(L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here [2010-2019]

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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Xonen »

Vlürch wrote: 12 Dec 2017 11:26
Xonen wrote: 11 Dec 2017 18:43Now, perhaps this is to some degree a matter of taste, but having been originally introduced to linguistics by Tolkien and Zompist back when the internet was young, I can't help but feel that inconsistent use of diacritics when creating an orthography is, at best, a rookie mistake.
I'd agree if it wasn't universally done in pretty much literally every language that uses diacritics. I mean, sure, Finnish is consistent, but that's only because Finnish has the smallest phonemic inventory in Europe and likely of any language officially written using the Latin alphabet... but when you consider that Estonian, which is more consistent by writing /y/ as <ü>, is less consistent in using the weird ass letter <õ> for /ɤ/...
The way I see it, an umlaut marks vowel fronting, a tilde marks unrounding. Granted, the latter is used on only one letter - but then, a rule that only applies to one thing pretty much by definition can't have any exceptions. So where's the inconsistency?

sangi39 wrote: 12 Dec 2017 01:10
Xonen wrote: 11 Dec 2017 18:43
Vlürch wrote: 11 Dec 2017 13:12but considering the fact that misspellings and lack of font support for easily typable letters like İ, ı, Öö and Üü have literally gotten people killed
Yikes, what? [:S]
I think Vlürch was referring to this unfortunate incident (and apparently it's not the only time incomplete support of <ı> has caused issues)
Yeah, that's what I meant.
Uh... Based on that account, I'd say the lack of support for <ı> was a contributing factor to the misunderstanding, but what actually got people killed was whatever the hell needs to be wrong with a family for them to start stabbing each other over something this stupid. What the actual fuck?

Apparently Nazarbayev personally decided that no matter what, it's pushed through. Maybe he has a fetish for apostrophes or something, but I used to think he was the kind of leader more countries could do with, but then he pulls this shit...
Well yeah, that's the problem with dictators. They can do as they damn well please, no matter how many apostrophes it happens to result in for everyone else.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by gestaltist »

The answer is probably really simple and obvious but I couldn't find anything.

I have envisioned an "inverted Genitive" for Nakarian, and I am looking for a real-world equivalent. Basically, the idea is to not mark the possessor but the possessed object. It also changes the head of the phrase from the possessed thing to the possessor:

normal situation: John's hat = John-GEN hat
Nakarian situation: John hat-POSS

Does any natlang do that? I'm looking for examples and also terminology to call this thing.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by WeepingElf »

gestaltist wrote: 12 Dec 2017 21:04 The answer is probably really simple and obvious but I couldn't find anything.

I have envisioned an "inverted Genitive" for Nakarian, and I am looking for a real-world equivalent. Basically, the idea is to not mark the possessor but the possessed object. It also changes the head of the phrase from the possessed thing to the possessor:

normal situation: John's hat = John-GEN hat
Nakarian situation: John hat-POSS

Does any natlang do that? I'm looking for examples and also terminology to call this thing.
That's a construct state, and it exists in Hebrew and many other Semitic languages.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by gestaltist »

WeepingElf wrote: 12 Dec 2017 21:42
gestaltist wrote: 12 Dec 2017 21:04 The answer is probably really simple and obvious but I couldn't find anything.

I have envisioned an "inverted Genitive" for Nakarian, and I am looking for a real-world equivalent. Basically, the idea is to not mark the possessor but the possessed object. It also changes the head of the phrase from the possessed thing to the possessor:

normal situation: John's hat = John-GEN hat
Nakarian situation: John hat-POSS

Does any natlang do that? I'm looking for examples and also terminology to call this thing.
That's a construct state, and it exists in Hebrew and many other Semitic languages.
Thanks. Does the possessor become the head of the phrase in Semitic languages, though? I don't think that's the case. Happy to be proven wrong, though...
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Davush »

gestaltist wrote: 12 Dec 2017 21:47
WeepingElf wrote: 12 Dec 2017 21:42
gestaltist wrote: 12 Dec 2017 21:04 The answer is probably really simple and obvious but I couldn't find anything.

