Questions tagged [grammar]
A body of rules, features, or generalizations which reliably differentiate between grammatical and ungrammatical constructions.
416
questions
4
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2answers
3k views
Why is it correct to say “Honey, I'm home”, but “Miel, soy casa” is not?
Inspired by the picture below (thanks to brainlesstaless), when I got home I called to my wife: "Miel, soy casa". After a short pause, she started laughing.
I know in Spanish this sentence makes no ...
2
votes
1answer
130 views
what would be the hypothetic result of *βεβλεπνται in Ancient Greek?
I'm talking about the third plural form of medium/passive perfect, in Ancient Greek.
My grammar explains that some very simple verb like παιδεύω may be inflected that way :
1S πεπαίδευ-μαι > ...
1
vote
2answers
303 views
Is a sentence's deep structure representative of i-language?
That is to say, is the deep structure supposed to be what's happening in our head when we speak a language? Or is this just to make our model of a grammar consistent?
4
votes
4answers
891 views
Can the Latin conjunction -que coordinate two propositions?
I read in Ovid, Metamorphoses, I.474-477 (Apollo is in love with Daphne) :
Protinus alter amat, fugit altera nomen amantis
silvarum tenebris captivarumque ferarum
exuviis gaudens innuptaeque aemula ...
3
votes
3answers
271 views
Grammar framework features that are not supported cross-linguistically
There are quite a lot of grammar frameworks postulated since the last century, like MP, LFG, RRG, RCG, MTT to name a few. I like reading about languages, but a lot of publications about languages are ...
2
votes
1answer
1k views
Help with syntax trees [closed]
I am having trouble creating a syntax tree for the following sentence:
Ginny thinks Harry is dreamy.
"Harry is dreamy" is clearly a sentence. However, I am confused what "is" should be. I think it ...
12
votes
6answers
8k views
What is minimalist about the minimalist program?
The minimalist program seems to be very fashionable amongst linguists at present, but for the life of me I can't understand its appeal.
As far as I can see - and I've read my fair share of the ...
0
votes
1answer
114 views
vowel contraction after “προ-” preverb in Ancient Greek
Like περι-, προ- preverb keeps its final vowel when added to a radical as in "προ-αιρέω". But my French->Ancient Greek dictionary, the old Bailly, tells me that προβάλλω becomes either προέβαλον ...
0
votes
3answers
865 views
Sentence well-formedness
When compressing a source sentence by removing some of its words, what are the main component besides the verb, subject and negation that one has to keep in order to preserve the grammaticality of a ...
4
votes
3answers
2k views
What is the relation between formal grammar and generative grammar?
I am having trouble figuring out the relation between formal grammar and generative grammar. Is one a superclass of another, are they distinct, or are they identical?
So far I've checked my notes, ...
3
votes
2answers
1k views
Is the set of lexical rules, or phrase structure rules finite?
I'm trying to write a program that generates valid English sentences, but without specifying what structure the sentence takes.
I want that to be determined by starting at a simple sentence S (NP VP?...
-1
votes
2answers
4k views
English vs. Esperanto (in grammar, vocabulary, semantics)
I know Esperanto is constructed on the basis of Romance languages; but what are the main differences and similarities between English and Esperanto?
Especially from the following aspects:
grammar (...
1
vote
2answers
271 views
Are there a finite number of noun phrase rules for nlp?
For example, a noun phrase might break up into these ways:
You should eat [noun phrase]
You should eat fish
You should eat the fish
You should eat the fresh fish
You should eat NP(N)
You should eat ...
4
votes
1answer
206 views
Dependency Grammar constraints
I study dependency grammar, DG and I have a question regarding constraints of DG.
I do understand why do we need constituency grammars, CG and DG, however I don't completely understand the ...
4
votes
1answer
2k views
Grammar for language L = {ww ∣ w ∈ {a,b,c} * }
I am new to linguistics and trying to understand how to construct a grammar. I am however having issues on this.
L= {ww ∣ w ∈ {a,b,c} ∗ }
is a linear indexed language, how can I construct the ...
