Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Vijay]

-e is like 'of' in English when connecting nouns, adjectives come after nouns in Persian rather than before with the ezafe connecting them, and 'King X' in Persian seems to just be 'X Shah' with no ezafe. So AFAICT it would be HUSBAND-e DAUGHTER-e ROSTAM and CROWN-e GOLD-e ROSTAM SHAH.

Thank you.

!خواهش می‌کنم

[Kuchigakatai]

I have a quick question about ezafe: how are multiple possessives handled? Like in English? So say one want's to say "Rostam's daughter's husband," is that ROSTAM-e DAUGHTER-e HUSBAND? Since ezafe also marks adjectives, what about something like "Shah Rostam's golden crown"? ROSTAM-e SHAH-e GOLD-e CROWN? (I'm working on a language that has a similar construct, but I've been a bit confused how to approach strings of possessors.)

It might be of your interest that in Standard Arabic nothing except determiners can go between two nouns in an /ʔidˤaːfa/ relationship, which means that, as it's a noun-adjective language, adjectives can be pushed after the /ʔidˤaːfa/ construction, even if the adjective modifies the first noun in it.

To understand the glosses before, note that Standard Arabic nouns inflect for both case (nominative/accusative/genitive) and "state" which is something similar to definiteness (definite/indefinite/construct, where construct is basically "possessed"). The language basic word order is noun-adjective and possessed-possessor. (Nouns also inflect for three or four numbers (singular/dual/plural and sometimes paucal or even more rarely a plural of eminence), but I'm not marking that below.)

• daughter.NOM.CONST Rostam.GEN.INDEF
  'Rostam's daughter'
  (personal proper names take indefinite state morphology when they're the possessors)
• daughter.NOM.CONST man.GEN.DEF
  'the man's daughter'
  (regular nouns usually appear in the definite state when they're possessors)
• husband.NOM.CONST daughter.GEN.CONST Rostam.GEN.INDEF
  'Rostam's daughter's husband'
• skull.NOM.CONST this man.GEN.DEF big.NOM.DEF
  'the big skull of this man'
• crown.NOM.CONST shah.GEN.DEF Rostam.GEN.INDEF golden.NOM.DEF
  'the golden crown of Shah Rostam'
  (if an adjective (or relative clause) modifies a noun morphologically in the construct state, the adjective (or relativizer) appears in the definite state)

Note that it's also common to use a preposition to have the adjective right next to the noun it modifies.

• crown.NOM.DEF golden.NOM.DEF of shah.GEN.DEF Rostam.GEN.INDEF
  'the golden crown of Shah Rostam'

[Zaarin]

I have a quick question about ezafe: how are multiple possessives handled? Like in English? So say one want's to say "Rostam's daughter's husband," is that ROSTAM-e DAUGHTER-e HUSBAND? Since ezafe also marks adjectives, what about something like "Shah Rostam's golden crown"? ROSTAM-e SHAH-e GOLD-e CROWN? (I'm working on a language that has a similar construct, but I've been a bit confused how to approach strings of possessors.)

It might be of your interest that in Standard Arabic nothing except determiners can go between two nouns in an /ʔidˤaːfa/ relationship, which means that, as it's a noun-adjective language, adjectives can be pushed after the /ʔidˤaːfa/ construction, even if the adjective modifies the first noun in it.

To understand the glosses before, note that Standard Arabic nouns inflect for both case (nominative/accusative/genitive) and "state" which is something similar to definiteness (definite/indefinite/construct, where construct is basically "possessed"). The language basic word order is noun-adjective and possessed-possessor. (Nouns also inflect for three or four numbers (singular/dual/plural and sometimes paucal or even more rarely a plural of eminence), but I'm not marking that below.)

• daughter.NOM.CONST Rostam.GEN.INDEF
  'Rostam's daughter'
  (personal proper names take indefinite state morphology when they're the possessors)
• daughter.NOM.CONST man.GEN.DEF
  'the man's daughter'
  (regular nouns usually appear in the definite state when they're possessors)
• husband.NOM.CONST daughter.GEN.CONST Rostam.GEN.INDEF
  'Rostam's daughter's husband'
• skull.NOM.CONST this man.GEN.DEF big.NOM.DEF
  'the big skull of this man'
• crown.NOM.CONST shah.GEN.DEF Rostam.GEN.INDEF golden.NOM.DEF
  'the golden crown of Shah Rostam'
  (if an adjective (or relative clause) modifies a noun morphologically in the construct state, the adjective (or relativizer) appears in the definite state)

Note that it's also common to use a preposition to have the adjective right next to the noun it modifies.

• crown.NOM.DEF golden.NOM.DEF of shah.GEN.DEF Rostam.GEN.INDEF
  'the golden crown of Shah Rostam'

Thanks!

[Vijay]

I've also been learning some Kurmanji, and in that language, it seems that ezafe works roughly like in Persian, but with the additional complications that it is always used in constructions involving both a preposition and a postposition and that when there are two nouns being connected through ezafe, both of them take it.

[masako]

I'm having a really difficult time reconciling this "خاشقجي‎" being romanized as "Khashoggi" and pronounced as /kæʃoːɡi/.

[Linguoboy]

I'm having a really difficult time reconciling this "خاشقجي‎" being romanized as "Khashoggi" and pronounced as /kæʃoːɡi/.

Oh, trippy, the Turks write it Kaşıkçı.

[masako]

Oh, trippy, the Turks write it Kaşıkçı.

Yes, exactly. WTF is with the Westerners?

This video demonstrates a more nuanced pronunciation by Arabic speakers.

[Linguoboy]

Oh, trippy, the Turks write it Kaşıkçı.

