Unanswered Questions
2,179 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
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Why the E- in Etruscan?
The Etruscans had several names in antiquity: the Greeks called them Tyrsenoi or Tyrrhenoi, the Roman Tusci or Etrusci (and their country Etruria). All these names seem to be related, ultimately ...
- 11k
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L1 memories being recalled in my L2
The situation is as follows: I have been studying my L2 for approximately 4 years. I have spent a total of 10 months immersed in the L2 environment. My current stint has been for 5 months and counting....
- 14.8k
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Dictionary with real IPA and English sandhi rules?
I don't like English dictionaries that use pseudo-IPA to indicate pronunciation. I've seen none indicating that most plosives should be aspirated, but when they're in "sp", "st" and other combinations ...
- 14.8k
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Are L. arvix and L. aries cognates?
arvix
sacrificial ram
aries
From a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "jump, spring," cognate with Old High German irah (“ram”), Old Irish heirp (“kid”), Ancient Greek ἔριφος, Armienian ...
CommunityBot
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Cellar door and Indo-European languages
Where I grew up (UK) there was a pub called The Drysalters. I always liked this name without having any idea what a drysalter was, or having any association or emotional connection to the pub itself.
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- 31.1k
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Is there a prohibition on stems starting with /g/ in PIE?
Is there a law that prohibits PIE stems starting with what traditionally reconstructed as non-palatal /g/?
So far I encountered with only one stem that the sources consistently reconstruct with this ...
- 6,711
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What is the origin of the Latin suffix -alis/-alia?
What is the origin of the Latin suffix -alis/-alia? Can it be an Etruscan borrowing? Is Russian adjectival suffix -аль- a borrowing from Latin?
CommunityBot
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Is there a way to measure culture's impact on a language?
I was wondering if there were any current models that measured the effect of cultural shifts in a given language. Specifically, is there consistent/model-able lag between major cultural events and how ...
- 201
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Do some languages have significantly more or fewer idioms than others?
Among the well-attested languages for which large corpora have been gathered, does the number of idiomatic expressions per language vary significantly? Are there fewer idioms in some languages than ...
CommunityBot
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Patterns of accent changes by non-native English speakers
I am looking for a list of 'accent changes', or pronunciation inaccuracies, non-native English speakers commonly make when speaking English words. The list would obviously be native language specific ...
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Is there any difference in meaning or nuance when the adjective follows the noun in Georgian?
Many languages allow the order of adjectives compared to nouns to vary, but for different reasons:
Some languages have very free word order in which case there is little difference between adj + noun ...
- 9,493
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Over what percentage of acceptance of a phrase is looked on as natural use?
This may not be qualified as a query.
Over what percentage of acceptance as idiomatic would normally be considered as felicitous?
For example, if 70% of native speakers agree a phrase is idiomatic, ...
- 817
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Arabic word stress in the presence of an elided hamza ("hamzat al-waSl")
Word stress in MSA follows a precise set of rules, which are described consistently in various Arabic grammar textbooks, e.g. Ryding's "A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic" (2005). ...
CommunityBot
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Gulf Arabic vowels allophones
No matter how much I browse, I cannot find any true researcher's really precise and accurate data on the issue. Actually, I cannot find any Gulf Arabic Phonology compendium, so any help will be ...
CommunityBot
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Is there a recognized foremost social factor from which idioms are derived?
I've heard some people posit that the reason a large amount of idioms in American English come from sports terminology (e.g. "ballpark figure" or "the whole nine yards") is due to the "competitive ...
