(L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

[Omzinesý]

In the case of Serbo-Croatian there's even a helpful list specifically of Serbo-Croatian words inherited from Proto-Slavic, so you don't have to worry about loanwords.

OK, I just didn't find it.

[Salmoneus]

Dude, just go to wiktionary, enter a serbo-croat word of Slavic origin, and then click on the hyperlink that's labelled "Serbo-Croatian words inherited from Proto-Slavic" (or something very similar).

[qwed117]

Dude, just go to wiktionary, enter a serbo-croat word of Slavic origin, and then click on the hyperlink that's labelled "Serbo-Croatian words inherited from Proto-Slavic" (or something very similar).

I dunno how this got somewhat heated so fast. The link to the Categories is on the very bottom of the page, and I don't think many people are very good at traversing Mediawiki's namespaces. Really no reason to flame someone who's just looking to learn; we were all noobs once.

[Creyeditor]

Also, it's hidden in the mobile version, IINM.

[Salmoneus]

Dude, just go to wiktionary, enter a serbo-croat word of Slavic origin, and then click on the hyperlink that's labelled "Serbo-Croatian words inherited from Proto-Slavic" (or something very similar).

I dunno how this got somewhat heated so fast. The link to the Categories is on the very bottom of the page, and I don't think many people are very good at traversing Mediawiki's namespaces. Really no reason to flame someone who's just looking to learn; we were all noobs once.

Dude. If you think that someone saying "dude" on the internet constitutes a "heated flame", I can only be envious your experiences of the internet to this point.

[Solarius]

Does anyone know of any good overviews, online or in print, of the development of specific Indo-European branches? Looking especially for something closer to the east since I'm working on a branch which is spoken by the Black Sea and has some similarities to Greek (has a "double reflex" to Greek's "triple reflex") and Slavic/Indo-Iranian (Satem). Focus on grammar a bonus because I'm still having trouble getting my brain around ablaut.

[WeepingElf]

Does anyone know of any good overviews, online or in print, of the development of specific Indo-European branches? Looking especially for something closer to the east since I'm working on a branch which is spoken by the Black Sea and has some similarities to Greek (has a "double reflex" to Greek's "triple reflex") and Slavic/Indo-Iranian (Satem). Focus on grammar a bonus because I'm still having trouble getting my brain around ablaut.

There's Index Diachronica which has sound change lists for many languages, including many Indo-European ones. In print form, the book Indo-European Language and Culture by Benjamin W. Fortson IV is not only a very readable introduction to Indo-European linguistics, but also sums up the major developments of each branch.

[VaptuantaDoi]

Does anyone know of any good overviews, online or in print, of the development of specific Indo-European branches? Looking especially for something closer to the east since I'm working on a branch which is spoken by the Black Sea and has some similarities to Greek (has a "double reflex" to Greek's "triple reflex") and Slavic/Indo-Iranian (Satem). Focus on grammar a bonus because I'm still having trouble getting my brain around ablaut.

I'd recommend Fortson too. It's accessible and it goes into reasonable depth about the development of all the major branches, as well as a pretty thorough description of PIE grammar.

There's even a pdf of the first edition, which looks close enough to the second edition that I've got.

[Omzinesý]

Does anyone know of any good overviews, online or in print, of the development of specific Indo-European branches? Looking especially for something closer to the east since I'm working on a branch which is spoken by the Black Sea and has some similarities to Greek (has a "double reflex" to Greek's "triple reflex") and Slavic/Indo-Iranian (Satem). Focus on grammar a bonus because I'm still having trouble getting my brain around ablaut.

I'd recommend Fortson too. It's accessible and it goes into reasonable depth about the development of all the major branches, as well as a pretty thorough description of PIE grammar.

There's even a pdf of the first edition, which looks close enough to the second edition that I've got.

That is an interesting book. I've learned much during the latest days.

[eldin raigmore]

About abbreviations; specifically, abbreviations for placenames.

How is it that we can usually tell
BC for Baja California, from BC for British Columbia?

And how is it that we usually disambiguate
UP for Upper Peninsula, from UP for Uttar Pradesh?

(And there are other examples).

Sometimes we fail to intuit which one is meant; but we often (and, it seems to me, usually) succeed.
How? And/or why?

[Khemehekis]

How is it that we can usually tell
BC for Baja California, from BC for British Columbia?

