanic philologist but also a lover of the ancient Germanic languages. So why, then, did he not create an Quendian language with a Germanic-like phonology, with a consonant shift paralleling "Grimm's Law" and all that? The answer is that...

Next update: The ZBB is running nicely; apparently, the problem has been fixed. Hurray!

I'd guess that a homonymy of 'find' and 'lose' would be unstable. In English, the meaning 'to adhere' of cleave is definitely on its way out. The homonymy of 'outer space' and 'night', in contrast, seems to make sense to me and may be stable. Night is, after all, the time of day when one can look ou...

I get nothing but errors, can't even log in, so it seems that there is just rubble behind the facade. But perhaps I am too impatient. Mark is tech-savvy and determined enough to work on a solution. Update: It churns out errors 500 or 404 often, but reloading the page usually gives the desired resul...

I get nothing but errors, can't even log in, so it seems that there is just rubble behind the facade. But perhaps I am too impatient. Mark is tech-savvy and determined enough to work on a solution.

It apparently was of no use - the ZBB has fallen, perhaps forever.