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Personal vs. Demonstrative Pronouns

I've read in a number of places (e.g. Wikipedia) that Proto-Indo-European had first and second-person personal pronouns, but no third-person pronouns. Instead, a system of anaphoric demonstrative pronouns, ancestors of English third-person…
Justin Olbrantz
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Why are sound changes regular?

Say, there is a word that used to be pronounced [ten] but gradually shifted to [tin]. I get it. There is always variety in how people pronounce words. Throw in some population dynamics, and the median of this variety gradually shifts over…
marcusque
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What's the term for finding an attestation of a word that predates the earliest known one?

Certain dictionaries make a point of citing the earliest known written usage of a particular word. Sometimes, after the dictionary is published, someone tracks down an even earlier attestation of the word (which may end up getting cited in the next…
Psychonaut
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Evidence that ø and œ are separate phonemes in French?

Are there any minimal pairs between ø and œ or other evidence that these are separate phonemes? I have been studying French, and so far it seems like ø is found in open syllables and œ is found in closed syllables. Wikipedia counts them as separate…
Theme
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How many Latin words have Greek roots?

I was wondering how many Latin (both Classical and Medieval varieties) words have Greek roots. Is Greek the common root of most IE languages?
Ascendant
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What to call an adjective that is a participle of a verb that is no longer used?

While answering the question How often do native speakers use the word “to scathe”? Is it OK if I use it instead of “to injure”?, I described "scathing" and "unscathed" as "fossils", because while they clearly originated as participles of the verb…
IMSoP
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Is the second “ρ” in “διάρροια” from “διά” + “ῥέω” due to an assimilation?

Or which phenomenon is causing this? Is there a known reason or rule behind this?
k.stm
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How to Tell Apart Voiced Consonants and Unaspirated Unvoiced Consonants

In languages like Hokkien that use all of the following consonants: /p/, /b/, and /ph/, how do you tell apart /p/ and /b/? Someone once taught me a trick where you say, "spy" and "buy" over and over again, but I still can't hear a difference. I read…
KureKotake
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Are there languages that wouldn't use present tense to describe what is in a picture?

Since "present tense" might not be meaningful for some languages, the question could better be phrased as "Are there languages that wouldn't describe the actions in a picture with the same tenses or structures that they would use to describe actions…
Pere
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Is there a name for when a 'c' becomes an [s] sound in words like rusticity, when originally it was a 'c' in rustiC?

I know it's a sound change, but is there a specific name for it? It's for an assignment I'm writing on the phonological transparency of the suffix -ity.
Emily
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What does 'MSP' stand for in the context of Chinese parts of speech?

The Part-Of-Speech Tagging Guidelines for the PennChineseTreebank(3.0) uses several acronyms without defining them. I am a hobbyist student of Chinese linguistics as part of my study of Chinese. I cannot figure out what MSP stands for. They say that…
Xavier Taylor
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What does Eastern Aramaic have to say about "(definite) articles are acquired, not lost"?

The current answers on Definite/indefinite articles vs. inflections agree that (definite) articles are acquired by languages, not lost. I'm wondering what Eastern Aramaic has to say about this. Semitic nouns can be in the absolute (default) or the…
Keelan
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“Reconstruction” of an attested and well studied language

I wonder has anyone ever tried to reconstruct Latin language via data on modern Romance languages as if we know nothing about what Latin actually was. Both as a fun exercise and as a method to test improve our reconstruction methodologies. If not, …
shabunc
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Northumbrian pronunciation of ge-/gi- prefix and -g suffix

I'm working on a musical setting of Cædmon's Hymn, and I'd like to have the primary setting be in the Northumbrian dialect of its earliest written example (the 737 "Moore" Bede manuscript). I'm pretty familiar with West Saxon's pronunciation rules,…
Necarion
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(Why) did the Thai script convert Sanskrit द /d/ to /th/ and then introduce its own character for /d/?

The first section of the Thai alphabet/abugida seems to follow Sanskrit pretty closely, with just a couple of additions. I believe that Sanskrit had the consonant /d/, which is represented by द in the Devanagari script and became ท in the Thai…
JD2000
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