Questions tagged [grammar]
A body of rules, features, or generalizations which reliably differentiate between grammatical and ungrammatical constructions.
560 questions
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What kind of genitive is involved in the sentence "A Mazda is a poor man's Ferrari'?
I'm not a linguist but am struggling to describe a similar locution in ancient Greek. It is not a simple genitive of possession since the poor man does not possess a Ferrari. It is not a genitive of ...
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Chosmky - Universal Grammar
I'm a graduate student and I'm struggling with Chomsky's ideas.
I understand the concept of universal grammar as an initial state, in which we are born pre-wired to acquire language.
What I don't ...
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Why doesn't Arabic have present tense "to be"?
I just observed Arabic doesn't have present tense "to be" (i.e. am, is, are).
For example, look at this sentence:
اَنا مُعَلِّم (I am a teacher) where اَنا means I and مُعَلِّم means teacher....
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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 ...
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Albanian, usage of definite nominative for proper nouns
I am learning Albanian using the book "Discovering Albanian". In chapter 2, the book introduces the definitive form of the nominative case and explains how to use it whit proper names.
It is ...
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Does Euro-English exist?
There is debate on the existence of this variety within the expanding circle, I think it exists in as much as we can categorise other varieties (i.e. Singlish falls under the 'Asian-English' label).
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A set of Constituency Tests
Is there any paper or resource where various constituency tests are listed and analyzed (besides topicalisation, clefting, pseudoclefting and all those tests that are illustrated on English)?
More ...
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Ellipsis with tože in Russian
Does anyone know literature on ellipsis with tože (тоже) in Russian? I've found papers only on verb-stranding, gapping, and yes/no ellipsis.
Here are some examples:
Я буду решать задачи. Я тоже буду (...
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How do I tell when a sentence is totally meaningless?
Consider the sentence:
Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.
It is meaningful, but to a person like me who does not know what the words "ontogeny", "recapitulation" and "...
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Has Attic Greek grammar been well-preserved enough or well-recorded enough so that it can be theoretically revived for daily communication?
Do scholars know enough about Attic Greek's grammar for us to learn to speak and write it fluently? Have enough grammar texts and records survived, and has there been a continuous line of textual ...
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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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What is a Grammatical Function in LFG?
I'm new to LFG and know that grammatical functions are considered to be primitives in it. But how can one know that the thing one is dealing with is indeed a grammatical function?
I am reading Falk's '...
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Women doctors vs woman doctors
In English, noun modifiers are not marked for number. One says "cowboy boot" and "cowboy boots", not "cowboys boots".
So I'm often confused when I see people write (for ...
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Which language has grammatical tone but no lexical tone?
"Having only grammatical tone" seems to be a marginal case of the definition of "tonal language", and it sounds like the tonal system has collapsed a lot (that the lexical tones ...
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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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Verification of R. Dixon's bound/free split prediction
In his book, 'Ergativity', R. Dixon makes a prediction on page 95:
if there is a split between bound and free forms, the former will
follow an accusative pattern, the latter - an ergative pattern.
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Tensed infinitives across languages
As the Latin language shows, infinitives can be marked for tense (amare - present, amavisse - perfect).
English also shows that: to love, to have loved.
Can anyone suggest any literature regarding the ...
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Criteria for transitivity
I am reading R. Dixon's work on ergativity. He employs three basic syntactic relations:
S for a single argument of a verb
A for one argument of a verb
O for the other argument of a verb
In an ...
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Why is "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously" considered meaningless?
Forewarning: I'm a philosopher, and I'm broadly ignorant of linguistics, so forgive me in advance for any misconceptions or stupid questions.
I think that it's regarded as common knowledge in ...
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Is direct reported speech more common in Turkish than indirect reported speech?
Working in subtitles production, I have noticed direct reported speech is very common in the dialog of Turkish TV shows. In Hebrew, my target language—and I think in English, as well—it is more common ...
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What is a half-transitivizer?
I've been learning Greenlandic and I came across this term, and I can't find anything about it online. Can anyone explain it in Layman's terms?
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What's the significance of correct grammar (as long as the information gets across)?
What's the significance of correct grammar (as long as the information gets across)?
This confuses me, because I intuitively think that:
Yes, if there are grammar rules, then one should attempt to ...
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Constructing a Czech adverb from an adjective
I am looking for an algorithm to create Czech adverbs when given an adjective. I was looking for a decent set of rules, but I was not able to find anything comprehensive. Going from example words I ...
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Why do we actually use the subjunctive in languages like Spanish?
