Questions tagged [english]
A Germanic language, which originated from England, and is considered the leading language in international communication. For non-linguistic questions about the English language, visit one of our sister sites English Language & Usage or English Language Learners.
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What did they do in Old English when using the instead of an?
I know that in Old English the would place n infront of words that start with a vowel after saying the word a but did they still do it when they said the? For example would a napron stay as the napron ...
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Syllable division in English words such as "library", "represent", "february"
Longman Pronunciation Dictionary transcription for those words favor separating /b/ (or /p/) and /r/ so "represent" is transcribed as /ˌrep.rɪ.ˈzent/.
Though at the beginning of the book, ...
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what kinds of two prepositions can or cannot be compounded?
Are these examples of compounding two prepositions:
from within
off of
outside of
?
Are there descriptive rules for what kinds of two prepositions can be compounded, or for what kinds of two ...
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Look behind you
My aunt observed today that we don't use the reflexive when we say "Look behind you!" or "Walk straight ahead of you." One might indeed expect it; it seems to have the requisite ...
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How might "Grante" > "Cante" > "Cam" have happened in the name "Cambridge"?
Etymonline says only that these changes were "due to Norman influence"
I've never heard of any change similar to gra > ca before, nor anteb > amb. I think for the latter I could ...
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What exactly does the "formal" in "formal markedness" refer to?
A paper I am currently reading (Mollin 2012) mentions formal markedness as an ordering constraint for binomials in English. At first I thought that formal just means that the form of the word is ...
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can we say that the word "these" in the sentence does not carry a clear specification of the number of "best cities"
can we say that the word "these" in the sentence does not carry a clear specification of the number of "best cities"
"Of all the cities in the world I love New York, Chicago ...
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Impact of modern media (radio, television, internet) on language evolution
Language change has traditionally been driven by the geographic and social barriers separating populations. However, the rise of mass media (radio, television) and the internet in the 20th century has ...
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Why is "I am me" not "I am I"?
In Latin, the case of a noun that follows a link verb is nominative, not accusative.
But in English, why do people say "I am me" not "I am I"? Is it different in English?
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Are there phonological systems proposed for English without the schwa as a phoneme?
The STRUT vowel is clearly a phoneme and it shouldn't be "insulted" by calling it "stressed schwa".
Can the schwa be explained as reduced forms of other phonemes?
EDIT:
if ALL ...
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Apparent articulation changes with common cold, esp s > ð, p > b
The way we talk changes when we have a cold. Listeners often either genuinely or humorously misinterpret the phonemes uttered. In English, some common changes are apparent [s] -> [ð] and [p] -> [...
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Is "away" in English a morpheme?
Fromkin's Introduction to Linguistics lists "away" as a English morpheme, which is also a free morpheme and open class word in FIGURE 2.1 Classification of English morphemes on page 49. A ...
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Why do English and German have relatively large vowel inventories?
Why do English and German have relatively large vowel inventories?
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English /j/ "mutation" in certain contexts
First of all, I cannot provide any actual audio data, but I am fairly certain that I have heard this phenomenon before.
In American English, in a dialect, there appears to be a [j] insertion (or [r] ...
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Why is the spelling of an English word only a rough guide to its pronunciation?
As a non-native speaker of English (and a native speaker of an Abugida language that is mostly written as it is pronounced), I always wondered how English (and similar languages) developed the ...
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How did English end up with a voiced "z" at the end of words?
How did English end up with a voiced "z" at the end of words, for example in "is", "was", "those"? Does this phenomenon exist in any Indio-European language ...
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Cot-Caught Merger in NYC and New Jersey?
I'm a bit confused with the cot-caught and father-bother merger, especially as they appear in the NYC / New Jersey area? I'm a native of the area and have lived there my whole life, yet I have the ...
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Do second language learners, at times, perceive the language to be acquired as more quiet or more difficult to hear when uttered, volume independent?
Has any person experienced the perceived lowering of volume or difficulty in hearing (perception of increased noise, for example) when attempting to listen to a second language? Is the effect ...
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What is the information density of factual knowledge in large bodies of English text?
An ML paper I was reading mentioned an estimate of no more than 0.7 bits per word, in footnote 4:
As of February 1, 2024, English Wikipedia contains a total of 4.5 billion words [...] We estimate ...
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Can a complementizer (C) take two complements (COMPS)?
The 1997 paper "English Relative Clause Constructions" by Ivan A. Sag has these diagrams:
(53) shows a diagram of to go to the UK, and (54) of for them to go to the UK. In (54), ...
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Canonical flaps
Dear colleagues: I have a question about canonical flaps. The literature is not clear on whether a canonical flap has a burst or not. I have found in my data that many flaps do have a burst (sometimes ...
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The analysis of 'for NP to VP' in HPSG
This is from a paper titled "What for?" by Bas Aarts:
(35) [NP It [S′ [COMP for] [S Mary see his relatives]]] [M may] [VP distress John]
Bresnan’s account was very influential in proposing ...
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Noun Phrase - complement vs. postmodifier
Let's look at these two noun phrases:
1 - The chapter of the book.
2 - A mother of two kids.
Could you please help me understand why 'of the book' is a postmodifier while 'of two kids' is a complement?...
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How many dimensions do phonemes have?
I was wondering if there was a better or alternative ordering for the letters of the English alphabet, than the standard “a b c d e …”.
This led me to wonder by what parameters they would be ordered.
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Is "because" always a subordinating conjunction introducing a subordinate clause?
My grammar book says that a word like "because" is a subordinating conjunction, meaning that it is a word that can introduce a dependent clause. I know that a dependent clause contains its ...
