Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[zompist]

As for internal etymologies, those are the source of the whole problem. The protolanguage is well-worked-out, and has a strong tendency towards light verb constructions and serial verb constructions; the modern system then results from univerbations of those.

OK, that's cool. I don't know what your etymologies are, but this is something like "I see" < "I'm going to look." Though perhaps the light verbs become grammatical affixes, or at least some of them still have a recognizable meaning?

(If the current situation really is implausible, I guess I could add in some irregular developments: say, *ɬiːsə-məŋul → *ɬisə-ŋul, which gets us to the much more manageable √ls-ŋun as the modern root, with lsoŋŋun as the resulting lexeme. It’s not unjustifiable.)

That sounds like a good plan. Complex stuff tends to be whittled down (before getting recomplicated...).

I don’t really see the resemblance to Sumerian. Algonquian (to my understanding) has a lot of verbs of great specificity, but the most basic verbs are underived and very short.

That's the point: both languages have long verbs, but they're built from short roots.

[bradrn]

As for internal etymologies, those are the source of the whole problem. The protolanguage is well-worked-out, and has a strong tendency towards light verb constructions and serial verb constructions; the modern system then results from univerbations of those.

OK, that's cool. I don't know what your etymologies are, but this is something like "I see" < "I'm going to look."

Well… I was sort of hoping to keep this something for people to work out, but the protolanguage is in fact the previous language in the thread. The relevant bits on the verb system are the posts on word classes (see section ‘Coverbs’) and verbal morphology.

In this particular case, *lhiise is a generic verb for forms of perception, and *meŋul is a coverb which in its nominal use means ‘eye’. The whole system is based on Kalam (Trans-New Guinea), which is however far less verbose: its equivalent for ‘see’ is wdn nŋ- (also lit. ‘eye perceive’). Also, Kalam doesn’t have the system of lexical aspects, which in the conlang adds another syllable.

Though perhaps the light verbs become grammatical affixes, or at least some of them still have a recognizable meaning?

I have no doubt they will retain their meaning in some capacity. The difference is that they’re now phonologically reduced parts of bipartite roots, rather than free verbs.

(Meanwhile, a bunch of them have separately grammaticalised into bound morphemes, mostly via SVCs. I list a few of them near the end of this post. But *lhiise took a different route, and became a passive participle.)

I don’t really see the resemblance to Sumerian. Algonquian (to my understanding) has a lot of verbs of great specificity, but the most basic verbs are underived and very short.

That's the point: both languages have long verbs, but they're built from short roots.

Fair enough. I never thought of √lis-mŋun as being a particularly long root, but looking at it again it contributes a whole five morae to the stem. Even simplifying it to √lis-ŋun would improve the situation, though I think I’d prefer to simplify it further to √ls-ŋun if I decide to go this route.

[Zju]

lisŋumŋun

lismuŋnun-
lisŋkummu-
lismuŋŋ-
lismŋnu-
lishŋŋ-

...let me methatesize darnit

[Travis B.]

Maybe you could make /mŋ/ a single coarticulated phoneme?

[Travis B.]

One thing I wonder about is why final devoicing of some fashion or another has been seemingly separately innovated so many times in Germanic. First, there is the classic case of continental West Germanic final devoicing. Then, there is the case of modern English final devoicing (which is distinct from the former because it does not involve phonemic mergers, with phonemic contrasts being preserved by preceding vowel length, (pre)glottalization, and, in many NAE varieties in some cases, vowel quality). Then are the cases of Old English and Gothic final devoicing.

[bradrn]

lisŋumŋun

lismuŋnun-
lisŋkummu-
lismuŋŋ-
lismŋnu-
lishŋŋ-

...let me methatesize darnit

That disrupts the internal structure, unfortunately: lis<ŋu>mŋun.

Maybe you could make /mŋ/ a single coarticulated phoneme?

No, it’s just a consonant cluster. This language has practically no restrictions on consonant clusters, so it’s not atypical.

[Zju]

Wind blows.
Water flows.
Light glows.
Earth is ploughed.

