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

[Lao Kou]

You kno yer gonna cloud (or whatever they'll call it a few yaahren from now) the Septessential Grammar, Grimoire, Chrestomathy and Lexicon of the Géarthnuns Language somewhere down the line.

I should revamp the entire format of a lexicon for the future of yaw-in-and-out-of-fictionality chrestomathy? I would for Poppins. A most delightful grimoire, that'un, she 'as -- it's a jolly holiday with Mary.

[Lambuzhao]

Just a twink, here and there.

[zyma]

twink

Perhaps you meant "tweak"?

//joke

[Lambuzhao]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twink_(gay_slang)
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=twink

Goodness. I really stuck my foot in it, there.

Yes, I meant tweak and/or pinch.
Serves me right to try an coin a portmanteau so early in the morning.

[Dormouse559]

Serves me right to try an coin a portmanteau so early in the morning.

I'm thinking of starting a list of things not to make in the morning. According to Lemony Snicket: assumptions. According to Lambuny Zhaocket: portmanteaus.

[All4Ɇn]

Just a twink, here and there.

Here a twink. There a twink. Everywhere a twink twink. It's like a Madonna concert up in here

[GrandPiano]

Serves me right to try an coin a portmanteau so early in the morning.

I'm thinking of starting a list of things not to make in the morning. According to Lemony Snicket: assumptions. According to Lambuny Zhaocket: portmanteaus.

How about lunch and dinner?

[Lao Kou]

Well, I kno it.

O thou clairvoyant one.

Just a twink, here and there.

Mercy, what sort of old lech do you take me for? My intentions are always honorable.

[All4Ɇn]

I've been reading more Italian lately and something I don't remember seeing before is starting to pop up quite a bit. I'm noticing the final -e being removed from the infinitive and seems to be especially common for past participles and infinitives. Are there any rules to this? Any situations where keeping the -e sounds weird?

[GrandPiano]

Why is it that the word "second" is borrowed from French, but all other English ordinal numbers as far as I can tell are directly inherited from Proto-Germanic?

[Sumelic]

Why is it that the word "second" is borrowed from French, but all other English ordinal numbers as far as I can tell are directly inherited from Proto-Germanic?

I think this is one of those things that doesn't really have a clear explanation. The usual explanation that I've seen offered is that "other", which is the word that was inherited from what seems to have been the PG term used for "second", was diachronically less stable than the other ordinals because of its wide semantic range, and also I would guess because it was suppletive (even though "second" is no less so, it still may be easier for a suppletive form to displace another suppletive form than it is for a suppletive form to displace a regular form. Compare perhaps the replacement of the Old English suppletive past tense of gān (to go), 'ēod-", with the modern suppletive past tense "went"). In German and Dutch, the "other" root inherited from PG has been replaced in some contexts with a ordinal derived from the "two" root and the usual "-th"-type ordinal suffix (like a hypothetical English *"twoth").

[Omzinesý]

If a language has different cases (affixes, clitcs, or particles) for the terminative(s) 'as far as X' and orienative(s) 'towards', is a normal directional case (lative, illative, allative etc.) even needed? I'm trying to ask, if the basic directional case really has just the terminative and otientative meanings, without making a difference, or is there something more?

[Xonen]

If a language has different cases (affixes, clitcs, or particles) for the terminative(s) 'as far as X' and orienative(s) 'towards', is a normal directional case (lative, illative, allative etc.) even needed? I'm trying to ask, if the basic directional case really has just the terminative and otientative meanings, without making a difference, or is there something more?

Well, the names of cases are just labels we attach to them to make it easier to talk about them. There's really no rule that a case with a certain name must have precisely the same range of functions as a case with the same name in another language, just that their core functions happened to satisfy some grammarian's idea of "close enough". Also, while there are certainly tendencies in what kinds of functions a language will most probably assign cases to, I don't really think there are specific rules on this sort of thing.

So, yes and no, I think. A third case is certainly not needed in that situation, but there's no reason why it couldn't exist, either.

[Ephraim]

If a language has different cases (affixes, clitcs, or particles) for the terminative(s) 'as far as X' and orienative(s) 'towards', is a normal directional case (lative, illative, allative etc.) even needed? I'm trying to ask, if the basic directional case really has just the terminative and otientative meanings, without making a difference, or is there something more?

Among the Northeast Caucasian languages that have separate slots for localizational (orientational) and directional case suffixes, I think most distinguish one or two types of direction approaching something. There is a lot of variation in the terminology, though. Tsez distinguishes roughly ’to’ and ’towards’; Wikipedia calls the first meaning lative and the second allative, Comrie and Polinsky calls the first allative and the second versative.

However, there are some languages that distinguish three types direction approaching something. Archi distinguishes what is conventionally labelled lative, allative, and terminative. I have only found very brief descriptions of the distinction and very few examples. The following is from Kibrik, Aleksandr E. — Nominal inflection galore: Daghestanian, with side glances at Europe and the world, in Plank, Frans (ed.) — Noun Phrase Structure in the Languages of Europe:

"Semantically, lative, allative, and terminative share the notion of approaching the orientation point, while elative and ablative share that of moving away from it, and specific terms in both groups distinguish degrees of contact in the process of movement with whatever is specified by localization relative to the orientation point. Thus, lative, unlike allative, implies some contact during the motion, while terminative implies final contact. Elative, unlike ablative, implies primary contact; translative implies spreading all over the area of localization.

[...]

