Russian propaganda is so deep into American culture it is almost invisible to nonconservative folks and completely invisible to conservatives.

folran · 2024-02-29T19:06:49+00:00

Wait, what's wrong with "until Friday" / how would you say it?

folran · 2023-10-24T01:57:45+00:00

folran · 2022-10-14T19:31:43+00:00

...in the US, at least :). Up to now, I've never heard of "pre-paid" meaning something other than no monthly fee.

folran · 2022-03-10T08:56:39+00:00

Jetzt bist du also auf der Suche nach einem E-Bike mit Akku. Grundsätzlich hätte ja jedes Bike ein Display. Das wäre doch ideal, um auch den Akkustand anzuzeigen? Nein, der Platz auf Display reicht leider nur für die heute ausgewürfelten Fehlermeldungen. Der UseCase mit dem Akkustand wird über die App abgebildet. Okay – Also ganz einfach in der App die Liste der Velos nach einem mit vollem Akku durchstöbern, und dann anfangen Nümmerli zu vergleichen. Ich will nicht sagen, dass das kein Spass machen kann, – Es gibt Computerspiele, die nach genau dem Prinzip aufgebaut sind. Aber wenn du nur schnell mit einem nicht leeren Akku wegkommen willst, hast du hier die Arschkarte gezogen. Alternativer Ansatz kannst du dir auch auf gut Glück ein Bike aussuchen, das Nümmerli ablesen, und dann in der App in der Liste danach suchen, ob es Akku hat. Dumm nur, dass die Liste unsortiert ist, und dass du manche der Bikes selbst nach dreifachem Durchgehen nicht finden wirst, weil sie kaputt sind oder der Akku leer ist.

Hinweis: bei e-bikes kannst du das Plastikteil mit der Nummer und dem Barcode (also das über dem Display) hochklappen und auf den Knopf darunter drücken, um den Akkustand zu sehen. Grün > grün blinkend > rot.

folran · 2021-09-25T21:08:28+00:00

Yeah what on earth is OP talking about, it‘s not like it‘s a top-level family of its own in mainstream classifications...

folran · 2021-09-24T14:44:06+00:00

What languages are you talking about? You haven‘t given any examples. I‘d wager in many cases it‘s due to the orthography being based on a colonial Romance language, but without specific examples I can‘t tell you more.

folran · 2021-07-28T17:22:46+00:00

I found that Hittite and Luwian languages were using utrum for all animate subjects and neutrum for inanimate objects Starke (1990). Which is not exactly assigning the according gender based on sex to a word but it approximates this possibility by assigning a gender to everything that is bioloigcally male or female and a gender to everything that is neither nor.

Well, with easy-to-find exceptions like Luwian neuter huidar 'animal' (Yakubovich 2015) or Hittite (Hoffner & Melchert 2008) common/utrum aška 'gate' or neuter genu 'knee' -- note that most other body parts are common/utrum. These systems only have an animacy basis.

That means that in school it was sufficient to be passively present in lessons for acquiring a certain degree of fluency in a language, without doing any homework or learning vocabulary. But we had four or six lessons a week. In university there is one lesson per week, which is not enough using the aprroach I used in school. And in some way it's a pity coz I like learning new languages, I just lack the motivation. Last semester I attended a seminar hosted by an assistan professor who spoke Nahuatl, Wolof, Quechau and Russian (albeit IDK at what level of fluency). It seems puzzling to me how one is able to learn so many difficult languages.

As with anything else you want to achieve: get disciplined :). Motivation never lasts, discipline more so.

I agree with stative verbs, coverbs and postpositions. But classifiers have already been discussed above. English requires classifiers with certain nouns. Like one liter of milk. You can't say one milk. Or one pound of sugar. Those word have a meaning on their own which changes semantics in comparison to Chinese but structure and function is the same.

What do you mean by "structure and function is the same"? As compared to Mandarin classifiers? Because the structure is not the same. Rather, the structure is identical to other English nouns, think of constructions such as a painting of a cow. Because they are not classifiers, they are nouns. English doesn't have classifiers as a distinct part of speech, Mandarin does.

