Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Travis B.]

Yes, but Japanese and Arabic have noun case, and that swings it. Also, I'm not sure it's completely sound to say that English doesn't have a genitive case for nouns.

I have read things that would class the English genitive on NP's as a case, even though morphologically it is a postpositional clitic and not an affix. (I cannot recall exactly where I read this though.)

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Yes, but Japanese and Arabic have noun case, and that swings it. Also, I'm not sure it's completely sound to say that English doesn't have a genitive case for nouns.

I have read things that would class the English genitive on NP's as a case, even though morphologically it is a postpositional clitic and not an affix. (I cannot recall exactly where I read this though.)

If I'm not very much mistaken, the genitive in English is simply an inherited form; the "his genitive" doesn't appear until something like the Twelfth or Thirteenth century, and is, I believe, some sort of analogical formation, or the result of the confusion of various unstressed words that now all do contract to some sort of [s~z] depending on context, and tend to be represented orthographically as 's.

[Raphael]

(I originally wanted to post this in the "What are you reading, watching and listening to?" thread in Ephemera, but then decided on this thread instead.)

I just started reading a somewhat tongue-in-cheek German book on English influences on the German language where, early in the book, the author claims that English has so many more Latin-derived words than German because of the long time the Romans ruled over what is now England.

Like, where do you even start? I'm this close to asking for my money back.

[Richard W]

If I'm not very much mistaken, the genitive in English is simply an inherited form; the "his genitive" doesn't appear until something like the Twelfth or Thirteenth century, and is, I believe, some sort of analogical formation, or the result of the confusion of various unstressed words that now all do contract to some sort of [s~z] depending on context, and tend to be represented orthographically as 's.

Whereas the entirely similar Swedish group genitive doesn't seem to appear until the 17th century.

[Travis B.]

(I originally wanted to post this in the "What are you reading, watching and listening to?" thread in Ephemera, but then decided on this thread instead.)

I just started reading a somewhat tongue-in-cheek German book on English influences on the German language where, early in the book, the author claims that English has so many more Latin-derived words than German because of the long time the Romans ruled over what is now England.

Like, where do you even start? I'm this close to asking for my money back.

Wut.

[2+3 Clusivity]

So, my Google-fu is not helping me out today. Are there any basic grammar sketches of Old Georgia and/or Proto-Kartvelian? Basically looking for declension, screeve, etc. tables.

Think there are some in Georgian and/or Russian, but I'm hoping to find something in English, German, or (maybe) French.

[Otto Kretschmer]

When was Proto Polynesian spoken?

[WeepingElf]

So, my Google-fu is not helping me out today. Are there any basic grammar sketches of Old Georgia and/or Proto-Kartvelian? Basically looking for declension, screeve, etc. tables.

Think there are some in Georgian and/or Russian, but I'm hoping to find something in English, German, or (maybe) French.

There are some books which contain ones. Kartwelsprachen by Heinz Fähnrich is in German, and contains sketches of both Proto-Kartvelian and Old Georgian. The first volume of The Indigenous Languages of the Caucasus, Volume 1 by Alice C. Harris is in English, and also contains such sketches. Both books do not agree in all points on Proto-Kartvelian, though. Also, they are probably too expensive to buy them, so better try finding a library that has them. (Myself, I checked out both by way of inter-library loan.)

[Zju]

Are there languages that have phonemic syllable boundaries? I.e. is there a language that distinguishes between /'uf.ljuf/ and /'u.fljuf/?

[WeepingElf]

So, my Google-fu is not helping me out today. Are there any basic grammar sketches of Old Georgia and/or Proto-Kartvelian? Basically looking for declension, screeve, etc. tables.

Think there are some in Georgian and/or Russian, but I'm hoping to find something in English, German, or (maybe) French.

There are some books which contain ones. Kartwelsprachen by Heinz Fähnrich is in German, and contains sketches of both Proto-Kartvelian and Old Georgian. The first volume of The Indigenous Languages of the Caucasus, Volume 1 by Alice C. Harris is in English, and also contains such sketches. Both books do not agree in all points on Proto-Kartvelian, though. Also, they are probably too expensive to buy them, so better try finding a library that has them. (Myself, I checked out both by way of inter-library loan.)

