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

A forum for discussing linguistics or just languages in general.
User avatar
Omzinesý
mongolian
mongolian
Posts: 4079
Joined: 27 Aug 2010 08:17
Location: nowhere [naʊhɪɚ]

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

Post by Omzinesý »

Salmoneus wrote: 22 Sep 2022 16:29 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.
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
Salmoneus
MVP
MVP
Posts: 3030
Joined: 19 Sep 2011 19:37

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

Post by 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).
User avatar
qwed117
mongolian
mongolian
Posts: 4094
Joined: 20 Nov 2014 02:27

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

Post by qwed117 »

Salmoneus wrote: 23 Sep 2022 03:16 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. [:|]
Spoiler:
My minicity is [http://zyphrazia.myminicity.com/xml]Zyphrazia and [http://novland.myminicity.com/xml]Novland.

Minicity has fallen :(
The SqwedgePad
User avatar
Creyeditor
MVP
MVP
Posts: 5091
Joined: 14 Aug 2012 19:32

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

Post by Creyeditor »

Also, it's hidden in the mobile version, IINM.
Creyeditor
"Thoughts are free."
Produce, Analyze, Manipulate
1 :deu: 2 :eng: 3 :idn: 4 :fra: 4 :esp:
:con: Ook & Omlűt & Nautli languages & Sperenjas
[<3] Papuan languages, Morphophonology, Lexical Semantics [<3]
Salmoneus
MVP
MVP
Posts: 3030
Joined: 19 Sep 2011 19:37

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

Post by Salmoneus »

qwed117 wrote: 23 Sep 2022 04:41
Salmoneus wrote: 23 Sep 2022 03:16 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
roman
roman
Posts: 1173
Joined: 30 Aug 2010 01:23

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

Post by 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.
User avatar
WeepingElf
greek
greek
Posts: 531
Joined: 23 Feb 2016 18:42
Location: Braunschweig, Germany
Contact:

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

Post by WeepingElf »

Solarius wrote: 11 Oct 2022 17:19 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.
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
My conlang pages
User avatar
VaptuantaDoi
roman
roman
Posts: 1067
Joined: 18 Nov 2019 07:35

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

Post by VaptuantaDoi »

Solarius wrote: 11 Oct 2022 17:19 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.
User avatar
Omzinesý
mongolian
mongolian
Posts: 4079
Joined: 27 Aug 2010 08:17
Location: nowhere [naʊhɪɚ]

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

Post by Omzinesý »

VaptuantaDoi wrote: 12 Oct 2022 00:23
Solarius wrote: 11 Oct 2022 17:19 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.
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
User avatar
eldin raigmore
korean
korean
Posts: 6352
Joined: 14 Aug 2010 19:38
Location: SouthEast Michigan

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

Post by 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
mongolian
mongolian
Posts: 3883
Joined: 14 Aug 2010 09:36
Location: California über alles

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

Post by Khemehekis »

eldin raigmore wrote: 20 Oct 2022 01:39 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.
♂♥♂♀

Squirrels chase koi . . . chase squirrels

My Kankonian-English dictionary: 86,336 words and counting

31,416: The number of the conlanging beast!
User avatar
eldin raigmore
korean
korean
Posts: 6352
Joined: 14 Aug 2010 19:38
Location: SouthEast Michigan

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

Post by 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!
Last edited by eldin raigmore on 10 Nov 2022 16:57, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Omzinesý
mongolian
mongolian
Posts: 4079
Joined: 27 Aug 2010 08:17
Location: nowhere [naʊhɪɚ]

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

Post by Omzinesý »

eldin raigmore wrote: 08 Nov 2022 23:51 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'.
eldin raigmore wrote: 08 Nov 2022 23:51 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?
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
User avatar
Nel Fie
cuneiform
cuneiform
Posts: 139
Joined: 23 May 2022 15:18

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

Post by Nel Fie »

eldin raigmore wrote: 08 Nov 2022 23:51 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!
Omzinesý wrote: 09 Nov 2022 15:21 [...]
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.
:deu: Native (Swabian) | :fra: Native (Belgian) | :eng: Fluent | :rus: Beginner
DeviantArt | YouTube | Tumblr
User avatar
LinguoFranco
greek
greek
Posts: 613
Joined: 20 Jul 2016 17:49
Location: U.S.

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

Post by 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?
User avatar
Nel Fie
cuneiform
cuneiform
Posts: 139
Joined: 23 May 2022 15:18

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

Post by Nel Fie »

LinguoFranco wrote: 29 Nov 2022 07:39 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.
:deu: Native (Swabian) | :fra: Native (Belgian) | :eng: Fluent | :rus: Beginner
DeviantArt | YouTube | Tumblr
User avatar
KaiTheHomoSapien
greek
greek
Posts: 641
Joined: 15 Feb 2016 06:10
Location: Northern California

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

Post by 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)?
Image
User avatar
loglorn
mayan
mayan
Posts: 1728
Joined: 17 Mar 2014 03:22

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

Post by loglorn »

KaiTheHomoSapien wrote: 10 Jan 2023 04:21 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.
Diachronic Conlanging is the path to happiness, given time. [;)]

Gigxkpoyan Languages: CHÍFJAEŚÍ RETLA TLAPTHUV DÄLDLEN CJUŚËKNJU ṢATT

Other langs: Søsøzatli Kamëzet
User avatar
WeepingElf
greek
greek
Posts: 531
Joined: 23 Feb 2016 18:42
Location: Braunschweig, Germany
Contact:

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

Post by WeepingElf »

KaiTheHomoSapien wrote: 10 Jan 2023 04:21 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.
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
My conlang pages
User avatar
qwed117
mongolian
mongolian
Posts: 4094
Joined: 20 Nov 2014 02:27

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

Post by qwed117 »

WeepingElf wrote: 10 Jan 2023 14:31
KaiTheHomoSapien wrote: 10 Jan 2023 04:21 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.
Image
Spoiler:
My minicity is [http://zyphrazia.myminicity.com/xml]Zyphrazia and [http://novland.myminicity.com/xml]Novland.

Minicity has fallen :(
The SqwedgePad
Post Reply