After a big announcement, we delve into the mysteries and wonders of creating dialects, reviewing natlang tendencies and talking about some techniques that can be used to mimic them, and then we talk about a quite interesting conlang as well. Top of Show Greeting: Palezi Urca Links and Resources: Wikipedia on Romance Languages Emesal (a... Read more »
George gets Bianca’s name wrong and no one notices. We also have some digressions at the beginning and the end of the show, but somehow we end up talking a whole lot about noun incorporation, and the weird and wacky language known as Gevey. Top of Show Greeting: Vaida Mi Ha Links and Resources: Notes... Read more »
Today we talk all about derivational morphology and what can be done with it. We also spend some time talking about Proto-Deithas Top of Show Greeting: Sindarin (translation by Roman Rausch) Links and Resources: Gary Shannon’s notes on related words Lexical Semantics Agent nominalizations Nominalization in Thai Featured Conlang: Proto-Deithas
Aszev of the CBB joins us for a little talk about the many kinds of phonological processes: what they are, what you can do with them, why the order of processes in important. We also review the awesomely well-developed Novegradian with its 500-page grammar and excellent dictionary. Top of Show Greeting: Talmit Links and Resources:... Read more »
CORRECTION: A commenter below graciously corrected me on a point I (George) raised in the show. When I talk about desiderative languages, please replace that word with dechticaetiative. Look to the comments below for a relevant link. I apologize for misidentifying the phenomenon I was talking about. We talk a lot about morphosyntactic alignment, outlining the basic... Read more »
What do you do when you want to make a language without case marking? Or with very little case marking? That is what we attempt to explore in this episode. If you would like to take up George’s “homework” challenge, make up a sketch of a language and send an example of some sort of... Read more »
Alternate Title: Genders, Classes, and Agreement, oh my! We talk today all about gender. Or noun class. Or both. Really, they are the same thing, at least we think so. Anyway, after a vivid and lively discussion on what can be done with the wonderful world of arbitrarily classifying nouns we review Taruven Top of... Read more »
We get right to it talking about suprasegmentals: mainly stress, phonation, tone, and nasalization. After a long and fascinating (if incomplete) discussion, we finally get around to talking to DJP’s Kamakawi. Top of Show Greeting: Kinál Links and Resources: Phonation Types Mark Liberman has doubts about stress-timed vs syllable-timed Nambikwara (lots of suprasegmental distinctions) Featured... Read more »
George reveals a peeve, which leads to a bit of a tangent before we get to talking about the wonderful world of evidentials and all the stuff you can do with them. Then we cover a very curious language by the name Talossan. Top of Show Greeting: Gówa Links and Resources: Evidentiality in Tibetan Evidence... Read more »
Today we talk about demonstratives. Chiefly, what distinctions are common for demonstratives, and what crazy out-there distinctions you can make. We also review a conlang that should be very familiar to you all. Top of Show Greeting: Zelsen Featured Conlang: Quenya Thorsten Renk’s Quenya Course (archive download) Ardalambion on Quenya Feedback: Email from Stephen Rogers:... Read more »
George has put up a grammar! Also, we talk numerals — what base to use, how to construct higher numerals, cardinal vs ordinal, etc. Then we feature a little bogolang called Wenedyk. Top of the Show Greeting: Celinese Links and Resources: WALS Numerical Base WALS Ordinals WALS Distributives WALS Numeral Classifiers Alyutor (Wikipedia) Pame number... Read more »
After some discussion of one little New York Times article that quoted William(!), we move along to talking about designing your sound system and romanization, though it’s mostly about romanization. After that, we break a pattern and for the first time feature a natlang rather than a conlang — going from a grammar that just... Read more »
A very special guest host joins us for this episode, where we try to talk about correlatives as a thing, but as correlatives is actually many different things, we end up just talking about indefinites the whole time. We have much more Top of Show Greeting: pr̝̊ɛmɪsl Links and Resources: Esperanto correlatives WALS on Indefinites Featured... Read more »
We start off with a reccomendation of sorts of the Speculative Grammarian Podcast, and George’s own long post on romanization. Then we get into the meat of the show talking about all kinds of irregularity and “regular irregularity”. Then we take a 180-degree turn and talk about the insanely regular Esperanto. Top of Show Greeting:... Read more »
We talk about one of William’s pet peeves in conlang descriptions and linguistics in general: the overuse of the word “emphasis”. We start out with some very strong reccomendations against using it in phonology, and then talk about some more standard terms you might use instead when talking about discourse or syntax. We also review... Read more »
We have a guest on, Olle Heikilä, who we totally didn’t forget to add to the Skype call, and have a nice discussion on grammatical voice and what it’s for, what you can include, and just in general. If you believe what your English teacher taught you about voice, prepare to be disabuse. We also... Read more »
After some observations about the merits of Star Wars and plastic chopsticks, we tell you all kinds of stuff about possession: alienable vs inalienable, various marking strategies, “to have” and more. Oh, and we talk about Abakwi. Top of Show Greeting: rejistanian Conlang: Abakwi Feedback: Email from Matt Pearson: Hi George, I finally had a... Read more »
We talk a little about what we like and dislike about alien languages — and what concepts we think are actually likely to work. Then we reveiw Ebisédian. Top of Show Greeting: Cardonian Conlang: Ebisédian Feedback: Five-Star Reviews: Great for both people interested in conlanging and linguistics in general by stingerbrg I’m fairly new at the... Read more »
George’s father has pragmatics issues, but anyway … pronouns! (Almost) every language is going to have pronouns of some sort. We talk all kinds — closed-class, open-class, free, clitic, and even having pronouns for bizarrely specific people. Also, we review Baranxe’i Links and Resources: Swahili concord (alternate) Mixtec Xavante (look for the reference to a’ama) WALS on demonstratives... Read more »
Bianca’s out for this episode, so William and I take the opportunity to talk about something she hates so much she wouldn’t let us have a show about it: poetry! Figure out how to choose good poetic devices for your conlang, and how history can affect the complexity of poetry. Also we talk about the... Read more »