I should warn you that you will quite probably find these books disappointing, especially concerning the verbs. Verbs in Kartvelian work quite similarly as in PIE: each of the three screeve series ("present", "aorist", "perfect") uses a different stem, and there are several ways of forming these stems, involving ablaut and various pre-, in- and suffixes. These cannot easily be rolled up into paradigms; they have to be learned for each verb separately.

[2+3 Clusivity]

...

I should warn you that you will quite probably find these books disappointing, especially concerning the verbs. Verbs in Kartvelian work quite similarly as in PIE: each of the three screeve series ("present", "aorist", "perfect") uses a different stem, and there are several ways of forming these stems, involving ablaut and various pre-, in- and suffixes. These cannot easily be rolled up into paradigms; they have to be learned for each verb separately.

Sheesh, worse than that, simply not available for purchase taking a few quick looks. Yeah, I'll have to see what wordcat, etc. has for me. Thanks W.E.

[2+3 Clusivity]

Are there languages that have phonemic syllable boundaries? I.e. is there a language that distinguishes between /'uf.ljuf/ and /'u.fljuf/?

Yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affricate ... _sequences

[bradrn]

Are there languages that have phonemic syllable boundaries? I.e. is there a language that distinguishes between /'uf.ljuf/ and /'u.fljuf/?

Yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affricate ... _sequences

That’s not a syllable boundary distinction; it’s just a difference between one phoneme vs a sequence of phonemes, which may or may not cause a change in the syllable boundaries. (I like Americanist notation for this purpose, since it uses one letter per phoneme: e.g. the Wikipedia example is Klallam k'ʷə́nc vs k'ʷə́nts.)

[Darren]

Are there languages that have phonemic syllable boundaries? I.e. is there a language that distinguishes between /'uf.ljuf/ and /'u.fljuf/?

Arguably some Lakes Plains langages, e.g. Sikaritai /kód.á/ "later" vs. /kú.da/ "caterpillar", although that's heavily supported by allophony ([kód̚.á] vs. [kú.ɾa]). English may also be an example although with minimal pairs only based on morpheme boundaries, e.g. the dubious McAuley /mək.ˈɔːli/ vs. MacCauley /mə.ˈkɔːli/ (which also relies on allophony).

[Travis B.]

The key thing, though, is that morpheme boundaries and phoneme pair/affricate distinctions can be considered to constitute phonemic distinctions, whereas such is much more questionable for syllabification.

[WeepingElf]

...

I should warn you that you will quite probably find these books disappointing, especially concerning the verbs. Verbs in Kartvelian work quite similarly as in PIE: each of the three screeve series ("present", "aorist", "perfect") uses a different stem, and there are several ways of forming these stems, involving ablaut and various pre-, in- and suffixes. These cannot easily be rolled up into paradigms; they have to be learned for each verb separately.

Sheesh, worse than that, simply not available for purchase taking a few quick looks. Yeah, I'll have to see what wordcat, etc. has for me. Thanks W.E.

Well, don't bother. They'd probably (I don't have them here now, and I may misremember) leave most of your questions, especially about the formation of the verb screeves, unanswered anyway.

[Otto Kretschmer]

Is the hypothesis of Austric languages any good?

[Travis B.]

Is the hypothesis of Austric languages any good?

Well, a far more solid superfamily is Austro-Tai...

[Richard W]

Is the hypothesis of Austric languages any good?

It looks like true but not very useful. Austro-Tai is solid in so far as it claims that Tai-Kadai has a fair few words cognate with Austronesian; I'm not sure that mass borrowing has been excluded.

[Travis B.]

Is the hypothesis of Austric languages any good?

It looks like true but not very useful. Austro-Tai is solid in so far as it claims that Tai-Kadai has a fair few words cognate with Austronesian; I'm not sure that mass borrowing has been excluded.

The key thing that makes Austro-Tai solid is that much of the relevant vocabulary is core vocabulary and thus less likely to be borrowed. IIRC the main controversy with Austro-Tai is not where Austronesian and Kra-Dai are related but rather whether Kra-Dai is a sister or a daughter of Austronesian.