-3
votes
1answer
165 views
What are other 'tacit perfectiveness/imperfectiveness event markers' in Russian? [closed]
I have discovered that making a communicative wishing constructions (like in 'have a good trip' or 'merry Christmas') in Russian, they use different structures depending on perfectiveness/...
3
votes
1answer
295 views
Root reduplication to mean singular
In different languages reduplication of the root serves as a means to express plurality (Malay 'orang' - 'a person', 'orang-orang' - 'people') or a greater degree (Russian 'много' - 'many, much', '...
2
votes
1answer
298 views
Scrambling in Languages like Latin
Consider a clause in Latin that has n words. Latin frequently uses scrambling, so there are n! possible ways to arrange that clause given a free word order. However, Latin writers use only a small ...
3
votes
0answers
135 views
What accounts for grammatical gender classifications?
Has there been any account given for what causes grammatical gender classifications to be used in languages? Is there a purpose in associating a gender to a word? Does this type of classification ...
4
votes
1answer
136 views
No more than - comparing two clause
I came across with sentence today:
Even she, who believed herself to be a revolutionary, could no more have broken her marital bangles than she could have driven a stake through her husband's heart....
0
votes
0answers
82 views
“Such” as a pronoun and “Reduction Transformations”
I just ran into this in the novel "Pride and Prejudice"
-"Ah! you do not know what I suffer."
-"But I hope you will get over it, and live to see many young men of four thousand a year come into ...
2
votes
1answer
241 views
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).
...
2
votes
1answer
420 views
Why are phrase structure rules always inconsistent?
I've noticed that phrase structure rules have been very inconsistent over my studies. I've seen NP = (det)(adj)N ; NP = (det)N(PP); these definitions seem to change with context. Is it just because ...
2
votes
1answer
1k views
English Phrase Structure Rules and adjectives
I am learning about English grammar, but as a programmer, I have natually gravitated towards learning about syntactic structure. I am learning from university lecture notes which I found through ...
9
votes
2answers
162 views
What are the other types of grammatical numbers different from those determined by 'quantity of items'?
Different languages have different grammatical numbers. For most IE languages, these are Singular, Plural and, sometimes, Dual.
Other languages have grammatical numbers differentiated by the quantity ...
1
vote
1answer
209 views
Gender/tone sandhi in [classical] Tibetan grammar?
Tibetan alphabet is a kind of abugida where glyphs may combine into new different forms, taking different positions in their combinations according to their types (see H.B. Hannah, pp. 16- 45).
Each ...
0
votes
0answers
173 views
Are there grammars for subset of English?
I'm looking for grammar for relatively simple subset of English, tokens in which contain only letters, digits and comma. No quotes, colons, dashes and so on. Is there such thing? If no, is there other ...
2
votes
1answer
3k views
Help with syntax trees for sentences [closed]
I am trying to understand syntax trees for sentences, i have been working through linguistics by myself and am having trouble understanding the structure of syntax trees (English is my second language)...
5
votes
2answers
1k views
Expressing Context Free Grammar from academic article with Python's NLTK
Please forgive the potentially noob question, but I'm trying to get started with semantic text analysis, particularly in the legal space.
I found a very good paper which describes a context free ...
4
votes
1answer
310 views
Conditional participles
Does any language besides Esperanto have conditional participles?
Esperanto has these only "unofficially"; they're not considered correct Esperanto usage by authorities, but common sense will tell ...
5
votes
2answers
157 views
How are foreign terms incorporated into the Arabic system of vowel alternation?
I don't know much at all about the specifics of Arabic grammar, so this question might not make sense, but as I understand it, most Arabic words consist of a three-consonant root with vowels inserted ...
3
votes
2answers
149 views
What are the main criteria for a grammar mistake to become a new normative?
I am conducting a small research on the usage of dual in the Czech language. Normally, the dual is used only when referring to body parts (legs, eyes, knees etc) and the number 200. However, in spoken ...
5
votes
1answer
182 views
Do we know of any influences on Tibetan from Chinese (other than lexical borrowing)?
