Rare/unusual natlang features

[bradrn]

Having /ɬ/ but not /l/ is pretty common. See: Mongolian, Amis, Avar, Chukchi, Muscogee/Mvskoke/Creek, Dogrib, Saaroa...

According to Wikipedia at least, Avar and Muscogee have /l/. But this does appear to be more common than I thought!

According to PHOIBLE: Kabardian, Nootka, Chukchi, Ahtna, Lushootseed, Tseshaht, Tigak, Tlingit, Shona, Bana, Rigwe, Chulupí, Korubo, Jurúna, Ket, Mongolian

I managed to find that list as well (using https://defseg.io/pshrimp-client/). But as VIjay said, many of the languages listed there have /l/, or don’t have any laterals at all, which is why I didn’t post it.

[Whimemsz]

Yeah unfortunately PHOIBLE is......not terribly reliable. I mean with any large database like this you're gonna get a fair number of errors, and the main use for it should be broad statistical trends, not dependable information on any specific language. Same with UPSID, which is also one of PHOIBLE's sources, including for Lushootseed. (Though even given that, I feel like PHOIBLE and UPSID have an awfully large number of errors that I've happened to notice, which means there's a bunch more I don't notice, so...)

[Zaarin]

I’ve just discovered that Tlingit has /ɬ/, /ɬʼ/, /t͡ɬ/, /t͡ɬʰ/ and /t͡ɬʼ/, but no /l/. (Except for some older speakers, who have [l] as an allophone of /n/.) Admittedly, I’m not sure how reliable Wikipedia is for these things, but Omniglot seems to concur.

This is correct, and it's a common feature of the PNW. (Not a universal one, though; see Haida, for instance.) Tlingit also has two sounds reportedly found in no other languages: /xʼʷ χʼʷ/. EDIT: That second one is a labialized uvular ejective fricative, if your font isn't showing a difference like mine...

[anteallach]

Also, the way into linguolabial itself is pretty rare. It's allegedly from labial consonant after a nonrounded vowel. But it should be rather stable for me.

I presume that the reason for their extreme rarity is indeed that the changes which produce them are very unusual, but I suspect they also turn readily into interdentals. Indeed there are some examples in Vanuatu of dentals where other languages have linguolabials.

Wikipedia claims linguolabials occur in Hawaiian Pidgin. I don't know where it's getting this from and a cursory look around with Google doesn't find any support (and does find some descriptions of the sound system which make no mention of any such things).

[Nortaneous]

Until very recently, Skou had a plosive system of /pʷ b t ɟ k/. Apparently, p < *gʷ, r < *t *tl, t < *s *j (dʒ?) *d. pʷ is now p for younger speakers, but younger speakers also have j > dʒ and an incipient merger of dʒ ɟ.

I'm not sure what /b ɟ/ are from. /ɟ/ is apparently not from *j. But both voiced plosives can only appear before /i e a ø/.

edit:
*p > p
*t > r
*k > k
*kʷ > k / w
*b > b
*d > t
*j > t
*g > h / 0
*gʷ > p
*m > m
*n > n
*ŋ > 0 / n / 0
*l > l
*f > f
*s > r / j
*h > h

So, from a reasonable almost-symmetrical plosive inventory of */p b t d ɟ k g kʷ gʷ/, although *g was apparently rare, we have
- p gʷ > pʷ
- t > r, s > r/ɟ (the only source of ɟ? ...cf. Albanian)
- d ɟ > t
- g > h/0

Everything but *b devoiced!

Also, *gʷ > tʃ in Sangke and Wutung, but this might be a POA difference, where *k *kʷ *gʷ [k̠ k̠ʷ g̟ʷ]. In Wutung, *k *kʷ > ʔ ʔw (Wutung has no velars), and an intermediate *q *qʷ isn't strictly necessary but could explain that. This POA difference is IIRC attested synchronically in some Papuan languages; in some cases, there are back velars ~ uvulars before back vowels and palatals before front vowels, but no standard velars at all. Sometimes it's noted that [k] is further back than English [k]. Wutung shows *d *j > t, *b > w / m, so maybe devoicing of everything but *b was a step here as well, and *b was eliminated later by turning it into a sonorant.

