Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Travis B.]

Does anyone else ever perceive the standard variety of their native language as being accented? I ask because to me the back [ɑ] of GA /ɑ/ (or, shall I say, /ɒ/) sounds distinctly accented to my ears, at least when it is not adjacent to /r w h kw gw/ (when I hear someone with such on the radio it automatically makes me think that they are not originally from here), and also I perceive Standard English as having too many /t/s, /d/s, and /n/s where they have largely disappeared in my own dialect (and pronouncing English with these consonants to me feels overenunciated to me).

[Raphael]

Are there any known human names, used in the past or the present, whose etymological origins have been lost?

[Linguoboy]

Are there any known human names, used in the past or the present, whose etymological origins have been lost?

Yes.

[Salmoneus]

Yes, vast numbers.

[Ryusenshi]

lowering one’s susceptibility.

I'm not sure what the thinko is here. It seems possible that the author just wrote "susceptibility" when she meant "resistance".

Or she wrote "susceptibility" when she meant "susceptibility threshold". I've often heard similar confusions. The other day I said "a precision of 10^-5 " instead of "a relative error of 10^-5 ".

Does anyone else ever perceive the standard variety of their native language as being accented?

Not me, since my region of origin is the birthplace of the standard variety. I should ask this question to some Southerners.

[Salmoneus]

Yes, vast numbers.

I can do a bit better than that, I guess.

Why are some names opaque?

1. Names (I'm assuming you mean the names of people) are high-frequency items. Although sound changes are generally regular, high-frequency items can sometimes exhibit irregular change. This makes it hard to trace etymologies backward with any certainty. You may be left with a situation where you can guess at some etymologies, but sound change has been irregular and hence you can't be certain which guess is correct.

2. Names are often subject to intentionally irregular processes. Many names are diminutive (some are augmentive), and diminution is sometimes highly irregular. In addition, name-giving sometimes follows ritual procedures that are highly unusual in any other area of language - for instance, some cultures combine syllables from the names of parents to produce the names of children, so that, for example, "Joseph" and "Jennifer" may have a child named "Jojen" or "Jenjo". [N.B. "Jennifer", as we've discussed on this board, is a name that has at best a disputed etymology]. This can make it hard to pin down etymologies of individual parts of the name.

3. Names, and naming elements, may be very old - as words fall out of use, names built on those words may be retained. If you don't have records of the earlier stages of the language, it may be impossible to recover these etymologies - or, if the root morphemes are retained only in highly derived forms, it may be possible to guess the etymology, but without any certainty.

4. Names are highly cultural, and hence can easily be borrowed from one language to another (for instance via immigration, or high-status individuals outside the home nation). The etymologies in the source language - sometimes even the existence of the source language! - may not be known to later scholars. For example, most English names are ultimately borrowed from high-status non-Germanic languages - classical Greek and Latin, and Hebrew. Fortunately, all these source languages are themselves well-recorded, so etymologies are usually clear, but that need not be the case. There are some attested Roman names seemingly borrowed from Etruscan, for example, so that their ultimate etymologies are unclear. English names possibly from Etruscan include Adrian, Miles, Tarquin, Virgil, and the surname of Gerardus Mercator (he of the projection) - some of these have intermediate etymologies ('Adrian' is 'from the town of Hadria', 'Mercator' means 'merchant', dealer in 'merx') but their ultimate etymology is unknown - 'Miles' is doubly unknown, as it's apparently 'Milo' (origin unknown) altered by analogy with Latin 'miles', 'soldier', origin unknown but possibly Etruscan.

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To take an English example: is the name "Teddy" opaque? Not to scholars. But only because they have excellent historical and linguistic records! It comes from PGmc "audawarduz" - "guard of wealth". But the first element, "audaz", has been lost in English, and indeed almost all modern Germanic languages! And the second element, "wardaz", does survive as English 'ward', but it's no longer a particularly common word, and indeed often now has the opposite meaning (someone guarded). To add further confusion, "Edward" has then been truncated to "Ed", given a seemingly-random first letter to make "Ted", and then given a diminutive suffix. If you just handed someone a dictionary of English and the name "Teddy", they'd struggle not to find it opaque...




So why are some names NOT opaque?

1. As names become opaque, there may be a cultural imperative to replace them with names that aren't opaque. If names are believed to have a magical power, for example - eg if they are believed to 'come true' - there is an incentive to keep names 'up to date' and transparent.

2. Where names are opaque, they may be supplemented and ultimately replaced by meaningful names. To take a European example: "Gaius" would have been opaque to the Romans (though scholars think it's probably ultimately related to "gaudeo", "to rejoice"), but one particular Gaius is instead known to history as "Augustus", "the Majestic One". Lots of rulers and princes in ancient history have non-opaque names of the "Crusher of his enemies", "Appointed by God", "First among nobles" kind, and it's not always clear whether this is actually what their parents would have called them, or whether these are just names they adopted later in life.

