Unanswered Questions
282 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
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Phonological development of Middle Chinese 學 /hæwk/ to Mandarin xue /ɕye/
學 was /hæwk/ according to Baxter-Sagart transcription of Qieyun, and according to this wikipedia page, -æwk became /Jye/ in modern Mandarin, where J is a palatalized initial consonant.
What I'm ...
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8
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1
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Agglutination in Proto-Indo-European
Based on numerous sources, it seems clear that Proto-Indo-European was
Productively agglutinative with non-root morphemes (and perhaps some specific roots that are also able to act like bound ...
CommunityBot
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8
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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
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109
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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 ...
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6
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Just how silent is the French e muet?
I know the e muet is usually considered silent. That being said, it is still often pronounced in songs and poetry (famously, in the Marseillaise). This is completely contrary to the situation in ...
- 161
6
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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 ...
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6
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157
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What historical change(s) shortened vowels in Old and Middle English?
In a 1968 paper by Kiparsky ("Linguistic universals and linguistic change"), a historical-change argument is made for the brace notation of SPE, based on the history of vowel shortening. The premise ...
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6
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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 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: '...
CommunityBot
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6
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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 ...
5
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What's the geographic distribution of the father/bra split in American English?
In most American English dialects with the father/bother merger, the bother vowel (originally /ɔ/) unrounds, lowers, and merges into the father vowel (originally /ɑ/), with the end result being /ɑ/, ...
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90
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How diachronically stable is release type?
Are there examples of languages completely shifting from (vocalic) release of all coda stops to, say, nasal release?
I imagine substrate effects could account for some of these cases (cf. unreleased ...
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226
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How does syntax of our language affect our thoughts?
Our language affects the way we perceive the world. I know it is not only because the words that don’t exist in one of the languages may exist in the other ones, but also because of the grammar. We ...
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Is there evidence that English speakers associate black with bad and/or white with good
Prompted by the recent move towards replacing the terms "blacklist" and "whitelist", I wonder if there is research around the topic of how people feel about the words "black&...
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The letter <u> in Provençal: when is it [y] and when is it [œ]?
In most dialects of Occitan, the letter <u> is pronounced [y] generally. However, in Provençal it appears to be pronounced [œ] by some speakers some of the time.
This wikipedia article states (...
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