Questions tagged [grammar]
A body of rules, features, or generalizations which reliably differentiate between grammatical and ungrammatical constructions.
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40 views
Describing continuity and change (like mou and mada in Japanese)
In Japanese, mada まだ refers to a continuing state: 'still (as it was)' or 'not (changed) yet', and mou もう is about change: 'already (changed)' or 'no longer (the same)'. Are there other languages ...
3
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0answers
66 views
How is “In we go” syntactically valid?
Various simple sentences occur in English that I can't explain precisely.
"In we went!"
"Off he goes!"
Is this an arcane idiom from an earlier grammar, or is there a general rule that can be ...
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0answers
26 views
Principle C of Binding Theory and Cataphoric Reference, why these notions are against each other?
Principle C of Binding Theory stated that 'referential expression' can not be c-commanded, even across clause boundaries.
While cataphoric reference refers to a reference which occurs before its ...
22
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2answers
2k views
Fourth person (in Slavey language)
I was reading a Wikipedia article about the Slavey (Slave) language in Canada, and it says that Slavey has first, second, third and fourth person. I've never heard about a language having a fourth ...
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1answer
49 views
If you can use nouns as verbs for different languages
Along the same lines of If you can use Chinese nouns as verbs, or vice versa, I am wondering if you can treat nouns as verbs or verbs as nouns in languages such as these:
Inuktitut
Hebrew
Japanese
...
3
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0answers
47 views
Behaviour of attributive nouns in foreign languages
A common construction in some foreign languages, but seemly not in English, is to use a noun where we would use an adjective. The two forms are:
A: PRONOUN "BE" ADJECTIVE
B: PRONOUN "HAVE" ∅-...
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1answer
89 views
Is *grandmother* a compound?
"Grand is used in a specialized sense in kin terms like grandmother or grandson to indicate a further degree of lineal distance beyond that expressed in the head. Such forms can themselves be modified ...
7
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1answer
194 views
Etymology of Latin infinitive verb endings
I was wondering, what the etymology of Latin infinitive verb endings -are, -ere and -ire was. I assume they are Indo-European, but I haven't found any information about it.
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1answer
41 views
Universal Grammar or Other Area of Study
So, what I am wondering about is what I should look up to study the following. From my understanding, there is a limited number of ways languages are implemented. That is, there is a set of abstract ...
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2answers
47 views
Can the need for ambiguity lead to merge of grammatical person, or other semantic merge?
My mother tongue doesn't distinguish 3.SG.F and 3.SG.M in speech. In some cases I feel the redundancy of it and the need for ambiguity of the grammatical person when I speak a language which ...
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0answers
26 views
Are there any statistic how similar are any two languages? [duplicate]
Are there any statistics on how similar any two languages are?
For a whole language (lexical and structural) or maybe just a comparison of two dictionaries (vocabulary)?
3
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2answers
97 views
Understanding Feature Grammar syntax
Background: I am a software dev who doesn't really know much about linguistics but I am trying to learn some of it for an application I'm making
I am trying to understand Feature Grammar syntax, and ...
2
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0answers
35 views
How are clauses containing adverbial clauses and free modifiers represented in syntax trees?
I know that relative clauses simply go in the noun phrase containing the noun they modify, but what about adverbial clauses and free modifiers? How do you represent a clause containing an adverbial ...
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4answers
105 views
All that glitters is confusing!
"All that is gold does not glitter"
"Not all that is gold glitters"
The first phrase appears in Lord of the Rings, modified from Shakespeare, and contextually implies that "Aragorn is vastly more ...
5
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1answer
91 views
Experimental support for construction grammar?
I realize there are many different instantiations of Construction Grammar (CxG), and I'm not necessarily tied to any particular version yet. I was curious if there are experiments that support CxG, or ...
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0answers
31 views
Noun Phrase/absolute clause distinction
What is the difference between a supplemental noun phrase and a absolute clause? In these examples and in general. Is it just the non-finite nature of the second example ?
He won at his favourite ...
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0answers
50 views
Phrase structure trees for serial verb constructions
I have not found an example of a phrase structure tree for a serial verb construction like let’s go [and] see a movie
The serialized verbs go and see would have to be sister nodes, I think, but I am ...
