Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[KathTheDragon]

I don't know what you mean by "special look", but "elbow" is an example of a word with a cranberry morpheme, along with many of its Germanic cognates.

[Pabappa]

i always analyzed "bucktooth" as being an ordinary compound of buck (animal) + tooth. which animal it is, i wouldnt be able to say, because a lot of them have teeth like that, .... the most ocmmon animal to be called a buck is the deer, but deer's teeth look nothing like that, so i would say trhat it is most likely named after the rabbit, whose males are also called bucks.

[Kuchigakatai]

Traditionally, what Wikipedia says is correct, but it seems to me there is a small recent movement to identify the parts of the grammars of European languages where evidentiality plays a grammatical role (even if the are no dedicated evidential morphemes).

Hmm, okay. But what about the question I had? Does grammatical evidentiality necessarily have to be obligatory?

Your question is about the definition of the term. Traditionally, it referred to obligatory markers, but nowadays, it doesn't for some linguists, and one of them even wrote a book arguing that a few specific German verbs are evidentiality markers "some of the time".

Do you know of any examples, from various languages, of words for bodyparts (human or animal) that have a special look, and which contain a cranberry morpheme?

In Spanish, every single common noun for body parts has a simple underived stem. Actually I find it very interesting on its own, I mean, I contrast it with English, which has at least a few compounds like "forehead" and "eyelash" and "fingernail" (besides "nail"). Wait- actually there is antebrazo (ante- 'prefix meaning "before"' + brazo 'arm') 'forearm', but I think that's really the only one.

It is difficult to say what the situation is in Mandarin... The problem with Mandarin is that its ancient logographic writing system forces native speakers to learn a ton about etymology. Imagine a world where just about every English speaker thinks it's obvious that "obvious" comes from Latin ob- (here meaning 'across at the front, in the way') + Latin via 'way' + the adjectival suffix -ous, so literally "something that stands on the way"; that's basically what the Chinese world is like. I once heard a Western linguist (I don't remember who) describe Mandarin as possibly the most boring language to work on etymology for, since figuring out the origin of most words is so easy because of the logography.

Technically, there are some that could be in Mandarin, but it's hard to say. Maybe a good candidate is 胳膊 gēbo 'arm', variants 胳臂 gēbì or gēbei. The stem there is basically gē-b- with some kind of ending, so maybe, if you omitted the writing system, you could say 胳 gē (or gēb) is 'arm' and then some weird suffix is attached to it. All three of 胳, 膊 and 臂 are attested in (pre-Qin) Classical Chinese meaning 'arm' though, and literate native speakers think of the Mandarin words as synonymic noun-noun compounds, which is not wrong.

As it goes, it basically starts getting interesting once you try to work out what ancient morphemes come from in relation to the rest of Sino-Tibetan, Austronesian, Mon-Khmer, etc., or if you try to find explanations for irregular phonetic developments (because a lot of them involve pronunciations borrowed from south of Beijing or sometimes misunderstandings, e.g. standard 色 sè 'colour' from Nanjing Mandarin vs. the inherited Beijing Mandarin shǎi which is still used sometimes, or the loss of 於 yū by confusing it with 于 yú because of their similar sound and meanings, so now 於 is pronounced yú as well).

[Qwynegold]

I don't know what you mean by "special look", but "elbow" is an example of a word with a cranberry morpheme, along with many of its Germanic cognates.

In Spanish, every single common noun for body parts has a simple underived stem. Actually I find it very interesting on its own, I mean, I contrast it with English, which has at least a few compounds like "forehead" and "eyelash" and "fingernail" (besides "nail"). Wait- actually there is antebrazo (ante- 'prefix meaning "before"' + brazo 'arm') 'forearm', but I think that's really the only one.

Ah, I meant compound words that contain a cranberry morpheme, and words that refer to specific kinds of ears, teeth, mouths, tails, etc. and not just the general words for various body parts (cf. the example words in my earlier post). So for example elbow doesn't count because it's not a specific kind of body part that only some people have.

[Qwynegold]

i always analyzed "bucktooth" as being an ordinary compound of buck (animal) + tooth. which animal it is, i wouldnt be able to say, because a lot of them have teeth like that, .... the most ocmmon animal to be called a buck is the deer, but deer's teeth look nothing like that, so i would say trhat it is most likely named after the rabbit, whose males are also called bucks.

Aha, I didn't know buck could refer to any animal, although I had a suspicion that it might not be a cranberry morpheme.

[Qwynegold]

Traditionally, what Wikipedia says is correct, but it seems to me there is a small recent movement to identify the parts of the grammars of European languages where evidentiality plays a grammatical role (even if the are no dedicated evidential morphemes).

Hmm, okay. But what about the question I had? Does grammatical evidentiality necessarily have to be obligatory?

Your question is about the definition of the term. Traditionally, it referred to obligatory markers, but nowadays, it doesn't for some linguists, and one of them even wrote a book arguing that a few specific German verbs are evidentiality markers "some of the time".

Ah, okay. Thanks for the clarification.

