Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[AwfullyAmateur]

I have a French speaking exam today, Wish me bonne chance...

[keenir]

I have a French speaking exam today, Wish me bonne chance...

I have full confidence in your success; all the best to you.

[AwfullyAmateur]

I scored 25...out of 25. I think ma prof was going easy on me, though, cause it was only cinq questions. But actually parle francais is hard, so that's a win.

[Travis B.]

I scored 25...out of 25. I think ma prof was going easy on me, though, cause it was only cinq questions. But actually parle francais is hard, so that's a win.

As I've mentioned before, I don't get why people think French is easy. Sure, a lot of English vocabulary is borrowed from Old and Middle French... but French morphosyntax, phonology, and orthography? Yeah...

[abahot]

Are you sure it isn't different from the spoken English you speak? There are substantial differences between written Standard English and spoken English in practically all English dialects.

Nothing I'm particularly consciously aware of -- at the very least, I don't remember having to make any substantial effort to learn Standard English, which I imagine will not be the case in a few centuries.

I do wonder though, will the perception of current English as a "classical" language develop in the future? If so, will the existence of spoken media from today change people's view of English as compared to, say, Vedic Sanskrit or Latin which are not widely spoken natively?

[Darren]

I scored 25...out of 25. I think ma prof was going easy on me, though, cause it was only cinq questions. But actually parle francais is hard, so that's a win.

As I've mentioned before, I don't get why people think French is easy. Sure, a lot of English vocabulary is borrowed from Old and Middle French... but French morphosyntax, phonology, and orthography? Yeah...

French morphosyntax is fairly Englishy for a romlang. Phonology, also very Englishy save front rounded and nasal vowels and /ʁ/, the latter two of which are well-known as shibboleths of French speech so tend to come naturally. Orthography is also Englishy and again, there's enough unassimilated loanwords that people are already familiar with it.

[Travis B.]

Are you sure it isn't different from the spoken English you speak? There are substantial differences between written Standard English and spoken English in practically all English dialects.

Nothing I'm particularly consciously aware of -- at the very least, I don't remember having to make any substantial effort to learn Standard English, which I imagine will not be the case in a few centuries.

I do wonder though, will the perception of current English as a "classical" language develop in the future? If so, will the existence of spoken media from today change people's view of English as compared to, say, Vedic Sanskrit or Latin which are not widely spoken natively?

The key thing is written Standard English. Even everyday spoken Standard English differs a good bit from written Standard English. Take for instance the plethora of forms found in everyday spoken Standard English such as hafta, be gonna, have gotta, be sposta, kinda, sorta, d'you, and so on, and that is not even getting into things like common variation in past participle forms in spoken English varieties, the fact that practically all spoken English varieties have innovated new second person plural forms, less commonly-known contracted forms like I onno and y'on't, the fact that many English varieties preserve an optional distinction between gerunds and present participles, and so on. Many of these differences are register differences rather than differences in dialect, and hence if one has learned Standard English one has probably learned these forms even if one does not use them in writing (and even if one does not use them in speech oneself one is almost certainly at least passively familiar with them).

About 'classical' English, I highly suspect that written Standard English will stay much more static in the coming centuries than spoken English, such that in writing people across the English-speaking world along with speakers of English as a second or foreign language will remain able to readily communicate with one another in writing for the foreseeable future even as language change affects spoken English. Note, however, that I think that English-speakers across the world will be able to understand each other's spoken English well at least in the near future even when language change is taken into account not because English varieties will converge globally (because they probably won't, as that kind of change requires close everyday contact, and for the most part people are not moving between the US and the UK much anymore) but due to simple familiarity with each others' varieties from hearing them in media (which requires only passive exposure).

[zompist]

We just bought an appliance, and the box has a weird bit of French text:

"Objets besoins pour l'installation"

They're trying to say "objects needed", but besoin is a noun... there is no verb "need", thus no participle.

I suspect machine translation, on the grounds that if you search "objets besoins" you'll get hits– not in the sense desired, but as some sort of educational or management jargon, e.g. "Les objets/besoins de recherche sont-ils définis ou formulés en étroite collaboration avec votre organisme?" However, Google Translate suggests the more reasonable "objets nécessaires".

[Travis B.]

We just bought an appliance, and the box has a weird bit of French text:

"Objets besoins pour l'installation"

They're trying to say "objects needed", but besoin is a noun... there is no verb "need", thus no participle.

I suspect machine translation, on the grounds that if you search "objets besoins" you'll get hits– not in the sense desired, but as some sort of educational or management jargon, e.g. "Les objets/besoins de recherche sont-ils définis ou formulés en étroite collaboration avec votre organisme?" However, Google Translate suggests the more reasonable "objets nécessaires".

At one of my jobs all our "translations" were done with Google Translate -- seriously...

[Travis B.]

I remember reading somewhere a while back that some theoretical phonologists think that each allophone must only belong to a single phoneme. However, trying to actually apply this principle severely breaks parsimony, because allophony in very many words must be replaced by allomorphy to apply this even when it is entirely regular.

Take final devoicing in German, Dutch, Polish, Russian, and like -- each morpheme which is affected must have at least two allomorphs, a final or preconsonantal allomorph and a medial or prevocalic allomorph, if one applies this idea. This is because the devoiced would-be allophones would be shared between fortis and lenis obstruent phonemes, which is forbidden with this idea. This is not parsimonious because this involves adding allomorphs that could be otherwise regularly explained with a simple broadly productive phonological rule.

