Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Zju]

I know I jest, but if future English has eɪ → i, it could as well happen that it spells /a i/ as <i a>.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

That is an oddly plausible scenario.

[anteallach]

Maybe it's not Travis, but I remember there's someone who enters every one of those "how do you pronounce..." threads with some nonsensical formula for a pharyngeal implosive or a sound that can only be made underwater. I just assume they're lying.

If you're alluding to my rhotic, there's nothing particularly strange about a pharngealized uvular approximant. It may not be typical for English, but it is what I have, and from listening to people here it isn't very unusual for here. I've only relatively recently taught myself to produce pure non-lateral alveolar and postalveolar approximants without at least some dorsal coarticulation, and they still don't always come out right (I find it hard to not make them at least a bit lateral).

I think it's just a bunched r, which is consistent with your claim that it's not unusual where you are and, while descriptions of bunched r are often pretty unclear, if it is then you're the only person I've ever seen who describes it as uvular. Dorsal, yes, but not uvular, and clearly something quite different from a French-style uvular approximant.

[Travis B.]

I think it's just a bunched r, which is consistent with your claim that it's not unusual where you are and, while descriptions of bunched r are often pretty unclear, if it is then you're the only person I've ever seen who describes it as uvular. Dorsal, yes, but not uvular, and clearly something quite different from a French-style uvular approximant.

Nah - from reading into it further, "bunched /r/"s are supposed to be palatal, and this is certainly not palatal - except when it directly follows a coronal, where then it does have postalveolar coarticulation and is otherwise fronted somewhat, it is further back than my /k/. Note that it is not the same as the French uvular /r/ because that has a tendency to fricate and devoice, whereas what I have is almost a semivowel (particularly when syllabic, where there it is almost like [ɑ] but further back) and never devices, and what the dialect here has has significant pharyngealization (in fact, I have noticed that my mother and I sporadically have what is an almost purely pharyngeal allophone in certain environments, particularly word-finally after /ɑ ɔ/).

[foxcatdog]

According to palmer "going to" is a better canidate for the english future than "will".

[Raphael]

According to palmer "going to" is a better canidate for the english future than "will".

Why, does he have the better policies? Attack ads? Ge-out-the-vote operation?

[Travis B.]

According to palmer "going to" is a better canidate for the english future than "will".

Who is Palmer, and why does he have a special say in the matter? (In the English I am used to - and I don't mean my own dialect per se - going to is a prospective, not a future.)

[bradrn]

According to palmer "going to" is a better canidate for the english future than "will".

Who is Palmer, and why does he have a special say in the matter? (In the English I am used to - and I don't mean my own dialect per se - going to is a prospective, not a future.)

Presumably Frank R. Palmer, the author of Mood and Modality (which I linked foxcatdog to a while ago).

According to palmer "going to" is a better canidate for the english future than "will".

They’re different categories, though. I’ve seen ‘going to’ labeled a ‘prospective’, since it expresses relative tense, not absolute tense, and doesn’t even assert that the event will take place — consider ‘I was going to have a muffin, but I changed my mind’.

[Travis B.]

They’re different categories, though. I’ve seen ‘going to’ labeled a ‘prospective’, since it expresses relative tense, not absolute tense, and doesn’t even assert that the event will take place — consider ‘I was going to have a muffin, but I changed my mind’.

Precisely - it is akin to the English "perfect", which is a retrospective.

[bradrn]

They’re different categories, though. I’ve seen ‘going to’ labeled a ‘prospective’, since it expresses relative tense, not absolute tense, and doesn’t even assert that the event will take place — consider ‘I was going to have a muffin, but I changed my mind’.

Precisely - it is akin to the English "perfect", which is a retrospective.

Ah, didn’t notice you already mentioned the prospective.

[Raphael]

I just discovered this entry (after coming across the word elsewhere). I just love the etymological and semantic development.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/jamoke

[Linguoboy]

I just discovered this entry (after coming across the word elsewhere). I just love the etymological and semantic development.

