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1500 questions
18
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3 answers
What is the meaning of the number 2 in Proto-Indo European reconstructions? e.g. As in *tewtéh₂, meaning "people" or "tribe"
I am a writer doing some research into ancient languages for a story I am creating. Despite having done some formal and informal study on linguistics (I am familiar with a phonetic chart) and informal study on etymology, there are certain symbols…
VictorLeVaguer
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Why don't the French pronounce consonants at the ends of words?
I am curious what could have caused the shift in pronunciation. I presume it must have occurred after the spelling of words was standardized. According to the History of French wikipedia article, this happened in the transition to Middle French…
Doug Summers-Stay
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18
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Do any languages use {woman} as the root for human?
In English, along with some other Latinate languages, the word for our species as a whole is related specifically to that of the male sex: 'Latin humanus "of man, human," – Etymoline'
This, Etymonline says, could be related to Hebrew and the name…
BladorthinTheGrey
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Are there any Sino-Tibetan languages that don't have an isolating morphology?
All the Sino-Tibetan languages I can think of are isolating. Are there any with a fusional or agglutinative morphology? If so, can you show some examples?
Peter Olson
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18
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How does alcohol affect the ability to speak a second language?
From my own experience, drinking alcohol has both positive and negative effects to the ability of speaking a second language. On the one hand, it facilitates the process, mainly because one gets more relaxed and less inhibited (thus caring less…
Otavio Macedo
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18
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1 answer
Are there any languages that don't permit instrumental subjects?
In English, and no doubt in many other languages, instruments can be subjects. We can speak not only of John (an agent) cutting the canvas, but also of the knife (an instrument) cutting the canvas. As others have pointed out, though I can't find…
James Grossmann
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18
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How do tone languages assign phonemic tones to loanwords from non-tone languages?
How do tone languages assign phonemic tones to loanwords from non-tone languages? For example, does such assignment vary according to the phonological context in each loanword? Alternatively, does each tone language have a typical pattern of tones…
James Grossmann
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18
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5 answers
When and how did French become a non-null-subject language?
First of all, what does "null-subject" mean? Taken from the Wikipedia page for "Null-subject languages":
[…] a null-subject language is a language whose grammar permits an independent clause to lack an explicit subject. Such a clause is then said…
Alenanno
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18
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7 answers
Looking for a good beginners reference to learn computational linguistics
Recently in my work I came across the Backus–Naur Form (BNF), one way of describing a context-free grammar. Since then, I've been interested in learning how to deconstruct and parse not only computing lanuages but human ones as well. I realize there…
Hooked
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18
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3 answers
r in Romance names of London
Most Romance languages have an "r" in their renditions of the British capital's name: Londres, Londra etc.
Outside the Romance family, I only found it in Turkish Londra and Breton Londrez, but those definitely look like borrowings from Romance…
Quassnoi
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18
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5 answers
Language acquisition without interactive contact with fluent speakers
Children raised in a multilingual environment learn all the languages that they are exposed to with no effort. Does the same thing happen if a child has only indirect contact with a language? For example, if the child is only exposed to music, TV…
Otavio Macedo
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17
votes
5 answers
Is there any point in the current ordering of the letters in the alphabet?
I know we inherit our alphabets (including its ordering) from the Romans, and if we trace it further we will end up with the Phoenicians or some other civilizations in the ancient Middle East. Do (or did) the alphabet sequence have any meaning/sense…
Louis Rhys
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10 answers
Why does linguistics focus on spoken languages rather than written ones?
I might be wrong since I'm unable to find any sources supporting this, but it's increasingly my gut feeling that linguistics appears to focus on spoken languages as opposed to written ones. If this is the case, why is it?
blunders
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17
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6 answers
Is "Kent" in Tashkent of Turkic origin or Indo-European?
In Turkish there is this word Kent which means city. Some Turkic city names have this as a suffix, like Başkent and Tashkent. In Azerbaijani the same word, with the spelling of Kənd (Kand) means village and we have tens of villages in Iranian…
Mousa
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17
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7 answers
Weird behavior of two fruits' names (ananas/pineapple, banana/plátano)
Some time ago I found two tables that reported the names for two fruits, which were supposed to be funny, because they specifically reported a single exception among those several languages, where this fruit's name was different for only one of…
Alenanno
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