I have envisioned an "inverted Genitive" for Nakarian, and I am looking for a real-world equivalent. Basically, the idea is to not mark the possessor but the possessed object. It also changes the head of the phrase from the possessed thing to the possessor:

normal situation: John's hat = John-GEN hat
Nakarian situation: John hat-POSS

Does any natlang do that? I'm looking for examples and also terminology to call this thing.
That's a construct state, and it exists in Hebrew and many other Semitic languages.
Thanks. Does the possessor become the head of the phrase in Semitic languages, though? I don't think that's the case. Happy to be proven wrong, though...
I don't know how the head is determined, but the possessed thing takes normal case marking in Arabic, while the possessor is invariably in the genitive (which probably means it's not the head?):

bayt-u l-rajul-i
house-NOM DEF-man-GEN
'the man's house'

raʔaytu bayt-a l-rajuli
see.1p.PAST house-ACC DEF-man-GEN
'I saw the man's house'
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Post by esoanem »

Vlürch wrote: 12 Dec 2017 11:26
Xonen wrote: 11 Dec 2017 18:43Now, perhaps this is to some degree a matter of taste, but having been originally introduced to linguistics by Tolkien and Zompist back when the internet was young, I can't help but feel that inconsistent use of diacritics when creating an orthography is, at best, a rookie mistake.
I'd agree if it wasn't universally done in pretty much literally every language that uses diacritics. I mean, sure, Finnish is consistent, but that's only because Finnish has the smallest phonemic inventory in Europe and likely of any language officially written using the Latin alphabet... but when you consider that Estonian, which is more consistent by writing /y/ as <ü>, is less consistent in using the weird ass letter <õ> for /ɤ/... well, I've yet to see any natural language with an orthography that's perfectly 100% consistent, especially when it comes to diacritics.
Spanish? The acute marks unpredictable stress, the diaresis marks hiatus (rather than diphthongisation) and the tilde's only used in ñ which is officially a separate letter anyway. That all seems pretty consistent to me; the only improvement I can think of in that regard is using <l̃> instead of <ll> and that is a hideous glyph and should be destroyed.

German and Swedish are also both pretty consistent, using the umlaut for vowel fronting (Swedish also has the ringed a <å> for kinda a rounded a for historical reasons). Irish is pretty consistent with acutes marking that a vowel has to be read as long. Welsh is also pretty consistent with circumflexes marking length, graves marking short vowels (where a long'd be expected), and acutes marking a stressed final vowel. Italian's also not bad with graves usually marking stress although is a bit less good than Spanish because in some cases it uses a grave instead. Icelandic's a little outdated but not too bad; acutes mark historically long vowels which have now usually a diphthong based on or a tense version of the un-acuted version. Dutch follows the same rules as Spanish

So of Western European languages, it's basically just French which is inconsistent so, well, "pretty much every language that uses diacritics" is pretty definitely bogus.
Vlürch wrote: 12 Dec 2017 11:26
Xonen wrote: 11 Dec 2017 18:43
No disagreement on this assessment, except maybe that "disgusting" is putting it a bit mildly.
Yeah, it's literally the worst orthography ever... taking cacography to a whole new level. I had no idea something so hideous could even be possible, especially for a language that already has one of the coolest-looking orthographies of all time (and definitely the best when it comes to the Cyrillic alphabet).
From all the hate I saw when this news first came out I was surprised to see it's based on the Uzbek alphabet so I think the blame probably ought to be aimed there instead.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by clawgrip »

Creyeditor wrote: 10 Dec 2017 17:05
neutloika wrote: 09 Dec 2017 23:14 Correct me if i'm wrong.
My thought experiment tells me that of a topic comment language, topicarized noun is similar to interjection.
I'm wrong if there is fusional topicarizer.
Aside suffix and vocative case.

See you later.
I think the answer is no. Someone with more knowledge about a really topic prominent might know more about it. Clawgrip maybe.
A topic is not an interjection. Though they are both similar in that they are not strictly constituents of the verb, an interjection is an entirely pragmatic phrase whose use is dependent on extralinguistic situational details, so it has no effect on the semantic content of the sentence, whereas a topic is a constituent of a clause and explicitly contextualizes the comment which follows.
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Post by Isfendil »

is a *confirmed* creole developing synthetic morphology attested? Or are most creoles we know of too young to have developed that far yet?
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Post by DesEsseintes »

Davush wrote: 13 Dec 2017 00:14
gestaltist wrote: 12 Dec 2017 21:47
WeepingElf wrote: 12 Dec 2017 21:42
gestaltist wrote: 12 Dec 2017 21:04 The answer is probably really simple and obvious but I couldn't find anything.

