Questions tagged [reference-request]
Questions seeking books, websites, articles, papers, research, or downloadable content on any linguistic topic.
289
questions
-1
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0answers
56 views
Is there a source for English prefixes and suffixes? and English Morphology?
I'd like to study English affixes. I need a source where ALL the affixes are listed. I need this for my English morphology course.
Furthermore, does anyone know that if there is a morpheme counter ...
-1
votes
0answers
64 views
Have linguists normally studied Latin
I have wondered for a while how closely married the field of linguistics is to the Roman lingua. Now somebody commented something to that effect
Also, people who do linguistics normally have studied ...
32
votes
3answers
7k views
Why isn’t the letter “G” immediately after “C” in the alphabet?
I have absolutely no formal linguistics background, but I enjoy learning about it a lot. I’ve seen multiple times before how the alphabet mutated from Roman times to our own:
The letter “J” was a ...
2
votes
1answer
79 views
Are there any detailed studies on Phonology of Georgian language?
As a native speaker of Georgian, I'm interested in learning more about Phonology of my native language.
1
vote
0answers
55 views
Looking for socio research on "Latinx"
I'll crib the intro from Wikipedia:
Latinx is a gender-neutral English neologism, sometimes used to refer to people of Latin American cultural or ethnic identity in the United States.
"Latinx&...
3
votes
1answer
49 views
Bilingual corpora work from the late 1980s
Does anyone know if the paper by Warwick and Russell (often cited as below) exists? I have looked on the EURALEX website and the authors are not listed as speakers in the 4th Conference. Maybe the ...
0
votes
0answers
34 views
What is a list of the first words acquired during different points in language development?
What words are acquired at what age, across languages, or just in English if that's too broad? Wondering what concepts and specifically what sound-sequences (words) are the most useful to a baby (like ...
-5
votes
1answer
62 views
What are some example linguistic glosses for the early languages which lack definite articles ("the")? [closed]
My working assumption is that definite articles evolve in language after much of more simpler language, though they can later be lost from a language as it evolves further. First, it appears to me ...
3
votes
2answers
467 views
Books on historical writing systems
Can you recommend books on the writing systems that are not widely used today (e.g. the Germanic runes, the Old Turkic script)?
2
votes
0answers
71 views
Is there any database with English verb argument structure?
To simplify -- different verbs require different number of nouns to be complete. Some of arguments may be implicit in the real usage of language. So, my question is there any database containing many ...
1
vote
0answers
53 views
request: linguistics self-study exercises (worksheets or exercises)
I am looking for linguistics exercises to do over the summer. These can be from websites providing worksheets, or recommendations of textbooks which contain such exercises or worksheets, or ...
2
votes
1answer
104 views
How to learn syntax
In elementary school I was told of the eight "parts of speech" (and in English they should really have said ten rather than eight, including articles and particles). I understood six of them....
4
votes
1answer
104 views
What's a good second formal semantics book?
I'm almost done reading Heim and Kratzer's Semantics in Generative Grammar and I'm looking for a good "second" book on formal semantics. Ideally, I would like it to emphasize the syntax-...
1
vote
0answers
22 views
Book recommendation on language acquisition of phonetics and phonology in American children?
I'm looking for answers to the following questions about language acquisition, as far as phonetics are concerned. I'm particularly interested in American English, though failing that any language ...
1
vote
0answers
47 views
Translation into English of first Mel'cuk publications
Does anyone have copies of these papers English translations ?
Mel'cuk, LA. (1958). “O maSinnom perevode s vengerskogo na russkij”, Problemy Kibernitiki 1, 222-264 [English translation : “Translation ...
2
votes
1answer
303 views
Book suggestions for a compelling introduction to linguistics for younger readers?
In particular, I'm looking for English texts which try to give some sense of the vast diversity of human languages through examples of unusual linguistic features exhibited in only one or in a small ...
0
votes
0answers
35 views
Can you share authors (papers) that give a percentage of active and passive vocabulary?
I’m looking for a scholarly source that gives an approximate ratio of speakers' active vs. passive vocabularies.
