Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Travis B.]

My native St Louis accent is in the process of losing one of its most distinctive features, the card-cord merger. It is full-blown in the speech of my parents' generation, I have it in certain words (forest, horror), and my sister's kids don't have it at all as far as I can tell.

I don't think "forest" and "horror" are examples of the card-cord merger? I would've thought pronouncing those with /ɑ/ would just be a regular American accent, especially eastern, as in "orange" [ˈɑɹɪndʒ] and "sorry" [ˈsɑɹi] (versus the Canadian [ˈɔɹɪndʒ] and [ˈsɔɹi], which you may hear in the western US).

Sure, you can find [ɑ] in these words in some Eastern accents (e.g. NYC, Philly), but it's a distinctive feature of those accents as well, not part of GA. And not all words with [ɑ] before /r/ in those accents have [ɑ] in STL as well. My mother talks about "[ɑ]ranges", but not about "Fl[ɑ]rida [ɑ]ranges". (That's how my stepmother talks, because she's from the Bronx.)

[ɑ] in many of these words is a key indicator of an East Coast accent to me at least. And yes, I have a rounded vowel in sorry despite being an American.

[caedes]

Gradual assimilation happened in England too,

Ok, let's put it this way: General question for everyone: to which extent is gradual assimilation happening where you live? To which extent has it happened there recently?

I am originally from around Heilbronn, which today lies directly on the border between Southern Franconian, Eastern Franconian and Swabian.
Linguistically, the area has been Franconian for centuries, but culturally and politically Swabian, and Swabian has been expanding to the north for the last few years.

Swabian only developed some sort of literary standard during the high middle ages (most Middle High German text were written in some form of Swabian, due to the Hohenzollern dynasty). Today, there is definitely a shift towards Standard German lexically, while neither phonology nor morphology have really been affected so far. I guess it is the same situation as in other areas of southern Germany, where local dialects rather enjoy a certain kind of prestige when used in public. Most people beyond their 40s have a hard time trying to speak proper Standard German. I remember occasions where I had to translate stuff to NHG for my dad. Most younger people also prefer it over NHG online when talking to relatives / friends that also speak that dialect, using some ad hoc orthography that is based on the standard.

Phonologically, the most distinctive feature is probably the realization of /ʀ/ in coda position as pharyngealized [ɐˤ], which also shifts following velars back to uvulars (NHG arg [ʔɑːk] very vs [ɑːɢ̥] / [ʌˤːɢ̥] ), which I think is not found in any of the neighboring dialects. Due to Swabian influence, there is no phonemic [voiced] feature at all for consonants, but rather a differentiation between fortis / lenis. There is also phonemic nasalization of vowels for some speakers, e.g. [d̥ũɐ̃] do (infinitive) vs [d̥uː] you (singular), which is definitely due to Swabian influence.

The Franconian substrate is mostly visible here in the lenition of former voiced plosives to approximants and, in case of reduced schwas, a further shift to unvoiced fricatives before consonants (NHG aber [ˈʔaːbɐ] but is [ˈaβ̥̞ɐˤ], NHG [fʀeːkst] (you) ask corresponds to [fʀɛxʂ]), which does not happen in Swabian.

In terms of morphology, theres is a lot of arbitrary code switching happening, especially when it comes to verbal morphology. There is the Swabian pattern that has a generic 3rd plural suffix /(ə)t/ (< MHG /ent/) in the present tense that in my dialect freely alternates with the Franconian pattern (usually /ə t ə/ and /n t n/ after liquids), with the Franconian one mandatory with stems ending in liquids.
That code switching thing can affect single morphemes or entire words (inherited Franconian [fʀɛxʂ] (you) ask vs loaned Swabian ['fʀɔːg̥ʂ]; or ['fʀɔːʁ̥̞əd̥] ask (plural) with the Franconian stem but Swabian affix vs ['fʀɔːʁ̥̞ə] as the fully Franconian form vs ['fʀɔːg̥əd̥] as the fully loaned Swabian version).
Some frequent verbs also have contracted forms in the plural, e.g. [d̥ɛ̃ːnd̥] do or [hɛ̃n(d̥)] have. All in common use, throughout generations.

