Different word categories to express a concept

[Kuchigakatai]

Languages usually express notions with very similar word categories across languages, but sometimes they express very particular notions with word categories that are surprising for English speakers. What are some examples you know?

Note that I'm not talking about larger phenomena like languages with adjectival verbs (verbs that mean things like "become yellow" or "be wooden / made of wood"), or the common polysynthetic strategy of inflecting nouns into verbs (so that "wolf" has conjugations meaning "[they] are wolves", "[it] was a wolf", etc.), but specific word category choices where the normal choice is predictable from English.



Spanish often expresses the notion of "usually" ~ "often" with an auxiliary verb: soler. Suele hablarme temprano usually.3SG speak.INF.3SG-1SG early 'She often speaks to me early (in the day)'. However, for many speakers these days (including me), this verb is defective and only has indicative present and indicative imperfect forms, which means the other tenses are supplied by adverbs like generalmente 'generally' or todo el tiempo 'all the time'.

Latin has some adjectives that express a part of a thing, where English uses a noun + a preposition. For example, summus/summa/summum is an adjective meaning 'the top of', and extrēmus/extrēma/extrēmum means 'the end of'. Notice the gender agreement in summus mōns 'the top of a mountain', summa columna 'the top of a column', summa senectūs 'very old age' ("the top of old age"); extrēmus liber 'the end of a book', extrēmus digitus 'the tip of a finger' ("the end of a finger"), extrēma ōrātiō 'the end of a speech'.

German has an adverb meaning "to like [doing]": gern, although it can be approximated with English "gladly". Er hört gern Musik he hear.3SG gladly music.ACC 'he likes to listen to music'.

[Linguoboy]

It's hard to think of Irish examples since I think most belong to your category of "larger phenomenon", e.g. the lack of an equivalent to have and the resulting periphrastic constructions with BE plus one of various prepositions (ag, ar, le). But there are a few I think might qualify.

1. For "know", Irish has a defective verb feadair, which is used only in the present and even then only in the negative and imperative. Present indicative and non-present forms are supplied by the periphrasis a fhios a bheith ag "its knowledge being at", e.g.:

"Ná feadraís?" "Cinnte go bhfuil a fhios agam, ach ní duart leat é."
"Don't you know?" "Of course I know, but I didn't tell you."

Similarly, Munster dialect doesn't use síl "expect, think" in the present tense, instead preferring a copular construction with dóigh "likely", e.g.:

Is lag a shíleas go mbéadh tosach aige orm. Anois is dóigh liom é.
"I didn't think[*] that he'd arrive before me. Now I find it likely."

Using periphrastic expressions in these cases isn't so odd, but the suppletiveness of them is.

2. To express the idea that something nearly happened, Irish uses dóbair, either as a defective verb:

Dóbair go mbáfaí é. "He narrowly escaped drowning."

or substantively with a past form of the copula:

Ba dhóbhair dom é a dhearmhad. "I nearly forgot it."

3. Irish sometimes uses conjugated prepositions (particularly chun) in circumstances where English-speakers would expect a full verb (or at least a difference expression):

Seo chugainn é! "Here he comes!" (lit. "This to-us he")
Chugainn amach as seo! "Let's get out of here!" (lit. "to-us out from this")
Agus amach leis. "And out he went." (lit. "and out with-him")
Chugat leat! "Off with you!" (lit. "to-you with-you")

[*] Literally: "It's weak that I thought he would have a start on me."

[akam chinjir]

Cantonese has some sentence-final particles that are maybe a bit surprising, coming from English (or Mandarin!). I'm thinking especially of focus particles jē 啫 only and tìm 添 also; sìn 先 first, beforehand maybe also counts. (A relevant article I turned up when trying to find the character for jē: Ann Law, Cantonese sentence-final particles and the CP domain.)

Going the other direction, I think many English speakers would be surprised how many languages (a big majority) don't express predicate possession with a transitive verb.

...Oh, I see Linguoboy mentioned "have." I have the idea that in Irish you also have a fair number of psychological predicates where you use a noun in the same sort of locative construction that is used for possession---is that right?

