Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Pabappa]

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."

http://www.lilec.it/mmm/wp/wp-content/u ... pounds.pdf says "(endocentric) coordinate compound" .... though not quite as specific, it definitely includes the type where the 2 elements are synonyms. Japanese has a lot of this too.

re-quoting because i bumped..

[Linguoboy]

Does anyone have a good syntactic test for determining whether "bright" is an adjective or an adverb in "it shines bright"? I can find arguments in favour of both treating "shine" as a copular verb and "bright" as a bare-form adverb.

[akam chinjir]

Does anyone have a good syntactic test for determining whether "bright" is an adjective or an adverb in "it shines bright"? I can find arguments in favour of both treating "shine" as a copular verb and "bright" as a bare-form adverb.

Not a direct answer (no syntactic test), but to me that looks like a (descriptive) secondary predicate. Compare: "Sal walked to the door drunk." "Drunk" describes Sal, not the walking; the meaning is quite different from "Sal walked to the door drunkenly." (Whether you walk in a drunken manner can be quite distinct from whether you are drunk.)

"It shines bright" looks the same to me: it's the subject rather than the shining that's being described as bright. You don't really get a different interpretation, though, since there's not really a difference between being bright while shining (on the one hand) and shining brightly (on the other).

Maybe that's what you're thinking of as treating it as a copular verb? But it's not really the verb that's doing the linking here, I wouldn't think. One data point: you can get secondary predicates applying to objects, as in "Sal gave me the meat raw."

One more example, because distinctions are fun.

"Wisely, Sal played the game" → it was wise for her to play the game, nothing is implied about how she played

"Sal played the game wisely" → her manner of playing was wise, she played well

"Sal played the game wise" → during the game she was wise (perhaps the druid buffed her wisdom), but again nothing is really implied about how well she played

[zompist]

Does anyone have a good syntactic test for determining whether "bright" is an adjective or an adverb in "it shines bright"? I can find arguments in favour of both treating "shine" as a copular verb and "bright" as a bare-form adverb.

Offhand, I think it's just a quirky construction. "Shine" doesn't seem to allow adjectives generally: *It shines dim, *It shines blinding, *It shines radiant, *The light is shining normal, ?It shines hot. But "bright" doesn't generally work as an adverb: *It's bright illuminated, *It's bright shining, *It glimmers/flickers bright, *The room was illuminated bright. (OTOH The fire burned/flared/blazed bright is OK for me.)

On preview: akamchinjir may be on to something, but I'm not convinced these simply modify the subject. E.g. Sal may be tall, German, and rich, but you can't say *Sal walked to the door tall/German/rich. At the least the modifier has to be relevant to the action.

[mèþru]

To me it seems like these are adverbs where the adverbial suffix was omitted

[akam chinjir]

On preview: akamchinjir may be on to something, but I'm not convinced these simply modify the subject. E.g. Sal may be tall, German, and rich, but you can't say *Sal walked to the door tall/German/rich. At the least the modifier has to be relevant to the action.

Yeah, to make the examples work you have to make the secondary predicate somehow relevant to the action, or at least to that period of time. But for more examples than you'd think you can work out a context that makes it work. "Sal walked to the door tall": the potion of height has just kicked in; or she's puffed up with pride about something, maybe. "Sal walked to the door German": she's just been given her naturalisation papers. "Sal walked to the door rich": she's just been given a pile of money.

But I think you're right that the restrictions are pretty complicated, and languages definitely differ in how freely they allow constructions like this. (It's super common in Akiatu, for example )

[akam chinjir]

(I wish I could remember the details or the source, but somewhere Asimov has a relevant discussion of "Do not go gentle into that good night"---which, if you take "gentle" as a manner adverb, seems to be wishing someone an unpleasant death.)

[Vijay]

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

Pleonasm?

[Znex]

Does anyone know how common retracted [s̠] is in the world's languages as a or the main allophone of /s/ or /ʃ/ (whether expressed apico- or lamino-alveolar)? I understand it was fairly common in medieval mainland European languages, where in some cases it was kept distinct to denti-alveolar /s/ and postalveolar /ʃ/, as opposed to some neighbouring countries:

eg. Middle French /s/ in loanwords > English /ʃ/ (eg. pousser /pusser/ > push /pʊʃ/; passion /passjɔn/ > /pæʃən/)
compare Middle French /ts/ in loanwords > English /s/ (eg. accepter /aktsɛpter/ > /əksɛpt/; notice /nɔtits(ə)/ > /nəʊtɪs/)

Middle High German /s/ in loanwords > Polish /ʂ/ (eg. kosten /kɔstən/ > kosztować /kɔʂtɔvatɕ/; sur /su:r/ > żur /ʐur/)
compare Middle High German /ts/ in loanwords > Polish /s/ (eg. loz /lo:ts/ > los /lɔs/)

Old Spanish /s/ in loanwords > Nahuatl /ʃ/ (eg. patos /patos/ > /patoʃ/)
Nahuatl /s/ perceived as similar to Middle Spanish /s̠/ (hence aztecatl rather than astecatl)
Spanish undergoes sibilant chain shift: /s̠/ > /s̺/ ( > /θ/)
Old Spanish /ʃ/ becomes /x/

And of course it's still the case in Northern Spain, as in Basque which retains a dental-retracted-postalveolar sibilant distinction (<z> /s̻/ vs. <s> /s̺/vs. <x> /ʃ/), and in Modern Greek (the main allophone of /s/ is typically retracted).

I must say I've never heard quite of such a sibilant distinction outside of Europe, but I know more of the prevalence of another three-pronged sibilant distinction: alveolar-retroflex-palatal.

How common is the retracted sibilant simply?