There's also the plural suffix /ənə/ for feminine nouns, borrowed from Swabian, which freely alternates with Franconian /ə/. That one I think is largely absent with younger speakers. Otherwise, some nouns have other plural forms than the standard, with some being quite irregular (['hɑ̃ntʃ͡uː] glove (NHG Handschuh) vs ['hɛ̃ːntʃ͡ɪx] gloves (Handschuhe)).

Otherwise, lots of unstressed pronouns / particles have become clitics. I guess that is true for all colloquial forms of German. The subject clitic for the 2SG /d/ is dropped post-verbally ([t̚kʰɔ̃mʂ] you (sg) come vs [kʰɔ̃mʂ] do you come?). There is also an interrogative clitic /n/ (cf. NHG denn) for non-polar questions, which never appears with polar questions.

[Raphael]

Thank you, caedes, that's a lot of detail!

[malloc]

It seems there is a Mayan language where all short vowels are back and all long vowels are front. It also has some unusual consonants, including an implosive uvular and apparently prevoiced ejectives.

And apparently Finnish has an unanalyzable root for "carbon monoxide" going back to the proto-language.

[Kuchigakatai]

And apparently Finnish has an unanalyzable root for "carbon monoxide" going back to the proto-language.

According to the Finnish Wikipedia article on carbon monoxide, which calls the compound hiilimonoksidi, the term "häkä" refers to gas mixtures (perhaps natural??) that are mainly but not only composed of the deadly gas.

Pääasiassa hiilimonoksidia sisältävistä kaasuseoksista käytetään usein nimeä häkä.
'Gas mixtures that chiefly contain carbon monoxide are often named häkä.'

(*nerd snort* "altavista", heheh, heheh)

[Whimemsz]

Now I'm curious - in Latin American dubbings of Hollywood productions, is there a traditions of using Spain-Spanish dialects/accents to dub British actors?

No. If a movie or TV show is in neutral Latin American, then every character speaks neutral Latin American. And this does generally mean getting rid of any dialectal colour or diversity the movie/show may have had in the original English.

I will say I've noticed occasional exceptions, though they don't necessarily correspond to dialectal color/diversity in the English original. The main examples that come to mind are that in the Shrek movies, Donkey is given a Mexican accent and uses Mexican slang while Puss in Boots (voiced by Antonio Banderas in the Latin American -- and I assume European, though I've never seen it -- dub as in English) has a thick Andalusian accent, with ceceo, coda s-loss (and some /sC/ --> [Cʰ]), ch --> [ʃ], etc. The other example is the LA dub of Madagascar, where King Julien has kind of a similar weirdo voice to the weirdo pseudo-Indian voice as Sacha Baron Cohen gave him in English, just carried over into Spanish, although with some regionally distinctive traits like him aspirating a lot of coda /s/'s, [h] for /x/, some velarization or loss-with-nasalization of coda /n/, instability of coda liquids, very weak /b d g/, and so on, but those are mostly pretty widespread... idk maybe if I were better at Spanish dialects I could identify this as a specific regional accent. I guess it's fairly Caribbeanish except that many of the traits are only sporadic (and plenty of /s/'s are retained or just aspirated)? I do note that the voice actor is from central Mexico, so it's definitely an accent that is consciously distinctive and not his own. (The other thing is that dubs generally seem to closely approximate the vocal style of the original English voice actor even if the accent itself is otherwise neutral -- e.g., Marty flat out sounds like Chris Rock if Chris Rock were speaking fluent Spanish, etc. So the King Julien thing is kind of just an outgrowth of that I think?)

EDIT: Oh I thought of another example. In the LA dub of The Hangover ("Qué Pasó Ayer?"), at least most of the characters speak with Mexican accents and constantly use Mexican slang.

EDIT2: Oh! And the Adelie penguins in the LA dub of Happy Feet speak ... some Caribbean dialect, I forget which one.

[Nortaneous]

It seems there is a Mayan language where all short vowels are back and all long vowels are front.

I've tried to substantiate this and failed, afaict Wikipedia is just wrong

[Glass Half Baked]

This video is supposedly in Ixil, and by golly it really does seem like the only long vowels are front vowels or aa. I can definitely hear short back vowels, but I'm not 100% certain that all the front vowels are long. Some of them sound phonetically short to me, but that may not be their underlying phonemic length.

[bradrn]

This video is supposedly in Ixil, and by golly it really does seem like the only long vowels are front vowels or aa. I can definitely hear short back vowels, but I'm not 100% certain that all the front vowels are long. Some of them sound phonetically short to me, but that may not be their underlying phonemic length.

