Questions tagged [grammar]
A body of rules, features, or generalizations which reliably differentiate between grammatical and ungrammatical constructions.
407
questions
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votes
0answers
37 views
The death of her grandmother did more than carry away the woman Alexandra loved best [closed]
The death of her grandmother did more than carry away the woman Alexandra loved best.
link
Throughout the twentieth century , bridal magazines have done more than just tell young women what to buy
...
1
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0answers
65 views
Verb-ing after this phrase or clause “this is my first time”
Is the verb with '-ing' in the phrase or clause "this is my first time eating this" a gerund or a present participle verb?
I think now I see that "this" probably is or means "...
4
votes
0answers
33 views
Where can I find a table/list of all/many languages' plural/singular forms for hours/time?
Even though I'm natively Swedish, I'm seriously unsure if it's "1,1 timme" or "1,1 timmar". That is, what in English would be "1.1 hour" or "1.1 hours".
Even as ...
2
votes
1answer
94 views
Arabic grammar: The difference between the terms raf` and marfu'
I have begun to learn Arabic, and the difference between following terms confuse me.
There is this topic of ʾirāb—the science which deals with how the Arabic noun inflects with respect to its ...
2
votes
0answers
33 views
What exactly is the Structure-Dependency Principle
Could someone explain what structure-dependency is in layman terms, and why it's so important?
Resources I've found on the internet weren't of much help so I'm asking on here.
Thanks!
0
votes
2answers
70 views
What can explain the appearance of “self-made” language features if neither of languages a person speaks or learns have similar features?
I know a woman, whose native language is Kyrgyz (Turkic family) and who learned Russian as an adult (mostly, maybe she was somewhat exposed to it before as well).
What striked me is that she invented ...
-1
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0answers
39 views
Subject, verb, object (direct or indirect), complements and adjuncts
James was a critic and wrote the first review of Mabel's paper in a blog post in 2004.
Am I right on these?
James = subject
was a critic = adjunct
wrote = lexical verb
the first review = object ...
2
votes
0answers
37 views
Adjunct vs complement with intransitive verb
Tony came from outside the traditional media
Am I right in thinking because came is intransitive that "outside the traditional media" is an adjunct rather than a subject complement?
3
votes
0answers
72 views
Where did English get its perfect tense(s) from?
Apologies if this is too basic, but I know very little about linguistics and figured this would be a good place to ask.
English seems like it draws from several other langiuages, notably the romance ...
0
votes
1answer
55 views
What is the name of the formulation where you specify sentence parts
Say I have the sentence:
The cat sat on the mat
What's the name of the formulation:
The-DET. cat-NOUN. sat-VERB. on-PREP. the-DET. mat-NOUN
Or this example from Wikipedia
Kin á-ø-sh-łééh
make-3....
3
votes
1answer
94 views
Is English grammar teaching tradition rooted in Latin?
I heard once that the way English grammar was taught as school was rooted in Latin and it wasn't a correct approach for a number of reason ?
This was a long time ago, so I cannot remember the details.
...
1
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1answer
51 views
What do the numbers 206.835, 1.015, 84.6, 0.39, 11.8, 15.59 mean in the Flesch reading ease and Flesch-Kincaid grade level formulas?
I am looking to understand what do these numbers mean in the formulas, and how do they affect results, and why they were specifically chosen. Here are the formulas:
Flesh reading Ease = 206.835 - 1....
5
votes
2answers
417 views
Is it possible in Sanskrit to distinguish between the names Rāma and Rām i.e. राम and राम् when used in a sentence?
Consider this sentence:
रामो लेखन्या लिखति
Is रामो in that sentence always referring to someone named राम (Rāma) or could it be equally possible that the person's name was राम् (Rām)? Are names like ...
0
votes
3answers
288 views
Subconscious grammar knowledge
I am reading the textbook Contemporary Linguistic Analysis by William O'Grady ninth edition. The text makes the claim that "grammatical knowledge is subconscious". They submit that most ...
-4
votes
1answer
162 views
Is there evidence of a disposition for certain races to learn certain languages? [closed]
For example would those of Chinese descent have a disposition to learn Chinese? Chinese is a quite different language being logographic then say English which is alphabetic.
Another example would be ...
4
votes
0answers
113 views
How does syntax of our language affect our thoughts?
Our language affects the way we perceive the world. I know it is not only because the words that don’t exist in one of the languages may exist in the other ones, but also because of the grammar. We ...
35
votes
8answers
6k views
Are there languages that don't have this kind of ambiguity?
In the sentence "John told James that he's happy.", the pronoun "he" is ambiguous, since it could refer to either John or James.
Are there any languages which try to solve this ...
0
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0answers
33 views
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 ...
0
votes
1answer
81 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 ...
1
vote
1answer
72 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 ...
1
vote
2answers
65 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 ...
1
vote
1answer
49 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 ...
0
votes
0answers
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" ...
1
vote
3answers
245 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 ...
1
vote
0answers
59 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 ...
2
votes
2answers
128 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"?
1
vote
1answer
93 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.
1
vote
1answer
57 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 ...
1
vote
0answers
58 views
What does this quote by Chomsky mean?
“Language 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.”
3
votes
1answer
143 views
Why are constructions such as ‘AN historian’ 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 ...
1
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0answers
43 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 ...
2
votes
4answers
379 views
Is ‘for’ a complementizer or a preposition in ‘prefer for John to stay’
As the title says, in ‘prefer for John to stay’, is ‘for’ a complementizer and the following is a CP, or a preposition?
1
vote
1answer
48 views
How can we explain “head feature” of a phrase? [closed]
For example, how can we explain the head feature of an adjective phrase?
1
vote
2answers
137 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.
2
votes
1answer
77 views
Sentence ambiguitiy
The sentence “Why did everyone’s father think that Tom said that you were fired?” is supposedly ambiguous in three different ways. However, I can’t seem to get any ambiguous reading from it. I have ...
1
vote
2answers
216 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?
0
votes
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 ...
3
votes
2answers
72 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?
0
votes
1answer
33 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?
0
votes
1answer
86 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 ...
0
votes
0answers
48 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"?
0
votes
1answer
62 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 ...
-5
votes
1answer
91 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 ...
0
votes
2answers
67 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 ...
-1
votes
1answer
45 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 "𐌰𐌻𐌰𐍂𐌴𐌹𐌺𐍃" (but I can't find a definition haha), and ...
-2
votes
1answer
85 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 ...
3
votes
1answer
147 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....
2
votes
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
-3
votes
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
votes
6answers
713 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 Мама мыла раму. (Mom washed the (window) frame.) from the point of view of modern grammar ...
