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

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Post by Creyeditor »

Ahzoh wrote: 11 Feb 2018 04:35 I'm wondering how Proto-Afroasiatic *suʔa eventually became Akkadian šū and Ge'ez wəʔətu.
Just some guessing, it is really just guesses:

Akkadian: Basically, a lot of deletion and palatalization before high vowels:
*suʔa > suʔ > šuʔ > šu

Ge'ez: deletion, reduction/diphthongization and some morphology
*suʔa > *uʔa > *wəʔa > *wəʔə > wəʔə-tu > wəʔətu
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Post by Shemtov »

Ahzoh wrote: 11 Feb 2018 04:35 I'm wondering how Proto-Afroasiatic *suʔa eventually became Akkadian šū and Ge'ez wəʔətu.
Why are you asking this from a Proto-Afroasiatic and not a Proto-Semitic standpoint? Both of them are in the Semetic branch.
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Post by Ahzoh »

Actually, those were the Proto-Semitic pronouns.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by All4Ɇn »

How, if at all, are vulgar characters taught in Chinese and Japanese schools?
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Post by WeepingElf »

All4Ɇn wrote: 12 Feb 2018 16:37 How, if at all, are vulgar characters taught in Chinese and Japanese schools?
What are "vulgar characters"?
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Post by ixals »

WeepingElf wrote: 12 Feb 2018 17:13
All4Ɇn wrote: 12 Feb 2018 16:37 How, if at all, are vulgar characters taught in Chinese and Japanese schools?
What are "vulgar characters"?
I would guess and say characters for vulgar words. "Fuck", "shit", "pussy" etc? They probably have their own characters but I can't see a school teaching characters like these. So I'd be curious to how this is done in schools!
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Post by LinguistCat »

ixals wrote: 12 Feb 2018 17:25
WeepingElf wrote: 12 Feb 2018 17:13
All4Ɇn wrote: 12 Feb 2018 16:37 How, if at all, are vulgar characters taught in Chinese and Japanese schools?
What are "vulgar characters"?
I would guess and say characters for vulgar words. "Fuck", "shit", "pussy" etc? They probably have their own characters but I can't see a school teaching characters like these. So I'd be curious to how this is done in schools!
I wouldn't know about Chinese at all and I don't know about Japanese schooling, but aren't most of these words written in kana in Japanese anyway?
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Post by All4Ɇn »

LinguistCat wrote: 12 Feb 2018 22:31I wouldn't know about Chinese at all and I don't know about Japanese schooling, but aren't most of these words written in kana in Japanese anyway?
That's definitely true so I'd imagine it wouldn't be a problem even if there are terms like that with Kanji at all. But the problem still remains in Chinese.
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Post by esoanem »

I imagine kids look them up in dictionaries and then spread them amongst themselves

edit: I doubt this is the only mechanism, but suspect most of the learning is through unofficial channels e.g. like this, or graffiti, or just from other students
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Post by GrandPiano »

LinguistCat wrote: 12 Feb 2018 22:31
ixals wrote: 12 Feb 2018 17:25
WeepingElf wrote: 12 Feb 2018 17:13
All4Ɇn wrote: 12 Feb 2018 16:37 How, if at all, are vulgar characters taught in Chinese and Japanese schools?
What are "vulgar characters"?
I would guess and say characters for vulgar words. "Fuck", "shit", "pussy" etc? They probably have their own characters but I can't see a school teaching characters like these. So I'd be curious to how this is done in schools!
I wouldn't know about Chinese at all and I don't know about Japanese schooling, but aren't most of these words written in kana in Japanese anyway?
To my understanding, Japanese doesn't really have swearwords. While there are words that could be considered vulgar, I don't believe any of them have the same strength or taboo as swearwords do in English. The closest equivalent to a swearword that I know of would be the word "kuso", which seems to have originally meant "feces" (and is probably still used in this sense, like "shit" in English), but is frequently used with a meaning similar to "damn" or "dammit". It's usually written in kana as くそ or クソ, but it can also be written with the kanji 糞. I don't believe that the character 糞 itself is vulgar, though. I'm not even sure that the word kuso is truly vulgar, since it appears in compound words like 糞虫 kusomushi "dung beetle".

Chinese, on the other hand, definitely has vulgar taboo words. Two that come to mind are 肏 cào "fuck" and 屄 bī "cunt". Not only are the words themselves obviously very vulgar, but the characters used to represent them are very suggestive: 肏 is composed of 入 "to enter" and 肉 "meat; flesh", and 屄 is composed of 尸 "body" and 穴 "hole". I don't know how these characters are treated in public education, but I doubt that they are taught at all. Even in casual writing, the actual characters I just gave for these words are rarely used. Instead, another character that is phonetically the same or similar is typically used euphemistically. Cào is often written with 操 cāo "to operate". Bī is often written with its one common homophone, 逼 bī "to compel".

