Unanswered Questions
75 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
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Are there linguistic maps/infographs of the typology of the manifestation of stress
On WALS, Chapters about stress:
14 Fixed Stress Locations
15 Weight-Sensitive Stress
16 Weight Factors in Weight-Sensitive Stress Systems
17 Rhythm Types
It is much much more difficult to define ...
- 374
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Are all alignments of A, P, Sa and Sp attested?
I put together this graphic to visualize what I think are all possible alignments of A, P, Sa and Sp:
(Sorry the text is so small; I had to downsize the image so the height wouldn't take up the full ...
- 600
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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 ...
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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....
- 374
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Why do most languages have TAM inflection on verbs but not on pronouns?
Examples of languages with TAM inflection on pronouns: Hausa, Wolof
It is quite a rare feature but we find it in English as well: eg. we'll eat. we've sung. Imma do it.
From the English examples above,...
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What is the filiation of contemporary English-speaking countries typology?
What is the filiation of the contemporary English-speaking countries typology?
IMU, the representative of the contemporary English-speaking countries typology are Keenan, Comrie, Dryer and Dixon.
But ...
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Verification of R. Dixon's bound/free split prediction
In his book, 'Ergativity', R. Dixon makes a prediction on page 95:
if there is a split between bound and free forms, the former will
follow an accusative pattern, the latter - an ergative pattern.
...
- 451
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Is "more than one" always treated as grammatically singular across languages with singular/plural?
In English, we say "more than one book is on the table," where "more than one" is treated as singular despite referring to a quantity greater than one. This pattern is also ...
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What are linguistic concepts that are not widely applicable outside European languages?
Most linguists are familiar with European languages, and then may have also studied some Eurasian languages that are familiar to Europeans such as Japanese and varieties of Chinese. So it may be that ...
- 576
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What are grammatical features specific to Eurasia?
I'n curious about what typological/grammatical features are prevalent across the entirety of Eurasia but are rare or absent in the rest of the world. I'm aware of "Standard Average European" ...
- 576
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In chinese 命運, 安慰. In japanese 運命, 慰安. it seems chinese graphs are switched regularly
Why these differences are made. Thanks in advance. (This question body does not meet our quality standards. Please make sure that it completely describes your problem - including what you have already ...
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166
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Semantic loans; words borrowing a meaning already there?
What exactly is a semantic loan, how can a word borrow a meaning it already has?
I am trying to figure out whether there are any limitations (can we choose any morphemes) on the recipient word and the ...
- 107
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Polynonpersonal agreement: agreement for noun class of multiple arguments
Among languages that inflect their verbs for person, a majority index both the agent and patient arguments in a transitive clause.
There are also languages that index one argument for non-person ...
- 1,366
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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
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What theory of syntax and grammar do language typologists tend to prefer?
The first concerns the theory of syntax and grammar that typologists prefer:
What theory of syntax and grammar do language typologists tend to prefer? Do they prefer a transformational phrase ...
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