Linguistics

Questions tagged [reference-request]

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Questions seeking books, websites, articles, papers, research, or downloadable content on any linguistic topic.

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30 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 ...
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49 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 ...
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456 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)?
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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 ...
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49 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 ...
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1answer
101 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....
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1answer
79 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-...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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1answer
83 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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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1answer
64 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 ...
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210 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 ...
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28 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 - ...
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1answer
44 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 ...
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2answers
90 views

Book recommendations for Second Language Acquisition

Can anyone please suggest some good books to read on Second Language Acquisition?
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3answers
135 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, ...
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1answer
356 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 ...
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1answer
67 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 ...
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50 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 ...
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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 ...
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118 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:/...
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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 ...
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131 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 ...
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144 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 ...
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117 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&...
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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 ...
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114 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 ...
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83 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 ...
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43 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.
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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 ...
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1answer
136 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 ...
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2answers
81 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.
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1answer
113 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) ...
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1answer
89 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 ...
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39 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 ...
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87 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 ...
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1answer
209 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. ...
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1answer
70 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 ...
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2answers
74 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 ...
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3answers
201 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 ...
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62 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 ...
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2answers
88 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 ...
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87 views

How do children learn to identify different languages?

A child can be raised in a sufficiently bilingual context that they learn two languages simultaneously, e.g. English & Spanish, Norwegian and Saami. The end product is that they have two ...
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273 views

*h₁éḱwos > ἵππος, (Aeolian) ἴκκος

(in short) What's the epigraphical support to the Aeolian word ἴκκος ? I can't find it in the (very limited) data I can consult. (full story) The history of the Greek word ἵππος ("horse") can be ...
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1answer
93 views

Does a scientific methodology exist for evaluating bilingual dictionaries?

I recently reread What's the difference between the various context dictionaries available for Spanish (e.g., Tatoeba, Reverso, Linguee, …)?. The accepted answer is excellent. But it got me ...
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1answer
62 views

Is there a high-quality academic reference resource for an extensive overview of a language?

If I wanted a general introduction to for example the Turkish language, I can look up articles on Turkish in Encyclopedia Britannica, the Routledge Compendium of the World's Languages, the ...
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2answers
229 views

Conventions on sorting phrases with whitespace and punctuation (for an index)

I'm sorry if this is not the correct community to ask this question, if not please suggest a transfer. I'm compiling an index of sorts for a large songbook where all the titles and first lines of the ...
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140 views

Where can you find a list of all nouns and verbs "forms" in each language? [closed]

The only languages for which I have found a book (not even a webpage) is for Hebrew and Arabic. Are there books or webpages that contain all the noun declensions and verb "conjugations" (or noun and ...

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