Where, roughly speaking, active vocabulary relates to the vocabulary a speaker uses ...
4
votes
0answers
39 views
Dataset for distribution of different systems for 'yes' and 'no' cross-linguistically?
The Wikipedia article for 'Yes and no' lists various distinct, common, systems for expressing the affirmative and the negative, ranging from no explicit terms (instead relying on echo responses) to ...
1
vote
1answer
71 views
Havlík's law, 3, & 4 in Czech
According to Wiktionary, the words for 3 and 4 in Proto-Slavic are *trьmi and *četyrьmi, respectively, in the instrumental case. In (current) Czech, they evolved into třemi and čtyřmi. But if you ...
4
votes
1answer
234 views
Historical explanations for soft/hard declensions in Czech
Declension patterns in Czech is traditionally categorized into hard and soft ones based on the final consonant of the stem. Materials for learners, e.g., Lída's Czech Step by Step or Michael's ...
3
votes
0answers
30 views
Syntax as error-correction-code
I vaguely recall from my academic studies that a professor mentioned that the syntax of sentence could be seen as error-correction-code in signal processing.
In other words, from a pragmatic view - ...
3
votes
1answer
47 views
What are good references on Eblaite cuneiform?
According to Wikipedia's article on the Eblaite language:
Studying the usage context for the symbols I, I2, A, ʾA, ḪA, etc. with regard to the writing conventions of Akkadian scribes enabled the ...
2
votes
2answers
105 views
Book recommendations for Second Language Acquisition
Can anyone please suggest some good books to read on Second Language Acquisition?
1
vote
3answers
190 views
Is there a word for the opposite of jargon? [closed]
I've noticed this phenomenon in language which I've come to think of as "the opposite of jargon", but which I'm hoping there's a better name for. I don't know anything about linguistics, ...
5
votes
1answer
357 views
Is there a document to summarize characteristics of various languages?
I have a question on languages and their respective characteristics.
Different languages are good at expressing certain things. For example,
Japanese is good for expressing sublime images very ...
5
votes
1answer
69 views
Where can I find a modern overview of Luvian hieroglyphs?
According to Melchert, the reading of Hieroglyphic Luvian (HLuvian, HLuwian) was completely revolutionized in 1974 by Hawkins, Morpurgo-Davies, and Neumann.
However, I haven't been able to find an ...
3
votes
0answers
59 views
Is there a grammar of Middle Tamil?
I am studying the Thiruppavai, a Middle Tamil poem, as a linguist and I wondered if any of you by any chance know of resources pertaining the grammar of Middle Tamil. Overviews of the history of Tamil ...
3
votes
1answer
46 views
Looking for a theoretical treatment of closed- and open-classes
The concept of open-class (e.g. English nouns) and closed-class (e.g. English prepositions) word categories seems to be taken as a given in a lot of papers and textbooks. I'm looking for a treatment ...
0
votes
1answer
134 views
What does this hieroglyph mean? (appear in Gödel Escher, Bach book by Douglas R. Hofstadter) [closed]
I found these hieroglyphs:
at the end of the prologue of the book in Spanish, so I do not know if they appear in the original or another versions. It is on page XVII of this specific edition: https:/...
0
votes
0answers
47 views
Can Studying Generative Grammar Help Someone Understand the Word Order of a Language?
Let's say for example that someone wanted to learn French. Would studying French's generative grammar help this person learn French word order?
Also, have there been any studies that teach L2 ...
5
votes
0answers
148 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 ...
11
votes
1answer
145 views
Is there a standardized graphical encoding for cuneiform?
If I want to describe the Hittite version of the DIŊIR cuneiform glyph, I could say "a double-headed horizontal, crossing a vertical". In other words:
This one's fairly straightforward, and ...
5
votes
0answers
118 views
Is there evidence that English speakers associate black with bad and/or white with good
Prompted by the recent move towards replacing the terms "blacklist" and "whitelist", I wonder if there is research around the topic of how people feel about the words "black&...