Again, I don't know for certain the answer to All4En's question, but my guess would be that they simply aren't.
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Post by Omzinesý »

I read about Dothraki. In it, the nominal predicat(iv)e in the present is in Nominative but in the past it is in Ablative. This is quite interesting an idea to code tense with case. Russian and Standard Arabic also have different cases (Instrumental and Accusative respectively) as complements of the past copula but the copula is always needed in the past.
Does it really appear in natlangs that the case is the only tense marker?
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Post by All4Ɇn »

GrandPiano wrote: 13 Feb 2018 01:38Again, I don't know for certain the answer to All4En's question, but my guess would be that they simply aren't.
Thanks for your answer! I'm curious how people in China learn vulgar characters though. But considering their characters are often replaced with similar sounding ones, I'd imagine the simple answer is that most people don't know them to begin with.
Omzinesý wrote: 14 Feb 2018 17:13Does it really appear in natlangs that the case is the only tense marker?
It's not exactly the same but apparently in Māori the past tense copula is marked with a locative particle that indicates the former location of an object. So thus the only difference between "Kei hea, a Pita?" and I hea, a Pita? (both literally (literally "at where Peter?") is that one is marked with a locative particle used exclusively to mark where an object was.
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Post by Xonen »

Omzinesý wrote: 14 Feb 2018 17:13 I read about Dothraki. In it, the nominal predicat(iv)e in the present is in Nominative but in the past it is in Ablative. This is quite interesting an idea to code tense with case. Russian and Standard Arabic also have different cases (Instrumental and Accusative respectively) as complements of the past copula but the copula is always needed in the past.
Does it really appear in natlangs that the case is the only tense marker?
I don't know of a particular natlang which does this, but I'd actually be rather surprised if there isn't one. For once, I can even refer to a conlanging idea I once had: what if different forms of the verb had originally triggered different case marking, and later sound changes had then obscured the differences between the verb forms but the cases had remained distinct? Both entirely natural processes with plenty of natlang precedent, even if the combination produces a somewhat unusual result. No reason why that couldn't happen.
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Post by Omzinesý »

Thank you both.

I have a deja vu that I have actually asked that before.
An interesting feature. Must utilize.
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Post by Salmoneus »

Xonen wrote: 15 Feb 2018 03:21
Omzinesý wrote: 14 Feb 2018 17:13 I read about Dothraki. In it, the nominal predicat(iv)e in the present is in Nominative but in the past it is in Ablative. This is quite interesting an idea to code tense with case. Russian and Standard Arabic also have different cases (Instrumental and Accusative respectively) as complements of the past copula but the copula is always needed in the past.
Does it really appear in natlangs that the case is the only tense marker?
I don't know of a particular natlang which does this, but I'd actually be rather surprised if there isn't one. For once, I can even refer to a conlanging idea I once had: what if different forms of the verb had originally triggered different case marking, and later sound changes had then obscured the differences between the verb forms but the cases had remained distinct? Both entirely natural processes with plenty of natlang precedent, even if the combination produces a somewhat unusual result. No reason why that couldn't happen.
I'd be surprised if such a feature were able to remain throughout a language family for thousands of years. But there's no reason why, as you say, it couldn't temporarily emerge as a result of other, reasonable changes.
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Post by clawgrip »

Regarding "vulgar" characters and Japanese, the words that actually have characters are, as stated, not taboo to the extent of any words in English. The word mentioned above, kuso, appears for example in a word like hanakuso, (dried) snot, which is a word you will hear children use, or even parents use with children, no problem.

There are a few words that are really not to be used in regular conversation, but these are written in kana, as also mentioned above, so you don't need to learn any characters anyway.
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Post by ixals »

Does anyone know why "e" is pronounced as /ə~œ/ in the French alphabet and not as /e/ like every other letter?
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Post by shimobaatar »

ixals wrote: 18 Feb 2018 02:47 Does anyone know why "e" is pronounced as /ə~œ/ in the French alphabet and not as /e/ like every other letter?
What do you mean "like every other letter"?
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Post by ixals »

shimobaatar wrote: 18 Feb 2018 04:07
ixals wrote: 18 Feb 2018 02:47 Does anyone know why "e" is pronounced as /ə~œ/ in the French alphabet and not as /e/ like every other letter?
What do you mean "like every other letter"?
I mean the letters that end in /e/. "b", "c", "d" etc. all end in /e/ and in other languages they all rhyme with "e" (like English /diː/ and /iː/, German and even original Latin /deː/ and /eː/), so I'm just wondering why "e" is somehow /ə~œ/.
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Post by GrandPiano »

ixals wrote: 18 Feb 2018 04:15
shimobaatar wrote: 18 Feb 2018 04:07
ixals wrote: 18 Feb 2018 02:47 Does anyone know why "e" is pronounced as /ə~œ/ in the French alphabet and not as /e/ like every other letter?
What do you mean "like every other letter"?
I mean the letters that end in /e/. "b", "c", "d" etc. all end in /e/ and in other languages they all rhyme with "e" (like English /diː/ and /iː/, German and even original Latin /deː/ and /eː/), so I'm just wondering why "e" is somehow /ə~œ/.
Probably because /ə/ is the most common pronunciation of <e> in French (I don't think /œ/ is accurate... perhaps you meant [ɵ̞], which might be a more accurate transcription of French /ə/?).

Also note that, at least according to Wikipedia, those consonant letters are written <bé>, <cé>, <dé>, etc., with an acute accent, when spelled out.
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