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0answers
71 views
Phrase structure trees for different languages
I am trying to get to the bottom of the difference between (1) and (2) below, and how the intended meanings would be reflected in a phrase structure tree:
(1) If you think that $100 is too little you ...
3
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1answer
330 views
What exactly is “level shift” in translation theory by Catford?
Catford (1978) divides the shift in translation into two major types, level/rank shift and category shift. Level/rank shift refers to a source language item at one linguistic level that has a target ...
2
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0answers
44 views
Markers that affect intensity of the imperative mood
I'm working on a project that explores how imperative mood varies in 'intensity'.
For example, one can 'soften' the tone of a directive by including the speaker in the command:
"Let's go to school"...
5
votes
1answer
125 views
'm' of predication vs. nominal sentence in Middle Egyptian
Consider the sentence: "I am a scribe, skillful of fingers."
This is typically stated in Middle Egyptian using the 'm' of predication:
iw=i m sš iqr n(y) ḏbaw
I think this is correct, and 'm' of ...
0
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2answers
60 views
What is the proper terminology for “I touch” in this sentence?
I am trying to diagram this sentence for a personal project:
Everything I touch with tenderness pricks like a bramble.
From what I understand, Everything is the subject, and pricks is the ...
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0answers
68 views
“Peter sang a song to Julie”, Is “to Julie” is an adjunct or complement?
Peter sang a song to Julie.
It seems that the verb "sang" selects the preposition, but to Julie is optional. And if we apply it to an X' Schema, how shall we do it? To Julie is the dependent of sang ...
1
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1answer
72 views
How to construct a grammar given a text and a dictionary
So I would like to learn how to construct a grammar from scratch. In order to do this the first step is collecting data, primarily texts, and compiling a dictionary. I think this can be simulated for ...
1
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1answer
104 views
Why Do We Say “The Same”?
Generally, sentences are constructed like this:
Compared to Joe, he looks similar.
Compared to Joe, he looks different.
Compared to Joe, he looks handsome.
Compared to Joe, he looks ugly.
Yet, when ...
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1answer
165 views
Why Creole languages aren't the default
I am new to exploring Creole languages, after seeing them compared to "Riau Indonesian":
The dialect of Malay spoken in Riau Province is considered by linguists to have one of the least complex ...
2
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1answer
91 views
Explaining Grammatical “Mood” for the Laymen
I have seen "mood" a lot in linguistics articles, have read about it a few times, but it never seems to click.
Wikipedia links to Linguistic modality. I have come across Modal Logic which basically ...
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1answer
64 views
Complete guide to cross-language grammar [closed]
Wondering what the best (free) resources are for learning about grammar generically across languages. I have seen a lot of "Guide to the X grammar", but not "Guide to grammar in general". Would like ...
0
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1answer
68 views
The languages with the most complicated grammars [closed]
It looks like Navajo has a very difficult-to-tease-apart verb morphology, as seen here:
Unusually for a natively North American language, Navajo is sometimes described as fusional due to its ...
7
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0answers
96 views
Does anyone know if there are plans for a 'successor' to Huddleston and Pullum (CamGEL or CGEL)?
Huddleston and Pullum's The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CamGEL or CGEL) is widely considered a 'successor' to a previous 'great English grammar': Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik's ...
3
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1answer
151 views
Why is sign language different from spoken language?
I have read a bit about sign language, and apparently they have different grammar from the local spoken language. Why would they need this? Doesn't it complicate things to have to learn 2 languages ...
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2answers
56 views
Why was 'grammar' chosen to signify the model of linguistic competence, when 'grammar' was already strikingly polysemous?
Page 5 of (R.L. Trask, Robert McColl Millar's) Why Do Languages Change? (2010 Rev. ed), expounds that 'grammar' originally didn't mean its linguistical meaning (quoted at the bottom): no surprise, as ...
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2answers
56 views
Latest research on the meaning of prepositions
Trying to understand what a preposition is. Wikipedia gives some hints (adpositions are the general case of preposition/postposition/circumposition):
...Adpositions are classed as syntactic ...
