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What types of evidentials tend to be used for statements about religion, mythology, etc.?
In languages that mark evidentiality morphologically, what evidential categories tend to be used for things like creation stories, myths, statements about theology ("God is good"), etc.?
It would seem that "direct experience" evidentials (visual or…
TKR
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Are there any linguists out there to help identify country of origin from syntax?
I've come here in the hope that there may be some genius amongst you who could have a fair crack at identifying a potential country of origin through speech pattern.
On the Movies&TV stack, we're trying to narrow down the origin of the mysterious…
John Smith Optional
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Is Thai a stress- or syllable-timed language, and does it matter?
We are gearing up for the new semester at the Thai university where I teach English. One course I’ll be helping out with is on English pronunciation. In the unit on sentence stress, the course textbook introduces the idea of stress-timed vs.…
neubau
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Why do most semantic theories assume no bottom/null element for mereological approaches to events?
Mereological theories of events usually assume that the domain of events forms a join semilattice with no bottom element.(Landman 2004's "Indefinites and the Type of Sets" is one of the few exceptions I've found.) There are probably good reasons…
user177
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Does Northern Kurdish actually have a paucal number?
For the past 10+ years, the Wikipedia article "Grammatical number" has stated:
Of the Indo-European languages, Kurmanji (also known as Northern Kurdish) is one of the few known languages with paucal number. For instance: car-IN-an (sometimes), cf.…
John Fortnight
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Do the qualities of a vowel determine its semivowel’s place of articulation?
[j] (the semivowel of [i]) is palatal.
[w] (the semivowel of [u]) is labial–velar.
[ɥ] (the semivowel of [y]) is labio-palatal.
Does the position of the vowel in the mouth play a part in determining its semivowel’s place of articulation?
If so, how…
Quinali Solaji
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Are L. domus and L. domō cognates?
domus
From Proto-Indo-European *dṓm, from root *demh₂- (“to build”). Cognates include Ancient Greek δόμος (dómos), Albanian dhomë (“a chamber, a room”), Sanskrit दम (dáma) and Proto-Slavic *domъ. The same Proto-Indo-European root also gave Old…
archenoo
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Why aren't conlangs very widely used?
Honestly, I don't see very many conlangs these days and I see that normal languages (Such as Welsh or Irish) are much more widely used? Why is that?
Akshat Goswami
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Why are "first-person inclusive" forms called "first-person"?
"First-person inclusive" forms are ones that refer to both the first and second person. In that case, why call them "first-person" anything? Wouldn't it be equally logical to call them "second-person inclusive"? It isn't that there's a division…
TKR
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How do syntacticians explain object pronouns in the subject position ("Me and him" or "Lui et moi")?
Me and a lot of other native English speakers sometimes use object pronouns as the subject of sentences if there's an "and" in the subject. This has been mentioned on Stack Exchange before but I don't think anyone discussed the syntactic theories of…
Jetpack
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What measures are there of similarity between languages? And where can I find data on such measurements?
Perhaps the most natural measure of similarity between two close languages is the ease with which a native speaker of one can understand the other. (This might not be symmetrical in some cases, because of the background degree of exposure or other…
John Bentin
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In Classical/Biblical Hebrew, why is CHAF not considered a guttural?
According to "A Practical Grammar for Classical Hebrew" by Jacob Weingreen, page 19, the four gutturals are ALEF (א), HEI (ה), CHET (ח), and AYIN (ע). And gutturals make a difference as to vowels on the article HA- preceding nouns, and impacts what…
NealWalters
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What parts of speech do professional jargons tend to mint?
Many English-based jargons include newly created nouns, verbs and adjectives; and re-appropriate existing English nouns, verbs, and adjectives to new ends.
I can't come up with an example of a newly minted preposition, and only one example of a…
Mike Samuel
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Government versus Agreement
Taking English as an example, as I understand things, the case of a pronominal Subject is governed by the verb—it must be nominative:
She loves elephants.
*Her loves elephants. (ungrammatical)
Conversely, the verb agrees with the grammatical…
Araucaria - him
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Indo-European languages that have innovated a nominative-accusative distinction for neuter nouns
One ubiquitous and ancient feature of Indo-European languages is a lack of contrast between the nominative and accusative for neuter nouns.
I'll restrict attention to nouns here and not independent pronouns.
This old question asks why the neuter…
Greg Nisbet
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