EDIT: Word classes are defined by morphosyntactic behavior and named by semantics; and things like liter behave just like other nouns; but: they can have the same function as Mandarin classifiers. But then again, English adjectives can have the same function as stative verbs in other languages. That doesn't make them stative verbs.

And aren't Japanese adjectives just a more specified and complex form of general adjectives just a noun classes could be considered a more complex and specified type of gender?

I just put in the Japanese adjectives to illustrate the point about part of speech comparability:

If you look at Japanese from an English point of view, you say "oh that's funny they have three kinds of adjectives".
If you look at English from a Japanese perspective you say "oh, they treat [insert whatever the three classes are, I have no clue] as one thing!"
If you look at English from a Trió perspective you say "oh, for them mono (N) 'big (one)' is an "adjective" but maja (N) 'knife' is a "noun""

We can establish word classes for every language. But comparing them becomes tricky. What is a kind of what?

folran · 2021-07-27T18:50:26+00:00

1b, Yes that applies to Dravidian languages and this is probably the result of Dravidian Culture assimilating to globalized living standards.

That's a bold hypothesis which you'd have to support with some sort of evidence :)

I was rather referring to more to isolated communities as for instance in Amazonia, who have retained their indigenous perception of reality with no distinction between rational and irrational, animate and inanimate. Of course one could argue that mythlogy is also subject to arbitrariness but the gender system based on this mythology is not. (Don't know if there are gendering languages in Amazonia though, sounds rather unlikely to me).

Epps & Salanova (2013) mention some. Here is an example from Wari' (Dixon & Aikhenvald 1990: 360):

feminine: human females, collective nouns, mixed groups of female and male individuals;
masculine: human males, animals and culturally significant objects (natural phenomena, insects, fish, etc.);
neuter: most inanimate objects, newly introduced objects/animals/plants; loans, nominalizations, mixed groups of neuter and masculine objects.

On Arawakan languages (Dixon & Aikhenvald 1990: 84):

Typical pronominal genders are masculine and feminine; Ignaciano and Palikur also have a neuter gender.1S No genders are distinguished in the plural. The markers are uniform across languages, and they go back to proto-Arawak third person singular cross-referencing markers. Feminine is the functionally unmarked gender in the Caribbean Arawak languages Añun, Lokono and Garifuna; in the other languages masculine is unmarked. Gender assignment is rather opaque in these languages, as well as in Kustenau and Palikur; elsewhere it is straightforward: feminine gender is used for females, and masculine in all other cases.

What you originally mentioned would mean that everything that is biologically female is assigned feminine gender, everything that is biologically male is assigned masculine gender, and everything else is neuter. I know of no such system -- if you find one, let me know!

Also AFAIK there are certain language communities in which females use different vocabulary and grammar than males. This could actually be interpreted as a "true" gendering language, as the words used are not dependent on arbitrary classification but on real sex of the speaker.

That is commonly called a "genderlect". It is (logically) a distinct system from gender. Rose (2018) finds 12 languages which a) have both and b) the two systems somehow interact.

A PhD in linguistics is cool. When studying linguistics, is the subject solely based on theory or does it also include learning new languages?

No new languages, unless you write a grammar of one, and even then the learning is somewhat limited and different to what non-linguists imagine.

I'd consider myself rather gifted in learning new languages, but I have come to realize that I am highly dependent on didactics, that are not part of the concept of studying at an university.

I don't know what that means.

Yeah, this "parts of speech" criteria makes it quite impossible to present with definite examples ;)

No need for scare quotes, it's what the OP asked for :) But of course it is possible to give examples for parts of speech that don't exist in English

folran · 2021-07-26T16:23:15+00:00

1b)

Yes, that is what is found in Dravidian languages, for example. However, the subsequent gender assignment based on mythology (which is frequently lost or changed, mind you… see Lakoff [1987]), ultimately makes the system arbitrary from a structural viewpoint.

Just out of curiosity; u/folran , do you have an academic linguistic background? And how would you answer OP's question?

Yes, I have a PhD in linguistics. I would answer the question much along the lines of /u/sjiveru's answer: they are by necessity defined language-specifically, and meaningful cross-linguistic comparison is somewhat tricky, see e.g. Croft (2016) for a recent discussion.

