2678: Strong Verbs Are Weakening–But Not Uniformly Apr 20, 2024

In English, there are strong verbs, those modified with internal vowel changes (e.g. “swim; swam; swum” or “rise; raise”) while weak verbs derive via an affix (e.g. “start; started”). Far and away, weak verbs are more common in English. Despite the occasional creation of a new strong form like “sneak; snuck”, with ‘snuck’ becoming more popular than ‘sneaked’ by the start of the 2010’s, strong verbs are increasingly weakening. For instance, the past tense of ‘knit’ has traditionally been ‘knit’ (no change), likewise with ‘put’, ‘wed’, and ‘whet’, but all of these aside from the most commonly used, ‘put’, are starting to take the ‘-ed’ suffix past tense. However, when this is taken into context, the waters are muddied, as some uses are changing faster than others.

Take “lawfully wedded [wife]”, which has been more popular than “lawfully wed [wife]”, at least in writing, since about the year 1800. Likewise, the phrase “wed to the idea” has never been in mainstream use, rather the phrase is with “wedded”. Compare that to the phrase “we wed” and “we wedded” where the weak form, ‘wedded’, actually peaked in the late 1820’s and is almost unheard of today, at least in writing. This verb is funny anyway insofar as it is almost never used in the present tense imperfect, and along with ‘whet’ is probably helped for that reason.

Things are different with “knit sweater” compared to “knitted sweater”, where the weak ‘knitted’ is actually now less popular since the late 1960’s, but “I knitted a sweater”, compared to “I knit a sweater” is more popular since the late 1990’s. It should be noted in the last example that it is also highly variable, and the relative popularity of ‘knit’ or ‘knitted’ as a verb switched several times throughout the 20th century.

2676: Goose”s Eyes: Humorous Scandinavian Quotation Marks Apr 19, 2024

British English and American English have different words for the same punctuation, like “period/full stop”, “parentheses/brackets” or “quotation marks/inverted commas”. Bearing in mind on the last example British English uses only one apostrophe for a quote, they’re all basically plain descriptions of function.

The Scandinavians, meanwhile, are equally as divided, but along different lines, namely, whether they are goose-eyes (gåseøjne in Danish / in Norwegian gåseauge), goose-feet (gæsalappir in Icelandic/ Gänsefüßchen in German). In Swedish it is bunny ears (kaninöron). These are not the only way of calling them (e.g Norwegian’s more formal “anførselstegn”), but they are all used regularly.

Aside from the division on which cute names to use, every single example above writes quotation marks differently to each other, and different from English. Some of these have secondary forms for quotes within quotes, but the primary versions are as follows:

Denmark: »...«

Iceland : „ “

Norway: «…»

Sweden: ” ” (Double right)

2604: Answering a Negative Question: 3-Form Systems Jan 31, 2022

Now only a historical detail, English used to have a 4-form system for answering questions with 'yes', 'no', 'yea', & 'nay', but this is not the only way to set it up. German has a 3 form system, as do many Germanic languages with normal 'ja' (yes), 'nein' (no), but also the word 'doch' which responds contrarily to a negative question to clarify that is it isn't affirming the negative. For instance:

You didn’t go?

Doch, [in fact, I did]

Without such a feature, to answer 'yes' in English is ambiguous. In addition to Germanic languages, French has this with 'oui' (yes), non (no), and its third form 'si' (yes, contrary to the negative). This shares a root with the Spanish 'sí' (yes), which does not have the same nuance.

2603: Utility of Yea and Nay: 2- & 4-Form Systems Jan 30, 2022

Latin had a somewhat complicated way to answer questions, but English's manner used to be more thorough as well. English is now a 2 form system meaning that is has one affirmative 'yes' and a negative 'no'. It used to be a 4 form system with 'yea' and 'nay' as well. The difference is that 'yea' and 'nay' answer questions that were stated affirmatively (a.k.a. positively), while 'yes' and 'no' were for questions stated negatively

For example:

Did he go?

Yes, he went

Did he not go?

Nay, he did not go

Eventually, these were lost and are now considered to be dated, without common understanding in the difference of the usage.

2602: Echo Languages Jan 29, 2022

Latin famously doesn't have a word for 'yes', but this is not unique. Other Goidelic languages don’t have words for either 'yes' or 'no', and just repeat the verb of the question back. This would appear like

"Do you run every day"

"I run" [yes]

These are known as "echo languages". Finnish, and Chinese do this as well, as did Latvian until they got 'ja' from the Germans. Likewise, Romanian had this quality until it got the Slavic affirmative ‘da’. In addition to echoes, Latin would also employ lots of adverbs like 'sic', 'certe' (certainly), 'sane' (healthy), planē (plainly), or for negative responses, 'minime' (least).

2561: aorist Dec 17, 2021

People will be familiar with past or present tense, but fewer will have heard of the aorist tense. This is really only applied to Ancient Greek verbs which were simple and undefined. Unlike the typical understanding of tense, this exists outside a description of time, but still exists alongside all verbal moods (e.g. indicative; subjunctive), persons, voices (e.g. active; passive), etc.. This is used for many purposes, one narrative use being for stating things as truthful, or generally consistent, not bound by time per se.