I have envisioned an "inverted Genitive" for Nakarian, and I am looking for a real-world equivalent. Basically, the idea is to not mark the possessor but the possessed object. It also changes the head of the phrase from the possessed thing to the possessor:

normal situation: John's hat = John-GEN hat
Nakarian situation: John hat-POSS

Does any natlang do that? I'm looking for examples and also terminology to call this thing.
That's a construct state, and it exists in Hebrew and many other Semitic languages.
Thanks. Does the possessor become the head of the phrase in Semitic languages, though? I don't think that's the case. Happy to be proven wrong, though...
I don't know how the head is determined, but the possessed thing takes normal case marking in Arabic, while the possessor is invariably in the genitive (which probably means it's not the head?):

bayt-u l-rajul-i
house-NOM DEF-man-GEN
'the man's house'

raʔaytu bayt-a l-rajuli
see.1p.PAST house-ACC DEF-man-GEN
'I saw the man's house'
Davush is correct; the possessum is the head even if it’s marked; it’s just a head-marked possessive construction.

In Turkish possessive constructions are doubly marked:

Onun kedisi
o(n)-in kedi-(s)i
3SG-GEN cat-POSS

His cat

The pronoun can be omitted and the possessed form can take case:

Kedisini gördüm.
kedi-(s)i(n)-i gör-d-im
cat-POSS.3-ACC see-PST-1s

I saw his cat.

If Nakarian (Nakaran would sound even cooler) is SOV, Turkish would be more relevant as a natlang model. If the lang is head-initial, Arabic is perfect.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Ælfwine »

Was the adoption of /i/ as the main plural in East Romance conditioned by any particular sound change or was it just the way analogy worked?

I keep reading about a change of /s/ -> /i/ in some words in East Romance, like magis -> mai in Istriot and Romanian (although this could simply be deletion of word final /s/ as in most Romance, it seems to be evaded in Old Portuguese mais.)
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Xonen »

Davush wrote: 13 Dec 2017 00:14
gestaltist wrote: 12 Dec 2017 21:47
WeepingElf wrote: 12 Dec 2017 21:42
gestaltist wrote: 12 Dec 2017 21:04 The answer is probably really simple and obvious but I couldn't find anything.

I have envisioned an "inverted Genitive" for Nakarian, and I am looking for a real-world equivalent. Basically, the idea is to not mark the possessor but the possessed object. It also changes the head of the phrase from the possessed thing to the possessor:

normal situation: John's hat = John-GEN hat
Nakarian situation: John hat-POSS

Does any natlang do that? I'm looking for examples and also terminology to call this thing.
That's a construct state, and it exists in Hebrew and many other Semitic languages.
Thanks. Does the possessor become the head of the phrase in Semitic languages, though? I don't think that's the case. Happy to be proven wrong, though...
I don't know how the head is determined, but the possessed thing takes normal case marking in Arabic, while the possessor is invariably in the genitive (which probably means it's not the head?)
It's apparently somewhat different in other Semitic languages (and modern spoken dialects of Arabic, which no longer have case endings but which still retain the construct state at least to some degree). But anyway, Wikipedia seems to confirm that the possessed noun is the head:
In Semitic languages, nouns are placed in the construct state when they are modified by another noun in a genitive construction. That differs from the genitive case of European languages in that it is the head (modified) noun rather than the dependent (modifying) noun which is marked. However, in Semitic languages with grammatical case, such as Classical Arabic, the modifying noun in a genitive construction is placed in the genitive case in addition to marking the head noun with the construct state.
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Post by gestaltist »

Thanks guys.

So it seems I'm trying to do something unprecedented by making the possessor the head? I'm worried I'm gonna break some kind of universal.
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Post by DesEsseintes »

gestaltist wrote: 13 Dec 2017 11:57 Thanks guys.

So it seems I'm trying to do something unprecedented by making the possessor the head? I'm worried I'm gonna break some kind of universal.
So “I took John’s hat” would be
I took John-ACC hat-POSS
?

If so this is probably possessor raising. This is attested. Compare English ‘He robbed me of my hat’.
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Post by clawgrip »

I'm not sure that that example works, because the object of "rob" is always the possessor. You can't normally say, "He robbed my hat," unless he took something of value out of my hat, i.e. the hat is the possessor.
Of course, if I ask you to define "rob" it is likely that the stolen object will become the direct object in your definition, e.g. "to forcefully take something from someone or somewhere" or whatever, but even so, all of this is the definition of a single word, not a language-wide pattern.
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Post by gestaltist »

DesEsseintes wrote: 13 Dec 2017 13:23
gestaltist wrote: 13 Dec 2017 11:57 Thanks guys.

