The CBB

Posted: **16 Aug 2020 22:45**

That diphthong in the New York Accent in strong dogs is analysed as either ɔə~oə~ʊə. But if you had to choose one, what be?

Posted: **16 Aug 2020 23:30**

jimydog000 wrote: ↑16 Aug 2020 22:45 That diphthong in the New York Accent in strong dogs is analysed as either ɔə~oə~ʊə. But if you had to choose one, what be?

Based on my intuition about/knowledge of my own speech, the height of the rounded element can vary rather freely, but if I had to pick just one, I might choose [oə̯] as a sort of compromise between the other two options. If it were just between the two "extremes", though, I'd chose [ʊə̯].

As a disclaimer, I'm from near Philadelphia, not New York. As far as I know, this phenomenon (diphthongization of the CLOTH-THOUGHT vowel) is something the two cities have in common, but if you're curious about New York City English in particular, someone from that part of the US might have a different answer.

Posted: **05 Sep 2020 19:30**

Does anyone know the origin of the circumflex accent in Ancient Greek? So far I haven't found anything on it.

Posted: **05 Sep 2020 19:32**

Clarification question: Do you mean the accent "mark" or the accent "sound"?

Posted: **05 Sep 2020 20:44**

Creyeditor wrote: ↑05 Sep 2020 19:32 Clarification question: Do you mean the accent "mark" or the accent "sound"?

The sound

Posted: **05 Sep 2020 21:07**

i think its just an ordinary sequence of a high and low tone, as in Baltic ... according to Wikipedia it occurs only on long vowels and diphthongs, suggesting that its origin is from a high tone followed by a vowel (which would need to be low tone since there were never 2 stressed syllables in one word).

Posted: **11 Sep 2020 11:14**

Hello. I have some questions regarding headedness and compounding which hopefully somebody more knowledgeable might be able to explain/expand upon.

1) Does compounding always overwhelmingly follow the overall head direction of the language? E.g. considering just Noun-Noun compounds for now, are there any head-initial (in the noun phrase, or overall) languages which predominantly use head-final compounds? Such as "book big", Vs "bigbook"?

2) Is there any explanation as to why SOV, or head-final, languages appear to have a much smaller number of verbs? There was a study which demonstrated this correlation, also noting that Noun+Light Verb constructions were often used to make new verbs in the sample (e.g. Japanese "telephone-do" for "to call/phone").

3) Is there any explanation as to why languages overall generally seem to prefer suffixation over prefixation? I know there are some counterexamples, but if I remember correctly, no language is entirely prefixation, while the opposite is true (or nearly) true. If a language is strongly head-initial, does suffixation come into this? E.g. might a strongly head-initial language develop methods of derivation via suffixation (which means head-finalness in those cases)?

4) This is more conlang related but also useful to see if there natlang precedents or possible explanations. Let's say the language is overall quite strongly head-initial, would having aspect markers follow the verb be considered an example head-finalness? What might motivate this. I could a guess a few motivations...e.g.:

I finish-eat bread: "I've eaten the bread" where "eat bread" essentially becomes the object of finish.

I eat-finish bread: This seems like it could be more sequential, e.g. "I ate the bread (until I) finished it."

I realise there is probably no single answer/consensus regarding these topics, but it would be interesting to hear a bit more.
Thank you!

Posted: **11 Sep 2020 22:06**

Well, "why" questions really get more into the theological/linguistic side of things, and I can't really answer. Depends on your denomination, I suppose.

I think one way to think of it, though, would be to imagine that a) the left-hand margin of words is particularly important in recognising them, and b) there is an approximate hierarchy in which nouns are more important than verbs, which are more important than adverbs, prepositions, etc.

a) would explain prefixation being relatively rare: prefixes obscure word onsets (conversely - because the word onset is clear, reanalysis particles as prefixes is less attractive). Word terminations aren't as important, so suffixes are more likely attached. Likewise, the widespread deletion of initial segments is a relatively rare soundchange, whereas the widespread deletion of final segments is extremely common.

