Unanswered Questions
2,180 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
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Do we know how common it is for ethnic Chinese and Tamils in Malaysia to speak each others language?
Here in Malaysia there are three main ethnicities, Malay, Chinese, Tamil, and most people speak more than one language.
There are four main language groupings:
Malay - national language and language ...
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What languages use grammaticalized spoonerisms?
Here I define a "spoonerism" as the exchange of onset sounds between initially accented words in a phrase:
"sh(oving l)eopard" instead of "loving shepherd"
"f(ighting a l)iar" instead of "lighting a ...
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What currency does the term "flip sense verb" have in linguistics?
In a recent comment on the question Ergative Verbs and some discussion about them, jlawler introduced a term I had not previously encountered:
The rose smells good is completely different; this ...
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Formal Language theory (context free grammars, pushdown automata)
Does anyone know any good introductions to Formal Language theory and Formal Grammar, that covers the mathematical basis of Syntax and things like context free grammars and pushdown automata? In ...
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Aside from coordination, subordination, and clause-chaining, how else do natural languages create multi-clause sentences?
Most of us know that sentences and clauses can be coordinated, and that subordinating clauses can modify nouns (see restrictive relative clauses), modify verbs (see adverbial clauses) and serve as ...
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What is the universal set of constraints in Optimality Theory?
According to Diana Archangeli (1997) there is a universal set of constraints (CON) that is part of our innate knowledge of language. These constraints are used in Optimality Theory, such as NOCODA: '...
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Where can I find references for how to build interlinear gloss for Chinese?
I find building interlinear gloss for Chinese to be difficult without any sort of reference material for what to call different grammatical particles etc. Is there such a reference available online?
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Is there a term for a mental prototype changing?
Years ago, if I heard the word bird I thought about a sparrow since I live in western Pennsylvania and there are sparrows everywhere. But now, if I hear the word bird I picture a blue, two-dimensional ...
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Comparative markers coming from low degree markers ("attenuatives")? (List such languages.)
Which languages have a marker of the comparative degree of adjectives that coincides with a marker of a low degree? ...or which has evolved from such a low degree marker?
(A message asking for the ...
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Do Chinese's time words come from its writing systems?
Chinese was traditionally written top-to-bottom. The Chinese word for next (in phrases like next week, next time, next page, etc.) is 下 (xià) which also means under.
The Chinese word for previous/last ...
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Etymology of Persian city suffix +jand
City names in Iran and Central Asia, such as "Birjand" in Iran and "Khujand" in Tajikistan end with "jand" suffix.
The first idea that comes to my mind is that it might ...
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Is audio understanding in bad conditions (e.g. at a noisy market) different between languages?
I consider myself almost fluent in English, but have trouble understanding when the words are blended together. This includes for example noisy places, song lyrics, or accents. In Czech, I have no ...
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Reference request: ways of indicating disagreement
There are lots of ways to indicate you disagree with some aspect of an utterance. I'm thinking here of the spectrum that includes "No, not-X," "Well, not-X," "Hey, wait a minute! Not-X!" "Yes, you're ...
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Are voiced sounds considered "weaker" than voiceless ones? If so, why?
The motivation for asking this question was checking up on the Wikipedia page for Lentition, which says that it can involve "voicing a voiceless consonant", even though it's described as a ...
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Different ways languages use adjectives as arguments?
I'm not sure how to word this. I'm not talking about languages where adjectives can act as nouns on their own. I'm talking about when 'states' are used as arguments.
An example in this is the phrase; ...
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