Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Travis B.]

My daughter frequently pronounces intervocalic /ð/ as [d]~[ɾ], e.g. words like other, another, and together, and I am wondering whether this is a new innovation, considering I do not recall anyone my age having this pronunciation (for me, intervocalic /ð/ is consistently [ð]).

[Znex]

It's definitely a thing in some dialects though I couldn't say which; eye dialect spellings like anudder don't seem very foreign to me, though I'd never use a flap for those words myself.

[Pabappa]

Wikipedia says Ivan Pnin's name was appreviated from Repnin in accordance with Russian illegitimacy custom.

http://enwp.org/Ivan_Pnin

Does anyone know more info about this ? Have many more famous people come from families where surnames like this are fixed and get passed down? Or do they all take new surnames after the next generation/?

[Travis B.]

One thing I see in people's transcriptions is representing rhotics after vowels like more [mɔːɚ], which to me indicates either a rhotic diphthong or a vowel followed by a separate rhotic vowel in a subsequent syllable. What makes me wonder is do you actually lack a distinction between vowels followed by rhotics (e.g. monosyllables) and vowels followed by rhotic vowels/syllabic rhotics (e.g. disyllables), or do you just not represent this distinction. I personally have such a distinction, as shown by hire [hə(ː)e̯ʁ] - a monosyllable in fluid speech - versus higher [ˈhaːe̯jʁ̩(ː)] - always a disyllable.

[Nortaneous]

My impression is that GenAm has the merger. I'd probably still have it after three beers, but maybe not after a very large quantity of whiskey.

[Travis B.]

Probably a better example (because there is no difference in vowel quality) for this is whether one has what I'd call the flour-flower merger. E.g. I merge them in careful speech, as [ˈfʟ̞ɑːɔ̯wʁ̩(ː)]~[ˈfɰɑːɔ̯wʁ̩(ː)], but in fluid speech they are distinct as [ˈfʟ̞ɑ(ː)ɔ̯ʁ]~[ˈfɰɑ(ː)ɔ̯ʁ] and [ˈfʟ̞ɑːɔ̯wʁ̩(ː)]~[ˈfɰɑːɔ̯wʁ̩(ː)] respectively.

[Pabappa]

Which is interesting because etymologically they're the same word even in English. Spelling pronunciation can be subtle. I have them the same, but i think if someone said the word in isolation i would be able to guess which one they meant from intonation. As is the case with wood/would.

[Travis B.]

Which is interesting because etymologically they're the same word even in English. Spelling pronunciation can be subtle. I have them the same, but i think if someone said the word in isolation i would be able to guess which one they meant from intonation. As is the case with wood/would.

I just looked that up and it's true. It seems the monosyllabic pronunciation is the older one, and the disyllabic one is the innovation. But yes, spelling pronunciation has definitely reinforced the two separate pronunciations.

[Travis B.]

As for wood and would for me that is another case of two words which are homophonous in careful speech but not in everyday speech - wood here is consistently [wʊːt]~[wʊːd] while would is frequently [wʊː] and sporadically [wɨːt]~[wɨːd] in everyday speech.

[Ryusenshi]

What do you think of the following sentences?
He likes really football.
You want to upload quickly the files.

[Travis B.]

What do you think of the following sentences?
He likes really football.
You want to upload quickly the files.

They for some reason are not really grammatical for me.

The first for me should be He really likes football. The second for me should be You want to quickly upload the files or You want to upload the files quickly.

[alynnidalar]

They are both ungrammatical for me, although I can see the second as something produced by a native English speaker mistakenly/rethinking their sentence as they went.

[Pabappa]

I agree exactly with alynnidalar ... if i caught myself saying the 1st sentence, I'd just start over, but the 2nd is at least intelligible.

[Ryusenshi]

Yeah, that's what I thought. English doesn't like putting adverbs between a verb and a direct object.

The problem is that non-native speakers are never taught that. And this can easily be a problem, because in some other languages it's a perfectly normal place to put an adverb. So I keep hearing sentences like the two above, and cringing because I'm the only one to notice that they're wrong.

Of course it cuts both ways. English allows adverbs between a subject pronoun and a verb (as in he really likes football), but other languages don't. Native English speakers trying to speak French end up saying sentences like *Il vraiment aime le football... which are completely ungrammatical.

This week in "Ryusenshi grouches about non-native English speakers": here's a sentence I heard a few weeks ago.
I am engineer in Renault since five years.
The grammar-mistake-per-word ratio is pretty impressive.

[akam chinjir]

I'd expect to hear those from someone whose first language is French. (Can't be the only language with that order, of course.)

Update: should've refreshed before posting, I guess.

I'm actually quite frustrated by what I've been able to find on adverbs and word order, cross-linguistically. This must be my own incompetence, I haven't even found a clear overview of Cinque's hierarchy---not the arguments, I mean just the claimed hierarchy.

[alynnidalar]

The problem is that non-native speakers are never taught that. And this can easily be a problem, because in some other languages it's a perfectly normal place to put an adverb. So I keep hearing sentences like the two above, and cringing because I'm the only one to notice that they're wrong.

I actually thought about mentioning that! The second sentence in particular sounds very much like something an ESL speaker would say.

[Salmoneus]

Yeah, that's what I thought. English doesn't like putting adverbs between a verb and a direct object.

Ah, but it's not so simple as that!

Note that I think we all agree that your two sentences are different sorts of wrong: the second is a "huh... that's not right!" mistake that might be expected from non-native speakers or from people who just didn't line up their sentence properly in advance; but the first is a burn-it-with-fire clear error.

And we can extend the continuum, because sometimes puttting an adverb between a verb and a direct object is perfectly OK. Sometimes it's even preferred to the alternatives. Consider:
This incident shows very clearly the extent of patriarchal oppression
The drawings on page five depict clearly the five different models of venting module
Let me explain precisely what went wrong
I think you've captured perfectly the spirit of your subject
He imitated skillfully the mannerisms of the headmaster
He recited dutifully the morning prayers
It is probably a mixture of things
I think that your answer addresses partially my complaint, but mostly John's
This category includes peripherally the asymmetric cases


It also happens more widely in archaising or poetic text: "He swung boldly the flaming sword".

I think it's probably a mixture of things including the semantics of the adverb, the semantics of the verb, the closeness of association of adverb and verb, the length of the various elements, the expected register and so forth.

But yeah, it's weird and probably annoying for learners that the superficially same construction yields variously completely unallowable sentences and perfectly cromulent ones, as well as a range in between.

This week in "Ryusenshi grouches about non-native English speakers": here's a sentence I heard a few weeks ago.
I am engineer in Renault since five years.
The grammar-mistake-per-word ratio is pretty impressive

But the French non-native speaker clichés per word ratio is similarly impressive...

[zompist]

Oh sure, post a syntactic puzzle just when I've ordered the final proof of my syntax book.

FWIW the heaviness of the following object definitely influences acceptability:

*This photo shows very clearly John.
*Let me explain precisely linguistics.

A few of Sal's sentences wouldn't quite work for me— the skillfully, dutifully, partially, and peripherally ones.

[akam chinjir]

With a couple of those ("precisely," "partially... mostly") the adverb could be part of the object, not a separate constituent.

[malloc]

What exactly is the difference between clausal subordination and coördination? What makes conjunctions like "yet" and "for" coördinating and those like "because" and "although" subordinating?