Comments for Anggarrgoon

Comment on Language of the Week: DIY by David Marjanović

David Marjanović — Thu, 08 May 2008 22:40:08 +0000

what I’d like to find is a language where “cuteness” is grammaticalized. Like a noun classifier system or something.

And diminutives won’t do?

Comment on Language of the Week: DIY by Cultural constraints on Aharip grammar « Greater Blogazonia

Cultural constraints on Aharip grammar « Greater Blogazonia — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:50:06 +0000

[...] Aharip culture and grammar are related to the previous results linking phonological inventories in Diuwe and Hidbap, although psychologists speculated that the fact that heavy clouds at the 300 meter [...]

Comment on Wangga Wanker by Indiana Jones i les llengües que es perden « Bloc de Lletres

Indiana Jones i les llengües que es perden « Bloc de Lletres — Thu, 08 May 2008 08:55:53 +0000

[...] molt d’entusiasme entre tots aquells que estimem les llengües (tot i que des d’alguns cercles es va polemitzar sobre alguns aspectes relacionats amb l’estil i les formes del [...]

Comment on Language of the Week: DIY by ACW

ACW — Wed, 07 May 2008 23:11:13 +0000

Welcome to the wonderful world of Diuwe studies!

Of course one of the charming aspects of Diuwe is the dialectology, with High Diuwe spoken above 30 meters, and Low Diuwe below. All native speakers at least have the ability to imitate the other dialect. One of the high points (so to speak) of any fieldworker’s sojourn in Diuwe country is the first time she hears a highlander mockingly imitate a lowlander’s imitation of High Diuwe.

Comment on Language of the Week: DIY by mark (the ideophone)

mark (the ideophone) — Wed, 07 May 2008 18:16:40 +0000

My blog already auto-pinged this post, but let me just note here that I provide a few more details on Hidbap, a language in the direct neighbourhood of Diuwe (namely the 100-200m range). It has only implosives and egressives.

Comment on Language of the Week: DIY by Kenji

Kenji — Wed, 07 May 2008 16:30:24 +0000

“Below 100 meters”? Where do you FIND this stuff??? Now I’m going to have to sift through Ethnologue looking for more of this. I have a queasy suspicion that a grant application to study the correlations among altitude, phonology, and (naturally) mitochondrial DNA would be highly fundable.

Speaking of queasiness, what I’d like to find is a language where “cuteness” is grammaticalized. Like a noun classifier system or something. Perhaps I’ve spent too much time recently herding teenage Japanese girls, but I imagine it would catch on like… like… well, like something very cute and catchy.

OK, in the realm of the non-absurd and just a little peculiar, one of the things that originally captured my interest in the Manchu language is that a single suffix serves both to causativize and to passivize verb stems: -bu-. And at least according to dictionaries, it’s even recursive. Though I haven’t seen many of these alleged -bubu-s in actual texts, so I’m a bit, I guess you could say, ambivalent (cough) about the actual coolness of it all.

Comment on Language of the Week: DIY by The Hidbap language of PNG — The Ideophone

The Hidbap language of PNG — The Ideophone — Wed, 07 May 2008 14:10:58 +0000

[...] week, the language of the week at Anggarrgoon is DIY, also known as Diuwe. Claire Bowern, noting that the only comment in the Ethnologue entry of [...]

Comment on Language of the Week: DIY by Verdurous

Verdurous — Wed, 07 May 2008 03:08:03 +0000

Kapu goega. Ngau nel Ben. Ngai ngurpai Kala Lagaw Ya. Kunikan iangu = kunikan mabaigal.

Eso, la kei ne.

Translation: “G’day, My name is Ben. I am learning Kala Lagaw Ya (Western Torres Strait Language). Strong language = strong people. Thank you, see you later.”

Comment on Localisation of linguistic terminology: occagram by Sally

Sally — Tue, 06 May 2008 08:23:55 +0000

You know Geoff O’Grady (Indo-Pacific fascicle 6) called nominal derivational affixes ’status quo suffixes’…so maybe here in Oz we should call them ’sherbet suffixes’. But he also said they were ‘nondivisive’ - which, for lovers of 70s Oz rock, Sherbet certainly are.

Bonus points Claire for a music and linguistics joke in one??

Comment on Two unrelated questions by Catalin

Catalin — Sat, 03 May 2008 19:27:12 +0000

As a Californian who lived for a few years in central New York (which one must refer to as “upstate NY” to Californians because unless you’ve lived there, NY is divided into ‘NYC’ and ‘upstate’), I think Rochester and Buffalo would both fall into the category of ‘back East’ which sometimes actually includes the whole midwest (as in, “He’s from somewhere back East” or “I haven’t seen her, she moved somewhere back East”). I think from the west coast, any rural area east of the Rockies is at least somewhat ‘midwestern’ including rural Pennsylvania and rural New York and including rural Michigan and maybe as far south as Virginia (though that’s probably the South), as far as cultural stereotypes go. I think many West Coasters don’t even realize there are cities in the midwest.