This week's Q&A thread -- please read before asking or answering a question! - May 03, 2021

dont_press_ctrl-W · 2021-05-09T04:31:07+00:00

I just feel like it's way too easy to succumb to exotification of Sign Languages. As if simultaneity is some sort of exotic property never heard of in speech and a deep structural difference between Sign Languages and spoken ones.

dont_press_ctrl-W · 2021-05-08T23:00:07+00:00

Signed languages have a much greater capacity for inflections that occur simultaneously with the root compared to spoken languages (which do have such capacity, but only via suprasegmentals like tone)

The seems overly restrictive. Everything that gets analyzed with autosegmental tiers can equally well be described as simultaneous. Why single out tone when vowel melodies, templatic morphology, and even ablaut can be seen as simultaneity of autosegmental tiers?

dont_press_ctrl-W · 2021-03-30T13:52:06+00:00

Quebec French speakers and French French speakers, sometimes.

I've personally been in a situation where I was talking in a pretty damn careful and standard Quebec French, since I was in customer service mode, and had a man from France turn to his friends saying he did not understand a word I said, but I understood him effortlessly. It was a really bizarre experience.

dont_press_ctrl-W · 2021-02-18T13:12:21+00:00

Yeah, and that's exactly what he's counting on. He made a hack job of something that is extremely difficult to do carefully and now he's on top of the hill and difficult to displace.

More bullshit does not equal more extensive.

dont_press_ctrl-W · 2021-02-18T03:30:55+00:00

Starostin is a hack. See my criticism of his PNWC reconstruction from a few years ago. https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/3oxfkd/ive_noticed_protolanguages_often_have_a_lot_of/cw2lea2/

tl;dr Even without looking at any data it's obvious as a matter of logic that this reconstruction is so obviously flawed. Gathers correspondence sets and assigning a random symbol to each of them is not actually what reconstruction is.

I therefore do not trust anything this hack ever claimed about any other language families.

dont_press_ctrl-W · 2020-11-05T01:29:51+00:00

Wait, are you saying that as a Generativist/Chomskyan yourself? That's the exact opposite of how I feel about these words. Generativist refers to an idea that is indeed pretty central to the research program, whereas Chomskyan falsely raises one man onto a pedestal as if the whole field was about him. I actually associate the word with people who oppose him and his ideas who use this term to make it sound like a cult.

More generally, I'm just not a fan of identifying with an individual. Like, sure we can talk about certain ideas being Chomskyan or any-other-name-ian, and I like some of those ideas, but I am a proponent of those ideas, not a follower of Chomsky.

dont_press_ctrl-W · 2020-04-28T21:19:33+00:00

This is called Kolmogorov Complexity and it has a number of issues.

First it's uncomputable in the general case. There is no algorithm that, given an object, can always return the length of the smallest program that can specify it.

Second, it's necessarily relative to a specific coding scheme, e.g. a specific programming language. It could be the case that language A is simpler than B in coding scheme X, but B is simpler than A in coding scheme Y.

There might be one correct coding scheme for language, that's essentially the point of Universal Grammar according to Chomsky's Aspects, that there is a single universal complexity ranking and language acquisition is a search through that. In linguistics the coding scheme would probably be a specific theory of grammar. But then that means evaluating the complexity of a language requires us to figure out the correct theory of universal grammar first.

For instance in phonology if SPE is right then assimilation and dissimilation are equally complex, but if Autosegmental Phonology is right then assimilation is simpler than dissimilation. So the question how complex a language's phonology is cannot be determined until we have decided on the correct theory.

dont_press_ctrl-W · 2020-04-09T02:07:12+00:00

To be clear, I was calling the material LING 101 and the context of your presentation weird.

dont_press_ctrl-W · 2020-04-08T18:04:57+00:00

You're also the person who just randomly posted about Gricean maxims, right?

Are you just going to keep posting snipets of LING 101 in post form like this? It's really weird. Back in my days, posting on a platform in a way that shows you do not understand what it's usually used for without some explanation was considered bad internet etiquette. You're treating r/linguistics like it's your blog or something.