2537: "Change" in Hebrew Root Letters Nov 23, 2021

Broadly speaking, Hebrew uses a system of 3-consonant roots are modified in various ways that change the meaning etc.. It is therefore important to retain these 3 letters as the core of the word, though there are some exceptions. Roots can end with a vowel sound for instance, and that will have certain implications, but sometimes the spelling conventions will change for a less grammatical reason. The for עשאה (ʔasa'ah) meaning 'make it' exists from the root letters ע-ש-ה meaning 'to do' but the א is added only because normally it would be another ה, either of which at the end are silent, usually. In actual fact, the final ה has aspiration in some cases (as is the case here) like the H in the 'house'. To retain the silence of what would be the first ה of עשהה, it is changed to עשאה.

2530: Welsh Numbers Nov 16, 2021

People may be aware that French numbers use somewhat mathematical descriptions, like soixante-dix for 70 meaning sixty-ten, and 'quatre-vingts' for 80 meaning 'four-twenties' but Welsh numbers are even more extreme. Indeed, there are actually two different systems, one decimal and one vigesimal. The decimal system operates similarly to English's decimal system, but the vigesimal is base-20 for all numbers so to say '30' it is 'deg ar hugain' (ten on twenty), '40' is 'deugain' (two twenty) and likewise for 60 and 80. To say ‘70’ is 'deg a thrigain' (ten and three twenty) and likewise for 90, but 50 is 'hanner cant’ (half a hundred) which also does not exist in the decimal system. The vigesimal system is more common when talking about dates and ages etc. and people may switch back-and-forth. There are many internal variations as well, including dropping the prepositions, or adjectival forms.

2528: Parataxis Nov 14, 2021

Parataxis describes the syntax for the phenomenon of placing two (seemingly) unrelated ideas next to each other with minimal to no conjunction and leaving the listener to interpret any connection. In writing this is often employed for poetic uses, but certainly in speech this is more common as a result of one's train of thought. Otherwise, this is just to abbreviate the language such that two utterances might be assumed to be connected when the full understanding of the relationship is not considered so important. Even in speech though this effect can be used less randomly and instead bring more focus to an utterance which might be otherwise subordinated with a conjunction rather than standing on its own.

2515: A Shift in Latin 3rd Person Endings Nov 1, 2021

In Latin, the present tense, 3rd person endings are singular '-t' and plural '-unt'. In Proto-Italic however, these were featured an [i] at the end, i.e. '-ti' and '-unti' respectively, though not always spelt that way specifically. This was probably related to the way that Greek constructed its verbs, though it did eventually drop off. There are inscriptions in Pompeii however that show 'estē' for what would be the Classical Latin 'est'. Indeed, Pompeii is a great source for popular writing as opposed to more formal, high-register, and perhaps most importantly edited writing. This alternate form might have been the source for Romanian's verb endings which look like that today somewhat.

2497: Antipassive Voice Oct 13, 2021

People might be familiar with the active and passive voice—and fans of Word Facts may remember discussion of the passival [1]—but less likely to be acquainted with the antipassive voice. This doesn't really exist in Indo-European languages, and instead is a feature mostly of ergative-absolutive languages [2]. The reason for this is that while the passive voice deletes the agent and promotes the object to be the subject, the antipassive operates by deleting the object of the sentence, and promoting the agent. This might sound like it would just be a normal active form then—hence the term 'antipassive'—but in ergative-absolutive languages, the subject takes different endings depending upon whether there is an object of the verb. In this way, the antipassive promotes a noun that would take the ergative case to be in the absolutive.

[2] https://www.wordfacts.org/blog/2017/10/1048-no-subjects-in-ergative-languages.html

2489: Referential Pronouns in Non-Standard Constructions Oct 5, 2021

"I love myself some coffee" while allowed in some dialects for emphasis, is not strictly grammatical. It could be formed as an omission of the words "to get", as in "I [would] love to get myself..." Indeed, this environment could also allow 'me' in place of 'myself' ("I love me some coffee") which is even less standard but insofar as it is used, shows that the version with 'myself' might not be formed with the underlying structure of "...to get...". It should also be noted that the use of 'some' before a mass noun (i.e. it is understood as a mass and not separate units) cannot exist without the referential pronoun, either 'myself' or 'me', as "I love some coffee" would instead indicate some specificity instead of mere emphasis, that is, not all coffee here.

2484: Irreversible Binomials Sep 30, 2021

A so-called irreversible binomial is a phrase which exists with separable words that occur in a fixed order, like 'fish and chips', 'fight or flight, 'or 'short and sweet'. These can exists for all types of words, including for those which are no longer productive, like 'kit and caboodle' or 'vim and vigor'. This leads to come pairs like 'time and time again' abbreviated as 'time and again' which would make 'again' sound like a noun and is ungrammatical, but here there is no loss in meaning. Many of these near-idiomatic phrases are also somewhat poetic in their structure, relying on rhymes or alliteration frequently. These nearly always use a conjunction either 'and' or 'or', but in some cases exceptional like 'hoity toity' this is not necessary.

