Newest Questions
11,713 questions
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If the Indo-European suffix for 2nd-declension neuter was -om (the source of Latin -um and Greek -on), why is the Serbo-Croatian suffix -o and not -u?
So, in Proto-Indo-European, the nominative and the accusative of the 2nd-declension neuter nouns and adjectives ended in -om, and that is the source of Latin -um and Greek -on, right? But, if so, why ...
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1
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How did the modern Croatian island name "Cres" evolve from "Krepsa"? Did the 2nd Slavic Palatalization somehow surmount the 'r'?
The ancient name for the island of Cres was Krepsa. Why did the 2nd Slavic Palatalization affect the 'k' (turning it into 'c', pronounced /ts/) if it was separated from the 'e' by the 'r'? I know that ...
- 1,048
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0
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38
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Average articulation speed of fast recitation?
What is the average articulation speed for a fast recitation of a text?
For example, the liturgies of certain religions contain texts which are said quickly by individuals. What is the average ...
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0
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36
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Which languages also have a full-fledged cognitive semantic gender system similar to Maasai?
Maasai gender in typological perspective
For a restricted set of nouns, gender is immutably based on lexical
semantic features. Other nouns are lexically neutral, or have a
default gender ...
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1
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0
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80
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Is it true that cross-linguistically native speakers tend to make mistakes in writing homophones that L2 speakers do not make? Why?
Reddit: Native English speakers' problem with writing homophones
In English, mistakes usually made by native speakers in writing but not by L2 learners:
eg. their/ they’re/ there, should of/ should ...
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2
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91
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Which tonal languages have 4+ tones and complicated tone sandhis/ tone changes/ grammatical tones?
Tone sandhi: change related to surrounding tonal environment
Tone change: change related to derivational/ inflectional morphology
It seems that both tone sandhi and tone change are inversely ...
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3
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1
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84
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Any language with some segments reserved exclusively for grammatical function only?
Usually grammatically words use a subset of the consonant/ vowel inventory (eg. In Georgian ejectives are for lexical words only) but there are African languages with tones reserved for grammatical ...
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1
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0
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22
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Linguistic map of direct speech VS indirect speech
I would like to have a linguistic map of whether indirect/direct speech are commonly used in languages:
Categories:
Both indirect and direct speech
Mainly direct speech (or a mixed indirect speech ...
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-3
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1
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82
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How does Biblical Hebrew distinguish between subject and object while it has no noun case?
Biblical Hebrew is VSO without noun case and it allows pro drop. Are the following sentences the same in Biblical Hebrew?
1)
Mary’s teacher Jay-Ann ate Ann.
Mary’s teacher Jay-Ann ate it.
Mary’s ...
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0
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38
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Linguistic map of the meaning of simple juxtaposed noun (in nominal case)
Juxtaposition of nouns in its default case in a language could be a relationship of:
genitive case (Joshua teacher - Joshua’s teacher)
zero copula for predicate nominals (Joshua teacher - Joshua is a ...
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1
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145
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Why is the Hungarian word "utca" (street) supposed to be a loan-word from a Slavic language, not a native word from Proto-Uralic *utka (track/way)?
So, I know there is a reconstructed Proto-Uralic word *utka meaning "way" or "track": https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Uralic/utka
For a very long time, I was ...
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1
answer
82
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A bit about "somehow" and computer science
When I was thinking about "somehow" I find something interesting:When we don't know the methods or reasons exactly we sometimes use "somehow". In my view, it's like there is a set ...
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1
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1
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94
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Why is the Serbo-Croatian word for soap, coming from Latin "sapo", "sapun", and not something like *sopin?
So, the Latin word for soap was "sapo". I suppose the Vulgar Latin word was something like *sapone, right? But, if so, why is the Serbo-Croatian word for soap "sapun" and not ...
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1
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Could PIE gʷ, ǵ be from geminated gg where the second element then changed to /ɣ/?
Could PIE gʷ, ǵ be from geminated gg where the second element then changed to /ɣ/ and further developed into w in centum languages / into i in satem languages?
16
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1
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Are there Minoan loans into Greek?
I adopt the weak definition of pre-Greek as a so far undertimed substrate in the lexicon, implying that there may have been multiple, separate pre-Greek languages.
Given that Linear B continues from ...