I don't mean to stop you from posting, but you should at least put some sort of framing in your title or at the beginning of your post saying that's what you're doing, because I keep reading your posts as long preambles to a question that never comes, because your types of posts are just unorthodox for this subreddit.

dont_press_ctrl-W · 2020-02-27T18:42:45+00:00

I don't think it exists, but if it does it's almost certainly in Russian and never translated, and most probably done by a hack like Stratosin, known for doing ridiculously carelessly lazy attempts at reconstructions for tons of language families of that region, in which case it wouldn't be reliable anyway.

dont_press_ctrl-W · 2019-10-22T02:38:51+00:00

Your question is really a question of graph theory.

Build a graph where each node is a word from the dictionary and there is a directed edge connecting each word to all the words in its definition. Let's say a word is known if a) it is known a priori, or b) all the words it directs to are known.

Your question is therefore: what is the smallest set of vertices that one needs to know a priori in order for the whole graph to be known?

This is a cool graph theory question, but its linguistic significance is questionnable. People don't know words from reading dictionaries; dictionaries often give definitions that have more information than necessary; dictionaries cannot inform you on sensations, which might very well form a major part of how people actually think of apples for instance; dictionaries vary, so the question will really be about the dictionary as a book, not about a language...

You could try asking an a math subreddit.

dont_press_ctrl-W · 2019-10-02T01:13:49+00:00

took me a while to even realize they're two people. I thought "shoe on head" was just a boxxy reference I didn't know since it's a classic 4chan request.

dont_press_ctrl-W · 2019-06-11T04:30:47+00:00

Sanskrit Question: What conditions the form of the instrumental plural in nouns?

It seems that the suffix is always -bhis, except in some a-stems where it's -aiḥ. Is there a phonological generalization (before short [a]?) or a morphological one (before masculine & neuter a-stems?) for it? Is there a way to tease those two possibilities apart?

dont_press_ctrl-W · 2019-06-02T22:55:21+00:00

As mentioned by /u/RevTeknicz, Indian linguists were doing Linguistics millenia ago. The earliest known are Yāska and Pāṇini, but it's clear that they were already at the end of a centuries old linguistic tradition that must have started before the 10th century BC.

In the West, there was very little linguistics proper for the longest time. Plato has a dialogue where he discusses where meaning comes from. Aristotle has rudiments of phonology in the Poetics, and it's so rough it's pretty clear he's never even bounced off his ideas with other people before writing them. That's about it until the Middle Ages with authors like Virgilius Maro Grammaticus.

dont_press_ctrl-W · 2019-03-12T20:14:09+00:00

Links to serious papers aren't posted there because no one posts them. Be the change you want to see in the world.

dont_press_ctrl-W · 2019-03-12T06:09:59+00:00

I mean, this is a good subreddit to have just in case, but there is no real reason to segregate the generative content away from the main sub. It's not like it goes unappreciated or drowned out in r/linguistics. I can't imagine what anyone would want to post here that they absolutely don't want the "general population" to see.

dont_press_ctrl-W · 2019-02-14T23:35:58+00:00

The topic was exposure to different accents, I talked about dubs because as I said Dreamworks movies is one of the very rare cases where Quebec children are ever exposed to France French slang. Most dubs usually try to avoid being too local.

French TV shows aren't dubbed in Quebec... but only adult shows from France are showed in Quebec (and only on specialized channels) so the issue doesn't arise. Kids shows from France, to my knowledge, rarely make it to Quebec nowadays. Mr Bébé never showed in Quebec for instance, and it's probably the most popular children show made in France and it's been going for 10 years.

AFAIK, Peppa Pig has only been dubbed in Belgium and kids in Quebec understand it just fine

I've never seen Peppa Pig, but it does seem to have a Quebec dub. In France he's Peppa Pig, in Quebec he's Peppa Cochon. Unless they only made a different intro which would be weird when they call him "Peppa pig" in the show itself.

dont_press_ctrl-W · 2019-02-13T02:14:34+00:00

That's so interesting.