So it seems I'm trying to do something unprecedented by making the possessor the head? I'm worried I'm gonna break some kind of universal.
So “I took John’s hat” would be
I took John-ACC hat-POSS
?

If so this is probably possessor raising. This is attested. Compare English ‘He robbed me of my hat’.
This is an option, but I actually envision something else. In English, you'd have the following two phrases:
1) I took John's hat.
2) I spoke to John, whose hat this is.

I.e., if you want to refer to the possessor, you need a subordinate clause to clarify. In Nakarian, it would go the other way:
1) I took the hat which belongs to John.
2) I spoke to John hat-POSS.

In actuality the 1st phrase would probably use a converb with noun incorporation instead of a subordinate clause. Something like:
I hat-ACC John-belong-CONV took.

The 2nd phrase would look something like:
I hat-POSS John-ACC spoke-to.
Spoiler:
Thanks for suggesting the name Nakaran. However, Nakar is actually the name of the planet, and Nakarian is only a temporary name until I come up with an endonym.
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Post by DesEsseintes »

clawgrip wrote: 13 Dec 2017 13:51 I'm not sure that that example works, because the object of "rob" is always the possessor. You can't normally say, "He robbed my hat," unless he took something of value out of my hat, i.e. the hat is the possessor.
Of course, if I ask you to define "rob" it is likely that the stolen object will become the direct object in your definition, e.g. "to forcefully take something from someone or somewhere" or whatever, but even so, all of this is the definition of a single word, not a language-wide pattern.
Of course. Possessor raising is not really a feature of the English language but the fact that it has verbs that take the possessor of the stolen thing (I refrain from using ‘object’) as a core argument demonstrates how easy it is for this to happen consistently in a language.

Possessor raising in French and other Romance languages would be a better example, of course:

Ils lui ont arraché les oreilles.
They pulled off his ears.

Here the possessor is raised to become the indirect object of the verb, ie a core argument rather than just a constituent of the NP. This happens in a lot of languages through a myriad of different strategies, including noun incorporation.
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Post by Iyionaku »

Vlürch wrote: 12 Dec 2017 11:26 I'd agree if it wasn't universally done in pretty much literally every language that uses diacritics. I mean, sure, Finnish is consistent, but that's only because Finnish has the smallest phonemic inventory in Europe and likely of any language officially written using the Latin alphabet... but when you consider that Estonian, which is more consistent by writing /y/ as <ü>, is less consistent in using the weird ass letter <õ> for /ɤ/... well, I've yet to see any natural language with an orthography that's perfectly 100% consistent, especially when it comes to diacritics.
Hawaiian has only got 13 phonemes. Also, Māori, Samoan and most other polynesian languages are written in the Latin Alphabet and yet beat Finnish in terms of a small phonemic inventory. (I'm not sure if Piraha also is officially written in Latin Alphabet, or if it has an official writing system at all.)
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Post by Frislander »

Iyionaku wrote: 13 Dec 2017 17:33 (I'm not sure if Piraha also is officially written in Latin Alphabet, or if it has an official writing system at all.)
I think honestly Daniel Everett's transcription is about as official as it gets really, I haven't seen the language written any other way except for that unbelievably ugly variant which has a superscript 1 or 3 after every vowel marking tone rather than the presence or absence of an acute mark (both forms are found on the Wikipedia so you can go compare).
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by clawgrip »

DesEsseintes wrote: 13 Dec 2017 15:34 Possessor raising in French and other Romance languages would be a better example, of course:

Ils lui ont arraché les oreilles.
They pulled off his ears.

Here the possessor is raised to become the indirect object of the verb, ie a core argument rather than just a constituent of the NP. This happens in a lot of languages through a myriad of different strategies, including noun incorporation.
I guess the Romance reflexives are very similar to your example and are another fairly consistent way that the possessor is raised:

:fra: Je me brosse les dents. ("I brush me the teeth.")
:esp: (Yo) me lavo las manos. ("(I) wash me the hands.")
:ita: (Io) mi sono tagliato il dito. ("(I) cut me the finger.")
:rou: (Eu) mi-am ras barba. ("(I) shave me the beard.")

Of course, in Romance reflexives, the possessum is a part of the body of the subject/possessor, but I imagine a language could adapt this strategy into a more general possessive construction.
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Post by Void »

Can anyone please explain what is going on in this sentence:

"I bring news of what would have been going to happen if you were not to have been going to change your ways."

It reads like a terrible meme, but I'm still curious.
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