Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Travis B.]

I ran into someone here in Oregon who didn't get that [pɜːʁ] meant better; it was only after switching to carefully pronouncing the word as [ˈpɛɾʁ̩(ː)] that she understood me.

Well, without the appropriate context, I’m not sure I would recognise that word either.

I just have a habit of shamelessly using dialectal pronunciations regardless of whether I really expect the other person to understand or not. In most cases people do understand regardless, so I have had little motivation to speak GA with people.

[Kuchigakatai]

Motion to stop using "to borrow" and "to loan" when talking about borrowings or loanwords. Nobody believes a language that borrowed a word has any intention to return it anyway. Therefore, a proposal is hereby put forth to start using "to grab" and "to take" instead, and also "a grabling" for the noun.

[Travis B.]

Motion to stop using "to borrow" and "to loan" when talking about borrowings or loanwords. Nobody believes a language that borrowed a word has any intention to return it anyway. Therefore, a proposal is hereby put forth to start using "to grab" and "to take" instead, and also "a grabling" for the noun.

Oh, as I observed a long time back, in English borrow need not imply returning, e.g. "can I borrow some paper?"

[Linguoboy]

Oh, as I observed a long time back, in English borrow need not imply returning, e.g. "can I borrow some paper?"

I would generally interpret that as a promise to repay the borrowing in kind, i.e. next time the borrower has paper, they will either give the loaner an equivalent amount or invite them to take what they need. So a language won't ever "give back" the words it borrows (except when it does), but it will probably "allow" the loaner language to "borrow" words of its own.

[Travis B.]

Actually, there are usages of borrow where it does not imply the permission of the person being "borrowed" from, e.g. "the kids next door came over and borrowed my Xbox."

[Linguoboy]

Actually, there are usages of borrow where it does not imply the permission of the person being "borrowed" from, e.g. "the kids next door came over and borrowed my Xbox."

To be honest, I'm not sure what you're describing here. It sounds like a euphemism to me, but for what exactly (used without permission? took and only gave back under duress?) I couldn't say for sure.

[Travis B.]

Actually, there are usages of borrow where it does not imply the permission of the person being "borrowed" from, e.g. "the kids next door came over and borrowed my Xbox."

To be honest, I'm not sure what you're describing here. It sounds like a euphemism to me, but for what exactly (used without permission? took and only gave back under duress?) I couldn't say for sure.

Took and used without permission. (Whether they intended to give it back or not is another question.)

[Raphael]

This is probably a very stupid question, but I simply wonder - does the Chinese language have any way to reliably indicate the subjunctive mood? I'm asking because I've often heard that so many things that Western languages indicate through syntax or inflections are instead derived from context in Chinese - and I'm not sure how to indicate something like the subjunctive through context. So, is it possible to translate a statement like

"If elephants would be pink, that would have the effect that..."

into Chinese without running the risk of producing something that a Chinese reader or listener might interpret as a claim that elephants are pink?

(Interestingly enough, right now the Wikipedia article on the subjunctive has a section on Akkadian but not on Chinese.)

[Kuchigakatai]

This is probably a very stupid question, but I simply wonder - does the Chinese language have any way to reliably indicate the subjunctive mood? I'm asking because I've often heard that so many things that Western languages indicate through syntax or inflections are instead derived from context in Chinese - and I'm not sure how to indicate something like the subjunctive through context. So, is it possible to translate a statement like

"If elephants would be pink, that would have the effect that..."

into Chinese without running the risk of producing something that a Chinese reader or listener might interpret as a claim that elephants are pink?

In English we say "If elephants were pink, that would have the effect that...". At any rate, yes, it's true, Mandarin (and Cantonese and Classical Chinese) do not really have a way of grammatically disambiguating the many distinctions European (and Semitic) languages make in conditions (if I am, I will; if I were, I would; if I had been, I would have; if I am, I do; if I was, I did...). Using 會 huì 'will, would; know (how to)' as an auxiliary in the apodosis makes it a bit more likely you're dealing with an unreal condition (if I were, I would; if I had been, I would have), but real conditions can also use 會, they just do so less often, so it doesn't get you out of much.

