All Questions
10,423
questions
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How to make a reference grammar of colloquial forms of a language?
Recently, I became interested in trying to document the grammar and phonologies of colloquial or "street" forms of English. Is there an easy way to figure out how people in my neighborhood ...
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0
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16
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Is there any language, with relevant grammar, that decides what gender pronoun to use for describing someone's previous life ⚕️? [closed]
One that decides, if you describe someone in a previous life ⚕️ and don't change setting, do you use their current gender, their previous gender, or something else (e.g. hypothetically Sanskrit ...
5
votes
1
answer
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A quick question on binding theory
I'm reading Syntactic Analysis by Nicholas Sobin, which has a concise chapter on binding theory. The Wikipedia article on the matter is similarly concise, which is fine, as I do not want to go down a ...
- 59k
2
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4
answers
423
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Which cultures are big-endian?
I do not really know where to post such a question, so please bear with me if you think there were a better stackexchange for it.
Endianness refers to how we order elements from multiple scales. As ...
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0
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66
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Can uppercase j be used to replace uppercase i letter?
I have seen it repeatedly on inscriptions. For example, a grave of a person called Ida having Jda on the grave inscription.
Is this a linguistic phenomenon? Like writing V instead of U in Latin ...
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3
answers
67
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In english, what's the origin of pronouncing the `e` as /i/ or /e/?
As instance, the sentence let it be is pronounced /lɛt it bi:/ .
And in general, the e seems to me pronounced just arbitrarily.
Does it come from Germanic languages? During language evolution, did ...
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15
votes
6
answers
1k
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Should orthographies represent phonemes or phones?
I am currently working with Salvadoran Nawat, an endangered language that has never had a standardized orthography due to being primarily oral. As part of the revitalization process, we need to ...
1
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1
answer
24
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Larynx anatomy and effect of configuration of larynx on F2 of vowels
In the bottom-left quadrant of the image below, an antinode ("A") is shown for F2 at a certain point in the larynx. I think the structure just below and to the left of it is the epiglottis ...
- 6,005
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0
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37
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What are these consonants? [closed]
I've got a picture of four voiced consonants of English, but I'm not sure whether I am right. Are they [z] [d] [b] [ʒ] respectively? Is there anyone who can help me look at it? Thank you in advance!
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1
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158
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What is "contacting case"?
According to Wikipedia, the Bats language of Eastern Georgia has a case called "contacting", but no description is offered as to its function.
I checked the Russian and Georgian versions of the page ...
- 28.6k
6
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4
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857
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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 ...
- 28.6k
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0
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Are Chechen мукадахка /mukdahka/ "rat" and Armenian մուկ /muk/ cognate?
Are Chechen мукдахка /mukdahka/ "rat" and Armenian մուկ /muk/ cognate?
Are Chechen херси /hersi/ "piglet" and Latin porcus "pig" cognate?
I know that IE "p" ...
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0
answers
63
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Could these languages switch to Latin alphabet? [closed]
What are the chances that the following languages will switch to Latin alphabet in the future
Russian
Greek
Arabic
Japanese
Georgian
Armenian
Persian
Hindi
Burmese
All other languages of India
1
vote
1
answer
219
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Finite Nominalised Clauses
Are there any instances in any language where a finite clause can be nominalised?
Gerunds in English are non-finite CPs and deverbal nouns lack an inflectional layer altogether.
Rome wants [CP to ...
CommunityBot
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37
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Is there a Slavic equivalent of the Greek and Latin semantic transfer from "chest/vault" to "treasure", like θησαυρός/thesaurus?
I was looking at the etymology of the Romanian word comoară ("treasure", "hoard", "pile of precious things") and it seems based on the widespread Slavic form komora, ...
- 464
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0
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49
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What is the non-sensical English sentence structure that reliably produces funny sentences [closed]
Please forgive me for such a ridiculous sounding question. A few years ago, I was a grad student and would in my spare time sit in on random undergraduate lectures. In a third-year linguistics class, ...
33
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10
answers
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Is pronouncing loanwords according to their "native" pronunciation stigmatised across most cultures and languages?
This old CollegeHumor sketch highlights an interesting phenomenon: it's often frowned upon or disapproved of, at least in the US and England, to pronounce a loanword according to the phonetics of the ...
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4
answers
5k
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Why aren't conlangs very widely used?
Honestly, I don't see very many conlangs these days and I see that normal languages (Such as Welsh or Irish) are much more widely used? Why is that?