I did a curosry look up, and at least glow has undergone metathesis early on in Proto Germanic from PIE *ǵʰelh₃-. I'm curious to see in the future if for any of them it can be posited that they have influenced one another in phonetic shape or meaning (motion of/through some medium). And the original PIE lemmas of 'blow' and 'flow' - depending on reconstruction - resemble each other conspicuously already in PIE.

[Raphael]

Wind blows.
Water flows.
Light glows.
Earth is ploughed.

I did a curosry look up, and at least glow has undergone metathesis early on in Proto Germanic from PIE *ǵʰelh₃-. I'm curious to see in the future if for any of them it can be posited that they have influenced one another in phonetic shape or meaning (motion of/through some medium). And the original PIE lemmas of 'blow' and 'flow' - depending on reconstruction - resemble each other conspicuously already in PIE.

For what it's worth, the only two of those words that rhyme in German, too, are the last two.

[bradrn]

Wind blows.
Water flows.
Light glows.
Earth is ploughed.

I did a curosry look up, and at least glow has undergone metathesis early on in Proto Germanic from PIE *ǵʰelh₃-. I'm curious to see in the future if for any of them it can be posited that they have influenced one another in phonetic shape or meaning (motion of/through some medium). And the original PIE lemmas of 'blow' and 'flow' - depending on reconstruction - resemble each other conspicuously already in PIE.

I struggle to see the resemblance between ‘plough’ and the other three.

[keenir]

Wind blows.
Water flows.
Light glows.
Earth is ploughed.

I did a curosry look up, and at least glow has undergone metathesis early on in Proto Germanic from PIE *ǵʰelh₃-. I'm curious to see in the future if for any of them it can be posited that they have influenced one another in phonetic shape or meaning (motion of/through some medium). And the original PIE lemmas of 'blow' and 'flow' - depending on reconstruction - resemble each other conspicuously already in PIE.

I struggle to see the resemblance between ‘plough’ and the other three.

at least for me, its easier if one doesn't use the -ed suffix:

Wind blows.
Water flows.
Light glows.
Plows earth.

[bradrn]

Wind blows.
Water flows.
Light glows.
Earth is ploughed.

I did a curosry look up, and at least glow has undergone metathesis early on in Proto Germanic from PIE *ǵʰelh₃-. I'm curious to see in the future if for any of them it can be posited that they have influenced one another in phonetic shape or meaning (motion of/through some medium). And the original PIE lemmas of 'blow' and 'flow' - depending on reconstruction - resemble each other conspicuously already in PIE.

I struggle to see the resemblance between ‘plough’ and the other three.

at least for me, its easier if one doesn't use the -ed suffix:

Wind blows.
Water flows.
Light glows.
Plows earth.

Then the spelling may be the same, but (a) it doesn’t rhyme and (b) the syntax isn’t parallel. I can buy that the first three are similar, but the last seems likely to be a coincidence.

[Travis B.]

I don't see the parallelism between plow (BrE plough) and the others.

[Travis B.]

Just for the record, consider the following:

blow is from PGmc *blēaną, cf. StG aufblähen.
flow is from PGmc *flōaną, cf. StD vloeien.
glow is from PGmc *glōaną, cf. StG glühen.
plow/plough is from PGmc *plōgaz, *plōguz, cf. StG Pflug.

[Travis B.]

In other words, the only words for which the parallelism extends back into PGmc are flow and glow.

[Zju]

Just for the record, consider the following:

blow is from PGmc *blēaną, cf. StG aufblähen.
flow is from PGmc *flōaną, cf. StD vloeien.
glow is from PGmc *glōaną, cf. StG glühen.
plow/plough is from PGmc *plōgaz, *plōguz, cf. StG Pflug.

Per wiktionary, blow's development is as follows:

From Middle English blowen, from Old English blāwan (“to blow, breathe, inflate, sound”), from Proto-West Germanic *blāan, from Proto-Germanic *blēaną

Don't have a historical grammar of Germanic, but did PWG obtain its vocalism from the past tense forms, which had *ō? Otherwise, it'd have to be *ē → *ā

[Travis B.]

