Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[bradrn]

There's likely other Sino-Tibetan like this. Which you probably count as around the Mon-Khmer area, but still.

Sesquisyllabicity is a widespread feature of a large linguistic area, yes, and it was more widespread in the past - Old Chinese and Proto-Kra-Dai, probably also Proto-Hmong-Mien etc. A handful of Austronesian languages too, like Jarai.

I know about this already, which is why I was looking for sesquisyllabicity elsewhere.

The development of sesquisyllabicity in Gta' is probably unrelated.

How do we know? After all, all of non-Munda Austroasiatic (i.e. Mon–Khmer) is sesquisyllabic.

[Nortaneous]

The development of sesquisyllabicity in Gta' is probably unrelated.

How do we know? After all, all of non-Munda Austroasiatic (i.e. Mon–Khmer) is sesquisyllabic.

Languages closely related to Gta' (like Gutob and Remo) don't reflect the vowel reduction that Gta' shows, and the vowels in Gutob and Remo cognates can't be predicted from the Gta' forms. So Gregory Anderson says, anyway, but judging by Felix Rau's preliminary proto-Munda reconstruction, it could be archaic.

[bradrn]

The development of sesquisyllabicity in Gta' is probably unrelated.

How do we know? After all, all of non-Munda Austroasiatic (i.e. Mon–Khmer) is sesquisyllabic.

Languages closely related to Gta' (like Gutob and Remo) don't reflect the vowel reduction that Gta' shows, and the vowels in Gutob and Remo cognates can't be predicted from the Gta' forms. So Gregory Anderson says, anyway, but judging by Felix Rau's preliminary proto-Munda reconstruction, it could be archaic.

Sorry, I misinterpreted you. I know that Gtaʔ sesquisyllabicity is innovative in Munda; I thought you were saying that the development of sesquisyllabicity in Gtaʔ was independent of the general trend towards sesquisyllabicity in SE Asia.

[Otto Kretschmer]

In Polish to say "I was in a park" we say

Byłem w parku

be.1SG.PST.MSC in park.LOC

but to say "I was not in a park" we use

Mnie nie było w parku (literally "me it was not in a park")

I.GEN not be.1SG.PST.NEUT in park.LOC

How is this type of construction called? When the verb to be is used in the past tense in the sense of being physically present /and negated, the subject changes from nominative to genitive and the verb from masculine/feminine to neuter

[Moose-tache]

In Polish to say "I was in a park" we say

Byłem w parku

be.1SG.PST.MSC in park.LOC

but to say "I was not in a park" we use

Mnie nie było w parku (literally "me it was not in a park")

I.GEN not be.1SG.PST.NEUT in park.LOC

How is this type of construction called? When the verb to be is used in the past tense in the sense of being physically present /and negated, the subject changes from nominative to genitive and the verb from masculine/feminine to neuter

Balto-Slavic in general has a lot of these verbs, where the "subject in spirit" is genitive, or even dative, and a dummy or omitted third person grammatical subject is inserted. I've seen different terms used in different contexts due to the variety of forms in different languages, but the most common term I've seen is impersonal verb.

[Otto Kretschmer]

How did the loss of masculine nominative -s in Latin occur? Did it just disappear or was there a transmitional period with s being pronounced as sh or [x][h] before finally disappearing?

[Travis B.]

How did the loss of masculine nominative -s in Latin occur? Did it just disappear or was there a transmitional period with s being pronounced as sh or [x][h] before finally disappearing?

Probably by the nominative ending being replaced by an accusative ending. Remember that the masculine nominative -s survived into Old French and Old Occitan, and there are sporadic survivals in individual words even in modern Spanish, and only disappeared when the case system finally finished collapsing.

[Nortaneous]

How did the loss of masculine nominative -s in Latin occur? Did it just disappear or was there a transmitional period with s being pronounced as sh or [x][h] before finally disappearing?

Probably by the nominative ending being replaced by an accusative ending. Remember that the masculine nominative -s survived into Old French and Old Occitan, and there are sporadic survivals in individual words even in modern Spanish, and only disappeared when the case system finally finished collapsing.

yes, cf. how in French the accusative forms of the pronouns are on track to replace the nominatives, and in English the dative forms of the pronouns are now the default form, with the "nominatives" being marked

[bradrn]

How did the loss of masculine nominative -s in Latin occur? Did it just disappear or was there a transmitional period with s being pronounced as sh or [x][h] before finally disappearing?

Probably by the nominative ending being replaced by an accusative ending. Remember that the masculine nominative -s survived into Old French and Old Occitan, and there are sporadic survivals in individual words even in modern Spanish, and only disappeared when the case system finally finished collapsing.

yes, cf. how in French the accusative forms of the pronouns are on track to replace the nominatives, and in English the dative forms of the pronouns are now the default form, with the "nominatives" being marked

Accusative, surely, rather than dative?

Also, does this make French marked-nominative?

[Nortaneous]

Accusative, surely, rather than dative?

No, dative. Compare the ModE third-person oblique pronouns to the OE datives him, hire, him, him, and then to the accusatives hine, hīe, hit, hīe. The accusative form is continued in it (presumably to retain gender marking; in OE masculine and neuter were merged in the dative and genitive), but the dative is continued everywhere else. Them even has a reduced form /əm/ - where'd the /ð/ go? Maybe it was never there.

Also, does this make French marked-nominative?

I don't think so, no - the nominative pronouns became verbal prefixes and the accusative pronouns became the pronouns.

[Otto Kretschmer]

Give some examples in French!

