Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[anteallach]

How is the surname Nortje actually pronounced in Afrikaans? Cricket commentators are anglicising it as /nɔːˈkiːə/ or similar.

[bradrn]

How is the surname Nortje actually pronounced in Afrikaans? Cricket commentators are anglicising it as /nɔːˈkiːə/ or similar.

Both my parents were born in South Africa and know a bit of Afrikaans, so I asked them. The consensus seems to be that it’s most probably /nortʃiə/, with /norkiə/ also a possibility. But Afrikaans orthography is ambiguous between the two pronunciations, so I won’t know which pronunciation is correct unless I manage to find a video in Afrikaans which mentions him by name.

[Nortaneous]

Miyake's idea is that proto-Japanese had a much more complicated vowel inventory than just /a i u ə/, and uses Ryukyuan languages as evidence.

Proto-Japonic *e *o have to be reconstructed to handle Ryukyuan.

By the way, whats up with yo₂? Do we believe that there really was a labialized version of /yo/? That one has been tough for me to accept.

Sure, why not - Mandarin and Burmese both have onset /jw/ clusters.

[Qwynegold]

The table describes the V2 order that's common across Germanic.

Oh, I thought that's something that only German has.

Satsadverbial is probably a term that's particular to Swedish linguistics... Judging by the table and the examples, it sounds like it might encompass any basic adverb that can appear in that specific slot. In French grammar, only a few basic adverbs and pronouns can interrupt a compound verb (je l'ai toujours aidé, il n'a rien vu). Maybe Swedish has something similar with its satsadverbial.

I tried to look up more. I didn't understand much, except that modalities are one type of satsadverbial.

Why is "på Melodifestivalen" an adverbial and not a complement? It begins with a preposition, but I don't see why that matters.

"Complement clause" usually refers to a subordinate sentence that serves as an argument (subject or object) of a verb. A prepositional phrase doesn't normally count as a complement clause at all.

Meanwhile, the term "adverbial" normally includes adverbs (when used as adjuncts of time, place, manner, attitudes of the speaker towards the information, evidentiality, etc.), prepositional phrases (when they express similar things: "[relaxed] as always", "during X", "from X", "[nowhere] at all", "with utmost sincerity"...), and subordinate clauses (idem: "when I...", "because you...", "if he...", "although she...", "so that we...").

Hmm, I think this is like morphologically motivated rather than semantically motivated, if that makes any sense. Some languages would just treat Melodifestivalen as an object. But in Swedish se på (lit. "see on") is one of these idiomatic verb+preposition compounds, whatever they're called, and that causes weird things in the syntax.

Thanks for your reply!

[linguistcat]

I was able to find a PDF version of A History of the Japanese Language, and the appendix by itself has already been very helpful. I was surprised at how late certain sound changes occurred. I'm probably going to spend today and any following days needed to get it read properly, along with Old Japanese: A Phonetic Reconstruction by Miyake.

[Travis B.]

When I listen for it, examples of what I'd call flap elision are very easy to find - for instance, the person on the message on the phone for my daughter's orthodontist's office pronounces dental as [tɜ̃ːɤ̯]. Likewise, linguoboy at least observes that this is a common phenomenon in at least NAE. Yet I have not seen the least bit of reference to this phenomenon aside from what linguoboy has said. Why?

[Pabappa]

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com ... L1000_.jpg <--- "COCK Flavoured soup mix" .... its not like this is some Asian import, ...the packaging is in English and in English only. I dont get it. Why "cock" when "chicken" would do? Is there a difference? Perhaps there is, because the company seems to also sell a chicken-flavoured one, but still, it's not clear what the difference is or why they felt the need to use that word.

[Travis B.]

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com ... L1000_.jpg <--- "COCK Flavoured soup mix" .... its not like this is some Asian import, ...the packaging is in English and in English only. I dont get it. Why "cock" when "chicken" would do? Is there a difference? Perhaps there is, because the company seems to also sell a chicken-flavoured one, but still, it's not clear what the difference is or why they felt the need to use that word.

It could still be an Asian import, but aimed at English-speaking countries, but with packaging designed by people whose English is lacking. After all, just about any native English-speaker would get connotations from the word cock that are quite different from those likely intended here.

[Nortaneous]

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com ... L1000_.jpg <--- "COCK Flavoured soup mix" .... its not like this is some Asian import, ...the packaging is in English and in English only. I dont get it. Why "cock" when "chicken" would do? Is there a difference? Perhaps there is, because the company seems to also sell a chicken-flavoured one, but still, it's not clear what the difference is or why they felt the need to use that word.

Grace is the Goya of the Caribbean. It probably doesn't have the same connotations there.

