Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[bradrn]

Is there any way of predicting which slang terms or constructions will become well-established long-term features of their respective languages, and which will soon go the way of most old slang? I strongly suspect that the answer is "no", but I wouldn't mind being surprised on this.

Everything I’ve heard (not a lot, I’ll admit) says that the answer is ‘no’.

Is there a fusional language that expresses five features with a single morpheme? I can think of four features, but not five, e.g. 1SG.PRS.PERF

You could add gender, I suppose, but I’m not sure if there is any language which actually does so. On the other hand, from what I can tell, Ancient Greek verbs seem to inflect for person+number+T+A+M+voice+finiteness, though I’m not sure if this is regarded as using a single morpheme per se.

[Richard W]

Is there a fusional language that expresses five features with a single morpheme? I can think of four features, but not five, e.g. 1SG.PRS.PERF

You mean like Latin -ō 1SG.PRES.IND.ACT? How about Hebrew yiqṭîl 3SM.CAUS.IMPF.ACT as opposed to yiqṭēl 3SM.CAUS.JUSS.ACT? That gives six features.

[zompist]

Is there any way of predicting which slang terms or constructions will become well-established long-term features of their respective languages, and which will soon go the way of most old slang? I strongly suspect that the answer is "no", but I wouldn't mind being surprised on this.

I haven't read anything on this, and this is based on what I know of English, French, and to some extent Spanish.

I think that you're right that individual terms can't be predicted. But I'd say there are general tendencies.

* Unwieldy terms will get shortened.
* Slang terms are generally disrespectful (chick, kid), but occasionally ironic (guv'nor).
* Exaggeration and minimization are both attractive. Metaphors are usually vivid and visual.
* Much more than ordinary language, slang favors sound symbolism, unusual sounds, rhyme, etc.
* The underclass always has the best slang.

English slang seems to require a new word for "good" every ten years.

Slang is sometimes explained as hiding meanings from parents, the cops, etc., but these explanations don't address how easy it is to learn the expressions. Policemen quickly start using underworld slang themselves. I think a better explanation is that slang, like clothing, is a way of signaling what group(s) you adhere to. As one of those groups is generational, that's a big reason why slang changes over time.

[Richard W]

Is there a fusional language that expresses five features with a single morpheme? I can think of four features, but not five, e.g. 1SG.PRS.PERF

You could add gender, I suppose, but I’m not sure if there is any language which actually does so.

Semitic includes gender in the second and third person conjugational affixes. The imperfective 2sf ending -î in Hebrew definitely flags for 3 features, though whether the morpheme includes the initial tV- is unclear. It also occurs without the tV- for the 2sf in the imperative. The Hebrew perfective 2pm/2pf endings -tem/-ten seem to code for 4 features, unless you think a second person morpheme -t- should be carved out.

[Kuchigakatai]

Is there any way of predicting which slang terms or constructions will become well-established long-term features of their respective languages, and which will soon go the way of most old slang? I strongly suspect that the answer is "no", but I wouldn't mind being surprised on this.

Those that fill in gaps maybe? Those that are analogical formations or backformations? Those that provide a way to say something people generally want to, but so far couldn't have? (or could have, but unwieldly)
I have heard the claim that languages develop mostly in two directions:
1) To express the same thing with less effort, ergo lenitions and whatnot.
2) To express more with the same amount of effort, ergo e.g. grammaticalisation.

Changes in the lingua franca commonly learned can also have a huge influence in vocab overturn that gets to stay. I'm thinking of Japanese here in particular, now that people more commonly know something of English than Chinese. Some of the English terms they've borrowed are basically slang, or used as slang (even if they aren't in English), against the more formal native or Sino-Japanese term. Like, 芸能人 gēnōjin 'entertainer, celebrity' versus タレント tarento (< talent, reduceable to just タレ tare, particularly used with TV show hosts and radio show hosts apparently) and エンターテイナー entaatainaa (< entertainer).

Some funny YouTube video making of the Japanese for their massive use of English words:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW4AiEqKGto
"Japanese in 10 Years / 10年後の日本語", 49 seconds long, by user Dogen (an American living in Japan)

[Moose-tache]

Is there a fusional language that expresses five features with a single morpheme? I can think of four features, but not five, e.g. 1SG.PRS.PERF

You mean like Latin -ō 1SG.PRES.IND.ACT? How about Hebrew yiqṭîl 3SM.CAUS.IMPF.ACT as opposed to yiqṭēl 3SM.CAUS.JUSS.ACT? That gives six features.

I feel like, at a certain point, this becomes a matter of semantics. Does the Latin 1sg ending also indicate that it's not a participle? If participles became used in evidential statements, does that mean -o now means "evidentiarily neutral?" If we say that the ending is simultaneously saying everything that it's not (i.e. not passive, not subjunctive...) then we can stack virtually anything we want onto it. But I don't think this accurately reflects how speakers think about how they use their language.

