Unanswered Questions
93 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
8
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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
8
votes
1
answer
2k
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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
- 1
7
votes
0
answers
204
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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
5
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0
answers
448
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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
5
votes
0
answers
217
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Is there a prohibition on stems starting with /g/ in PIE?
Is there a law that prohibits PIE stems starting with what traditionally reconstructed as non-palatal /g/?
So far I encountered with only one stem that the sources consistently reconstruct with this ...
- 6,711
4
votes
0
answers
107
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Historically, when was whitespace used versus interpuncts versus no-separation?
The Wikipedia article on whitespace claimed until recently that the use of whitespace as a word separator was rare until its promotion by Alcuin of York in the Carolingian Renaissance. But I've found ...
- 538
4
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0
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48
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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
4
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0
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109
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Where can I find a list of English words that contain a rare combination of phonemes
I am looking for a wake up word for a digital product that would be easily detected with a voice recognition engine.
This calls for a word that has a rare combination of phonemes so the product is ...
- 6,601
4
votes
0
answers
633
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PIE Aspect: (Im)perfective or (Non-)progressive?
According to Wikipedia Proto-Indo-European had four tense-aspects, the first being stative and the latter three being eventive: stative aspect, perfective aspect, and past and present tense of ...
- 14.8k
4
votes
1
answer
304
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Loans in Indo-Aryan languages indicating possible migration routes
I am aware of only few Uralic loans into Indo-Aryan languages that show migrations from Eurasia to India, Iran etc. What are typical examples of loan words that are unquestionably a result of a ...
3
votes
0
answers
87
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Etymology of Persian suffix 'ـش-' (-eš)?
This suffix equivalent to English '-tion' or '-ment' occurs in many Persian words such as ستایش (setâyeš, "glory"), etc. But its ultimate etymology cannot be found anywhere. Wiktionary stops ...
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3
votes
0
answers
126
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How did خشاب become the Persian word for magazine?
In Iran magazine (in a gun) is called خشاب (kheshab). I tried to find a relation to another language but I failed.
The only thing I found is that خشب (khashb) means wood in Arabic.
In Arabic magazine ...
- 465
3
votes
0
answers
99
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Can you provide a cheat-sheet for turning Proto-Indo-European dictionaries from the older style into laryngeal notation?
Much of the resources I have for Proto-Indo-European itself (not etymological dictionaries for other languages) either use Laryngeal notation but are limited in scope (like Wiktionary) or are written ...
- 31
3
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0
answers
107
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Was there a tendency of Indo-European languages to avoid syntactical ambiguity by introducing more complex morphology?
In (Peškovskij, 1914, p. 246) I stumbled upon the following (Russian) assertion:
Opisannoe vytesnenie predikativnogo imenitel'nogo tvoritel'nym možno
rassmatrivat' kak častnyj slučaj obščego ...
3
votes
0
answers
123
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Can a trill be creaky?
Or in other words, is it possible to pronounce [ʙ̰], [r̰], [ʀ̰], or [ʢ̰]?
I tried to pronounce these phones by myself, and I always failed. It seems the airstream from the constricted glottis cannot ...
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