Cf. Arabic *g > dʒ, maybe?

[Qwynegold]

But the actual tongue movement is tiny!

If you have your tongue as for /T/, and just push it a milimetre further, you get a lin'uolabial. If you have it as for dental /t/ and push it a couple of milimetres further, you have a linguolabial.

What?? I agree that linguolabials are easy to make, but I just tried measuring in front of a mirror with a measuring tape, and if I go from an interdental [θ] to [t̼] I have to move my tongue about 5 mm if I simultaneously also move my upper lip about 5 mm lower. If I go from [t̪] to [t̼] I have to move my tongue about 25 mm, again while I lower my lip about 5 mm. If I keep my lip in its normal position, I have to move my tongue even further.

[Salmoneus]

But the actual tongue movement is tiny!

If you have your tongue as for /T/, and just push it a milimetre further, you get a lin'uolabial. If you have it as for dental /t/ and push it a couple of milimetres further, you have a linguolabial.

What?? I agree that linguolabials are easy to make, but I just tried measuring in front of a mirror with a measuring tape, and if I go from an interdental [θ] to [t̼] I have to move my tongue about 5 mm if I simultaneously also move my upper lip about 5 mm lower. If I go from [t̪] to [t̼] I have to move my tongue about 25 mm, again while I lower my lip about 5 mm. If I keep my lip in its normal position, I have to move my tongue even further.

Huh!?

Look, in an interdental, the tip of your tongue protrudes beyond your top teeth, yes? And in a resting position, your top lip droops down directly in front of your top teeth, yes? The lip is attached (on the inside) more or less directly above the gums above the teeth - there is no half-centimetre 'plateau' in front of your gums before your lips start. It's lips, then teeth, immediately - which is why it's possible to accidentally bite your lip, and why (given that the bottom lip is similarly located vis a vis the lower teeth) gently biting one's own lip is a common indicator of nervousness or concentration.

Try, for example, sliding a thin object between the teeth and the upper lip and see if you feel anything. I cannot, for example, hold the thin end of a fork or spoon handle in front of my upper teeth without feeling it against the inside of my upper lip - I can maybe hold a single-width piece of paper there, but only right at the very bottom of the teeth. This indicates that the gap between lip and teeth is no more than a millimetre, or two at most.

Being as how the lip is almost immediately in front of the teeth, and being as how the tongue in an interdental protrudes in front of the teeth (it is, after all, inter-dental, not merely dental), it stands to reason that the tip of the tongue in an interdental can be no more than a negligible distance from the inside of the lower lip.

And indeed, if I hold my mouth in a neutral position, and move my tongue as for an interdental, the tongue is already touching the lip (sometimes, or else is avoiding contact by the tiniest of least reliable margins). To make a clear interdental sound, I have to actually very slightly flare the lip to avoid contact between lip and tongue.

Accordingly, while to make a linguolabial I'd naturally push the tongue-tip a milimetre further forward, I don't actually have to - I could jus lower it a fraction (to come off the teeth) and pull the upper lip back instead of pushing it out.



-------

25mm!? Two and a half centimetres!?

Dear lord man, we're talking linguolabials, not linguonasals!

I'm not kidding, two and a half centimetres from my interdental position would literally be my nose! Even from a pre-dental position, it's probably only 30mm in a straight line to my nose (albeit my tongue would have to go around the lip rather than through it, so would be a bit longer, but...)

[Birdlang]

Sikka, a language from NTT, Indonesia, distinguishes the following phonemes: /β v ⱱ/. A few other languages have the latter phoneme, namely a few African languages, yet in some of them may not be a phonemic but allophonic distinction.

[äreo]

In Ukrainian, the indicative past tense is marked for number and gender, but not for person. It derives from a former compound perfect that used an adjective.

[Pabappa]

Russian too. I think it was pan-Slavic at some point but that many of the other Slavic languages added person markers later on.

[hwhatting]

Russian too. I think it was pan-Slavic at some point but that many of the other Slavic languages added person markers later on.

