Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Raholeun]

There is a Polish folk music album called Heralds of Fight. That phrase does not seem grammatical English to my non-native ears, but I cannot really say why. Perhaps because "fight" would be primarily interpreted as a verb? Heralds of War or Heralds of Peace would sound much more acceptable.

[zompist]

There is a Polish folk music album called Heralds of Fight. That phrase does not seem grammatical English to my non-native ears, but I cannot really say why. Perhaps because "fight" would be primarily interpreted as a verb? Heralds of War or Heralds of Peace would sound much more acceptable.

It sounds wrong to me too. Fight is absolutely a noun, but it almost always means a single instance of combat-- a fight. Or if it refers to an ongoing struggle, that's the fight. As a mass noun, you have to say fighting.

There's no particular reason for this-- battle can be used either way, and Heralds of Battle would work fine.

[bradrn]

There is a Polish folk music album called Heralds of Fight. That phrase does not seem grammatical English to my non-native ears, but I cannot really say why. Perhaps because "fight" would be primarily interpreted as a verb? Heralds of War or Heralds of Peace would sound much more acceptable.

It sounds wrong to me too. Fight is absolutely a noun, but it almost always means a single instance of combat-- a fight. Or if it refers to an ongoing struggle, that's the fight. As a mass noun, you have to say fighting.

Counterexample: Fight is a poor means of solving problems. (Admittedly I prefer the sentence starting with fighting, but both are fine to me.) And I agree that that album title sounds wrong.

[zompist]

Counterexample: Fight is a poor means of solving problems. (Admittedly I prefer the sentence starting with fighting, but both are fine to me.) And I agree that that album title sounds wrong.

Wouldn't work for me.

I was having trouble thinking of other nouns, with only an alternate -ing form, which also can't be used as mass nouns. I just thought of one: steal. ("A steal" is mostly used in the sense of "a bargain". Hey, that's another one: *Masters of bargain.)

[Moose-tache]

"This old dog's still got some fight in him."
Obviously "heralds of fight" is grammatical if you accept that they're using fight in this way, but this is highly colloquial.

[Vijay]

Where do the Torricelli Mountains get their name from? Evangelista Torricelli? Does their name have something to do with atmospheric pressure?

[bradrn]

Quick question: are there any nominative-accusative languages (specifically, non-marked-nominative ones) in which the sole argument of at least some intransitive verbs can be placed in the accusative case?

EDIT: Actually, just discovered this is the case for some Icelandic verbs (Donohue 2008), e.g.:

Mig_ACC velgir við setningafrœði.
I am nauseated by syntax.

Though more examples would still be appreciated!

[Travis B.]

Quick question: are there any nominative-accusative languages (specifically, non-marked-nominative ones) in which the sole argument of at least some intransitive verbs can be placed in the accusative case?

EDIT: Actually, just discovered this is the case for some Icelandic verbs (Donohue 2008), e.g.:

Mig_ACC velgir við setningafrœði.
I am nauseated by syntax.

Though more examples would still be appreciated!

Note, however, that Icelandic is marked-nominative.

[bradrn]

Quick question: are there any nominative-accusative languages (specifically, non-marked-nominative ones) in which the sole argument of at least some intransitive verbs can be placed in the accusative case?

EDIT: Actually, just discovered this is the case for some Icelandic verbs (Donohue 2008), e.g.:

Mig_ACC velgir við setningafrœði.
I am nauseated by syntax.

Though more examples would still be appreciated!

Note, however, that Icelandic is marked-nominative.

It is? Are you sure?

[Travis B.]

Quick question: are there any nominative-accusative languages (specifically, non-marked-nominative ones) in which the sole argument of at least some intransitive verbs can be placed in the accusative case?

EDIT: Actually, just discovered this is the case for some Icelandic verbs (Donohue 2008), e.g.:

Mig_ACC velgir við setningafrœði.
I am nauseated by syntax.

Though more examples would still be appreciated!

Note, however, that Icelandic is marked-nominative.

It is? Are you sure?

Note the masculine -ur (ON -r) nominative marker.

[Vijay]

That's not what marked nominative means. Marked nominative alignment means only the nominative is marked and the citation form is the unmarked accusative case form. This is very rare.

[Travis B.]

That's not what marked nominative means. Marked nominative alignment means only the nominative is marked and the citation form is the unmarked accusative case form. This is very rare.

I just did a bit of reading, and I can find sources that state that both Old Norse and Gothic had a marked nominative, and that the use of the nominative as the citation form is more a matter of Indo-Europeanist tradition than anything else.

[Vijay]

That's not what marked nominative means. Marked nominative alignment means only the nominative is marked and the citation form is the unmarked accusative case form. This is very rare.

I just did a bit of reading, and I can find sources that state that both Old Norse and Gothic had a marked nominative, and that the use of the nominative as the citation form is more a matter of Indo-Europeanist tradition than anything else.

Key word: only.

[bradrn]

I mean, it’s not like it’s impossible or anything: English at least is genuinely marked-nominative, at least in the pronouns. (The core cases aren’t overtly marked, but me and other accusatives are clearly the citation form and less marked than I etc.) I just wasn’t aware that extended to other Germanic languages.

[KathTheDragon]

I mean, it’s not like it’s impossible or anything: English at least is genuinely marked-nominative, at least in the pronouns. (The core cases aren’t overtly marked, but me and other accusatives are clearly the citation form and less marked than I etc.) I just wasn’t aware that extended to other Germanic languages.

This analysis feels wrong to me. "I" vs "me"/"my" and "she" vs "her"/"her" are suppletive, and "he"/"him"/"his" and "who"/"whom"/"whose" actually have an unmarked nominative. In both cases, we don't have a marked nominative vs an unmarked accusative. Note that marked nominative is defined in terms of morphological markedness, i.e. the presence or absence of overt morphemes, not the very nebulous sense of "marked" you're using.

