Episodes

George and William invite Prof. William Croft to talk about his theoretical approach to word classes and constructions. Forget a language without adjectives, let’s talk about how your property concepts are predicated! Top of Show Greeting: AvriccilnDownload Links and Resources: Croft, William. in preparation. Morphosyntax: constructions of the world’s languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 1, Chapter 2 Croft, William. 2013. “Radical Construction Grammar.” The Oxford Handbook...

George spends some time talking about his recent revisions of his Istatikii grammar, with a focus on organizing writing to serve the needs of the language and the readers. You will find the two drafts of the Istatikii consonant processes below. istatikii-phonproc-draft1Download istatikii-phonproc-draft2Download Script below the fold, see the history here. Welcome to Conlangery, the podcast about constructed languages and the people who create them. I’m George Corley. I’m making a short for th...

Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets joins us to talk to us about Ainu, a minority language of northern Japan. Top of Show Greeting: Bwángxùd by alr2569 (Translation Notes) Links and Resources: Japan’s new policy on the Ainu is misleading A Topical Dictionary of Conversational Ainu Bugaeva, A. (2004). Grammar and folklore texts of the Chitose dialect of Ainu: (Idiolect of Ito Oda). ELPR Publication Series (Vol. A-045). Suita: Osaka Gakuin University. (Texts, Preface, Index) Refsing, Kirsten. (1986)...

Jessie Sams comes on the show to talk to us about how she uses conlanging in the classroom. We discuss how these courses can be designed, what fields of linguistics they address well, and the results she saw from the course. Jessie also requested the following message be added to the notes: I would also like to thank David J. Peterson, who has visited with my conlang students the last three times I’ve offered the course. His visits have been incredibly beneficial for both my students and me. St...

George and William come back to talk about telicity and lexical aspect. Listen to us talk about endpoints in events and puzzle over why achievement and accomplishment are supposed to mean different things. Links and Resources: Agbo, M. (2010). Verb classification and Aktionsart in Ìgbò. California Linguistic Notes, 35(1), 1–21. Aoki, N., & Nakatani, K. (2013). Process, Telicity, and Event Cancellability in Japanese : A Questionnaire Study. Journal of the English Linguistic Society of Japan,...

George reflects on completing his PhD, and talks to those conlangers who might be considering graduate study in linguistics. Script below the fold: Welcome to Conlangery, the podcast about constructed languages and the people who create them. I’m George Corley, and we’re back! We’re going to have a short episode today, just to catch y’all up on what I’ve been doing while I was gone and maybe to give me a chance to be a little reflective. As I write this, I have submitted the final version of ...

George gives a short talk about how phonology affects phonetic transcriptions and why the narrow “phonetic” transcription of your language does not have to be overly specific (especially with vowels!). We should have a regular episode again next month. ORIGINAL SCRIPT: There is a tendency in the conlanging community to hew toward more narrow, standardized definitions of terms than among linguists. There have been a few times when someone has criticized me on a use of a term that I defined in t...

Colm Doyle comes on to talk about his Nymeran language, created for the comic series Glow, as well as some of the process and challenges of making a conlang and script for comics. Top of Show Greeting: Vaq’ǫ̀ʔ Nąśą /vàqʼõ̀ʔ nã̀ʃã́/ Glow issue 2 Kickstarter

Joey Windsor and Christophe Grandsire-Koevets join George to discuss what tools we can get from more advanced linguistics theoretical frameworks. What tools do they provide the conlanger, and where do you have to be careful about applying them. Top of Show Greeting: Gidurguyt [ɡɪ-ərdɡuː-jɪt] LCC Presentations: Doug Ball’s Talk Unfortunately, the video of Joey’s talk is incomprehensible. I also cannot find video for William’s talk. Please forgive the inconvenience. Academic Sources and Textbo...

George discusses last year’s Lexember and some of the things that came out of that. Also, help us correct our transcripts on the Conlang Sources Wiki. What we reblogged on Tumblr. The Conlangery Twitter account. (Sorry, twitter search is bad, so I can’t conveniently direct you just to Lexember retweets.)

