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1500 questions
29
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4 answers
Why do English verbs inflect so little, especially in regard to "person"?
Most Indo-European languages have verbs which endings change according to the person. I made a table with the most common (and close) languages and focussed on the category of person and the present tense, for reasons of space. The endings for each…
Alenanno
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29
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Why does English not have a cognate of words like heter, in Swedish, or llama, in Spanish, etc?
This is something that I think is present in most languages. If I were to present my self in English, I might say:
My name is DisplayName.
Where as in other languages I can both say:
Mitt namn är DisplayName
Or I could use heter like this:
Jag…
DisplayName
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28
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Do the Khoisan languages resemble the world's first language?
I have read somewhere that if there ever was a world's first language*, that language must have had very much in common** with the Khoisan languages. Arguments in support of this hypothesis are:
Khoisan languages have click consonants, a feature…
Otavio Macedo
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28
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9 answers
Why are "eat" and "drink" different words in languages?
In theory, the words "eat" and "drink" are fundamentally the same action to me: putting something (...edible?) in your mouth. Oftentimes when speaking English, I confuse the words "eat" and "drink" for no reason (even though it's my native…
cdknight
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28
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10 answers
Do some languages have articles besides the definite and indefinite articles?
Most languages have either no articles, or one or both of the definite (akin to English "the") and indefinite (akin to English "a" / "an").
But are there other kinds of articles, and which languages have them?
hippietrail
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27
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9 answers
Are there languages that distinguish between inclusive and exclusive "or"?
I would be especially interested in Indo-European languages or other common language families, but failing that, I would be very interested if it exists at all, because it is an important distinction in formal discourse, but can almost always be…
Phira
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27
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Are there any non-Indo-European languages with go-periphrasis?
Some Indo-European languages have a construction called go-periphrasis, by which some form of the verb go is used in conjunction with the main verb to mark tense. Most languages that have this feature use it to mark the future tense, like English…
Otavio Macedo
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27
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17 answers
Is there a language without gender in third person pronouns?
English (as most Indo-European languages) has a gender-neutral third person pronoun, it, but it is typically not used for people; if one wants to be gender neutral, one is often stuck using he or she.
Is there group of languages which make no…
IQAndreas
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27
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6 answers
How do field linguists begin to study an undocumented language which they cannot speak?
When field linguists begin to study a new language with whose speakers they don't share a common language, how do they begin?
I don't need the whole story, just the very start, the "bootstrapping". For some remote languages even the nearest…
hippietrail
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27
votes
2 answers
Fourth person (in Slavey language)
I was reading a Wikipedia article about the Slavey (Slave) language in Canada, and it says that Slavey has first, second, third and fourth person. I've never heard about a language having a fourth person, so I was just wondering if someone here…
lmc
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26
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5 answers
Was there a Semitic influence on Proto-Germanic?
One of the hypotheses supported by Theo Vennemann and other linguists is that Proto-Germanic was influenced by some Semitic language. The evidence they present for their case includes:
Loss of some grammatical cases from Proto-Indo-European. This…
Otavio Macedo
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26
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5 answers
Are consonant mutations in Indo-European languages specific of the Celtic group?
Consonant mutations are a strong characteristic of the Celtic languages. An example in Breton would be:
Khaz /kaz/: cat
Ar c'haz /aʁ.xaz/: the cat
The /k/ is altered to /x/ after ar.
According to Wikipedia there are mutations in Russian, but I am…
Evpok
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26
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Is it common to use the minor third for calling someone?
In German, calling someone's two-syllable name is tied very strongly to the minor third.
In languages that like to have a stressed last syllable, I would expect the last syllable to be higher than the first.
Phira
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26
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Is the seeming relation between the sound /n/ and negativity purely coincidental?
I have noticed that in many languages, words for "no", negative verb forms, etc. often begin with the sound /n/. Although I understand it is by no means universal, is there any relationship between these sounds in otherwise unrelated languages (e.g.…
rintaun
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26
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9 answers
The relationship between "orange" the colour and "orange" the fruit
This is something that bugged me before I studied linguists, and it still does - why is the word "orange" so often used for both the colour and the fruit cross-linguistically? Every language I've learned has these items as the same word, or at least…
LaurenG
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