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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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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Why is the vowel in “caught” in General American English transcribed to /ɔ/
The /ɔ/ sounds (as in “caught”/“bought”) in RP and GA sound very distinct to me. The one in GA sounds more like /ɒ/ to me.
Why isn’t it transcribed to /ɒ/ in the dictionary?
And I wonder what the ...
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Similar and cognate words between Swedish and Iranian are related to which historical era?
I have been studying languages and history for more than thirty years but I am still in surprise how some of Indo-European languages that has separated thousands years ago from each other still ...
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What is one-place predicate and two-place predicate?
When I read some linguistic articles, I encountered two names. One is called a "one-place predicate" and the other is a "two-place" predicate. So what are the definitions of these ...
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Was the word 'vehicle' first used as a concrete noun or as an abstract noun?
So I recently learned that the word 'vehicle' was first used in the 1650s and that got me thinking about the way in which it was first used, and whether this use would've been literal or metaphorical. ...
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What is a psych verb?
As mentioned in this comment by John Lawler to this question I asked yesterday, know is not a psych verb.
What is a psych verb? I've heard this term before and vaguely guessed that it was a word ...
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By what mechanism do `want` and `know` fail to form commands?
Verbs like want and know seem to resist being used in imperative constructions. In particular, it does not seem possible to use them to command people to change their mind about what they want or to ...
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What is the difference between attributive adjective and predicative adjective?
When I began to read articles related to English adjectives, I often encountered these two names: "predicative adjectives" and "attributive adjectives". It seems that the author ...
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Question about prepositions in English idioms
I have noticed that many idioms in English include a fixed preposition at the same time that the complement of the preposition is free, e.g.
a. light a fire under X
b. carry a torch for X
c. cast a ...
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What are the contemporary schools of linguistics? [closed]
What are the contemporary schools of linguistics?
Which of them are more influential and which are more promising?
Which schools do the following books on English grammars belong to:
Huddleston & ...
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Are the Croatian word "radije" (rather) and English word "rather" related?
The Croatian word "radije" means "rather". Is it related to English "rather"? On one hand, it seems that they can't be, as the Croatian 'd' (in "radije") ...
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Is morphology of English mostly done by its etymology?
I have the following observations and not sure if they are correct.
Whenever I want to learn about the morphology of a word in English, e.g. the affixes and root of the word, my search on the ...
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How does Chinese function so well without determiners and a lot of the subtle detail that English has?
I have been typing into Google Translate and Yabla all day (Yabla is basically a Chinese glossing tool), trying to get a sense at how simple English sentences with prepositions are translated into ...
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Do modal auxiliaries in English never change their forms?
Anderson's Essentials of Linguistics says that in English:
The modal auxiliaries never change their form: they occupy the T-
head position in their own right.
The non-modal auxiliaries, like main ...
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Allophones of dental fricatives (/θ/, /ð/) in English
I've noticed in my own speech (West Riding of Yorkshire, male, born in the '90s) two different ways I have of pronouncing phonemes /θ/ and /ð/:
The tip of my tongue sits in the gap between my top and ...
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Is there a phonological rule or process that dictates the choice between voiced and unvoiced "th" in the English word "with"?
There are two different pronunciations recorded for the "th" sound in the English word "with" in most dictionaries (Webster, OED). I was wondering if one or the other is preferred ...
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What are the current views on the existence of a "zero article" in English?
As is well known, under certain circumstances in English, there can be acceptable noun phrases (NPs) that lack a determiner. Some cases include:
(i) "indefinite uncountable nominals" (There ...
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Emphasis through capitalizing the first letters of words
I've begun to see this style of emphasis used more frequently, like in the following passage:
People whose careers depend on the great stuff working as advertised may decide instead that they Simply ...
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How can a language-learner determine the root, prefix, and suffix of a word in English, if they know its language of origin?
Many English vocabulary-building books (for example, Merriam-Webster Vocabulary Builder, Word Power Made Easy) break the meaning of words down into three pieces: prefix + root + suffix.
On the website ...
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Letter “o” with Ogonek in Early Middle English Orthography?
Edit: looking at this again, I wonder if the editors of the Wikipedia article mentioned below (from which the transcription comes) just transcribed the manuscript incorrectly, and the “ogonek” I am ...
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Can dialects of English have phonetic aspirated consonants?
Although the traditional phonemic assignment of English <j> and <ch> are /dʒ/ and /tʃ/, respectively, I believe there's an argument to be made that these are realized in some American ...