Surely the phonemic/phonetic distinction would go the other way round if there isn’t any contrast between short and long vowels? That is to say, I would think that phonemically there is no length, and the length is merely a phonetic detail.

[Pabappa]

wikipedia disagrees with itself, too, saying on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamean_languages that the Ixil vowel system is pretty well mixed and even looks a bit like Classical Latin. for all but the /u/, the quality difference seems to be more about height than frontness, with the long vowels always being higher.

[Raphael]

Which is, for lack of a better word, "better" Latin, Dramatis Personae or Personae Dramatis?

[bradrn]

I found the following statement in Tibetan Ergativity and the Trajectory Model: (emphasis mine)

Let us recall here that written Tibetan has a paradigm of five ‘cases’: absolutive (∅), instrumental-ergative (gis+allomorphs+free variants), ablative (nas/las), genitive (gi+allomorphs+free variants) and oblique (ia+allomorphs+free variants) … The Tibetan ‘cases’ are not ‘cases’ in the classical sense of ‘Russian’ or ‘Latin’. As in other Tibeto-Burman languages, they are more similar to postpositions, never modify the morphology of the noun to which they are assigned, appear only once at the end of the NP, and have several non casual functions.

I find this highlighted statement to be very surprising: I had thought that it is very usual for cases to ‘never modify the morphology of the noun to which they are assigned’ and ‘appear only once at the end of the NP’. (I’m not sure what a ‘non casual function’ is, so I can’t say anything about that.) If these properties are not usual for noun cases, then what do most languages do instead of these?

[akam chinjir]

I found the following statement in Tibetan Ergativity and the Trajectory Model: (emphasis mine)

Let us recall here that written Tibetan has a paradigm of five ‘cases’: absolutive (∅), instrumental-ergative (gis+allomorphs+free variants), ablative (nas/las), genitive (gi+allomorphs+free variants) and oblique (ia+allomorphs+free variants) … The Tibetan ‘cases’ are not ‘cases’ in the classical sense of ‘Russian’ or ‘Latin’. As in other Tibeto-Burman languages, they are more similar to postpositions, never modify the morphology of the noun to which they are assigned, appear only once at the end of the NP, and have several non casual functions.

I find this highlighted statement to be very surprising: I had thought that it is very usual for cases to ‘never modify the morphology of the noun to which they are assigned’ and ‘appear only once at the end of the NP’. (I’m not sure what a ‘non casual function’ is, so I can’t say anything about that.) If these properties are not usual for noun cases, then what do most languages do instead of these?

On the first point, I assume the idea is that you get no funny morphophonology, just perfectly regular concatenation. This seems more like an argument that they're not affixes, really, though you might take that as a reason to think they're not also case-markers, I suppose, if you're thinking of case entirely in terms of Russian and Latin. (But why would you do that?)

On the second, I don't know any Tibetan, so I don't know if there are any post-nominal modifiers---I guess those would come between the noun and the ostensible case-marker, which might be relevant. Otherwise, he's just pointing out that there's no case concord.

To be honest these don't sound like especially serious arguments that they're not case-markers.

I also don't know what "casual" is supposed to mean. Error for "clausal"? (I still don't know what the argument would be, but at least it'd seem maybe relevant.)

[bradrn]

Thanks, akam chinjir! I do have a few more questions now, though:

I found the following statement in Tibetan Ergativity and the Trajectory Model: (emphasis mine)

Let us recall here that written Tibetan has a paradigm of five ‘cases’: absolutive (∅), instrumental-ergative (gis+allomorphs+free variants), ablative (nas/las), genitive (gi+allomorphs+free variants) and oblique (ia+allomorphs+free variants) … The Tibetan ‘cases’ are not ‘cases’ in the classical sense of ‘Russian’ or ‘Latin’. As in other Tibeto-Burman languages, they are more similar to postpositions, never modify the morphology of the noun to which they are assigned, appear only once at the end of the NP, and have several non casual functions.

I find this highlighted statement to be very surprising: I had thought that it is very usual for cases to ‘never modify the morphology of the noun to which they are assigned’ and ‘appear only once at the end of the NP’. (I’m not sure what a ‘non casual function’ is, so I can’t say anything about that.) If these properties are not usual for noun cases, then what do most languages do instead of these?

