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Monogenesis vs. Polygenesis
By following the comments to another question about the evolution of Khoisan languages, I learned that there is a heated debate in Evolutionary Linguistics about the origin of language. Some quick research on Wikipedia shows that there are two…
Otavio Macedo
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Why are many ancient languages so complicated compared to many modern languages?
Many ancient languages have a structure that is more complex than that of the "respective" modern languages. Modern languages like English have simpler structure, without case, gender or declination, compared to ancient languages spoken in the same…
G M
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Latin, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and French number words from eleven to nineteen - history of a bizarre, inconsistent construction
Following Sklivvz's advice, I propose here a question I made in Italian Language. Because I am not sure how I should do this, I will just copy/paste the whole lot.
Let's count in Latin from one to twenty:
ūnus/ūna/ūnum, duo/duae/duo, trēs/tria,…
randomatlabuser
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What's the term for correspondence between the written and the spoken form of a language?
Not all languages have the same degree of correspondence between the spoken and the written form.
Saying correspondence, I'm referring to the equivalence between what we write in a certain language and the way we read it.
It seems that one of…
Alenanno
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17
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What are the criteria that distinguish clitics/particles from affixes?
This question inspired me to finally ask a question that has been bothering me for years: how does one distinguish clitics and/or particles from affixes, especially when those clitics are phonologically enclitics, like Latin -que or arguably the…
Tsela
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1 answer
Is it possible to analyse Māori grammar without contrasting nouns and verbs?
In order to prepare myself for a glorious sports event this weekend, I've bought and read a book about Māori. If my sources are to be believed, Māori is relatively close to other Polynesian languages, so if you are a specialist in these or in other…
JPP
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17
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What makes a non-native English speaker sound foreign?
I'm not a native speaker. However, I have tried a lot during last 10 years to learn English at a high level of proficiency and to become fluent in conversation.
However, when I talk to some of my friends in US over Skype (found via my profession),…
Saeed Neamati
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17
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How do native speakers control gender distinction?
I get the concept of (Western) grammatical gender and why it is used in the languages I know. However, I do not understand how native speakers casually avoid mistakes in grammatical gender.
For example, I have heard in Spanish someone saying "Hay…
SunnyMoon
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Aren't all spoken languages tonal?
From my understanding, a tonal language is when a difference intonation of the word changes its meaning. Now: Italian for example (which I was told is not tonal) differentiates questions from affirmations simply on how you say the sentence (while…
AGL
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Are there signed languages that have a case system?
In a prior question I asked whether word order in ASL has a special significance, which naturally lead to another question: do any signed languages, that is languages communicated mostly if not fully through hand signs, have a case system to free up…
Andy
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Writing systems that do not preserve spoken order
Are there writing systems where there are cases of written form of words not preserving the order of speech, i.e. text(A) precedes text(B) in the written form, but speech(B) precedes speech(A)?
Only words written in the native script(s) should be…
Ryan Li
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What is the longest word without a vowel in any language?
(see edit below before you answer!)
I'm not a linguist, but I've always been fascinated by the fact that in Czech, there is a 9-letter word without a single vowel: čtvrthrst. It means "quarter of a handful" and although it's not really commonly…
honzukka
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On the idea that Classical Chinese may *not* be direct ancestor of modern Chinese languages
It's known that Literary Chinese (or Classical; wényán ), the language of historical Chinese texts, differs completely from modern Mandarin as well as from other spoken Chinese languages, not only in vocabulary but even syntax, grammatical…
melissa_boiko
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What are the chief advantages & disadvantages of describing sentences with dependency vs. phrase structure trees?
What are the chief advantages & disadvantages of describing sentences with dependency vs. phrase structure (aka. constituency) trees?
From what I've read, dependency grammar trees lack phrase nodes and mark everything as dependent on the verb. …
James Grossmann
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How do tones work in music sung in tonal languages, such as Cantonese or Mandarin Chinese?
I have not yet studied tonal languages, so it might be understandable, but when I listen to Chinese music, for example, I'm unable to perceive tones. This makes me think they are partially or completely dropped in music.
Are tones preserved or…
YI-78
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