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

[Sumelic]

It seems to be unclear. It's possible that the current form actually represents a merger of the OE present participle (with the ending changed to -ing) and the OE gerund (with the a- prefix lost, in a similar manner to how the ge- prefix of past participles was lost). There is some discussion here: progressive forms: participle or gerund? with some links to academic work.

[HoskhMatriarch]

It seems to be unclear. It's possible that the current form actually represents a merger of the OE present participle (with the ending changed to -ing) and the OE gerund (with the a- prefix lost, in a similar manner to how the ge- prefix of past participles was lost). There is some discussion here: progressive forms: participle or gerund? with some links to academic work.

Yes, thanks. The person saying there never was a preposition is annoying though. That's what the a- prefix was, it was short for "on", which is also what „am“ is in the German ones („am“ = „an dem“ = on the). I wonder how exactly the participle ending got changed to -ing though. It seems kind of random.


Does anyone have anything about the origins of suppletive morphology? And does anyone know if there's a good reason abstract nouns formed from verbs are feminine in Indo-European languages, while concrete nouns formed from verbs are generally masculine? Mostly I'm wondering if it's a universal (or at least common) thing or just an IE thing.

[Squall]

Is W a legitimate letter?

The original Latin alphabet had 23 letters and did not have J, V and W.
J and V were introduced during the Middle Ages because of sound changes.

W is a ligature of two V. It is called "double U", and U was a V-shaped letter in Latin before the introduction of V for /v/.
However, Æ and Œ are ligatures too, but they are independent letters in some languages.
Ñ and Ç are letters with diacritic, but they are independent letters in some languages. Ñ is named "eñe" in Spanish rather than "N with tilde".
Ð and Ŋ are letters in some languages that use the Latin alphabet.

When Esperanto was created, it used Ŭ for /w/ rather than W. English was not the most important language during that time.

Therefore, I conclude that W was introduced by the English language.
Nowadays, W is in any keyboard and it is a basic letter in any character encoding methods.
Furthermore, languages that do not need W use it for loanwords. The same does not happen to Ñ and Æ, which are often written as N and AE in loanwords.


*It is interesting that English has no common words or native words with a sequence of two V.

[MrKrov]

Protip: questions about about legitimacy are usually misguided and inane.
I'm not sure there's really a question you haven't already answered yourself however oddly tho.

[HoskhMatriarch]

Of course <w> is not a legitimate letter. Uue should all uurite it as <uu>. Douun uuith <w>, everything should look like Althochdeutsch texts (or ƿe could use the Runic letter Ƿynn like ƿe ƿere all Anglo-Saxons, that ƿould also be cool. Alſo, ƿe need ſome long s, and more ligatures. Ƿe could even ƿrite in Blackletter. Sans ſerif is not a legitimate font).

Also, I think <w> was invented for German and introduced to English by the French to displace Ƿynn for looking too much like a <p>.

Well, here's Wikipedia on it anyways: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/W#History

[eldin raigmore]

Of course <w> is not a legitimate letter. Uue should all uurite it as <uu>. Douun uuith <w>, everything should look like Althochdeutsch texts (or ƿe could use the Runic letter Ƿynn like ƿe ƿere all Anglo-Saxons, that ƿould also be cool. Alſo, ƿe need ſome long s, and more ligatures. Ƿe could even ƿrite in Blackletter. Sans ſerif is not a legitimate font).

Also, I think <w> was invented for German and introduced to English by the French to displace Ƿynn, which people seemed to be fine with because it looks less like a <p>.

Well, here's Wikipedia on it anyways: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/W#History

I think Fe should use the "digamma" (F) for that sound. After all, in some kinds of Greek gamma Γ is pronounced a lot like Fhat you have called ƿynn; and the original digamma seems to have been meant for that sound. (How it got to mean a voiceless labiodental fricative, I don't knoF.)
MeanFhile, Fhy don't Fe go back to using the same letter (f) to represent labiodental fricatifes Fhether foiced or foiceless? Let it be foiced Fhen it's interfocalic, and unfoiced otherFise.

