(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 shimobaatar »

ThatAnalysisGuy wrote: 07 Mar 2018 03:57
Parlox wrote: 06 Mar 2018 02:11
ThatAnalysisGuy wrote: 06 Mar 2018 01:58 What are the differences between a fusional and an agglutinative language?
Fusional languages encode multiple meanings in grammatical morphemes, -kio could be present tense, imperfect aspect, conditional mood. Agglutinating languages separate these into multiple morphemes.
What else characterizes a fusional language and an agglutinative one? I am planning on making at least one conlang with a fusional morphology.
Not much. Terms like these aren't the most well-defined.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Lao Kou »

shimobaatar wrote: 07 Mar 2018 04:17
ThatAnalysisGuy wrote: 07 Mar 2018 03:57
Parlox wrote: 06 Mar 2018 02:11
ThatAnalysisGuy wrote: 06 Mar 2018 01:58 What are the differences between a fusional and an agglutinative language?
Fusional languages encode multiple meanings in grammatical morphemes, -kio could be present tense, imperfect aspect, conditional mood. Agglutinating languages separate these into multiple morphemes.
What else characterizes a fusional language and an agglutinative one? I am planning on making at least one conlang with a fusional morphology.
Not much. Terms like these aren't the most well-defined.
Then again, how well-defined do terms like these need to be?

Latin -- fusional; Japanese, Hungarian -- agglutinative ('s how we learned it).

Parlox' definition seems rather workable. If you "what about this?" "what about that" with anecdotal counterexamples, then English could well become an OVS topic-comment lang. If I don't miss my guess, the question may actually be, "How does a fusional language behave?" or "What characteristics does a fusional language exhibit (as opposed to an agglutinative one)?" Aiming at something the lines of: "SOV langs tend to do this." Which is all fine. But why not just try it out?

Géarthnuns, my lang, is SOV, fusional, and does some ideosyncratic things. These have led to some revelations as to "Oh, maybe this is why SOV langs as a general rule tend to do it this way." But nothing insurmountable, and I'm sure some lang in Papua New Guinea does it my way, anyway. Just have some fun.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by All4Ɇn »

Is there any evidence that the Japanese words 貝 and 買う are etymologically related? Doesn’t seem far fetched considering their relationship in Chinese.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by esoanem »

shimobaatar wrote: 07 Mar 2018 04:17
ThatAnalysisGuy wrote: 07 Mar 2018 03:57
Parlox wrote: 06 Mar 2018 02:11
ThatAnalysisGuy wrote: 06 Mar 2018 01:58 What are the differences between a fusional and an agglutinative language?
Fusional languages encode multiple meanings in grammatical morphemes, -kio could be present tense, imperfect aspect, conditional mood. Agglutinating languages separate these into multiple morphemes.
What else characterizes a fusional language and an agglutinative one? I am planning on making at least one conlang with a fusional morphology.
Not much. Terms like these aren't the most well-defined.
Which is why I see German cited as an example of both (although its inflection is pretty clearly fusional)
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Void »

I've been using this weird system of harmony in my conlang, which I've called [the system] rhotic harmony, that means that /r/ can't (usually) follow another /r/, so the /r/ becomes /l/, and vice versa.

For example:

The stem of "rule" is vel-, but becomes verül in the infinitive form (because of the suffix /yl/).

Anyway, I wanted to ask, is this system or anything of the sorts present in an actual language? Or if it even has a name?
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by shimobaatar »

I wouldn't call this harmony. This sounds like dissimilation, which absolutely happens in a lot of natural languages. I think this kind of "liquid" dissimilation is why, for example, the first <l> in the English word "colonel" is pronounced as if it were spelled with an <r>.