-3
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1
answer
58
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What tribal/regional Yemeni arabic dialects and/or modern south Arabian languages or crioles do SFO and OAK Bay Area Yemeni imigrants speak most?
I think I've noticed near-homogeneity, in SF and Oakland bodegas. But there are reasons to doubt that.
I'm interested in:
The most common Yemeni lects (or three most commonly natively used, for ...
- 75.2k
-1
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0
answers
46
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Biblical Hebrew Textbooks Written in Voweled Hebrew [migrated]
The title may be a bit confusing; what I'm looking for is a Hebrew Grammar textbook (preferably biblical Hebrew, but modern is fine too) that is completelly written in Hebrew but its ment for non-...
- 107
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0
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48
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Strange vowel harmony in Arabic loanwords within Turkish—why could it be?
Some Arabic loanwords have a palatalised, for example, /lʲ/ in final position, and it is more understandable in the case of those words. However, some others go against vowel harmony for no apparent ...
- 2,553
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0
answers
21
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Caleb might appear to have lost his mind (but he hasn’t!) [closed]
I Dont get this tree because it’s passive and raising. I am meant to Draw a tree diagram for the sentence in (1), below. DO NOT INCLUDE THE PART IN BRACKETS (this is included just to make the meaning ...
3
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0
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96
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Are Swedish/Danish/Norwegian ever taught as a single pluricentric language? [migrated]
Due to largely overlapping vocabulary and morphology, mutual intelligibility among the three Scandinavian languages is near-complete (and in spite of claims that “Danish is impossible to understand”, ...
- 75.2k
0
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1
answer
125
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We typically say rates are 'hiked' and cuts are 'swingeing' - is there a term to describe this?
You never really hear of interest rates 'going up', they're always 'hiked'.. and government cuts are rarely 'deep' or 'severe',. they're 'swingeing'. Is there a word/term for either this use of ...
CommunityBot
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2
answers
47
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Is there an automatic way to divide French words into syllables/morphemes?
Context:
I am trying to come up with a way to divide French words into syllables, phonemes, morphemes, or any other individually pronounceable/meaningful sub-unit in order to model word corruption in ...
- 75.2k
1
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0
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77
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how does government binding theory account for verbs taking bare form in a subjunctives
In "he demanded that you be silent"
How does the gb theory accounts for the bare form of the verb "be" ?
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0
answers
4
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“I hope for it to have helped you”? [migrated]
I see they use “I hope (that) it has helped you”, but I can’t understand the use of the indicative mood above the subjunctive mood there. Any explanation whatsoever? Can I use the structure stated in/...
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Indefinite article before the multiplicaiton product: "a decad of twos is twenty" or "a decad of twos is a twenty"
For a technical article intended for linguists only, I have to unidiomatically translate oral multiplication sentences from a South Asian language to reflect the original morphology, and while doing ...
- 136
1
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1
answer
68
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Is there a technical term for the process of a dialectal word being accepted as part of the standard variety?
For example, the word pet appeared originally in Scottish and northern England dialect, but it is no longer felt as specific to certain regions. I have not discovered any appropriate term for such ...
- 28.6k
2
votes
1
answer
73
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Is there a technical term for words that seek attention?
In many languages there are words or sounds that function as attention-seeker.
For example you might say hey yo,
And this causes people to turn their heads towards you.
In Persian there is آهای as ...
- 4,604
2
votes
1
answer
90
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Denotation of common nouns
Do common nouns have any singular 'denotation' or do all of them denote entirely contextually? For example in 'a car' is 'car' denoting a type of object and the entire phrase describing an object of ...
CommunityBot
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3
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0
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Any examples of any language bifurcating the past into past before one's life and past during one's life?
It can be either from a conlang or a natlang but I wasn't able to find any examples.
- 28.6k
12
votes
2
answers
997
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Language that uses [t] (or [k]?) in formal settings and [k] (or [t]?) in in informal
I remember reading about some language in which both [t] and [k] were considered the same phoneme and one of the [t] and [k] were used in formal and the other in informal settings. Does such a ...
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1
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92
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Question about a phrase with the Polish case genetive (dopełniacz)
in the following sentence:
"Teraz idę do żabki po sok"
What is the function of the genitive case applied on the noun "żabka"?
I'm aware that with the preposition "do", ...
