11
votes
Accepted
How linguists select phonemes to construct an alphabet for a language
You should not be surprised if I tell you that the process is highly variable. Very roughly speaking, you start by eliciting a bunch of words and writing them down. Linguists have varying degrees of ...
- 75.3k
5
votes
Accepted
Is Generative / X-bar Theory prescriptivist? (can the descriptivist linguist create X-bar syntax trees?)
X-bar theory is prescriptivist in a certain sense. It prescribes certain things about the structure of syntax trees: that all branching is binary, for example, and that every XP level dominates an X' ...
- 59k
3
votes
How to Identify Copulas in the Wild
This may not be a satisfying answer (is this becoming a trend with my answers?), but here's the best advice I can give:
A word is a copula if and only if calling it a copula makes your theory more ...
- 59k
3
votes
Accepted
What's a good resource where I can publish some narratives in a minority language?
The question seems to be about where one would put such materials (not how one would handle the typesetting issue). There are at least three places which don't require content review: Zenodo, Figshare,...
- 75.3k
3
votes
Accepted
What's the conventional way to gloss ergative inflection?
The most commonly used generic guidelines for glossing in linguistics are the Leipzig Glossing Rules. Your best bet is to use their labels. Depending on what exactly it is you want to show, you can ...
- 306
3
votes
Accepted
Symbols to indicate different dialects in text
There isn't a standard way to do this. Rather you can establish symbols or very short abbreviations and write it before the sentence. But it also depends on how you want to represent these examples.
...
- 9,220
3
votes
Accepted
Possible to describe phonetics before phonology of an unknown language?
First, you need to explain what you mean by "phonetic", "phonological" and "analysis". You also need to explain what you mean by "before". To simplify matters, I reduce "phonetics" to acoustics, ...
- 75.3k
2
votes
Accepted
How to diagram a sentence containing a sentence adverb?
Simplified Tree Diagram of Supplementary Adjunct:
- 831
2
votes
Accepted
Do any languages have a nominal suffix meaning 'former' or 'ex-'?
In Guarani, the derivational suffix -kue means former, ex-. It's also used in Jopara, the mix of Guarani and Spanish.
- 2,499
2
votes
Possible to describe phonetics before phonology of an unknown language?
Well, of course you have to start with phonetics, when you're just starting work with an informant. You can hardly start with phonemics, because there is no way for you to know what the phonemes are. ...
- 12.3k
2
votes
What's a good resource where I can publish some narratives in a minority language?
Another potential archive for documentation of endangered languages is The Language Archive currently hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics at Nijmegen (The Netherlands).
- 28.6k
2
votes
The o-o-o-ol’ shakuh-shakuh: how can we describe this extended “o” sound?
The IPA is not designed to represent all possible sounds, even ones made by humans when speaking, so what you can hope for is a “hint” about a particular sound. Mainly, what you have to figure out is ...
- 75.3k
2
votes
Is meaning prescribed?
Existing words already have meaning. The relationship between the word (form) and the meaning is conventional, and in learning a language (as a child or second language learner), you learn that ...
- 75.3k
1
vote
How to Identify Copulas in the Wild
The most sensical cross-linguistic definition of "copula" is an element that is required for non-verbal predication. The elements in your examples could all qualify as copulas depending on what verbal ...
- 11
1
vote
Accepted
1
vote
Possible to describe phonetics before phonology of an unknown language?
Imagine a situation where you have a recording of people speaking in some language, but you have no possibility to talk to these people. You can't ask them questions that would lead to finding minimal ...
- 1,773
1
vote
Glossing and translating personal pronouns absent from Indo-European languages
First of all, lexical items should be glossed as words. That is, you just can't gloss the word meaning he as "3", "3p.MSg", or anything like that. It is "he". All the other stuff is for grammatical ...
- 1,066
1
vote
Glossing and translating personal pronouns absent from Indo-European languages
I don't understand what would make such a gloss "Anglocentric", especially since "proximal" and "animate" are Latinate terms. I only partially understand "clunky".
You have to distinguish between ...
- 75.3k
1
vote
Accepted
What languages have been documented using Minimalism?
The Syntax of French by P.Rowlett (see here) would be a canonical answer for French.
That said, I think it is worth pointing out that the project of writing a full grammar of a given language (...
- 1,886
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