[cedh]

This might also count as one of your "larger phenomena", but then it's about one particular semantic category that's systematically found in an unusual word category:

Most Iroquoian languages have their kinship terms lexicalised as verbs. These are typically transitive, often with the older relative as the subject and the younger relative as the direct object, but can be used to refer to either person depending on the pronominal prefix used:

(Oneida)

hiyenhų́saʔ
h-i-enhųs-aʔ
1SG-3SG.M-be_father_in_law_to-DIM
'(he is) my son-in-law' ('I am father-in-law to him')

lakwenhų́saʔ
l-akw-enhųs-aʔ
3SG.M-1SG-be_father_in_law_to-DIM
'(he is) my father-in-law' (lit. 'he is father-in-law to me')


Sometimes, only gender agreement in the pronominal prefix distinguishes words for male and female relatives, using the same root:

(Seneca)

hakso:t
h-ak-hso:t
3SG.M-1SG-be_grandparent_to
'my grandfather' (lit. 'he is grandparent to me')

ʔakso:t
ʔ-ak-hso:t
3SG.F-1SG-be_grandparent_to
'my grandmother' (lit. 'she is grandparent to me')


Dyadic relationships are often indicated using an intransitive dual or plural prefix, which may appear together with a reflexive or reciprocal marker:

(Mohawk)

akwatateʔkʌʔokųʔa
akw-atate-ʔkʌ-ʔokų-ʔa
1PL.EXCL-RECIP-be_sibling-PL-DIM
'my brothers and sisters' (lit. 'we are siblings to each other')

[Linguoboy]

It would be good to mention the copular construction with dóigh involves a noun: "be likelihood" > 'be likely'.

Except that a comparative form, dóiche, exists, e.g.: an áit is dóiche aige "the likeliest place for him".

If I understand correctly, Anois is dóigh liom é omits a VP that é is the subject of? "now be.PRES likelihood with-me 3SG [VP...]".

No, é here represents the entire omitted clause.

Ba dhóbhair dom é a dhearmhad. "I nearly forgot it."

Wiktionary lists the verb "to forget" as dearmad. Is the mh a dialectal variant?

It is. The Munster pronunciation is /dʹaˈru:d/, which can be best explained synchronically as dearmhad with epenthesis (i.e. *dearamhad) followed by vocalisation/vowel coalescence (dearúd).

I feel like I should be able to think of more Welsh examples. The only one that comes to mind is the use of emphatic pronouns where English prefers to add "too" or "also", e.g.: Cadno ishe llaeth, a ninne'n barod am ginio. "Fox wants milks, and we're also ready to eat dinner." (ishe = eisiau "want", ninne = ninnau "we too")

[Kuchigakatai]

To anyone who might be confused: Linguoboy accidentally deleted the post I had made here (and has sent me apologies for it). It's an easy mistake you can make when you're a moderator in a phpBB forum, because the edit and delete buttons are close to the quote button (I have done it to people in other forums too).

I don't feel like rewriting everything I had written, but it was mostly examples of how Arabic uses verbs to express "almost/nearly", "barely/almost not/narrowly", "still" and "not anymore", which English uses adverbs for. They're all auxiliary verbs basically.

EDIT from 2020: And I meant regular, boring auxiliary verbs that take a verb right away without an intervening particle (or functional clitic if you prefer). So, much in the same way you say:

بدأت أنام
badaʔtu ʔanaamu
begin.PRF.1SG sleep.IMPF.1SG
'I began to fall asleep.'

you also say:

كدت أنام
kidtu ʔanaamu
almost.PRF.1SG sleep.IMPF.1SG
'I almost fell asleep.'

[Salmoneus]

Spanish often expresses the notion of "usually" ~ "often" with an auxiliary verb: soler. Suele hablarme temprano usually.3SG speak.INF.3SG-1SG early 'She often speaks to me early (in the day)'. However, for many speakers these days (including me), this verb is defective and only has indicative present and indicative imperfect forms, which means the other tenses are supplied by adverbs like generalmente 'generally' or todo el tiempo 'all the time'.

This is very similar to English, but backward. English auxiliary "used to" has become defective, and is only used in the past tense (there is a present form - "I am used to speaking to her early in the day" - but this has a slightly different meaning and a different syntax and IME people think of it as a different verb). However, these meanings are still often conveyed by verbs in English: "she tends to speak to me early in the day", etc.