- 16.8k
2
votes
2
answers
525
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How good ChatGPT is at answering questions?
I am looking for evaluations of ChatGPT on some question-answering dataset.
I'm especially interested in how good (or bad) ChatGPT is at answering questions posted on Stack Exchange, specifically in ...
- 3,617
0
votes
1
answer
64
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Is "str" a legit sound in Polish?
"str" is legit in generic Slavic ("*strel-", arrow), so I wonder if Polish has it, maybe in leanwords. A small dictionary computer search gave nothing. (Frankly, I just want to ...
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1
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Etymology of "kipos", the Greek for garden
Consider the following Ancient Greek word:
κήπος
This means "garden". 'horto' is the Latin. 'jardin' in French is obviously the root for garden, but the links between Latin, Greek and ...
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4
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4k
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Is it possible for a word-initial vowel to not have a glottal stop before it?
I am not understanding how a word can begin with a glottal stop? Is it a glottal plosive? I guess I am trying not to outright ask why is it not called a glottal plosive.
When I say some words that ...
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0
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How are /ɪ/ and /ʌ/ realised in the Nottingham (East Midlands) accent? [migrated]
I've got a sample of a few words pronounced by a Nottingham accent representative: https://youtu.be/2fCSeDEZeVU
My ear is far from perfect and this is why I'd like to ask for your help in this ...
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3
votes
4
answers
800
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Does word order and word choice influence how a word is pronounced?
I'm curious about the connection between word order/grammar and how that influences the way we pronounce a word, particularly in reference to dialect.
For example, if we take the word 'going' and ...
- 28.6k
-1
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0
answers
64
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Pronunciation of Emma and Emma's [migrated]
According to Wiktionary, Emma pronounced as /ˈɛmə/ but I hear it more like /ˈɛmɑː/, however when it comes to pronouncing Emma's, I hear it like /ˈɛməz/ and I hear a clear schwa there.
Here are the ...
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1
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How to read a spectrogram?
I read some materials online How to Read a Spectrogram, Reading Spectrograms: Consonants, Reading Spectrograms: Vowels. I still have no idea how to analyze a spectrogram. Could anyone explain with the ...
CommunityBot
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3
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191
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How do other cultures categorize phonemes?
I don't know where it came from, but the "west" at least as I have learned, came up with the idea of "vowels" and "consonants" at some point, and we just go with that ...
- 1,848
2
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64
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What argument did Paul Kretschmer use for Illyrian being a satem language?
Kretschmer identified both Illyrian and Messapic as satem languages due to the change from IE o to a.
Illyrian language - Wikipedia
That sounds like complete nonsense to me. How does the argument go?
...
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1
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93
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Isn't it misleading to call written representations of spoken languages as written languages?
In the following sentences I would refer to anything that can be used to denote something as a symbol.
Any language uses some kind of symbol to denote different things. I presume that any language ...
- 75.2k
5
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2
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677
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Is Mongolian "шинэ" / "ᠰᠢᠨᠠ", meaning "new", a borrowing of Chinese "新"?
I've noticed that the Mongolian word for "new" is "шинэ" (or in traditional script, "ᠰᠢᠨᠠ"). Since final vowels are not pronouned it's spoken as "shin".
The Han character for "new", "新" is also ...
CommunityBot
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2
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92
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How do you form demonyms in Sumerian as well as Akkadian?
If I'm not mistaken, the Sumerians called themselves as 𒊕𒈪𒂵 (saĝ-gíg-ga) and their country as 𒆠𒂗𒄀 (k-en-gi(-r), how would you turn that into an adjectival form or demonym like how -n is added to ...
- 59k
0
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1
answer
91
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How can I extract the speech from one speaker in an audio file?
Assisting with a project and they need me to extract the speech from one speaker in an interview and make it its own audio file.
The audio I have are 1-1.5 hr interview recordings, and it is generally ...
CommunityBot
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votes
2
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249
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Etymology of Kalb/Canis
Dog is in :
*Indo European languages
Latin/Roman Languages
Latin: canis
Chien in French
Cane in Italian
cão in Portuguese
cane in corsican
câine in Romanian
Armenian
-շուն (shun) in Armenian
*...
- 5,545
5
votes
2
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399
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What is dependency grammar and what are the possible relationships?
I have just started studying dependency grammar and I am really struggling with the relationship types and trees. I have only ever drawn classic syntactic trees so I keep getting confused. Could you ...
- 28.6k