(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 Ælfwine »

Zekoslav wrote: 17 Aug 2018 19:21 There's another Slavic language that distinguishes /ʧ/, /ʤ/ and /ʨ/, /ʥ/ - Serbo-Croatian. But, as is the case with Polish, the first pair aren't actually proper /ʧ/, /ʤ/ - they are apical (sometimes even truly retroflex) and slightly labialized. There's also numerous dialects that merge them into proper /ʧ/ and /ʤ/ (I distinguish them improperly since I'm bidialectal), which makes for one of the two greatest difficulties of our otherwise largely phonemic orthography.

It should be known, however, that the distinction has an extremely low functional load in S-C, so if your language is different in that regard, I say yes to the distinction, and to allophonic labialization.
Thanks for the response Zeko! Very informative. As it stands, /t͡ʃ/ occurs before the new reflexes of /ke ki/ from previous Latin /kwe kwi/, in addition it also occurs before /a/. So I imagine it has a stronger functional load than in S-C. /t͡ɕ/ is essentially previous /t͡ʃ/ that had been palatalized a second time.

/d͡ʒ/ and /d͡ʑ/ are both a bit rarer, and may be trickier to incorporate. The only word I can think of having /d͡ʒ/ at the moment is lengua -> lend͡ʒa or something.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Zekoslav »

Ælfwine wrote: 18 Aug 2018 04:53
Zekoslav wrote: 17 Aug 2018 19:21 There's another Slavic language that distinguishes /ʧ/, /ʤ/ and /ʨ/, /ʥ/ - Serbo-Croatian. But, as is the case with Polish, the first pair aren't actually proper /ʧ/, /ʤ/ - they are apical (sometimes even truly retroflex) and slightly labialized. There's also numerous dialects that merge them into proper /ʧ/ and /ʤ/ (I distinguish them improperly since I'm bidialectal), which makes for one of the two greatest difficulties of our otherwise largely phonemic orthography.

It should be known, however, that the distinction has an extremely low functional load in S-C, so if your language is different in that regard, I say yes to the distinction, and to allophonic labialization.
Thanks for the response Zeko! Very informative. As it stands, /t͡ʃ/ occurs before the new reflexes of /ke ki/ from previous Latin /kwe kwi/, in addition it also occurs before /a/. So I imagine it has a stronger functional load than in S-C. /t͡ɕ/ is essentially previous /t͡ʃ/ that had been palatalized a second time.

/d͡ʒ/ and /d͡ʑ/ are both a bit rarer, and may be trickier to incorporate. The only word I can think of having /d͡ʒ/ at the moment is lengua -> lend͡ʒa or something.
Absence of voiced affricates is another feature of late Common Slavic you could incorporate as an areal feature. Whenever a Slavic language has a voiced affricate, it is usually a latecomer originating from /ɟ/ or /dʲ/. The only exception is late Common Slavic /ʣ/, which is preserved in some languages on the periphery of the Common Slavic dialect continuum.

In fact, S-C /ʤ/ is found only in loanwords, usually from Turkish, and is absent from northwestern dialects that were never under Turkish rule. Many of these dialects still lack voiced affricates entirely, since late Common Slavic /ɟ/ merges with /j/ there - all of which is also true for Slovenian.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Ælfwine »

Zekoslav wrote: 18 Aug 2018 13:03
Ælfwine wrote: 18 Aug 2018 04:53
Zekoslav wrote: 17 Aug 2018 19:21 There's another Slavic language that distinguishes /ʧ/, /ʤ/ and /ʨ/, /ʥ/ - Serbo-Croatian. But, as is the case with Polish, the first pair aren't actually proper /ʧ/, /ʤ/ - they are apical (sometimes even truly retroflex) and slightly labialized. There's also numerous dialects that merge them into proper /ʧ/ and /ʤ/ (I distinguish them improperly since I'm bidialectal), which makes for one of the two greatest difficulties of our otherwise largely phonemic orthography.

It should be known, however, that the distinction has an extremely low functional load in S-C, so if your language is different in that regard, I say yes to the distinction, and to allophonic labialization.
Thanks for the response Zeko! Very informative. As it stands, /t͡ʃ/ occurs before the new reflexes of /ke ki/ from previous Latin /kwe kwi/, in addition it also occurs before /a/. So I imagine it has a stronger functional load than in S-C. /t͡ɕ/ is essentially previous /t͡ʃ/ that had been palatalized a second time.