[Zaarin]

It's pretty typical of the Great Basin region of North America, extending (I believe) into southern California. (Also your Nahuatl example is backwards: Nahuatl /s/ was perceived as similar to Spanish /s̪/, hence being written <z ce> rather than <s>.)

[Vijay]

IIRC it's very common cross-linguistically, and a few languages (probably most famously Basque) make a phonemic distinction between laminal and apical sibilants.

[Nortaneous]

How common is the retracted sibilant simply?

It's usually how /s/ is realized in IE languages with only one sibilant, like Icelandic and Greek. And some dialects of English contrast apical alveolar (instead of dental) /s/ with laminal postalveolar /ʃʷ/.

[Vijay]

My brother is a native speaker of Malayalam whereas I can't really say the same for myself. He always talks to our mom in Malayalam (though he doesn't always with our dad) and always has. However, he barely knows how to read and write it whereas I know how to do this about as well as he knows how to speak it. Since I've read far more in Malayalam than he has, I also know a lot of words he doesn't, and he'll be the first to admit it. Yet it surprises me sometimes just how basic these words can be.

The day before yesterday, I learned, and still haven't gotten over the fact, that he didn't know the word for 'lip' in his own language "because it's not a word that comes up in conversation." (There was also a time that he didn't know how to say 'right' or 'left', either, for the exact same reason, and he's not the only one. Perhaps he still doesn't know). It's all the more surprising to me because it came up in a completely ordinary situation. My mom was trying to get a piece of food off her mouth, but of course, she couldn't see it. She kept trying to clean it off and missing it, so I said, "Not there! On your lip!" entirely in Malayalam, and she finally got it (but he didn't!).

I'm almost positive the reason why my brother doesn't know how to say 'lip' is because my mom would always say this word in English (perhaps because lips would come up in conversation particularly in the context of lipstick, which was simply unaffordable to most Malayalee women when she was growing up. In her day, if Malayalee women felt the need to redden their lips, they would most likely chew an areca nut. Kids also often don't know how to say 'right' and 'left' in Malayalam because their parents say these words in English, too). However, it was still more surprising to me when her explanation to me was that the word for 'lip' is more often used to refer to a bird's beak. I'm convinced this is not the case. I've seen plenty of examples where it means 'lip' and relatively few where it means 'beak', and I'm pretty sure it's used to mean 'beak' precisely because this is the closest analog a bird has to lips. All this makes me start worrying a bit about the future of our language.

[Zaarin]

Does anyone happen to know what the Carthaginians called Spain? I'm familiar with the putative Punic etymology of Hispania, but I personally find it unconvincing. The Punic would be something like ʾī saponīm, which looks considerably less like Hispania than Hebrew ʾī šᵉfanīm. Jews took to calling it Sᵉfarad in the Roman period, which might have a Punic cognate of something like Sapard, but Sᵉfarad is derived from an unknown location in Obadiah--not promising for a Punic name. Google, Wikipedia, and Krahmer have all let me down on this front.

[Raphael]

A question about 21st century Chinese: I think I remember that, long ago, on the predecessor board, a native Chinese speaker explained that writing text messages on Chinese cellphones works in the way that you start to type in Pinyin, and then the phone suggests possible Chinese characters you might mean (similar to how today's Westerm smartphones suggest words you might mean). To me this sounds like, every Chinese person who can write on a cellphone knows Pinyin.

So my question is: is that actually the case?

[akam chinjir]

A question about 21st century Chinese: I think I remember that, long ago, on the predecessor board, a native Chinese speaker explained that writing text messages on Chinese cellphones works in the way that you start to type in Pinyin, and then the phone suggests possible Chinese characters you might mean (similar to how today's Westerm smartphones suggest words you might mean). To me this sounds like, every Chinese person who can write on a cellphone knows Pinyin.

So my question is: is that actually the case?

There are other options. In Taiwan, for example, many people use a different transliteration system, which in English is usually called bopomofo (link). Also you can now often use handwriting (with your finger on the screen). (Both of these options, and I'm sure any others, do result in a list of options from which you can choose the character you want.)

[Raphael]

A question about 21st century Chinese: I think I remember that, long ago, on the predecessor board, a native Chinese speaker explained that writing text messages on Chinese cellphones works in the way that you start to type in Pinyin, and then the phone suggests possible Chinese characters you might mean (similar to how today's Westerm smartphones suggest words you might mean). To me this sounds like, every Chinese person who can write on a cellphone knows Pinyin.

So my question is: is that actually the case?

There are other options. In Taiwan, for example, many people use a different transliteration system, which in English is usually called bopomofo (link). Also you can now often use handwriting (with your finger on the screen). (Both of these options, and I'm sure any others, do result in a list of options from which you can choose the character you want.)

Ah, thank you.

[Linguoboy]

To me this sounds like, every Chinese person who can write on a cellphone knows Pinyin.

So my question is: is that actually the case?

I think it is in the PRC. Children there actually learn Pinyin before they learn any characters. So if they don't know how to entre something in Pinyin on a phone, then some other input method is not going to help them.

This is probably true in Singapore as well. In Taiwan, children start with bopomofo a.k.a. Zhùyīn fúhào and--as akamchinjir says--there are other input methods designed to incorporate it.

[Raphael]

Thank you!

[akam chinjir]

I just thought to check my phone (sometimes I'm slow), and maybe it's worth mentioning that there are also a few methods based on the composition of the character (the strokes that make it up), including Cangjie, which maybe can still give me nightmares. (Which stroke-based methods I'm offered depends on whether I've chosen simplified characters, Hong Kong Chinese, or Taiwan Chinese. I'm offered pinyin input for all three; Hong Kong Chinese does not offer a Cantonese-based input method, though it has to be possible to download one.)