[anteallach]

How is the surname Nortje actually pronounced in Afrikaans? Cricket commentators are anglicising it as /nɔːˈkiːə/ or similar.

Both my parents were born in South Africa and know a bit of Afrikaans, so I asked them. The consensus seems to be that it’s most probably /nortʃiə/, with /norkiə/ also a possibility. But Afrikaans orthography is ambiguous between the two pronunciations, so I won’t know which pronunciation is correct unless I manage to find a video in Afrikaans which mentions him by name.

Thanks!

How did Afrikaans end up with this orthographic ambiguity for <tj>?

[bradrn]

How is the surname Nortje actually pronounced in Afrikaans? Cricket commentators are anglicising it as /nɔːˈkiːə/ or similar.

Both my parents were born in South Africa and know a bit of Afrikaans, so I asked them. The consensus seems to be that it’s most probably /nortʃiə/, with /norkiə/ also a possibility. But Afrikaans orthography is ambiguous between the two pronunciations, so I won’t know which pronunciation is correct unless I manage to find a video in Afrikaans which mentions him by name.

Thanks!

How did Afrikaans end up with this orthographic ambiguity for <tj>?

Not a clue. I know very little about Afrikaans: all I know about this particular topic is that when a word ends in the diminutive suffix ⟨-tjie⟩ (or possibly ⟨-tje⟩), it’s pronounced with /k/.

[Linguoboy]

Not a clue. I know very little about Afrikaans: all I know about this particular topic is that when a word ends in the diminutive suffix ⟨-tjie⟩ (or possibly ⟨-tje⟩), it’s pronounced with /k/.

I thought -tje was Dutch and -tjie was Afrikaans. But then proper names are so very often exceptions in any case.

[bradrn]

Not a clue. I know very little about Afrikaans: all I know about this particular topic is that when a word ends in the diminutive suffix ⟨-tjie⟩ (or possibly ⟨-tje⟩), it’s pronounced with /k/.

I thought -tje was Dutch and -tjie was Afrikaans. But then proper names are so very often exceptions in any case.

As I said, I don’t know Afrikaans. I don’t know if ⟨-tje⟩ even is a diminutive, or if it’s just a set of letters at the end of a word which happens to resemble the diminutive.

[Space60]

When I listen for it, examples of what I'd call flap elision are very easy to find - for instance, the person on the message on the phone for my daughter's orthodontist's office pronounces dental as [tɜ̃ːɤ̯]. Likewise, linguoboy at least observes that this is a common phenomenon in at least NAE. Yet I have not seen the least bit of reference to this phenomenon aside from what linguoboy has said. Why?

A question about flap elision. Is it less likely to occur in uncommon or technical words like "rhotic"? I'm guessing so, but then again I don't have flap elision in my speech.

[Travis B.]

When I listen for it, examples of what I'd call flap elision are very easy to find - for instance, the person on the message on the phone for my daughter's orthodontist's office pronounces dental as [tɜ̃ːɤ̯]. Likewise, linguoboy at least observes that this is a common phenomenon in at least NAE. Yet I have not seen the least bit of reference to this phenomenon aside from what linguoboy has said. Why?

A question about flap elision. Is it less likely to occur in uncommon or technical words like "rhotic"? I'm guessing so, but then again I don't have flap elision in my speech.

Not in my experience; the main limiters on it from what I can tell is that it tends to occur immediately after a stressed syllable when the following syllable is unstressed, and in particular that it cannot occur in two syllables in a row.

[mae]

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[Pabappa]

Awesome. I've always loved Polynesian languages, especially those with no velar sounds. And a language with a small consonant inventory but yet one distinctive sound, which for me in this case is /v/, makes it even better.

[Nortaneous]

Awesome. I've always loved Polynesian languages, especially those with no velar sounds. And a language with a small consonant inventory but yet one distinctive sound, which for me in this case is /v/, makes it even better.

That language has a sound a little more distinctive than /v/:

The phoneme g is a voiced "non-aspirated" uvular affricate. Schooling (1981:49) says, "The term 'non-aspirated' is used to indicate that even though there is some frication, there is no breathiness."

It's from Proto-Polynesian *l and *r. (Cf. Rennellese *l > ŋg.)

So:
/p t k ʔ/
/ɢʁ/
/f v h/
/m n ŋ/
/a e o i u/

But that may not exist in the Rurutu dialect.

[mae]

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[Pabappa]

I could believe theyre both different dialects of the same language. A language with a small inventory has a lot of room to move things around ... e.g. Rotokas has a dialect with 6 and a dialect with 9 consonants, yet they apparently have no problem understanding each other. /ɢʁ/ is not really my favorite sound, though I admit it's interesting both because it stands out so much from the rest and because it shows somewhat of a parallel to the development of uvular R from /r/-like sounds in Europe.