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1500 questions
16
votes
3 answers
Are there languages without words for "father" or "mother" but only "parent"?
I'd like to know if there are languages where there aren't words for father and mother, but for parent, and how one would say [something like] this to their father in that language: where's mom?
I think it could be: where is parent?
It also could…
saviosg
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Where did the nasal sound in the Portuguese word "sim" come from?
Among the descendants of the Latin word sic ("thus, so, or just like that"), only the Portuguese word sim ends with a nasal consonant. Actually, in modern Portuguese, it ends with a nasal vowel, [sĩ], which must have developed from [sim] by…
Otavio Macedo
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16
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What is markedness?
I am confused about the meaning of markedness. From the Wikipedia page I read:
The dominant term is known as the 'unmarked' term and the other, secondary one is the 'marked' term. In other words, it is the characterization of a "normal" linguistic…
gui11aume
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Replacing Chinese characters with pinyin forever as Vietnamese did
I know both languages to a certain extent. By no means I am fluent; reading is still a challenge, especially in Chinese, thus I am not allowed to firmly stand by my opinion.
I often ponder on the big loss the Vietnamese Language incurred with the…
GA1
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16
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6 answers
Is there a term for the syntax difference between English "I like you" and Spanish "Tú me gustas"?
English and Spanish each have one main verb for "to like".
In English "to like", the grammatical subject must be the one doing the appreciating:
I like her.
But with Spanish "gustar", the person appreciating must be the grammatical object:
Ella…
hippietrail
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16
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4 answers
Are there languages in which "coffee" is not a cognate of a root containing k/q and f/h/w?
Is there a language, in which the word for "coffee" does not contain the sounds k/q and f/h/v, i.e. the word has a different root?
Kiril Mladenov
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16
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2 answers
Is there a well-established metric to measure the effectiveness of a parsing algorithm?
My understanding that 100% accurate parsing (analyzing a text and creating a syntactic tree) is an impossible task for computational linguistics at this moment. However, there are many heuristics or approximation algorithms that produces good enough…
Louis Rhys
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16
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6 answers
Does Pirahã syntax contradict the principles of Universal Grammar?
The Wikipedia article on Universal Grammar cites the research by Everett (2005) about the Pirahã language:
Finally, in the domain of field research, the Pirahã language is claimed to be a counterexample to the basic tenets of Universal Grammar.…
Otavio Macedo
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16
votes
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Is there a language in which feminine is the unmarked gender?
In English and every language I speak or know well, masculine gender is unmarked, and feminine is marked, for any human referent. Is there any known language where this is the other way around? (Take for example los ricos in Spanish, "the rich". Is…
RLG
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16
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Do dialects without the meet-meat merger neutralize the distinction in some contexts?
For many dialects of English (including my own) multiple historical lexical sets are merged into one "FLEECE" set (this diaphoneme can be represented with IPA /iː/).
I've read about the basics of the "MEET-MEAT" merger, but apparently the situation…
brass tacks
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16
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Do linguists measure the relation distance between languages? How?
Sometimes, I read passages like:
Languages X, Y and Z in region A are closely related to each other, comparable to French, Italian and Spanish in Western Europe.
The discussion in the question "Do distantly related languages have a lower incidence…
Louis Rhys
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7 answers
What is LOLspeak, and does it have equivalents in languages other than English?
I can imagine a French, German, Dutch or Russian version of "teh first language born of teh internets". Does any such exist? And what is LOLspeak anyway. It clearly isn't, as it calls itself, a "language". Is it a cant? Is there, in fact, any…
TRiG
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15
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What are the arguments against Chomsky's Universal Grammar?
What are the most convincing and most popular arguments against the Innateness Hypothesis of Universal Grammar or Universal Grammar as described by Chomsky?
Lucas
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Spelling of laryngeals in Proto-Indo-European
Who introduced the notation e̯ a̯ o̯ (vowels with inverted breve below) for Proto-Indo-European laryngeals and when?
Proto-Indo-European has been reconstructed with so-called "laryngeal" consonants, spelled *h1, *h2, and *h3. These were lost in…
Damian Yerrick
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15
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4 answers
How is grammaticality judged in dead languages?
As far as I know, linguists determine grammaticality by judgement tests. Native speakers are presented with several types of utterances and, based on their intuition, they can judge each of these utterances as being grammatical or ungrammatical.
But…
Otavio Macedo
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