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But what is the fact is not always clear... sometimes one could put forth good arguments for different analyses. Sometimes the arguments in favour of one analysis dominate, but other times it may be more difficult, and qualified linguists may disagree.

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constructedlanguages.net

Before being very deep in phonology, I read a Suomi24 (a net forum) discussion about analysing the Finnish long vowels. Divergent opinions appeared. I suppose the native speakers don't have any innate intuition of the analysis. They are written with two vowels so they think they are two vowels.

About the analysis, phonetically they are simply a long vowels.
Phonemically they are two vowels. Eg. makaa 'He is lying' maata 'to lie' It would be a bit complicated to analyse that so that the /aka/ becomes /a:/ while you can analyse it /k/->/ø/.
Historically most of them are two vowels, too.
If we analysed long vowels and diphtong as phonemes, we would have about 50 vowel phonemes.

Languages like Germany, I suppose Norvegian as well, analyse the long vowels as separate phonemes because they have a quality change too /u:/ vs /ʊ/. I think /a/ vs. /a:/ doesn't differ but that's the only case. As Professor Olli Aaltonen, keeps remind, the Finnish vowels differ only in length.

In Finnish the morpheme boundary can cut right through the long vowels and diphthongs: elämä-ä, partitive singular of elämä, "life". So, it is logical to say that phoneticly Finnish long vowels are sequences of two homogeneous tautosyllabic vowels.

I read somewhere that Japanese long vowels were indeed just sequences of two vowels, so there was no difference between /ō/ and /oo/. Guess it was wrong, then.

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UNUS•ET•UNICUS

Western Finnish dialects actually differentiate diphthongs and two vowel sequences:
<näin> (as a diphtong) 'so/this way'
<näin> /nä.in/ (as two vowels) 'I saw' hän näki 'he saw'

to what you said

I'd also say that sometimes one could analyse long vowels as separate phonemes, even when there's no clear qualitative difference from the corresponding short vowels. This could be the case in those dialects of English that distinguishes vowel-length. In such dialects, it's typically only one, two or three vowels or something that have contrasting length. Since vowel-lenght is not part of a general pattern, it may be simpler to analyse the long vowels as separate phonemes.

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constructedlanguages.net

I actually didn't know that. Very interesting.

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CrazyEttin's Lair

One of the major differences in the Swedish and Norwegian vowel systems are that Norwegian vowels generally keep the same quality (e.g. /ɑ/ vs. /ɑː/, /ʉ/ vs. /ʉː/) whereas the Swedish ones don't (/a/ vs /ɑː/, /ɵ/ vs /ʉː/).

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КЕРВЕНСКИЙ

That is true for high and low vowels, but not for mid vowels.
That is why I prefer Norwegian, it's phonology is way more simple than Swedish.

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UNUS•ET•UNICUS

Someone somewhere here mentioned that there are languages that mark specificity instead of definiteness. What's the deal with that?

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UNUS•ET•UNICUS

I had never realised most people had /ɵ/ until like two years ago or something. I don't do that crap.

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‹› · Ḿḿ Ńń Ĺĺ Śś Źź Ąą Ǫǫ Ųų Æ̨æ̨ Ǽǽ Œ̨œ̨ Œ́œ́ Ɣɣ Y̋y̋ Įį Şş Z̧z̧ θ
Āā Ēē Īī Ōō Ūū ↗ Ṭṭ C̣c̣ Łł Ḍḍ Ṣṣ Ẓẓ Ṇṇ Ŋŋ e˞ o˞ ʷ ʲ ʰ ə

IIRC Turkish is one of them.



What do you mean?

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I am not responsible for the accuracy of my sources; they're responsible for their own mistakes, if any, and also responsible for defending their own statements if you disagree with them.

At least on direct objects. Accusative case is used for specific direct objects. Non-specific direct object take the nominative case. There is apparently also an indefinite article. All this yields the following three -way distinction (examples from BJ Blake 'Case':

Hasan öküz-ü aldı
Hasan ox-ACC bought
'Hasan bought the ox'

Hasan bir öküz-ü aldı
Hasan INDEF ox-ACC bought
'Hasan bought and ox' (specific)

Hasan bir öküz-Ø aldı
Hasan INDEF ox-NOM bought
'Hasan bought and ox' (non-specific)

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constructedlanguages.net

How is it different from definiteness? Examples? Where can I find more information about it?

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UNUS•ET•UNICUS

Specificity means that the article is referring to a specific example of its kind. Definiteness means that the thing has already been mentioned. So, for instance:

1p. want SPEC-car

would mean that she wants a specific car, not any of the other ones. Whereas:

1p. want DEF-car

would mean that she wants the already mentioned car.

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"Wait for the starvation of glaciers, chicken hamburger Noel Weber Arthur."

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I think Solarius explained it adequately enough, nevertheless I'm going to explain it too.

Specific is a synonym for referential.


A use of a noun phrase is a specific or referential use, if the speaker has a specific one, or specific ones, in mind, to which s/he is referring.

A use of a noun phrase is a definite use, if, not only is it specific, but the speaker reasonably expects that the addressee knows to which one (or ones) the speaker is referring.

Since specificity/referentiality vs nonspecifcity/nonreferentiality, and definiteness vs indefiniteness, are largely pragmatic differences: exactly where the division between specific and nonspecific, and between definite and indefinite, is drawn, varies somewhat from language to language.



An example of a specifc but indefinite noun-phrase is "some shirts" in "I went and bought some shirts". I obviously know which shirts I bought, but I obviously don't expect you to know.