/d͡ʒ/ and /d͡ʑ/ are both a bit rarer, and may be trickier to incorporate. The only word I can think of having /d͡ʒ/ at the moment is lengua -> lend͡ʒa or something.
Absence of voiced affricates is another feature of late Common Slavic you could incorporate as an areal feature. Whenever a Slavic language has a voiced affricate, it is usually a latecomer originating from /ɟ/ or /dʲ/. The only exception is late Common Slavic /ʣ/, which is preserved in some languages on the periphery of the Common Slavic dialect continuum.

In fact, S-C /ʤ/ is found only in loanwords, usually from Turkish, and is absent from northwestern dialects that were never under Turkish rule. Many of these dialects still lack voiced affricates entirely, since late Common Slavic /ɟ/ merges with /j/ there - all of which is also true for Slovenian.
I don't think /d͡ʒ/ etc. would be too uncommon, at least in the beginning. Remember the area that I am dealing with was the headquarters of the Avar Khaganate, and would've supplied the language many early Turkish loans. If there were Turks among the Avars, then that phoneme would be much more common among the Pannonian Slavic substrate (and therefore the language.) The problem I wrangle with is having a lot of instances of /d͡ʑ/ from former /d͡ʒ/, but not having a lot of instances of new /d͡ʒ/. However, I can always merge /d͡ʒ/ with /t͡ʃ/, or reduce it to /j~ʒ/ if I want. (Doesn't Portuguese/Spanish do that?)

Along with Click, we could probably reconstruct the Slavic speaking language of the Khaganate quite well, but that might be a project for another day (and only if you are interested.)
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Zekoslav »

Yes, somehow I managed to completely forget about the Avars! [:D] Concerning affricates, this is your language afterall so you're free to do whatever you want - and having a bunch of voiced affricates would make it stand out of it's neighbours. I'd say the best thing to do would be to develop a reasonably sized vocabulary to see exactly how common they are. This is something I'm struggling with in my languages, because I tend to make a detailed account of sound changes and the resulting phoneme inventories, but don't have a decent vocabulary to be able to check their frequencies.

I'd be happy to help with reconstructing Pannonian Slavic, since I have a decent knowledge of the history of Slavic languages (in fact, when I graduate, I'd like to be an Indo-Europeanist), including the more challenging bits such as accent. What's your approach with reconstructing it?
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Ælfwine »

Zekoslav wrote: 19 Aug 2018 11:10 Yes, somehow I managed to completely forget about the Avars! [:D] Concerning affricates, this is your language afterall so you're free to do whatever you want - and having a bunch of voiced affricates would make it stand out of it's neighbours. I'd say the best thing to do would be to develop a reasonably sized vocabulary to see exactly how common they are. This is something I'm struggling with in my languages, because I tend to make a detailed account of sound changes and the resulting phoneme inventories, but don't have a decent vocabulary to be able to check their frequencies.

I'd be happy to help with reconstructing Pannonian Slavic, since I have a decent knowledge of the history of Slavic languages (in fact, when I graduate, I'd like to be an Indo-Europeanist), including the more challenging bits such as accent. What's your approach with reconstructing it?
I don't expect the language to have too many Turkish influences, the Avars themselves don't seem to have had much of a role, and like their cousins the Bulgarians had likely become assimilated into their subjects. But, whatever influences they may have had upon the Pannonian Slavic language I figured might also lend itself to the rom lang.

That's awesome. Not too many slavicists (well, on my side of the pond at least.)

For the most part I am looking into the Kajkavian dialect of Croatian and the Prekmurje dialect of Slovene while trying to find common isoglosses between them, and with West Slavic as well. Some papers have helped me, including this review article, although I am trying to find more. And of course although this is an attempt at a serious reconstruction, a bit of imagination is still used. I've decided to give the language a Turkish substrate (a la Bulgarian), and that the language would probably have voiced affricates to go along with it. I'm also tempted to give the language front rounded vowels, possibly due to Avar and later Hungarian influence, but I am a little more undecided on this.