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Study of the English language
In the United Kingdom, the study of the English language (insofar as it extends to secondary and sixth-form education) entails what many might refer to as "analytical reading". In other ...
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Does 'z' act as a coda or onset in the syllable structure for the word crazy?
I am working on drawing the syllable structure for the word crazy. So far within kreizi, ei and i are nucliet, kr is an onset, but I am stuck on the 'z'. There are many words that start with z in the ...
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Establishing criteria for sounds likely to facilitate phonological mergers around them
I know extremely little about the history of sound changes in languages other than English, so that will be the source of my examples. However, I’m asking this question for a more general, cross-...
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Can English syntax alone tell apart a person's background?
I was wondering if English syntax alone can tell apart a person's background? For example, if two strangers are exchanging texts - without looking at their spelling, word choices etc, just by the ...
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Update: what is the structure of the copula sentence in phrase structure grammar
When it comes to the copula sentence, usually the noun phrase preceding the copula is subject.
(1)The problem is the kids.
(2)??The problem are the kids.
(3)The kids are the problem.
(4)*The kids ...
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/t/ /n/ /d/ /l/ assimilation before post-alveolar /r/
Does syllabic /n/ and /l/ in English undergo post-alveolarsation before /r/? If yes, how can I mark it on my allophonic transcription? Ex. “Didn’t try”
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Should λ-terms all be easily translated back into natural language syntax?
We have encountered this question when we try to read Heim and Kratzer's book. This following picture is taken from Heim & Kratzer (1998: 40).
Our answers are simply based on the subscripts:
(a) ...
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Exception to word order in quotative situations
I'm very uneducated in syntax, so I apologize if this question is something really basic that everyone already knows.
English is a subject-verb-object language, and it is known to follow that pattern ...
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Origin of vowel-h digraphs that English speakers use to represent phonemes
The majority of English speakers are not proficient in the International Phonetic alphabet or any other phonetic transcription system outside their own orthography. However, we often feel the need to ...
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Does the concept of slang exist in cultures without established written or formal education traditions?
In English and, presumably, many of the world's other commonly spoken languages, there exists a rough category of words considered slang. This concept is not quite the same as taboo (many slang words ...
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Unexplained /ɪl/ /ɛl/ phenomenon in American English
(I hope all this background information I’m about to give is relevant.) I’m a teenager from the north side of Chicago with a mostly unplaceable General American accent. I have some general tendencies ...
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How can I understand "remnant movement" in English heavy-NP shift construction
Kayne 2003 mentions that there exists remnant movement in English. As background, note:
I predicted that John would marry Susan, and marry Susan/her/*Ann he will.
The argument(s) in the preposed VP ...
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Which English phoneme varies the most among its dialects?
The phonology of English shows extensive variance among its multitude of dialects. Which phoneme(s) shows the most variance throughout the language?
I think the most immediately apparent choice would ...
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Freely available Penn-Treebank-like Rewriting Rules corpus?
Hey I'm currently working on my thesis in computer science. For one of my experiments I need a large context-free grammar (set of rewriting rules) that vastly approximates English syntax for some ...
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How to make a reference grammar of colloquial forms of a language?
Recently, I became interested in trying to document the grammar and phonologies of colloquial or "street" forms of English. Is there an easy way to figure out how people in my neighborhood ...
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L-epenthesis/allophony in unexplained circumstances in American English
I've been having trouble articulating this question, so I'm sorry if it's poorly worded.
I'm a teenage English speaker from Chicago. I've recently noticed a seemingly odd allophonic possibility in ...
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Preceding 'look' in response to question
Have read that this increased in popularity starting with US president Obama, but what significance does starting a response with a superfluous 'Look, ...' before giving an answer have?
eg, an ...
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Unusual categorization of slang terms in parts of speech ("cap")
I am not educated in syntax (or any formal linguistics really), so my hypotheses and observations in this question may not be super high-level.
I am a young American English speaker from the Midwest. ...
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Is 'x' the written form for the speech sound ɛks in this sentence?
Consider the following spoken sentence written in phonetic transcription:
lɛt ɛks dɪˈnəʊt ən ˈɛlɪmənt ɒv ðə sɛt ------------1
(I don't know how to do phonetic transcriptions, I used a website for ...
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What is the name for the phenomenon where an English verb that takes a clausal complement either does or does not mark the infinitive with "to"?
Let them go home.
*Let them to go home.
*Allow them go home.
Allow them to go home.
Make them go home.
*Make them to go home.
*Force them go home.
Force them to go home.
What is the reason that &...
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