Thought I would put out there, Conlangery episode #64 will probably publish later than usual. In my haste to move I apparently had not synced my computer to my backup service before moving. Hence, after several days of syncing my laptop up to said service, I discovered that Conlangery64_rough.aup was no where to be found. My hope is that it is, in fact, saved on my desktop computer, which will be sent to me via UPS in a few days, and I don’t end up with a “lost episode” — just a late one.
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Today, we cover one of the weird and wonderful languages of Papua New Guinea. It turns out to be surprisingly not so weird, but there’s still quite a few things in it to inspire conlangers. Do check out the crazy verbs though — that bit is quite nuts.
Top of Show Greeting: Pøplish
Featured NATLANG: Kuot
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Today we tackle a big grammar and discourse topic: anaphora and co-referentiality. We go through a list of options you have for cleaning up ambiguities and keeping your discourse coherent. Just don’t throw them all into the same conlang.
Top of Show Greeting: Minhast
Links and Resources:
- Indexicality, Logophorality, and Plural Pronouns
- Logophor in Ogonoid languages
- Switch reference in Pomo
- Wiki on switch reference
Special Mention: Talossa has been reunited
Feedback:
Emails:
From Robert: Read more »
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This week we cover the monumental and yet incomplete amman îar, a heavily Tolkien-inspired language that nevertheless manages to have its own flavor.
Top of Show Greeting: Uskra
Featured Conlang: amman îar
Feedback:
Email from FE: Read more »
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So, for various reasons we have now changed the format of the show. Now we will be doing only one topic per show, alternating weeks between discussion topics and featured conlangs. We hope that this addresses the issues some people have had with show length while still allowing us to have thick, meaty discussions. As such, this week’s show is all about phonotactics and how the way you allow sounds to combine into words is often more important to the overall sound of your conlang than your phoneme inventory is.
Top of Show Greeting: Khangaþyag
Links and Resources:
- WALS on Syllable Structure
- Lakhota syllable structure
- Proto-Algonquian
- Georgian and its plainly ridiculous consonant clusters
No feedback today, sorry.
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Today we take some time to talk to you about a conworldy topic: loan words in your conlang. What words are likely to be borrowed? What kinds of situations cause borrowing? And how does grammar work for loan words? Also, we talk about Kebreni, our second feature of an Almean language.
Top of Show Greeting: Lojban
Links and Resources:
- Presentation on “Borrowability”
- World Loanword Database
- Loanword Typology (paper)
- Loanword Typology (PPT)
Featured Conlang: Kebreni
Feedback:
Email:
Saluton!
A friend just posted this on my Facebook wall: a list of measure words in English! Everything from a murder of crows to a stand of flamingos to a blessing of unicorns (because it’s Unicorn Appreciation Day, of course!), and even some obviously contrived creations like “a brace of dentists”.
http://users.tinyonline.co.uk/gswithenbank/collnoun.htm
Now I wonder what the measure word for conlangers would be….
Cheers,
Michael from California
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This week, we talk all about the middle voice and the many things that that covers, as well as give you all sorts of options to make your own creative use of this feature. We also have a featured natlang today that has very interesting features as well as some hilarious crackpot historical theories around it.
Top of Show Greeting: Fäesek
Links and Resources:
Featured NATLANG: Burushaski (Wikipedia page)
Feedback:
Email from Thomas: Read more »
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After a short update on George’s grad school situation and some musing over our tagline, we get to talking about the very complex interactions that animacy and agency can have with the rest of your grammar. Then we talk about Interlingua, a very boring auxlang that appears to be comfortably readable by anyone who speaks a Romance language.
Top of Show Greeting: Kiswona
Links and Resources:
Featured Conlang: Interlingua (another link)
Feedback:
Dear George, William and Mike,
First of all, let me say, what a great show! I just posted a 5 star review on iTunes. I started three weeks ago and listened to every episode. I wanted to bring to your attention the unwritten rule in podcasting not to go beyond 82 minutes. No one can burn your episode onto CD and give it to a friend if it’s longer than that! Let me be sure to emphasize to coolness of what yo do.
Thanks again,
Robert Murphy
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David Peterson joins us for a wonderful Supersize episode where we talk all about growing your lexicon, from generating roots to creating realistic polysemy and semantic fields. Also, we finally feature an obscure little language we’ve wanted to talk about for a while 😛
Top of Show Greeting: Oltengo
Links and Resources:
- Analysis of English phrasal verbs with out
- John Quijada on cognitive linguistics: LCC1
- Some lojban dictonary resources
- Okuna dictonary
- ámman îar dictionary
- Asha’ille dictionary (same person has some software to convert Shoebox to HTML)
- Wikipedia list of Dictionary Writing Systems
- SIL’s Shoebox
- Lexical typology notes
Bonus link: A cool linguistics book on TAM
Featured Conlang: Dothraki (fan site, David’s blog)
Feedback:
Email from Zelos: Read more »
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We give you a podcast today about how you can do without tense, and what other things in the language can be used to fill in the gaps. Also, we have special guest Jeffrey Jones on to talk about his conlang.
Top of Show: Sheewan
Links and Resources:
Featured Conlang: K’tlê
Feedback:
Email from JS: Read more »
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