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

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

Post by Salmoneus »

Creyeditor wrote: 08 Jul 2021 08:08 Interestingly though, there are syllables and/or word stress. I feel this paper might explain it well, if you can get your hands on it.
I think everyone agrees there are syllables, but some people argue that there isn't word stress - that there is stress, but it's based on units larger than individual words.

EDIT: if you want a paper, this one discusses the vowellessness and touches on some other issues in passing.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Creyeditor »

Right, I think the paper you suggest includes a good summary of the discussion.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by All4Ɇn »

In the accent I speak in French, final /ɛʁ/ is typically pronounced instead as /eʁ/ but final /ɔʁ/ (which is already merged with /oʁ/) is still pronounced as /ɔʁ/. Is there anything specifically about how these vowels or /ʁ/ are pronounced that would cause this discrepancy?
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Dormouse559 »

All4Ɇn wrote: 15 Jul 2021 07:55 In the accent I speak in French, final /ɛʁ/ is typically pronounced instead as /eʁ/ but final /ɔʁ/ (which is already merged with /oʁ/) is still pronounced as /ɔʁ/. Is there anything specifically about how these vowels or /ʁ/ are pronounced that would cause this discrepancy?
French does favor the /e ɔ/ pairing in other contexts, namely in nonfinal open syllables. An extension of that maybe? :wat:
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by All4Ɇn »

Dormouse559 wrote: 15 Jul 2021 08:26
All4Ɇn wrote: 15 Jul 2021 07:55 In the accent I speak in French, final /ɛʁ/ is typically pronounced instead as /eʁ/ but final /ɔʁ/ (which is already merged with /oʁ/) is still pronounced as /ɔʁ/. Is there anything specifically about how these vowels or /ʁ/ are pronounced that would cause this discrepancy?
French does favor the /e ɔ/ pairing in other contexts, namely in nonfinal open syllables. An extension of that maybe? :wat:
This is a good point actually. But to make matters more complicated, I mostly only use /o/ in open syllables while keeping /ɔ o/ distinct in closed ones.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Khemehekis »

Why is a python called a "brocade snake" in Japanese?
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by ixals »

Khemehekis wrote: 21 Jul 2021 10:01 Why is a python called a "brocade snake" in Japanese?
My guess would be that it's just because of the similarities between their skin and a brocade pattern.
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Syllabaries

Post by eldin raigmore »

What syllabary (or syllabaries) is the world’s largest?
How many syllables does it have?
Which languages are written in it?
What’s its name?
How can I see what it looks like?
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Pabappa »

Korean wins by a thousand miles if you accept that it is a syllabary. It has 11,172 syllables, every one of which has a distinct Unicode character in the Hangul syllables code block.

But Wikipedia shies away from calling Hangul a syllabary, for some reason. Perhaps because the component blocks are visibly distinct, without even forming ligatures. Yi has a much smaller inventory, but their characters include ligatures and have a much clearer impression of being one glyph per syllable. Thus one could say Yi is much more complicated than Hangul despite having a much smaller glyph inventory.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by eldin raigmore »

Pabappa wrote: 01 Aug 2021 03:34 Korean wins by a thousand miles if you accept that it is a syllabary. It has 11,172 syllables, every one of which has a distinct Unicode character in the Hangul syllables code block.

But Wikipedia shies away from calling Hangul a syllabary, for some reason. Perhaps because the component blocks are visibly distinct, without even forming ligatures. Yi has a much smaller inventory, but their characters include ligatures and have a much clearer impression of being one glyph per syllable. Thus one could say Yi is much more complicated than Hangul despite having a much smaller glyph inventory.
Thanks.
I was aware of Hangul but really not thinking of it as a syllabary. Maybe I should!
I first heard of Yi earlier today when I was trying to answer this question on my own; but I didn’t find any of the details you just pointed me too! Thank you!
The U+A000 to U+A48C block has 1165 decimal characters in it.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Salmoneus »

Pabappa wrote: 01 Aug 2021 03:34 Korean wins by a thousand miles if you accept that it is a syllabary. It has 11,172 syllables, every one of which has a distinct Unicode character in the Hangul syllables code block.

