Archive for July, 2019
Conlangery 140: Word Classes with William Croft
Wednesday, July 3rd, 2019
George and William invite Prof. William Croft to talk about his theoretical approach to word classes and constructions. Forget a language without adjectives, let’s talk about how your property concepts are predicated! Links and Resources: Croft, William. in preparation. Morphosyntax: constructions of the world’s languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 1, Chapter 2 Croft, William.... Read more »
Sargaĺk: Mistaken Ideas about Biology
Tuesday, July 2nd, 2019The gender of certain nouns in Sargaĺk showcase that biology and grammatical gender sometimes are mismatched. Several genderless animals have nouns for both genders. No regard is given to whether there actually are gender distinctions in the actual species, and sometimes the speakers have misconstrued what particular traits characterize the genders.
saləb a small common species of worm (masc)
saluta a small common species of worm (fem)
kaxar tadpole (masc)
ipxaž tadpole (fem)
Many tadpoles in the Sargaĺk area only differentiate by gender after reaching the (almost) mature stage.
karč scallop, oyster (masc)
əltas scallop, oyster (fem)
the gender distinction is made by the colour of the shell, which has no actual implication visavis the actual gender of the oysters of the Sargaĺk world. However, different communities may map the colours to genders in different ways.
sreb snail (masc)
srewta snail (fem)
tirs slug (masc)
tirast slug (fem)
əktəl a slightly larger species of worm (masc)
əkta a slightly larger species of worm (fem)
k'ets a type of crayfish (masc)
k'enast a type of crayfish (fem)
The Sargaĺk do not eat this particular crayfish because it's poisonous. However, they assume small claws imply feminine gender, which is not entirely accurate.
inis ant (fem)
inast a different, slightly larger species of ant (masc)
Sargaĺk: Mistaken Ideas about Biology
Tuesday, July 2nd, 2019The gender of certain nouns in Sargaĺk showcase that biology and grammatical gender sometimes are mismatched. Several genderless animals have nouns for both genders. No regard is given to whether there actually are gender distinctions in the actual species, and sometimes the speakers have misconstrued what particular traits characterize the genders.
saləb a small common species of worm (masc)
saluta a small common species of worm (fem)
kaxar tadpole (masc)
ipxaž tadpole (fem)
Many tadpoles in the Sargaĺk area only differentiate by gender after reaching the (almost) mature stage.
karč scallop, oyster (masc)
əltas scallop, oyster (fem)
the gender distinction is made by the colour of the shell, which has no actual implication visavis the actual gender of the oysters of the Sargaĺk world. However, different communities may map the colours to genders in different ways.
sreb snail (masc)
srewta snail (fem)
tirs slug (masc)
tirast slug (fem)
əktəl a slightly larger species of worm (masc)
əkta a slightly larger species of worm (fem)
k'ets a type of crayfish (masc)
k'enast a type of crayfish (fem)
The Sargaĺk do not eat this particular crayfish because it's poisonous. However, they assume small claws imply feminine gender, which is not entirely accurate.
inis ant (fem)
inast a different, slightly larger species of ant (masc)
Designing an Artificial Language: Anaphora
Monday, July 1st, 2019Rick Morneau is a long time language creator who lives in rural Idaho. In the early 1990s, he wrote a series of essays on language design that proved to be quite influential in the early language creation community. Their quality has endured since their original publication, and continue to be read and enjoyed by language creators the world over.
Abstract
This essay discusses anaphora and how they can be implemented without ambiguity in an AL.
Version History
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.