Harmony would be pretty much the exactly opposite, since it's a type of assimilation. For example, if instances of /r/ caused following (or preceding, depending on the type of harmony) instances of /l/ to be pronounced as [r], and vice versa, I would call that a type of consonant harmony.
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Post by Void »

Yes, that makes sense. Thank you very much!
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by esoanem »

Similar processes are given as the reason for Spanish "arbol" from Latin "arbor" amongst others (although Spanish also has unrelated metathesis of r and l in some cases).
My pronouns are they/them/their

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

Post by shimobaatar »

Yeah, the history of the liquids in Spanish is pretty interesting. From what I've seen, sometimes Latin /l/ became a rhotic in Spanish, and Latin /r/ became Spanish /l/, for seemingly no reason. Of course, like you said, there are instances where the reason is clear, but there are a bunch of words where it just… happened, at least as far as I know.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Lambuzhao »

W00T! Fun!! :mrgreen:

These are good ole' metatheses {I think it's 'Slope Metathesis'} :

:lat:[->] :esp:
periculum [->] peligro
miraculum [->] milagro
parabola [->] palabra
crocodilus [->] cocodrilo


There's Dissimilation

arbor [->] árbol
carcer [->] carcel
stercorem [->] estiercol
locale [->] lugar
marmor [->] mármol
Mercurii (dies) [->] miércoles
turturem [->] tortola


And then there's Lambdaization
anchora [->] ancla
aratrum [->] aladro
arbitrium [->] albedrio
byrsa [->] bolsa
coriandrum [->] culantro
fratrem [->] fraile
peculiare [->] pegujal
papyrus [->] papel
robur [->] roble
rosarium [->] rosarium
taladro [->] taratrum
tenebræ [->] tinieblas

among other 'usual suspects'

ex libris J.P. Ayegui, Penny (the usual suspects)
Last edited by Lambuzhao on 08 Mar 2018 19:05, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Lambuzhao »

esoanem wrote: 08 Mar 2018 15:56 Similar processes are given as the reason for Spanish "arbol" from Latin "arbor" amongst others (although Spanish also has unrelated metathesis of r and l in some cases).
In addition, :lat: has an example of /r / - /l/ dissimilation.

The ADJZ morpheme /alis/ becomes /aris/ when the stem contains an /l/

EG
diurnalis
dualis
generalis
naturalis
navalis
nivalis
regalis

But

familiaris
linearis
lunaris
militaris
ocularis
singularis
solaris

Even when the stem has a rhotic and a liquid, the rightmost determines the proper affix

floralis
particularis
pluralis

Though there is at least one exception (from Latinity)

legalis (?!)
localis (?!?)

And at least one case of doublets (from Latinity):

linearis / linealis

And (from Modernity):

familiaris / familialis

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

Post by esoanem »

Lambuzhao wrote: 08 Mar 2018 17:26
:lat:[->] :esp:
periculum [->] peligro
miraculum [->] milagro
parabola [->] palabra
crocodilus [->] cocodrilo
There's a pretty regular pattern to most of these that (after voicing and some vowel reduction/elision) you have metathesis in rVDl. Cocodrilo doesn't really seem to be a metathesis so much as just a movement of the r (the l stays in its original location).

Also a couple of your lamdaisation examples seem not to be examples? Or at least not the same route as suggested by your post (etymologies I'm working from are from wiktionary)
Lambuzhao wrote: 08 Mar 2018 17:26 aratrum [->] aladro [this is the aragonese reflex, Spanish just loses the second r and has arado]
rosarium [->] rosarium [no change here, the only form I can find is rosario with both r's preserved]
My pronouns are they/them/their

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

Post by shimobaatar »

Creyeditor wrote: 04 Mar 2018 20:02 Velarization often means that the first part of the following vowel starts out with the tongue in the back of the mouth. For Russian at least, I often hear the velarized (non-palatalized) versions of the velar consonants like this [kɨ̯͡i ] vs. palatalized [ki]. Hope that helps a bit.
Salmoneus wrote: 04 Mar 2018 22:03 I've seen Irish given as having velarized velars.

Wikipedia, however, calls these plain velars (contrasted with palatals) with a short velar offglide, as opposed to the velarized consonants with velar offglides seen at other POAs. However, given the range of realisations across dialects, and the difficulty of actually distinguishing these sounds anyway, it seems like pretty much the same thing.

So yeah, I assume that Bolyu has velars preceded or followed (or both) by velar glides.
Many thanks to both of you for your responses!
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Post by Trebor »

Are there any good descriptions online of the morphology of Faroese? Someone has asked me to research the language as she might be going to the Faroe Islands, but, alas, I can't find anything semi-decent apart from the Wikipedia article 'Faroese grammar'--which itself isn't very helpful.

NB: Material at Google Books isn't accessible with my screenreader JAWS.