But Wikipedia shies away from calling Hangul a syllabary, for some reason. Perhaps because the component blocks are visibly distinct, without even forming ligatures.
Haven't you overlooked the Latin syllabary? The variant used to write English has characters for nearly 16,000 syllables! And although for ease of typing contemporary speakers use a form in which the component blocks are visibly distinct, when using the computer, traditional writing involves extensive ligatures (not only within but even between syllables). Some of these ligatures involved substantial modification of the component blocks, and can even be found in some modern computer fonts designed to imitate older writing styles. There are also various characters for syllables (or even multi-syllabic words) that don't make use of component blocks at all.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Pabappa »

i mean, you start off with a good point .... if Korean has a syllabary, than English has a syllabary ... but then you undercut it at the end by pointing out that English cursive also links whole words, not just syllables. This means Korean has a trait that English does not ... its subglyphs are grouped in strictly syllabic blocks. The only thing keeping it from being classified as a true syllabary, so far as I can see, is that it's too regular for the category it would otherwise be the standout example of.

However, as said, Wikipedia does not include Hangul as a syllabary, and that seems to be the general opinion among the experts, so I gave two answers. I didn't scour the world, but the Yi syllabary is at least the largest I've seen whose glyphs are not reducible into discrete subglyphs based on individual phonemes.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Salmoneus »

Pabappa wrote: 01 Aug 2021 15:23 The only thing keeping it from being classified as a true syllabary, so far as I can see, is that it's too regular for the category it would otherwise be the standout example of.
The main thing keeping it from being classified as a true syllabary is the fact that it's an alphabet, and has no properties of a syllabary. The only reason it may look like a syllabary is its writing direction, which does change depending on position in a syllable - codas are written lower down, instead of along the line (or, from a historical point of view, nuclei are written to the right instead of down the line). But this obviously doesn't make it into a syllabary! [it could arguably make it into an abugida, admittedly].

If you accept that sort of syllabic grouping as making something a syllabary, then again you'd have to look at the Latin script when used for languages like Vietnamese, which typically have blank spacing between syllables regardless of whether they're entire morphemes or not. And the biggest syllabary would then probably have to be something like Tibetan, which uses non-linear positioning (and even character alteration) to spell out consonant clusters.
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Re: What I have been working on

Post by eldin raigmore »

I have been working on a way to construct a semantic map of a language’s lexicon; and to connect such maps from one language to another.
I have no idea where to post any of it.
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Re: What I have been working on

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eldin raigmore wrote: 15 Aug 2021 17:24 I have been working on a way to construct a semantic map of a language’s lexicon; and to connect such maps from one language to another.
I have no idea where to post any of it.
Moving your post to L&N quick questions; the original thread is a personal conlang thread.
The Linguistics and Natlangs subforum would probably work. If your system is specific to conlangs, then I’d suggest that subforum. If you feel more inclined to give lessons about the method, there’s Teach and Share.
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Re: What I have been working on

Post by eldin raigmore »

Dormouse559 wrote: 15 Aug 2021 17:36
eldin raigmore wrote: 15 Aug 2021 17:24 I have been working on a way to construct a semantic map of a language’s lexicon; and to connect such maps from one language to another.
I have no idea where to post any of it.
Moving your post to L&N quick questions; the original thread is a personal conlang thread.
The Linguistics and Natlangs subforum would probably work. If your system is specific to conlangs, then I’d suggest that subforum. If you feel more inclined to give lessons about the method, there’s Teach and Share.
IMO or guess it’s best for languages with lots* of fluent speakers; so not many Conlangs. Maybe Esperanto or Lojban.
I’ll have to think about it some more.
Edit: *Maybe a few thousand? Like >=4096, perhaps?
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by qwed117 »

Anyone know if Grassman’s law operated on Sanskrit’s unvoiced plosive series, or if there are traces of Grassman’s Law in Armenian or other languages that retained aspiration?
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Re: (L&N) The day before the day before yesterday and the day after the day after tomorrow.

Post by ixals »

Here I am, once again with a small question for my fellow German speakers. How do you pronounce the <i> in <lustige>, <ewige> etc.?
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Re: (L&N) The day before the day before yesterday and the day after the day after tomorrow.

Post by Creyeditor »

I think it is /ɪ/ [ɪ], but it feels a bit higher and more front than the <i> in <ich>. It is not /i/ though.
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Worked wreaked wrought.

Post by eldin raigmore »

Worked, wreaked, wrought.
What are the similarities and differences?
Which are correct and which incorrect?
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