Questions tagged [grammar]
A body of rules, features, or generalizations which reliably differentiate between grammatical and ungrammatical constructions.
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How can I compare the grammatical complexity between two texts using their sentences dependency length?
This is a continuation to the following thread.
I have two texts, common English texts such as news articles and informative texts versus a technical textbook. I want to compare the grammatical ...
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1answer
66 views
How to differenciate the long vowels from the actual letters in arabic?
I'm learning beginner in arabic and I can't find a proper grammar rule to figure it out.
There is a lot of lessons on long vowels but they are totally disjointed from the question "How to ...
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1answer
62 views
How to determine grammatical complexity using quantitative features?
I'm doing a research on defining the complexity of language used in technical documentations for technologies (libraries and modules) used in data science and machine learning engineering. And I'm ...
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2answers
57 views
Are there approaches to/theories of grammar that do not deal with the acceptability problem?
As I understand, grammars boil down to the acceptability problem: Is an utterance acceptable to the users of some language X? How to differentiate acceptable from non-acceptable utterances? Those who ...
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1answer
47 views
The semantics of grammatical transformations? [closed]
Please see the following:
We start with a sentence/clause like -
Mr Wilkins is the oldest person in the village.
It seems like we can "transform" the clause using certain "grammatical rules":
Mr ...
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42 views
Do nouns in simple apposition semantically unpack to predicate nominatives in English?
A Koine Greek grammar states that nouns in simple apposition are semantically understood as predicate nominatives.
So, "Paul the apostle" unpacks to "Paul is the apostle" and "the apostle is Paul" ...
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2answers
124 views
Why is Spanish SVO and not VSO?
I understand that Spanish sentences have an SVO sentence structure.
(S)(Yo) (V)compro (O)los zapatos.
What confuses me is the fact that when the subject is a pronoun, it is omitted so often that you ...
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0answers
58 views
How can one differentiate syntax and morphology for ESL students?
Do morphological and syntactical approaches to grammar instruction co-exist? I am writing a paper on the importance of clause structure in lexicogrammatical approaches to grammar instruction at the ...
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2answers
117 views
What is the difference between compound words and derivational words?
I know that compound words are made up with two small words, but is "tax-free" or "timeless" compound word? How about "thought-free"?
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1answer
90 views
Is there a term for how English replaces the preposition “of” by putting the word that comes after “of” before the word that comes before “of”?
EG,
Apple Juice --> (The) Juice of Apple(s)
Gold Castle --> (The) Castle of Gold
Liver Disease --> Disease of (the) Liver
Et Al.
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1answer
39 views
Non-projective tree sentences
I'm trying to generate the non-projective tree of the sentence:
"A hearing is scheduled on the issue today."
But with the Stanford Core NLP tool (https://corenlp.run/), I obtain a projective ...
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0answers
56 views
What does this quote by Chomsky mean?
āLanguage is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied.ā
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1answer
139 views
Why are constructions such as āAN historianā commonly pronounced with a non-silent H?
It is well-known that the determiner a is substituted with an when the following word begins with a vowel (letter or sound). In some cases, however, an has been used preceding words beginning with (as ...
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0answers
41 views
Determining the semantic “complexity” of a grammar computationally from text
I'm working on a computational text analysis project which uses ngram data from journal articles, and I'm trying to find a way to measure some aspect of the semantic "complexity" of the grammar in one ...
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4answers
187 views
Is āforā a complementizer or a preposition in āprefer for John to stayā
As the title says, in āprefer for John to stayā, is āforā a complementizer and the following is a CP, or a preposition?
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1answer
47 views
How can we explain “head feature” of a phrase? [closed]
For example, how can we explain the head feature of an adjective phrase?
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2answers
118 views
sentence structure vs word order difference
What is the difference between a sentence structure and a word order?
(could you please explain that on a few examples?)
Thank you.