Combine a) with b), and it would exlain the different outcomes of noun-verb and verb-noun sequences. Since nouns are more important than verbs, and onsets are particularly salient, a verb-noun sequence has the most salient point in the middle of the sequence; this makes it more difficult to interpret as a single unit. Conversely, in a noun-verb sequence, the most salient point remains at the beginning of the sequence, as though it were a word. It's easier to interpret it as a single unit, either by complete compounding, or by treating the noun-verb sequence as a multi-word lexical entity. If you treat it as a lexical entity, it's able to supplant, or obviate the need to invent, more specific words. [if you mentally have the entry "water remove" as a legitimate coherent concept in your language, you don't feel as much need to borrow the word 'dehydrate']. This would tend over time to result in more phrasal verbs with light verbs and nouns.

But I'm not a linguist, so I may be talking nonsense!

Posted: **15 Sep 2020 15:22**

Can anyone recommend a good general online source about the kind of Initial+Medial+Final method of deriving word-stems that is used by Algic or Algonquian languages (at least for some parts-of-speech)?

Can anyone recommend a conlang that uses something similar?

I think it should be as popular, among conlangers, as the Afro-Asiatic tri-consonantal-root-system.
Anyone agree?

But I’m a beginner and can’t get much information.

Posted: **15 Sep 2020 16:57**

shimobaatar wrote: ↑16 Aug 2020 23:30
jimydog000 wrote: ↑16 Aug 2020 22:45 That diphthong in the New York Accent in strong dogs is analysed as either ɔə~oə~ʊə. But if you had to choose one, what be?
Based on my intuition about/knowledge of my own speech, the height of the rounded element can vary rather freely, but if I had to pick just one, I might choose [oə̯] as a sort of compromise between the other two options. If it were just between the two "extremes", though, I'd chose [ʊə̯].

As a disclaimer, I'm from near Philadelphia, not New York. As far as I know, this phenomenon (diphthongization of the CLOTH-THOUGHT vowel) is something the two cities have in common, but if you're curious about New York City English in particular, someone from that part of the US might have a different answer.

I was thinking [oə̯] as well. I'm just enamored on the way Larry King speaks, its almost a protruded [oə̯].
...My spell checker wants me to say enamoured but I rarely if ever seen it like that.

Posted: **23 Sep 2020 22:22**

Salmoneus wrote: ↑11 Sep 2020 22:06 Well, "why" questions really get more into the theological/linguistic side of things, and I can't really answer. Depends on your denomination, I suppose.
...

Thank you, Salmoneus. That was very useful! While such questions do verge into the 'theological' side of things, I think they are nonetheless interesting to think/speculate about...(also not a linguist, though!)

Posted: **01 Oct 2020 05:13**

So what's the difference between "iku" and "yuku" in Japanese (i.e. the verb "to go"). I was looking at song lyrics and saw in the lyrics the word is written いこう (ikou) but the singer clearly says "yukou". Are they just completely interchangeable?

Posted: **01 Oct 2020 10:40**

KaiTheHomoSapien wrote: ↑01 Oct 2020 05:13 So what's the difference between "iku" and "yuku" in Japanese (i.e. the verb "to go"). I was looking at song lyrics and saw in the lyrics the word is written いこう (ikou) but the singer clearly says "yukou". Are they just completely interchangeable?

Wiktionary at least seems to suggest they're interchangeable:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%A1%8 ... F#Japanese

Posted: **01 Oct 2020 10:54**

KaiTheHomoSapien wrote: ↑01 Oct 2020 05:13 So what's the difference between "iku" and "yuku" in Japanese (i.e. the verb "to go"). I was looking at song lyrics and saw in the lyrics the word is written いこう (ikou) but the singer clearly says "yukou". Are they just completely interchangeable?

They are largely interchangeable in the plain forms yuku, yukō but I don’t think the yu-forms are often used with the polite forms, which I’ve only ever heard as ikimasu, etc.

The forms in ik- are just simplifications of the form in yu-. The opposite development can be seen in the verb 言う iu which tends to become yuu, with analogy extending that even to the past tense yutta for earlier itta.

In names the element 之 -yuki (of the same origin) is never simplified to *-iki.