(Perhaps this can be taken to PM if you want?)
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by sangi39 »

I'm hoping some of the Japanese-knowing members of the board might be able to help with what I hope will be a quick translation of "I hope that you don't already have this [book] (already)" into Japanese, speaking to a colleague who I'd consider a relatively close friend [:)] They're moving to Japan soon, and have been learning Japanese for a couple of years (from what I can tell of their writing, they've mastered katakana and hiragana, but are still learning kanji, although their handwriting might need some work), and I've just bought them a Japanese grammar textbook to take with them, hoping it will help. I'd prefer to present it to them in Japanese, but as of yet I haven't found a translation that covers the meaning properly (a lot of what I can find at the moment covers "hope" in terms of the desiderative, which I'm not convinced this is).
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by clawgrip »

There is no translation of hope that is used in the way it is in English, and to attempt to translate it directly would be forcing English patterns of speech on Japanese. You could say something like "I apologize if you already have this." Though to be honest, it seems like an odd sentiment, if that's all you're saying. Something more Japanese might be, "It's not much, but I will be happy if it's helpful."
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Post by sangi39 »

clawgrip wrote: 20 Aug 2018 09:02 There is no translation of hope that is used in the way it is in English, and to attempt to translate it directly would be forcing English patterns of speech on Japanese. You could say something like "I apologize if you already have this." Though to be honest, it seems like an odd sentiment, if that's all you're saying. Something more Japanese might be, "It's not much, but I will be happy if it's helpful."
I'd been doing some more reading, and yeah, trying to force that version of "hope" into Japanese didn't look like it was going to work. Thanks for the suggestion on "it's not much...", that does seem like something that might be easier to translate [:)]
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by clawgrip »

Or you could more directly say something like "I'm worried that you may already have this, but..."
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Post by Omzinesý »

Basque has this nominal suffix -a that is called the article. What does it really encode? How should its function be understood?
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Post by eldin raigmore »

I’m about to cook some bistec de ribeye de res.
Isn’t “de res” redundant?
Isn’t all bistec automatically de res?
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Post by All4Ɇn »

eldin raigmore wrote: 26 Aug 2018 22:42 I’m about to cook some bistec de ribeye de res.
Isn’t “de res” redundant?
Isn’t all bistec automatically de res?
Googling around it seems that bistec usually refers to beef but has been extended to other steaks. You can easily find recipes online for bistec de cerdo and bistec de pollo. I'm not sure if this is more specific to certain dialects or not.
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Post by eldin raigmore »

All4Ɇn wrote: 26 Aug 2018 23:17
eldin raigmore wrote: 26 Aug 2018 22:42 I’m about to cook some bistec de ribeye de res.
Isn’t “de res” redundant?
Isn’t all bistec automatically de res?
Googling around it seems that bistec usually refers to beef but has been extended to other steaks. You can easily find recipes online for bistec de cerdo and bistec de pollo. I'm not sure if this is more specific to certain dialects or not.
Huh! [O.o] [O.O] [o.O]
So does “bistec” just mean “steak”, not “beefsteak”?
I did not know that!

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Post by Omzinesý »

I have had a look at some Slavic languages.
Russian, which is the only one I know even a bit, has many "y-verbs".

Russian: читать (čita-t') 'to read' , читает (čita-ye-t) 'reads'
Czech: čtat 'to read', čte 'reads'
(Serbo-)Croatian: čitati 'to read', čita 'reads'

Both sub-conjugations (adding "ye" to a stem ending in "a" and changing stem-final "a" to "e" in Czech seem to appear in Old Church Slavic. I don't know where the bare stem of in Croatian comes from. I wonder if Russian has increased the number of "ye-verbs" or Czech and many other languages have decreased them.
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Post by ixals »

There were Proto-Slavic verbs ending in -ati that had -aje- throughout its conjugation, but there were also thoe ending in -ati that had -ite or -ete. Serbo-Croatian and West Slavic changed the first to a simple -a- afaik (I guess in Czech it is because a lot of VjV sequences were reduced, as the infixed -á- is a long vowel). Czech probably regularised everything a bit more (Polish dawać - daje vs. Czech dávat - dává). East Slavic retained the original form because it didn't reduce any VjV sequence.

I also don't find a Czech verb čtat, "to read" in Czech seems to be číst everywhere I look so that might explain the irregularity here.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Zekoslav »

Omzinesý wrote: 30 Aug 2018 12:17 I have had a look at some Slavic languages.
Russian, which is the only one I know even a bit, has many "y-verbs".

Russian: читать (čita-t') 'to read' , читает (čita-ye-t) 'reads'
Czech: čtat 'to read', čte 'reads'
(Serbo-)Croatian: čitati 'to read', čita 'reads'

Both sub-conjugations (adding "ye" to a stem ending in "a" and changing stem-final "a" to "e" in Czech seem to appear in Old Church Slavic. I don't know where the bare stem of in Croatian comes from. I wonder if Russian has increased the number of "ye-verbs" or Czech and many other languages have decreased them.
Well, "to read" seems to be an irregular verb, which accounts for the obvious difference between the infinitive and the present stems, but for more regular *-ati verbs, the situation is this:

1. Russian preserves the original situation, with the stem vowel *-a-, to which endings are added: *-ti for the infinitive and *-je- for the present.