LATIVE ‘to move toward LOCAL (OP)’
ALLATIVE ‘to move in the direction of LOCAL (OP) without necessarily reaching it’
TERMINATIVE ‘to move to LOCAL (OP) and reach it, but not further’
"

This is from Spencer, Andrew et al. — The Handbook of Morphology (Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics):

"lative motion into LOCN, implying attainment of that position

allative motion towards LOCN, not implying attainment of that position
terminative motion into LOCN but no further
"

This is from Bond, Oliver et al. — Archi: Complexities of Agreement in Cross-Theoretical Perspective:

"lative
‘to the location’
bošor-mi-ra-k
man(i)-sg.obl-cont-lat
‘to the man’ (lit.‘to near the man’)

allative
‘towards the location’
neqː’ʷi-tːi-ši
earth(iv).sg.obl-sup-all
‘to the land’ (lit. ‘to on the land’)

terminative
‘to the location and no further’
darc’-li-ra-kəna
post-sg.obl-cont-term
‘up to the post’
"

Khwarshi has a similar distinction. Here, the directions are usually called lative, versative and terminative.

This grammar gives some descriptions and a few examples:
https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstr ... sequence=2

"The Lative indicates motion to a location. It corresponds to the English preposition ‘to’ and ‘into’, and it has the suffixes -l /-li , which are free variants.

[...]

The Versative expresses the basic meaning ‘towards a place’ or ‘in the direction of something’. The meaning of this case is also close to that of the Lative case. The suffix of the Versative case is -γul.

[...]

Thus, the Lative refers to a definite direction, e.g. uškulλ’ol ‘school.SUP.LAT’ ‘to the school’, and the Versative means a non-specified direction ‘in the direction of uškulλ’oγul ‘school.SUP.VERS’ ‘in the direction of the school’.

[...]

The Terminative case means ‘motion until, up to something’. The Terminative case suffix is -q’a. The suffix -q’a is also used to form the terminative converb (also cf. 4.10.3.1.6)."

[sangi39]

Just a general question (watching Attack on Titan), but is Japanese /o/ sometimes unrounded?

[Ashtăr Balynestjăr]

Has anyone reconstructed useful forms for the 2du. and 3du. perfect endings in PIE? Ringe shows only *-we for the 1du., and Sihler and Fortson don’t reconstruct any dual perfect endings at all.

[clawgrip]

Just a general question (watching Attack on Titan), but is Japanese /o/ sometimes unrounded?

There is a lazy/slangy way of speaking that has vowels more open and less enunciated than usual, so this could be what you're hearing.

[GrandPiano]

For the etymology of the word "flight", Google says:

Old English flyht ‘action or manner of flying,’ of Germanic origin; related to Dutch vlucht and fly1. This was probably merged in Middle English with an unrecorded Old English word related to German Flucht and to flee, which is represented by sense 3 of the noun.

Anyone know why they suggest the existence of an unrecorded Old English word related to German "Flucht" being a part of the etymology, when it seems to me like "flight" could easily just be a direct descendant of OE "flyht" and directly cognate with German "Flucht"?

[Ashtăr Balynestjăr]

It looks like there were two different Proto-Germanic verbs, *fleuganą ‘to fly’ and *fleuhaną ‘to flee’, whose derived forms were indistinguishable when the root was directly followed by a consonant, that is, both ‘a flight’ and ‘an escape’ were *fluhtiz in Proto-Germanic.

[sangi39]

For the etymology of the word "flight", Google says:

Old English flyht ‘action or manner of flying,’ of Germanic origin; related to Dutch vlucht and fly1. This was probably merged in Middle English with an unrecorded Old English word related to German Flucht and to flee, which is represented by sense 3 of the noun.

Anyone know why they suggest the existence of an unrecorded Old English word related to German "Flucht" being a part of the etymology, when it seems to me like "flight" could easily just be a direct descendant of OE "flyht" and directly cognate with German "Flucht"?

flight (n.1)
"act of flying," Old English flyht "a flying, act or power of flying," from Proto-Germanic *flukhtiz (source also of Dutch vlucht "flight of birds," Old Norse flugr, Old High German flug, German Flug "flight"), from Proto-Germanic *flugti-, suffixed form of PIE root *pleu- "to flow."

Spelling altered late 14c. from Middle English fliht (see fight (v.)). Sense of "swift motion" is from mid-13c.. Meaning "an instance of flight" is 1785, originally of ballooning. Sense of "a number of things passing through the air together" is from mid-13c. Meaning "series of stairs between landings" is from 1703. Figuratively, "an excursion" of fancy, imagination, etc., from 1660s. Flight-path is from 1908; flight-test (v.) from 1919; flight-simulator from 1947 (originally in rocketry); flight-attendant from 1946.

flight (n.2)
"act of fleeing," c. 1200, flihht, not found in Old English, but presumed to have existed and cognate with Old Saxon fluht, Old Frisian flecht "act of fleeing," Dutch vlucht, Old High German fluht, German Flucht, Old Norse flotti, Gothic þlauhs, from Proto-Germanic *flugti-, suffixed form of PIE root *pleu- "to flow." To put (someone or something) to flight "rout, defeat" is from late 14c., the earlier verb form do o' flight (early 13c.).

Etymology 1 (fly)
From Middle English flight, from Old English flyht (“flight”), from Proto-Germanic *fluhtiz (“flight”), derived from *fleuganą (“to fly”), from Proto-Indo-European *plewk- (“to fly”), enlargement of *plew- (“flow”). Cognate with West Frisian flecht (“flight”), Dutch vlucht (“flight”), German Flucht (“flight”) (etymology 2).

Etymology 2 (flee)
From Middle English, from Old English flyht, from Proto-Germanic *fluhtiz, derived from *fleuhaną (“to flee”). Cognate with Dutch vlucht and German Flucht (etymology 1).

Looks like somewhere two verbs from Proto-Germanic merged, either in Old English or Middle English, and Google's etymology is assuming the merger happened in Middle English.