Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Nortaneous]

Why does there have to be?

Because some things aren't semantically possessed at all. There's a bird on a tree outside. Whose bird? Whose tree? (Whose outside? Whose ground? Whose sky? Whose sun? And so on.)

[Travis B.]

That first construction is a Mid-Atlantic / Inland North thing, probably calqued from German.

You are referring to the use of come with without an object; alynnidalar was referring to the dropping of I, which is not something German does.

Ha, I noticed I put that in there as I wrote my example sentences, but it's a fun feature of my dialect so I figured I would leave it. Didn't consider it might cause confusion in a discussion over a different linguistic feature!

I was always under the impression it was a Swedish thing, to be honest--I associate the "come with" construction with people from Michigan's Upper Peninsula. I don't know how widespread it is broadly; I intentionally started using it more a few years ago because I like it so I know it's more entrenched in my speech than your average southern Michigander.

(I did a quick search in my company Slack and couldn't find many uses--mostly me and another Michigander coworker (who, interestingly enough, was born in Russia, but moved to Michigan as a child), and a couple from an Ohioan coworker)

I am very much used to this construction, and did not know until not all that long ago that it was not Standard English but rather a dialectal feature apparently associated with parts of the US which received non-Anglic Germanic-speaking settlers historically.

[Pabappa]

And probably words for people, outside of occupations ("my doctor") and family relations ("my son").

Again, though, while I dont think there's a single natlang anywhere in the world that has done it, I could definitely see a language in which the third-person possessive form is merged with the plain form for at least a subset of nouns.

Preceisely because of their impossessibility, words for celestial objects and certain other large objects will never be ambiguous. Again in Pabappa, I use pantipi for "outer space", and even though the third person possessive form ("their outer space") is exactly the same, it is no problem because situations in which the latter is meant will be very rare.

[Vijay]

Why does there have to be?

Because some things aren't semantically possessed at all. There's a bird on a tree outside. Whose bird? Whose tree? (Whose outside? Whose ground? Whose sky? Whose sun? And so on.)

Ahh, okay, thanks!

[Travis B.]

And probably words for people, outside of occupations ("my doctor") and family relations ("my son").

It is not uncommon for familial relations to be inalienably and obligatorily possessed in particular.

[Xwtek]

It turns out nonconfigurationality is not that weird. I spontaneously produced an example of phrase split into two:

Jawa

Javanese

biasanya

Usually

e

e

nya

3SG.POSS

cuma

only

satu

one

lalu

then

di-gandeng

PASS-combine

sama

with

kata

word

sebelum-nya

previous-3SG.POSS

deh

deh

I thought Javanese usually has -e written by only one e and combined with the previous word. (Lit. Java's e is usually only one and is combined with the previous word deh)

Deh is pretty untranslatable

[Linguoboy]

I was always under the impression it was a Swedish thing, to be honest--I associate the "come with" construction with people from Michigan's Upper Peninsula. I don't know how widespread it is broadly; I intentionally started using it more a few years ago because I like it so I know it's more entrenched in my speech than your average southern Michigander.

It is dead common in Chicago, to the point of being something of a local shibboleth. There was Swedish settlement here, but nothing on the scale of German settlement. (Interestingly, though, it seems to be absent from Missouri, although there was equally heavy German settlement there--particularly in St Louis and the Missouri Valley.)

[Kuchigakatai]

I have sometimes heard "come with" here in Vancouver, BC, mostly as a hortative imperative: "Come with!" = "Please come with us!". From people without any connection to the American inland north too.

[Linguoboy]

The map generated by the YGDPENA shows a healthy area of southern Washington and northern Oregon where the construction is as commonplace as it is in the Upper Midwest.

[Pabappa]

Interesting pattern. Im in the 3.5-4.0 region, the next category after Minnesota. I have used this phrase and didnt think anything of it until now. I dont think theres much Germanic influence out here, but maybe there was enough to get us into the third category. I dont think Pennsylvania Dutch influence is at play because it actually gets weaker before it gets stronger when going from Pennsylvania to the Boston area.

Further down the page is "You should take with a gun." I would never use this sentence at all.

[Travis B.]

Further down the page is "You should take with a gun." I would never use this sentence at all.

To me that is ungrammatical - rather, it would be "You should take a gun with".

On that note, who also has go with, take with, or bring with?

[Kuchigakatai]

The map generated by the YGDPENA shows a healthy area of southern Washington and northern Oregon where the construction is as commonplace as it is in the Upper Midwest.

Well, that explains why it exists in Vancouver! Great.

[Kuchigakatai]

It turns out nonconfigurationality is not that weird. I spontaneously produced an example of phrase split into two:

Non-configurationality usually means being very free to apply the various possible orders or (core) arguments around the verb: SVO, SOV, VSO... Phrase splits are something else (and also a much more interesting phenomenon IMO!).