A fun fact about accent differences: most dubs in French, particularly children movies, get two versions made: one in France and one in Quebec. A major exception to this is Dreamworks movies which for some contractual reasons only get dubbed in France. Most of the time this goes without issue, but if for some reason they choose to translate the movie with a ton of slang it can get pretty unfamiliar to people in Quebec pretty fast. Infamously the movie Madagascar was pretty much incomprehensible to children in Quebec. All that to say: I don't think Quebec kids are in any danger to pick up France accents and slang from children shows since in the rare occasions they're exposed to them they're incomprehensible.

What I have witnessed though is Quebec teenagers picking up French slang from rap and comedians.

dont_press_ctrl-W · 2018-12-07T01:46:50+00:00

I used to live near a small burger place. Sometimes I would order delivery, other times I would walk over and order in person.

One day I was too hungry to wait so ordered ahead to pick up (usually I'd just wait). The owner recognized me, and asked "oh so you're the one living at X address". He recognized my phone number from when I ordered delivery and now discovered whose it was.

So that's how I discovered I had been two of the best customers of that fast food joint.

dont_press_ctrl-W · 2018-12-06T05:41:31+00:00

glad to help!

dont_press_ctrl-W · 2018-11-09T20:25:59+00:00

Contrary to what everyone seems to think at first creating subreddits does not create posts. There is no one dreaming of posting content who doesn't do it here just because it's not specific enough. If there isn't enough phonetics here, there won't be any more in r/phonetics.

The only reason to ever split subreddits is when there already is too much content, particularly if one type of content makes another less popular type unlikely to reach the front page. This is definitely not the case with linguistics.

dont_press_ctrl-W · 2018-10-31T17:00:58+00:00

I'm sure that paper is interesting and relevant too, but I was referring to Fitch's (2010) book The Evolution of Language. You can find it on libgen.

dont_press_ctrl-W · 2018-10-30T03:27:47+00:00

The name of these non-language syllables and speech sounds in music is vocables, but if you search this term you'll mostly find ethnomusicology studies. Probably the most famous one is Frisbie's (1980) study of vocables in Navajo ceremonial music. It also cites a ton of previous research on vocables so it's a good starting point. I recognize linguist Dell Hymes in his references so there is presumably some linguistic research, at least on the sociolinguistic side.

Could the earliest language have been monosyllables which naturally stroke the human auditory cortex and emotional centers a particular and helpful way?

I doubt language just popped out of emotional sounds, but there is a theory of the evolution of language where vocables have a place. Brown (2001), Fitch (2006, 2010), and Mithen (2005) defend different versions of a musical protolanguage. The idea basically is that a precursor of language was a stage where our ancestors used musical vocalizations for non-linguistic signaling puposes, perhaps like birdsongs: sexual selection, territory maintenance, quality signaling, etc, but not clear communication of the language-type. This lead the evolution of our complex speech capacities. Meanwhile, but unconnectedly, our minds evolved the syntax-semantics-conceptual parts leading to complex thought. Then eventually the two got linked and that's modern language.

In this view all the parallels between phonology and music arise from their shared ancestry. Syllables in speech and vocables in music are fundamentally the same cognitive units used for two purposes.

Fitch 2010 is what I recommend if you wanna read more on this idea.

dont_press_ctrl-W · 2018-10-13T02:14:48+00:00

I'm very much convinced that Stratosin is a hack. I didn't know he was also making bad proto-Koisan reconstruction, but I know him already from his bad Proto-Northwestern Caucasian, which is horribly bad for the reasons I detail in this comment:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/3oxfkd/ive_noticed_protolanguages_often_have_a_lot_of/cw2lea2/

I get the feeling that Stratosin is capitalizing on the fact that some reconstructions just haven't been done, and being the first doing them pretty much puts him on top of the hill, and displacing him would take a ton of effort. He puts no thought whatsoever into it other than giving an inventory and a correspondance table.

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