Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Moose-tache]

I like this one: "Any phonological word that is not an argument and effects a non-semantic change on one or more verbs, which either is itself a lexical verb or retains some syntactic or morphological signs of being a verb." This includes English "will," "have," and "should," but excludes English "huh?," "soon," and "actually."

[Travis B.]

I like this one: "Any phonological word that is not an argument and effects a non-semantic change on one or more verbs, which either is itself a lexical verb or retains some syntactic or morphological signs of being a verb." This includes English "will," "have," and "should," but excludes English "huh?," "soon," and "actually."

I would go with that definition myself.

[bradrn]

Papua Indonesian stacks at least two auxilliaries:

Sa mo dapat pukul.
I FUT PASS beat
I will get beaten up.

Maybe you can do more than that, idk. mo also means want and dapat also means get.

But isn’t Papua Indonesia a creole? At any rate, I’ve heard that at least Standard Indonesian is very heavily influenced by IE (especially Germanic) languages, but I’m not sure to what extent that’s true for Papua Indonesian.

Just out of curiousity: which languages don't allow any stacking here?

So far I’ve looked at Mandarin, Cantonese, Tamang, Udihe, Khakas and Imonda; none of them allow auxiliary stacking. On the other hand, Hkongso apparently does — or at least, it has stacking of things which the grammar calls ‘auxiliaries’, but I have my suspicions as to the terminology here, especially given that it refers to a ‘subject agreement auxiliary’.

It depends on what exactly your definition of 'auxiliary' is - is there a single, language independant one?

Almost certainly not, but I’d go with something like Moose-tache’s.

[Creyeditor]

Papua Indonesian stacks at least two auxilliaries:

Sa mo dapat pukul.
I FUT PASS beat
I will get beaten up.

Maybe you can do more than that, idk. mo also means want and dapat also means get.

But isn’t Papua Indonesia a creole? At any rate, I’ve heard that at least Standard Indonesian is very heavily influenced by IE (especially Germanic) languages, but I’m not sure to what extent that’s true for Papua Indonesian.

It is descended from a pidgin, that is true. I wouldn't say that the Portuguese and Dutch influence is very noticeable in the grammar though. I am pretty sure that Mee (aka Ekari, Ekagi), as an important substrate language, also allows this kind of stacking but I would need to look at some examples to be sure.

[bradrn]

I am pretty sure that Mee (aka Ekari, Ekagi), as an important substrate language, also allows this kind of stacking but I would need to look at some examples to be sure.

Looking through Doble’s description (1987), it appears that it does not allow stacking auxiliaries — or, indeed, any sequence of more than two verbs at all. (p103 has what might be a partial exception, mainai goo-motii, but goo-motii is glossed as a single verb.)

[Creyeditor]

I recall that Mee has a do-support-like construction with tai which can be combined with other verbs. Of course you could debate the status as an auxillary, but I will probably find time to look at some examples tomorrow.

[Creyeditor]

The Mee examples are much less clear than what I remembered. Page 64 for example shows a complex verbal construction (with strange glossing). It's not really clear if it involves auxiliary stacking.

woo kei tai epi
continue make do know

Auxiliary verbs are described in section 8.1.2 starting on p. 78, but it does not mention the presence or absence of stacking.

Meanwhile, I found a paper on aux-stacking in Tsonga here. The orthography (with a lot of spaces) is a bit confusing but stacking is shown in section 5 starting on p. 130.

[Otto Kretschmer]

A question about writing systems

Could isolating Niger Congo languages be written using Chinese characters without any additional system?

[bradrn]

Meanwhile, I found a paper on aux-stacking in Tsonga here. The orthography (with a lot of spaces) is a bit confusing but stacking is shown in section 5 starting on p. 130.

Ah, thanks! This is more like what I was looking for — didn’t think to try Bantu.

(The orthography looks like a disjunctive one, where spaces mark morpheme boundaries. They’re pretty common in this part of Bantu.)

Could isolating Niger Congo languages be written using Chinese characters without any additional system?