Another good example of why this idea is not parsimonious is flapping in NAE and AusE; all morphemes ending in a vowel followed by /t d/, or in varieties which also flap /n/, by /n nt/ must have a separate prevocalic allomorph even though this is entirely regular if one applies this idea. This is because the flapped would-be allophones [ɾ] and [ɾ̃] would be shared between /t d/ and /n nt/ respectively.

[Linguoboy]

I remember reading somewhere a while back that some theoretical phonologists think that each allophone must only belong to a single phoneme. However, trying to actually apply this principle severely breaks parsimony, because allophony in very many words must be replaced by allomorphy to apply this even when it is entirely regular.

This is the very problem that the Prague School proposed the archiphoneme in order to resolve.

[Travis B.]

I remember reading somewhere a while back that some theoretical phonologists think that each allophone must only belong to a single phoneme. However, trying to actually apply this principle severely breaks parsimony, because allophony in very many words must be replaced by allomorphy to apply this even when it is entirely regular.

This is the very problem that the Prague School proposed the archiphoneme in order to resolve.

This I am aware of, but there are other problems with the idea that "each allophone must only belong to a single phoneme". For example, in NAE dialects with allophonic vowel length and/or Canadian/American raising (excluding American dialects in which American raising has become phonemic), the /t/ and /d/ in writer and rider do not neutralize but rather are directly realized as the same flapped allophone, with the distinction between the two being displaced onto the preceding vowel. One could then do an analysis where vowel length and/or Canadian/American raising is phonemic before /t d/ and their merged archiphoneme //T//, but this also severely breaks parsimony because then one has to posit an isolated case of phonemic vowel length in a vowel system that otherwise completely lacks phonemic vowel length and or an added case where Canadian/American raising is phonemic even though their distribution is entirely regular from the morphological evidence.

[malloc]

Over the past decade or so, I have noticed that the Southernism "y'all" has become increasingly common among outside the South or at least among Youtube video essayists I watch. The people I watch are all quite distant from the South culturally, often living as far afield as Canada, so they presumably didn't acquire it in meatspace. Am I simply imagining things or does this represent a genuine case of linguistic diffusion witnessed in real time?

[Richard W]

I’ve no stats on this. However, are you sure it isn’t a case of a contraction “y’all” of unidiomatic “you all” spreading? I happily parse it as such; “you both” is a common enough collocation for me. There’s also a usage of “y’all” as an undifferentiated synonym of “you”.

[keenir]

The people I watch are all quite distant from the South culturally, often living as far afield as Canada, so they presumably didn't acquire it in meatspace.

Travel is always a good spreader of words...both tourism and other reasons for travel.

heck, there are words for people who spend part of the year in the South (such as, for example, Florida) and part of the year elsewhere (in that example, in Maine or New York)

[Travis B.]

One thing I should note is that I am not very familiar at all here in Wisconsin with y'all being used in initial position, whereas you guys is extremely common initially. For instance, if someone said 'y'all are commenting on the use of "y'all" outside the South', I would presume that the speaker was from the South, and would be very surprised if they weren't.

[jal]

"y'all" is also AAVE. And as such, some people would claim (I've seen this online) that the use of white people outside the South might be seen as cultural appropriation (since outside the South, only black people would use it).


JAL

[Travis B.]

"y'all" is also AAVE. And as such, some people would claim (I've seen this online) that the use of white people outside the South might be seen as cultural appropriation (since outside the South, only black people would use it).

The only real complaint I have seen about the use of y'all by White people outside the South is that it is an overly 'politically correct' usage instigated by feminists who don't like the you guys native to many dialects outside the South on the grounds that it is sexist, which of course is an example of the etymological fallacy in action (cf. complaints about the word history even though it actually comes from Latin historia).

[salem]

"y'all" is also AAVE. And as such, some people would claim (I've seen this online) that the use of white people outside the South might be seen as cultural appropriation (since outside the South, only black people would use it).


JAL

There is a certain sort of racist who hides their discomfort with people of other races having Black friends and loved ones, listening to music made by Black people and so on behind ostensibly progressive language. This is a great example of that.

(Edit: to be perfectly clear, I don't think that you yourself are a racist for mentioning this, and it's certainly possible for people of other races to misuse African American English in an arrogant or mocking way such that it would indeed qualify as "cultural appropriation". Though I'm not sure how a word like y'all could really be used like that...)

[Travis B.]

"y'all" is also AAVE. And as such, some people would claim (I've seen this online) that the use of white people outside the South might be seen as cultural appropriation (since outside the South, only black people would use it).


JAL

There is a certain sort of racist who hides their discomfort with people of other races having Black friends and loved ones, listening to music made by Black people and so on behind ostensibly progressive language. This is a great example of that.

(Edit: to be perfectly clear, I don't think that you yourself are a racist for mentioning this, and it's certainly possible for people of other races to misuse African American English in an arrogant or mocking way such that it would indeed qualify as "cultural appropriation". Though I'm not sure how a word like y'all could really be used like that...)

Stuff like this is part of why I tend to strongly dislike the idea of 'cultural appropriation', because it strongly implies that races/ethnicities/cultures should be kept separate from one another and have things which are proprietary to themselves; additionally, it indicates that what rights one has are determined by what race/ethnicity/culture one is born into, an idea to which I am diametrically opposed. (I remember a long argument on here a while back about how supposedly White people 'stole' rock music from Black people, as if what kinds of music one is 'allowed' to play is determined by one's race, and as if 'White music' is supposed to be kept separate from 'Black music'.)