Unanswered Questions
47 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
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Reference request: ways of indicating disagreement
There are lots of ways to indicate you disagree with some aspect of an utterance. I'm thinking here of the spectrum that includes "No, not-X," "Well, not-X," "Hey, wait a minute! Not-X!" "Yes, you're ...
CommunityBot
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Have there been any reconstructive efforts of proto-languages, where aspects of historic culture have been inferred for languages other than PIE?
I'm not sure if this is the right SE to ask this question (possibly History SE?), but here goes!
Similar to the source material for this video, have there been any efforts to infer aspects of culture ...
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What is the historical-linguistic origin of the high variety of the Burmese language?
In Myanmar (Burma), a state of diglossia exists.
How did the high (formal) variety originate historically? Did it use to have native speakers at some point in the historical development of the ...
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5
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Is there a recognized foremost social factor from which idioms are derived?
I've heard some people posit that the reason a large amount of idioms in American English come from sports terminology (e.g. "ballpark figure" or "the whole nine yards") is due to the "competitive ...
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Is there any place in the US where the Northern Cities Vowel Shift is not reversed among young speakers?
The Northern Cities Vowel Shift (NCVS) is a chain shift of vowels affecting six vowels in the Inland Northern United States during the twentieth century. This sound change progressed and spread ...
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Can the shift in grammatical usage of "an X-ese [person]" be explained linguistically?
While reading An Introduction to Information Theory by John R. Pierce, I was distracted by a linguistic artifact (on page 251 of the second edition):
We can tell our friends apart, […] but we find ...
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4
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Term for universally-used quote with additional, non-compositional meaning
There exist certain fixed expressions which people use to convey quite specific meanings and (at least to me) always invoke a famous saying which is assumed to be common knowledge, such as
I am not a ...
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Which are the social differences which lead to the variance in the way to address a person?
My question is: Which are the social differences which lead to the variance in the way to address a person?
An example of the difference is T-V distinction some languages abolished it while others ...
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How do people pick an abbreviation for a technical term?
Today I heard “regex,” short for “regular expression,” out loud for the first time with a /dʒ/ instead of a /g/ as I had always guessed. I felt the same experience when I first heard the abbreviation ...
CommunityBot
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3
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Is accent prejudice well-established in film/television hubs other than Hollywood?
In US films and television, characters with a British accent are typically smart. Characters with a deep south accent are typically foolish or uneducated. And characters with a Scottish accent are ...
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3
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Saying words aloud to confirm/disprove accuracy of written language
I had a really interesting thought the other day:
Is oral language dominant/superior in some way to written language?
I bring this up because every time I need to correct or edit my written words (I ...
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470
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Psycholinguistic/Sociolinguistic theories of lying and/or deception
That is a very broad question, I understand. I am working in a project where my aim is to detect linguistic features of deception as a person is speaking or writing. Some work has been done for ...
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Has the use of body gestures during speech production the same importance in every culture?
I know that different cultures may use different (hand or other body part) gestures to convey the same meaning. But is the amount of gestures similar in number among cultures?
Some recent research, ...
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3
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1
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How common is Teke as a written language in Gabon and what variety is usually the basis of the written language?
In many instances of Gabonese media, "Teke" seems to be regarded as a single language, however there are several varieties that are distinct enough to be considered as separate languages. ...
CommunityBot
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2
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What makes a dialect a prestige dialect?
The dialect of upper-class Brits has been considered a prestige dialect not only in the U.K., but also all over the English-speaking world. Even today, kitchen gadgets are often hawked on American T....
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