Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[WeepingElf]

Thank you so far. Thinking about it, palatal series are quite obviously much more common than retroflex series, so a language with only one of the two is more likely to have a palatal series than a retroflex one. Of course, you'll almost always have a plain dental or alveolar series besides the palatal and retroflex series. A language with a retroflex series and no palatal series (but with an alveolar series) would thus be remarkable but not impossible.

[chris_notts]

Although I actually think the following apparently (if I understood comments in Dixon's overview correctly) attested system is quite cool:

1. Alveolar apical
2. Retroflex
3. Laminal (allophones: palatal before i, dental otherwise)

I think it gets what you might want in a way, which is presumably to have retroflexes without too many coronal places.

[bradrn]

I think part of it might be that retroflexes are less likely to be transcribed as such when the language doesn’t contain other series to compare them with.

[anteallach]

The plosive systems of standard Swedish and Norwegian at least give some evidence for potential for retroflexes without palatals, though of course the retroflexes are often analysed as clusters with /r/.

[WeepingElf]

The plosive systems of standard Swedish and Norwegian at least give some evidence for potential for retroflexes without palatals, though of course the retroflexes are often analysed as clusters with /r/.

Of course!

[Travis B.]

The plosive systems of standard Swedish and Norwegian at least give some evidence for potential for retroflexes without palatals, though of course the retroflexes are often analysed as clusters with /r/.

Actually... Standard Swedish and Urban East Norwegian do have palatals.

[anteallach]

The plosive systems of standard Swedish and Norwegian at least give some evidence for potential for retroflexes without palatals, though of course the retroflexes are often analysed as clusters with /r/.

Actually... Standard Swedish and Urban East Norwegian do have palatals.

In the plosive system?

[Linguoboy]

This reminds me, how did German and apparently some celtic languages end up with the same word - "ach" - meaning very similar things?

Onomatopoeia. Cf. English ugh, yech, yuck, etc. which all have their origins in a similar sound.

This seems unlikely to me because, having looked at etymology in Réunionese Creole, many words purported to be of onomatopoeic origin turned out to be of Malagasy origin e.g. tèktèk, a bird species

Let me clarify: It seems unlikely to you that German and Celtic could independently develop an onomatopoeia because some words in Réunionese Creole have Malagasy etymologies?

Welsh ach! and Irish ach! can't even share a Common Celtic reconstruction because there is no CC sequence which would regularly yield /x/ in both languages. Moreover, the Welsh form has the variants ych! and och! whereas Irish has the variants och! and ách. Find me any other cognate between the two languages which shows this kind of range of contemporary vowel developments.

Sometimes an ach! is just an ach!

[Travis B.]

The plosive systems of standard Swedish and Norwegian at least give some evidence for potential for retroflexes without palatals, though of course the retroflexes are often analysed as clusters with /r/.

Actually... Standard Swedish and Urban East Norwegian do have palatals.

In the plosive system?

In the case of Standard Swedish, apparently not. However, consider Finland Swedish:

In Finland Swedish, /ɕ/ is an affricate: [t͡ɕ] or [t͡ʃ]

[hwhatting]

I have a question about mean, as in "gohan means rice". I've noticed that some immigrants, when speaking Swedish, will sometimes use the reverse order and say things like "rice means gohan". This is ungrammical in Swedish; you have to express it like "rice is called gohan". So I wonder if this happens because of interference from their L1. How common is it in natlangs that either order is fine together with the word meaning mean? Which specific natlangs do this?

I'd be interested as well - the natlangs I speak well enough all have a similar distinction of having one verb / construction "mean" where the familiar term comes second and another verb / construction "is called" where the familiar term comes first.

[Moose-tache]

Spotted in Hong Kong last week:

[bradrn]

I can’t read Chinese… what does this sign show? (My guess is Simplified vs Traditional, with the usual political connotations.)

[Kuchigakatai]

I can’t read Chinese… what does this sign show? (My guess is Simplified vs Traditional, with the usual political connotations.)

Yep, exactly that. Sign is officially in Simplified, and someone hand-corrected the second character to the Traditional form.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

The characters are 道 (way), 風 (wind), and 山 (mountain), which in Mandarin I think would be read Daofeng-shan, though the place is apparently called "Taofong Shan" or "Tofong Shan" in English. The Japanese on'yomi would be "Dōfūsan", and the kun'yomi would be "Michikaze-yama".

[zompist]

The characters are 道 (way), 風 (wind), and 山 (mountain), which in Mandarin I think would be read Daofeng-shan, though the place is apparently called "Taofong Shan" or "Tofong Shan" in English. The Japanese on'yomi would be "Dōfūsan", and the kun'yomi would be "Michikaze-yama".

The Yale romanization would be douh fūng sāan. Wikipedia has it as "officially" To Fong Shan. There's some Mandarinization going on there, as Cantonese lacks the sh.

Also it's apparently just 130 m tall, so it's a 小山 at best.

[foxcatdog]

Would i be right in assuming VSO and VOS languages have a stronger tendency to be head initial in other elements compared to SVO languages while OVS and OSV languages have a stronger tendency than SOV languages to be head final?

[Travis B.]

Would i be right in assuming VSO and VOS languages have a stronger tendency to be head initial in other elements compared to SVO languages while OVS and OSV languages have a stronger tendency than SOV languages to be head final?

Remember that VOS, OVS, and OSV languages are essentially fictional.

[foxcatdog]

I'm aware word order is to a degree fictional except in everyones favourite language english where fronting of objects is clumsy.

[Travis B.]

I'm aware word order is to a degree fictional except in everyones favourite language english where fronting of objects is clumsy.

Topic-fronting VOS, OVS, and OSV does not make.

[bradrn]

Basic word order (which is what SOV/SVO/VSO/VOS/OVS/OSV are usually taken to refer to) is generally defined as being the default in the absence of topicalisation, focus or similar information-structuring devices (which in and of itself should tell you what a useless concept ‘basic word order’ is when trying to actually understand a language).