Well, if the placename sounds Spanish, it's probably Baja California rather than British Columbia.

Similarly, Indian-sounding place names are probably not from the Upper Peninsula.

[eldin raigmore]

Is there any difference between an instructive case and an instrumental case?
Or between an instructive mood and an instrumental mood?
(Or an instructive aspect and an instrumental aspect, or any other grammatical feature.)

I’m looking for natlang examples, but if you have conlang examples those are okay too; I just hope you understand them and can explain them to us!
….
Thanks!

[Omzinesý]

Is there any difference between an instructive cas and an instrumental case?

My understanding is that there is no difference in meaning. Some grammars, like Finnish grammars, like to speak abaut an instructive case and most grammars speak about an instrumental case.

In an old conlang of mine I used Instructive to mean the object of 'use' in the sense of 'consume' and 'Instrumental' in the sense of 'using without destroying'.

Or between an instructive mood and an instrumental mood?
(Or an instructive aspect and an instrumental aspect, or any other grammatical feature.)

What are they?

[Nel Fie]

Is there any difference between an instructive cas and an instrumental case?
Or between an instructive mood and an instrumental mood?
(Or an instructive aspect and an instrumental aspect, or any other grammatical feature.)

I’m looking for natlang examples, but if you have conlang examples those are okay too; I just hope you understand them and can explain them to us!
….
Thanks!

[...]
My understanding is that there is no difference in meaning. Some grammars, like Finnish grammars, like to speak abaut an instructive case and most grammars speak about an instrumental case.
[...]

I don't have prior knowledge on the subject, but based on what I could gather from a quick search, Omzinesý is more or less right.
I think there's a slight difference in meaning between instrumental and instructive from a theoretical perspective, insofar that the intended "ideal" instructive case also covers constructions where something is not used as an intentional instrument per se, but was somehow essential to the action or the results of the action. The distinction is perhaps best exemplified by wording the instrumental case as "using X", whereas the instructive could be worded as "by means of X" or "thanks to X". In English, saying "I came here using a car" and "I came here by means of a car" are quasi-synonymous, though the second one suggests a bit more that it wasn't intentional, and/or that the speaker was not involved in driving or directing the car to this destination.
To summarize, the instructive is perhaps so called because it "informs the action" (i.e. "instructs"), as opposed to literally describing something being used as an instrument.

That said, in real world uses, the distinction seems somewhat irrelevant for the few natlang cases I could find. The Wikipedia page for the instructive case mentions that Turkish has it, but the Turkish Grammar page then presents it as the instrumental.
Finnish meanwhile has an instructive case (again according to Wikipedia), but it is only used in few situations, suggesting that it might be dying out. Whether the distinction from an instrumental is intentional and justified, I don't know; but it seems most meanings usually covered by an instrumental case (or other instrumental constructions) are being performed by the adessive case. It's possible that in the case of Finnish, the instructive is at least well named insofar that the few uses it still has are distinctly instructive, rather than instrumental.

That's all I could find with a quick and naive search, sorry if it's not all you were hoping for.

[LinguoFranco]

So, I heard that the Gheg dialect of Albanian has phonemic vowel length.

Are long vowels in Gheg tied to stress in any way, and can more than one long vowel occur in a word?

[Nel Fie]

So, I heard that the Gheg dialect of Albanian has phonemic vowel length.

Are long vowels in Gheg tied to stress in any way, and can more than one long vowel occur in a word?

I didn't know anything about the subject, so I can only report the little tidbits I found after a little bit of searching.

Most of it comes from the phonology section of "Standard Albanian - A reference grammar for students" by L. Newmark, P. Hubbard and P. Prifti.
Based on what I could find, Standard Albanian is based the Tosk dialect, which is stated not to make vowel length distinctions. So I assume that any mention of a length distinction applies to Gheg.

