Unanswered Questions
98 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
8
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1
answer
585
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Which languages have zero markers of comparative degree that coexist with non-zero comparative markers?
The zero comparative marker and the non-zero one should be more or less interchangeable. (The etymology of the non-zero marker doesn't matter.)
(A message asking to list such languages was originally ...
6
votes
0
answers
109
views
Are there any languages with second-person pronouns marked for a proximal/distal distinction?
I am curious if there are any natural languages where the personal pronoun used to refer to the addressee varies in some way depending on their distance to the speaker. For instance, one form might be ...
- 161
6
votes
0
answers
139
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How common are languages with different word orders in matrix and non-matrix clauses
How common is it cross-linguistically for a language to have a different word order in various types of embedded clauses such as relative clauses?
WALS appears to collect information on word order in ...
- 31.1k
6
votes
0
answers
595
views
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 ...
5
votes
0
answers
118
views
Are there any universals about how m-case can pattern for predicate NPs?
Predicate noun phrases (NPs) have different patterns of case in different languages.
Even closely related languages can show significant differences (Sigurðsson 2008). For example, among the Germanic ...
CommunityBot
- 1
5
votes
2
answers
388
views
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
- 1
4
votes
0
answers
108
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Any examples of any language bifurcating the past into past before one's life and past during one's life?
It can be either from a conlang or a natlang but I wasn't able to find any examples.
- 31.1k
4
votes
0
answers
198
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Why French Adjectives Uses BAGS
In French, most adjectives are positioned behind the noun e.g.
vache bleue
médecin étrange
orange énevrant
But sometimes you have an adjective following BAGS -- the adjective describes beauty, age,
...
- 31.1k
4
votes
0
answers
124
views
How is declension class represented in Distributed Morphology?
Does somebody knows a good paper or textbook that would have a Distributed Morphology (DM) approach to declension class? Ora Matushansky writes that it is an "underlying nominal property influencing ...
- 6,337
4
votes
0
answers
284
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Is there a purely singulative-collective language?
I wanted to ask "Is there a language that marks singular?" but found this. So instead, I'm asking: Are there any purely singulative-collective languages?
The (admittedly abstract) idea behind this is ...
- 504
4
votes
0
answers
96
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Kuryłowicz on cases and prepositions
I've read Kuryłowicz's classic paper "Le problème du classement des cas" and I'm not sure how to interpret what he says about the difference between case affixes and prepositions. Does he in effect ...
- 2,600
3
votes
0
answers
159
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Languages with very small "modal inventories"
I'm interested in frameworks for describing how languages encode mood. For example, I'm curious whether something similar to a case hierarchy or color hierarchy exists for moods. Or if there are ...
- 1,366
3
votes
0
answers
35
views
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....
- 374
3
votes
0
answers
28
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Dependent-marking on adpositions?
Is there a language such that an adposition is dependent-marked so that one can infer that it depends on head X but not Y?
As a possible example, an affix is attached to an adposition to show that it ...
- 451
3
votes
0
answers
146
views
In any language, is there a word for a death relationship with one’s sibling?
In English, we have the word “widowed” for losing a spouse and “orphaned” for losing a parent. Is there any equivalent for one’s sibling in any language?
- 31.1k