3. Even when opaque names are acceptable, there can be a demand for new names. Fashions change. And some cultures require an individual to change their name one or more times during their life, which means there's a lot of names needed. New names can come from other cultures, or from the distant past. But they can also come from ordinary words. Do you want to give your kid a weird name people don't understand that makes them sound like a grandparent already - or a meaningful, beautiful name? Even in our culture, very friendly toward opacity in names (most of our names are etymologisable by scholars, but not by most people who carry them), there's a tendency to replace opaque old names with transparent new ones - there are now fewer Dorises and Amandas, and more Willows and Dawns, than there used to be.

4. Names are nouns. In some languages, very few nouns are opaque, because they're all derived from verbs - in these languages, I won't say that opaque names CAN'T develop, but there's probably a strong tendency for names, like other nouns, to remain transparent.



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If you're looking for specific opaque names, you're most likely to find them, I would guess:
a) in the names of Gods, which are often borrowed and often very old;
b) in names derived from places, as placenames are often borrowed and often very old;
c) in names from little-known cultures
d) in names from cultures with great respect for other, little-known, cultures
e) in popular, informal names, which are more likely to show irregular diminution processes, and less likely to have their older forms recorded

[Travis B.]

About "Teddy", I thought that was a diminutive of Theodore...

[Ryusenshi]

Maybe it first appeared as a diminutive of "Edward", then was repurposed as a diminutive of "Theodore"?

[Travis B.]

Okay, Wiktionary says it can be a diminutive of either Edward or Theodore.

[Linguoboy]

The reason I gave such a laconic answer to the question, BTW, is that the answer was so self-evident that I needed Raphael to do some work to figure out what question he was really asking. I suppose I could have put together as wide-ranging a response as Sal's in the hopes of answering it by chance, but I lacked the patience.

Okay, Wiktionary says it can be a diminutive of either Edward or Theodore.

The OED further states that it can be used for Edmund and other given names with the initial ed- element Sal mentioned.

[Zaarin]

Perhaps it's a British thing? I've only heard Teddy as a diminutive of Theodore and indeed associate it overwhelmingly with a certain President Roosevelt. Personally if my name were Theodore I'd prefer "Theo" as a diminutive, and if my name were Edward or Edmund I'd be quite insistent on the use of my full name...or better yet a middle name. :p Happily none of those is my name, and my name is too short for a pet form--not that that prevents some people from trying anyway...

[akam chinjir]

Perhaps it's a British thing? I've only heard Teddy as a diminutive of Theodore and indeed associate it overwhelmingly with a certain President Roosevelt.

Ted Kennedy, though.

[Raphael]

Thank you, Sal!

The reason I gave such a laconic answer to the question, BTW, is that the answer was so self-evident that I needed Raphael to do some work to figure out what question he was really asking. I suppose I could have put together as wide-ranging a response as Sal's in the hopes of answering it by chance, but I lacked the patience.

The reason I asked the question in the first place is that I simply couldn't remember any time in the recent past when I wanted to know a name's meaning and couldn't discover it through a relatively short web search.

[Salmoneus]

Perhaps it's a British thing? I've only heard Teddy as a diminutive of Theodore and indeed associate it overwhelmingly with a certain President Roosevelt.

Ted Kennedy, though.

Also Ted Cruz. Unless there's a general Edward > Ted, but Theodore > Teddy rule?

[Zaarin]

Perhaps it's a British thing? I've only heard Teddy as a diminutive of Theodore and indeed associate it overwhelmingly with a certain President Roosevelt.

Ted Kennedy, though.

Also Ted Cruz. Unless there's a general Edward > Ted, but Theodore > Teddy rule?

I didn't say TR was the only "Ted(dy)" in my repertoire--I voted for one of those Teds--I just said I overwhelmingly associated it with TR.

[Linguoboy]

The reason I asked the question in the first place is that I simply couldn't remember any time in the recent past when I wanted to know a name's meaning and couldn't discover it through a relatively short web search.

We live in amazing times. I say this as someone who's been interested in the meanings of names almost all my life. Researching them used to be extremely time-consuming. But that is one way I learned how many have no certain etymologies.

[anteallach]

Does anyone else ever perceive the standard variety of their native language as being accented? I ask because to me the back [ɑ] of GA /ɑ/ (or, shall I say, /ɒ/) sounds distinctly accented to my ears, at least when it is not adjacent to /r w h kw gw/ (when I hear someone with such on the radio it automatically makes me think that they are not originally from here), and also I perceive Standard English as having too many /t/s, /d/s, and /n/s where they have largely disappeared in my own dialect (and pronouncing English with these consonants to me feels overenunciated to me).