On the first point, I assume the idea is that you get no funny morphophonology, just perfectly regular concatenation. This seems more like an argument that they're not affixes, really, though you might take that as a reason to think they're not also case-markers, I suppose, if you're thinking of case entirely in terms of Russian and Latin. (But why would you do that?)

I had thought that it’s very normal to have some affixes which show no special morphophonological patterns. Is this really rare enough that having ‘no funny morphophonology’ is enough evidence to suspect that something isn’t an affix?

On the second, I don't know any Tibetan, so I don't know if there are any post-nominal modifiers---I guess those would come between the noun and the ostensible case-marker, which might be relevant. Otherwise, he's just pointing out that there's no case concord.

To be honest these don't sound like especially serious arguments that they're not case-markers.

I’m not sure if it strictly counts as a ‘post-nominal modifier’, but Tournadre includes a fascinating example where the ‘case marker’ comes after a postposition:

khō

he.ABS

tsȫnkhang

jail

na̱ng-la

in-OBL

yü̱n

long

ri̱ngpo

time

tä̱ʼ-pareʼ

stay-PFCT+GNOM

“He stayed a long time in jail”

I would say that this makes these clitics rather than affixes. Does this disqualify them as case markers? Honestly, I don’t know; I’m beginning to think that there’s no clear way to define what is and isn’t a case-marker, especially in Tibeto-Burman languages.

As for case concord, I would be interested to know: do you have any information about how common it is? I used to be under the impression that it was pretty much restricted to European languages, but then I found a Dyirbal example with possible case concord, so now I’m not sure how common or uncommon it is.

I also don't know what "casual" is supposed to mean. Error for "clausal"? (I still don't know what the argument would be, but at least it'd seem maybe relevant.)

Well, I’m pretty sure Tournadre isn’t a native English speaker (e.g. he writes ‘The term intransitive is used by commodity.’). But on the other hand, I’m also pretty sure that ‘causal’ isn’t a typo either: he uses it in other parts of the paper as well (e.g. ‘[the S type connectors] can also be assigned to causal clauses.’). I can’t figure out what the term means though.

(If you’re interested, I did include a link to the paper (which is freely available) in my original post, so you can read it yourself if you want to.)

[Richard W]

I suspect casual is intended to have the etymologically obvious meaning 'to do with cases'.

[akam chinjir]

I’m not sure if it strictly counts as a ‘post-nominal modifier’, but Tournadre includes a fascinating example where the ‘case marker’ comes after a postposition:

khō

he.ABS

tsȫnkhang

jail

na̱ng-la

in-OBL

yü̱n

long

ri̱ngpo

time

tä̱ʼ-pareʼ

stay-PFCT+GNOM

“He stayed a long time in jail”

Interesting case. I guess I'd want to know if that could be a relational noun structure.

I would say that this makes these clitics rather than affixes. Does this disqualify them as case markers? Honestly, I don’t know; I’m beginning to think that there’s no clear way to define what is and isn’t a case-marker, especially in Tibeto-Burman languages.

I wouldn't have thought it made a difference, to be honest. But any distinction between case-markers and (noncasemarking) adpositions is likely to be pretty theory-internal.

(I remember once finding somewhat convincing an argument that some instances of Japanese "ni" marked dative case and some were regular postpositions, but I don't remember the details.)

As for case concord, I would be interested to know: do you have any information about how common it is? I used to be under the impression that it was pretty much restricted to European languages, but then I found a Dyirbal example with possible case concord, so now I’m not sure how common or uncommon it is.

Mark Norris, A typological perspective on nominal concord, concludes that 30% of languages with concord within the noun phrase, and 25% of languages with morphological case, have case concord. (I didn't see a reference to areal or genetic patterns, but I also skimmed pretty ruthlessly.)

Well, I’m pretty sure Tournadre isn’t a native English speaker (e.g. he writes ‘The term intransitive is used by commodity.’). But on the other hand, I’m also pretty sure that ‘causal’ isn’t a typo either: he uses it in other parts of the paper as well (e.g. ‘[the S type connectors] can also be assigned to causal clauses.’). I can’t figure out what the term means though.

Hmm, and there it's "causal." Doesn't help me understand, though.