In fact, even marking something as a condition with an equivalent of "if" (如果 rúguǒ, 若 ruò, 要是 yàoshi) is optional. You sometimes see that in English in gnomic sorts of conditions ("you yell, they yell back at you", i.e. "whenever you yell"), but in Mandarin it's much more common. Sometimes all you get is the adverb 就 jiù "then" in the apodosis, but even that is optional. In Euro languages we tend to be very clear about the presence, the tense and the reality or irreality of a condition.

And yeah, it is true that Chinese leaves a lot of things up to context. Some other things people with a pure Euro background get surprised about are:

- Number marking is very much optional in NPs with a definite reference, i.e. that have been mentioned before. (Note that number is near-mandatory if a new NP is introduced as the direct object of a verb though.) The listener is expected to understand whether all previously-mentioned members of a plural noun are meant, or just a sample, from context. In Euro languages we tend to mark number every time.

- Subjects are regularly dropped as if it was nothing, even though the language has no verbal subject agreement. This includes subjects of subclauses that are different from that of the main clause, so e.g. "want finish soon" can mean 'I want to finish it soon' or 'You want me to finish it soon' or 'She wants us to finish it soon', and so on. The listener is expected to fill in subject changes (or non-changes) from context. In Euro languages we tend to indicate subject changes pretty clearly.

- The language regularly topicalizes direct objects of definite reference to the beginning of the sentence without any particular marking, really just plain movement to the front. Combined with the point above, this means that you often get OV sentences, where the topicalized object looks like the subject of the verb. The listener is expected to know it's an object from context. In Euro languages we tend to mark this much more clearly, either with subject-vs.-object case marking, or prepositional marking for topicalization, or anaphoric pronouns.

[Linguoboy]

Just got in from watering the plants outside where it's 35°C/95°F. My first thought was, "Man, I'm sweating like a Russian racehorse", which is a saying I picked up from a high school classmate. It occurred to me that the adjective "Russian" is arbitrary insofar as there's no recognised stereotype of Russian racehorses being sweatier than other kinds. It's simply there for augmentative effect. Somehow "sweaty as a Russian racehorse" sounds stronger than just "sweaty as a racehorse".

I first noticed this effect back in the 80s when Bronson Pinchot (then riding the crest of his Beverly Hills Cop fame) did an ad for some product which concluded with a line to the effect that when people in shorts get up from sitting in a particular kind of openwork chair, "their thighs look like Belgian waffles". Now, Belgian waffles are different from other waffles, with generally deeper indentations. But even if it didn't evoke this specific image, the adjective would still have an augmentative effect simply from elongating the NP.

[Raphael]

Thank you, Ser, that's very informative!

But now I wonder if there's any good way to clear up misunderstandings, if you tried to make something clear from context but it wasn't as clear as you thought it would be? Let's say you try to say something like "If elephants were pink, that would have the effect that", and then the Chinese person you're talking to responds with something like "What? You're saying that elephants are pink? Are you stupid?" Would there, then, be some way of explaining what you were trying to say?

[Raphael]

Separate post, because this is about a completely different topic: One of my next-door neighbor families is from Moldova and has the surname "Brandusa". And, well, sometimes, when I see their name on the doorbell, a small part of my brain thinks that it's the doorbell for a local branch of a brand from the USA. (It helps that the name is in all caps.)

[Pabappa]

Seems to be another one of those Romanian-only words such that nobody knows where it comes from .... it's a well known flower, but https://ro.wiktionary.org/wiki/br%C3%A2ndu%C8%99%C4%83 has three proposed etymologies. There are a lot of words like that, and it seems that they are most often words for objects in nature, though that may be observation bias.

[Raphael]

A flower? Interesting. From what I've seen of the family so far, they seem to follow relatively old-fashioned gender roles, so now I wonder what the men of the family think about having a surname derived from a pretty flower...

[Richard W]

- The language regularly topicalizes direct objects of definite reference to the beginning of the sentence without any particular marking, really just plain movement to the front. Combined with the point above, this means that you often get OV sentences, where the topicalized object looks like the subject of the verb. The listener is expected to know it's an object from context. In Euro languages we tend to mark this much more clearly, either with subject-vs.-object case marking, or prepositional marking for topicalization, or anaphoric pronouns.