I haven't looked to see how good these are, but maybe some or even all of these:

http://www.azlifa.com/definite-indefinite-referential-generic-specific-expression/
http://www.azlifa.com/page/6/
http://www.ilg.uni-stuttgart.de/vonHeusinger/pub/pub02/specificity.php
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Colloq/Colloq0708/nagaya.html
http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/55/82/04/PDF/Definiteness.PDF
http://www.ub.edu/ccil/sites/default/files/Heusinger-Specific%20Indefinites%20-From%20Intentionality%20to%20Indexicality2012_0.pdf

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I am not responsible for the accuracy of my sources; they're responsible for their own mistakes, if any, and also responsible for defending their own statements if you disagree with them.

I think I understand switch-reference. It is where the verb is marked for whether or not the subject is the same as in the previous clause, right? How does it interact with relative clauses? Do I have any significant misconceptions?

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"Wait for the starvation of glaciers, chicken hamburger Noel Weber Arthur."

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Hi! New here and I have a question about the relation between two German words, aufgehoben and aufheben. I know a little tiny bit about linguistics, but almost nothing of German. Help, please!

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The body is a jar.

aufgehoben is the perfect participle of aufheben, which is the infinitive. (basically like 'rescinded' vs 'to rescind')

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КЕРВЕНСКИЙ

Fundamentally, yes.

Except that for many or most languages with switch-reference marking, the reference clause is after the marked clause instead of before it. (The direction in which the switch-reference refers is statistically correlated with the "word"-order.)

Also, the reference clause may be the anchor clause (initial clause in some 'langs, final clause in others) of the clause-chain, rather than the immediately preceding or immediately following clause.

Also, sometimes the switch-reference marker specifies not only "same subject" and "different subject", but also or instead "same object" vs "different object". (Mostly even ergative switch-reference-marking languages track "same agent vs different agent", but not all do.)

And, sometimes it marks whether the marked clause's subject is the same as or different from some other core participant of the reference clause; that is some of its values may mean "marked clause's subject is referenced clause's direct object" or "marked clause's subject is referenced clause's indirect object", as well as "marked clause's subject is referenced clause's subject" and "marked clause's subject is not a core argument of referenced clause".

And sometimes the marker distinguishes between identity and proper containment. That is, in addition to a value meaning "marked clause's subject is referenced clause's subject", another value might mean "marked clause's subject is one of or some of referenced clause's subject" if the referenced clause's subject is non-singular, and another value might mean "marked clause's subject contains referenced clause's subject" if the marked clause's subject is non-singular, and another value would mean "marked clause's subject neither contains nor is contained in referenced clause's subject".

You could look up what I wrote about Adpihi's (my conlang's) switch-reference system; it's quite typical except for one thing.
That is:
In Adpihi one value of the marker means both/either "marked clause's subject properly contains referenced clause's subject" and/or "marked clause's subject is properly contained in referenced clause's subject" and leaves the addressee to disambiguate based on gender and grammatical number; but another value means "marked clause's subject is exactly identical to referenced clause's subject".
But, in most natlangs with switch-reference marking that marks proper containment, one direction of proper containment is marked just like identity, and the addressee must disambiguate somehow; while the other direction of proper containment is marked differently.



Subordinate clauses don't occur in languages with switch-reference marking (this sentence may be "almost true" instead of "true").

A clause is subordinate to another clause if both:
it is contained in it and plays a role in it (as if a noun or an adjective or an adverb) and;
it is dependent on it (its semantics depend on the semantics of the containing clause).

In clause-chaining switch-reference-marking languages a "subordinate" clause must be either the first or the last element of the matrix clause it's embedded in and dependent on; and there can be only one such "subordinate" clause. But the languages don't strongly distinguish between co-ordination and sub-ordination. You might call it "cosubordination".



I can't tell. AFAIK nothing you've said so far indicates any significant misconception.

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BTW; if your switch-reference-marking system tracks two participants of the marked clause (like Adpihi's tracks both the marked clause's subject and its object), and mark their relationship possibly to more than one participant of the referenced clause, the clauses in a clause-chain will have to satisfy the "principle of disjoint reference". That is to say, if such a clause has two or more core participants (such as a subject and an object), then the individual or group referred to by one core participant (for instance the subject) cannot be the same as, nor be contained in, nor contain, nor overlap with, the individual or group referred to by any other core participant (such as the object).

Of course that will require that the language have good productive reflexive voice and reciprocal voice processes.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switch-reference
http://cnrs.academia.edu/YvonneTreis/Papers/766515/Switch-reference_and_Omotic-Cushitic_language_contact_in_Southwest_Ethiopia
http://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/tsl.2 (I highly recommend this book.)
http://people.wm.edu/~jbmart/papers/cr_switch_reference.pdf
http://www.sil.org/acpub/repository/Ke-A_switch_reference_marker_Mankanya.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koasati_language
http://www.wikinfo.org/index.php/Koasati_language maybe; that link may be broken.
http://ling.uni-konstanz.de/pages/proj/Sprachbau/introduction/examples.html but I'm not sure how strong these statistical implications are.
http://pilarvalenzuela.com/Shipibo_Language.html

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http://www.dogpile.com/search/web?fcoid=417&fcop=topnav&fpid=2&q=clause-chaining&ql=

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http://www.dogpile.com/search/web?fcoid=417&fcop=topnav&fpid=2&q=principle+of+disjoint+reference&ql=

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I am not responsible for the accuracy of my sources; they're responsible for their own mistakes, if any, and also responsible for defending their own statements if you disagree with them.

Thank you, Aszev! Very helpful. Sorry I posted in the wrong thread.

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The body is a jar.