Unanswered Questions
68 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
11
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0
answers
380
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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 ...
- 10.1k
8
votes
1
answer
585
views
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
votes
0
answers
1k
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Why is the word "wherefore" not "whatfore" and the word "therefore" not "thatfore" and related anomalies
There is a pronominal adverb in many germanic languages that is a conjunction of the descendants of the proto-germanic words *hwar (where) + *furi (for/fore) which means something very similar to "for ...
- 1,391
7
votes
0
answers
170
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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 ...
- 6,337
6
votes
0
answers
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 ...
- 161
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 ...
4
votes
0
answers
118
views
Are there languages where grammatical parallelism does not matter?
English has a strong preference for parallelism (Wikipedia link), even though sentences lacking parallelism are still considered grammatically correct:
Good:
She likes cooking, jogging, and reading.
...
- 1,140
4
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0
answers
339
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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 ...
- 6,337
4
votes
0
answers
509
views
Is there a phoneme distribution graph for multiple European languages?
I am doing some research on a manuscript which I need to identify the language. My hypothesis is that it is written in phoneme by someone who does not understand the language. Spoken aloud, one that ...
- 18.7k
4
votes
0
answers
173
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Month names variants
Regarding the question on TeX.stackexchange I am looking for generally used languages that use different cases for their month and day names.
Based on Czech and Slovak languages I can imagine two ...
CommunityBot
- 1
4
votes
0
answers
322
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How did West Germanic languages evolve?
I'm trying to make a comprehensive phylogenetic tree of Germanic languages, with dates of divergence, and I have been unable to find details on West Germanic languages and how they diverged. I have ...
- 41
3
votes
0
answers
146
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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
3
votes
0
answers
75
views
Languages with a common, productive construction for marking heterogeneous groups
Are there any languages with a construction similar in meaning to an associative plural or elliptical construction that's used frequently within the language? I'm particularly interested in a ...
- 1,366
3
votes
0
answers
165
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Are there written languages that commonly start direct speech without marking?
In English and many common languages nowadays, punctuation marks are used to introduce direct speech. This makes it possible to start direct speech without lexical clue, as in the second example here:
...
- 4,840
3
votes
0
answers
78
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Incoordination (sentence-initial equivalents of "and")
In Italian, the conjunction corresponding to "and" can be used in imperative constructions for emphatic purposes, as in:
E smettila! ('And stop!', i.e: 'Do stop!').
This is probably the outcome of ...
- 31.1k