13 episodes

Welcome to Linguitect, where we explain linguistic topics and talk about how to build them into your conlang!

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You can e-mail us any questions at linguitect@gmail.com

Linguitect Unknown

    • Science

Welcome to Linguitect, where we explain linguistic topics and talk about how to build them into your conlang!

Logo designed by Matt.

You can e-mail us any questions at linguitect@gmail.com

    Consonant Harmony

    Consonant Harmony

    You've heard of vowel harmony, now get ready for consonant harmony! In this episode, Rowan explains how consonant harmony is realized across different languages, and we take a dip into featural and autosegmental phonology.
    Resources:
    http://www.artoflanguageinvention.com/papers/features.pdf
    https://phoible.org/
    https://books.google.com/books/about/Introducing_Phonology.html?id=V-VRAgAAQBAJ
    https://cloudfront.escholarship.org/dist/prd/content/qt2qs7r1mw/qt2qs7r1mw.pdf
    http://idiom.ucsd.edu/~rose/RoseWalkerHarmonysystemsch8.pdf
    https://twpl.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/twpl/article/download/6198/3187
    https://twpl.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/twpl/article/download/6930/3946/0 

    • 43 min
    Ergativity

    Ergativity

    In this episode, Matt and Rowan talk about all sorts of ergative phenomena, and how to use them for conlanging. We will cite our sources by section they are first relevant towards, and also length.

    0:14 Intro
    Ergativity by R. M. W. Dixon - a book compiling the data and theories of the man who made Ergativity popular in modern linguistics - long
    Linguitect 'Accusativity' episode - http://linguitect.libsyn.com/episode-6-accusativity
    'Ergativity Handbook' by Amy Rose Deal - http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~ardeal/papers/Deal-ergativity-handbook.pdf - of the many things in here, one is about how the "ergative" property is not the same as the "absolutive" property - medium length
    'Ergativity and Depth of Analysis' by Martin Haspelmath - https://www.academia.edu/41122863/Ergativity_and_depth_of_analysis - defends "ergativity" as a single category as being useful for cross-linguistic comparison - short
    4:02 My Problems with the naïve definition
    'Blue Bird of Ergavity' by Scott Delancey - http://celia.cnrs.fr/FichExt/Documents%20de%20travail/Ergativite/3dDelancey.htm - an overview of why the unitary definition of "ergativity" does not explain linguistic data - short
    Linguitect 'Non-Default Cases' episode - http://linguitect.libsyn.com/episode-8-non-default-case-marking
    'Ergativity as Transitive Unaccusativity' by José-Luis Mendívil-Giro- https://www.academia.edu/905847/Ergativity_as_Transitive_Unaccusativity - medium length
    'Split Ergativity is not about Ergativity' by Jessica Coon & Omer Preminger - http://ling.umd.edu/assets/publications/Coon-Preminger-17-SplitErgativity.pdf - medium length
    21:01 - History and Context
    Google N-Gram search showing how recently linguists started talking about "ergativity" - https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=ergative%2Cergativity%2Cabsolutive&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Cergative%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bergative%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BErgative%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Cergativity%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bergativity%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BErgativity%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Cabsolutive%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Babsolutive%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BAbsolutive%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BABSOLUTIVE%3B%2Cc0
    23:54 - What langauges do Ergativity
    https://linguisticmaps.tumblr.com/image/141437592433
    'Manifestations of Ergativity in Amazonia' by Francesc Queixalós and Spike Gildea - https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6b70/b7024341e6f051cefe87bd3ccc377ee272d0.pdf - medium length
    26:31 - marginally ergative phenomena
    36:38 - Ways to be Ergative
    Valpal - http://valpal.info/
    WALS chart that could help you make European non-Basque Ergativity - https://wals.info/chapter/62
    Ergativity in Amazonia edited by Francesc Queixalós and Spike Gildea - https://amerindias.github.io/curso2015/referencias/gilque10ergativityamazonia.pdf - long
    'A Movement Theory of Ergativity' by Mark Campana - https://research.uni-leipzig.de/lomo/ergativity/Campana1992.pdf - explains raising ergativity in depth, including giving examples of the extraction asymmetry I talked about - long
    'The rise of ergativity in Hindi' by Saartje Verbeke & Ludovic De Cuypere - https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/55760161.pdf - ergativity arising in Hindi - short
    55:07 - Ideas for how to implement ergativity
    A few example sentences used in this episode:
    Warlpiri
    [ngatyu] ka -(rna) purlami
    [I (abs)] tense - (1sg.nom) shout
    I shout

