Search found 67 matches
- Wed Jun 06, 2018 1:25 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Quick question about English transitive verbs w/o objects
- Replies: 4
- Views: 5335
Quick question about English transitive verbs w/o objects
Is there a name or technical term for the way English treats transitive verbs like "to feed", whereby they usually take an object ("The bird feeds its young"), but when it takes no object it's understood as having an unstated reflexive object ("The bird feeds"; i.e. "The bird feeds itself")?
- Sat Mar 10, 2018 1:32 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Questions about pluractionality/verbal number
- Replies: 0
- Views: 9181
Questions about pluractionality/verbal number
I'm reading up on the concept of pluractionality, which I only learned about recently, so it's still rather confusing to me. The general sense is that the verbal action itself is plural (either involving multiple referents or a repetition of action), but that it also crosses over somewhat with ergat...
- Fri Nov 10, 2017 10:18 pm
- Forum: L&L Museum
- Topic: resources
- Replies: 722
- Views: 314437
- Mon Jul 24, 2017 2:35 pm
- Forum: L&L Museum
- Topic: resources
- Replies: 722
- Views: 314437
Re: resources
Comparative Siouan Dictionary
Download link in upper right. The main page also contains links to PDFs of papers related to the reconstruction.
Download link in upper right. The main page also contains links to PDFs of papers related to the reconstruction.
- Wed Feb 08, 2017 11:55 am
- Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
- Topic: Sound Change Quickie Thread
- Replies: 2827
- Views: 630316
Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread
Are you sure there is no distinction between an intervocalic position before /r/ and being directly after /r/ for this sound change? If there is a distinction, the second seems like plain, one step fortition. Don't know about the other one. Admittedly, 'murther' was the only example of the latter I...
- Tue Feb 07, 2017 8:14 pm
- Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
- Topic: Sound Change Quickie Thread
- Replies: 2827
- Views: 630316
Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread
In the history of English there was a change whereby [ð] <> [d] in the vicinity of <r>. Thus, fader > father , but murther > murder . In effect, <th> and <d> switched places with each other in the same environment. I was wondering how this was possible and what the intermediary steps were, if any.
- Thu Nov 03, 2016 11:24 am
- Forum: L&L Museum
- Topic: resources
- Replies: 722
- Views: 314437
Re: resources
Proto-Algonkian (i.e. Algonquian) roots and word-formatives Careful with this one- Hewson's tastes run towards the abstract, so he often reconstructs underlying forms that aren't actually attested anywhere, and sometimes he gets things wrong. I know this because I took him at face value before my c...
- Tue Sep 27, 2016 2:18 pm
- Forum: L&L Museum
- Topic: resources
- Replies: 722
- Views: 314437
- Fri Sep 02, 2016 12:32 pm
- Forum: L&L Museum
- Topic: resources
- Replies: 722
- Views: 314437
- Sat Aug 06, 2016 6:36 am
- Forum: L&L Museum
- Topic: resources
- Replies: 722
- Views: 314437
Re: resources
A Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages
Written before the discovery of Ugaritic, but a good summary nonetheless.
Written before the discovery of Ugaritic, but a good summary nonetheless.
- Tue Jun 28, 2016 6:11 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Loss of tone, resulting in...what?
- Replies: 13
- Views: 4355
Loss of tone, resulting in...what?
I've been reading up on the various ways languages can acquire tone, but haven't found much on how they can lose it. I know a simple tone system like high/neutral can equalize the tones and leave an effect on the vowel, such as length, but what about a complex system like that of Chinese? Or, to put...
- Tue Jun 07, 2016 4:45 pm
- Forum: L&L Museum
- Topic: resources
- Replies: 722
- Views: 314437
Re: resources
Frederik Kortlandt: The Indo-Uralic Verb
- Tue Mar 15, 2016 11:31 am
- Forum: L&L Museum
- Topic: resources
- Replies: 722
- Views: 314437
- Mon Dec 28, 2015 9:57 pm
- Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
- Topic: Sound Change Quickie Thread
- Replies: 2827
- Views: 630316
Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread
Die althochdeutsche Lautverbindung sk wurde zu sch . So entstand zum Beispiel aus dem althochdeutschen Wort scōni die mittelhochdeutschen schōne und schœne (beide Wörter – schon und schön – haben im heutigen Deutschen dieselbe Herkunft). Der Konsonant s wandelte sich zu sch, wenn er vor l, m, n, w,...