Latin has some adjectives that express a part of a thing, where English uses a noun + a preposition. For example, summus/summa/summum is an adjective meaning 'the top of', and extrēmus/extrēma/extrēmum means 'the end of'. Notice the gender agreement in summus mōns 'the top of a mountain', summa columna 'the top of a column', summa senectūs 'very old age' ("the top of old age"); extrēmus liber 'the end of a book', extrēmus digitus 'the tip of a finger' ("the end of a finger"), extrēma ōrātiō 'the end of a speech'.

This also happens in English, though rather less often. "Outer", "inner", "upper" and "lower" are the best examples, I think. It is rarer to find it used specifically with extremes as in your Latin examples - "the uppermost mountain" could in archaic English mean the top of the mountain, though these days it more naturally means the highest mountain. It does still happen occasionally, though: "He exhibited the utmost courage in our trek through the innermost Congo". Perhaps ?"my lower leg was for the most part badly wounded in the blunderbuss accident, although strangely the lowermost was unharmed".

German has an adverb meaning "to like [doing]": gern, although it can be approximated with English "gladly". Er hört gern Musik he hear.3SG gladly music.ACC 'he likes to listen to music'.

FWIW, archaic English had some adverbs not in "-ly" for similar meanings. The two most common these days are "lief" and "fain" - "lief" being closer to "to be content doing", "to be willing to do" (often in the comparative: "I'd as lief X as Y"; and often taking on the sense of its comparative, "liefer" - that is, to mean "to prefer", "rather"), and "fain" being closer to "to like doing", "to do joyfully or gladly".

However, while I'd personally use these words fain on a daily basis, anyone else not actively RPing or attempting to write like ye olde Englishe folke would apparently as lief say "fain" as sever their lower fingers, so...

[many people who ARE attempting ye olde english assume these words are auxiliary verbs, but they're not. This is demonstrated by their freer word order: wiktionary's three quotations for "fain" give "I fain would have had", "I would fain know", and "I [...] would be loved fain"]


[come to think of it, our last major survivor of this class in English is adverbial "rather", which is indeed often in a different word class in other languages. And I guess "sooner" in its non-literal sense.]

[Ryan of Tinellb]

I keep forgetting that it tends to be "Ich habe Hunger" in German. That is, "I have hunger" in constrast to English's "I am hungry".

[Xwtek]

In Indonesian, frequentity adverbs (sering, jarang, though not kadang-kadang) in English are often expressed via auxiliary verbs (The dictionary says adverbs, but the syntax says that it's auxiliary verb).

Kemarin aku pergi ke pasar || Sering aku pergi ke pasar || Sudah aku pergi ke pasar
Aku kemarin pergi ke pasar || Aku sering pergi ke pasar || Aku sudah pergi ke pasar
Aku pergi kemarin ke pasar || *Aku pergi sering ke pasar || ?Aku pergi sudah ke pasar
Aku pergi ke pasar kemarin || ?Aku pergi ke pasar sering || ?Aku pergi ke pasar sudah

Ironically, while sudah is treated as auxiliary verb, it's actually more flexible in placement than sering.

[Ares Land]

Latin has aegrōtō, 'I am sick' (and Old French had egroter, to be sick).

French has être d'accord, 'agree' (with an adverb, 'd'accord'), and être obligé (have to, must). (A common pitfall for French speakers in English: that's why you have French speakers say things like 'I am agree' or 'I am obligated').

[Qwynegold]

Japanese
Hungry and thirsty are expressed with verbs.

onaka ga suku
stomach NOM hunger.V

nodo ga kawaku*
throat NOM thirst.V
*This is the same word as for to dry, but they're written with different characters. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Like, dislike, be good at and be poor at are expressed with adjectives.

watashi wa okashi ga suki/kirai da
1SG TOP sweets ?⁑ like.ADJ/dislike.ADJ COP

ano hito wa shodō ga jōzu/heta da
that.DIST person TOP calligraphy ?⁑ good/bad COP
⁑I don't know what this particle is doing here.

