Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Richard W]

The closest thing I can think of to this is Vietic. In Austro-Asiatic, strong final stress caused initial syllables to weaken in various languages, and in Vietnamese they are gone almost without a trace (they may have some influence on tone,

Initials, not tone - the presence of an Old Vietnamese presyllable can condition lenition:
rắn 'snake' ~ Ruc /pəsíːɲ/
ven '(river)bank, near' < OC *tə.pˤe[n]

See Gong 2017. But this lenition is absent in some dialects.

Ferlus 2004 claims that being sesquisyllabic had an effect on the tone after tonogenesis.

[Otto Kretschmer]

How to create Proto Balto Slavic names? I am currently writing an alt hisotory TL involving Proto Balto Slavs and it would be good if I was able to create plausible PBS names.

Could they have had also simple unipartite names in addition to typical IE bipartite ones?

[Moose-tache]

The last time you asked this question, I did a little digging, to try and find some of the earliest East Baltic names. They all seem to take the two-part formula, although I didn't find any that follow the imperative + noun pattern sometimes found in Slavic. Also, I couldn't find any specific combination of elements common to medieval Baltic and Slavic names. So itt's very possible that no attested Baltic or Slavic names are reflexes of PBS names, but rather both branches inherited similar naming conventions. As for unipartite names, that's even harder to determine. We don't know if there were simple nicknames that became proper nouns over time, since we only get the names of important people, and even then only the names their descendants want us to remember. Maybe lots of people were called "Fox" or "Dandelion," and we'll just never know.

If you're making an a posteriori Balto-Slavic conlang, I would recommend using existing names as a template, but not trying to copy them or reconstruct ancestral names. Or you could, of course, if you wanted to.

[Otto Kretschmer]

When did satemization take place in IE languages?

[Otto Kretschmer]

The last time you asked this question, I did a little digging, to try and find some of the earliest East Baltic names. They all seem to take the two-part formula, although I didn't find any that follow the imperative + noun pattern sometimes found in Slavic. Also, I couldn't find any specific combination of elements common to medieval Baltic and Slavic names. So itt's very possible that no attested Baltic or Slavic names are reflexes of PBS names, but rather both branches inherited similar naming conventions. As for unipartite names, that's even harder to determine. We don't know if there were simple nicknames that became proper nouns over time, since we only get the names of important people, and even then only the names their descendants want us to remember. Maybe lots of people were called "Fox" or "Dandelion," and we'll just never know.

If you're making an a posteriori Balto-Slavic conlang, I would recommend using existing names as a template, but not trying to copy them or reconstruct ancestral names. Or you could, of course, if you wanted to.

I am writing an AH story about Balto-Slavs https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/ ... bc.517429/

and it would be nice if i could come up with names that they could have had

[Otto Kretschmer]

Was there any single phonological factor or factors that caused the divergence of Slavic from the rest of Balto Slavic dialect continuum? IMO it could not be related to accentuation because Proto Slavic kept the pitch accent of Proto Balto Slavic.

[Moose-tache]

Was there any single phonological factor or factors that caused the divergence of Slavic from the rest of Balto Slavic dialect continuum? IMO it could not be related to accentuation because Proto Slavic kept the pitch accent of Proto Balto Slavic.

What do you mean "phonological factor that caused the divergence?" Do you mean what was the first sound change that made the dialects no longer mutually-intelligible? That would require us to date the sound changes that occurred across two millennia, which is no simple task. The metathesis of liquids, raising of a to o, and second and third palatizations seem relatively later compared to the merger of s and ś or the first palatization, but even that is not certain.

[Dē Graut Bʉr]

It doesn't even make sense to talk about "the first sound change that made the dialects no longer mutually-intelligible", because mutual intelligibility exists in a continuum from full to no intelligibility, and may be different for different speakers.

[Moose-tache]

Otto, I hope this doesn't sound rude, but I have an honest suggestion. You tend to ask a lot of one-off questions about proto-Germanic or Proto-Balto-Slavic or PIE, etc., but it's not always clear what you mean or why you're asking. Your alt history project about Balts is really fun. I enjoyed what I read over on the AH forum. Maybe you could make a thread about that project in the conworlding forum, and use that thread for all the little questions that come up about Balto-Slavic historical linguistics. That would make it much easier to answer you, and it would make me feel less like I'm playing a game of whack-a-mole.

[bradrn]

Otto, I hope this doesn't sound rude, but I have an honest suggestion. You tend to ask a lot of one-off questions about proto-Germanic or Proto-Balto-Slavic or PIE, etc., but it's not always clear what you mean or why you're asking. Your alt history project about Balts is really fun. I enjoyed what I read over on the AH forum. Maybe you could make a thread about that project in the conworlding forum, and use that thread for all the little questions that come up about Balto-Slavic historical linguistics. That would make it much easier to answer you, and it would make me feel less like I'm playing a game of whack-a-mole.

We even have an Indo-European thread where they would be perfectly acceptable.

[Otto Kretschmer]

Otto, I hope this doesn't sound rude, but I have an honest suggestion. You tend to ask a lot of one-off questions about proto-Germanic or Proto-Balto-Slavic or PIE, etc., but it's not always clear what you mean or why you're asking. Your alt history project about Balts is really fun. I enjoyed what I read over on the AH forum. Maybe you could make a thread about that project in the conworlding forum, and use that thread for all the little questions that come up about Balto-Slavic historical linguistics. That would make it much easier to answer you, and it would make me feel less like I'm playing a game of whack-a-mole.