No, it's the other way round, Russian and Ukrainian lost the markers. As äreo says, it originally was a periphrastic perfect formed from the perfect active participle and the copula (e.g. (ty) bilъ esi you have beaten). The East Slavic languages stopped using the copula, nit only here, but they generally stopped using the present tense forms, resulting in the current situation where you just have the former participle without personal endings. Some languages (e.g. Polish) fused the forms of the copula with the participle, resulting in a synthetic past ( (ty) biłeś). In other languages, like Serbo-Croation, the tense is still formed periphrastically ( (ti) si bio).

[Raholeun]

How rare are eponyms for common nouns cross-linguistically? I was leafing through a dictionary of Pitkern, and an astounding number of nouns and verbs had an eponymic etymology noted. Which got me wondering if eponyms are not just an overenthousiastic case of folk etymology on the part of the language informants.

Some random examples:

ENA [e'nʌ] Boiled sweet potatoes mashed. I - 11 5. Ou, perhaps after some
Hannah or Harry?

RUSSELL [ˈrʌsəll] To hide away something, to cheat (esp. when peeling
arrowroots). / Ford 1 980: 1 9 (=PM August 1966) gives rustling. II 7. Opn: as
the islanders sat peeling arrowroots together, Russell McCoy ( 1 845- 1 924) is
said to often have been hiding away the small ones, because he thought they
were so boring to peel. Thus, it is probably not English rustle as Ford
suggests

WILLIAM ['wɪljʌm] In expr. like DAA'S UNI WILLIAM and YOU SE WILLIAM,
both meaning (i) "that's nothing to worry about", or (ii) "you've become
angry without reason". "I hate that word: people have died because they didn' t
go to see a doctor, since they didn't want to risk to be called WILLIAM" (Pi). I
KBY 105. II 10. Opn, William Christian ( 1 860- 1 934) was a sensitive person
who could stand no nonsense

[Linguoboy]

How rare are eponyms for common nouns cross-linguistically? I was leafing through a dictionary of Pitkern, and an astounding number of nouns and verbs had an eponymic etymology noted. Which got me wondering if eponyms are not just an overenthousiastic case of folk etymology on the part of the language informants.

Pitkern has a community of about 50 speakers. It makes complete sense to me that you'd have frequent eponyms in a linguistic community that small. I can think of a number from the social circles I've been in:

• A particular kind of bickering was named "cliff-and-ellening"
• A particular sex act was called "miking someone" due to an infamous sex party
• Spilling food down the front of your shirt while eating was called "louing yourself" after a friend who did this frequently

I'm sure most people with active social groups could come up with similar examples.

[Raholeun]

Fair point. But given that various generations each have their own social groups, I would expect such terms to die out or be replaced frequently, rather than survive for +- 150 years.

Those little anecdotal etymologies are always a nice read nonetheless.

[Vijay]

I wouldn't. Just look at the names of some sandwiches: the Dagwood, Strammer Max...the Dagwood at least is named after the character in Blondie. How many people these days would associate a sandwich with that character? How many people even read Blondie these days? And yet the names persist.

[Darren]

I feel eponyms would persist especially well with a small speaker base, like Pitkern. In larger languages, eponyms are probably more common in specific communities; this would obviously have a larger influence on a small language. At least some of the stories/folk-etymologies behind eponyms would be maintained because of the small number of early settlers.

[KathTheDragon]

English certainly has examples. In Britain, vacuum cleaners are very very often called "hoovers", after the brand name, after the brand's founder's name.

[quinterbeck]

English certainly has examples. In Britain, vacuum cleaners are very very often called "hoovers", after the brand name, after the brand's founder's name.

And vacuum is so rarely used to the point that the related verb is basically always hoover, as in "I really need to hoover the living room." I don't think I've ever heard a Brit use vacuum as a verb

[Raholeun]

My non-native speaker brain would interpret hoover as onomatopeic. At least my vacuum cleaner makes an 'ahuuu'-sound.

[dhok]

Several attestations of intervocalic -l- in Tubatulabal and the Cupan languages derive from PNUA *-t-, with Tubatulabal and Cupan -l- regularly corresponding to -t- in SUA cognates. In addition, a shift of /w/ to /l/ occurred in some Hopi words in the environment of the low vowels /a/ and /ö/ (Voegelin et al., 1962: 53).