I would have thought that most people whose native variety is sufficiently far from the standard would. Certainly, my impression is that in Britain most people who do not have RP/SSBE/"near RP" accents perceive RP as accented; they may well call it a "southern accent" (depending where they're from) or a "posh accent".

Personally, I don't really for mainstream modern RP/SSBE, other than noticing a long vowel in BATH. Affected RP (Boris Johnson, say, if you can bear him) is a different matter but isn't really what I'd call standard. Old school RP with its funny vowels is also a different matter but that's not very surprising, and as that link indicates I'm hardly alone there.

[Travis B.]

Personally, I don't really for mainstream modern RP/SSBE, other than noticing a long vowel in BATH. Affected RP (Boris Johnson, say, if you can bear him) is a different matter but isn't really what I'd call standard. Old school RP with its funny vowels is also a different matter but that's not very surprising, and as that link indicates I'm hardly alone there.

On that note, in many ways the old-school RP is closer to what I am used to than contemporary RP/SSBE, with the exceptions of DRESS and HAPPY here being closer to the latter. In particular the TRAP vowel in contemporary RP/SSBE sounds a lot like my LOT vowel (in most cases).

[Linguoboy]

Do other languages commonly have “false conditionals” of the form “If you’re interested, I’m free next week” (where the speaker is free without regard to the addressee’s interest)? Is there a better name for these than “false conditionals”?

[Salmoneus]

Do other languages commonly have “false conditionals” of the form “If you’re interested, I’m free next week” (where the speaker is free without regard to the addressee’s interest)? Is there a better name for these than “false conditionals”?

Well, they're valid material conditionals*, so "false conditional" might be a bit misleading.

I think the problem arises because you're looking for a set defined by absence: you seem to be looking for a term for all material conditionals that are not also... something else (material biconditionals, strict conditionals, relevant conditionals, connexive conditionals, intuitionistic conditionals, etc). I'm not sure there is one.

There is a name for the opposite situation, I know - "if you're a mongoose, I'm Cate Blanchett" is a so-called "vacuous truth" (where the conditional statement is classically true because the premise is false). But I don't know if there's a word for the reverse.

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Alternatively, you could look at the function of such a phrase. In this case, the distinctive feature appears to be that the apodosis is essentially performative or self-quoting. We could rephrase your example as:

a) if you're interested, "I'm free next week"
or
b) if you're interested, <I will tell you that> I'm free next week

Where, in the latter case, by saying that you will say that, you are performing the act of saying it.

Anyway, the key is that the apodosis is a statement, and the protasis describes the condition under which that statement will be made/relevant/interesting/etc, NOT the condition under which the statement will be true. Similarly, "If you ask me, it's a fish", "if you don't mind me saying, your cat is obese", "if you're into fish, there's a great place around the corner" and "if you finish your chores early, your homework is in under the ladder".





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*for those not aware, material conditionals say "If A, then B", and mean that if A is true, then B is true, or that if B is not true, then A is not true either. However, this means that th conditional is always true if A is not true (as it can't be false, and in most logics things are either true or false), and that the conditional is likewise always true if B is true. So LB's conditional is a perfectly valid classical conditional, as the consequent is true.

Many attempts have been made to suggest alternative logics for conditionals to get around this. Biconditionals are true when if A is true, B is true, AND when A is not true, B is not true. Strict conditionals are true when, if A is true, B is necessarily true. Relevant conditionals are true when material conditionals are true, but only when A and B in some way (there are many theories) share some relevant content with one another. Connexive conditionals instead insist that A's falsehood cannot imply A's truth, or, for some connexivists, that A cannot imply both the truth and the falsehood of B. (this eliminates vacuous truths and explosions, but not the reverse, as considered here). Intuitionist logics eliminate bivalence, which does all sorts of things, including that conditionals are no longer necessarily true just because it's not the case that simultaneously the premise is true and the conclusion is false. Minimalist logics do likewise but also eliminate explosions. LB's example sentence, taken literally, is classically true, but not relevantly, strictly or intuitionistically true. All these explanations of conditionals are appealing (indeed connexivism was the norm in european thought from aristotle until the 19th century), but they also aren't quite compatible with one another, and all cause problems.

One reason for all this confusion may be that, while the semantics of counterfactuals are clear for most people, the semantics of non-counterfactual conditionals are controversial, because they're weird and don't really crop up in most ordinary speech. Apparently a survey found that only 50% of people believe modus tollens is valid in indicative conditionals...