Unanswered Questions
151 questions with no answers
8
votes
0
answers
220
views
Historical pronunciation of Hindi यह and वह
The Hindi 3rd person singular proximal and distal pronouns यह and वह are commonly pronounced [jeː] and [ʋoː], in contrast to the [hyper-correct?] pronunciations [jəɦ(ə)] and [ʋəɦ(ə)] one might expect ...
- 3,132
7
votes
0
answers
204
views
Northumbrian pronunciation of ge-/gi- prefix and -g suffix
I'm working on a musical setting of Cædmon's Hymn, and I'd like to have the primary setting be in the Northumbrian dialect of its earliest written example (the 737 "Moore" Bede manuscript). I'm ...
- 87
6
votes
0
answers
192
views
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
votes
0
answers
148
views
Term for non-homograph homophone synonyms?
In Japanese, 熱い and 暑い are both read atsui and both mean 'hot'. The former pertains to an object (e.g. hot coffee) and the latter to weather.
In French 'cuissot' and 'cuisseau' have the same ...
- 507
6
votes
0
answers
157
views
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 ...
- 83.4k
5
votes
0
answers
159
views
Why in the world are French "Paul" and "Paule" distinguished by vowel openness?
Wikipedia lists
Paul [pɔl] ('Paul', masculine), vs. Paule [pol] ('Paule', feminine),
as a minimal pair of the two mid rounded back vowels of French.
What I wonder is, how did it happen that the two ...
- 159
5
votes
0
answers
226
views
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 ...
- 4,840
5
votes
0
answers
130
views
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&...
- 401
5
votes
0
answers
145
views
Research on development of language of modality in children 8-12?
Let me quickly introduce myself to provide a context for my questions. My PhD research focuses on ways that we can teach primary school children (9-12) ways of handling complex, contradictory and ...
- 51
5
votes
0
answers
61
views
What to reference for grammatical features being more reliable than lexical features for diachronic research?
I often hear people mention in passing that grammatical features are more reliable than lexical features in diachronic research, specifically when detecting pseudepigraphs, because it is relatively ...
- 4,840
5
votes
0
answers
484
views
OCR program for IPA?
Is there a program that can convert a scan/image of IPA into any digital encoding? UTF-8 Unicode preferred, and low-cost preferred (open source would be especially nice).
- 6,601
5
votes
0
answers
448
views
Cellar door and Indo-European languages
Where I grew up (UK) there was a pub called The Drysalters. I always liked this name without having any idea what a drysalter was, or having any association or emotional connection to the pub itself.
...
- 31.1k
4
votes
0
answers
123
views
How did "y" come to represent the semi-vowel yod /j/ in French orthography?
I went down a bit of a rabbit hole trying to work out where the different sounds of the "y" in English came from. I quickly established that the semi-vowel was originally written with a yogh,...
- 151
4
votes
0
answers
198
views
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
48
views
Dataset for distribution of different systems for 'yes' and 'no' cross-linguistically?
The Wikipedia article for 'Yes and no' lists various distinct, common, systems for expressing the affirmative and the negative, ranging from no explicit terms (instead relying on echo responses) to ...
- 203