Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[WeepingElf]

Also, the German verbal prefix be- works pretty much like an applicative (at least if I haven't misunderstood the concept of "applicative").

[Raphael]

Unrelated:

In the English language, is there any logic behind when you use "West [name of place]", and when you use "Western [name of place]"?

[Kuchigakatai]

I think "West X" implies a higher level of independence from its neighbours. So "Western Germany" feels like "the western parts of Germany", but "West Germany" feels rather like "a country opposed to its rival, East Germany".

Here in Metro Vancouver there is a suburb called "West Vancouver", and another one called "North Vancouver". Calling them "Western/Northern Vancouver" would make them sound like they're inside the city of Vancouver proper, rather than being the suburbs on the side that they are.

(Hilariously, in practice, the western parts of the city of Vancouver are referred to as "Vancouver West"... And the (south)western parts of its downtown are referred to as "the Westside". This is the source of much confusion among immigrants and tourists.)

[alynnidalar]

Hmm.

Off the top of my head, I'm inclined to say that "West X" tends to be used in fixed phrases, whereas "Western X" is more ad-hoc--e.g. "West Philadelphia" (born and raised...) is a specific part of the city of Philadelphia, while "Western Philadelphia" is a more general term that just means, "any part of Philadelphia to the west".

But I don't know. I can think of phrases where "Western" is standard (e.g. I would always say "Western Europe", not "West Europe"), and also plenty of situations where they seem interchangeable (e.g. "West Michigan" and "Western Michigan" both seem cromulent to me, as a person from Michigan).

[Kuchigakatai]

I'd say that Western Europe sounds like "the western region(s) of Europe", but West Europe sounds like "an alliance opposed to East Europe" (or "North Europe", etc.).

[Linguoboy]

And "West Michigan" sounds more to me like the name of a university than a region of the state (despite the fact that there is in fact a "Western Michigan University" but no "West Michigan University").

My home state of Missouri isn't divided into regions by cardinal direction so "North Missouri", "East Missouri", "South Missouri", etc. all sound very odd to my ears. Not so for "northern Missouri", "eastern Missouri", etc.--these are just vague areas of the state. Similarly, "northern St Louis County" is just the northern part of the county whereas "North County" is a specific region within it; people could tell you without having to think about it whether they grew up in "North County" or not. "North St Louis" and "South St Louis" are shorter synonyms for "the North Side of St Louis" and "the South Side of St Louis". But *"West St Louis" is jarring because there is no "West Side" (it's the "Central West End"). "North Chicago", on the other hand, is an entirely separate municipality, several miles from the northern border of the "North Side of Chicago".

[Kuchigakatai]

On object agreement, the claim seems like complete nonsense. To start with, it ignores Arabic, which has object agreement, as did the earlier imperial languages Akkadian and Aramaic. Spoken French arguably has a verbal complex that includes object agreement— /ʒnətevypa/ "I didn't see you". Of the imperial languages of the New World, Quechua and Nahuatl— and it's historical accident that tens of millions speak Spanish rather than those— both have object agreement.

I think the claim about object agreement may possibly be interesting. Neither old nor modern Arabic have object agreement in the constructions that are normally considered at least, and I suspect you may be wrong about those two other Semitic languages.

Btw, Spoken French is often said to have it, but because of the likes of "je t'ai pas vu toi" [ʃtepavy twa] 'I didn't see you', or "je les porterai les livres" [ʒlepɔrtrɛ lelivʁ] 'I'll bring the books', not your intended example "je t'ai pas vu". ([ʃtepavy] being a single phonological word doesn't stop linguists from analyzing as ʃ-t-e pa vy grammatically, with ʃ-t-e being a separate word showing no object agreement, but seeing the object repeated as in [ʃtepavy twa] and more so [ʒlepɔrtrɛ lelivʁ] does give munition to an analysis with at least some kind object agreement somewhere.)


That said, it is very true that the statistics of such a paper are most likely very bad, because languages are often more complicated than a "has it" / "doesn't have it" yes-no variable. Most if not all of Romance does have object agreement in the verbs when a direct object is topicalized and fronted: El pastel te lo traigo mañana 'Regarding the cake, I'll bring it to you tomorrow'. But it happens this is a marked construction. You could classify Spanish or Italian as "doesn't have it" while missing this bit of information. My own dialect of Spanish admits los traeré los libros 'I'll bring the books' as a colloquial variant construction, even though traeré los libros, without object agreement, is a bit more common.

Similarly, you could say Arabic verbs have object agreement when they're inside a relative clause and their direct object is what has been relativized, although this is probably better analyzed as classic resumptive pronouns inside a relative clause anyway.