Thank you in advance.
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Post by sangi39 »

Trebor wrote: 09 Mar 2018 11:57 Are there any good descriptions online of the morphology of Faroese? Someone has asked me to research the language as she might be going to the Faroe Islands, but, alas, I can't find anything semi-decent apart from the Wikipedia article 'Faroese grammar'--which itself isn't very helpful.

NB: Material at Google Books isn't accessible with my screenreader JAWS.

Thank you in advance.
I found this PDF that looks like a good start.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Ælfwine »

GrandPiano wrote: 04 Mar 2018 19:15
Ælfwine wrote: 04 Mar 2018 08:05Another curiosity is the shift from a > uo in stressed syllables, and o > ua. I'm curious to know how this would come about regularly. Perhaps it was a > o and then o diphthongized?
o > ua resembles the o > oa (/o̯a/) sound change that Romanian had in certain environments, e.g. Latin nostram > Romanian noastră (but nostrum > nostru). Perhaps it’s related to the o > uo change that took place in many other Romance languages? Maybe something like [ɔ] > [u̯ɔ] > [u̯a]... Considering Spanish turned [u̯ɔ] into [u̯e], it doesn’t seem too unlikely.
yes this makes a lot of sense, thanks.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Omzinesý »

Ælfwine wrote: 12 Mar 2018 04:31
GrandPiano wrote: 04 Mar 2018 19:15
Ælfwine wrote: 04 Mar 2018 08:05Another curiosity is the shift from a > uo in stressed syllables, and o > ua. I'm curious to know how this would come about regularly. Perhaps it was a > o and then o diphthongized?
o > ua resembles the o > oa (/o̯a/) sound change that Romanian had in certain environments, e.g. Latin nostram > Romanian noastră (but nostrum > nostru). Perhaps it’s related to the o > uo change that took place in many other Romance languages? Maybe something like [ɔ] > [u̯ɔ] > [u̯a]... Considering Spanish turned [u̯ɔ] into [u̯e], it doesn’t seem too unlikely.
yes this makes a lot of sense, thanks.
Resembles Saami vowel shift, by the way.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Xonen »

Omzinesý wrote: 12 Mar 2018 18:35
Ælfwine wrote: 12 Mar 2018 04:31
GrandPiano wrote: 04 Mar 2018 19:15
Ælfwine wrote: 04 Mar 2018 08:05Another curiosity is the shift from a > uo in stressed syllables, and o > ua. I'm curious to know how this would come about regularly. Perhaps it was a > o and then o diphthongized?
o > ua resembles the o > oa (/o̯a/) sound change that Romanian had in certain environments, e.g. Latin nostram > Romanian noastră (but nostrum > nostru). Perhaps it’s related to the o > uo change that took place in many other Romance languages? Maybe something like [ɔ] > [u̯ɔ] > [u̯a]... Considering Spanish turned [u̯ɔ] into [u̯e], it doesn’t seem too unlikely.
yes this makes a lot of sense, thanks.
Resembles Saami vowel shift, by the way.
Yes, and a whole bunch of others, including some dialects of English (OE stān > :jam: (s)tuon). Raising and diphthongization are both rather common changes for vowels to undergo. And in general, vowels tend to change quite a lot; if you give them 2000 years, you could expect pretty much anything.
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Post by Omzinesý »

How are constructions like "I saw him sitting on a bench." analysed?

Is it "I saw him [sitting on the bench]" [sitting on the bench] modifying "him"
or "I saw [him sitting on the bench]" [him sitting on the bench] being the complement/object of "to see"
?
And why so?
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Post by shimobaatar »

Omzinesý wrote: 20 Mar 2018 11:10 How are constructions like "I saw him sitting on a bench." analysed?

Is it "I saw him [sitting on the bench]" [sitting on the bench] modifying "him"
or "I saw [him sitting on the bench]" [him sitting on the bench] being the complement/object of "to see"
?
And why so?
"I saw him sitting on a bench" is an ambiguous sentence. You seem to mean "I saw him, while he was sitting on a bench". For that interpretation of the sentence, "(sitting) on a bench" modifies "him", which is the direct object of "saw/to see". It modifies "him" because it describes something about this person. More specifically, it describes where he was when he was seen.

However, if you interpret the sentence as "I saw him, while I was sitting on a bench", then "(sitting) on a bench" modifies the verb "saw/to see", because it is thought of as describing something about the verb. In this case, it describes where the action of seeing took place.
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