According to this grammar, speakers of Gheg Albanian only distinguish vowel length on stressed syllables (Chapter I, page 12). When stressed, the vowel can either be short or long, though this is not written out or exemplified plainly in the book. They provide the following minimal pair: ‹plak› and ‹plakë›, which are described as being pronounced [pʎak] and [pʎaːk] respectively (the IPA transcriptions are my own, based on the text). However, the paragraph as a whole states that this distinction is caused by the loss of the ‹ë›, which is pronounced in the Tosk dialect. Whether that counts as a fully phonemic distinction, or simply the product of a synchronic sound change, I'm not sure.
But a few IPA transcriptions of Gheg Albanian words/pronunciations I could find on Wiktionary suggest a least that stressed syllables can have short vowels, both in monosyllabic and polysyllabic words. Of course, this assumes that the transcription is trustworthy, and I haven't seen a counterexample to stress rule 2) stated below - so there's the possibility that outside of monosyllables, vowel length distinctions only exist in stressed syllables without a coda.

A more general statement on the previous page about vowel length in Standard Albanian states that vowels are long if:
1) They are part of a stressed syllables.
2) They are part of a stressed syllable followed by a syllable with a simple onset (i.e. CV, as opposed to CCV).
Not too sure what to make of that - my best interpretation is that long vowels can only occur in a syllable with no coda unless it is the last syllable in the word? (I.e. that vowel length can only occur in stressed syllables of type CV.)
3) They receive a prosodic/pragmatic phrase accent.

A later section on stress (Chapter I page 15) states that Albanian has main stress and secondary stress. Secondary stress occurs (apparently) only in compound words, where it is placed on the last syllable of any stem before the last one, which receives primary stress. Whether this secondary stress makes a vowel length distinction, I don't know.

A small tidbit comes from the Wikipedia page on Albanian dialects, which states that Gheg Albanian has phonological vowel length. However, it follows up by bringing up a sublect that has up to three length distinctions, giving a minimal triad of monosyllables where length is the only distinction, at least according to the transcription. So, either I'm misunderstanding the intended use for linguistic terminology, or whoever wrote that section did, and it should actually state "phonemic vowel length".

To summarize, in ways directly aimed at your questions:
1) I'm not entirely sure if vowel length is phonemic in Gheg Albanian, though I'd strongly lean towards 'yes'.
2) Vowel length is strongly tied to stress as far as I can tell - it's not available on unstressed syllables, at least.
3) I don't know if there can be multiple long vowels per word. I'd say probably not since it requires a stressed syllable and Albanian is stated to only have one main stress per word, but syllables can carry secondary stress in compound words, and I don't know how these handle vowel length.

[KaiTheHomoSapien]

How come in so many countries around the world, their stop signs say "stop", borrowed from English (I've seen it rendered into Cyrillic and Greek as well)? Has this always been the case, was it a later adoption, at what point was the word "stop" borrowed from English into so many other languages (for this specific traffic-related usage)?

[loglorn]

How come in so many countries around the world, their stop signs say "stop", borrowed from English (I've seen it rendered into Cyrillic and Greek as well)? Has this always been the case, was it a later adoption, at what point was the word "stop" borrowed from English into so many other languages (for this specific traffic-related usage)?

This is the first i hear of it, all i can say it that it was not loaned into (Brazilian) Portuguese.

[WeepingElf]

How come in so many countries around the world, their stop signs say "stop", borrowed from English (I've seen it rendered into Cyrillic and Greek as well)? Has this always been the case, was it a later adoption, at what point was the word "stop" borrowed from English into so many other languages (for this specific traffic-related usage)?

This seems to be a European thing. While I haven't traveled beyond Europe yet, I have seen stop signs from other parts of the world in TV documentaries etc., and they usually have the word "stop" in the relevant national language. Sometimes the signs are bilingual, as in Quebec.

[qwed117]

How come in so many countries around the world, their stop signs say "stop", borrowed from English (I've seen it rendered into Cyrillic and Greek as well)? Has this always been the case, was it a later adoption, at what point was the word "stop" borrowed from English into so many other languages (for this specific traffic-related usage)?

This seems to be a European thing. While I haven't traveled beyond Europe yet, I have seen stop signs from other parts of the world in TV documentaries etc., and they usually have the word "stop" in the relevant national language. Sometimes the signs are bilingual, as in Quebec.

I believe there's an international treaty that governs the signs. Not all countries have acceded to the treaty which determines when you'll see the red stoptagon versus another shape. Has to do with US's post-WWII strength, especially with regards to determining international agreements. :)

Edit: Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals, from Wikipedia, mandates that it is a stoptagon, or a circular sign with an upside down triangle, with the word "STOP" written inside. Accessors and ratifiers are the green countries.