43
votes
Accepted
How did the generic masculine emerge?
In many Indo-European languages, like Latin, the masculine is less "marked" than the feminine, meaning that it's the more basic or fundamental form: the one you use by default unless there's ...
- 60.2k
8
votes
Why do “reiß” and “reis” not have the same phonemes although they are pronounced the same?
The idea is, humans don't memorize every individual form of reisen separately. Instead, they memorize the rules for deriving reise, reist, and all the other forms from a single stem. (Look into "...
- 60.2k
7
votes
Does French retain more Celtic words than English does?
Not really, modern French has preserved only very few Celtic words not counting geographical names. The loss of Celtic words already happened in Gallo-Romance, the Frankish takeover had indeed little ...
- 29.1k
6
votes
What Sound Does Each of These Middle High German Diacritics Make?
Most of the quoted characters do not stand for a single phoneme, they are either just a spelling convention for the sequence of the two characters or a scribal abbreviation whose reading may depend on ...
- 29.1k
4
votes
Accepted
Qualifying similarities between languages - e.g., German and Norwegian
There are two reasons why German and Norwegian seem similar. One is that they come from the same language spoken a few thousands of years ago. The second is that German had a more modern influence (...
- 76.9k
4
votes
Is the active vs passive voice distinction, a property of the verb or sentence itself?
Of the classical linguistic categories, English does not have paradigmatic representations of Voice, Mood, or Aspect for verbs, nor Case or Gender for nouns. It has two paradigmatic tenses, present ...
- 9,828
4
votes
Why do “reiß” and “reis” not have the same phonemes although they are pronounced the same?
Phonemes are defined by their contrast with other phonemes. Since German doesn't allow /z/ and /s/ contrast in word final position, we can't claim that both phonemes exist in that position; or, in ...
- 185
3
votes
Accepted
Auxilary verb alternation in analytic perfect for French/Italian and German languages
This is called auxiliary selection. It came about in the late Roman - early Medieval period in the major Romance and Germanic languages, before being progressively lost in many languages through the ...
- 6,753
3
votes
Why are telling and counting related in many languages?
The American Heritage Dictionary gives these primary definitions of count (v)
To name or list (the units of a group or collection) one by one
in order to determine a total; number.
To recite numerals ...
- 9,828
2
votes
Can one word be classified as two different word classes?
I am inclined to believe that stative passives-verbs without explicit agents are adjectives, as they don't focus on event i.e. they are not eventive. A Verb should show action or event, not mere ...
- 121
1
vote
Accepted
Phonology for Loanwords
Pronunciation of borrowed words can be influenced by spelling or by pronunciation. Words borrowed into English are strongly influenced by Latin alphabet spelling, until special pronunciation ...
- 76.9k
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