[Whimemsz]

i always analyzed "bucktooth" as being an ordinary compound of buck (animal) + tooth. which animal it is, i wouldnt be able to say, because a lot of them have teeth like that, .... the most ocmmon animal to be called a buck is the deer, but deer's teeth look nothing like that, so i would say trhat it is most likely named after the rabbit, whose males are also called bucks.

Aha, I didn't know buck could refer to any animal, although I had a suspicion that it might not be a cranberry morpheme.

Well it can't refer to the male of any animal, just to some. It's used for many male ungulates (though "bull" is used for bovine ones like bison and, of course domestic cattle). I didn't actually know it applied to rabbits, though. There's a lot of pretty specific animal gender and age names that I don't think are that widely known by English speakers other than specialists (farmers or whatever).

[Linguoboy]

That’s funny, I’d always assumed bucktoothed was derived from buck in its verbal meaning of “bend outward, buckle”. Compare cockeyed, which has nothing to do with roosters (whose eyes are the opposite of cockeyed).

I would argue that snaggletoothed qualifies, since I’ve never heard snaggle used on its own in contemporary English.

[Qwynegold]

That’s funny, I’d always assumed bucktoothed was derived from buck in its verbal meaning of “bend outward, buckle”.

Oh! That makes sense.

I would argue that snaggletoothed qualifies, since I’ve never heard snaggle used on its own in contemporary English.

Yes, that's a good example.

[Xwtek]

I watched this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCy12B14woM
Wow, that was full of bullsh*t.

1. The video insists that Jews are not be called "Jews". That's akin not calling Chinese as Chinese, but as "zhongguoren"
2. I'm sure that the word is not pronounced like that.
3. So, the video search for a Bantu word that shares the same consonant as a Hebrew words. This is basically the same thing as mass comparison.
4. I believe it was a nitpicking.

[Hominid]

Just got this BBC notification:

"Olympics host Japan ask for this year's games to be postponed over the coronavirus crisis"

I know that it's "ask" instead of "asks" because countries are considered plural in British English in the context of sports (I think) but if that's the case, shouldn't it be "hosts" instead of "host"? I thought I understood how this works but now I'm unsure.

[bradrn]

Just got this BBC notification:

"Olympics host Japan ask for this year's games to be postponed over the coronavirus crisis"

I know that it's "ask" instead of "asks" because countries are considered plural in British English in the context of sports (I think) but if that's the case, shouldn't it be "hosts" instead of "host"? I thought I understood how this works but now I'm unsure.

I think this is meant to be parsed as:

“Japan, which is the Olympics host, ask for this year’s games to be postponed…”

Here, “Olympics host” is a single noun phrase (if that’s the correct term); I think that “Olympics” is acting as a noun adjunct here. Still, this is a really confusing headline, and it took me a good few minutes to parse; you should post it in the confusing headlines thread!

[Hominid]

Just got this BBC notification:

"Olympics host Japan ask for this year's games to be postponed over the coronavirus crisis"

I know that it's "ask" instead of "asks" because countries are considered plural in British English in the context of sports (I think) but if that's the case, shouldn't it be "hosts" instead of "host"? I thought I understood how this works but now I'm unsure.

I think this is meant to be parsed as:

“Japan, which is the Olympics host, ask for this year’s games to be postponed…”

Here, “Olympics host” is a single noun phrase (if that’s the correct term); I think that “Olympics” is acting as a noun adjunct here. Still, this is a really confusing headline, and it took me a good few minutes to parse; you should post it in the confusing headlines thread!

I didn't have trouble parsing it, but I'm just confused as to why the word Japan (which is only used once in this sentence) is apparently considered singular when it's the olympics host, but plural when it's asking for the games to be postponed. Or are national sports teams singular nouns that take plural verbs?

[Travis B.]

Or are national sports teams singular nouns that take plural verbs?

In English English, some singular nouns indicating collective entities such as sports teams may have plural verb agreement.

[Richard W]

I know that it's "ask" instead of "asks" because countries are considered plural in British English in the context of sports (I think) but if that's the case, shouldn't it be "hosts" instead of "host"? I thought I understood how this works but now I'm unsure.

I think its just point of view shifting within the sentence. The Olympic host is Japan, but when it comes to decision making, one imagines a group of people who may have internal dissension.

[Kuchigakatai]

Here are some useful tone correspondences between Mandarin and Cantonese, if a Cantonese syllable ends in a vowel, -m, -n or -ng. Judging very informally from my experience learning pronunciations, I estimate they're reliable perhaps 93%-95% of the time (alternatively read: the correspondence doesn't work for about 1 in 14 syllables or perhaps 1 in 20 syllables).

