Jan. 2, 2012

Conlangery #31: Demonstratives

Show Notes

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:

George and Bianca,

I thought the following new title might be of interest to you.

A DICTIONARY OF MADE-UP LANGUAGES: From Adūnaic to Elvish, Zaum to
Klingon, the Anwa (Real) Origins of Invented Lexicons
http://www.stephendrogers.com/Anthos/DictionaryOfMade-UpLanguages.htm

Bio: Stephen D. Rogers is a contributor to The Greenwood
Encyclopedia of Science Fiction & Fantasy: Themes, Works, and
Wonders; a member of the Language Creation Society; and the
award-winning author of more than 700 shorter pieces.

Let me know what you think.

Comment on #19 by David J Peterson:

English has 11 basic color terms. I think you may be getting confused about what “basic color term” means. A basic color term is a color term that can’t be explained in terms of other color terms. So in English, you can’t describe “pink” as “light red” or “whitish red”, or anything. That’s how we know “pink” is a basic color term. The largest number of basic color terms is 12 (Russian and Hungarian, which have different basic terms for what we’d call “light blue” and “dark blue”). “Basic color term” does not mean “not produced from derivational morphology”. “Orange” is a basic color term even though it’s a borrowing; “puce” is not a basic color term even though it’s pretty cohesive. See this description for more.