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1500 questions
9
votes
2 answers
Feelings about formerly more civilized foreigners' words
Is there a name for the phenomenon described below, whereby even after centuries of development into erudite thinking, people feel that words that come from formerly more civilized foreigners are more civilized, literate, dignified, or formal than…
Michael Hardy
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9
votes
5 answers
Which non-Indoeuropean languages have noun-adjective agreement?
For example, agglutinative/fusional languages where case or possessive suffixes/endings must be attached both to a noun and all adjectives that modify it. Or any other kind of noun-adjective agreement.
Slavus
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9
votes
1 answer
Diphthongs and macrons in Hawaiian
In Hawaiian diphthongs such as
ao,
sometimes a macron (a diacritical mark, Hawaiian: kahakō) occurs:
āo.
According to Hawaiian Grammar by Pukui and Elbert, we can also have
āō
and
aō.
In practice, looking through dictionaries, it seems that āo is…
Bjørn Kjos-Hanssen
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9
votes
3 answers
Is Russian the most diverged Slavic language?
Does the Russian language have more innovations and divergent development from other languages in the Slavic branch?
I am asking, because I always had the feeling, that the tense and pronunciation in Russian is very distinct from its other Slavic…
Zlar Vixen
- 123
- 3
9
votes
1 answer
Quantitative metathesis in other languages than Ancient Greek?
The Attic-Ionic dialects of Ancient Greek underwent a sound change whereby, in a sequence of a long vowel followed by a short vowel, the quantities were switched: -V:V- became -VV:-, e.g. -e:o- > -eo:-.
Has a metathesis of this kind occurred -- or…
TKR
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9
votes
1 answer
How are dictionaries produced
What are the steps invoked in producing a dictionary?
I am primarily interested in understanding the role software plays in the production process.
Obviously a corpus for the language is first produced and this corpus needs to find a reasonable…
Baz
- 1,072
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9
votes
1 answer
Did the PIE word for "copper" mean "imitation"?
Michiel de Vaan's Etymological Dictionary of Latin has for PIE:
a̯ei̯os copper
and
a̯eimos imitation, substitute
a̯imea̯ image, copy
All three words seemingly have the same root a̯ei̯-
Are these two words related? Did the word for copper initially…
Anixx
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9
votes
2 answers
Vanishing of cases: general trend or specific to indo-European family?
Does vanishing of cases reflect a general trend across the languages or is this a false impression that one gets from the most Indo-European languages, like English and the Romance languages? A different angle: does the loss of case structure…
Roger V.
- 980
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- 18
9
votes
2 answers
Are "go" and "went" part of the same lexeme?
Are “go” and “went” part of the same lexeme, i.e. the same set of inflected forms?
Consider this brief Glottopedia entry. The entry defines its subject matter as follows:
“A lexeme is usually defined as a set of inflected word-forms that differ…
James Grossmann
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9
votes
1 answer
How does expressing possession vary across language families?
Related: https://english.stackexchange.com/q/126519/17952
Backstory:
I recently was explaining a couple of Marathi phrases to my friend,
and I realized that the language doesn't have the word "to have". We
have multiple different ways of…
Manishearth
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9
votes
1 answer
Analysis of 'fuck off has he', 'bollocks do they', and the like
Is anybody aware of published analysis of this interesting construction, which seems to require what I will loosely term swear words to work? I believe I've only heard it in British English:
A1 - Dave got a job at Roche.
B1 - Fuck off did he! (=No…
Luke Bradley
- 93
- 4
9
votes
3 answers
Is there any formally recognised concept of a “standard” translation?
It’s common to hear in translation theory that when you translate a work you change it fundamentally, for example because words have multiple meanings and very specific connotations depending on their context of use, so every translation is in some…
Julius Hamilton
- 523
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9
votes
2 answers
Are there any natural languages that mark the distinction between cataphoric and anaphoric pronouns?
Are there any natural languages that mark the distinction between cataphoric and anaphoric pronouns?
Just to make sure I got the terms straight, I looked up “cataphora” and its opposite, “anaphora,” at the Summer Institute of Linguistics’ Glossary…
James Grossmann
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9
votes
1 answer
Could anyone give examples of context-sensitive sentences that cannot be generated by context-free rules?
Could anyone give examples of context-sensitive sentences that cannot be generated by context-free rules?
To clarify, they are generated by rules including at least one that is in the form αβγ→αψγ, α,γ are not empty and we cannot find any…
XL _At_Here_There
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9
votes
1 answer
Old Norse, 'r' vs 'ʀ'?
On the Snoldelev Stone (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snoldelev_stone) is found the following inscription:
kun'uAlts| |stAin ' sunaʀ ' ruHalts ' þulaʀ ' o salHauku(m)
What is the difference between the two Rs: 'r' and 'ʀ'? I have come across them…
j4nd3r53n
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