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1answer
76 views
Sentence ambiguitiy
The sentence āWhy did everyoneās father think that Tom said that you were fired?ā is supposedly ambiguous in three different ways. However, I canāt seem to get any ambiguous reading from it. I have ...
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2answers
174 views
What is non-headed phrase?
I know most of the phrases in English are headed phrases, like noun is the head of NP. But what is non-headed phrase?
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1answer
68 views
What is case for pronouns in different positions? [closed]
Can we say "the case of subject in a sentence is nominative, the direct object of a verb is accusative, the second object of a ditransitive verb is accusative, the objective of a preposition is ...
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2answers
68 views
a question about reflexives and nonreflexives
Why "the house(i) had a fence around itself(i)" is ungrammatical but "Susan(i) wrapped the blanket around herself(i)" is grammatical?
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1answer
31 views
What's the difference between coindexing and coreferential? [closed]
Here is a sentence. I(i) enjoy yourself(i). Can we say "I" and "yourself" are coindexed but not coreferential?
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1answer
83 views
Is ungrammatical speech evenly distributed across languages?
Often when I talk in English, I create ungrammatical or non-canonical sentences.
Question is: Does this happen equally often among all languages? What influences the occurrence of ungrammatical ...
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47 views
Why is “woman” in “the woman teacher” an adjunct while “literature” in “the literature teacher” a complement?
Is it because we cannot say "teacher of woman" but we can say "teacher of literature"?
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1answer
60 views
How to provide evidence that my hypothesis is correct (the same structure but the constituents are different), syntactic structures, constituency
How can I provide evidence supporting the hypothesis, that is, prove by means of constituency tests that my hypothesis is correct?
The sentences:
(1) Jeff lost the watch with the big numbers
(2) Jeff ...
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1answer
84 views
What are all the primary variants of these languages? [closed]
In order to make the transliterator more precise, it looks like I am going to need to distinguish between different versions of a language. My question is, is this the complete list of languages and ...
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2answers
63 views
How to build a robust transliteration scheme across languages?
So I am trying to imagine building a transliterator across languages that takes any language and converts it into IPA or some less-detailed equivalent (like a Romanization). I am thinking about ...
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1answer
41 views
What etext sources do we have for the Gothic Language?
It is very hard to search for "Gothic" in Google, because it finds modern gothic stuff which is not what I'm looking for. I found the word "š°š»š°šš“š¹šŗš" (but I can't find a definition haha), and ...
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1answer
78 views
I read the Quran syllable by syllable but I don't know where a word begins and where it ends.If I knew that I could translate them from the dictionary [closed]
Salaam aleikum. I have learned the entire Arabic alphabet. And also the harakat and long vowels. But I have a big problem. I read the Quran syllable by syllable but I don't know where a word begins ...
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1answer
128 views
How to extract grammar rules from a language (grammar induction?) using a neural network like a LSTM
I have a simple artificial language. It has about 200 words and it has a grammar. I am trying to figure out how to learn that grammar, which I think is called grammar induction, then print those rules....
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0answers
58 views
Does anyone know the history of the infinitive?
I teach grammar, and I think it is no mystery to anyone that infinitives are strange. I think it might help me to know the history of this verb-cum-noun-adjectiv
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1answer
49 views
Combine flexibility + ism , how ? thanks [closed]
I want to use the word flexibility in an "ism" form. I have two possible forms in mind but sure which one is better:
flexibilism
flexibiltyism
Which of the above forms is correct?
...
4
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6answers
703 views
Do Modern Grammar Theories fall short in explaining Free Word Order?
Here's my childish challenge to generative grammar:
Could anyone give me an analysis of Russian sentence ŠŠ°Š¼Š° Š¼ŃŠ»Š° ŃŠ°Š¼Ń. (Mom washed the (window) frame.) from the point of view of modern grammar ...
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3answers
70 views
What is the name of introductory expressions like “It is not the case that…”
I'm trying to find out what is the grammatical category that corresponds to such expressions that use to introduce clauses, such as:
It is not the case that...
