Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Qwynegold]

not really. english sort of does that, right? "book case" vs "case of books". and likewise a lot of other IE languages and probably non-IE ones. it might even be easier to communicate this way since a listener is more likely to hear the difference between two phrases if the missing piece is not just a small, unstressed case marker.

Okay, that's good to hear. I was under the impression that Romance languages typically do their compounds in the opposite order than English, because of their genitive order. WRT "book case" though, it follows the order of "book's case".

[Linguoboy]

WRT "book case" though, it follows the order of "book's case".

What is "book case" anyhow? I read that as some kind of typeface only used for books. (Book covers, perhaps?)

[Kuchigakatai]

Okay, that's good to hear. I was under the impression that Romance languages typically do their compounds in the opposite order than English, because of their genitive order. WRT "book case" though, it follows the order of "book's case".

Romance languages typically don't do compounds of the Germanic type with multiple stressed words, aside from modern French (un projet Internet 'an Internet project, an online project'), and even in this language they're not the most common way to express such things. Romance languages typically just use prepositional phrases: Spanish un proyecto en línea, un proyecto en/de Internet.

What is "book case" anyhow? I read that as some kind of typeface only used for books. (Book covers, perhaps?)

In North American English we usually say "bookshelf". A bookcase/bookshelf then may contain more than one shelf (i.e. horizontal support plane) inside.

[Linguoboy]

What is "book case" anyhow? I read that as some kind of typeface only used for books. (Book covers, perhaps?)

In North American English we usually say "bookshelf". A bookcase/bookshelf then may contain more than one shelf (i.e. horizontal support plane) inside.

"Bookcase" is a different word than "book case". They aren't stressed the same. (Also, do folks really have [kː] in this word, as Wiktionary shows? It's just [kʰ] IMD.)

[missals]

"Bookcase" is a different word than "book case". They aren't stressed the same. (Also, do folks really have [kː] in this word, as Wiktionary shows? It's just [kʰ] IMD.)

Yes, for me it has a geminated stop just like in "black cat" (but with only one primary word stress). Pronouncing it with a single [k] makes it sound like a pseudo-Latin word for a chemical compound, "buccase" or something.

[Travis B.]

"Bookcase" is a different word than "book case". They aren't stressed the same. (Also, do folks really have [kː] in this word, as Wiktionary shows? It's just [kʰ] IMD.)

I have [kː] in bookcase myself. Of course then I have [kː] in vodka...

[Linguoboy]

Of course then I have [kː] in vodka...

Not to turn this into the HDYP thread, but I'm pretty sure I have [ʔk] there. Maybe that's what I have in bookcase too, come to think?

[akam chinjir]

Not to turn this into the HDYP thread, but I'm pretty sure I have [ʔk] there. Maybe that's what I have in bookcase too, come to think?

I think that's what I have (for bookcase).

[zompist]

To my surprise, I think I say [vagkə].

[Travis B.]

To my surprise, I think I say [vagkə].

Phonemically I have /gk/ in vodka because the preceding vowel is long and there is no preglottalization - but the /g/ is devoiced in actual production.

[Linguoboy]

A friend asked for help in localisation the speech of the narrator of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s_pu4o5Bwo&t=447s.

It's trickier than I thought. The most salient features are his ellisions: Cluster simplifications abound, the is always /ð(ə)/, unstressed medial vowels drop, and coda /l/ is vocalised or deleted. But none of these is particularly regional as opposed to simply characteristic of "uneducated speech". I think I hear some diphthong smoothing, but he's cot-caught merged and and lacks the pin-pen merger. That still covers a lot of ground. Suggestions?

[quinterbeck]

More samples:

... in 1983 our house got burnt down that we were living in, in Geraldton ... (unless that's Australian Aboriginal)

Completed September 2012, The Woolshed replaces an the old homestead that had burnt down that they had operated in. - Kiwi

For those guys to live for all these years, to see their building burnt down that they put time and effort into, that was huge.

... but unfortunately their Minivan burnt down which they just bought ...

And here's a paper on the usage - When relative clause extraposition is the right choice, it’s easier. I haven't read it - I was only after an existence proof.

FWIW, relative clause extraposition is pretty acceptable for me, spoken in informal contexts

[Kuchigakatai]

I've known for a while that historically German didn't always distinguish 'when' and 'if', and that this is ultimately the reason why 'wenn', the cognate of 'when', ended up meaning 'if' (meanwhile, the meaning 'when' was retained by a split doublet: wann). The ambiguity is also observable in Standard Arabic: إذا ʔiðaa means both 'when' and 'if' (and I mean realis 'if', irrealis 'if' would be لو law).

Today I learned that a cognate of 'if' does survive: 'ob', meaning 'whether', as in 'I don't know whether I did well in the exam or not'. Ultimately they come from a Proto-Germanic *ja-ba or *ja-bai, meaning the 'if' of conditions.