[HoskhMatriarch]

Of course <w> is not a legitimate letter. Uue should all uurite it as <uu>. Douun uuith <w>, everything should look like Althochdeutsch texts (or ƿe could use the Runic letter Ƿynn like ƿe ƿere all Anglo-Saxons, that ƿould also be cool. Alſo, ƿe need ſome long s, and more ligatures. Ƿe could even ƿrite in Blackletter. Sans ſerif is not a legitimate font).

Also, I think <w> was invented for German and introduced to English by the French to displace Ƿynn, which people seemed to be fine with because it looks less like a <p>.

Well, here's Wikipedia on it anyways: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/W#History

I think Fe should use the "digamma" (F) for that sound. After all, in some kinds of Greek gamma Γ is pronounced a lot like Fhat you have called ƿynn; and the original digamma seems to have been meant for that sound. (How it got to mean a voiceless labiodental fricative, I don't knoF.)
MeanFhile, Fhy don't Fe go back to using the same letter (f) to represent labiodental fricatifes Fhether foiced or foiceless? Let it be foiced Fhen it's interfocalic, and unfoiced otherFise.

Uue should use <uu> and not <F> for <w> because I uuould rather my uuriting look like Althochdeutsch than have something that looks like a capital <f> everyuuhere. I guess each can uurite as they uuant though. But, uuith the <f>, English has a phonemic contrast betuueen /f/ and /v/ nouu. Although, it uuould not be aesthetically terrible to pronounce the uuord voiceless [fɔɪ̯slɛs] (I am also guessing that foiceless is the antonym of foist).

[qwed117]

Stop Please


W is a legitamate letter, like C and Q.

[Keenir]

Does anyone have anything about the origins of suppletive morphology? And does anyone know if there's a good reason abstract nouns formed from verbs are feminine in Indo-European languages, while concrete nouns formed from verbs are generally masculine? Mostly I'm wondering if it's a universal (or at least common) thing or just an IE thing.

nothing is universal, except Hydrogen; everything else has exceptions.

But, uuith the <f>, English has a phonemic contrast betuueen /f/ and /v/ nouu.

it wouldn't be utterly terrible to have /v/ without /f/

[gach]

Is W a legitimate letter?
...

And of course, G is originally just a C with an added diacritic to mark voicing. So I guess it shouldn't really be thought as an independent letter either, whatever that means.

[HoskhMatriarch]

Does anyone have anything about the origins of suppletive morphology? And does anyone know if there's a good reason abstract nouns formed from verbs are feminine in Indo-European languages, while concrete nouns formed from verbs are generally masculine? Mostly I'm wondering if it's a universal (or at least common) thing or just an IE thing.

nothing is universal, except Hydrogen; everything else has exceptions.

But, uuith the <f>, English has a phonemic contrast betuueen /f/ and /v/ nouu.

it wouldn't be utterly terrible to have /v/ without /f/

No, all /v/ should become /f/. That also opens things up to get rid of /w/ by changing it to /v/.

But still, does anyone have anything on suppletive morphology?

[Ahzoh]

Does anyone have anything about the origins of suppletive morphology? And does anyone know if there's a good reason abstract nouns formed from verbs are feminine in Indo-European languages, while concrete nouns formed from verbs are generally masculine? Mostly I'm wondering if it's a universal (or at least common) thing or just an IE thing.

nothing is universal, except Hydrogen; everything else has exceptions.

But, uuith the <f>, English has a phonemic contrast betuueen /f/ and /v/ nouu.

it wouldn't be utterly terrible to have /v/ without /f/

No, all /v/ should become /f/. That also opens things up to get rid of /w/ by changing it to /v/.

But still, does anyone have anything on suppletive morphology?

Ies, let's co back to Latin spelling. It vvas mvch better then.

[GrandPiano]

Ies, let's co back to Latin spelling. It vvas mvch better then.