[Salmoneus]

Latin has aegrōtō, 'I am sick' (and Old French had egroter, to be sick).

French has être d'accord, 'agree' (with an adverb, 'd'accord'), and être obligé (have to, must). (A common pitfall for French speakers in English: that's why you have French speakers say things like 'I am agree' or 'I am obligated').

FWIW, these all have direct parallels in English: "to ail" is old-fashioned but valid, particularly in the past tense ("but he ailed suddenly..."; there's also the inchoative "to sicken"); "to be in accord" is not uncommon in a formal register, and "to be in agreement" is very common indeed. "To be obligated" and "to be obliged", with slightly different connotations, are both common.

[Kuchigakatai]

Like, dislike, be good at and be poor at are expressed with adjectives.

watashi wa okashi ga suki/kirai da
1SG TOP sweets ?⁑ like.ADJ/dislike.ADJ COP

ano hito wa shodō ga jōzu/heta da
that.DIST person TOP calligraphy ?⁑ good/bad COP
⁑I don't know what this particle is doing here.

"su^kiꜜ" is better understood as being similar to 'liked, pleasant', so "ga" just expresses the subject here. Same goes for its antonym ki^rai 'disliked', and jo^ozuꜜ / he^taꜜ 'skillful/unskilled'.

"Regarding me, the sweets are liked." ('I like the sweets.')
"Regarding him/her, the calligraphy is skillful." ('His calligraphy is good.')
EDIT: A year and a half later, I don't think this is quite right. "Ga" expresses focus... It would be possible to say "okashi wa suki da" as well.

[MacAnDàil]

In Indonesian, frequentity adverbs (sering, jarang, though not kadang-kadang) in English are often expressed via auxiliary verbs (The dictionary says adverbs, but the syntax says that it's auxiliary verb).

Kemarin aku pergi ke pasar || Sering aku pergi ke pasar || Sudah aku pergi ke pasar
Aku kemarin pergi ke pasar || Aku sering pergi ke pasar || Aku sudah pergi ke pasar
Aku pergi kemarin ke pasar || *Aku pergi sering ke pasar || ?Aku pergi sudah ke pasar
Aku pergi ke pasar kemarin || ?Aku pergi ke pasar sering || ?Aku pergi ke pasar sudah

Ironically, while sudah is treated as auxiliary verb, it's actually more flexible in placement than sering.

Could you please give the translations of these words and phrases so we better understand?

[Vijay]

'I went to the market yesterday' vs. 'I often go the market' vs. 'I already went to the market'

aku = I/me
pergi = go
ke = to
pasar = market
kemarin = yesterday
sering = often
sudah = already

[MacAnDàil]

Cool, thanks

[dɮ the phoneme]

On the theme of alternate ways to express possession, Japanese does it with an intransitive verb meaning "to exist" (maybe that barely counts as a different word category, but still):

Gorō wa boushi ga aru
Gorō TOP hat NOM exist.IPFV
"Gorō has a hat"

Also, a number of things that are expressed with auxiliaries or adverbs in English are dependent nouns in Japanese:

suugaku no kyoushi na node, sansuu ga jouzu na hazu (da).
math GEN teacher COP because, arithmetic NOM skilled COP expectation (COP)
"Because he's a math teacher, I expect he's good at arithmetic"

okita bakari (da)
wake_up.PFV just (COP)
"I just woke up"

Both hazu and bakari (and, arguably, node, even though it's usually referred to as a particle) are dependent nouns here, modified by a preposed relative clause.

[Kuchigakatai]

One curious thing about Classical Chinese is that 皆 'all', 或 'some, someone' and 莫 'none, no one' are quantifier adverbs, so better understood as 'in all cases, every time, always', 'in some cases, in one case, in at least one case, sometimes', and 'in no cases, never', with a previous topic or subject as scope. There is a fair bit of disagreement in English-language resources about the category of these words, are they pronouns or adverbs? I suppose this is getting inevitably into "best-fit" arguments, but even then... Calling them pronouns often appears to be a reasonable thing to do when the sentence doesn't have a topic, aside from a noun right before any of these words. (Pronunciations below are in Baxter's notation for Middle Chinese.)