Yes, of course they could. Practically any language can be written in any script. It won’t necessarily be a good fit though.

In terms of real world antecedents, Chinese characters have been extended to non–Sino-Tibetan isolating languages Vietnamese (Chữ Nôm) and Zhuang (Sawndip), so such things are certainly attested.

[Otto Kretschmer]

Das internal reconstruction of Japonic go any further than Proto Japonic? Any attempts at Pre Proto Japonic?

[Zju]

About a year ago somebody here posted a link to an interesting paper about a possible link between Japonic and Korean, with about a dozen sound correspondances and a few dozen lexical ones, but I can't recall it on top of my head.

[hwhatting]

At any rate, I’ve heard that at least Standard Indonesian is very heavily influenced by IE (especially Germanic) languages, but I’m not sure to what extent that’s true for Papua Indonesian.

Do you have a source for that? I'm now doing advanced lessons of Bahasa Indonesia, and while there are lots of Dutch loans (often corresponding to English lo loanwords in Malaysian), the syntax and verbal morphology look totally un-Germanic (and un-SAE) to me.

[Otto Kretschmer]

About a year ago somebody here posted a link to an interesting paper about a possible link between Japonic and Korean, with about a dozen sound correspondances and a few dozen lexical ones, but I can't recall it on top of my head.

This Japanese YT channel has reconstructions for Pre Old Japanese https://youtu.be/yMQwt3q-PVQ

[Creyeditor]

At any rate, I’ve heard that at least Standard Indonesian is very heavily influenced by IE (especially Germanic) languages, but I’m not sure to what extent that’s true for Papua Indonesian.

Do you have a source for that? I'm now doing advanced lessons of Bahasa Indonesia, and while there are lots of Dutch loans (often corresponding to English lo loanwords in Malaysian), the syntax and verbal morphology look totally un-Germanic (and un-SAE) to me.

From my experience, one big thing in Standard Indonesian that is not found in any colloquial Indonesian variety is the strict word order SVO(X). That looks like European influence to me. There is a chapter by David Gil et al. on this somewhere but I can't seem to find it now.

You will probably find more literature on evidence for European influence in Indonesian varieties descended from Bazar Malay. The English Wikipedia article on Malay trade and creole languages is readable if you know some Indonesian. It doesn't explicitly mark the European influence but still I found it somewhat convincing.

[hwhatting]

Fair enough - compared to SAE, Bahasa Indonesia looks foreign, but you may be right that compared to other local languages it looks positively European.

[Otto Kretschmer]

Fair enough - compared to SAE, Bahasa Indonesia looks foreign, but you may be right that compared to other local languages it looks positively European.

What European features does it have that Classical Malay did not? I am not aware of any language in Africa or India picking up European features other than vocabulary

[bradrn]

At any rate, I’ve heard that at least Standard Indonesian is very heavily influenced by IE (especially Germanic) languages, but I’m not sure to what extent that’s true for Papua Indonesian.

Do you have a source for that? I'm now doing advanced lessons of Bahasa Indonesia, and while there are lots of Dutch loans (often corresponding to English lo loanwords in Malaysian), the syntax and verbal morphology look totally un-Germanic (and un-SAE) to me.

As mentioned by Creyeditor it was a comment of David Gil’s, in his (excellent) chapter Escaping Eurocentrism: fieldwork as a process of unlearning. Alas, my saved link seems to be dead and unarchived, so you’ll have to try find it yourself.

[Richard W]

What European features does it have that Classical Malay did not? I am not aware of any language in Africa or India picking up European features other than vocabulary

How about Swahili's lack of tones?

Of course, Indonesian is in SE Asia. In SE Asia, Thai has the 'English passive' and nowadays commonly exhibits fricative codas.

[Moose-tache]

And Medieval Korean lost vowel harmony! Man, those Europeans really got around.

[keenir]

And Medieval Korean lost vowel harmony! Man, those Europeans really got around.

I blame that Venetian brat.