2475: Asyndeton Sep 21, 2021

Asyndeton is a literary device of removing conjunctions between related clauses, such as the famous Latin line 'veni; vidi; vici' (I came; I saw; I conquered). These can be on the level of whole phrases and clauses, as in the example before, or merely a series of adjuncts "softly, carefully, she walked down the stairs" or other sorts of features just so long as the conjuncts have no conjunction. This literary device helps to add emphasis, memorability and a certain smoothness to the language.

2426: Construct State Aug 12, 2021

In Hebrew grammar, simple nouns are discussed as having three states, those being indefinite, definite, and construct. English has the first two types, at least principally, distinguished usually by articles such as 'a; an; some' in the indefinite and 'the; that' in the definite, but the construct genitive is not like anything in English, and can be either definite or indefinite. For instance, בית מדרש (beis medrash) literally 'house of learning' is constructed as a phonetically modified version בַּיִת (bayis) that indicates the following word is possessed; these constructions also have a unique plural form. Traditionally, an article on the definite form would be placed before the possessed word, so in this case בית המדרש (beis hamedrash) meaning 'the house of learning' and was considered that the article was part of the word. In Modern Hebrew however, it is not completely uncommon for the article to be placed in front of the possessor הבית מדרש (habeis medrash), which complicates these distinctions of states, to a degree.

2416: Particles Aug 2, 2021

In grammatical terms, a particle is a function word associated with word without any lexical meaning of its own. These would include terms like 'not', 'oh', and 'to' (as a marker for infinitives) since these are integral for overall meaning and syntactic structure, but cannot be defined independently. In this way they are considered to be in their own lexical class, though in older definitions a particle was just anything that could not be inflected and could be part of other lexical classes like articles, conjunctions, prepositions, and even adverbs. Since particles indicate grammatical relation between words, language with lots of inflection tend to have fewer, and languages with little to no inflection, like Mandarin, will use particles instead of things like affixes to indicate grammatical functions.

2409: Functionality of Ge- in German Jul 26, 2021

The prefix 'ge-' in German has a wide variety of meaningful, grammatical functions, though this is on the decline in some. One use is to form collectives, such as 'Gebirge' (mountain range) from 'Berg' (mountain), ‎'Gewässer' (body of water) from 'Wasser' (water). It is also used for nouns from verbs to express frequency and repetition, like '‎Gerede' (chatter) from '‎reden' (talk). It is used quite commonly and fairly ubiquitously for forming past participles from verbs, especially with '-en' or '-et' suffixes, though this last point is contentious about how distinct 'ge-' is if would require these suffixes. Aside from these, it is also used to express the terminitive case in certain regional dialects—e.g. 'geleiten' (escort) from 'leiten' (lead)—along with referential nouns formed from verbs—‎'‎Gelege' (clutch of eggs) from 'legen' (lay). Finally, it is used to indicate union, like the Latin-based 'co-and 'com-' do in English and indeed certain German loan-words.

2407: Alternative Comparatives & Superlatives Jul 24, 2021

Comparative and superlative adjectives are in some languages are used for purposes outside of comparison. For instance, comparatives are used in English to convey tendency, such as "Bob is the more humorous type" which does not compare between people as might be assumed with this subject, but between his other characteristics. Likewise, superlatives are often used emphatically: "he's the dumbest"; "she's the prettiest" which has the effective meaning of "very dumb/pretty".

2369: Abessive Case Jun 13, 2021

Finnish is known for its many grammatical cases: an amount that would put Latin to shame. Still, not all of these are as common as others, such as the abbessive case, a.k.a. caritive or privative case. This expresses a lack of something, and would be roughly comparable to the English '-less', for instance in:

raha (money)

rahatta (without money)

but this is increasingly being replaced with other words like 'ilman' meaning 'without' and is already fairly rare to find in normal speech, though still used to some extent in writing. Hungarian also has suffixes and postpositions for this purpose, but the postposition is not considered a suffix and won't have vowel harmony. Other languages, even related languages like Estonian and many Turkic languages use this case fairly productively, so it's not disappearing universally by any means.

2332: Double Negatives for A.I. May 7, 2021

The phrase 'double negative' is pretty vague considering how negatives really operate, and this fact might be increasingly used as a test to see what's a human and what's a computer. For instance, "I ain't got no satisfaction" is a perfectly legitimate, albeit informal phrase which contains two negatives with a negative and emphatic meaning. Moreover, "it's not unusual to be loved by anyone" is also a double negative but with a basically neutral connotation because this is not the same meaning as "it is usual". Indeed it was a description of this structure which led to the understanding of a rule of two negatives in English establishing a positive if vaguer meaning. Likewise, it has been observed that phrases like "there isn't no other way" can be interpreted as either positive or negative depending on tone and other context. This is still and likely will always be difficult for a computer to intuit, and may be used as a tool for discerning man or machine.