/w/ and /u/ weren't distinguished in Latin orthography, so "was" would be written <VAS>.

[alynnidalar]

ALSONOSPACES

[HoskhMatriarch]

ALSONOSPACES

YESVECANVRITELICEROMANSVITHNOSPACESNOLOWERCASENOCERTAINLETTERSANDNOPUNCTUATION

(Actually, we should really not do that.)

I just forgot if languages have Suffixaufnahme on things other than genitives if it's not mandatory to have it in all contexts (such as the languages that only have Suffixaufnahme when genitives are moved away from what they modify). However, I can't remember which page in my Suffixaufnahme book the thing that I am either remembering or misremembering is on.

[HoskhMatriarch]

OK, does anyone have anything on numeral systems? I can't get Janko Gorenc to talk to me and I want to make up some interesting numbers without just copying German, Danish, or Latin (or English for that matter, since English's system is infinitely more interesting than the two-ten-one of languages like Turkish and Mandarin).

[Imralu]

Can anyone who knows Arabic please check this for me?

I just made a track with some Arabic vocals in it (as well as English, German, French and Turkish) and I want to check that they're correct. I don't know any Arabic and I googled and got these sentences ...

• أهلاً وسهلاً بالإخوة اللاجئين
  
  أَهْلًا وَسَهْلًا

... and then I put them into this speech generator, which is pretty damn good but obviously not perfect.

Here's the (semi-)finished product: Demidron - Refugees Welcome

I basically just want to make sure that the Arabic is correct and normal and the speech generator gave me at least understandable recordings. The Arabic should say "Welcome, refugees" (in a friendly way, and I read that addressing everyone as "brothers" is friendly and appropriate even for mixed sex groups) and then simply "welcome". I'm very impressed with the quality of the recordings - they sound like real people, but I can't tell if the intonation is natural in Arabic (or reliably in French or Turkish for that matter, but they sound fine-ish to me).

Thanks in advance!

Edit: Solved by a real-life friend from Syria. Apparently all good.

[Keenir]

OK, does anyone have anything on numeral systems?

i literally own the book on that. (well, one copy of it)

I can't get Janko Gorenc to talk to me and I want to make up some interesting numbers without just copying German, Danish, or Latin (or English for that matter, since English's system is infinitely more interesting than the two-ten-one of languages like Turkish and Mandarin).

2-10-1?

does your language (Hoskh?) have a base number? write that down.

now, what base number did you almost give to the language? write that down.

okay, now if your almost base# is smaller, then jot down the multiples of that number...these will get names that don't match all the other numbers. (example: if your base is 10, and your almost base was 7, then 14, 21, 28,etc might be, respectively, 7&1, 7&2, 7&3,etc)

whereas, if your almost base is larger, then give unique names to all the numbers from 1 up to the almost base, and then use the base to name everything else. (example: in English, 1-12, and then everything from there until you hit a gross, is base 10)

[MrKrov]

I can't get Janko Gorenc to talk to me and I want to make up some interesting numbers without just copying German, Danish, or Latin (or English for that matter, since English's system is infinitely more interesting than the two-ten-one of languages like Turkish and Mandarin).

2-10-1?

It's how 21 and by extension other numbers are formed.

[Cikkernok]

My language, Zuthenian, is very reduplication-happy. However, syllable shapes are quite restricted. Only nasal coda's are allowed, as well as ʔ and ç. This, of course, yields problems now and then.

I want to get rid of practically all consonant clusters. Certain monosyllabic verbs were reduplicated to form agent nouns. For instance, the historical verb *pek could be reduplicated to *pekpek. Now, over time sound change should work its magic on *pekpek. This, together with the progressive restriction of syllable shapes means –kp- needs to go.

So, I am struggling over the question wether a more plausible result would be ['pɛʔ.pɪç], ['pˀɛ. pɪç] or even ['pə.ʔɛ.pɪç]. Personally, I slightly favor the first option, because it seems like a consize option, but I am having a very hard time actually pronouncing it. What would you say?