Applicatives in the strict sense (using a dedicated morpheme) are probably just uncommon. Even here, Swahili has one. And a syntactic applicative is probably not uncommon— cf. English we walked a mile and a half, where a measure (usually expressed with "for") has been promoted to direct object.

I am reminded of the Latin prefix per-, which can be an applicative for the notion of 'through', often even in parallel to using the preposition per.

ventus per capillōs flāns (wind.NOM through hair.ACC.PL blowing.PTCP.ACT)
ventus capillōs perflāns (wind.NOM hair.ACC.PL through-blowing.PTCP.ACT)
'wind flowing through your hair'

In the second phrase, capillōs 'hair' has been raised to the direct object function.

I've occasionally come across syntactic applicatives in Mandarin, where the direct object has been used in an instrumental sense (something like "cut knife" for "make a cut with a knife", but I wish I could remember an actual example).

...I suspect the claim about applicatives is probably very weak, because of the reasons you and akam chinjir have said.

[zompist]

Btw, Spoken French is often said to have it, but because of the likes of "je t'ai pas vu toi" [ʃtepavy twa] 'I didn't see you', or "je les porterai les livres" [ʒlepɔrtrɛ lelivʁ] 'I'll bring the books', not your intended example "je t'ai pas vu". ([ʃtepavy] being a single phonological word doesn't stop linguists from analyzing as ʃ-t-e pa vy grammatically, with ʃ-t-e being a separate word showing no object agreement, but seeing the object repeated as in [ʃtepavy twa] and more so [ʒlepɔrtrɛ lelivʁ] does give munition to an analysis with at least some kind object agreement somewhere.)

I think you're using "object agreement" differently... from your examples, it looks like you only use it if the object is explicitly present. I was referring only to agreement expressed on the verb. I'm not sure that your definition makes much sense when the object is 1st or 2nd person, since in many of these languages explicit pronouns are pragmatically marked. I would find it rather odd to describe "je t'ai pas vu" as not agreeing with its subject or object. But till someone tracks down the paper being discussed, we don't really know what "object agreement" means in it.

(Also, the Latin example is a great example of an applicative, thanks!)

[Bob]

Hmm.

Off the top of my head, I'm inclined to say that "West X" tends to be used in fixed phrases, whereas "Western X" is more ad-hoc--e.g. "West Philadelphia" (born and raised...) is a specific part of the city of Philadelphia, while "Western Philadelphia" is a more general term that just means, "any part of Philadelphia to the west".

But I don't know. I can think of phrases where "Western" is standard (e.g. I would always say "Western Europe", not "West Europe"), and also plenty of situations where they seem interchangeable (e.g. "West Michigan" and "Western Michigan" both seem cromulent to me, as a person from Michigan).

Whoa, did someone say Western Michigan? I'm from Michigan, too.

I was just looking in this thread and reading stuff and saw Western Michigan and thought I'd respond.

This is great everyone talks about so many linguistics and conlang topics but I often read them and then am like, well, I don't have anything to add to that.

I like conlangs that tie in with science or history or prehistory or have some specific linguistic theoretical topic they especially explore. Like I'm doing a dinosaur one now. Dinosaurs!

Yes, alas, there is a Western Michigan University. But all the universities in Michigan really pale in comparison to the University of Michigan and Michigan State University and fleece the students. It's like New Coke only inversed. Such small and limited faculties. But you'll never get a good job in academia if you didn't do your undergrad at Harvard. So why bother? It's easier to just read the dribble they publish and study their incompetence and the mis-achievements of nepotism and plutocracy. Everything is just the Emperor's New Clothes all the time.

They do the same thing in China, call every single college a "university" so it looks good on paper. Next, they'll make a term "Super University" to distinguish the greater universities from the rest. But then all the others will change their names to "super university"! The lawyers will have a field day. "For all that and all that."

This is like how The Congo is The Democratic Republic of the Congo. Sure, it's "democratic", just in a "democratic republic" sort of way.

Yeah, you wouldn't say West Michigan University. It'd be Western. There's also Grand Valley State University over there, I think. I think they adjust the names over time as part of the selling of diplomas. Michigan Technological University used to be Michigan College of Mines and then I think MSU and UMICH both used to have different names, maybe Michigan Agricultural College and The University of Detroit or something. See, the old names are just more honest. That's always a bad sign.

Oh, and by the way, MSU and UMICH are the University of Michigan and Michigan State University. Which sounds like the same thing. I think this is supposed to confuse high school students or people not from Michigan.

[Kuchigakatai]

I think you're using "object agreement" differently... from your examples, it looks like you only use it if the object is explicitly present. I was referring only to agreement expressed on the verb. I'm not sure that your definition makes much sense when the object is 1st or 2nd person, since in many of these languages explicit pronouns are pragmatically marked. I would find it rather odd to describe "je t'ai pas vu" as not agreeing with its subject or object. But till someone tracks down the paper being discussed, we don't really know what "object agreement" means in it.