- Mon Dec 28, 2015 5:20 pm
- Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
- Topic: Sound Change Quickie Thread
- Replies: 2827
- Views: 630316
Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread
What was the reason/mechanism whereby certain *s became <sch> in modern German?
- Thu Dec 03, 2015 9:25 am
- Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
- Topic: Sound Change Quickie Thread
- Replies: 2827
- Views: 630316
Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread
PSl. *norvъ 'custom' > OCS nrav (loaned into Russian as nrav , coexisting with native norov ), Bulgarian and Slovene nrav , Macedonian and Serbo-Croatian narav , Polish narów , and Czech and Slovak mrav with dissimilation from earlier nrav . So you can either block reduction of the original vowel a...
- Tue Dec 01, 2015 10:16 pm
- Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
- Topic: Sound Change Quickie Thread
- Replies: 2827
- Views: 630316
Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread
In a language which undergoes liquid metathesis, like what the Slavic languages went through, what might happen with a word like *norto or *nolto? Is it realistic that they fully metathesize to *nroto/*nloto (with a subsequent change to eliminate the initial cluster), or would it be more likely that...
- Tue Jun 09, 2015 9:14 am
- Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
- Topic: What was your first conlang like?
- Replies: 30
- Views: 7804
Re: What was your first conlang like?
I only dimly recall my first conlang. I remember it was a blatant Quenya-clone, but nothing else. The oldest conlang I still have the files for was called Galáthir. It wasn't just a Quenya-clone, it threw in a lot of Sindarin as well. Originality! The nominal and verbal inflections were invented on ...
- Mon Dec 08, 2014 11:29 am
- Forum: L&L Museum
- Topic: resources
- Replies: 722
- Views: 314437
Re: resources
An Overview of Uto-Aztecan Grammar: http://www-01.sil.org/acpub/repository/21478.pdf
- Wed Oct 15, 2014 7:24 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Old English Gerunds in -enne
- Replies: 2
- Views: 1909
Re: Old English Gerunds in -enne
The link I posted, however, contrasts the "inflected infinitive" -anne with the "gerund" -enne.
- Wed Oct 15, 2014 8:27 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Old English Gerunds in -enne
- Replies: 2
- Views: 1909
Old English Gerunds in -enne
I've only ever seen the Old English gerund suffix -enne mentioned by one source*, and I can't recall ever having seen it used in a text. I've always assumed that -ing/-ung was the usual gerund suffix. Was -enne common, and did it differ in usage from -ing/-ung ? *This one: http://www.utexas.edu/cola...
- Tue Aug 05, 2014 11:43 am
- Forum: L&L Museum
- Topic: resources
- Replies: 722
- Views: 314437
Re: resources
I apologize if this has been asked before. Are there any good books or online resources that list native English words (i.e. Anglo-Saxon words) that were displaced by borrowed words? For example, how the English word "ruth" (Old English hrēowð) was dropped in favor of "pity".
- Tue Jul 01, 2014 4:07 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Scope of Evidential Usage
- Replies: 1
- Views: 1089
Scope of Evidential Usage
I'm trying to incorporate some evidentials into my language. I think I'm going to go with the following four: Visual: tarho Non-visual sensory: scó Hearsay: rahon Inferential: mif All are particles: the first three are derived from archaic verbs which were replaced by others, while mif was originall...
- Wed Jun 04, 2014 6:27 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: External possession - what is it?
- Replies: 5
- Views: 1857
Re: External possession - what is it?
I guess it depends entirely on the language in question. External possession is just a mechanism to raise the possessor to a more central syntactic position within the clause (from an attribute into a recipient in the German and Yimas examples and into a patient in the Guaraní example). It's up to ...
- Mon Jun 02, 2014 6:15 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: External possession - what is it?
- Replies: 5
- Views: 1857
Re: External possession - what is it?
In my understanding external possession or possessor raising often has to do with the focus of the action being on the possessor of the object rather than on the object itself. In the German example the more relevant information is that the neighbour gets her car washed, not just that someone's car...