I thought that the rule was that objectless SV with a transitive verb was so odd that that it is what one has to recognised from the context. I've seen this expressed by saying that noun + transitive verb without an object is a passive sentence.

[Kuchigakatai]

But now I wonder if there's any good way to clear up misunderstandings, if you tried to make something clear from context but it wasn't as clear as you thought it would be? Let's say you try to say something like "If elephants were pink, that would have the effect that", and then the Chinese person you're talking to responds with something like "What? You're saying that elephants are pink? Are you stupid?" Would there, then, be some way of explaining what you were trying to say?

Not the best example, that one. Elephants are not normally pink, they're some kind of brown or grey, so why would you need to specify your pink elephants aren't real? Same goes for the thing European languages do of constantly specifying tense. If you already established your narrative happened one year ago, why do you need to keep putting every verb in the past? Just use the historic present! Someone on the ZBB once mentioned coming across a traditional story in one of those languages with evidential morphology, and every verb was of course in the "hearsay" conjugations. Was that necessary, when an unmarked form could've been used?

In Chinese you can use adverbs if you must insist. For example, a past-tense real condition could have a past adverbial and something like "really", "three days ago, if she really show up, then saw my brother too". It's not normally necessary though.

I thought that the rule was that objectless SV with a transitive verb was so odd that that it is what one has to recognised from the context. I've seen this expressed by saying that noun + transitive verb without an object is a passive sentence.

I don't know where you've seen that, but to me that's clearly not true in Chinese at least. Objectless SV with a transitive V is very common! In Chinese linguistics there is even a stereotypical example of the ambiguity that subject pro-drop-ness + the topic-comment construction cause:

魚還沒吃啊。
yú hái méi chī a
fish still not.PAST eat SFP
'The fish haven't eaten yet.' (fish is the subject)
'The fish haven't been eaten yet.' (fish is the topic)
(SFP = sentence-final particle, it can mean a number of things)

If you say this example doesn't count due to 吃 chī 'eat' being intransitive (I wouldn't say it is, but anyway...), I'd add that you can perfectly say e.g. 我剛剛做完了 wǒ gānggāng zuòwán le, lit. "1SG moment.ago do-finish CHANGE.OF.STATE", meaning 'I just finished it'.

[Richard W]

I thought that the rule was that objectless SV with a transitive verb was so odd that that it is what one has to recognised from the context. I've seen this expressed by saying that noun + transitive verb without an object is a passive sentence.

I don't know where you've seen that, but to me that's clearly not true in Chinese at least. Objectless SV with a transitive V is very common! In Chinese linguistics there is even a stereotypical example of the ambiguity that subject pro-drop-ness + the topic-comment construction cause:

魚還沒吃啊。
yú hái méi chī a
fish still not.PAST eat SFP
'The fish haven't eaten yet.' (fish is the topic)
'The fish haven't been eaten yet.' (fish is the subject)
(SFP = sentence-final particle, it can mean a number of things)

If you say this example doesn't count due to 吃 chī 'eat' being intransitive (I wouldn't say it is, but anyway...), I'd add that you can perfectly say e.g. 我剛剛做完了 wǒ gānggāng zuòwán le, lit. "1SG moment.ago do-finish CHANGE.OF.STATE", meaning 'I just finished it'.

My source for Chinese was <i>the Loom of Language</i>, which is less than eighty years old. According to that, in Chinese, one can't just say a literal equivalent of 'I was writing' but have to say 'I was writing characters' because otherwise the sentence would be taken as passive. A misinterpreted style guide? There's a similar rule for Thai, which explains why one gets such odd expressions as 'He is learning books'. The explanation given is that omitting the subject and putting the object in topic/subject position makes the sentence passive. The Thai passive (or pseudo-passive) formed this way can have the subject added back in as an oblique noun phrase; this construction is called the 'English passive', because it was typical of translations of English into Thai. Thai does have passive constructions similar to the Chinese passive with 'bei', but these are traditionally regarded as adverse passives - the patient truly suffers. The copying of the passive in English technical works has lead to a weakening of the adverseness.

