Search found 1387 matches
- Wed May 15, 2024 12:46 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: English questions
- Replies: 1406
- Views: 451092
Re: English questions
I think it's a generalisation of 'I could have done that', which doesn't really make a lot of sense when one analyses it. This particular construction does make sense to me. You just need to notice that English modals don’t really have past tense forms — so if you want to place a modal in the past,...
- Tue May 14, 2024 6:18 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: English questions
- Replies: 1406
- Views: 451092
Re: English questions
Other fun in this sort of department are things like: I'd've never've gotten my box cryptolocked if I hadn't've downloaded that "antivirus" program from that site. To me, this feels almost like aspectual agreement! It doesn’t work in my dialect, though: it feels very much like a feature o...
- Sat May 11, 2024 12:47 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4708
- Views: 2065442
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
I'm no expert, but I do have a Larousse, which says the word was singular or plural till the 18th century; while Etymonline says the English word became plural in the 17th century. while in English the plural agreement is inconsistent and varies by dialect ("maths is..." etc.). I don't th...
- Sun May 05, 2024 9:53 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4708
- Views: 2065442
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
When Lithuanians sort lists in Lithuanian alphabetically, do they use the same order as dictionaries? I ask because I've seen evidence that some at least consider 'e' and 'ė' as as different as 's' and 'š' (definitely different letters when the brain is engaged), while happily disregarding ogoneks o...
- Sat May 04, 2024 1:25 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4708
- Views: 2065442
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
Exactly. And in this case there are no convenient historical events that we can firmly peg a transition in our periodization to (such as how 1066 is used as a demarcation between Old and Middle English). Nitpick: The Old to Middle transition is normally dated to 1200, for which the historical peg w...
- Wed Apr 24, 2024 2:10 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: What are the phonotactics rules for Classical Latin?
- Replies: 22
- Views: 1138
Re: What are the phonotactics rules for Classical Latin?
Does alliteration exist as a poetic device in the languages of the Southeast Asian sesquisyllabic erosion area? If so, can C1- alliterate with P.C1-? It does, and it depends . So the answer to the second part seems to be 'No'. Alliteration, at least for alliterative quasi-reduplication, requires bo...
- Sun Apr 21, 2024 8:36 pm
- Forum: Ephemera
- Topic: Do you think it will ever be possible to go back in time?
- Replies: 43
- Views: 1310
Re: Do you think it will ever be possible to go back in time?
This is getting beyond what I’m familiar with, but according to Wikpedia , such a region of the universe would result in a gamma-ray signal from annihilation with our region of the universe, and we’ve seen no evidence of such a signal. It only says that for regions within the observable universe.
- Sun Apr 21, 2024 8:41 am
- Forum: Ephemera
- Topic: Do you think it will ever be possible to go back in time?
- Replies: 43
- Views: 1310
Re: Do you think it will ever be possible to go back in time?
Professor Brian Cox, around 2013, did a special lecture to a celebrity audience explaining (among other things) why time travel into the past will never be possible. It was a Doctor Who themed lecture and was a part of the BBC's 50th Anniversary celebration for DW. From what I remember it requires ...
- Sun Apr 21, 2024 8:25 am
- Forum: Ephemera
- Topic: Do you think it will ever be possible to go back in time?
- Replies: 43
- Views: 1310
Re: Do you think it will ever be possible to go back in time?
Can we do more than say that there's more matter than antimatter in the visible universe? The antimatter might mostly be beyond the horizon!
- Sat Apr 20, 2024 12:03 pm
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: Conlang Random Thread
- Replies: 3024
- Views: 2853258
Re: Conlang Random Thread
The frequency of phonemes in Vrkhazhian will be even more skewed because of the deaffrication of /tɬ tɬ dɮ tʃ tʃʼ dʒ/ into /t tʼ d/ (when geminate) or /ɬ (ɬʼ) ɮ ʃ (ʃʼ) ʒ/ (when singleton) and subsequent mergers of the postalveolars with the central alveolars. I think you may need to evolve your wor...
- Thu Apr 18, 2024 5:09 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: English 'not' migration
- Replies: 8
- Views: 471
Re: English 'not' migration
I suspect that you, Jonlang, may be becoming more pernickety as you gets older, and are thus more aware of the possibility of refraining from "neg hopping".
- Sat Apr 13, 2024 5:56 pm
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: Linguistic and cultural situation after the Norse conquest of England
- Replies: 7
- Views: 2051
Re: Linguistic and cultural situation after the Norse conquest of England
Now, I have encountered a claim that Danish in England was simply Anglicised so much that it wound up being simply regarded as English. It is then claimed that the opposite has happened in Jutland - an Ingvaeonic language was so Danicised that it wound up simply being considered bad Danish. Unfortun...
- Sat Apr 13, 2024 5:42 pm
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: Linguistic and cultural situation after the Norse conquest of England
- Replies: 7
- Views: 2051
Re: Linguistic and cultural situation after the Norse conquest of England
English as we know it already has quite some Old Norse influence, but there could be a variety of English with even more Norse influence. Maybe the English dialects of the former Danelaw have more Norse influence than Standard English, but I don't know about that - I know virtually nothing about En...
- Sun Mar 31, 2024 7:25 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Marginal distinctions
- Replies: 15
- Views: 682
Re: Marginal distinctions
...For instance, many of the distinctions merged in the Mary - merry - marry merger have been resurrected in a marginal fashion through consonant elisions and resulting vowel cluster reductions... Surely this is only an issue if the merger is still active. Is it? You cannot create new words that re...
- Sun Mar 24, 2024 9:35 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread's Sequel
- Replies: 909
- Views: 1084399
Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread's Sequel
Geneticists have found out that the Yamanya people who probably spoke PIE emerged from the mixture of two populations, one related to the probable speakers of Proto-Uralic, the other from south of the Caucasus. My idea is that the latter spoke an Afroasiatic language related to Semitic. That, howev...
- Sun Mar 24, 2024 9:01 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4708
- Views: 2065442
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
Whatever the transcription, I think the best explanation is that this phonologically is /jn̩/, but that’s so highly marked sonority-wise that the language ‘tries really hard’ to get rid of it (so to speak). Why does the phonology even have /jn̩/? Wouldn't /jən/ do just as well? In a few ways, the [...
- Sun Mar 24, 2024 6:18 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4708
- Views: 2065442
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
Why does the phonology even have /jn̩/? Wouldn't /jən/ do just as well?
- Sat Mar 23, 2024 3:02 pm
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: Survival of Greco-Roman paganism
- Replies: 26
- Views: 4571
Re: Survival of Greco-Roman paganism
Some recent talk about religion got me thinking. Would a scenario where 'paganism' in whatever form would survive to the present day make any sense? Or was it inevitable that Christianity replaced everything in Europe? I thought it had survived - see harsh words on Mariolatry. Remnants of Lithuania...
- Sat Mar 23, 2024 2:06 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4708
- Views: 2065442
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
I'm not sure I can out-pedant you, but I can sure try. I count five separate vowels in xkcd's text: ə in was, a, of, obs- ʌ in up, Doug, stuck, etc. syllabic n in obstruct ion , onions syllabic l in tunnel ʊ in ugh A fun activity! I agree with your phonetic analysis (except I have STRUT for "u...
- Thu Mar 21, 2024 4:03 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: English questions
- Replies: 1406
- Views: 451092
Re: English questions
This is more an English-learners-of-German question. It seems to me that English-speakers in general have an easier time learning the ach-Laut that the ich-Laut, despite the fact that the ach-Laut is only found in certain English varieties such as Scottish English, and the ich-Laut being found nati...