Mandarin 1st tone ~ Cantonese 1st tone
Mandarin 2nd tone ~ Cantonese 4th tone
Mandarin 3rd tone ~ Cantonese 2nd or 5th tone
Mandarin 4th tone ~ Cantonese 3rd or 6th tone

Examples:

Mandarin 1st tone ~ Cantonese 1st tone
開心 kai1xin1 ~ hoi1sam1 'happy'
分鐘 fen1zhong1 ~ fan1jung1 'minute'

Mandarin 2nd tone ~ Cantonese 4th tone
成為 cheng2wei2 ~ sing4wai4 'to become'
人員 ren2yuan2 ~ yan4yun4 'staff, staff member'

Mandarin 3rd tone ~ Cantonese 2nd or 5th tone
跑錶 pao3biao3 ~ paau2biu2 'stopwatch'
永遠 yong3yuan3 ~ wing5yun5 'forever'
可以 ke3yi3 ~ ho2yi5 'can, be allowed to'
軟體 ruan3ti3 ~ yun5tai2 'software'

Mandarin 4th tone ~ Cantonese 3rd or 6th tone
世界 shi4jie4 ~ sai3gaai3 'world'
互動 hu4dong4 ~ wu6dung6 'interaction'
教授 jiao4shou4 ~ gaau3sau6 'professor'
大眾 da4zhong4 ~ daai6jung3 'the masses'


However, if the Cantonese syllable ends in -p, -t or -k, then the Mandarin tone is a lot more unpredictable. A very large proportion (I very informally estimate 55%-65% from experience) has a 4th tone in Mandarin, and when that's not the case they tend to have 2nd tone (I very informally estimate 25%-30%). Instances of corresponding Mandarin 1st tone and 3rd tone are a lot less common, but do happen, including a few common morphemes (切 qie1 ~ chit3, used in 一切 yi4qie1 ~ yat1chit3 'everything; all Xs'). There are ultimately no highly reliable correspondences between Mandarin and Cantonese for -p/-t/-k syllables.

Example syllable morphemes with all possible combinations of correspondence:

出 chu1 ~ cheut1, 貼 tie1 ~ tip3, 夕 xi1 ~ jik6
得 de2 ~ dak1, 察 cha2 ~ chaat3, 獨 du2 ~ duk6
北 bei3 ~ bak1, 百 bai3 ~ baak3, 蜀 shu3 ~ suk6
必 bi4 ~ bit1, 各 ge4 ~ gok3, 辣 la4 ~ laat6

[zompist]

I assume you're aware that this has been studied across many dialects? There are useful summary tables in Jerry Norman's Chinese. The usual way of looking at this is by comparison to the 8 Middle Chinese tone categories— píng, shǎng, qù, rù, with a yīn/yáng division within each of those, the yīn tone appearing after a voiceless consonant.

What you're finding is that rù is an absolute mess in Beijing Mandarin. It's not as bad in other Mandarin dialects— e.g. in Xī'ān it's easy: rùyīn is tone 1, rùyáng is tone 2.

Cantonese has preserved all the MC tone categories (the realization is of course a different matter). The only oddity is that rùyīn has divided into two tones (55 and 44) based on the length of the vowel in MC.

[Kuchigakatai]

I assume you're aware that this has been studied across many dialects? There are useful summary tables in Jerry Norman's Chinese. The usual way of looking at this is by comparison to the 8 Middle Chinese tone categories— píng, shǎng, qù, rù, with a yīn/yáng division within each of those, the yīn tone appearing after a voiceless consonant.

What you're finding is that rù is an absolute mess in Beijing Mandarin. It's not as bad in other Mandarin dialects— e.g. in Xī'ān it's easy: rùyīn is tone 1, rùyáng is tone 2.

Cantonese has preserved all the MC tone categories (the realization is of course a different matter). The only oddity is that rùyīn has divided into two tones (55 and 44) based on the length of the vowel in MC.

I'm well aware and have seen such tables various times in various sources, but I have never seen a presentation of this where 1) correspondences are considered from a synchronic point of view, instead of from Middle Chinese, 2) something about the tone of the syllables corresponding to Middle Chinese -p/-t/-k in Beijing Mandarin is said beyond "the developments are unpredictable" (my observation about them tending to be 4th or 2nd tone is original), and 3) actual examples are given.

[zompist]

2) something about the tone of the syllables corresponding to Middle Chinese -p/-t/-k in Beijing Mandarin is said beyond "the developments are unpredictable" (my observation about them tending to be 4th or 2nd tone is original)

Well, Norman kind of makes the observation too. His table has

yīnrù = 1, 2, 3, 5
yángrù = 2, 5

where the numbers are MC not Mandarin. As it happens, MC 5 = Mandarin tone 4. So this may be partly what explains your findings— yīnrù is unpredictable, but yángrù goes to just those two tones.

(Also I was careless about the order... should be yīnrù, not rùyīn...)

[Raphael]

I recently had a little Twitter chat about the infamous brioche quote, reported - probably falsely - to have been said by Marie Antoinette when she was told that poor people had no bread.

The original French version of the quote was supposedly "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche". Since I don't speak French, I have no idea how to translate it. Now, the traditional English translation is "Let them eat cake". (Brioche is not actually cake, it's apparently (I've never eaten any myself) a variety of bread that goes a bit in the general direction of cake.)

Anyway, what confuses me a bit is that in German, the quote is traditionally translated as something like "Warum essen sie denn dann keinen Kuchen?"; that is, a question that could be translated into English as something like "Why don't they eat cake, then?" Now, you could argue that the cluelessness and out-of-touch-ness of the quote comes across best in the German version. But it makes me wonder - is there any way to interpret "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" as a question? Or is the German version a case of linguistic telephone?