I was previously unfamiliar with the "coffee" sense. I'm not convinced that's actual a semantic development, since "moke" already existed with a similar sense and "jamoke" could have developed from it by extension.

[bradrn]

In one of my less developed conlangs, consonant-final nouns require a lexically determined vowel before a case suffix. At the time I called this a ‘thematic vowel’, but now, having read a little more about PIE, I realise that term isn’t quite correct — PIE thematic vowels aren’t lexically determined, but regular given the form of the root. Are these kinds of vowels attested in natlangs, and if so, what do people usually call them, and how do they get analysed?

[Ares Land]

Latin and Romance! It's called a thematic or theme vowel. Of course, they are PIE thematic vowels but they are also lexically determined.

To the extent that they're called anything at all. I think it's used in Latin, but in French for instance we just talk about conjugation classes.

[WeepingElf]

I think the word you are looking for is epenthetic vowel. A thematic vowel is a stem-final vowel that occurs throughout the paradigm (sometimes modulo ablaut), though the term has a narrower use in PIE linguistics (i- and u-stems are considered athematic, like consonant stems).

[bradrn]

Except it isn’t a thematic or epenthetic vowel in the usual sense, because those are regularly determined by the paradigm in question, whereas what I’m talking about is irregular and lexically specified by the root. (e.g. from that post, koist, koist-ɩ-zh, koist-ɩ-m vs hõkʼâdh, hõkʼâdh-ae-z, hõkʼâdh-ae-n — the vowel in the middle is determined by the root.)

On reflection, I guess I could just analyse it by saying that all roots are underlyingly vowel-final, and some suffixes delete a preceding vowel (cf. Jaqaru)… but that doesn’t explain why certain roots are always consonant-final when they don’t have a suffix. Another possibility is multiple stems, but that doesn’t work well either since not all roots participate in this alternation.

[zompist]

Except it isn’t a thematic or epenthetic vowel in the usual sense, because those are regularly determined by the paradigm in question, whereas what I’m talking about is irregular and lexically specified by the root. (e.g. from that post, koist, koist-ɩ-zh, koist-ɩ-m vs hõkʼâdh, hõkʼâdh-ae-z, hõkʼâdh-ae-n — the vowel in the middle is determined by the root.)

The term I use is stem vowel, which I think has less theoretical baggage than thematic vowel. It fits nicely into the same metaphor as "root". Though I guess we don't call the endings "leaves".

[bradrn]

Except it isn’t a thematic or epenthetic vowel in the usual sense, because those are regularly determined by the paradigm in question, whereas what I’m talking about is irregular and lexically specified by the root. (e.g. from that post, koist, koist-ɩ-zh, koist-ɩ-m vs hõkʼâdh, hõkʼâdh-ae-z, hõkʼâdh-ae-n — the vowel in the middle is determined by the root.)

The term I use is stem vowel, which I think has less theoretical baggage than thematic vowel. It fits nicely into the same metaphor as "root".

That’s a good option, thanks! And ‘verbal stem’ is of course a well-established term already for the root + derivational-like affixes.

[Creyeditor]

In one of my less developed conlangs, consonant-final nouns require a lexically determined vowel before a case suffix. At the time I called this a ‘thematic vowel’, but now, having read a little more about PIE, I realise that term isn’t quite correct — PIE thematic vowels aren’t lexically determined, but regular given the form of the root. Are these kinds of vowels attested in natlangs, and if so, what do people usually call them, and how do they get analysed?

I think this is roughly the way in which I heard the term theme vowel used in Romance and Baltic linguistics. As for the analysis, there is no concensus. Some say it's part of the root but has a specific morphological distribution, some say it's an affix that realizes certain morphological features that only come about if certain roots and affixes are combined. Yet other approaches assume that this is lexically/morpheme-specific phonology and the vowel is epenthetic. I don't think the difference is particulary relevant for conlanging purposes.

[Zju]

Are these kinds of vowels attested in natlangs, and if so, what do people usually call them, and how do they get analysed?

IIRC Estonian has something similar - cf. here. Though I'm not aware if those gen. sg. stem-final vowels are denoted by any special term.