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1500 questions
21
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3 answers
Connection between right (opposite of left) and right (legal term)?
Does anyone know of a connection, or some sort of established historical/etymological explanation why in a few languages, "the opposite of left" and "legal term" are the same or seemingly related words? Do they all have a common root? Did they…
Rafael Emshoff
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4 answers
Where did Spanish get its /x/? Arabic influence?
Most Romance languages don't have /x/ (like the j in hijo), nor did Latin. Where did Spanish /x/ come from? Internal development, Arabic influence, or something else? Since Moroccan Arabic also has /x/, one would suspect Arabic influence; but…
Cerberus
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21
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1 answer
When does copula absence occur in African-American Vernacular English?
In what contexts can the zero copula occur in African-American Vernacular English? What rules govern its use—for example, what makes she runnin' more likely to be acceptable than ?she a runner?
Some of what I know:
Some (I think Labov, notably)…
aedia λ
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21
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1 answer
How powerful is literacy to slow down language change?
The degree of literacy of a certain community of speakers is generally proposed as one of the factors that affect the pace of language change. More specifically, literacy would slow down change, since literate people – most of them speaking the…
Otavio Macedo
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20
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6 answers
What's the global difference between nouns and verbs?
Is there a way to distinguish nouns and verbs that applies to all languages?
This problem has been occupying my mind for some time now. I'm not quite sure how to approach this question, so I'll just list out some of my thoughts that make this…
Joe
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9 answers
How is definiteness expressed in languages with no definite article, clitic or affix?
According to WALS Feature 37A: Definite Articles, 198 languages have no definite or indefinite article, and 45 have no definite article but have indefinite articles. These number excludes languages that have affixes or clitics to mark definiteness,…
Louis Rhys
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20
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8 answers
What is the difference between native language, first language, mother tongue and L1?
Note: I'm not a linguist, and I realize I might be treading in a grey area here.
I'm wondering what the differences (and/or similarities) between native language, first language, mother tongue and L1 are. The first three, I find, are often used…
DPenner1
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20
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5 answers
Is there a term for when you use grammar from one language in another?
I am reviewing a report as part of a university course, and the author of said report, a native Swedish speaker, has chosen to write the report in English rather than Swedish. Frequently, he uses grammatical structures from Swedish while writing…
Newbyte
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20
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2 answers
Are similar languages easier for children to acquire than dissimilar ones?
When a child is first learning a language in a bilingual environment, is it easier or harder to properly acquire the two distinct languages if they are more similar? For example, is it easier for a child to learn Italian and Spanish growing up in an…
Artem Kaznatcheev
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20
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3 answers
Since when did Indo-European languages start associating noun genders with male/female sexes?
Since what point in time did noun classes in Indo-European languages become associated with the sexes?
I read that greek/latin used words that translate to "kind" to describe the noun classes (as we use "gender" today), so maybe the speakers of…
minseong
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12 answers
Which languages have different words for "maternal uncle" and "paternal uncle"?
According to some early Hebrew grammarians, the Biblical Hebrew word דוד (dod) specifically means "paternal uncle," while the term מסרף (misraf) means "maternal uncle" (for example, see Ibn Ezra and Kimhi to Amos 6:10). These two words for what in…
Reb Chaim HaQoton
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20
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1 answer
Why is reconstructed PIE so typologically unusual?
I'm probably not the first to notice that a large number of features of reconstruct Proto-Indo-European are typological irregularities. The most famous of these probably being the voiceless/voiced/voiced aspirated distinction found among the stops,…
M. Sperling
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20
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8 answers
What are some interesting features that are common cross-linguistically but don't exist in English?
This is on purpose not a very concrete question, I simply want to know some interesting properties other languages have that English doesn't, or features you even think English ought to have, this can be with respect to all linguistic fields you can…
Andrea Rowlatt
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3 answers
Can the IPA represent all languages' tones?
The IPA's current tone system can show five different tone levels, and any contours formed from them.
Is there any language for which this is insufficient? In other words, is there any (known, natural, attested) language which uses six or more…
Draconis
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20
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2 answers
How did שְׁלֹמֹה (shlomo) become Solomon?
According to Wiktionary, שלמה (pronounced /ʃloˈmo/ in Modern Hebrew) is the Hebrew version of Solomon. The pronunciation seems to follow reasonably well from the spelling, and as far as I can tell, it was spelled the same way in Biblical Hebrew.
The…
mic
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