[Kuchigakatai]

My source for Chinese was <i>the Loom of Language</i>, which is less than eighty years old. According to that, in Chinese, one can't just say a literal equivalent of 'I was writing' but have to say 'I was writing characters' because otherwise the sentence would be taken as passive. A misinterpreted style guide? There's a similar rule for Thai, which explains why one gets such odd expressions as 'He is learning books'. The explanation given is that omitting the subject and putting the object in topic/subject position makes the sentence passive. The Thai passive (or pseudo-passive) formed this way can have the subject added back in as an oblique noun phrase; this construction is called the 'English passive', because it was typical of translations of English into Thai. Thai does have passive constructions similar to the Chinese passive with 'bei', but these are traditionally regarded as adverse passives - the patient truly suffers. The copying of the passive in English technical works has lead to a weakening of the adverseness.

Mandarin (and Cantonese) often does require generic objects of that sort with monosyllabic transitive verbs ("study-book" for 'study'), but often that has more to do with complying with its prosodial rules than anything else. The generic object can be exchanged for a resultative or potential complement, a directional complement, an adverbial, or an implied object in the context. Or you can put it at the end of a "headless" relative clause. So, taking your 写字 xiě-zì ("write-character") example (none of the following sentences is original, but taken from the LINE Chinese-English dictionary):

a resultative or potential complement (resultative 完 -wán 'finish', potential 得完 -dewán can-finish)
拾起笔写完吧！
shí-qĭ bĭ xiĕ-wán ba
pick.up-up pen write-finish EXHORT
'Take up the pen and finish!'
我写得完。
wǒ xiě-de-wán
1SG write-ABLE-finish
'I can finish writing it.'

directional complements (下来 -xiàlai down-come, 出来 -chūlai exit-come)
你非要我写下来吗？
nĭ fēiyào wŏ xiĕ-xià-lai ma
2SG insist 1SG write-down-come Q
'Do you insist that I write this down?'
柏拉图并没写出来，像这样罗列出前提和结论。
băilātú bìng méi xiĕ-chū-lái, xiàng zhèyàng luóliè-chū qiántí hé jiélùn
Plato at.all didn't write-exit-come, like this.way list-exit premise and conclusion
'It's not at all like Plato wrote them out, listing premises and conclusions that way.'

(adverbials)
你想怎么写？
nĭ xiăng zĕnme xiĕ?
2SG want how write?
'How would you like it to be written?'
你必须写得清楚易读。
nǐ bìxū xiě de qīngchu yì-dú
2SG must write ADV clear easy-read
'You must write legibly.'

(contextual object)
我有个伴郎演说要写，可是没时间写了。
wŏ yŏu gè bànláng yănshuō yào xiĕ, kĕshì méi shíjiān xiĕ le
1SG have CL best.man speech need write, but not.have time write CHANGE.OF.SITUATION
'I have a best man speech to write and no time to write it.'

(in relative clause)
写的是感人肺腑啊！
xiĕ de shì gănrén-fèifŭ a
write REL be touching-lung_guts SFP
'What you/he/she/they wrote is very moving!'

Your comment about the Thai "English passive" is interesting... Mandarin 被 bèi often has a slight adversative connotation, but the way you speak of it, it sounds like the connotation is more strongly negative in Thai.

[bradrn]

Mandarin (and Cantonese) often does require generic objects of that sort with monosyllabic transitive verbs ("study-book" for 'study'), but often that has more to do with complying with its prosodial rules than anything else. The generic object can be exchanged for a resultative or potential complement, a directional complement, an adverbial, or an implied object in the context. Or you can put it at the end of a "headless" relative clause.

What ‘prosodial rules’ are those? I’ve never heard of such a thing, but they sound interesting!

[Zju]

Just got in from watering the plants outside where it's 35°C/95°F. My first thought was, "Man, I'm sweating like a Russian racehorse", which is a saying I picked up from a high school classmate. It occurred to me that the adjective "Russian" is arbitrary insofar as there's no recognised stereotype of Russian racehorses being sweatier than other kinds. It's simply there for augmentative effect. Somehow "sweaty as a Russian racehorse" sounds stronger than just "sweaty as a racehorse".

Sounds like the saying at some point was "sweating like a rushing racehorse".