It is very possible that...
It is ...
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3answers
264 views
Why does Spanish have obsolete tenses?
In Spanish, there are a few tenses that exist but are almost never used in daily life, like the subjunctive future and future perfect tenses. They are only utilized in legal documents and older pieces ...
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2answers
68 views
The linguistic terms for “chains” of similar structures (review material)
Could someone help me identify what these are?
I know that "noun chains" are called "noun phrases", and "verb chains" are called "verb phrases", but I don't know the equivalent for adverbs, ...
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1answer
212 views
What is the origin of the “redundant” pronouns in the Venetian language?
From the examples taken from Wikipedia:
ā¢ Venetian: (Ti) te jĆØra onto or even Ti te jĆØri/xeri onto (lit. "(You) you were dirty").
ā¢ Venetian: El can el jĆØra onto (lit. "The dog he was dirty").
It ...
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0answers
67 views
What are the unique features of the Australian Aboriginal Languages compared to other world languages
Not looking phonologically but grammatically, what are the languages which would be a good reference point for starting studies in Australian Aboriginal languages? Western Desert Language? Others? Are ...
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2answers
161 views
When an existential verb is used existentially as the predicate to a subject, is it true in all languages that it cannot take another predicate?
When an existential is used existentially verb as the predicate to a subject, is it true in all languages that it cannot take another predicate?
In other words, when the existential to-be verb means '...
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1answer
56 views
What are the thematic structures of a clause?
While going through Rodny huddleston's An outline of English Grammar; I came across a concept named :Thematic structures of a clause.
Its been more than a year when I first read it but have failed to ...
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2answers
951 views
Are words classified (PoS) according to their use in a sentence, or does classification precede usage?
This is a rather broad question, so I'd like to limit this to verbs, at least in this explication of the question.
Verbs take many forms and roles in sentences. Present participles can take the role ...
4
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1answer
92 views
Has grammar ever been observed in animal communication?
This question came into my mind while thinking about the question by JohnDoea: What is the essential difference between human languages to other earthly Animalia languages?
I hypothized this could be ...
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2answers
80 views
A counter-example to the parsing rule model?
The idea that we have some strict "correct" parsing rules which we use to parse sentences seems a bit wrong to me. Here's why. Consider these sentences:
Yesterday I went to the beach.
I, yesterday, ...
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1answer
60 views
Is there specific grammar used in Newspaper headlines?
I need to find some general rules used in Newspaper headlines. I will use computational linguistics (nltk python library) to develop classification algorithm to distinguish news and not news by ...
4
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1answer
261 views
Absense of cases in Bulgarian
Nowadays, Bulgarian and Macedonian are the only Slavic languages where the system of cases isn't developed. Bulgarian and Macedonian are very close to each other, but are considered to be 2 ...
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1answer
123 views
Distribution and origin of reflexive pronouns like “myself” across languages
I'm neither a professional linguist nor a native English speaker, please excuse me if I use any term incorrectly. Feel free to make and suggest edits to make my question more clear.
Question
Hello,
I ...
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1answer
70 views
How does switch-reference typically arise in a language?
How does switch-reference typically arise in a language?
In linguistics, switch-reference (SR) describes any clause-level morpheme that signals whether certain prominent arguments in 'adjacent' ...
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40 views
Diacope Confusion
I'm a little confused by diacope as a rhetorical feature. All examples I can find are short simple sentences "drill baby drill" for example.
I'm trying to work out what the correct term would be to ...
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2answers
112 views
How to know when to use a direct and indirect object pronoun [closed]
Il faut les rendre actifs - we have to make them active
Nous devons leur donner le choix - We have to give them the choice
Please can someone explain why the second sentence takes an indirect object ...
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2answers
89 views
Is wrong article use a matter of pronunciation or grammar?
I was in a discussion with someone, where they described my wrong use of an article as a "mispronunciation". I argued it was rather a matter of grammar, as I did pronounce the article correctly, but ...