With China asserting its influence on Tibet, including the standard Chinese language, what changes if any have taken place in the Tibetan language due to influence from the Chinese language?
...
2
votes
2answers
168 views
What are the various rules to deal with “markedness” if the speaker doesn't know?
I mean obligatorily marking a word for number, gender, animacy, direction etc, I don't actually know what I'm asking about.
For example, in English, we have that awkward situation where we don't know ...
4
votes
1answer
370 views
Resources comparing grammars of different languages
I'm looking for a book on comparative grammar, where the grammar of different languages and/or language families is described and compared.
EDIT: A comment made me realize that the question is ...
2
votes
2answers
3k views
When are numbers nouns?
In my native language, Portuguese, numbers have officially been in various classes, from adjectives and nouns to "quantifiers" and determiners.
I'm thinking that perhaps we can't group them all, ...
3
votes
2answers
706 views
Hebrew - Arabic grammar book
I've been searching for quite a long time for a Hebrew-Arabic grammar book to study both languages in more depth at the same time while being able to compare similar roots and the root system for ...
5
votes
4answers
690 views
Seeking free grammar or detailed description of Avar
The more I learn about the Georgian language the more eager I am to compare it with nearby Caucasian languages, to which it is not related but shares a common Sprachbund with.
Although I'm also ...
3
votes
2answers
1k views
Checking grammar of non-English text (NLP)
I am writing a program that will take input from users in non-English languages (German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese) and will need to determine whether the input is grammatically correct....
1
vote
1answer
2k views
Grammatical constraint of language
I have a question for a machine translation exam which reads;
"Provide examples where unigram, brigram, trigram and 4-gram models would fail to capture a grammatical constraint of the English ...
2
votes
0answers
54 views
Generalisations which a bi-gram probabilistic model might infer from a dataset
I have the following exam question for a machine translation course:
From my understanding, I assume the answer is looking for incorrect English grammar which get discovered by bi-grams.
So the ...
9
votes
3answers
7k views
Non-Projective Example
I'm looking for an example sentence with a non-projective dependency parse.
It doesn't have to be in English, though such an example would be nice.
2
votes
2answers
7k views
What are the constituent morphemes in 'preposition'?
The word preposition. I am trying to break down a series of words into their constituent morphemes and am having trouble with the word 'preposition'.
I can obviously see that the 'pre-' is a morpheme ...
42
votes
9answers
205k views
What's the difference between syntax and grammar?
From what I've read, both terms have to do with the rules of formation of sentences. I've seen grammar used in mathematical contexts, in computability theory, where it has a precise definition. But ...
3
votes
1answer
3k views
What is syntactically wrong with these sentences?
I am currently analysing a poem, and I have come across two sentences that are obviously grammatically incorrect, but I can't figure out how to describe what is wrong with them.
"Beside him, the ...
2
votes
2answers
277 views
Does speech transcription change syntax/grammar?
Just a question out of curiosity. Before typing became commonplace, many writing communications must have been transcribed from dictation. My hypothesis is that certain syntax and grammar must change ...
-3
votes
1answer
173 views
Is it *incorrect* to use single digit numerals? [closed]
I had an argument with someone recently and figured I should find out, so I went on a research spree and could not find any authoritative answers on the subject.
I am sure there are many disputes ...
12
votes
3answers
248 views
Does writing influence grammar?
Do we know of any cases where the grammar of a language was influenced by the imperfection of its writing system? For example, has any language become isolating because it had a logographic writing, ...
3
votes
1answer
329 views
How is the hesternal past, crastinal future etc. conveyed?
Hesternal Past tense describes an event occurred yesterday (in an absolute tense system) or the day preceding the day under consideration (in a relative system) and the crastinal future describes and ...
11
votes
3answers
477 views
Do any languages have verbal inflection with a plural object?
The verb in a language like English can inflect for person, for example:
I see the cat > he sees the cat
and the verb can inflect for tense:
I see the cat > I saw the cat
But do any languages ...