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0
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1
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159
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Apophony: Latin 'imberbis'
According to RAE's dict., apophony is
Variation of the vocal tone in words of the same root due to phonetic evolution; e.g., imberbe from barba
https://dle.rae.es/apofon%C3%ADa?m=form
However, the ...
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1
answer
163
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Connection between Arabic and PIE
If two ancient languages were connected, you'd want to examine words involving the most basic concepts. There are two reasons for this:
Those sorts of words are fundamental to the language and aren'...
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1
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78
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Can initialisms be etymologies of other initialisms?
For example, is UNO (/ˈjuːnəʊ/ United Nations Organization) being used in Unesco's etymology?
Compare UN in the etymology of UNICEF and UNO itself.
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33
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How split up a textgrid file consisting of multiple annotated words into individual text grid files only consisting of a word each?
I don't know what kind of minimal working example would suffice for this question, so I will try to explain to the best of my abilities.
I have a .wav and a .textgrid file, with the sound file ...
1
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1
answer
127
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Unknown diacritics, White South African English (exam prep), need help!
I am researching White South African English´s Phonology and work with a book (A Handbook of Varities of English, Kortmann Schneider) that uses some symbols I can´t find out about.
There are usually 2 ...
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1
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Present / subjunctive and adjective / subjunctive - how these two can logically (/mathematically) mean the same thing? [closed]
In mathematics these two sentences have the same meaning:
The probability that the person is positive to the test, given that that person is sick, [...]
and
The probability that the sick person is ...
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2
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0
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83
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Is this sentence an example of inversion, or of a presentational construction?
I’m trying to understand the difference between inversion and the presentational construction.
Inversion is verb-subject order without the word “there”. For example, Down the street came a procession ...
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11
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2
answers
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Is there a tool that can generate possible but non-existent words for a chosen language?
I need to generate linguistically plausible but non-existent words in Germanic and Celtic languages (for an experimental non-word learning task to measure the effects of distraction on attention). ...
user55618
2
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0
answers
71
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Why are popular text to speech apps/functions (e.g. in Alexa) so bad at prosody?
Is it because we haven’t figured out how to do that better? (Or is something better available, but most apps don’t want to implement something higher quality, for cost or other reasons)?
2
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1
answer
117
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How are isolated languages defined when taking extinct languages into acount
Wherever I see a definition of a language isolate it's something along the lines of "A language isolate, or an isolated language, is a language that has no demonstrable genetic relationship with ...
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1
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0
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73
views
Naming of indicative tense-aspects in Spanish
According to Lingolia:
imperfect [preterite] refers to an action that was in progress in the past
[indefinite] preterite refers to an action that was completed in the past or general truths about the ...
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0
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1
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98
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How can conjugation be modeled in formal grammars?
I think of the most basic introduction to the idea that languages are combinatorial systems with typed elements to be showing people how you can take a noun and an article and form a noun phrase, and ...
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4
votes
1
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465
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Why לֶחֶם instead of לַחַם?
Biblical CaCC or CiCC syllables with a guttural second radical, usually become CaCaC in Masoretic Hebrew. For example, דַּעַת (/daʕaṯ/ < /diʕt/), פַּחַד (/paħaḏ/ < /paħd/), and so on.
The word ...
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0
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75
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How does r-colored schwa behave in the coda?
How does r-colored schwa in American English behave in the coda before a vowel for instance in expressions like
Her age
Murder of...
After an hour
etc? What does happen there? Is there insterted r ...
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0
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110
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Whatever happened to this Linear A website?
I find Pre Indo European languages fascinating and found an amazing website caled people.ku.edu/lineara or something like that, but sometime last year it was deleted for some reason. I think it said ...
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0
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76
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How can I effectively determine if I am making a sound correctly or not?
I am reading about pharyngealized consonants in Arabic and reading things like "the root of the tongue is pulled backward and downwards" and "they have a darker timber", but this ...
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1
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142
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Estimated time of seperation between Greek and Phrygian
I watched this video about the Phrygian language and I have some questions.
Did the Phrygian language use a alphabet similar to the Greek one or the reason why Phrygian is written in a similar is due ...
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7
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1
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687
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Why הָאָרֶץ instead of הָאֶרֶץ?
