The CBB

teotlxixtli wrote: ↑14 Aug 2021 18:49 Do implosives occur in consonant clusters? I find it hard to articulate

The currently favorite theory for “click o genesis” is that they and implosives typically arise out of pulmonic egressive consonant clusters, and also typically disappear by changing into clusters of pulmonic egressive consonants.

I’m pretty sure velaric ingressive consonants do occur as first consonants of word-initial two-consonant clusters where the second consonant of the cluster is pulmonic. I’ve seen them being pronounced on a YouTu.be video.

Native implosives seem to occur only word-initially.
Loan-phoneme implosives seem to occur only syllable-initially, but sometimes they are word-medial.

All of that is hearsay coming from me. I trust my sources but I don’t recommend you trust me!

Implosives are also partially glottalic ingressive.

The only cluster I have seen to develop into and from implosives is a cluster of a glottal stop and a voiced plosive (in either order).

As for clicks, IIRC, there is a debate. Complex click onsets are either analyzed as clusters of clicks with pulmonic consonants or as complex click consonants with secondary features.

Are adpositions with more than one complement attested? I'm primarily thinking of things such as "foo (c1) (c2)" meaning "across (c1) from (c2)".

Fluffy8x wrote: ↑28 Aug 2021 04:05 Are adpositions with more than one complement attested? I'm primarily thinking of things such as "foo (c1) (c2)" meaning "across (c1) from (c2)".

Would you count “between”?

eldin raigmore wrote: ↑28 Aug 2021 09:32 Would you count “between”?

Close enough, though in English, it technically has only one complement that tends to be a coordinate noun phrase.

Fluffy8x wrote: ↑28 Aug 2021 17:48

eldin raigmore wrote: ↑28 Aug 2021 09:32 Would you count “between”?

Close enough, though in English, it technically has only one complement that tends to be a coordinate noun phrase.

Yes - it requires a coordinate NP (between you and me) or a plural one (between the trees). Anything with at least two referents.

@Fluffy8x:
How about “as … as …”?
For instance “as rich as Croesus”?

…..

@WeepingElf:
To be prescriptivist for a moment;
I was taught that “between” < “by twain” is for two things.
If we’re talking about more than two we need to use “among”.
Between two trees
Among the trees
.

Of course then “The War Between The States” would be a counterexample.

Do you restirct this to having nothing between the two complements, not even a pause in speech? Thats what I understood you to mean, and that means that none of the English examples come close, and no, I dont have any natlang examples either, though my understanding is that Lojban is all about this type of sentence structure.

Suddenly I wish google translate had Lojban, which should be one of the easiest languages to translate, because it was designed for computers, after all.

Still, this construction makes me think of computers ... .e.g. the diff command by definition takes two and only two arguments, so there is no need to put a conjunction between them, as you might if the number of arguments was variable. The closest I can come to that in a natural language is English constructions like "with men, women" but I dont count this because it's a highly marked construction and, perhaps more importantly, requires an audible speech pause between the two complements, which to me feels like a conjunction. If I had just said "with men women" it would take the listener a moment to figure out what I meant.

OK. I am not a native speaker of English, and may have missed something. In my native language, German, we use zwischen for both 'between' and 'among'.

WeepingElf wrote: ↑29 Aug 2021 14:10 OK. I am not a native speaker of English, and may have missed something. In my native language, German, we use zwischen for both 'between' and 'among'.

We do in English, too, don't worry.

Eldin is right that there's a prescriptivist distinction between the two words - it's grown up over time and isn't found in older English writings (partly because 'between' used to be used particularly of groups of more than two, with 'betwixt' used when there's exactly two items). But it's not always adhered to, and more importantly he's wrong about what the distinction actually is.

The distinction is (meant to be) that you use 'among' to indicate that the items form a group and the thing is found somewhere within that group, whereas you use 'between' to indicate that the items are individual and distinct and the thing is precisely located in an intermediate position between them, usually indicating that the things are close together. In particular, each has meanings the other can't have: "among" can mean the thing itself is one of the items (he is among the most famous footballers in Belgium can mean they surround him, or he is one of them), while "between" can mean the thing extends fully from each item to the others.

As a result of these meanings, 'between' is more often used with pairs of items, because they're more likely to be distinct and individual, and it's easier to define an intermediate position or an extend from one to the other. But this is just a coincidence, and there are other non-dual situations where 'between' is appropriate, not 'among'.

Eldin gives an example: war exists between three countries, not among them. Similarly, we would say the Axis was an agreement between three countries, not among them. But also in a physical sense: we share out sweets between three people, not among them, and if three people are holding a sheet they would pull the sheet taut between them, not among them.

[you can have an agreement among... but this suggests more a general consensus among people, rather than a binding treaty on specifically three parties. Likewise you can share things among, but that suggests a general sharing in the things, rather than a strict division into three or more equal portions. In general 'between' is a more precise relation, whereas 'among' is often kind of vague.]


EDIT: thinking about it, the distinction often becomes more clearcut when dealing with plurals. Thus, there is a clear difference in meaning between there are ropes laid out among the poles (the ropes are laid out vaguely in the area defined by the poles) and there are ropes laid out between the poles (the ropes are laid out specifically from pole to pole).

A question about verb tense/aspect for Osroene: Would it be plausible for a perfect form to be synthetic, while the preterite/simple past is newer and is composed of 2 parts (deriving from an earlier participle)?

