Posted and filed under Podcast.

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:

Featured Conlang: Novegradian

Feedback:

Email from Nathaniel Fischer: Read more »

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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 types, talking a little about various complications, and even bringing up a linguist who thinks it’s not all that important, anyway.  Also, we feature a natlang for the second time: Ngarla, a language of Australia, with some morphosyntactic oddness (that’s typical for Australia, but still odd).  Also, stick around after the end music to hear George’s informal review of China Miéville’s Embassytown.

Top of Show Greeting: Jameld

Links and Resources:

Featured NATLANG: Ngarla

Feedback:

Email from Bryn LaFollette: Read more »

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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 narrative that demonstrates how you handle various semantic roles, with varying animacy, etc.  Here is an example story you can use (though you are fully free to make up one yourself).

There was once a man who beat his donkey every day.  One day, a second man, who was a neighbor, came to the donkey-beater and asked, “Why do you beat your donkey?”  The donkey-beater said, “Beating is all the donkey knows, I must beat him until he learns how to behave.”

The donkey-beater then went into his home and discovered his dinner wasn’t ready, so he beat his wife.  His neighbor heard the screams of the donkey-beater’s wife and came to the door.  “You should not beat your wife so much,” said the neighbor.   “I beat her until she learns to have dinner ready on time.”

Some time later, the neighbor saw the donkey-beater beating his son in a field.  This time, he did not say anything, but seized the donkey beater and began to beat him with a heavy cudgel.  When the donkey-beater asked why his neighbor was beating him, his neighbor replied, “I will beat you until you learn not to beat others.”

Again, you don’t have to use my story, it’s just an example.

Anyway, on with the shownotes …

Top of Show Greeting: Maxédri

Links and Resources:

Featured Conlang: Txtana

Posted and filed under Podcast.

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 Show Greeting: Knæknæk

Links and Resources:

— Zompist on gender (More in the book.)

— WALS pages

— Interesting gender systems

Featured Conlang: Taruven (newer link here — the grammar we used is very old)

Feedback:

We won something! (Link may die.  Let me know if it does.)

Posted and filed under News.

Conlangery will be “blacked out” on Wed, January 18th in opposition to SOPA (HB3261: Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (SB968: Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011, aka PROTECT IP).  Behind those bureaucratic congressional names are two bills that could seriously damage the workings of the Internet.  As such, we have decided to join the protest against it.

The “blackout” will not actually shut off the site.  Instead, if you visit the website, you will receive a splash page with links to anti-SOPA sites as well as a way to click on through to our site.  Conlangery isn’t such a big megaphone, but I hope it will make some impact.

Posted and filed under Podcast.

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:

Featured Conlang: Kamakawi

Feedback:

Comment thread on #30

Some comments we mention specifically: Read more »

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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:

Featured Conlang: Talossan

Feedback:

Email from Arnt Richard Johansen: Read more »

Posted and filed under Podcast.

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

Feedback:

Email from Stephen Rogers: Read more »

Posted and filed under Podcast.

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:

Featured Conlang: Wenedyk

Feedback:

Email from Mathew Park: Read more »

Posted and filed under Podcast.

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 so happens to be the dissertation of one Mark Okrand.  The language is Mutsun.

Top of Show Greeting: Standard Sentalian

Links and Resources: George’s “Design Perameters for Romanization”

Featured NATLANG: Mutsun