Yes, exactly. WTF is with the Westerners?

Is it Westerners, though? I don't know what relationship Jamal is to Adnan, but I assume it's due to the latter that media outlets are using the transcription they are. And Adnan studied in the West, so presumably he had some say in how his surname was transcribed. Non-native speakers of English have been known to come up with more idiosyncratic transcriptions than the average mothertongue speaker would.

[masako]

Makes me think of Gaddafi.

[Vijay]

There's just gotta be some variety of Arabic spoken in Saudi Arabia where it's pronounced something like [χæːʃoʔˈgiː], though.

Also I just found out the Malayalam word for 'bed' (or 'mattress', apparently) comes from Hebrew. (The one that doesn't also mean 'cot', that is...and that one is also related to the English word cot).

[Nortaneous]

I'm having a really difficult time reconciling this "خاشقجي‎" being romanized as "Khashoggi" and pronounced as /kæʃoːɡi/.

maybe cf. Genghis /gengis/. I could see -(g)dZ- being intended.

[Linguoboy]

I'm having a really difficult time reconciling this "خاشقجي‎" being romanized as "Khashoggi" and pronounced as /kæʃoːɡi/.

maybe cf. Genghis /gengis/. I could see -(g)dZ- being intended.

It looks very Italian-influenced to me. Cf. oggi /ˈɔd.dʒi/

[mèþru]

@Vijay
mitah?

In Modern Standard Arabic /g/ is used as a marginal phoneme to pronounce some dialectal and loan words. On the other hand it is considered a native phoneme or allophone in most modern Arabic dialects, mostly as a variant of ق /q/ (as in Arabian Peninsula and Northwest African dialects) or as a variant of /d͡ʒ/ ج (as in Egyptian and a number of Yemeni and Omani dialects). It is also considered a separate foreign phoneme that appears only in loanwords, as in most urban Levantine dialects where ق is /ʔ/ and ج is /d͡ʒ~ʒ/. Foreign words containing /ɡ/ may be transcribed more commonly with ج‎, غ‎, ق‎ or ك‎ or less commonly ݣ‬ (used in Morocco) or ڨ‬ (used in Tunisian and Algeria), mainly depending on the regional spoken variety of Arabic or the commonly diacriticized Arabic letter.

[Zaarin]

I was listening to a little kid talk. He was probably around two, and his parents spoke GenAm with maybe a hint of Southern influence. Most of his speech was what you'd expect from a child still acquiring language (/l/ [w] in all positions, so elephant [ɛwfn̩ʔ], and /r/ [ɹ~l~w~ɰ] in free variation, etc.), but his plosives were unusual.

His voiceless plosives were aspirated in all positions (including after /s/ and in coda) except in absolute word-final position, where /p k/ were ejectives and /t/ was the expected [ʔ] (maybe lexical). His voiced plosives were normal, but he at least pronounced /d/ with audible release word-finally--but still had glottal fortification. So for example his bird was something like [bɨwʔd], and stop was something like [stʰɑʔpʼ].

Anyway, I thought that was interesting. I can easily imagine that the word-final ejectives are an imitation of his parents' over-enunciating when teaching words, but is generalizing aspiration to all positions like that normal? I don't have much experience with kids.

[Pabappa]

Can he read at all? No comment on the stops, but the pronunciation of "bird" jumped right out at me. All accents that I know of have just a syllabic R there, but it sounds like he's trying to give a vowel + R. Most kids don't learn to read until much later, but maybe he's been watching educational TV etc. Could just be that a diphthong is his approximation of a schwa, of course.

[anteallach]

I'm having a really difficult time reconciling this "خاشقجي‎" being romanized as "Khashoggi" and pronounced as /kæʃoːɡi/.

maybe cf. Genghis /gengis/. I could see -(g)dZ- being intended.

There's an old Language Hat post on this name:
http://languagehat.com/khashoggi/

That suggests that /gdʒ/ was indeed intended.

[mèþru]

The guy he's talking about is the cousin of the Khashoggi in the news

[Zaarin]

Can he read at all? No comment on the stops, but the pronunciation of "bird" jumped right out at me. All accents that I know of have just a syllabic R there, but it sounds like he's trying to give a vowel + R. Most kids don't learn to read until much later, but maybe he's been watching educational TV etc. Could just be that a diphthong is his approximation of a schwa, of course.

I never heard a complete sentence out of him, so I highly doubt he's reading. I interpreted his pronunciation of bird as /bəɹd/; so not a diphthong, just realize /ɹ/ was [w].

[Vijay]

@Vijay
mitah?

The Malayalam word apparently comes from that (I've found at least two sources that say it does, but honestly, neither one strikes me as particularly reliable. One is just the Malayalam version of Wiktionary...). In Malayalam, we say മെത്ത [mɛˈt̪a]. My Malayalam-English dictionary (the other source ) also lists 'mattress' as a possible meaning for this word.

The other (ordinary, and seemingly much more common) word for 'bed' in Malayalam is കട്ടിൽ [kəˈʈɪl]. Apparently, Sanskrit got this word from some Dravidian language, and eventually, English got it from Hindi, and that's where cot comes from.

[quinterbeck]

Is there a term for this occurrence, where two words of similar meaning form a phrase with no or very little added meaning. For example, bunny rabbit, which came up in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=137

Failing a term, can anyone cite any other examples? (Also of interest is the case where one word in a two-word phrase carries all the meaning, and the other adds none or very little.)

Morphological rather than phonological: Chinese added clarifying morphemes to words which became homophones with each other as a disambiguation strategy

I was actually thinking of something similar to that earlier today, only more due to common stock phrasings than homophone distinction. Like if the word became bunnyrabbit instead of "bunny rabbit."