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1answer
52 views
Is there a grammatical case indicating displacement?
As part of a constructed language experiment I am trying to write phrases with clause structure of [noun supersedes noun] as just two words. For example, “death before dishonor” or “freedom over ...
5
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4answers
193 views
Example of a tenseless sentence
I just learned about Tenseless languages, such as Chinese. But I'm interested to see what this looks like and/or means.
For example, wondering if one could write a tenseless sentence in English and ...
1
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1answer
75 views
How can I identify Grammatical Categories in a sentence?
Please excuse the fact that I'm not an academically trained Linguist.
I am working on a computer program with example sentences and their equivalents in different languages.
The idea I am trying to ...
2
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2answers
94 views
Does it make any sense when saying someone's grammar was wrong?
This is a followup question of this question that I asked 3 and a half year ago. So based on what I could gather there, "descriptive" grammar comes after a language, hoping the rules are best ...
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1answer
35 views
What part of speech is “group” when used in a construct like “people group,” or “product group”
Given a class C, we may append it with the literal "group" to obtain a class of sets whose elements are instances of C, and which are related in some way.
If you're not super familiar with object ...
2
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3answers
151 views
How can you know that a word in a sentence is a verb?
I am wondering what it takes to parse a sentence with incomplete knowledge. That is, take a sentence like this:
If I use timeout I have to call again my function at the end of the execution of the ...
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0answers
52 views
Pattern to Prefixes and Suffixes in English
I've come across a list of English prefixes and remember learning in school about Latin and Greek being helpful for learning words in English based on prefixes/suffixes. I'm wondering though if there ...
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1answer
43 views
Do the WALS chapters cover the core grammatical structure of Spanish?
How complete is their description for the Spanish language? Is it missing something out? Here is the description http://wals.info/languoid/lect/wals_code_spa
Thank You
4
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1answer
107 views
Instrumental - nominative inversion in Polish
While scrolling through a course in Polish, I saw the following sentence:
Wynikiem wyrażenia jest nowa relacja.
This is not the first time I notice this pattern, where the instrumental is used for ...
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0answers
46 views
This/that: a determiner or pronoun? [duplicate]
Is there commonly accepted opinion on what lexemes this/that are, determiners or pronouns?
E.g. in the following phrase:
... can help you work these out
these seem to show some properties of ...
2
votes
1answer
421 views
Python list to Parse tree
In Python, I have an input of list like following:
[('S', ['NP', 'VP']),
('A', ['V', 'NP']),
('VP', ['V', 'NP']),
('NP', ['DET', 'NP']),
('N', "'mouse'"),
('NP', "'mouse'"),
('DET', "'the'"),
('V', "'...
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0answers
53 views
Are there languages which have ways to distinguish between an adjunct noun and an adjective?
(Take some example). Do other languages (than English) have means distinguish between their adjunct nouns and adjectives or is it a very complex/grammatical structure that cannot possibly be ...
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3answers
110 views
One usage of infinitive clause
My question is about the sentence
A few opportunities exist to get a better education in the U.S.(1)
Some people said: "It is a correct sentence."
However, I don't think so and will explain why.
...
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1answer
74 views
Is there any theoretical explanation of putting infinitive clause at the beginning?
There is a sentence which my Canadian professor today talked about.
1-) I see no reason to do these stupid things.
The Canadian English professor at the university said that we could put the part "...
2
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0answers
79 views
Which friend did he find to study with?
The question is about what happens to phrases during the time of making them questions.
We know that the following sentence is a normal English sentence which is correct grammatically.
He found a ...
2
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0answers
24 views
What do introductory non-finite clauses modify?
The introductory non-finite clauses below (in bold)
Speeding down the road, Peter ran a red light.
Discouraged by his losing record, the boxer quit boxing
what, if anything, do they modify?
Do ...
4
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0answers
41 views
How broad should the corpora be to describe the grammar of a proficient speaker?
What's the minimum size of a corpus that you need to cover substantially the grammar of a language?
I know that the limits of 'substantial' might be open to speculation. But imagine you wanted to ...
