Unanswered Questions
97 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
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What kind of features support the claim that Slavic languages are closer to Germanic languages than to Indo-Iranian languages?
Inspired by this answer to a different question, I ask what kind of features justify a claim that Balto-Slavic languages are closer to Germanic languages than to Indo-Iranian languages.
The features ...
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7
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Is there any evidence of language contact between the Inuit and Ainu languages?
The Eskimo-Aleut and Ainu languages were historically spoken in the same region (near the Kamchatka Peninsula), and they share some features that are common in Paleo-Siberian languages, including ...
CommunityBot
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6
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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 ...
CommunityBot
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5
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Is rising intonation (almost) universally associated with questions across languages, and why?
It seems that in most languages, rising intonation/prosody (towards the end of the sentence) is typically associated with questions. Thus:
How prevalent is this practice, and are there major ...
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5
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Have there been any reconstructive efforts of proto-languages, where aspects of historic culture have been inferred for languages other than PIE?
I'm not sure if this is the right SE to ask this question (possibly History SE?), but here goes!
Similar to the source material for this video, have there been any efforts to infer aspects of culture ...
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4
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382
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What language is most similar to Basque?
While Basque remains firmly a language isolate and AFAIK it's origins (along with that of the Basque people) remain shrouded in mystery, I wonder if there are any languages, living or dead, that ...
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Why is a verb omitted in English coordination?
In English coordination, it is very common that a verb should be omitted so that the whole expression sounds natural as exemplifed below.
Ann came with, and Bob without, a date. (Langacker 2012).
...
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4
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Are there languages that mark mood but not tense or aspect?
Are there languages where verbs inflect for mood but don't inflect for tense and aspect?
For instance, if a language had one set of indicative forms and another set of subjunctive forms, but didn't ...
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4
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125
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Sound Changes From Proto Bengali to Bengali
What are the sound changes that occur from Proto Bengali to Bengali? In which order did they occur historically?
Ex.
PB Būdhā became B Buro
PB Karisi became B koriš
PB dahī became B doi
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4
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43
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Calculating conceptual similarity of distinct languages
I'm new to linguistics (fresh off the boat) and am curious if there is some type of equation/field/sub-field that tries to quantify the conceptual similarity between distinct languages. Not just the ...
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Why can't the internal argument of "matter" raise?
The internal arguments of unaccusative verbs in English must raise to subject position to obtain case and satisfy the EPP. For example, verbs like melt, fall, die, arrive, etc. must have their ...
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Using (e.g.) Stanford NLP for retrieving specific “indirect” objects
I am a computer scientist using Stanford NLP for extracting a Semantic Graph from plain text.
Through this tool I am already getting the universal dependencies but now I want to get all the possible ...
- 6,601
4
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247
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The expressive power of languages : Information content in a sentence : How do we measure it
What is your name
Isme shoma chi e
Two sentences - same content.
My question is about the way to measure information content in a language. How do we do this? Because quite evidently count of the ...
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3
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List of counter examples + statistics of Greenberg's universal
I could not find a list of counter examples/ statistics of Greenberg's linguistic universals.
There are numbers that I could find relevant information on WALS. There are some I could not find anything....
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3
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Semitic verb extenders
Whenever I look up how Semitic created its triconsonantal template system, one tidbit I see frequently mentioned is that the older roots seem to have originally been biconsonantal, and were only later ...
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