Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[bradrn]

"I fought with the class bully" vs "I picked a fight with the class bully"
The latter narrows the meaning of the former by nominalising it. What is this phenomena called

This is generally called a ‘light verb’ construction. (According to Wikipedia, sometimes in English they’re also called ‘stretched verbs’).

The light verb in this case is ‘pick’, which is bleached of its usual semantics, and simply acts to qualify its complement ‘fight’. Often, as in this case, it imparts an aspectual meaning.

Is there a terminology for this as a means of narrowing? In the example, pick implies a choice, possibly of whom to fight and possibly of whether to fight at all when peace was possible.

Not that I’m aware of. I suspect that when both a light verb and a corresponding full verb exist, this narrowing always occurs.

[Raholeun]

A few years ago, I was browsing through the Archive of Linguistic Universals and came across an entry with no exceptions (at least, none found so far). The gist was as follows: 'There is no language where grammatical plurality is expressed purely through syntax.' Unfortunately, I can no longer find this entry. Does anybody have the answer and/or a link?

[zompist]

A few years ago, I was browsing through the Archive of Linguistic Universals and came across an entry with no exceptions (at least, none found so far). The gist was as follows: 'There is no language where grammatical plurality is expressed purely through syntax.' Unfortunately, I can no longer find this entry. Does anybody have the answer and/or a link?

Depends on how you interpret "through syntax" and "plurality".

Mandarin has no morphological plural on nouns. It does pluralize pronouns with -men, but it seems arbitrary 1) whether that is really plurality, and 2) whether that is morphology or syntax. You can't just declare it, you'd have to supply arguments one way or the other.

Japanese doesn't even have plural pronouns. You can use -tachi with nouns to indicate groups, but see here for arguments that this is not simply a plural.

ASL indicates plurals in several ways: reduplication, numerals, or making the sign using a numeral handshape. The first are arguably syntactic; the third is a use of simultaneity, which is less fundamental in spoken languages and thus hard to assign to morphology vs syntax.

[Creyeditor]

I think the universals archive has the other meaning of syntax here (as in some typological research: word order.

[jal]

Is there a terminology for this as a means of narrowing? In the example, pick implies a choice, possibly of whom to fight and possibly of whether to fight at all when peace was possible.

That might be the origin of the expression, but that doesn't feel like the modern use of it. "He picked a fight with X" feels the same as "He started a fight with X" or "He got into a fight with X" (although the latter implies perhaps less agency, but still some).


JAL

[Darren]

I have recently been convinced that the "naur" vowel is a real thing, at least in eastern states Australian English (mostly as spoken by people under 30, especially women). It even makes sense in an AusEng context — diphthongs tend to spread out more exaggeratedly, hence why /aɪ̯/ becomes /ɑe̯/ and /aʊ̯/ becomes /æo̯/; the GOAT vowel is already spread out along the F1 and F2 frequencies as /ɐy̯/ in GenAus; naur-ism spreads it out further along the F3 frequency to give /ɐy˞̯/, since /y/ is already a lower F3 than the cardinal vowels. It's fairly distant from Australian /ɹ/ ([ɻʷˤ] or something), but almost exactly the same as GenAm /ɹ/ (which might be something like [ɰ̟ʷˤ], the only mismatch being pharyngealisation).

[jal]

See this educational video about NAUR by Geoff Lindsey.

Talking about Geoff Lindsey, he seems to be the inventor (or one the inventors) of the "modern IPA" I asked about a while ago:

Not sure whether this is the right thread, but anyway. I recently encountered a website (https://youglish.com/) that, in its pronunciation description, uses bith "traditional IPA" and something called "modern IPA". I've never heard of the latter, and it looks decidedly odd. So does anyone know whether this is an actual thing, or just something that website invented?

He employs it in his videos (e.g. this one), and a pronunciation website he co-authored.



JAL

[bradrn]

Talking about Geoff Lindsey, he seems to be the inventor (or one the inventors) of the "modern IPA" I asked about a while ago:

Not sure whether this is the right thread, but anyway. I recently encountered a website (https://youglish.com/) that, in its pronunciation description, uses bith "traditional IPA" and something called "modern IPA". I've never heard of the latter, and it looks decidedly odd. So does anyone know whether this is an actual thing, or just something that website invented?

He employs it in his videos (e.g. this one), and a pronunciation website he co-authored.

I linked you Geoff Lindsey earlier! It seems quite strange to me that he would use anything other than standard IPA, especially since he’s put so much effort into creating a reasonable transcription of modern British English.

[Ryusenshi]

I think people say modern IPA to mean "Lindsey's transcription of modern British English in IPA", and traditional IPA to mean "the traditional transcription of Received Pronunciation in IPA". Both use the standard IPA.

[Travis B.]

One thing is that phonetic transcription must not be confused with phonemic transcription. For instance, to extend your standard phonemic transcription to the English here, you'd only really need to add two new phonemic distinctions (i.e. /ae/ versus /əe/ for standard /aɪ/ and /ɑr/ versus /ʌr/ for standard /ɑːr/) vis-à-vis standard GA phonemic transcription, but to try to use standard GA phonetic transcription for the English here is not quite so simple. When providing pronunciations to other people, particularly learners, I would consider it to not be a good idea to specify phonetic transcriptions as they are often far too narrow, and far too parochial, to be useful.

