Unanswered Questions
352 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
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Do "only if..." and "if... only then..." have the same LF representation?
I'm currently writing a term paper where I am comparing if... then..., only if..., and if... only then... statements.
I've noticed that only if p q and if p, only then q have the same truth conditions ...
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Positive & Negative Polarity Items, and Interrogatives
There are certain items in some languages that tend to occur largely in negative clauses. In English, one such item might be the word ever:
*I have ever been to Paris.
I haven't ever been to Paris.
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What are the current views on the existence of a "zero article" in English?
As is well known, under certain circumstances in English, there can be acceptable noun phrases (NPs) that lack a determiner. Some cases include:
(i) "indefinite uncountable nominals" (There ...
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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 ...
7
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I'm confused by the term 'adjunct' as used in A Student's Introduction to English Grammar (2nd Edition 2022)
According to the authors of the book, adjuncts are divided into two kinds: modifiers, which are thoroughly integrated into the syntactic structure of clauses, and supplements, which are much more ...
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Are there any languages where the first person cannot be an object?
In some languages, nouns low on the animacy hierarchy, particularly inanimates cannot surface as A, and if a situation arises where they are underlyingly A, some reparative strategy such as a passive ...
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In which non-Sinitic languages do negative clauses retain older constituent order in SVC-derived complex predicates?
Many complex predicates are historically derived from serial verb constructions. This is not only true of the Sinitic family. For example, in Saramaccan (Byrne 1987, as cited in Givón 2009):
(1) a ...
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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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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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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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6
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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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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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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; ...
CommunityBot
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What kind of syntax diagrams are these, found in a book on legal writing?
These don't look like syntax trees in undergrad linguistics syntax textbooks. Do linguists use these diagrams? What are they called?
Page 343.
Diagrams for grammatical analysis are visual aids to ...
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