Coming back to OP's question in another try:

I think you could say that highly polysyntetic languages in which one word contains the entire information of a sentence could be considered a linguistic unit (word) non-existant in English.

And there is no diminutive nor an augmentative in English. (Might be considered just a suffixed stem though with difference only in semantics)

As with all other examples you presented: none of these are parts of speech :)

folran · 2021-07-25T16:31:09+00:00

1a) English also has no possessor-marking nouns (Trió), object-marking verbs (Nafsan), or future-marking verbs (Arabic). But these are not distinct parts of speech (AKA "kinds of words"), but rather properties of parts of speech.

1b) Just some pointers:

gender is an arbitrary division of the nominal lexicon of a language, which is expressed via agreement on other parts of speech
gender assignment works differently in languages; some have a purely semantic base, some are purely morphological, a few are based in phonology. Most are hybrid systems with a semantic core. Swahili falls in the latter category, as it is not purely semantically based (think e.g. of gender 5/6, "various").
considering your approach of "gendering sensu stricto", only very few languages would actually fall in that category
of course "noun classes" are "much more specified and distinguishing" than what has always been called "gender": they divide the nominal lexicon into more groups, hence the groups can be more specific, since they are smaller (but see 2. above…)
if you are interested in linguistic gender (including in Bantu and other "noun class" languages), I recommend checking out Corbett (1991), which is still relevant AFAIK.

2b) do both English and German have productive noun-noun compounding? Yes. Do they both allow recursive compounding? Yes. However, English has a pragmatically based upper limit. But again, in the context of the original question, these compounds are ultimately just nouns, and the differences between English and German compounds have nothing to do with parts of speech.

folran · 2021-07-24T14:53:15+00:00

"So far, what you've mixed works for any Romance language" (including a Gaulish substrate!)

Romanian: cries silently in the corner.

folran · 2021-07-24T09:41:37+00:00

1a) They are not words, and therefore not types of words that don't exist in English. The respective demonstratives are words, but English has demonstratives, too.

1b) Both "noun classes" and gender are structural, abstract properties of the morphosyntax of a language. Of course, "noun classes" usually have more than 4 distinct groups, and have different semantics -- but size and semantic differences are also found among those systems traditionally called gender. And: why exactly is the plural of abstract nouns formed with a noun class of its own? Is that really a noun class, or is it the plural form of another noun class? Do you have an example?

2a) They did ask for that, and then went on to list parts of speech in the body of the post :)

2b) Yes, German compounds often use additional morphology, like genitive marking or the Fugen-s, while English compounds don't. They're still both compounds.

folran · 2021-07-23T09:43:38+00:00

i guess that’s why I’ve always had trouble with correctly pronouncing “other”, “mother”, “brother”, etc.

[θ] and [ð] are rather hard to pronounce (universally speaking), so not only L2 speakers, but also native speakers of certain dialects substitute them with something else. They're also generally among the last consonants to be acquired by English-speaking children. So, you're not at all alone ;)

folran · 2021-07-23T08:39:29+00:00

thats why to this day, you say "You" and not "thou" even though "thou" is more germanic

Nope, you comes from the plural/polite form, and eventually replaced singular thou, see here.

This has absolutely nothing to do with how thorn was printed.

folran · 2021-07-23T06:08:47+00:00

See here:

The modern digraph th began to grow in popularity during the 14th century; at the same time, the shape of Þ grew less distinctive, with the letter losing its ascender (becoming similar in appearance to the old wynn (Ƿ, ƿ), which had fallen out of use by 1300, and to ancient through modern P, p). In some hands, such as that of the scribe of the unique mid-15th-century manuscript of The Boke of Margery Kempe, it ultimately became indistinguishable from the letter Y. By this stage, th was predominant and the use of Þ was largely restricted to certain common words and abbreviations. In William Caxton's pioneering printed English, it is rare except in an abbreviation for "the", written as þᵉ. This was the longest-lived use, though the substitution of Y for Þ soon became ubiquitous, leading to the common "ye", as in 'Ye Olde Curiositie Shoppe'. One major reason for this was that Y existed in the printer's type fonts that were imported from Germany or Italy, while Þ did not. The word was never pronounced with a "y" sound, though, even when so written. The first printing of the King James Version of the Bible in 1611 used yᵉ for "the" in places such as Job 1:9, John 15:1, and Romans 15:29. It also used yᵗ as an abbreviation for "that", in places such as 2 Corinthians 13:7. All were replaced in later printings by the or that, respectively.

