Conlangery Podcast

Today, after a brief digression about Pahlavi, we get into last year’s Smiley winner Kash.   Links Cindu website David Peterson’s Smiley writeup

Today we take some time to suggest a few books that conlangers should check out. Linguistics Books Heine, B., & Kuteva, T. (2002). World lexicon of grammaticalization. Cambridge University Press. Bybee, J., Perkins, R., & Pagliuca, W. (1994). The evolution of grammar: Tense, aspect, and modality in the languages of the world. University of Chicago Press. Dixon, R. M. (2012). Basic Linguistic Theory (Volumes 2 and 3). Oxford University Press. The Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics (“Red Books”) and the Oxford Linguistics collection. (Somehow we mixed these two together) Not Quite Linguistics Watkins, C. (1995). How to kill a dragon: aspects of Indo-European poetics (Vol. 11). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Florian, C. (1996). The Blackwell encyclopedia of writing systems. Oxford: Blackwell, 174. Grammars of Inspiration and Magnificence Any Germanic grammar by Henry Sweet and Joseph Wright Aikhenvald, A. Y. (2008). The Manambu Language of East Sepik, Papua New Guinea. OUP Oxford. Young, R. W., & Morgan, W. (1980). The Navajo language: A grammar and colloquial dictionary (Vol. 3). University of New Mexico Press. Suggestions from Tumblr narnuinotes: The Art of Grammar (Aikhenvald), Dialectology (Chambers and Trudgill), Languages of Native North America (Mithun). vaxjedi answered: In terms of conscripts, I found Writing Systems by Geoffrey Sampson to be useful. official-data: The Unfolding of Language by Guy Deutscher. neschria answered: In addition to the things mentioned, I have found _The Conlanger’s Lexipedia_ by Mark Rosenfelder gives me things to think about as I am generating vocabulary. (G note: I took a look at the Lexipedia, but I’m not super into it — I feel it’s better to get that information from other sources) vilikemorgenthal answered: “An Introduction to Linguistic Typology”, from Viveka Velupillai. The amount and variety of examples from natlangs is breathtaking. Oh, and it delves into sign languages on an equal footing! A personal favorite 1nsomnizac answered: What Language Is by John McWhorter is a good reference for the sorts of features that develop in natural languages, and it explains things well for laymen.

George gives another short about what you can do with your Lexember words after lexember.

In this short episode, George puts together some of his favorites from the last Lexember! Also, a note, he also wrote a thing for Fiat Lingua. #Lexember #kardak #conlang #conscript #WOD #29 #languages pic.twitter.com/sAWio7VyXo — DachiiKardak (@dachiikardak) December 30, 2015 http://olilonien.tumblr.com/post/135933221852/lexember-day-25 This is probably the #lexember coinage I’m proudest of – pic.twitter.com/UaLD3ss5h9 — Zeke Fordsmender (@Fordsmender) December 13, 2015 http://lhaasiri.com/post/135758181191/lexember-22nd-cookin-mama kéka (n) 1. The amount of displacement of an adult woman’s fist. (OOW 305 mL) #lexember — D. Moonfire (@dmoonfire) December 4, 2015 http://standardchironian.tumblr.com/post/135326185772/lexember-16th-limbs http://languagesofgalhaf.tumblr.com/post/135784167162/lexember-day-23 http://vilikemorgenthal.tumblr.com/post/135769103318/lexember-23th-ástah #Siye /yetesoni/ ‘suppletive root’ #conlang #Lexember — AvonInTheStorm (@CasusVerbi) December 24, 2015

Victor Raymond joins us today to talk about the language Tsolyáni, created by MAR Barker and implemented in his campaign setting Tékumel in Empire of the Petal Throne. Top of Show Greeting: Proto-Continental Links and Resources: Tékumel official site Tékumel Foundation The Tsolyáni Language The Tsolyáni Primer All Tekumel books on DriveThruRPG

This month Britton joined us and we talked about the wonders of reduplication and nicknames in Thai. Top of Show Greeting: Dzuish (English-based conlang) Wikipedia on Thai Thai-language.com Noss, R. B. (1964). Thai reference grammar. Foreign Service Institute. Haiman, J. (2013). Decorative morphology in Khmer. In The Aesthetics of Grammar: Sound and Meaning in … (pp. 61–82).

Top of Show Greeting: Zametulian Announcements Radio West interview and Video West feature of Trent Pehrson The Art of Language Invention (George’s review, William’s review) Links and Resources Lamoureaux, S. V. D. (2004). Applicative Constructions in Maasai. Linguistics, (August). Austin, P. K. (2005). Causative and applicative constructions in Australian Aboriginal Languages. The Dative and Related Phenomena, 1–38. Haspelmath, M., & Müller-Bardey, T. (2001). Valence change. In Morphology: A handbook on inflection and word formation 2 (pp. 1130–1145). http://doi.org/10.1088/0953-8984/22/11/116005 Kiyosawa, K., & Gerdts, D. B. (2010). Benefactive and malefactive uses of Salish applicatives. Benefactives and Malefactives: Typological Perspectives and Case Studies, 147–183. Baker, M., & Kramer, R. (2013). The Morphosyntax of Applicative Markers in Amharic. Afranaph Project Development Workshop 2. Gerdts, D. B. (2004). Halkomelem directional applicatives. 39th International Conference on Salish and Neighbouring Languages, University of British Columbia Working Papers in Linguistics, 14, 189–200.

In this very special episode, we interview Britton Watkins about his upcoming documentary Conlanging: The Art of Crafting Tongues while his husband films us for said documentary. Keep your eye out for their crowdfunding to start, and look forward to seeing our faces when the film is released next year. You can see information on the documentary here. Top of Show Greeting: Rennic

George discusses his own observations about the use of kinship terms in his wife’s village in Henan province, China. NOTE: We’re going to change how our audio is hosted soon. This might mean some oddness in the feeds in the coming weeks.

Today we have a long talk with author and conlanger JS Bangs about conlanging, worldbuilding, and writing. Top of the Show Greeting: Praseo Links and Resources: JS Bangs’s conlang site JSBangs.com