1
vote
0answers
82 views
Which grammars are written with TeX?
I have an enduring interest in TeX, and was pleasantly surprised that Schiffman's Reference Grammar of Spoken Tamil (1999) namechecks Knuth in the foreword. I would like to ask for other examples of ...
3
votes
0answers
115 views
Formal, mathematically-minded introduction to generative grammar?
I'm looking for a formal, mathematically-minded introduction to contemporary generative grammar theory, where all the concepts, such as dominance, c-command, government, etc. are defined formally in ...
2
votes
0answers
88 views
What are the differences between Radford's various introductory texts to Generative Syntax?
In looking for a good introductory textbook on Generative Syntax, I came across this StackExchange comment, which mentions, among others, Radford's "Transformational Grammar, A First Course". I ...
1
vote
0answers
44 views
What are some good resources on the study of word order?
I've already read the Wikipedia article on the subject, and I was wondering if any resources exist that go more into detail.
4
votes
3answers
2k views
Does an affinity between languages necessitate that the speakers be ethnically related?
It is generally assumed that semitic languages like Hebrew and Arabic are similar because the speakers of those languages are ethnically related and share a common ancestry. In other words, A Hebrew ...
4
votes
1answer
138 views
Linguistic overview/critique of the Tomatis method
Some advertisements for language training material (like this and this) have a dubious claim that each language has its own frequency range of sounds, or a "pass band", so that listening to ...
1
vote
2answers
87 views
Any good book recommendations on the relationship between language and thought? [closed]
Title says it all, I really want to explore this relationship between language and thought.
1
vote
1answer
119 views
How did these first person plural pronouns come to be in Catalán?
I recently saw this image comparing different first person plural masc. pronouns to Pokémon. For reference the pronouns listed are
Nosaltres (Cat. Central)
Natros (Tortosí)
Moatros (Val. Central)
...
0
votes
1answer
107 views
What percentage of words or queries are misspelled in search queries?
What percentage of words or queries are misspelled in search queries?
I couldn't find any decently recent study. {3} states:
Dalianis measured that 10% of web search engine queries were misspelled ...
3
votes
0answers
40 views
vocabulary and notation for syntactic changes
As a layman I have picked up the terminology and notation for changes in phonology. But I know very little about diachronic changes in syntax other than that they happen: things like shift from SOV ...
0
votes
0answers
104 views
Frequency of phonemes in Indian languages
I would like to know the relative frequency of phonemes in Indian languages whose sript is basically very close to Devanagiri. We need this data to make a pronunciation based keyboard layout for ...
2
votes
1answer
242 views
Is there an aggregation of Oracle Bone Script glyphs?
I am looking for something that might take a raw resource like this and instead provide a list of the discovered oracle bone script glyphs, like you would find for the CJK Unicode block for example. ...
0
votes
1answer
73 views
What are linguistics foundations of how a message can be on topic?
What I am looking for
Is there a linguistics perspective on a message being "on topic" or "off topic" in some context and/or something inbetween?
Is there even a linguistics definition and research ...
0
votes
2answers
81 views
How to cite an edited book [closed]
I want to cite some articles directly in Semantics, Volume 2 by de Gruyter (2011). I wonder if each article in it is a journal or conference paper that can be cited directly. Otherwise, I should cite ...
2
votes
3answers
206 views
Bibliography for a beginner in philosophy of language
In my main time, I am a mathematician working in logic and category theory. As a logician, I am familiar with some bits of philosophy of language.
Stuff I have read:
Word and object, Quine.
Naming ...
2
votes
0answers
64 views
Syntactic models than span across multiple sentences
I hope this question is not too broad.
I've been reading quite a lot about grammars, and it seem that all of the models I encountered focus on a single sentence level syntax.
It seems pretty obvious ...
1
vote
2answers
96 views
Definite descriptions and essentially indistinguishable participants
In the analysis of definite descriptions there is a problem called "The Problem of Indistinguishable Participants", exemplified by the so-called bishop sentences:
If a bishop meets a bishop, the ...