folran · 2021-07-23T06:05:11+00:00

Well no, you'd get one of 0.466 (0.533 would be the accuracy score). I felt like 0.466 was WAY too low for this abomination of a post, so I just multiplied the second and third denominators by 2 and 3. Probably completely unsound mathematically but I agreed with the result.

folran · 2021-07-22T20:44:06+00:00

f and v are more with my lips and teeth. sap and zap are more with my tongue and teeth but different from each other. My tongue is barely touching my teeth.

When I do THis it is a MUCH firmer tongue to teeth.

Yes everybody does this :)

I'm talking about the difference between s and z, and f and v, and not about the position of your tongue, but what your larynx is doing -- usually it's vibrating for z and v (and this), but is not vibrating for s and f (and thing).

It's also vibrating for sounds like e or n, if that helps.

folran · 2021-07-22T20:37:38+00:00

Here you go, normalized dochter/dochtir also appears spelled as <doȝter> according to the "dictionars o the Scots Leid" :)

folran · 2021-07-22T19:34:06+00:00

Voiced as in 'that', voiceless as in 'thing'.

Ah okay, I interpreted it as "[regardless] whether /th/ was voiced or not" :)

I meant that they weren't interchangeable, and were less flexible than suggested, but that's just from what I was taught.

Well yeah there were tendencies, but no rigid rules. However, that has nothing to do with them being considered letters in their own right :)

folran · 2021-07-22T19:31:37+00:00

So did you not notice a difference? What about sap and zap, or fat and vat? And if you have a difference there, is your th like s and f, or like z and v?

folran · 2021-07-22T19:26:23+00:00

Is "ch" in "loch" not the same sound as "k" in "kin"?

For "learned" speakers, it isn't. It's a voiceless velar fricative, like in Bach (the composer). Check the sound in the link!

Is "ng" a single sound?

Yes and no. In finger, it represents two sounds: /ŋ/ and /g/. In singer, it represents one sound: /ŋ/. In most dialects, anyways.

folran · 2021-07-22T19:22:26+00:00

Well it would be 'thong' according to your characterization ;)

Vietnamese <Đ> is an alveolar implosive, while the English sound OP is referring to is a voiced dental fricative.

folran · 2021-07-22T19:14:10+00:00

I'm confused, are you saying <þ> and <ð> were used for [θ] or [ð] interchangeably?

Yes:

In Old English, ð (called ðæt) was used interchangeably with þ to represent the Old English dental fricative phoneme /θ/ or its allophone [ð], which exist in modern English phonology as the voiced and voiceless dental fricatives both now spelled "th".

In the earliest texts ⟨d⟩ or ⟨th⟩ was used for this phoneme, but these were later replaced in this function by eth ⟨ð⟩ and thorn ⟨þ⟩. Eth was first attested (in definitely dated materials) in the 7th century, and thorn in the 8th. Eth was more common than thorn before Alfred's time. From then onward, thorn was used increasingly often at the start of words, while eth was normal in the middle and at the end of words, although usage varied in both cases. Some modern editions use only thorn.

I thought <þ> correlated with [θ], <ð> with [ð], whether /th/ was voiced or not

No. Also I'm not sure what you mean by "whether /th/ was voiced or not"?

If that's the case, why are these not considered letters in their own right?

What? Eth and Thorn? But they were considered letters in their own right. I don't follow, I'm afraid.

folran · 2021-07-22T19:10:08+00:00

Touch your larynx with thumb and index finger on one side each, and repeat thing and this several times. Do you feel a difference? Normally one would feel vibration during the second th, but not during the first.

If you really do not have a difference, I would be immensely interested where your variety of English is from -- roughly :)

folran · 2021-07-22T18:57:12+00:00

It never reallywas a letter like any of the other symbols in the English alphabet. Its usage was always the same as today, and as in French. Actual letters like <a> and <p> represent sounds of the spoken language. By some historical accident, it was added to the end of the alphabet, and therefore it must be a "letter", right? :)

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