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1500 questions
7
votes
2 answers
What does it mean when a phoneme represented by one IPA is "phonetically" a different IPA?
I have been studying Hungarian and its pronunciation for a long time, using references such as the Hungarian Phonology Wikipedia page and comparing that to the General American Phonology page.
The Vowels section of the Hungarian Phonology page has…
David R
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7
votes
3 answers
How does PIE *kʷ in **wĺ̥kʷos change to PGmc. *f in *wulfaz?
wĺ̥kʷos
The word *wĺ̥kʷos is a thematic accented zero-grade noun perhaps derived from the adjective *wl̥kʷós ‘dangerous’ (compare Hittite walkuwa ‘dangerous’, Old Irish olc ‘evil’, Sanskrit [script?] (avṛká) ‘safe’, literally, ‘not wild’, वृकतात्…
archenoo
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7
votes
2 answers
What is dependency grammar and what are the possible relationships?
I have just started studying dependency grammar and I am really struggling with the relationship types and trees. I have only ever drawn classic syntactic trees so I keep getting confused. Could you recommend any resources that have dependency…
Anonymous
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7
votes
1 answer
Sociolinguistics of pre-handover Hong Kong cinema and dialogue in non-Cantonese Chinese “dialects”
I have always heard that mutual intelligibility between the Sinitic languages of China is low. However, I am confused by the sociolinguistics of Hong Kong cinema in 1980s and 1990s. Films from that period often contain extensive dialogue in pure…
user21126
7
votes
0 answers
Why do some theophoric names put the verb first?
Across several Afro-Asiatic languages, it used to be common to use entire sentences as personal names, usually with a deity involved. For example, the emperor Nebuchadnezzar's name in Akkadian was Nabû kudurri uṣṣur "may Nabû protect my heir". The…
Draconis
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7
votes
0 answers
How is Donald Duck's voice produced, if not by buccal speech?
The Disney character Donald Duck is well known for his nigh unintelligible voice, which was originated by actor Clarence Nash in the 1930s. I have always heard this manner of speaking described as buccal speech, where air is squeezed through the…
Psychonaut
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7
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3 answers
What is the most commonly accepted synonym or synonymous phrase in linguistics for "wh-question"?
The term "wh-question" seems transparent enough for English speakers, but reeks of English language chauvinism. I have heard such questions referred to as "information questions," "content questions, and "question-word questions," but I don't…
James Grossmann
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7
votes
1 answer
Why does Polish language not use letters Č, Š, and Ž?
Why does the Polish language not use the letters Č, Š, and Ž, and instead uses Cz, Sz, and Ż/Rz? Why has the Polish language never adopted the Czech convention to use caron/háček, despite being similar to Czech? Which are reasons for that?
Poiponen
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7
votes
4 answers
Is "illegal" an example of nasal place assimilation in English?
I've read that English has a nasal place assimilation phonological rule,
n → m / _p,b,m
etc.
I was shown an example "illegal", apparently nasal place assimilation of the prefix "in-" prefixing "legal"
Apparently in medieval Latin the word was…
minseong
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7
votes
2 answers
Why do some languages lack family name markers?
This is an extension of the questions that I have asked in the German and French communities: some languages have a subset of family names that are indistinguishable from given names, occasionally resulting in confusion. E.g., when talking about…
Roger V.
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7
votes
6 answers
Can animacy be grammatical or must it always be natural?
Animacy has come up in a few recent questions, especially in comparison to gender. One interesting thing that turned up in the comments on those questions was whether or not animacy can sometimes be purely grammatical.
Let me compare with gender…
hippietrail
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7
votes
1 answer
Origin of the family name affix "tom"
During my mathematics research, I've come across the mathematician Tammo tom Dieck. I have never come across the family name affix "tom", neither Wiktionary nor light googling give me anything conclusive, and it is also not listed on Wikipedia's…
Lukas Miaskiwskyi
- 173
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7
votes
0 answers
I'm confused by the term 'adjunct' as used in A Student's Introduction to English Grammar (2nd Edition 2022)
According to the authors of the book, adjuncts are divided into two kinds: modifiers, which are thoroughly integrated into the syntactic structure of clauses, and supplements, which are much more loosely connected to the sentences in which they’re…
IMissedmyflight
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7
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3 answers
Are there any languages where verbs in the past form are used with the future tense?
I have learned that in the Galician Ukrainian dialect the verbs in past tense are used in the future. Are there any other languages with the same structure?
For example:
"Будеш з нами їв?" = "Will you ate with us?" (not "Will you eat with…
Kurovsky
- 173
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7
votes
1 answer
Limits of historical linguistic reconstruction
It is a well-known and widely repeated fact that the linguistic reconstruction associated with the comparative method is no longer effective for large temporal depths (informally estimated to be between 6000 and 1000 years, depending on the number…
Davius
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