Part of speech whose members indicate an action or a state of being.
3
votes
3answers
113 views
Why do stem-changing verbs have a vowel change in Spanish?
It may just be that I'm demonstrating my gross ignorance, but I can't seem to find a 'why' for stem-changing verbs in Spanish. I understand that there is some sort of perceived weakness in the vowel ...
5
votes
2answers
161 views
Is there a difference between a preterite and an aorist?
I am reading about aorist and preterite verb forms. It seems that they are both forms which express perfective aspect and past tense. Is the difference between them simply in differing terminology or ...
4
votes
2answers
125 views
Are we witnessing the death of stative “think”?
For those who came in late: From what I understand, English stative verbs don't take the progressive. We can use progressive in utterances with dynamic verbs. Witness "I'm eating," "She's ...
0
votes
0answers
45 views
Which transitivity class is appropriate for the main verb in the sentence “The bridge was broken by the storm”? [closed]
The classes are
ditransitive
monotransitive
ergative
nontransitive (relating)
intransitive
I think it's ergative but I would like a confirmation on it.
1
vote
2answers
94 views
Is there a computer program/script that can match a verb with its various conjugations?
For example, matching "protest" with "protested", "protesting", "protests", and also matching less regular conjugations, like "run", "ran", "running" and "grab", "grabbed", "grabbed".
If there were ...
2
votes
1answer
95 views
Is there a term for a non-finite verb that does that work of gerunds and participles?
To ask the question more exactly, is there a term for a form of the verb that is a) not marked for tense, and b) can syntactically pattern like a noun-phrase or like a noun-modifier depending on the ...
3
votes
1answer
147 views
What are intransitive verbs with dative complement called?
First off, I was about asking this question on German Language & Usage since this is a feature specific to the German language. Possibly, this feature exists in other languages as well but as far ...
3
votes
2answers
121 views
Affix that makes nouns into verbs and verbs into nouns?
I have a friend studying a language from the pacific islands, and she found an affix that when added to a noun makes a verb and when added to a verb makes a noun. What would you call such a thing, and ...
2
votes
3answers
138 views
Forming an imperative mood by using other grammatical moods or aspects across the languages
I'm looking for some comparative analysis that would indicate how imperative meaning can be built in various languages by using grammatical moods other than imperative.
The reason is that in many ...
3
votes
0answers
112 views
What's confusing about this sentence?
Consider the following sentence:
Clean up the design database to initialize costing.
I find the sentence to be confusing but I'm a native English speaker. I asked my wife about it and she ...
8
votes
3answers
201 views
Do any languages have verbal inflection with a plural object?
The verb in a language like English can inflect for person, for example:
I see the cat > he sees the cat
and the verb can inflect for tense:
I see the cat > I saw the cat
But do any languages ...
5
votes
1answer
129 views
History of the verb positioning in German
In German, the word order is SVO (or V2, to be precise) in main clauses, while in subordinate clauses have the finite verb in final position; there is some discussion of the word order in "German is ...
3
votes
0answers
82 views
Dimensions of a verb
A single verb usually describes an action or state --the common dimension of verb among languages.
But in addition to that it may convey more information e.g. tense, person, gender of subjective, ...
7
votes
1answer
164 views
How do SOV languages develop agreement affixes on verb?
According to WALS, most languages using SOV as basic order of subject, object and verb have some kind of personal agreement markers. As far as I know, these affixes rise by grammaticalization of ...
8
votes
2answers
110 views
What is the historical basis for the use of this type of phrasal verb in English but less so in Spanish?
For example, English uses phrases like to look for and to look at, which (I believe) are considered phrasal verbs. Spanish, however, would under normal circumstances use some derivation of buscar and ...
3
votes
2answers
152 views
What is the maximum number of forms a (modern) Japanese verb can take?
Recently I've begun to wonder how many possible forms can be made from a single Japanese verb.
I asked a similar question first on the Japanese Language & Usage site, where I received some ...
6
votes
2answers
109 views
Is there are strong case for the existence of languages that lack a clear morpho-syntactic distinction between nouns and verbs?
Is there a strong case for the existence of languages that lack a clear morpho-syntactic distinction between nouns and verbs? If so, what would be an example of a phrase structure for a uniclausal ...
4
votes
1answer
291 views
Difference Phrasal Verb, Prepositional Verb and Prepositional Phrasal Verb
I am not sure how one can see the difference between these three. I can give an example of the three - respectively come in, went into and got along without - but I don't know why these are what they ...
2
votes
2answers
103 views
What's the best term for the group of concepts pertaining to verbs which includes tense, mood, and aspect?
There are many named concepts which relate to verbs across many languages.
The three most well known would be tense, aspect, and mood. But person, number, and voice are others, and there must be many ...