[bradrn]

I’m not sure if it strictly counts as a ‘post-nominal modifier’, but Tournadre includes a fascinating example where the ‘case marker’ comes after a postposition:

khō

he.ABS

tsȫnkhang

jail

na̱ng-la

in-OBL

yü̱n

long

ri̱ngpo

time

tä̱ʼ-pareʼ

stay-PFCT+GNOM

“He stayed a long time in jail”

Interesting case. I guess I'd want to know if that could be a relational noun structure.

That’s an interesting possibility — I hadn’t considered that! But then wouldn’t there be some sort of possessive relationship as well in that situation? (Although admittedly I’m very unfamiliar with relational nouns.)

As for case concord, I would be interested to know: do you have any information about how common it is? I used to be under the impression that it was pretty much restricted to European languages, but then I found a Dyirbal example with possible case concord, so now I’m not sure how common or uncommon it is.

Mark Norris, A typological perspective on nominal concord, concludes that 30% of languages with concord within the noun phrase, and 25% of languages with morphological case, have case concord. (I didn't see a reference to areal or genetic patterns, but I also skimmed pretty ruthlessly.)

I honestly wasn’t expecting to get any hard numbers on this, so thanks for finding this for me! I’m always interested in typology, so I’ll have to read through this later.

Well, I’m pretty sure Tournadre isn’t a native English speaker (e.g. he writes ‘The term intransitive is used by commodity.’). But on the other hand, I’m also pretty sure that ‘causal’ isn’t a typo either: he uses it in other parts of the paper as well (e.g. ‘[the S type connectors] can also be assigned to causal clauses.’). I can’t figure out what the term means though.

Hmm, and there it's "causal." Doesn't help me understand, though.

You’re right — that was an error on my part, sorry! (I searched for ‘causal’ instead of ‘casual’.) But there are several instances of ‘casual’ as well (including one on the line right below my quote, which I think was also a factor in quoting the wrong part):

The analogy between ergative and ablative can be further confirmed by the fact that the two markers have the same non-casual meanings. For instance, the ablative nas functions as a connector …
In oral Tibetan, among the casual ‘source’ morphemes, only nas functions as a connector between clauses, but in written Tibetan all the ‘source’ morphemes may serve as connectors …
CO stands for `connector' which indicates that the morpheme has no longer a casual meaning but serves to connect two clauses.

Based on the first two quotes, I’m inclined to agree with Richard W in that it may mean ‘to do with cases’ — but in the last excerpt, ‘the morpheme’ seems to be a verb rather than a putative noun case. I think the only thing I can conclude for now is simply that the word is being used here in a very confusing way.

[Richard W]

CO stands for `connector' which indicates that the morpheme has no longer a casual meaning but serves to connect two clauses.

Based on the first two quotes, I’m inclined to agree with Richard W in that it may mean ‘to do with cases’ — but in the last excerpt, ‘the morpheme’ seems to be a verb rather than a putative noun case. I think the only thing I can conclude for now is simply that the word is being used here in a very confusing way.

Have you some evidence you're not showing us? For example, a word meaning 'with' and functioning like a preposition can also mean 'and' (e.g. Thai กับ) for connecting noun phrases, and it doesn't seem much of a stretch to let it join clauses. Indeed, English 'with' can perform that semantic function, except that the second clause has to be nominalised, e.g. 'She washed the dishes with me drying them' meaning pretty much 'She washed the dishes and I dried them'.

[bradrn]

CO stands for `connector' which indicates that the morpheme has no longer a casual meaning but serves to connect two clauses.

Based on the first two quotes, I’m inclined to agree with Richard W in that it may mean ‘to do with cases’ — but in the last excerpt, ‘the morpheme’ seems to be a verb rather than a putative noun case. I think the only thing I can conclude for now is simply that the word is being used here in a very confusing way.

Have you some evidence you're not showing us? For example, a word meaning 'with' and functioning like a preposition can also mean 'and' (e.g. Thai กับ) for connecting noun phrases, and it doesn't seem much of a stretch to let it join clauses. Indeed, English 'with' can perform that semantic function, except that the second clause has to be nominalised, e.g. 'She washed the dishes with me drying them' meaning pretty much 'She washed the dishes and I dried them'.

Feel free to read the original paper yourself: https://minpaku.repo.nii.ac.jp/?action= ... &file_no=1. So no, I don’t have any evidence I haven’t showed you (unless there was something in the paper which I missed, which is certainly possible).

[akam chinjir]

Ah, I see that Richard W posted while I was composing---and is surely correct about "casual."