I found this very interesting and ironic because there are English speakers who don't like the use of 'if' in which it means 'whether', as in 'I don't know if I did well'. In German, the very opposite happened, and the Germanic *ja-ba became specialized to mean mainly just that as German 'wenn' took over its use in conditions.

[Pabappa]

found this just now:
https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch06.html

For host-only networking, as with internal networking, you may find the DHCP server useful that is built into Oracle VM VirtualBox.

[Qwynegold]

Okay, that's good to hear. I was under the impression that Romance languages typically do their compounds in the opposite order than English, because of their genitive order. WRT "book case" though, it follows the order of "book's case".

Romance languages typically don't do compounds of the Germanic type with multiple stressed words, aside from modern French (un projet Internet 'an Internet project, an online project'), and even in this language they're not the most common way to express such things. Romance languages typically just use prepositional phrases: Spanish un proyecto en línea, un proyecto en/de Internet.

Searching in a Spanish dictionary I found words such as coche-cama, coche-comedor, coche-patrulla, cortocircuito, cuentakilómetros, estadounidense, gomaespuma, guardabarros, guardabosques though.

But anyway, I was wondering if compounds of the proyecto en línea type would be better?

[Kuchigakatai]

Searching in a Spanish dictionary I found words such as coche-cama, coche-comedor, coche-patrulla, cortocircuito, cuentakilómetros, estadounidense, gomaespuma, guardabarros, guardabosques though.

I think Pabappa gave a good answer to your question (English happens to be an example of what you wanted). What I did was mentioning that Romance doesn't typically do "compounds of the Germanic type with multiple stressed words", as you seemed to be suggesting. None of those is an example in Spanish:
- four don't have a relationship of modifier-modified as in the question you're interested in but rather "X that is also Y" (cochecama, coche-comedor, coche-patrulla, gomaespuma —a cochecama is not a car of the bed type, or a bed of the car type, but "a car that is also a bed")
- three involve the 3SG verb + plural noun = noun pattern that is largely absent in Germanic (cuentakilómetros "it-counts-kilometres", guardabarros 'it-protects-[from]-mudsplats", guardabosques "it-protects-forests")
- one is a Greek-like compound with linker -o- (estad-o-unidense, from Estados Unidos 'the US', cf. English therm-o-metre)
- and the remaining one is an example of the rare adjective-noun = noun compound pattern (cortocircuito, historically a calque of English "short-circuit").

I think only the second one is highly productive and common in regular Spanish. The third one might be too, but in fancy scientific writing rather than everyday language. Neither is relevant to your question anyway.

Note how these Germanic-type doubly stressed modifier-modified compounds get rendered: "linguistics textbook" (libro de texto de lingüística, or libro/manual de lingüística, or even texto de lingüística), "cotton shirt" (camisa de algodón, lit. "shirt of cotton"), "metal table" (mesa de metal "table of metal", mesa metálica "metallic table").

But anyway, I was wondering if compounds of the proyecto en línea type would be better?

That's not a compound in Spanish as you can modify the nouns as you please: "el proyecto nuevo de mi hermano en línea" 'my brother's new online project'. I'd say you can do as in Romance and forbid modifier-modified (or modified-modifier) compound nouns. Or you can do like English and do what you originally wanted to do (i.e. having both "cards of silver" and "silver cards"). Basically you can do whatever you want.

found this just now:
https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch06.html

For host-only networking, as with internal networking, you may find the DHCP server useful that is built into Oracle VM VirtualBox.

lol. How natural does that sound to you though? Personally I'm not unused to seeing calques from other languages in software documentation.

I suppose there might be some substance to Richard's claim that some native speakers at least (who are not from South Asia) do use that construction, but it feels so non-standard to me, and it's not something I normally come across at all.

[Space60]

How do you say the date?
In America we write the date as "August 12, 2020" month/day/year however in speech the day can occur before the month "The 12th of August" or after "August (the) 12th". Both of these are used in American English however saying the day after the month is most common.

[Travis B.]

August 12th. The rest seem a bit flowery to me.

[Space60]

August 12th. The rest seem a bit flowery to me.

Yes, I also say August 12th. An exception is July 4 where if I'm referring to the holiday and not just the date I say "the Fourth of July".

[Kuchigakatai]

I say August 12th (August twelfth), which I write that way, but which many people write as "August 12" without the <th>.

Occasionally I see some people here in Canada writing "12 August", which they read as "the twelfth of August". You can particularly see this in bilingual English-French texts such as official forms, because it matches the French format (le 12 août /lə duz (a.)u/ [lœ̽ duːz (a.)ˈu]).

The article "the" is mostly just added after the day of the week, or when saying the number of the day in isolation: "Friday the 13th", "on Monday the 1st", "on the 10th". Some people do say "August the 12th" sometimes, but I think that's usually emphatic directing extra attention to the number.