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1500 questions
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7 answers
What divides semantics from pragmatics?
To my understanding... Semantics is the raw meaning and connotations a word carries on it's own and pragmatics is the context-dependent meaning a word holds.
Is this accurate? Can anyone explain it to me simply?
LitheOhm
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Are there any languages in which verbs are a closed class?
In English, the verb "do" can be a transitive verb whose object stands for an action. So, we English speakers can "do a somersault," "do a back flip," and "do a cartwheel." The productivity of this construction is limited, but it does suggest a…
James Grossmann
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4 answers
Corpus of baby-talk or motherese
Baby-talk or motherese is the language that parents tend to use when addressing preverbal or just-starting-to-speak children. What are the fundamental features or rules that define this subset of a language? Is there a publicly available…
Artem Kaznatcheev
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3 answers
Are there any fundamental differences in personal pronoun acquisition across languages?
I am interest in reversal errors in personal pronoun acquisition. My knowledge comes mostly from studies done with English-speaking children, and I was wondering if there is any languages where this effect would not occur or occurs in a…
Artem Kaznatcheev
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20
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2 answers
How are languages deciphered?
How do archaeologists, cryptoanalysts and linguists decipher extinct languages? Has there been a case in history where this was successfully accomplished, without the means of something like the Rosetta stone or people that still speak a similar…
Dexter
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What is the relationship between the PIE roots *dekṃ and *kṃtóm?
It seems that there is a consensus that the PIE roots for ten and hundred are, respectively, *deḱṃ and *ḱṃtóm. There also seems to be a consensus that *ḱṃtóm is a shortened version of *deḱṃtóm. These two roots are strongly related, both…
Otavio Macedo
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19
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5 answers
Why is dependency parsing so much faster than constituency parsing?
For example, Cer, Daniel M., et al. "Parsing to Stanford Dependencies: Trade-offs between Speed and Accuracy." LREC. 2010. :
Why is dependency parsing so much faster than constituency parsing?
user48665
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2 answers
How did Italian manage to stay (mostly) phonetically spelled despite its long written tradition?
Italian is commonly cited as an example of a phonetically spelled language. It is easy to guess how an Italian word is pronounced based on the way it is written, because each written symbol highly corresponds to a sound (with some exceptions). This…
Louis Rhys
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5 answers
Why is the specific error "substraction" so common in English?
It seems very common (particularly among non-native English speakers, but I've seen the typed form, though not the spoken form, from native speakers too) for people to type or even say "substraction" when they mean "subtraction".
What causes this…
Hearth
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5 answers
Why were vowels secondary citizens in many of the worlds sound-based writing systems?
Not considering logographic systems like Chinese, and outside Cuneiform (not sure if that is a logo system or something else), it appears at first glance that many of the world's writing systems started out without giving vowels a…
Lance
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19
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2 answers
Ncuti Gatwa is, according to Wikipedia, pronounced /ˈʃuːti ˈɡætwɑː/ - where is the NC orthography derived from?
On trying to find the pronunciation of the name of Mizero Ncuti Gatwa, a Rwandan-Scottish actor who will be playing the Fourteenth Doctor, I noticed the NC pairing and its pronunciation is listed on Wikipedia as ʃ. I then wondered what the origin of…
AncientSwordRage
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3 answers
Why was "zh" picked to represent /ʒ/, and where does it come from?
As a native French speakers I used to be puzzled by Zh being used for /ʒ/. At first because I didn't understand the need for it, since in French j is /ʒ/, and dj is /dʒ/. Then I understood why English speakers need a special symbol, but Zh felt…
Teleporting Goat
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10 answers
Languages with different words for 'we'
Are there any languages that make a distinction between the following:
We (you and I)
We (them and I, but not you)
We (all of us)
I don't think any of the Germanic languages do.
Also, what is this distinction called? If I knew that I think I may…
Sarke
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19
votes
4 answers
Is the Cyrillic letter 'Z' the same as the number 3
Why do the Cyrillic 'Z'(З) and the number '3' seem to be the same glyph? Is there a difference that I'm just not seeing? They look identical to me
jastako
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19
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3 answers
Why vowels sound different from each other
This might be a basic question but I am confused about how mouth shapes for vowels, at a deeper level, are producing different sounds. Wanted to see if one could demonstrate with another instrument like a pipe, how you could create the vowel…
Lance
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