Conlangery Statement on Patreon Fee Changes (audio and transcript) We use Patreon to get a little money to pay some of the site fees and such for Conlangery. Our Patreon has grown some since it started, and I’m grateful to all our Patrons. However, I need to inform you that the way you pay through Patreon has changed. Patreon has added a thirty-five cent fee on all transactions, which is paid by the patron. Previously, all fees would just be deducted from the pledges, meaning that I’d get less ...

Today, Matt Pearson joins George and William to talk about non-finite “adverbial” verb forms called converbs. Top of Show Greeting: Old Niveni Links and Resources: Imperative Converb in Archi (conference abstract) Expressing adverbial relations in clause linkage with converbs: definitional and typological considerations (workshop slides) Ylikoski, J. (2003). Defining non-finites. Action nominals, converbs and infmitives. Journal of Linguistics, 16(2003), 185–237. Ahland, M. (2015). The Fun...

Jake and Kaye come on to talk about how language can interact with identity, across ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, and class identities. Top of Show Greeting: Faikari. /ˈvɐ͡ɪ.kʰɒ.ˌʁi/ Links and Resources: Plural you Key and Peele skits 1, 2 Stigmatization of speech associated with women “Sounding gay” Journal of Gender and Language Mondorf, B. (2002) Gender differences in English syntax. Journal of English Linguistics, 30(2), 158-180 Holland, D. C. (2001) Identity and agency in cultura...

This week, George discusses Phonix, a sound change applier that will help you with your historical conlanging.

This episode, we discuss Coptic, the last descendant of thousands of years of Ancient Egyptian, now spoken mainly as a liturgical language in Coptic Christian churches in Egypt. Top of Show Greeting: Nalathis Special Mention: Go watch Conlanging: The Art of Crafting Tongues! Links and Resources: Plumley, Martin (1948) An Introductory Coptic Grammar. London: Home and van Thal. Tattam, Henry (1863) A Compendious Grammar of the Egyptian Language. London: Williams and Norgate. Layton, Bentley ...

This month Christophe and William come on to talk about their experience at LCC7. Along with a few people William recorded on his phone. View the conference page here and all the videos of talks here. Top of Show Greeting: Croatian (translated and performed by Dorian Frangen)

Kaye Boesme joins George to talk about her far-future audiodrama Epiphany. Top of Show Greeting: Narahji (Note, I am working on a transcript for this episode. It has been delayed by irregular baby napping.)

Jake Malloy and David Peterson join George to talk about sign language as well as a few other ways humans communicate non-vocally. Top of Show Greeting: Bakom Links and Resources: SLIPA ASL Lessons ASL classifiers Non-manual markers in ASL ASL Internet slang Plains Indian Sign Language Tactile Signing Black ASL Signed Exact English (signed English relex) SignWriting (proposed script for ASL) The Non-Verbal Dictionary The Gripping Language Napoli, Donna Jo and Jeff Wu. (2003) Morpheme struct...

George talks about how to listen to the language all around you like a conlanger, especially when you encounter weird specialized terms or senses of words. Wiktionary entry on “wrong” (includes the sewing sense)

George talks a bit about his personal progress with Middle Pahran. Draft Grammar of Middle Pahran

David Salo comes on to talk about his historical research into George Dalgarno’s Lingua Philosophica, a 17th century philosophical language. We discuss the features of Dalgarno’s work, a little of how it compares to other work of the time and also its influence on the history of conlanging. Top of Show Greeting: Lingua Philosophica (translated and read by David Salo) Links and Resources Linguifex article The Works of George Dalgarno (19th century reprint of Dalgarno’s work)

William is out for this month so we have Jake Malloy here to talk a bit about language policy, both official and unofficial, as well as a bit about language attitudes. Top of Show Greeting: Shidhunarien

I reflect a bit on Lexember 2016. Links and Resources: My post on -piq Dragonlinguistics on Tumblr Also please check out Phonetic Calligraphy on Tumblr and Facebook!

George gives a quick update on the Paramount v Axanar case and the LCS’s part in it. This was previously discussed in episode 119. For more information, please see the Language Creation Society’s Axanar information page.