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1500 questions
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Are there languages in which plural classifiers co-occur with numerals?
I'm aware that a number of classifer languages have what might be called "plural classifiers" which -- unlike "normal" classifier -- force a plural, count interpretation, instead of being ambiguous between a single interpretation with a mass-y…
dustinalfonso
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Outside of Modern Hebrew, do any previously dead languages have native speakers again?
What previously dead (i.e. no more native speakers) or remnant (i.e. not very well or hardly documented) languages have been revived to the point that there are native speakers?
Accounts of revival efforts show up in the popular press form time to…
MatthewMartin
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Does capitalization of nouns aid reading comprehension?
German is the only widely used language prescribing capitalization of nouns in the written language. I speak English and German fluently myself, but I can read German texts significantly faster than English ones. I also use sometimes speed reading…
Hauser
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Which languages conflate (imperfective) past and irrealis, and why?
In English, the "simple past" form of a verb can sometimes be used to convey irrealis meanings, without any preterite sense:
If I was rich, I'd buy a Porsche.
If you only knew!
I wish I was there with you.
I'd like to be able to say that he wrote…
TKR
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How do linguists determine whether a language has an indefinite article?
Given:
For those languages which have it, the indefinite article mostly if not always is derived from the numeral for "one".
Most languages have numbers but many lack articles.
How do linguists decide whether a language under investigation has an…
hippietrail
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14
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Are there natural languages that do not obey Zipf's law?
Is there a natural language which is known not to follow Zipf's law? I'm interested to see if it's really universal.
This is what Zipf's law states:
Zipf's law states that given some corpus of natural language utterances, the frequency of any word…
sashoalm
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How do computational linguists abstractly represent a language?
When building models of the evolution of languages or similar phenomena where many different languages are involved and change over time, how do computational linguists abstractly model a language?
It seems like the canonical computer science…
Artem Kaznatcheev
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The reason why Semitic languages are written right to left
I have seen a video where the host said the reason why Semitic languages are written right to left is because in the old days in that region paper-like material was scarce and people usually carved text on stone, and carving is easier from right to…
blackened
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How to explain differences in mutual intelligibility?
Suppose language A and language B belong to the same language family. And suppose the speakers of language A understand language B a lot better than the speakers of language B understand language A. How can linguists explain this phenomenon?
dobrze
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How does vowel harmony typically arise in a language?
How does vowel harmony typically arise in a language?
Here's a definition of vowel harmony from the WALS chapter on Vowel Quality Inventories: http://wals.info/chapter/2.
"When a language is said to have vowel harmony this generally means that…
James Grossmann
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Are there any papers etc analyzing Japanese as a language with noun cases rather than particles?
Japanese is often included in lists of agglutinating languages.
Many (most?) agglutinating languages are analysed as having case systems.
Of course cases and prepositions/postpositions fill the same role, identifying the job of nominals.
I have also…
hippietrail
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Do some Slavic languages have an "extra" gender distinction for animate nouns?
I seem to recall hearing and reading that certain Slavic languages including Czech treat animate nouns as something like an extra gender. Even Wikipedia in some places counts more than three genders for some Slavic languages (or used to, I will have…
hippietrail
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What is the relationship between syntax and semantics?
There are a number of positions you can take on what the relationship between syntax and semantics.
You could think that syntax is prior and so think that an expression's syntactic function determines (or, weaker, constrains) the expression's…
Dennis
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term for gibberish intended to resemble specific language
Is any term identified, among linguists, for an effect by which some speech or text has no meaning, and yet superficially resembles, by following certain patterns, speech or text from
a particular language or language group?
The following are …
brainchild
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Is there such a thing as an L colored vowel?
I am wondering about vowels with approximant sounds. I am talking about a variant of a r colored vowel. An r colored vowel is found in words like earth. But, I want to take this a step further. Is there a such thing as an l colored vowel, and is it…
Mitten File
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