禍莫大於不知足
hwaX mak dajH 'jo pjuw trje tsjowk
disaster none big in not know be.enough
(lit., "[regarding] disaster, none is greater than not knowing what is enough", a locational comparative)
'No disaster is greater than not knowing what is enough / Satiety' (Daodejing 46)

In the above, it does look like 禍 'disaster' is the topic, 莫 'none' is the subject of the comment, and 大於... 'is greater than...' begins the verb phrase of the comment.

But this seems less easy to believe when a topic already exists before the noun phrase that's right before the quantifier word.

晉國，天下莫強焉。
tsinH kwok, then-haeH mak gjang hjen
Jin nation, heaven-under never strong in_it
(lit., "Jin kingdom, the underheaven is never stronger than it")
'No one in the world is stronger than the Jin kingdom.' (Mencius, chapter 1 (梁惠王上, king Hui of Liang part I), section 5)

Should we think of this as a topic-comment sentence (天下莫強焉, underheaven_TOP none_SUBJ stronger than_it) forming as a whole a comment of another topic (晉國, Jin kingdom_TOP)?

Maybe, but this rather breaks down when the existentials 有 hjuwX 'there is' and 無 mju 'there isn't' get involved, as they take their argument after, not before, yet 皆 'all', 或 'some' and 莫 'none' appear before them. This effectively makes the quantifiers look like adverbs that express something about a previous subject or topic, and not pronouns.

夫儒者之言，有溢美過實。
bju nyu tsyaeX tsyi ngjon, hjuwX yit mijX kwaH zyit
TOP confucian=AGT GEN word, exist overflow beautiful exceed real
瑞應之物，或有或無。
dzyweH 'ingH tsyi mjut, hwok hjuwX hwok mju
auspicious answer GEN thing, sometimes exist, sometimes not.exist
(lit., "Now the Confucians' words, there were overflowers of beauty and exceeders of reality. [As for] things of auspicious answers, [they] sometimes existed, [and] sometimes didn't.')
'Now there were things the Confucians said that overflowed in beauty and exceeded reality. Auspicious omens sometimes exist, sometimes don't.' (Wang Chong, 論衡 (Critical Essays), chapter 52 (是應))

If they were indefinite pronouns we'd expect *有或無或 "exist some, not.exist some". This probably means the first example should be reinterpreted as "regarding disaster, it is never greater than when not knowing satiety" (or "in no cases it is greater than when not knowing what is enough").

Still interestingly, though, 或 can introduce a person, an indefinite but specific person, meaning something like 'in one case'.

宋人或得玉
sowngH nyin hwok tok ngjowk
Song person in.one.case get jade
'Among the people of Song, there was one that obtained jade.' (Zuo Tradition, chapter 9 (襄公), year 15 (十五年))

[Linguoboy]

Today I learned the Finnish verb harrastaa, which my source glossed as "to have as a hobby". The hobby is expressed as an object in the elative case (which often translates English "from", e.g. talosta "from the house"), so I suppose it could be glossed even more literally as "to make a hobby of". In any case, it seems unusual crosslinguistically to have a transitive verb for this concept rather than using a copular expression. (I thought Korean might also express this with a transitive verb, but it turned out I was wrong.)

(I don't know how common elative objects are in Finnish, but I note that the common verb pitää takes one in the sense of "to like"; with a partitive or accusative object, it means "hold" bzw. "keep".)

[Kuchigakatai]

I thought Korean might also express this with a transitive verb, but it turned out I was wrong.

I found instances of 愛好 àihào as such a transitive verb in a Chinese corpus (e.g. 我愛好集郵 wǒ àihào jíyóu 'I make a hobby of collecting stamps'), but it seems it's a mere extension of the regular transitive 愛好 àihào meaning 'be keen on, really like', used more often than not with non-hobbies (她愛好各式各樣的帽子 tā àihào gèshì-gèyàng de mào zi 'she loves all kinds of hats'). Ultimately 愛好 àihào seems to only mean 'hobby' when it's a noun, not a verb, in phrases like ……是我的愛好 ...shì wǒ de àihào '... is my hobby', or 我有……的愛好 wǒ yǒu ... de àihào 'I have ... as a hobby'.