Well, I think this redundance (or some similar interesting behaviour) is needed to be able to say something has object agreement in a meaningful way. Otherwise, je t'aide [ʃtɛd] 'I help you' on its own is not any different from English "I help you" [aɪˈhɛɫpju aˈhɛɫpjə], Spanish te ayudo [te̯a.ˈʝu.ðo] or Arabic أساعدك ʔu-sa:ʕid-u=ka (1SG-help.PRES-1SG=2SG.MASC), as you can consider /ʃtə/ a clitic word on its own (or two clitic words: /ʒə/ + /tə/) rather than a part of the verb exhibiting object agreement.

Whether some bound segments like that count as an attached clitic or an affix is more of a gradient in the end... But I find the reasons for the affix analysis weak if there is no redundancy with the full noun phrase, or otherwise behaviour such as the "clitics" appearing inside the stem of the verb (that easily makes them infixes instead), or showing very tight phonetic fusion with the verb (such as changing the MOA of the first consonant of the verb stem, i.e. consonant mutation). Being a single phonological word like [ʃtɛd] 'I help you' does help, but I think more should be taken into account to make the category meaningful.

If I try to "steelman" your view on Arabic, I can hardly think of any support for saying Standard Arabic ʔu-sa:ʕid-u=ka involves a suffix of object agreement instead of an enclitic. One is that many speakers shift the accent rightwards as if a single phonological word ([ʔʊˈsæ:ʕɪdʊ] > [ʔʊsæ:ˈʕɪdʊkæ]), but even then, some of them, notably Iraqis, don't ([ʔʊˈsæ:ʕɪdʊkæ]). (This reflects parallel phenomena in spoken Arabic.) Another is that the 2PL.MASC subject agreement suffix -tum gets extended to -tumu: before an object pronoun, e.g. sa:ʕadtʊm 'you guys helped' + -ha '3SG.FEM' > sa:ʕadtumu:=ha 'you guys helped her', showing some degree of fusion (or at least sensitivity) of the subject agreement for the object pronoun. But I note the object pronoun is not phonetically modified, and the suffix becomes -tumu: before all of the pronouns. Otherwise, I can think of nothing else, the object pronouns otherwise behaving rather like English =me, =her, =us or =them.

[zompist]

Well, I think this redundance (or some similar interesting behaviour) is needed to be able to say something has object agreement in a meaningful way. Otherwise, je t'aide [ʃtɛd] 'I help you' on its own is not any different from English "I help you" [aɪˈhɛɫpju aˈhɛɫpjə], Spanish te ayudo [te̯a.ˈʝu.ðo] or Arabic أساعدك ʔu-sa:ʕid-u=ka (1SG-help.PRES-1SG=2SG.MASC), as you can consider /ʃtə/ a clitic word on its own (or two clitic words: /ʒə/ + /tə/) rather than a part of the verb exhibiting object agreement.

I'm probably not understanding you, because this seems like weird quibbling to obscure the difference between morphology and syntax. Why not claim that "I help" is "not any different" from ayud-o? Why talk about inflection or morphology at all then?

(Obviously morphology and syntax overlap, and there are edge cases. But you really give no reason why /ʃtɛd/ is "not any different" from "I help you" besides the fact that they mean the same, which is neither a morphological nor a syntactic argument...)

Being a single phonological word like [ʃtɛd] 'I help you' does help, but I think more should be taken into account to make the category meaningful.

Sure, which is why those who make this analysis take more things into account. One is the very narrow parameters of the French verbal complex-- there are very few elements you can insert inside it. (Compare "I will, if I can, happily help you".) Another is the fact that for topicalization or emphasis you need to surface a separate pronoun-- "Moi je te crois" parallels "Yo te creo" as "Je te crois" parallels "Te creo." (Well, roughly-- you can use the "moi" form far more freely.)

If I try to "steelman" your view on Arabic, I can hardly think of any support for saying Standard Arabic ʔu-sa:ʕid-u=ka involves a suffix of object agreement instead of an enclitic.

I don't know Arabic and can't really say whether it's a suffix or a clitic. So let's talk about Akkadian. E.g.

a-ṭrud-kuš-šu
I-send.perf-2sm.dat-3sm.acc
"I sent him to you."

In what way do the affixes -kum, -šu differ from the affix a-? How would you determine they're "clitics" and not "suffixes"? FWIW the two grammars I have here call them suffixes.

(FWIW the grammar does mention clitics: conjunction -ma, subordinator -ni, indirect speech -mi. For -ma and -mi at least, this is probably because they are not restricted to one part of speech.)