In more detail concerning intransitive verbs, the perfect is an "original" inherited form (just using placeholder example morphemes for now). For intransitive verbs, it develops a perfect–stative-like meaning:

sas-kou sleep-PERF 'I have slept, I have gone to sleep, I am asleep'
ar-kou arrive-PERF 'I have arrived, I am present'

Whereas a participle-like form gains a preterite-like meaning:

sas-ma mou sleep-PPT 1sg 'I slept, I had slept' (e.g., 'I am having slept' > 'I slept')
ar-ma mou arrive-PPT 1sg 'I arrived, I had arrived'

This somehow feels counterintuitive as periphrastic perfects seem overall much more common, but could also just be my English bias? Thank you!

Davush wrote: ↑31 Aug 2021 20:35 A question about verb tense/aspect for Osroene: Would it be plausible for a perfect form to be synthetic, while the preterite/simple past is newer and is composed of 2 parts (deriving from an earlier participle)?

In more detail concerning intransitive verbs, the perfect is an "original" inherited form (just using placeholder example morphemes for now). For intransitive verbs, it develops a perfect–stative-like meaning:

sas-kou sleep-PERF 'I have slept, I have gone to sleep, I am asleep'
ar-kou arrive-PERF 'I have arrived, I am present'

Whereas a participle-like form gains a preterite-like meaning:

sas-ma mou sleep-PPT 1sg 'I slept, I had slept' (e.g., 'I am having slept' > 'I slept')
ar-ma mou arrive-PPT 1sg 'I arrived, I had arrived'

This somehow feels counterintuitive as periphrastic perfects seem overall much more common, but could also just be my English bias? Thank you!

A very good question. Partially merking imperfective and perfective past tenses is the current problem in my still unnamed Romlang.

Surely, the imperfective can be periphrastic and the perfective synthetic.

But I think imperfective does not derive from an older perfect.
The perfect tense/aspect basically expresses past action whose results are relevant at the moment. It's a simple semantic change from the perfect to the perfective, which codes event with results/endpoints generally.
The imperfect, on the other hand, emphasizes the action itself and its agent. A semantic change from the perfect to the imperfective is not semantically motivated.
I think the meaning of the past progressive could well spread to all imperfective action. 'I was studying French.' => 'I studied French.'

Davush wrote: ↑31 Aug 2021 20:35 A question about verb tense/aspect for Osroene: Would it be plausible for a perfect form to be synthetic, while the preterite/simple past is newer and is composed of 2 parts (deriving from an earlier participle)?

In more detail concerning intransitive verbs, the perfect is an "original" inherited form (just using placeholder example morphemes for now). For intransitive verbs, it develops a perfect–stative-like meaning:

sas-kou sleep-PERF 'I have slept, I have gone to sleep, I am asleep'
ar-kou arrive-PERF 'I have arrived, I am present'

Whereas a participle-like form gains a preterite-like meaning:

sas-ma mou sleep-PPT 1sg 'I slept, I had slept' (e.g., 'I am having slept' > 'I slept')
ar-ma mou arrive-PPT 1sg 'I arrived, I had arrived'

This somehow feels counterintuitive as periphrastic perfects seem overall much more common, but could also just be my English bias? Thank you!

I can't give you an exact example, but it certainly seems plausible to me. Look at English, and the way the periphrastic present has supplanted the the simple present in almost all contexts. We could easily imagine it going further and relegating the simple only to the habitual aspect, which it's not all that far from now. So it wouldn't seem less plausible to me to have the simple past relegated only to the perfect.

how to turn:

into?:

I have two moods.

Both of them are used in subordinate clauses.
The first one is a pretty typical subjunctive. 'I insist that he leave us alone.'
The second one is a realis mood. 'I know that he leaves us alone.'

They are also used for marking future tense in main clauses. The first one is an uncertain future and the second one is a certain future.

The first one is probably Subjunctive but what to call the second one?
Should I call it Conjunctive and give the term a new meaning?
Should I call it something like Factual Mood?

What's an arealis mood? Is it similar to a realis mood? If so, why not call it realis mood? Or does it indicate strong epistemic neccesity?

Creyeditor wrote: ↑07 Sep 2021 09:19 What's an arealis mood? Is it similar to a realis mood? If so, why not call it realis mood? Or does it indicate strong epistemic neccesity?

I imagine its to moods what an "atemporal tense" is to tense
But it seems more like an evidential.

Creyeditor wrote: ↑07 Sep 2021 09:19 What's an arealis mood?

atypo :)

Creyeditor wrote: ↑07 Sep 2021 09:19 Is it similar to a realis mood? If so, why not call it realis mood? Or does it indicate strong epistemic neccesity?

Realis mood is a bigger class that includes the normal indicative.

It appears in the same places as Subjective but, while Subjective expresses non-factuality (truth value is not presupposed), it expresses factuality.

I have an idea for a Germanic language, with palatalization /p b f v m/ > /pɕ bʑ ɕ ʑ mɲ/; /t d s z n l ʁ/ > /c͡ɕ ɟ͡ʑ ɕ ʑ ɲ ʎ r/; /k x ɣ ŋ/ > /t͡ʃ ʃ ʒ ɲ/. The final inventory is probably /m n ɲ ŋ/ /p t t͡ʃ c͡ɕ k/ /b d ɟ͡ʑ/ /f s ʃ ɕ x/ /v z ʒ ʑ ɣ/ /w l ʎ ʁ r j/. How can I romanize it? I want the spelling to be phonemic and a little etymologic.

Well where is it located? That will determine its spelling more than anything else.