[bradrn]

I mean, it’s not like it’s impossible or anything: English at least is genuinely marked-nominative, at least in the pronouns. (The core cases aren’t overtly marked, but me and other accusatives are clearly the citation form and less marked than I etc.) I just wasn’t aware that extended to other Germanic languages.

This analysis feels wrong to me. "I" vs "me"/"my" and "she" vs "her"/"her" are suppletive, and "he"/"him"/"his" and "who"/"whom"/"whose" actually have an unmarked nominative. In both cases, we don't have a marked nominative vs an unmarked accusative. Note that marked nominative is defined in terms of morphological markedness, i.e. the presence or absence of overt morphemes, not the very nebulous sense of "marked" you're using.

Well, the term is defined somewhat ambiguously, but there seems to be a rough consensus that a system can be marked nominative even if nominative is not formally marked, as long as it is marked functionally. And English does show several features consistent with marked-nominativity: the citation form is the accusative, the copula takes one nominative and one accusative argument, the accusative can be used in S and A whereas the nominative cannot be used in O, etc.

[zompist]

Well, the term is defined somewhat ambiguously, but there seems to be a rough consensus that a system can be marked nominative even if nominative is not formally marked, as long as it is marked functionally. And English does show several features consistent with marked-nominativity: the citation form is the accusative, the copula takes one nominative and one accusative argument, the accusative can be used in S and A whereas the nominative cannot be used in O, etc.

Are you using "citation form" in some sense other than "what grammarians choose to put in the lexicon"? Unless you have a different defintion, the citation form isn't a fact about the language.

[bradrn]

Well, the term is defined somewhat ambiguously, but there seems to be a rough consensus that a system can be marked nominative even if nominative is not formally marked, as long as it is marked functionally. And English does show several features consistent with marked-nominativity: the citation form is the accusative, the copula takes one nominative and one accusative argument, the accusative can be used in S and A whereas the nominative cannot be used in O, etc.

Are you using "citation form" in some sense other than "what grammarians choose to put in the lexicon"? Unless you have a different defintion, the citation form isn't a fact about the language.

As far as I’m aware, “citation form” has always meant “how native speakers refer to a word in isolation”. In most accusative languages, the citation form is in the nominative; in most ergative languages, citation form is the absolutive. In marked-S languages, the citation form will be accusative or ergative.

(It’s not just case either. Wrt number, citation form is usually singular, though I can’t rule out the existence of some weird Papuan language in which it’s dual instead. In languages with noun classifiers, a noun in citation form usually has a classifier attached. And verbs often have some extra material attached — in English, it’s the infinitive.)

[zompist]

Are you using "citation form" in some sense other than "what grammarians choose to put in the lexicon"? Unless you have a different defintion, the citation form isn't a fact about the language.

As far as I’m aware, “citation form” has always meant “how native speakers refer to a word in isolation”. In most accusative languages, the citation form is in the nominative; in most ergative languages, citation form is the absolutive. In marked-S languages, the citation form will be accusative or ergative.

I've never heard of it as part of speaker knowledge. Wikipedia has this (boldface is mine):

In morphology and lexicography, a lemma (plural lemmas or lemmata) is the canonical form,[1] dictionary form, or citation form of a set of words (headword).[2] In English, for example, break, breaks, broke, broken and breaking are forms of the same lexeme, with break as the lemma by which they are indexed. Lexeme, in this context, refers to the set of all the forms that have the same meaning, and lemma refers to the particular form that is chosen by convention to represent the lexeme. Lemmas have special significance in highly inflected languages such as Arabic, Turkish and Russian. The process of determining the lemma for a given word is called lemmatisation. The lemma can be viewed as the chief of the principal parts, although lemmatisation is at least partly arbitrary.

But even if you can find someone who uses it your way, I'd be greatly skeptical that there is a uniform way that native speakers cite a word. Saying a word "in isolation" is not a natural process; it's a form of grammatical analysis, highly influenced by whatever grammatical tradition exists. Maybe speakers can invent such a process ad hoc when quizzed by a linguist, but I'd like to see some justification for the idea that they'll all do it the same way.

Googling the term, I can't find a good general discussion, but I did find a paper that discusses the concept, why lexicons may differ, and why native speakers may differ. E.g. Henderson says (p. 81):

When there is no earlier tradition of dictionaries to follow in a language,
the citation form is selected by lexicographers on the basis of factors
such as whether speakers have a sense that one inflectional form is basic
in each lexeme, or even on the basis of common translation practices in
the community. It may also take into account the target audience and
the ways they are expected to use the dictionary. Sometimes a citation
form is chosen because the form itself indicates important grammatical
information about the lexeme.

On native speakers' differing practices:

Present tense seems to be a natural citation form for most verbs for Aranda speakers
today. It is the form that is typically given in responses to researchers’ and
learners’ questions such as ‘How do you say eat?’ or ‘What’s the word
for fall?’ However, the Aranda Present is not the only possible answer to
such questions: occasionally older speakers especially may give the Aranda
Imperative (order) form, presumably because they interpret the English
base form as a request for a translation of the English Imperative, for
example ‘eat!’.

[Richard W]

(It’s not just case either. Wrt number, citation form is usually singular, though I can’t rule out the existence of some weird Papuan language in which it’s dual instead. In languages with noun classifiers, a noun in citation form usually has a classifier attached. And verbs often have some extra material attached — in English, it’s the infinitive.)

What would a Welsh speaker say was the ordinary word for Mus musculus? My money's on llygod, though Wikipedia doesn't give me a warm feeling. English Wiktionary agrees with me and Welsh Wiktionary disagrees with me.