No offense taken. I do not create a thread about this conworld as it does not fit there too much. There is no conlanging stuff to discuss IMO

[keenir]

No offense taken. I do not create a thread about this conworld as it does not fit there too much. There is no conlanging stuff to discuss IMO

but there is conworlding stuff to discuss

[Otto Kretschmer]

No offense taken. I do not create a thread about this conworld as it does not fit there too much. There is no conlanging stuff to discuss IMO

but there is conworlding stuff to discuss

Would you like such a thread? My TL already has 36 chapters and new ones are added every day more or less.

It is here https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/ ... bc.517429/

[keenir]

No offense taken. I do not create a thread about this conworld as it does not fit there too much. There is no conlanging stuff to discuss IMO

but there is conworlding stuff to discuss

Would you like such a thread?

*sigh* you do realize that questions count as part of discussing, right?

My TL already has 36 chapters and new ones are added every day more or less.

ps: also, changing things in the language or protolanguage, count as conlanging.

[Man in Space]

Some languages allow bare adjectives to stand substantively. English usually doesn’t; however, it can indicate a mass or plural referent: The fallen, the brave, the blue, the vaccinated…

How did this develop in English?

[Otto Kretschmer]

Some languages allow bare adjectives to stand substantively. English usually doesn’t; however, it can indicate a mass or plural referent: The fallen, the brave, the blue, the vaccinated…

How did this develop in English?

Don't other IE languages allow bare adjectives? They exist in Polish, my uneducated hypothesis is that they also existed in English but loss of adjective declension led to ambiguity and it became necessary to say "the X one" and bare adjectives became limited to plural referents.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I suspect it has to do with the tendency in Englsih to use dummy subjects and objects — rather than a "bare" adjective, one would normally say the purple one or the happy one, a lucky one, and so on.

[Richard W]

I suspect it has to do with the tendency in Englsih to use dummy subjects and objects — rather than a "bare" adjective, one would normally say the purple one or the happy one, a lucky one, and so on.

I think this is a much more recent phenomenon. This usage of 'one' is literally a pronoun, but 'one' stands for a noun and acts like one, whereas generally a pronoun stands for a noun phrase. Indeed, I think it has become commoner during my lifetime. The phrases 'this one' and 'my one' are displacing the pronouns 'this' and 'mine' where they overlap. I looked for a date in Wiktionary, and couldn't even find this use of the word 'one'. Indeed, I don't even know the proper term for this general substitute for a previously mentioned noun. 'Do' performs a similar rôle amongst verbs.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I suspect it has to do with the tendency in Englsih to use dummy subjects and objects — rather than a "bare" adjective, one would normally say the purple one or the happy one, a lucky one, and so on.

I think this is a much more recent phenomenon. This usage of 'one' is literally a pronoun, but 'one' stands for a noun and acts like one, whereas generally a pronoun stands for a noun phrase.

Does it? I thought pronouns stood for individual nouns all the time.

Which book do you want? (antecedent, "book")
I want this one. (pronoun, which has a dummy noun "this one")

The phrases 'this one' and 'my one' are displacing the pronouns 'this' and 'mine' where they overlap.

I hadn't encountered "my one" for "mine", though I could picture a child saying it. For me, the above example requires "this one", however...

What do you want?
This.

I've always experienced "this" to imply that there is some degree of "unknown" involved (if you have a thing from a definite set of things, you use "this one", if not, you use "this"

'Do' performs a similar rôle [sic] amongst verbs.

Yes, it does, and I was pointing to this tendency to generally have dummy... words generally in English for this purpose being why English doesn't tend to like having bare adjectives standing (and phrases like "the brave", "the dispossessed", "the bookish", have a certain literary flair to them, and aren't common in general speech when describing something or somebody merely ordinary).

[zompist]

This usage of 'one' is literally a pronoun, but 'one' stands for a noun and acts like one, whereas generally a pronoun stands for a noun phrase.

Does it? I thought pronouns stood for individual nouns all the time.

No, pronouns stand for entire NPs. There are several problems with the noun theory.

1. It fails for 1st and 2nd person pronouns, as well as indefinite pronouns like everyone, something, somewhere. When used deictically, 3rd person pronouns need no antecedent either.
2. Syntactically they pattern with NPs— they take up the entire argument slot.
3. They don't act like nouns— e.g. they can't be modified(*) or have a determiner attached.
4. We cant use them narrowly to refer to just the noun within an NP:

*The French king roundly insulted the English him.

5. Semantically they refer to NPs too. E.g. in this conversation--

Susan: I like men who drive Ferraris.
Mildred: I hate them.

--what Mildred hates is not "men", it's "men who drive Ferraris".

6. Something so simple as a name gets complicated. "I'm reading Robert Heinlein. Have you read him?" Which noun is "him" supposed to refer to-- Robert or Heinlein? In the sf field "Robert" isn't enough; there's also Robert Silverberg, Robert Sawyer, and Robert Sheckley.

(*) With caveats. I've written a book on syntax, you know.

Richard's statement that one is a noun anaphor isn't quite right either. Consider:

You've read all the long Japanese novels, but at least I've read the short ones.

Here "ones" refers not to "novels" but to "Japanese novels".

Note that "ones" can be modified and have a determiner, so it's not an NP anaphor. (It's a N' anaphor, but it would take awhile to explain that...)