Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Linguoboy]

I'm looking for a specific grammatical term, and I was wondering if someone can remind me what it was. It was a type of gender for nouns that are masculine and feminine at the same time, or possible for nouns that can be either masculine or feminine depending on the referent.

"epicene"?

[WeepingElf]

I once saw the following Runic inscription (probably a band logo) on a T-shirt:

ᛏᚻᚢᚱᛁᛋᚨᛉ

Apparently, the one who designed this made a mistake. Can you spot it?

More: show

Of course, the Runic script has a separate letter for /þ/, so the th digraph in the lettering is wrong,

More: show

Wait, isn't the inscription itself a name of the th rune?

Somebody basically wrote the name of the th forgetting about the th letter itself?

Just that!!!

[Qwynegold]

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.

What?? A NATLANG ALREADY DID THIS?!

[Qwynegold]

I'm looking for a specific grammatical term, and I was wondering if someone can remind me what it was. It was a type of gender for nouns that are masculine and feminine at the same time, or possible for nouns that can be either masculine or feminine depending on the referent.

"epicene"?

Epicene! Thank you!

[Qwynegold]

When a language has a length distinction and a speaker wants to emphasise a word from a length minimal pair by lengthening it (as in nooooooo! or do you heeeaar me?) how is the contrast maintained or is it not?

I'm not sure I understand the question. I'm trying to think how we do it in Finnish, but it's complicated. It depends on which syllable the length contrast is in, and which syllable you lengthen. If we take the given Saana and sana (meaning word), Saana can be lengthened on the last syllable or both. Sana would only be lengthened on the last syllable. So they don't merge. I can't think of any good examples of minimal pairs with length distinction in the last syllable, but I think the words would merge.

If we take monosyllabic words, it's again a little difficult to find minimal pairs. Monosyllabic words with a short monophthong tend to be function words. But one possible pair could be se (it) and see (the letter C). Depending on the situation, function words might or might not be lengthened. The sentence "See on oikein" could mean either "iit is right" or "C is correct", so the words would indeed merge.

[gach]

When a language has a length distinction and a speaker wants to emphasise a word from a length minimal pair by lengthening it (as in nooooooo! or do you heeeaar me?) how is the contrast maintained or is it not?

I'm not sure I understand the question. I'm trying to think how we do it in Finnish, but it's complicated. It depends on which syllable the length contrast is in, and which syllable you lengthen. If we take the given Saana and sana (meaning word), Saana can be lengthened on the last syllable or both. Sana would only be lengthened on the last syllable. So they don't merge. I can't think of any good examples of minimal pairs with length distinction in the last syllable, but I think the words would merge.

If we take monosyllabic words, it's again a little difficult to find minimal pairs. Monosyllabic words with a short monophthong tend to be function words. But one possible pair could be se (it) and see (the letter C). Depending on the situation, function words might or might not be lengthened. The sentence "See on oikein" could mean either "iit is right" or "C is correct", so the words would indeed merge.

In the first two disyllabic examples the regular lengthening of the final vowel gives you the partitive case, the case ending being -a in both cases, so you'll end up neutralising a case distinction anyway.

That said, I don't think I've heard this kind of emphatic articulation much at all apart from kids (mostly impatient or demanding), in which case the lengthening is always mostly at the end of the word and clearly more extended than the regular long vowels. A more typical way of empasising a word would be to give it a stronger dynamic stress and a sharper falling pitch contour.

[Qwynegold]

I agree, except that there are a few more situations where you can lenghten a word: When you are calling out to someone, and when you are speaking hesitantly.

[gach]

I agree, except that there are a few more situations where you can lenghten a word: When you are calling out to someone, and when you are speaking hesitantly.

Yes, indeed. Interestingly the lengthening seems to behave differently in all these cases. When you are dragging out someone's name when calling for them, the lengthening affects all the vowels roughly equally irrespective of their original lengths. The hesitant lengthening is maybe more likely towards the start of the word, which seems like a reasonable place to hesitate if you want to finish the thought or not. That may be more likely on originally long vowels than the short ones, but I really don't know for sure. You could perhaps look at Oiva Lohtander in Raid since I think he does that quite a bit. Anyway, when such lengthening happens it overrides the underlying vowel length similarly as in singing.

This turns out to be a more involved topic than I initially thought. I wonder also how often and under what conditions you can find extra lengthening of consonants.