[Ryan of Tinellb]

Does anyone here speak Irish / Gaeilge?

Jennifer Fallon's Rift Runners trilogy is set in a number of parallel universes. It uses the idea of doubles of the characters. Since it's set in Ireland, she uses the word eileféin to refer to this concept. I know it's not a real word, but what would be the most likely plural, please?

[Moose-tache]

You really need to know the gender. It could be a feminine noun, with a plural in -a. Are you sure it's not already a masculine plural?

[Linguoboy]

Does anyone here speak Irish / Gaeilge?

Tá Gaelainn agamsa.

Jennifer Fallon's Rift Runners trilogy is set in a number of parallel universes. It uses the idea of doubles of the characters. Since it's set in Ireland, she uses the word eileféin to refer to this concept. I know it's not a real word, but what would be the most likely plural, please?

She had the right idea, but missed the mark slightly. Ordinarily in left-branching compounds, the second element undergoes lenition, e.g. féin "self" + cosaint "defence" = féinchosaint "self-defence". So I would've preferred eilefhéin or even eiléin (since fh is silent and silent letters are often dropped in contemporary Irish.) Another possibility--and one which purists argue is more true to how Irish traditionally forms compounds--would be right-branching féin eile.

You really need to know the gender. It could be a feminine noun, with a plural in -a. Are you sure it's not already a masculine plural?

It could also be a feminine noun with a plural in -a--or a masculine noun with a plural in -a, for that matter. Irish plural formation is rather varied and not as strictly tied to gender as other Indo-European languages.

This is actually an odd case because féin in the modern language is a pronoun which is invariable for number, e.g. sinn féin "we ourselves"[*]. In Old Irish it had a funky internal plural (being in origin a compound of two pronouns, one corresponding to PIE *swé and the other to Irish sin "that"), written variously as fesin, fessin, feisin, feissin, feisne, etc. Now, if you wanted to preserve that, the modern spelling would be feisin, thus eilef(h)eisin. This seems like an unlikely survival, though, given the distinctive plural form wasn't even preserved for the corresponding pronoun. Moreover, contemporary Irish shows a strong tendency toward analogy and regularisation, even with compounds. (One of my favourite examples is brá lín "bedsheet". This is original a right-branching compound, i.e. "sheet of linen" but in the modern language is pluralised braillíní, i.e. as if a diminutive in -ín of a nonexistent root noun *braill.)

So if we want to go with an analogical plural, what would be a likely choice? According to Foclóir Nua Béarla-Gaeilge Fhoras na Gaeilge, féin as a noun meaning "[the] self" is fourth declension masculine. That puts it in a class with the aforementioned braillín and other true diminutives -ín which take strong plurals in -í. But this is Irish, so there are always alternatives, and a common for fourth declension masculines ending in a slender consonant is -eanna (e.g. veain "van", plural veaineanna).

Other possibilities would be less likely or more dialect-specific. Cois Fhairrge, for instance, seems to have a penchant for -eacha (and for double plurals like -eachaí). One possibility I like depends on the original derivation of the term being obscured and eilfhéin "other self" being reinterpreted as eiléine "other shirt", which would have the plural eiléinte (or, of course, eiléinteacha in Cois Fhairrge).

tl; dr: The most plausible options would be eileféiní or eileféineanna.

[*] One other oddity about féin in the modern language is that in many dialects it is pronounced as if spelled *héin. If the etymology is transparent, you'd expect this pronunciation in the compound eileféin as well.

[Vijay]

Are you really the only person here who speaks Irish? (Unless I count, I guess. Sorry, I didn't sleep well, so I'm not sure how well my memory/brain is working).

[Ryan of Tinellb]

Thank-you for a very thorough analysis, Linguoboy.

[Pabappa]

the next Edo Nyland may be found in Hungary:

https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_magyar_nyelv_szótára , a dictionary written in the 1800s, contains many etymologies built by sticking pieces of other words together, reminiscent of Nyland's method to derive all words from Basque. The author of this dictionary only did so for Hungarian, and by the standards of his day he may not have been quite so bad ... let's be fair to the guy.

But people today are still claiming that Hungarians are descended from the Huns, and therefore cannot speak a Finno-Ugric language, and that all resemblances must be due to chance or due to loaning in the opposite direction. This leads to massive attempts to construct native etymologies for not only loans, but also for other native words (since any native word that appears related to Finno-Ugric languages must be explained away).

On https://www.instagram.com/p/COdP18zHTwX/ , we see that fenyő, the word for pine tree, cannot be related to the Uralic stem commonly reconstructed for it, but instead means "light killer", because pine trees are tall and strong and block out light. árpa "barley" likewise comes from bits of two words for flooding and drying. Even the word for water is explained as a derivation of the verb for "carry"

There's surely more, but the person who posted these is primarily known for posting maps and so I'm not wholly placing the blame on him either, though it appears he's not listening to his commenters.

[Travis B.]

I don't think the Hungarians' penchant for questionable linguistic ideas is new by any means.

[Travis B.]

One (likely crackpottish) idea I did hear recently was that the Hungarians are mostly descended from the Pannonian Avars, who are posited as being Finno-Ugric, who did not disappear when their state was defeated by the Byzantines, and that the Magyars themselves were a relatively small set of Turkic groups (which is justified by that early Magyar leaders whose names are known to history supposedly had Turkic-sounding names) who were quickly assimilated by the Avars, leaving behind mostly their name. Of course, the problem with this whole idea is that in later times the Pannonians Avars are known to have mostly spoken Common Slavic...

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I suppose they must simply be HUNGaRY for fanciful tales.