The CBB

Maybe you could post your full descriptive grammar of Hoskh for us, to give us something to aspire to, some sense of how we can progress beyond sketchlanging to the sort of Real Serious Conlanging that you do? that would be silly - HoskhM's repeatedly said that it can't be shared until its complete...

Plenty of conlangs have speakers even if you're a sketchlanger who doesn't speak yours *hangs head in shame* Yeah, I'm only a sketchlanger. I mean, I've posted draft overviews of Rawàng Ata's phonology, nouns and pronouns, and all of that doesn't come to more than about 50 pages of work - just a sk...

It might perhaps be helpful to distinguish between realism and naturalism . These are two different approaches to art, though they are often allied. If you want to do realistic conlanging, which is what I'm calling a sort of photorealistic-simulacrum approach, that makes it both harder and easier. I...

It may be worth pointing out here that phonologically 'simple' language with small inventories often (though not always, certainly) have very complicated rules for allophony.

Yeah, but the consonants don't alternate before different vowels, so slender and broad doesn't make sense. ...they don't alternate in Irish, either, that's the whole point. You use spelling to indicate the sounds. There are also no null onsets so there doesn't need to be a symbol for that. I think ...

OK, I need a romanization for /p pʰ t tʰ k kʰ q qʰ ʔ/ that looks quasi-European (and if that's not possible, at least it needs to not look like bad sci-fi). I intend to use <ⱪ ⱨ> as /q/ or /qʰ χ/ instead of <q x> just for that reason. I do stuff like <w ch z> /v x t͡s/ because it looks nice, I don'...

The polynesian A/O system is about control and agency, as we've discussed before.

I recommend flexibility. For instance, my grammar of Rawàng Ata will have a section on possession, because it's a big deal in the language, but most grammars won't need it. But there won't be sections on adjectives or adverbs. In some languages it makes sense to discuss morphology in one chapter and...

There is a problem with this phonemic inventory, and it isn't the /f v/ contrast. Samoan and Tahitian have that as their sole voicing contrast. That's just off the top of my head - I am pretty sure I've seen that contrast in other Austronesian languages, and Papuan languages as well. No, the proble...

Split ergativity only in verbs of perception seems to me to be very sensible, though I can't personally give you an example. But it's in keeping with the general hierarchy of ergativity, as those verbs are among those most likely to be ergative. ----- I'm not sure what you mean exactly. Do you mean ...

I don't have a name for this language yet. I made it just to have a simple phoneme inventory. Besides that it's probably actually extremely complicated (grammatically, that is). Phoneme inventory: /m n ŋ/ <m n ng> /p t k ʔ/ <p t k '> /f v s x h/ <f w s ch h> /l̴ ʀ j/ <l r j> /a e i o u/ <a e i o u>...

Could a language make a distinction between a realis future and an irrealis future? Wikipedia defines an irrealis mood as indicating "that a certain situation or action is not known to have happened as the speaker is talking" while a realis mood indicates "a statement or fact" o...

OK, how do languages with different kinds of reduplication avoid having a bunch of homophonous words? Real languages have a bunch of homophonous words. Every language with partial reduplication also has full reduplication, so if full reduplication is used for one thing, and only reduplicating the o...

Which Wittgensteinian philosophy of language? Early or late?

In languages where there are different endings for (infinitive) verbs (which are conjugated differently), does anyone know if these different verb endings arose from for instance, semantically based verb classes? Like for instance, French has -er, -re and -ir verb endings, did these come historical...

OK, I've been trying to develop Hoskh folk music, and I'm wondering how much variation there should be across the whole country as well as from region to region and town/village to town/village. I'm guessing different musical styles and techniques will largely be divided according to the dialect is...

If I would want to write a book in a conworld, would it be a problem with getting it published and copyrighted if I would post rough drafts for review here? Yes, it can be a problem. Copyright isn't much of an issue: you automatically own the copyright. If it came to a legal dispute (extremely impr...

Northern Englandish and Scottish English/Scots are similar because both are branches of Northern Early Middle English. Southern England is from, well, Southern Early Middle English. It has nothing to do with Norse or French influence. Well, except for the fact that Northern Late OE / Early ME was s...

Sorry. Well, I didn't think other people considered stories with merpeople serious. "Fairy tales, those are for children..." and all that jazz. [You know, the need for martyrdom and iconoclasm - the constant "I guess people won't take this seriously because...", "everyone e...

I have a question. Today on a radio program I heard the presenter say (about "accidentals" in musical notation -- i.e. sharps and flats and naturals) that they looked dull on "the stave". I had never previously (to the best of my recollection, anyway) heard "stave" use...