I am aware of when to use it; that is not my question. Why do we say "Sugiero que vayas" rather than "Sugiero que vas" when it is clear that the latter would express the meaning ...
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Is vocabulary different from grammar in a language
I read this post and an answer in it says that vocabulary and grammar aren't actually discrete, I have the following questions:
Are they different but not distinct?
Could someone explain how they ...
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wh-word and adjunction (Russian as an example)
I am reading The Syntax of Russian by John Frederick Bailyn. He takes the wh-word который to be of category AP/NP. Also he assumes that adjuncts operates at the level of XP, not X-bar.
Given that, if ...
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What is "description" in terms of a metalanguage?
Suppose I have a formal system consisting of a formal grammar and deductive rules. To "describe" the formal grammar and deductive rules, I require some sort of metalanguage.
My question is, ...
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Are all pronouns proforms?
The definition of a pronoun according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is "any of a small set of words... that are used as substitutes for nouns or noun phrases". The definition of a pro-...
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Czech declension of Masculine Names ending in -a
I have come across several examples where at least in the genitive of a two-word phrase the name ending -a does not decline, e.g., svatého Sáva (vs. standard and more common Sávy), Alexandra (or ...
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Where can I find books from the late 17th/early 18th century about English grammar, and books from the same period about English phonology?
I'm interested in finding books that explain English grammar (as much of it and in as much depth as possible), written by scholars from the late 17th/early 18th century. Which do you recommend? Could ...
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Preposition stranding and Wh-islands
I am doing research on a few apparent cases of preposition stranding in Brazilian Portuguese (a non-P-stranding language) and, by comparing them to languages that have bona fide P-stranding, I am ...
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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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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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Wh-movement of D/NP in Russian
I have recently come across the following expression:
(они) попрали даже то, что ими диктуется о смысле жизни. (they) trampled even what they dictated about the meaning of life.
It made me wonder: ...
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Are there any languages with dominant VSO word order that DON'T switch to VOS in copular sentences?
VSO languages are few and hard to find. The few I know of all switch to VOS order in copular sentences. Is this universal or are there exceptions? Do humans really dislike de-coupling V and O so much ...
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What part of speech is "CQ"?
In radio communications, "CQ" (pronounced as individual letters, i.e. "see-queue", or as a mnemonic, "seek you") is a standardized term used to mean "calling all ...
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How do different grammar theory (e.g. PSG, FG) explain word order in different language? [closed]
In typology, how do different types of grammar theories (such as phrase structure grammar, functional grammar, etc.) explain different linear word order in different languages? I know that dependency ...
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Is there a reason why certain verbs use certain cases?
For examples, in German there are certain verbs that always use the dative cases and others that always use the accusative case. Is there a logical or semantical reason for this?
Does the use of a ...
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Can one word form a phrase?
Can one word form a phrase?
For example:
Man is mortal.
There is no modifier. So, here is there any phrase?
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16 Genders of the Kivunjo Language?
Some of the Bantu languages have many grammatical genders. One of these, Kivunjo, is said to have 16. Would anyone let me know all of the 16 genders?
Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct quotes ...
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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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Coreferentiality of relative pronoun and its antecedent explanation
I am struggling with the intuition behind understanding an antecedent as that part of speech which is 'referred back to' and coferential with a relative pronoun.
In the case 'Tom is kind, so I like ...
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Defining an 'unexpressed antecedent'?
I think I understand that an expressed antecedent is the word or set of words, actually stated, which provide meaning to a pronoun or pro-form. That is, the pronoun or pro-form refers to the same ...
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Is there always at least one parse which accounts for all words cleanly using Phrase Structure Grammar trees?
A few small but related questions here. I'm looking at ways to define "sentence patterns", at least starting with English. That led me back to phrase structure grammars, which have nice and ...
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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.”
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Marking TAM without an explicit TAM marker
There's this concept related to how Semitic verbs conjugation - not the vocalic templates, more a logical consequence of them - that I think is really interesting. How they manage to communicate TAM ...
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Third-person singular used for emphasis in online communication -- Why?
I signed up simply to ask this question, although it's awfully niche.
In textual situations, such as for roleplay or for humor, on the internet, one will use the third-person singular form of a verb ...
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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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context free grammar ressource
I am looking for a large...ish context free grammar, preferably in flat format (so no XML for example). The language does not matter. Whether it has features or not doesn't matter either. Can you ...
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How do I identify constituents and clause boundaries?
I'm going through some practice exercises for an upcoming exam and trying to do syntax trees is really tripping me up. Could anyone please walk me through how they would break them down and how to ...
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