Just for the record, consider the following:

blow is from PGmc *blēaną, cf. StG aufblähen.
flow is from PGmc *flōaną, cf. StD vloeien.
glow is from PGmc *glōaną, cf. StG glühen.
plow/plough is from PGmc *plōgaz, *plōguz, cf. StG Pflug.

Per wiktionary, blow's development is as follows:

From Middle English blowen, from Old English blāwan (“to blow, breathe, inflate, sound”), from Proto-West Germanic *blāan, from Proto-Germanic *blēaną

Don't have a historical grammar of Germanic, but did PWG obtain its vocalism from the past tense forms, which had *ō? Otherwise, it'd have to be *ē → *ā

*ē > *ā did indeed happen in PWGmc (PNWGmc? because this change is shared by WGmc and NGmc), excluding a few cases sometimes called *ē₂, as in PGmc *hē₂r > Goth/OE/ON hēr "here".

[keenir]

Then the spelling may be the same, but (a) it doesn’t rhyme and (b) the syntax isn’t parallel. I can buy that the first three are similar, but the last seems likely to be a coincidence.

I'm wondering if theres paralelism because those three were reanalysed as sounding the same, and after that, schools made sure kids associated them together soundwise and syntax-wise.....whereas plough&plow were left to one side, with the different word order we saw above.

[Travis B.]

Then the spelling may be the same, but (a) it doesn’t rhyme and (b) the syntax isn’t parallel. I can buy that the first three are similar, but the last seems likely to be a coincidence.

I'm wondering if theres paralelism because those three were reanalysed as sounding the same, and after that, schools made sure kids associated them together soundwise and syntax-wise.....whereas plough&plow were left to one side, with the different word order we saw above.

Another thing to note is that plough/plow's original meaning is as a noun, from which the verb was (zero-)derived, whereas the other three are verbs going back to PGmc (and two of them were already identical in PGmc except in the onset).

[Travis B.]

I have alluded to this before here, but does anyone else here find that they have to deliberately not speak like they do at home to be consistently understood by non-native speakers of one's native language?

I ask because I personally work with many non-native speakers of English, most from India or China, and I find that if I speak in unadulterated dialect, as I am wont to do even at work, they often trip over usages, particularly contractions (e.g. [d̥jɛː(v̥)] for do you have or [ˈaːõ̞ʔ]~[ãːːʔ] for I don't), that while common in NAE and readily understood by other native NAE-speakers, seem to not be taught to non-native English speakers and seem to be unfamiliar to ones who have not lived in the US or Canada for some time.

Note that a key factor seems to be how natural their informal English is ─ if they speak informal English naturally like a native English-speaker, even if they have an accent, they generally do not have a problem. On the other hand, if they do not speak naturally informal English, even if they have very little accent, if I make the mistake of speaking to them like I would to someone at home I am liable to not be clearly understood.

I probably ought to tone down speaking in dialect at work just to make life easier for my non-native coworkers, and I do in contexts like meetings, calls, and whatnot (where I typically speak what is pretty much just mildly-accented StE). Yet at the same time, to me it is normal to speak in dialect in informal chat, even at work, outside of such formal contexts regardless of whom I am speaking with, and in a way I am proud of using dialect and do not like the idea of deliberately speaking in plain StE outside of circumscribed social circumstances in which it is expected.

I imagine things are similar in, say, German-speaking Switzerland, where while the formal language of media, business, and education is SwStG, everyone really speaks Alemannic varieties, even though the dialect here is much closer to Standard English than Alemannic is to SwStG.

[zompist]

I have alluded to this before here, but does anyone else here find that they have to deliberately not speak like they do at home to be consistently understood by non-native speakers of one's native language?

Note that a key factor seems to be how natural their informal English is ─ if they speak informal English naturally like a native English-speaker, even if they have an accent, they generally do not have a problem. On the other hand, if they do not speak naturally informal English, even if they have very little accent, if I make the mistake of speaking to them like I would to someone at home I am liable to not be clearly understood.

Why does this surprise you? Understanding other dialects has to be learned by exposure. My wife is Peruvian, and when she came here (many years ago) she had trouble understanding any dialects but General American. And why wouldn't she? She would not have encountered them as a foreign learner. Similarly I can understand her Spanish very well, but other dialects with more difficulty.