5
votes
1answer
122 views
Do languages besides the Kartvelian family have a property of verbs called “version”?
I'm currently studying the Georgian language and it has quite a few interesting properties not common in more well known languages.
One property of the verb is called "version", "version markers" or ...
7
votes
1answer
155 views
Is there an automatic way of identifying transitive verbs in Computational Linguistics?
Is there any straightforward way of identifying transitive verbs (or sentences containing transitive constructions) in an BrE English text?
I've looked into semantic shallow parsers, such as Semafor, ...
4
votes
4answers
507 views
What is the difference between a copula and a transitive verb?
I can only speak from an English perspective. Be seems to me to be a transitive verb, when joining a subject and an object, yet it is described as a copula.
What I mean is
The bullseye is the ...
9
votes
3answers
252 views
Do Spanish speakers prefer certain words for certain aspects, like in Russian?
In an effort to clearly delineate durar and tardar to my Spanish students, I have been searching for some usage notes and I was not satisfied with anything I found.
Instead, I was wondering if these ...
1
vote
1answer
110 views
Why do languages with extensive verb cross-referencing morphology require less overt marking for embedding than other languages do?
Conlanging is my hobby, and I would like to think more creatively about embedding. Since nature is always more inventive than any hobbyist can be, I've been reading about embedding in natural ...
3
votes
2answers
187 views
Why does it appear certain Georgian verbs take preverbs in present forms?
Georgian verbal morphology includes a concept called a preverb, which has several functions compounded into one morpheme:
distinguishes present (without preverb) from future (with preverb)
adds ...
5
votes
2answers
212 views
Suppletion vs. missing verb forms
Japanese is famous for its very few irregular verbs, but there are some cases where verb-forms are missing and other verbs/adjectives are used instead.
For example, (in standard Japanese) the verb ある ...
9
votes
6answers
461 views
Are there languages with a totally regular conjugation for “to be” outside Quechua?
I recently noticed that most languages have an irregular conjugation for the verb To be. I say almost because I don't know all languages, but the ones I've seen all have some irregularity sooner or ...
3
votes
3answers
595 views
English words which are both verbs and adjectives
A question about UI design led me to speculate about English words which are both a verb and an adjective. My answer to the question addresses this linguistics issue as the root of the UI issue. I ...
2
votes
3answers
549 views
German is SOV: should it not have been “Ich ein Berliner bin”?
German is typically described as a Subject-Object-Verb language. For former American President Kennedy's mistake to be grammatical (i.e. without the indefinite article "ein"), why should it not have ...
21
votes
2answers
342 views
Are there any non-Indo-European languages with go-periphrasis?
Some Indo-European languages have a construction called go-periphrasis, by which some form of the verb go is used in conjunction with the main verb to mark tense. Most languages that have this feature ...
10
votes
6answers
1k views
What's the global difference between nouns and verbs?
Is there a way to distinguish nouns and verbs that applies to all languages?
This problem has been occupying my mind for some time now. I'm not quite sure how to approach this question, so I'll just ...
14
votes
1answer
270 views
How much is known about verb regularization rates?
According to this abstract, published in 2007, "the half-life of an irregular verb scales as the square root of its usage frequency: a verb that is 100 times less frequent regularizes 10 times as ...
2
votes
1answer
60 views
How to characterise set/assign-from/to
If I want to talk about moving information, I can use verbs "set" or "assign" in combination with nouns referring to source and target information containers, right?
My intuition/instinct is to ...
10
votes
1answer
278 views
Is it possible to analyse Māori grammar without contrasting nouns and verbs?
In order to prepare myself for a glorious sports event this weekend, I've bought and read a book about Māori. If my sources are to be believed, Māori is relatively close to other Polynesian languages, ...
2
votes
1answer
128 views
Which kinds of participle does Albanian have?
There are many kinds of participles. English has two kinds, past participles (eaten) and present participles (eating).
The Wikipedia article on the Albanian language doesn't cover as much as many ...
9
votes
4answers
263 views
Hierarchy of morphology, auxiliaries, and suppletion of verbal accidents?
I would like to make a hierarchy of verbal accidents that would have the
following features.
For any two accidents in the hierarchy, if a language marks only one
of them by lexical suppletion, it ...
15
votes
3answers
579 views
Why do English verbs inflect so little, especially in regard to “person”?
Most Indo-European languages have verbs which endings change according to the person. I made a table with the most common (and close) languages and focussed on the category of person and the present ...
11
votes
4answers
375 views
Is there a term for the syntax difference between English “I like you” and Spanish “Tú me gustas”?
English and Spanish each have one main verb for "to like".
In English "to like", the grammatical subject must be the one doing the appreciating:
I like her.
But with Spanish "gustar", the ...