[Ryusenshi]

Point taken. But remember, Lindsey is also interested in teaching EFL using SSBE as a model. For EFL learners, it can be confusing to see GOOSE transcribed as /uː/, which in IPA means a back monophthong, when in SSBE this vowel is neither back nor a monophthong. You can't ask beginners to keep two different transcriptions in mind. Even teachers can end up confused, describing one thing (what fits the usual IPA transcription) and pronouncing another.

[Travis B.]

Point taken. But remember, Lindsey is also interested in teaching EFL using SSBE as a model. For EFL learners, it can be confusing to see GOOSE transcribed as /uː/, which in IPA means a back monophthong, when in SSBE this vowel is neither back nor a monophthong. You can't ask beginners to keep two different transcriptions in mind. Even teachers can end up confused, describing one thing (what fits the usual IPA transcription) and pronouncing another.

The key thing is then you run into the problem that not all native speakers of the target language have the same phonology even if their underlying phonemes aren't too different (e.g. GA phonemes are essentially a subset of SSBE's, with exception of the BATH and CLOTH lexical sets and some particular words such as lieutenant). For instance, take /uː/ for instance ─ it is anywhere between [u] and [y] depending on environment at least here (and apparently this is common in NAE) ─ so if you are taught that /uː/ is specifically [ʉw] rather than that [ʉw] is a particular realization of /uː/ in a particular target variety (i.e. SSBE), learners might be confused when they come to North America and hear both [u] and [y] for it.

[bradrn]

I think people say modern IPA to mean "Lindsey's transcription of modern British English in IPA", and traditional IPA to mean "the traditional transcription of Received Pronunciation in IPA". Both use the standard IPA.

Except the so-called ‘modern IPA’ which started this conversation wasn’t IPA at all, as I recall.

[anteallach]

I think people say modern IPA to mean "Lindsey's transcription of modern British English in IPA", and traditional IPA to mean "the traditional transcription of Received Pronunciation in IPA". Both use the standard IPA.

Except the so-called ‘modern IPA’ which started this conversation wasn’t IPA at all, as I recall.

As far as I can tell it is a combination of Lindsey's transcription, which is IPA, and a non-IPA way of marking stress (acute accents). It's the system used by the CUBE dictionary, and their rationale for writing stress this way is explained on this page ("stress in CUBE"); whatever, calling it "modern IPA" is a bit misleading.

[anteallach]

Point taken. But remember, Lindsey is also interested in teaching EFL using SSBE as a model. For EFL learners, it can be confusing to see GOOSE transcribed as /uː/, which in IPA means a back monophthong, when in SSBE this vowel is neither back nor a monophthong. You can't ask beginners to keep two different transcriptions in mind. Even teachers can end up confused, describing one thing (what fits the usual IPA transcription) and pronouncing another.

The key thing is then you run into the problem that not all native speakers of the target language have the same phonology even if their underlying phonemes aren't too different (e.g. GA phonemes are essentially a subset of SSBE's, with exception of the BATH and CLOTH lexical sets and some particular words such as lieutenant). For instance, take /uː/ for instance ─ it is anywhere between [u] and [y] depending on environment at least here (and apparently this is common in NAE) ─ so if you are taught that /uː/ is specifically [ʉw] rather than that [ʉw] is a particular realization of /uː/ in a particular target variety (i.e. SSBE), learners might be confused when they come to North America and hear both [u] and [y] for it.

This is basically an impossible problem to avoid, though: you could say essentially the same about Gimson's transcription of GOAT.

(Except that I wouldn't emphasise the British/American differences here. Both monophthongs and diphthongs in these lexical sets can be found on both sides of the Atlantic, and diphthongal transcriptions like /uw/ and the non-IPA /iy/ have a long history in the American tradition.)

[anteallach]

See this educational video about NAUR by Geoff Lindsey.

Some of the examples seem to be an almost monophthongal rhotacised vowel, e.g. the token of total which sounds like turtle. I'm somewhat used to total sounding like turtle, but this is with the version found in some parts of the North of England (most famously Hull) which fronts the GOAT vowel while keeping it monophthongal and rather "lax" and so makes it sound like non-rhotic NURSE.

[Zju]

Are there tonal languages without a level tone? E.g. just rising and falling tone?

[Moose-tache]

Are there tonal languages without a level tone? E.g. just rising and falling tone?

There are languages with high and low and rising and falling, with no medium. Does that count? Navajo, for example, has two tones, but long vowels formed form syncope can end up with rising or falling tone.

[Darren]

Are there tonal languages without a level tone? E.g. just rising and falling tone?

I feel fairly certain in saying no, there aren't. Pitch-accent languages may have only contour pitches, but languages with tone on every syllable must have at least one level tone.

[zompist]

Are there tonal languages without a level tone? E.g. just rising and falling tone?

Yep: Fúān dialect of Mǐn Chinese has tones 43 21 51 35 212.