[Kuchigakatai]

[...]

Those are good objections, and I am now thinking I'm wrong.

I think that ultimately I was too uncomfortable with the idea of verbs having object agreement only when the full noun phrase is not present, but I see what you mean now. Under this new view, I agree that Arabic does have object agreement.(!) (It also mattered to me that the phonetic forms of verbal agreement in French are very predictable once you know the morphophonology involved, and they never alter the verb stem. But anyway this is phonetic detail that's not really relevant... I was also influenced by having never heard of Arabic being described as having object agreement.)

(It is also true I have a lot of sympathy for the "syntax all the way down" kind of people, but that's a separate issue...)

Another further point about French is that a lot of speakers are uncomfortable coordinating on subject agreement, like je te vois et t'entends. That also shows that je has become an agreement prefix pretty tightly attached to the verb.

I also loved that Akkadian example, because Standard Arabic is one of those languages that, when both the direct object and indirect object are present as pronouns, the direct object pronoun gets demoted to a kind-of-prepositional phrase and the indirect object gets raised as the new direct object. And modern spoken Arabic tends to keep using a preposition for the indirect object. Not that I know anything about Akkadian anyway.

أرسلتك إياه
ʔarsal-tu-ka ʔijjaa-hu
sent-1SG-2SG ACC-3SG
'I sent him to you.'

[Richard W]

In what way do the affixes -kum, -šu differ from the affix a-? How would you determine they're "clitics" and not "suffixes"? FWIW the two grammars I have here call them suffixes.

In my amateur view, there is a difference between inflection and agreement. There is a good reason to see the verbs being inflected to express the objects, but agreement indicates that there is something else controlling the form. The boundaries do get muddied by resumptive or emphatic pronouns; they seem to be a path for former clitics to become mere agreement markers.

A definite case of Romance object marking is the agreement of the past participles in transitive perfect tenses with the direct object; It may be relevant to the claim that there's not a lot of it left.

[bradrn]

In what way do the affixes -kum, -šu differ from the affix a-? How would you determine they're "clitics" and not "suffixes"? FWIW the two grammars I have here call them suffixes.

In my amateur view, there is a difference between inflection and agreement. …

I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying here — surely agreement is simply a type of inflection?

[Raphael]

Thank you, everyone!

[Xwtek]

On object agreement, the claim seems like complete nonsense. To start with, it ignores Arabic, which has object agreement, as did the earlier imperial languages Akkadian and Aramaic. Spoken French arguably has a verbal complex that includes object agreement— /ʒnətevypa/ "I didn't see you". Of the imperial languages of the New World, Quechua and Nahuatl— and it's historical accident that tens of millions speak Spanish rather than those— both have object agreement.

Well, the paper doesn't say that there is no such language, but they just say that there is a significant correlation.

[Richard W]

I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying here — surely agreement is simply a type of inflection?

Exactly. Not all inflection is agreement. SAE noun inflection is not agreement, unless you account governance.

Another example is the Celtic and Semitic inflection of prepositions. It's not agreement; prepositions are not inflected for the nouns they govern, but rather contract with personal pronouns in a manner best described as conjugation.

[alynnidalar]

Yes, alas, there is a Western Michigan University. But all the universities in Michigan really pale in comparison to the University of Michigan and Michigan State University and fleece the students. It's like New Coke only inversed. Such small and limited faculties. But you'll never get a good job in academia if you didn't do your undergrad at Harvard. So why bother? It's easier to just read the dribble they publish and study their incompetence and the mis-achievements of nepotism and plutocracy. Everything is just the Emperor's New Clothes all the time.

truly the hottest of takes

[zompist]

Well, the paper doesn't say that there is no such language, but they just say that there is a significant correlation.

Again, people can talk about correlation when the observations are independent. Languages aren't.

My database of languages with a million speakers is outdated, but it should still be a good proxy for their data. 180 languages, that's robust enough for statistics. Only... how many language families?

22.

N=22 is a very small sample set; you're very likely to get false correlations.

Also: 1/3 of that set is Indo-European, and 1/4 is Niger-Congo.

You'd get an even stronger and just as valid "correlation" if you compared "million speaker languages" with "distance from the Greenwich meridian." But probably it'd be harder to get it into a journal.

[Nerulent]

I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying here — surely agreement is simply a type of inflection?

Agreement is separate from inflection - it can also take the form of clitics or separate words.

I think that ultimately I was too uncomfortable with the idea of verbs having object agreement only when the full noun phrase is not present, [...]

I’m not sure why you say only here - in the French examples, you can analyse it as verbal agreement whether or not the explicit object is present. Just as Spanish still has subject agreement in both ayudo and yo ayudo, French object agreement is the same across je t’aide and je t’aide toi.