2. In all Slavic languages but East Slavic (and even there there are exceptions, not in standard Russian though) vowels contract when separated by *j, resulting in a long vowel.

This can be clearly seen in Czech's regular verbs, because Czech marks long vowels in it's orthography: dělat "to do", dělám "I do/I'm doing". The situation in standard (Serbo)-Croatian is in fact the same, but isn't clear because the language's orthography doesn't mark long vowels: čitati and čita are pronounced /tʃǐtati/ and /tʃîtaː/. Many dialects, however, shorten at least some of the unstressed long vowels, resulting in the equivalence of the infinitive and present stems.

Not marking long vowels and accent in the orthography is probably for the best, since the result would be more difficult to master than the old Greek polytonic orthography.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Clio »

Could anyone recommend some resources about Indo-European verbs? I'm especially interested in how different branches reorganized the PIE state of affairs. Books, journal articles, and free online resources will all be appreciated!
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Post by Omzinesý »

Zekoslav wrote: 30 Aug 2018 12:47
Omzinesý wrote: 30 Aug 2018 12:17 I have had a look at some Slavic languages.
Russian, which is the only one I know even a bit, has many "y-verbs".

Russian: читать (čita-t') 'to read' , читает (čita-ye-t) 'reads'
Czech: čtat 'to read', čte 'reads'
(Serbo-)Croatian: čitati 'to read', čita 'reads'

Both sub-conjugations (adding "ye" to a stem ending in "a" and changing stem-final "a" to "e" in Czech seem to appear in Old Church Slavic. I don't know where the bare stem of in Croatian comes from. I wonder if Russian has increased the number of "ye-verbs" or Czech and many other languages have decreased them.
Well, "to read" seems to be an irregular verb, which accounts for the obvious difference between the infinitive and the present stems, but for more regular *-ati verbs, the situation is this:

1. Russian preserves the original situation, with the stem vowel *-a-, to which endings are added: *-ti for the infinitive and *-je- for the present.

2. In all Slavic languages but East Slavic (and even there there are exceptions, not in standard Russian though) vowels contract when separated by *j, resulting in a long vowel.

This can be clearly seen in Czech's regular verbs, because Czech marks long vowels in it's orthography: dělat "to do", dělám "I do/I'm doing". The situation in standard (Serbo)-Croatian is in fact the same, but isn't clear because the language's orthography doesn't mark long vowels: čitati and čita are pronounced /tʃǐtati/ and /tʃîtaː/. Many dialects, however, shorten at least some of the unstressed long vowels, resulting in the equivalence of the infinitive and present stems.

Not marking long vowels and accent in the orthography is probably for the best, since the result would be more difficult to master than the old Greek polytonic orthography.
Thank you both

Now that you say it, different vowels resulting for contractions seem evident. They also give many new possibilities for conlangs' verb systems because the results of the contractions seem to be very language-specific.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Omzinesý »

Clio wrote: 30 Aug 2018 21:30 Could anyone recommend some resources about Indo-European verbs? I'm especially interested in how different branches reorganized the PIE state of affairs. Books, journal articles, and free online resources will all be appreciated!
I found Tense and Aspect in Indo-European Languages very illuminating.
https://books.google.fi/books?hl=fi&lr= ... an&f=false
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Post by Zekoslav »

The only free online resource I can remember is this page by prof. Piotr Gąsiorowski, and his blog also contains interesting information if you dig deeply. Sadly, both haven't been updated in a long time...

Other than that, you'll have to read books, most of which aren't available for free on the internet (legally...). Any good introduction to Proto-Indo-European will work, Fortson's (2004) and Ringe's (2006) are especially popular and you can find a good summary of them on Wikipedia, since they used to be accessible for free by googling their titles, probably by the author's (deliberate?) oversight.

Any detailed description of a language's development of the PIE. system will have to be found in that language's separate historical grammar.

Looking at the state of Getic, you've probably already read all of this stuff... still, I'll try to help as much as I can, and you can PM me if you need help on something specific. [:D]

EDIT: Luca Panieri's "A New Look at the Indo-European Verb" is a good book, but not easily found on the internet, and rather advanced.
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