Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Raphael]

That link doesn’t work for me. Corrected one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzceerVqM60. (Plus, it’s funny even if you don’t speak French!)

Ares Land's original link didn't work for me, either. Serious question: how did you find the corrected link?

[bradrn]

That link doesn’t work for me. Corrected one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzceerVqM60. (Plus, it’s funny even if you don’t speak French!)

Ares Land's original link didn't work for me, either. Serious question: how did you find the corrected link?

I looked at the given URL, compared it to the first random correct YouTube URL I could find, and adjusted pieces until it worked. It would appear that the original URL included lots of extraneous query parameters, which I removed, as well as for some reason entity-encoding all the symbols necessary for those parameters to be recognised.

[Raphael]

Thank you!

[Ares Land]

Oh, yeah, I pasted that link sloppily, my bad!

[keenir]

got back from the library; I found some information in the history books...

I didn't have time to copy down the page on how idu handled disambiguation and such...next time; sorry.

but I did get these:

[...] called idu, literally "clerical writings" was used by government clerks for daily record keeping.
-page 42 of A Brief History of Korea by Mark Peterson with Phillip Margulies.

Seol Chong grew up a great scholar, standarizing the idu script, a system using sinographs to write the Korean language.
-page 51

These songs were known as hyangga, the Sila song
-page 56 of The history of Korea (Second Edition) by Djun Kil Kim / Chun-gil Kim.

[...]Chinese influence came through Lolang, a Chinese colony that existed in northwestern Korea between 108 B.C. and A.D. 313. Though they spoke to each other in their own Korean language, they wrote things down in Chinese. [...] An attempt to adapt Chinese characters to the Korean language was made during the Silla period, when the idu system was created. The idu system used certain Chinese characters possessing the range of Korean sounds to write things in Korean pronounciation [, ...] Korean words and expressions [...]
-page 68-9

Idu literature is much rarer than hansi poetry, and only twentyfive idu poems survive in the genre called hyangga, which did not have to conform to the rigid prescriptions of Chinese poetry. [...] During the Koryo period, Koreans also invented sijo, a poem-song format that used the Chinese words that had become part of the Korean language but put them in the context of Korean grammar. [...] The first sijo were probably recorded in the mixed idu writing and rewritten later in pure Korean.
-page 70 of Culture and Customs of Korea by Donald N. Clark.

[Starbeam]

Is /sŋ/ possible as an initial cluster? I’ve always wondered about cluster impossibilities

[Travis B.]

Is /sŋ/ possible as an initial cluster? I’ve always wondered about cluster impossibilities

I don't know of any specific reasons why it should be impossible, since as initial clusters go, both /sm/ and /sn/ are well-attested, as is /sk/ (and less commonly, /sx/, in the case of Dutch). However, I can't remember ever actually seeing /sŋ/ or /sɲ/ as an initial cluster anywhere.

[Richard W]

Is /sŋ/ possible as an initial cluster? I’ve always wondered about cluster impossibilities

Yes, in Khmer of course. It relatedly occurs as an impure cluster in Thai, e.g. in the personal name สงบ /săŋop˦/. (The status of that first vowel is debatable.) Khmer also has syllable-initial /sɲ/.

[Travis B.]

Is /sŋ/ possible as an initial cluster? I’ve always wondered about cluster impossibilities

Yes, in Khmer of course. It relatedly occurs as an impure cluster in Thai, e.g. in the personal name สงบ /săŋop˦/. (The status of that first vowel is debatable.) Khmer also has syllable-initial /sɲ/.

Isn't Khmer known for its insane initial clusters descended from sesquisyllables?

[Raphael]

I've noticed that, when I write on a keyboard, it's relatively rare for me to make typos that result in words that don't exist (though it happens), but at least somewhat more common to make typos that result in "proper" words, but not the words I want to type. Seems like some part of my brain places a higher priority on making my computer's spellcheck happy than on writing what I actually want to write.

[Travis B.]

I've noticed that, when I write on a keyboard, it's relatively rare for me to make typos that result in words that don't exist (though it happens), but at least somewhat more common to make typos that result in "proper" words, but not the words I want to type. Seems like some part of my brain places a higher priority on making my computer's spellcheck happy than on writing what I actually want to write.