Is there a good reason to think biasanya is an adverb modifying the zero-copula, instead of an adjective modifying Jawa?

I mean, the word uses -nya (yet another of the many uses of -nya...) and at least superficially seems to modify Jawa in much the same way sebelum-nya modifies kata. I notice sebelum-nya is the preposition/subordinator sebelum 'before X' that has been turned into a noun modifier with the addition of -nya. I know that biasanya regularly modifies verbs meaning 'usually', but I'm asking if in this sentence it isn't a noun modifier of Jawa, so that a literal translation would be "The e of usual/normal Javanese is only one, and is combined with the previous word."

If it is a modifier of Jawa, then there is no phrase split here.

[Whimemsz]

Well, discontinuous phrases are classically one part of a "non-configurational language"; the other key elements are widespread (and always possible) null anaphora and "free" (in practice, pragmatically rather than syntactically determined) word order, at least for many elements. Syntactically within many frameworks it also means a relatively flat phrase structure with the absence of a VP. I don't know enough about Javanese to say if these other features apply, but I'm also not sure what its status as configurational or non-configurational would have to do with non-configurationality being "weird," since a number of languages have been claimed to be non-configurational.

[Whimemsz]

It's also a perfectly cromulent phrase for me, although I think I rarely use it myself, and I haven't lived in areas with much Scandinavian or German or whatever influence. I was born and grew up in eastern Massachusetts, though, which I see is in the ~4 range on the map, so I guess it fits, whatever the actual source is. [I also have family who live in Minnesota that I see a lot, so I may have heard it from them enough times that it never registered as weird?]

I agree that "It is a good idea to take a gun with" is totally ungrammatical, and I might not even have immediately understood what someone was trying to say if I had heard that (though I guess context would probably have made it clearer).

[Travis B.]

I agree that "It is a good idea to take a gun with" is totally ungrammatical, and I might not even have immediately understood what someone was trying to say if I had heard that (though I guess context would probably have made it clearer).

To me, "It is a good idea to take a gun with" is perfectly grammatical, whereas *"It is a good idea to take with a gun" is ungrammatical.

[Kuchigakatai]

Well, discontinuous phrases are classically one part of a "non-configurational language"; the other key elements are widespread (and always possible) null anaphora and "free" (in practice, pragmatically rather than syntactically determined) word order, at least for many elements.

Ah, I see! Thanks for the correction. I had been wrong about the definition all this time...

"free" (in practice, pragmatically rather than syntactically determined) word order

I know this is very commonly asserted in all sorts of publications, but I sometimes wonder of its truth. I mean, I don't deny that word order choices in Spanish are often pragmatically chosen, like the possibility of fronting a definite O₂ in a contrast like "SVO₁, but O₂SV":

Mi hermano escribió la carta, pero el sobre alguien más lo compró
'My brother wrote the letter, but somebody else bought the envelope

However, I notice this sentence could've been "..., SVO₂" (pero alguien más compró el sobre) with hardly any difference in focus or anything else. If I want to emphasize O₂ with intonation/volume, then "..., O₂SV" is a lot more natural, but if I'm not applying emphasis there's no difference. The pragmatics allow the fronting, they don't always force it.

I often hear Spanish speakers using VS or OVS word orders, and while these orders often indicate a heavy, long S, often is specified as some kind of new information (even if only as a subset of a known group), sometimes I can't tell why the speaker did that at all. I hear sentences with a short, definite S in VS order, like Lo arrestó la policía ayer por la noche, and I wonder if it can't be ascribed to mere random choice. Do linguists cede some leeway for random choice as opposed to pragmatic motivation, or is this a controversial view?

but I'm also not sure what its status as configurational or non-configurational would have to do with non-configurationality being "weird," since a number of languages have been claimed to be non-configurational.

Well, you know, within the context of the languages we conlangers normally talk about. There's nothing odd about heavy use of polysynthesis either, with lots of affixes and compounded modifier roots, and yet we sometimes see examples that make us exclaim "Morphology was a mistake", as you know.

[Whimemsz]

.

[akam chinjir]

My (very shallow) understanding of the literature on Spanish agrees with Ser, that the word order variation in question doesn't result from topicalisation or focus movement or anything like that. (To use the lingo, it's not A-bar movement.)

There at least used to be a view that in some ("polysynthetic") languages, all overt NP arguments are actually adjuncts, which could be a way to generate truly nonconfigurational (not discourse-configurational) word order. But my impression is that this view hasn't panned out.

[Kuchigakatai]

Some fun folk etymology I just remembered. When I lived in El Salvador, I sometimes heard people say, in all seriousness, that the Spanish word la teta 'titty, breast of a woman' comes from the name of the Greek letter theta Θ, which is also la teta in Spanish, due to the similarity between the look of a breast and nipple with that of the Greek letter.

In reality, it most likely comes from a Germanic source, so ultimately the same origin as English "tit(ty)", German Titte, Yiddish tsitse, etc.