Posted: **01 Oct 2020 17:51**

Thanks. I had always found it confusing. I also found this on Quora:

"In poem and song lyrics sometimes the writer uses "yuku". For example the song from Ikimonogakari 歩いていこう (read: aruite yukou). What's more bizzare is that the lyrics is written in the hiragana form いこう but they read it as ゆこう (yukou), so basically they both mean the same thing :)."

Posted: **03 Oct 2020 05:36**

Two questions.

1. Does anyone know the name of the natlang whose maximal syllable structures are like the following:
* (C)(C)V(C)(C) in one-syllable words;
* (C)(C)V(C) in word-initial syllables of words with two or more syllables;
* (C)V(C)(C) in word-final syllables of words with two or more syllables;
* (C)V(C) in word-medial syllables of words with three or more syllables
?
Consonant clusters can’t ever be longer than two consonants;
and word-internal consonant clusters always straddle a syllable-boundary.

2. Does anyone know the name of the natlang whose maximal syllable structures are like the following:
* (C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C) in one-syllable words;
* (C)(C)(C)V(C)(C) in word-initial syllables of words with two or more syllables;
* (C)(C)V(C)(C)(C) in word-final syllables of words with two or more syllables;
* (C)(C)V(C)(C) in word-medial syllables of words with three or more syllables
?
Consonant clusters can’t ever be longer than four consonants.
Word-initial and word-final consonants can’t ever be longer than three consonants.
If a word-internal cluster is three or four consonants long, it must span a syllable-boundary.

Posted: **03 Oct 2020 08:15**

I don't know of such natlangs, I think. Unfortunately, the World Phonotactics Database does not work anymore. Otherwise this would have been a good starting point.

Posted: **03 Oct 2020 13:13**

Creyeditor wrote: ↑03 Oct 2020 08:15 I don't know of such natlangs, I think. Unfortunately, the World Phonotactics Database does not work anymore. Otherwise this would have been a good starting point.

How can we concisely denote the allowed syllable shapes in, for instance, the following situation?

....

This conlang has 21 consonants and 3 vowels.

Code: Select all

Maximal shape is CCVC and minimal shape is CV.

Onsets are mandatory, but needn’t be clusters.
Onset-clusters can be at most two consonants long.
Codas are optional but can’t be clusters.

Consonants come in three groups of seven.
Seven of the consonants can be the first or only consonant of an onset;
A different seven consonants can be the last or only consonant of an onset;
And the remaining seven consonants can be the only consonant of a coda.

Code: Select all

So there are up to 7*7 + 7 + 7 = 63 possible onsets;
and up to 63 * 3 * (7+1) possible syllables.

49*3*7 = 1029 CCVC syllables 
14*3*7 = 294 CVC syllables
49*3 = 147 CCV syllables
14*3 = 42 CV syllables

for a total of up to 1512 possible syllables.

And possibly more than 2,250,000 two-syllable sequences.

Posted: **03 Oct 2020 14:15**

You could use a "()" to show optionality and use a disjunction by saying that syllables are either C(Q)V(K) or (C)QV(K) and define each category. I like to use letters that denote dorsals for consonants

If you want to include the disjunction inside the formula you could use bracketing [C(Q)/(C)Q]V(K). I think this is the format that awkwords uses.

Another option would be to use recursive categories. If O is onset, N is nucleus and K is Coda and a syllable is ON(K), you could define them in the following way:
O=C/CQ/Q/QC
N=V
K=K

This is probably not the most concise way, but it is very clear I think. And awkwords compatible.

Posted: **04 Oct 2020 04:33**

Creyeditor wrote: ↑03 Oct 2020 14:15 You could use a "()" to show optionality and use a disjunction by saying that syllables are either C(Q)V(K) or (C)QV(K) and define each category. I like to use letters that denote dorsals for consonants If you want to include the disjunction inside the formula you could use bracketing [C(Q)/(C)Q]V(K). I think this is the format that awkwords uses.

I like this!

Another option would be to use recursive categories. If O is onset, N is nucleus and K is Coda and a syllable is ON(K), you could define them in the following way:
O=C/CQ/Q/QC
N=V
K=K

I don’t think I like the bolded line. But maybe the general idea is a good one!

This is probably not the most concise way, but it is very clear I think. And awkwords compatible.

I kinda think it’s pretty concise!
Thanks!

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