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1500 questions
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Is there a general correlation between the number of homophones in a language and how phonetic its writing system is?
When I think of languages that have a high number of homophones, I think of Japanese, Mandarin, English and French.
And when I think of languages with relatively opaque writing systems that are not particularly phonetic, I think of Japanese,…
Sarhanis
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Indo-European prepositions: why prepositions?
In a related but different question to Indo-European prepositions: whence did they come?, why do just about all modern Indo-European languages have prepositions rather than postpositions?
PIE is believed to have been an SOV language, and like…
Justin Olbrantz
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Hebrew "shemen" versus Latin "semen"
Is the etymology of the word "semen" (eng. "seed") in Latin connected to the hebrew word שֶׁמֶן "shemen" (eng. "ointment")?
I've just read a peculiar article that attempted to make this connection:
The word for "ointment(s)" here in the Hebrew is…
André Staltz
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Which Indo European language best preserves the features of Proto Indo-European?
Among all attested Indo European languages, which one best preserves the features of Proto Indo-European? Which is most useful in the reconstruction of PIE?
Valandil
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Hearing your name in a noisy crowd: what is this called and how might it work?
I can't really formulate it any more lucid than as it is in the title, so.... I'm reading a phonetics text now, but I haven't yet got to the chapter on 'speech perception' so maybe I'll come across at least the terminology in the near future. But I…
taylor
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French dialects from west to east: no distinct breaks, blend into German?
A long time ago, I remember reading about a work that showed that there were no distinct breaks in the local dialects as one travelled from west to east across France, and how at the easternmost areas, the dialect shared more in common with German…
Glyphoglossus
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To what extent has Middle Chinese been reconstructed?
I'm currently studying Japanese and Korean for professional reasons and have become very interested in Middle Chinese as the hearth of substantial vocabulary in many East Asian languages.
Recalling my days studying Latin in high school, I've become…
Dragonsheep
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8
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What are the current hurdles to automatic audio to IPA transcription?
I have heard several people tell me that automatic segmentation and transcription to (narrow) IPA of fieldwork-quality audio is impossible at the moment, and even from laboratory-quality audio recordings for known languages it appears to be a hard…
Anaphory
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Why does "begin" have /g/ instead of /j/ if it's from PG *ginnan?
My understanding is that the reflexes of Proto-Germanic velar consonants before front vowels were usually palatal consonants in Old English, which in turn generally yield palatal or palato-alveolar consonants in Modern English, as in yellow from…
brass tacks
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What are the rules to infer the vowel in-fix in Hebrew conjugation?
Hebrew verbs are based on roots. A root can provide different verbs through processes of derivation called binyanim. Each verb can be conjugated by in-fixing vowels. For instance (using the first person singular in the present), the verbs conjugate…
neydroydrec
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What is it called when a word is used based on an extant definition which no longer actually applies? e.g. "dial" with phones
It was difficult to phrase what I mean in an accurate and precise way here.
This is similar to a fossil word, but fossil words are words which have fallen out of general use except where they are preserved in an expression. (for example fro in the…
Some_Guy
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Can two close languages be merged?
For example: Norwegian and Danish are very close. If for some reason, Norwegian and Danish people live together in the same place, after a certain time, they'll speak the same language, will they?
Follow-up question: Can two far languages be…
Huy Ngo
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8
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What do the "less-than" and "greater-than" signs mean when used as IPA vowel diacritics?
I was recently reading an academic paper on Amdo Tibetan phonetics and the author uses IPA vowel diacritics that look like "less-than" and "greater-than" signs.
Here is a picture so you know what I'm talking about:
These are narrow phonetic…
Joshua
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What is a determiner?
I asked a previous question related to this one about parts of speech. I need to figure out what a determiner (DT) is in Penn Treebank Tag Set. In the set examples found in the tag set, it appears that a determiner is a mixture of articles and…
Tyler Rinker
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What is the primary phonological difference between dialects, vowels or consonants?
Not considering things like vocabulary or syntax (if that is possible), what phonological differences make the most telling distinction between two dialects, is it the vowels or the consonants?
Informally, among English dialects, it seems that…
Mitch
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