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What's this linguistic phenomenon in English speaking?
I was enjoying the relaxing vibes that the hotel provided.
When Americans say the above sentence, do they sometimes say "vibes that" in a way that sounds like "vibesat"?
Does it ...
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Is this preposition stranding or not?
I am a linguistics student and am currently doing research on supposed cases of preposition stranding in Brazilian Portuguese. So far I've come up with a few assumptions, but my data has been mostly ...
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Has the spread of English removed any phonemes or characteristics from pre-existing languages?
I know there's already an answered question on here about English adding sounds and characteristics to languages, but I was wondering if there were many examples of the removal of intricacies from pre-...
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Is subject auxiliary inversion (do-support) unique to English?
In English, some question sentences are formed by the inversion of the subject and the auxiliary verb.
I see you?
Do I see you?
*See I you?
From what I understand, the inversion cannot be done with ...
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Does California English have an additional vowel phoneme?
I've noticed that my pronunciation of the word only differs from the General American pronunciation (I'm from coastal California). This is the pronunciation of only that I assume is General American: ...
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What is the name of the "clicky" t sound used in some british accents in words like "little" and "mental"?
Emma Stone tries to replicate it here.
It's not a glottal stop; the t is definitely being pronounced in the mouth and not the throat. It's almost exclusively used when a "t" sound is ...
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Is there research on which diphthongs are perceived by English speakers as single sounds?
In English, diphthongs are single phonemes, and monolingual English speakers hear them as a single vowel. However, this does not mean that English speakers will hear all diphthongs in other languages ...
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How do you attest that two modal particles in different languages are of similar semantic attributes?
especially fellow English-Dutch speakers.
I am wondering as to how we can attest that two modal particles in different languages share similar semantic attributes. Is there any metrics/theories to ...
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Linguistically speaking, what is the standard phraseology that pilots and air traffic controllers use to communicate?
There is a standardized phraseology used in aviation radio communications. It is based on English, but it is significantly different, and many of the statements are not grammatically correct in ...
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When the short /i/ sound in English is lenthened very much (in singing, for example), will its quality change so it resembles long /i:/?
In singing, when a singer lengthens a word that contains short /i/, will it cause any confusion (between that short /i/ and the long /i:/) for the native English speaker's ear?
When I listened to this ...
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What is "o'clock" in English?
Please don't say "adverb" because that is an ad hoc part of speech that means "anything that doesn't fit".
Certain words in the English language, from a functional perspective, map ...
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Why do nouns typically have their main stress on the penultimate while verbs on the ultimate (according to theories other than that of Hayes)?
I'm working on English stress acquisition by non-native speakers for my Master's Thesis. According to the theories of Hayes (1981) and, subsequently, Halle & Vergnaud (1987), extrametricality (i.e....
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Phonetic/acoustic difference between /ˈæb.sə.luːt/ and /ˈæp.sə.luːt/
My understanding is that "b" in "absolute" can be pronounced either as /b/ or /p/. In both cases, the plosive is usually not released (or has an inaudible release). Clipping occurs ...
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Is “actual” both a false friend and a cognate?
English definition of “actual”:
existing in fact; typically as contrasted with what was intended, expected, or believed.
Spanish definition of “actual”:
current, present, contemporary
These are ...
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Are the Croatian word "struna" (string of a musical instrument) and the English word "string" related? [closed]
So, are the Croatian word "struna" (string of a musical instrument) and the English word "string" related? And, if so, why does the English word contain -ng, while the Croatian ...
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Chomsky on licensing parasitic gaps in English
Chomsky (1995: 69) says (115) that "(115b) is ruled out for independent reasons of control theory." What reasons?
(115) a. the book that you filed [without PRO reading e]
b. *the book that ...
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Are there languages where grammatical parallelism does not matter?
English has a strong preference for parallelism (Wikipedia link), even though sentences lacking parallelism are still considered grammatically correct:
Good:
She likes cooking, jogging, and reading.
...
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How to represent and distinguish between inflected and related words in English dictionary?
In English we have these words:
create
created
creates
creating
creator
creation
creationism
creativity
creative
I am unsure which one is an inflection, and which one is a new word. Created and ...
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I'd like for this to be a word. Why isn't it?
I am a high school student with a question, and I am not entirely sure this is the right place to voice it. I often encounter situations where I want to use a word to describe a specific situation I'm ...
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The Origin of the Word 'Mammoth' [closed]
As per the Wiktionary article the origin of the world is Russian:
From obsolete Russian ма́мант (mámant), modern ма́монт (mámont), probably from a Uralic language, such as Proto-Mansi *mē̮ŋ-ońt (“...
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Why do so many loan words have a different pronunciations of letters like X and Q (among others)?
I have been thinking about the following question quite a bit recently: why do other languages, which often do not even use the Latin alphabet, seemingly get to decide on the way their words get ...
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Information Selection with Because
I'm having difficulty with the extraction of information from sentences containing the word "because."
I was analyzing a text about the advantages and disadvantages of open-plan offices. ...
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The acceptability of verbal phrase ellipsis and subject-auxiliary inversion in triple modal sentences
I have been researching on multiple modal constructions, which is a feature used in the Southern United States. Unlike Standard English, this dialect allows more than one modal auxiliary per clause.
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Is there any type of app that trains my english skills?
I like to write some more in english and for that I want to improve my vocabulary (and overall grammar skills). Is there an app that focuses on teaching new words and explains their meaning? I know ...
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Does English have genuine literary conversation without the use of Latin and Greek words?
The most languages have their own literary and original way of conversation and writing, which is different from common conversation. This dichotomy between the speech of the courtiers and the ...
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