    [ngatyu-lurlu] ka -(rna)-ngku nyuntu nyanyi
    [I (erg)] tense -(1sg.nom) -2sg.acc you(abs) see
    I see you

    Samoan
    perfective
    na va’ai-a [A e le tama] [P le i'a]
    pst look.at-prfv [ERG the boy] [the fish]
    ‘The boy spotted the fish.’

    imperfective
    na va’ai [A le tama] [P i le i'a]
    pst look.at [A the boy] [P OBL the fish]
    ‘The boy looked at the fish.’

    Bhojpuri
    agentive
    ham phuul mahaknii
    I-NOM flower-ACC smell-1S-PST
    ‘I smelled the flowers’

    non-agentive
    hamraa gais mahakal
    I-DAT gas-NOM smell-3S-PST
    ‘I smelled gas’

    • 1 hr
    Sketches

    Sketches

    In this mini-episode, Matt and Rowan talk about how to explore ideas in conlanging through sketches.
    Resources:
    http://miniatureconlangs.blogspot.com/ https://badconlangingideas.tumblr.com/ https://crazyninjageeks.wordpress.com/2015/11/28/introduction-to-kayfdanfsantaptvlirtsangbesputvombngagtvlimpkayfsnafkayfgaf-boptvegpdaffshofbompvlimpgafvlimpgaf/

    • 19 min
    Standard Average European

    Standard Average European

    Join Rowan and Matt as they discuss the Standard Average European sprachbund (SAE). This is a language area that is centered mostly on Western European Romance and Germanic languages (think, French and German), but some features of it extend much farther into the Caucasus Mountains, etc.
    Haspelmath's formulation of the sprachbund can be found in this paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247869081_The_European_linguistic_area_Standard_Average_European
    A summary of that paper, intended for conlangers: http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/sae.html
    Wikipedia for the overlapping (or subset, depending on definition) Balkan Sprachbund: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkan_sprachbund
    WALS chapter on Haspelmath's feature 12, intensive vs. reflexive pronouns: https://wals.info/chapter/47
    WALS chapter on comparative constructions: https://wals.info/chapter/121
    Paper on equative constructions: https://zenodo.org/record/814964/files/EquativeConstructions_2016b.pdf?download=1

    • 35 min
    Sandhi School

    Sandhi School

    Today, Matt and Rowan talk about every sort of flavor in the ice cream Sandhi bar (ow! Rowan! that hurts!)
     
    Sandhi is an umbrella term for phonological processes that occur at boundaries - between words (external sandhi, like in Sanskrit vowel blending) or within a word between morphemes (internal sandhi, like in Latin assimilation)
    It can occur between two vowels (Sanskrit vowel blending, Latin elision, English intrusive R), between two consonants (Latin assimilation), between vowels and consonants together (French and Korean liaison, English linking R), between two tones (Mandarin tone sandhi), a weird mix of tones and syllable boundaries (Soyaltepec Mazatec tone sandhi), or even between two tones depending on consonants in between (Taiwanese Hokkien tone sandhi)
     
    References:
    Beal, Heather D. "The segments and tones of Soyaltepec Mazatec." (2012).
     

    • 35 min
    Non-Default Case Marking

    Non-Default Case Marking

    This episode has Matt and Rowan talking about case marking, a way to indicate what each noun is doing in the sentence. Specifically, what Matt refers to as "non-default case marking" - parts of languages where cases behave in ways that don't fit with their canonical uses in the rest of the language.
    Paper mentioned: https://mitcho.com/subjex/aldridge.pdf
    Many of the examples are from Ergativity by R.M.W. Dixon

    • 42 min

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