Most of my typos are actually correctly-spelled English words, albeit not English words that I want to type, or simply English words that are missing (or occasionally repeated only). I suspect it has something with my brain-keyboard interface malfunctioning slightly than me actually hitting the wrong keys.

[Linguoboy]

I've noticed that, when I write on a keyboard, it's relatively rare for me to make typos that result in words that don't exist (though it happens), but at least somewhat more common to make typos that result in "proper" words, but not the words I want to type. Seems like some part of my brain places a higher priority on making my computer's spellcheck happy than on writing what I actually want to write.

I've sometimes heard those kinds of typing mistakes called "thinkos", with "typo" reserved for mistakes resulting purely from hitting the wrong keys. (Appropriately, I originally typed that sentence with "reserbed from", thereby featuring a typo stricto sensu followed by a thinko.)

For some reason, one of my most common is substituting d for s when typing present tense finite forms. I'm not quite sure how to classify this according to this scheme since, after all, those keys are adjoining.

[Linguoboy]

So I was curious about the origin of the intrusive l in the gentilics Congolese and Togolese given that English doesn't generally seem to have a problem with this sort of hiatus. I think it's etymological, due to these words being borrowings of the French forms congolais and togolais. (The existence of French chicagolais kind of clinches it for me.)

Now does anyone have ideas about the intrusive n in Shanghainese?

[Travis B.]

Now does anyone have ideas about the intrusive n in Shanghainese?

This Language Log post covers this exact topic.

[Zju]

How frequent are languages that have just /t͡ɬ/ as opposed to:
1. Both /t͡ɬ/ and /ɬ/?
2. Just /ɬ/?

[malloc]

How frequent are languages that have just /t͡ɬ/ as opposed to:
1. Both /t͡ɬ/ and /ɬ/?
2. Just /ɬ/?

Nahuatl has just /t͡ɬ/ without /ɬ/ although Wikipedia says that /l/ devoices syllable-finally so /ɬ/ might have occurred as an allophone.

[Zju]

I suspected as much from Nahuatl, but is it rather the rule or the exception?

[anteallach]

How frequent are languages that have just /t͡ɬ/ as opposed to:
1. Both /t͡ɬ/ and /ɬ/?
2. Just /ɬ/?

An UPSID search finds 17 languages (out of the UPSID sample, of course) with voiceless lateral affricates and 50 with voiceless lateral fricatives. The only languages in the 17 which aren't also among the 50 are Nahuatl and Wintu. For the latter, Wikipedia says "The lateral /tɬ/ is usually a fricative [ɬ] but occasionally an affricate among McCloud speakers while Trinity speakers have only the affricate. It is interdental after non-low front vowels /i, e/, post-dental after low /a/, and retroflex after non-low back /u, o/."

[Zju]

Ah, so it is a overall rarity then. I guess I'll have to find a source of ɬ if I want tl > t͡ɬ,

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Ah, so it is a overall rarity then. I guess I'll have to find a source of ɬ if I want tl > t͡ɬ,

I shouldn't think you'd necessarily have to.

Some forms of Early Modern English had /kl/ realised as [t͡ɬ]; Spanish also has /tʃ/, but not /ʃ/ (at least not in native words, though I believe earlier stages of the languages did).

In more hypothetical matters, it's also posited that Old Japanese */s/ might've been any of *[ts tʃ ʃ s], or possibly all of them in free variation (my personal guess is probably that it was an at least somewhat apical [s̺~ʃ] with an allophone *[ɕ] before */i₁ e₁/ (probably *[(j)i je]; many */e₁/ seem to result from the coalescence of a diphthong */ia/ in Proto-Japonic (at least across word boundaries). The arrangement of Kana is usually in accordance with the ordering of an Indic script (I can't remember the name right away), which had "ts" and other palatal-like sequences after the k-series, but the s-series somewhere near the end, which may or may not indicate that /s/ was at least sometimes [ts]- or [tʃ]-like. Middle Chinese */tsi/ is also often borrowed into Japanese as /si/ rather than /ti/ (though I don't believe it's known when they came to be realised as [ɕi cɕ(ʰ)i]).

The point being it's certainly possible for a language to have a certain affricate without the corresponding fricative, or the two to be in free variation.