[Raphael]

Thank you, everyone!

[Kuchigakatai]

I've been studying Latin a fuckton this year, and one thing I've been really marvelled by is just how much stuff about pronunciation has been figured out by making very close observations of received textual poetry from the ancient period, like, from the 3rd century BC to the 1st century AD (much of it surviving only in manuscripts from the 9th century AD, besides loose earlier fragments). Poetry! In its myriad forms, once that data is combined with more usual things like fully authentic ancient text surviving as inscriptions, graffiti, fragments, plus grammarians' explicit comments.

Like, poetry has been used for the reconstruction of Chinese phonological history, but it doesn't seem to have been this obsessively careful? In Latin linguistics, it's not unusual to see things like, "but [X poet] uses [Y word] with a long vowel in the ablative twice". Maybe it just isn't possible, I don't know how exacting Chinese poetic rules are, but I can't help but wonder what it'd be like if this obsession was applied onto Sanskrit literature. Has it been?

Maybe because there just aren't enough people doing this stuff.

[Richard W]

Like, poetry has been used for the reconstruction of Chinese phonological history, but it doesn't seem to have been this obsessively careful? In Latin linguistics, it's not unusual to see things like, "but [X poet] uses [Y word] with a long vowel in the ablative twice". Maybe it just isn't possible, I don't know how exacting Chinese poetic rules are, but I can't help but wonder what it'd be like if this obsession was applied onto Sanskrit literature. Has it been?

I get the feeling it's been applied to Vedic Sanskrit. Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit (BHS) poetry seems to have been scrutinised similarly. Incidentally, BHS may not be any more Buddhist than New Testament Greek is Christian.

[Qwynegold]

Does anyone know if Japanese uranai 'fortune telling' or sarasaranai 'not at all' undergo the colloquial reduction of ranai > nnai?

Doesn't that thing only happen to negated verbs? Which uranai isn't. That other word I've never even heard of.

[Travis B.]

My daughter, who is nearly 12, has reanalyzed last as having the underlying stem /læs/, such that its pres. 3sg. is /ˈlæsəz/.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

So it would conjugate "I lass, (thou lassest), he/she/it lasses (lasseth), we lass, you lass, they lass; past tense/past participle: lassed; gerund: lassing"?

[Travis B.]

So it would conjugate "I lass, (thou lassest), he/she/it lasses (lasseth), we lass, you lass, they lass; past tense/past participle: lassed; gerund: lassing"?

I presume so.

[Travis B.]

So it would conjugate "I lass, (thou lassest), he/she/it lasses (lasseth), we lass, you lass, they lass; past tense/past participle: lassed; gerund: lassing"?

I presume so.

Contrast this with how last is for me, where it is /læst/ phonetically, but in everyday speech final /st/ > [s] and medial /st/ and final /sts/ > [sʲː].

From visiting my sister's family, who live in the Chicago area, I have noticed that my four year-old nephew merges /aʊ ɑr ɔl/ as [ɑʊ].

[Raphael]

What are some examples for very long-lived features of a language? That is, things that are generally believed to have been present in an ancestral language thousands of years ago, and that are still present in a descended language today? Can be anything from words to phonological, morphological, or syntactical features.

[bradrn]

What are some examples for very long-lived features of a language? That is, things that are generally believed to have been present in an ancestral language thousands of years ago, and that are still present in a descended language today? Can be anything from words to phonological, morphological, or syntactical features.

The clearest example is probably Semitic triconsonantal roots. Another one which springs to mind is pervasive disyllabicity in Austronesian languages (which as it happens I was reading about literally minutes ago). Beyond that, I’m not too sure, though I’m sure that I’ll remember some more examples if I think a bit more.

[Creyeditor]

Looking only at IE, it seems that (simple onset) nasals and laterals are pretty stable, at least before back vowels, IINM.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

What are some examples for very long-lived features of a language? That is, things that are generally believed to have been present in an ancestral language thousands of years ago, and that are still present in a descended language today? Can be anything from words to phonological, morphological, or syntactical features.

From what I know of East Asian languages:

Middle Chinese was a tonal language, as was Old Thai. Tones seem to be a persistent feature once established.

Japanese has been using particles to mark syntactic function from the oldest attested texts, though which particles are used, and for what purpose, have changed over the centuries. Its ancestrally quadrigrade (yodan), modern quintigrade (godan), verbs have survived a long time, even when the bigrade (nidan) conjugations were regularised out of existence beyond a single lone modern verb.

[Raphael]

Thank you for your feedback, everyone!

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Something else that's also occurred to me — dental fricatives, and possibly [æ], in English: some theories, and I tend to agree with them, posit that Chaucer's /aː/ was phonetically [æː], and the dental fricatives are well-documented historically; these rare sounds, the bane of foreigners trying to learn English, we seem to have kept out of sheer spite (though there are varieties which have lost them). Even weird and rare features can stick around indefinitely, it would seem.