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Are there any languages with minimal distinctions between the noun and verb categories?
Are there any languages in which the, largely Indo-European/PIE, and more compartmentalized parts-of-speech system don't work very well? In particular, I am wondering if there are any languages in which the relationship between a verb and noun to…
Morella Almånd
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Romance languages - "to mean" as "to want to say"
I have noticed this phenomenon in quite a few Romance languages, that the verb "to mean" can also be conveyed by the phrase "to want to say", regardless of the origin of the verb "to want".
For example:
(Language): (verb meaning "to mean") | (phrase…
Kenny Lau
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Why were words for the four cardinal directions in Romance languages borrowed from Old English?
Why were words for the four cardinal directions (east, west, north, south) in Romance languages borrowed from Old English? They could have used their own words derived from Latin because these words seem to belong to the basic vocabulary, and if…
Vun-Hugh Vaw
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When did the concept of constituent movement arise?
As far back as the mid 1700s, William Ward considered the following phrase in An Essay on Grammar applied to the English Language.
the flowers which a lady sitting on the seat in a garden views with attention
Ward noted that the example clearly…
Brett Reynolds
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How and when did some European languages acquire retroflex d and t?
It seems the retroflex d and t are present in some Germanic languages but not in most Romance, Slavic, and other IE languages.
I know that it occurs in IE languages of Asia, like Sanskrit, Pashto, and north Indian languages, (but not Persian), which…
vin
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How are syllabic consonants written in IPA?
Suppose that, in some hypothetical language, there were two different words:
/tump/
/tump/
What's the difference?, you might ask. In the first one, the word is one syllable long. In the second one, the word is two syllables long because the /m/ is…
Peter Olson
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Why do some languages have more speakers than others?
I am interested in languages that are used as first languages.
Does it have to do simply with population growth/sustenance of the speakers of those languages? What are the theories put forward to explain this?
Martin81
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Why did generative linguists abandon the notion of kernel sentences?
I've had a hard time finding answers to this question on Ixquick.
When I was young, transformational grammarians believed that sentences were derived from "kernel sentences," which were uniclausal, single-verb clauses with no modifiers. …
James Grossmann
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What does the term "coercion" mean in the context of Cognitive Linguistics?
I recently read a question that referred to "aspectual coercion" and looked up a paper called "Aspectual coercion and the typology of change of state predicates".
To read this paper, I'll have to know, among other things, what "coercion" means in…
James Grossmann
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Are There Ancient Greek Words Descended From Sumerian?
Does the lexicon of Ancient Greek contain words believed to be of Sumerian origin? If so, can some estimate of their number be provided?
Thanks
user6626
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Where can I find a vowel analyzer app or program?
I'm looking for a smartphone app or computer program that will listen to me pronouncing a vowel and will tell me where exactly the vowel is located in the IPA vowel chart. Does anyone know of apps or programs that do this? If so, which ones would…
joaqo
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The semantical change of сарай - "saráj" (rus., ukr.) vs. sister and donor languages: pl. 'seraj', srb-cro. 'saraj'
Much like (eng.) saray, the words derive themselves from Ottoman Turkish latinized: saray ("palace", "mansion", "castle"), which itself is derived from Persian سرای ("hall", "dwelling", "mansion", "palace", "seraglio")
The words don't deviate much…
n-hexane
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Have very many linguists studied the structure of sentence fragments used in informal conversation?
Have very many linguists studied the structure of sentence fragments used in informal conversation in a given language?
In the course of informal conversation, we English speakers use lots of sentence fragments to answer questions (e.g. (It's)…
James Grossmann
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What is the difference between "Linguistic distance" and "Lexical distance"?
The question arose in the comments here.
Fiksdal
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Do any languages have different syllable weight criteria for primary and secondary stress?
Some languages count the same syllable as "light" or "heavy" depending on the phonological process in question. For example, in Lhasa Tibetan, a CVC syllable ending in a sonorant is heavy for tone but light for stress (Gordon 2006).
My question is:…
