Linguitect

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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

  1. 05/08/2020

    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

    44 min

  2. 03/15/2020

    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

  3. 02/05/2020

    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/

    20 min

  4. 01/01/2020

    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

  5. 10/30/2019

    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).

    36 min

  6. 07/30/2019

    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

  7. 05/31/2019

    Pitch Accent

    In this episode, Rowan and Matt talk about pitch accent! We cover controversies in the definition of pitch accent and the wide variety of systems that have been called "pitch accent." References from this episode: Hulst, Harry van der, and Norval Smith. 2010. Autosegmental Studies on Pitch Accent. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110874266. Hyman, Larry M. "How (not) to do phonological typology: the case of pitch-accent." Language Sciences 31, no. 2-3 (2009): 213-238. Evans, Jonathan P. "Is there a Himalayan tone typology?." Senri Ethnological Studies (2009). Ding, Picus Sizhi. "The pitch accent system of Niuwozi Prinmi." Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 24, no. 2 (2001): 57-83. Ding, Picus Sizhi. "A typological study of tonal systems of Japanese and Prinmi: Towards a definition of pitch-accent languages." Journal of Universal Language 7, no. 2 (2006): 1-35.

    31 min

  8. 02/27/2019

    Accusativity

    In this episode, Matt and Rowan discuss "accusativity" - the organizing idea behind many languages' syntax. It's very widespread, in languages as diverse as English, Swahili, Latin, Arabic, and Korean, but in a later episode, we'll go over other organizing principles as well. Matt discusses some history, theory, and examples of phenomena that occur in these "nominative-accusative languages."   Resources discussed in this episode:  - https://wals.info/chapter/32 - contains an overview of semantic domains and gender in Russian

    28 min
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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

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