In Masoretic Hebrew, certain Segolates of the form CeCeC become CāCeC in pause. For example, ʔereṣ (אֶרֶץ) becomes ʔāreṣ (אָרֶץ), keleḇ (כֶּלֶב) becomes kāleḇ (כָּלֶב), geḇer (גֶּבֶר) becomes ...
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1
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91
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Stems of words with irregular inflection
Definition: A stem is the part of the word that remains after removing inflectional endings. (Introducing Morphology by Rochelle Lieber)
Inflectional endings are the suffixes we add to words to ...
2
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0
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69
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How did Slovene end up with "univerza" not "univerzitet"?
Generally European languages use cognates of "university", including those that influenced or developed alongside modern Slovene, namely French, German, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, Czech and ...
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0
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80
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Are there syntactic constituents that are not words, phrases, clauses, or sentences?
I'm studying syntax and trying to understand the relationship between constituents and traditional grammatical units.
After some reading, I deduced but wasn't able to verify: If a linguistic unit is ...
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0
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34
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How does coordination affect syntax?
everyone!
I have a question about identifying independent clauses when some elements are being coordinated by "and".
Let me provide some expamples:
John and Laura like pizza. (Is this one ...
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0
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72
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Syntax analysis of a sentence with a lot of infinitival forms
I don't know if this is the right forum for this type of questions, but I was wondering if someone could give me a hand analysing the following sentence:
It was perhaps an incautious suggestion to ...
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0
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76
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A specific term for the Old Saxon svarabhakti
Does exist a specific term for the Old Saxon svarabhakti (PGmc *berg bereg, *harm haram) like for Russian "polnoglasie" (PSl *berg bereg, *sorm sorom)?
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1
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Is there a term for "digraphisation”?
Is there a term for "digraphisation", where the orthographic representation of a phoneme shifts from one letter to two letters?
For example, Middle English <e> to New English <ee>...
2
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0
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70
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What does it mean for feet to be required to be aligned at the right edge of the word?
In "Winnebago accent and Dorsey's law" (John Adelrete, 1995), he writes
Furthermore, the reason why an initial subminimal foot is not permitted is because there is a constraint which ...
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0
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Courses that explain the basics of and linguistic jargons in-depth and with their etymology?
I don’t know if this is the place to ask this but I don’t know where to else to ask.
Are there are any linguistics courses that are primarily focused on proto-indo-European but not any one language ...
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1
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54
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Praat Scripting Question: Any clue on how to debug this error? (Formant value extraction)
New to Praat Scripting here, so I am not entirely sure if I am going about this in the most efficient manner. I am using a Praat script to extract formant values at specific time intervals like 10%, ...
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0
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94
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Could you give me some advice on my hypothesis about P-stranding in Brazilian Portuguese?
I finished my Master's about a year ago and I'm going to present my hypothesis at the Konstanz Linguistics Conference next October. I am very nervous about it because it's my first presentation at a ...
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1
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172
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What do Semitic languages do when the grammar requires a consonant cluster which would contradict Sonority Sequencing Principle?
I am interested, how do Semitic languages deal with the situation when the grammar form requires a word to end in a consonant cluster, but the third consonant of the root is more sonorous than the ...
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3
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1
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193
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Why didn’t ארד become a segolate?
Numbers 26 contains the name ארד, pronounced /ʔard/.
Biblical CVCC syllables always become Segolates (of the form CVCeC) in Masoretic Hebrew. For example, Masoretic אֶרֶץ /ʔereṣ/ comes from Biblical /...
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0
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104
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How frequent is the Accusativus cum Infinitivo (AcI) in non-IE languages?
The accusativus cum infinitivo (AcI) is a famous construction known from Latin and Classical Greek, and it also occurs less frequently in Germanic languages. In many cases it cannot be translated ...
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0
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79
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How frequent is the double accusative in non-IE languages?
Double accusatives are well-known from many European languages like Latin, Classical Greek, or German. There are some classes of verbs that allow for that, typical members are verbs meaning to teach ...
- 32k
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0
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71
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What is the difference between ATR and faucalization?
What differentiates between ATR and faucalized voice on one hand, and RTR and harsh voice on the other?
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1
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999
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Is "gametonym" the usual linguistic term for a spousal name?
In many cultures one's personal name may change upon marriage. A change commonly seen among English speakers is to drop one's family name and replace it with that of the spouse. In other languages ...
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