[Raphael]

This is a really dumb question for which, normally, JFGI would be a perfectly appropriate response, but unfortunately, Google (and Wikipedia) tend to provide a lot of mathematical information about numbers-related topics, and little or no linguistic information. So...

How do you call, on the one hand, the numbers one, two, three etc., and on the other hand, the numbers first, second, third etc.?

[gach]

How do you call, on the one hand, the numbers one, two, three etc., and on the other hand, the numbers first, second, third etc.?

Cardinal and ordinal numbers.

[Raphael]

How do you call, on the one hand, the numbers one, two, three etc., and on the other hand, the numbers first, second, third etc.?

Cardinal and ordinal numbers.

Thank you!

[Qwynegold]

This turns out to be a more involved topic than I initially thought. I wonder also how often and under what conditions you can find extra lengthening of consonants.

IKR. As native speakers we should know these things, but it's hard to come to think of all the rules when you have never thought about these things conciously before. As for consonants, the only thing that comes to my mind right now is the classical "perrrrrrrkele!"

[Kuchigakatai]

People know the Swahili morphological reinterpretation of Arabic كتاب kitaabun as kitabu, plural vitabu. Here are some other examples...

Arabic وقت waqt 'time (as an abstraction); moment' got reinterpreted as having the gender of long or wide things: wakati, plural nyakati.

Arabic مدرسة madrasa 'school' got reinterpreted as a ma-plural (in the gender of augmentatives or things that often appear in groups): madarasa 'classes, classrooms', singular darasa 'class, classroom'.

Arabic أسقف usqufun '(Christian) bishop' (from Greek ἐπίσκοπος) also got assigned the gender of augmentatives or things that often appear in groups: askofu, plural maaskofu.

Arabic agent nouns begin with mu-, which is convenient for Swahili speakers because the animate gender marker is word-initial m-, so you get معلم muʕallimun 'teacher' reinterpreted as mwalimu, plural walimu.


While we're at it, I'll mention I like Swahili binadamu 'human being', from Arabic ابن آدم bin aadam 'son of Adam'. The Arabic word for 'human being' is actually إنسان insaan. Cf. the Christian use of "the Son of Man" meaning 'the divine Son, Jesus', from the Gospel adaptation of a Hebrew expression that simply meant 'human being', בן–אדם ben adam (אדם adam can refer to mankind in general or a particular person; its use as the personal name of a character in Genesis is a nice play on words).

Imagine a babysitter saying, at the end of her work, to the mother of a couple girls: hoy se portaron bien tus niñas ~ hoy tus niñas se portaron bien 'your girls behaved pretty well today'.

I tried these out on my wife, who's Peruvian. She thinks there's a very slight difference. Partly topicalization: the first sentence is about the behavior, the second about the children. But she thinks the second could express some disapproval— i.e. the babysitter expected them not to behave, but for once they did.

Hmm, maybe I agree, although I don't know if I'm now being influenced by her judgment.

[mèþru]

It isn't a play on words; Adam literally means Earth because that's what Adam is.

[Kuchigakatai]

It isn't a play on words; Adam literally means Earth because that's what Adam is.

אדמה adama 'earth' and אדם adam 'humanity' have the same triconsonantal root but they're not the same word.

EDIT: Hmm, actually, the more I think about it, the more I find a lot of problems with both your and my interpretation. We can't really know which came first, the word for "humanity", the name "Adam", the word for "earth" (ארץ éretz is also a word), or the Genesis story that tied one to the other.

[mèþru]

Well, this is the Jewish tradition, as taught to me by fluent Hebrew speaking parents. Hebrew is their primary yet not native language. My native language is Hebrew, but it is not my primary one.

[linguistcat]

I'm pretty sure adhoratory mood is a linguistics term and not something that I made up, but google literally told me it doesn't exist and I can't seem to 100% remember what it means.

[Pabappa]

Variant name for hortative mood?

[Linguoboy]

I'm pretty sure adhoratory mood is a linguistics term and not something that I made up, but google literally told me it doesn't exist and I can't seem to 100% remember what it means.

"Adhortative mood" is a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hortative#Adhortative.

[Travis B.]

The thing about those moods is that I can't take them seriously for some reason with the exception of the cohortative, probably because the cohortative is the only one that is really grammaticalized (i.e. let's has become grammaticalized as a cohortative marker). The rest just seem like different vague ways of categorizing hortative statements, with the only clear differences being positive versus negative and cohortative verssu non-cohortative.