2319: Kobon Verbs: Only 120 Apr 23, 2021
Famously, the language of Kobon only has some 90-120 verbs. This is difficult to imagine from an English perspective with 171,476 verbs according to the Oxford English Dictionary 2nd edition. The way this is pulled off is obviously not having anything like English's many synonyms and obscurely used verbs, for instance having only one verb to express observation through any of the senses or emotion, or another verb to describe movement through virtually any means, though there are 3 words for pouring (regarding solids, liquids, or food) and one verb meaning 'to quarter a cassowary'. What Kobon does have, however, is a fairly normal number of nouns, and to get around certain idea phrases which would be periphrastic in other languages are used. Alternatively, verbal ideas are put together to make a compounded meaning.
2295: Prosodic Stress Mar 29, 2021
In addition to the way that an individual word will have stress, stress in a sentence adds or indeed creates meaning. For instance:
[*x* indicating stress]
*He* didn't rob her (indicates someone else was a robber)
He didn't rob *her* (indicates someone else was robbed)
This sort of differentiation of meaning can be seen in practically any part of a sentences, even though the literal, structural form will be the same. This is known as prosodic stress since it is the prosody of the sentence which acts to add meaning. Any fun examples of this, write in the comments.
2281: Frequentative, Iterative, and Habitual Aspects Mar 15, 2021
There is a general decline in morphology and general grammatical features in English as time goes on. This is by no means universal, but across Indo-European languages this happens not only with words themselves becoming less morphologically complex, but as in the case of the frequentative, habitual and iterative (grammatical) aspects, syntactically simpler. In a nutshell, each of these expressed repeated action, but in different ways, with the frequentative expressing repetition and intensity of action—think 'chatter' [1] from 'chat'—and the iterative aspect signifying repeated action within one instance, such as 'he knocked on the door'. Those two now are generally more dependant on a word's meaning or historical carryover, while the habitual aspect—signalling continual action that may or may not be presently happening e.g. 'Bob runs' (i.e. 'Bob is a runner')—is somewhat productive, and in certain dialects like African American English is extremely productive, relying on the so-called habitual 'be'.
2280: wrong, wrangle, worry and wring Mar 14, 2021
The suffix -le can signal diminutives but also it is retained as a historic suffix to mark the frequentative form which once expressed repeated action over multiple instances. This is the case in 'wrangle' for instance which comes from Low German 'wrangeln' (to wrangle) but from the root 'wrangen' (to strangle). This led to the split in the English 'wrangle' and 'wring' which likewise lost the W in the German 'rangeln' (wrestle), and related to the Dutch 'vringle' (twist). The sense of twisting of truth also elucidates the connection there with 'wrong'—this being a common Germanic root each time eventually gaining the same moral connotations—and 'worry', which originally meant 'choke'.
2277: Optative Voice Mar 11, 2021
In certain languages, there is another mood along with indicative, subjunctive, imperative and the like known as the optative expressing a wish, as might be covered in English by 'if only...'. This was common verbal mood across Indo-European languages historically but these have usually been lost in a gradual process of morphological and syntactic simplification, reducing many distinct specific features for less precise periphrastic constructions. Some languages like Sanskrit and Ancient Greek are well known for this, but it is retained in Albanian, Armenian, and Kurdish, as well as non-Indo-European languages like Navajo, Yupik, Turkish and Georgian. English cannot neatly express this, but modal verbs like 'may' in "may you have good health" convey a similar intent, though this is also possible even with the present tense as in "G-d help us". In Albanian this is known as "mënyra dëshirore" or literally "wishing mood".
2254: Time & Space in Preposition Feb 16, 2021
There is a strong correlation between a forward direction physically as well as in time; the reverse is true with a backwards direction and the past. There are some exceptions as with in Aymara, but otherwise this is a (near-)universal rule. In Indo-European languages, this manifests not only in prepositions and adverbs (e.g. 'ahead'; 'forward'; 'backward'; toward; behind), but in prefixes. Many are indeed related to those examples before such as in 'fore-' from Old English and ultimately related to 'fare' from 'faran' (to go), along with other prepositions now like the Latin and Greek 'pro-', found in English. 'Before' is also related, and can relate to both time and space. More on this at a later point.
2215: Periphrastic Utility Jan 7, 2021
To update slightly the post on periphrasis from 2018, there can be linguistically significant benefits of using seemingly unnecessary words beyond just style. To recap, periphrastic language is when one uses separate words to express a grammatical relationship, such as 'did go' rather than 'went'. These are often, though by no means always with auxiliary verbs, but consider the exception with "I was blamed" with "I received the blame", which affects the grammar beyond simply intensity. Yiddish also uses periphrasis to express speed or urgency such as כאפן א קוק (khop a kuk), literally 'catch a look', or טאן א קוק (ton a kuk), literally 'do a look' meaning 'looked'.
2197: Biblical Hebrew has No Tenses Dec 20, 2020
Biblical Hebrew contains no verb tenses, a fact which is often misunderstood. Hebrew did of course have a way of expressing the action—just not time—in verbs through aspect. Unlike, in English however wherein aspect only can express Perfect (i.e. that the action is completed) and the Imperfect (i.e. that the action is incomplete), using the prefix וְ (v-) known as 'vav', other verbs could signal sequence. In other words, there is morphology to indicate that the action came in sequence (after) another whether that is in actual time or simply conceptual.
Somewhat counterintuitively sounding, the Sequential Perfect expresses similar meaning to the Imperfect and vice versa, but this is because if a Perfect verb is followed by a verb in the Sequential Perfect, it would have to have the sense of ongoing action. For instance”I read a book and I ate an apple” (both Perfect) does not actually show the sequence of time how “I read a book and I am eating an apple“ would and hence the Sequential Perfect looks almost the same but acts like an Imperfect.
Of course, there were ways of expressing the concepts that English uses tense to describe using other words and structures, but it is technically wrong to use the term 'tense'. This use of the וְ prefix is known as the Vav Consecutive form. This is distinct from the Vav Conjunctive, which merely expresses the same meaning as the English 'and'. This is why often Biblical translations will often write 'and' even at the beginning of sentences or indeed chapters. Modern Hebrew and even Mishnaic Hebrew does employ tenses, but these developed closer to the Indo-European system.
2192: Plurals that aren't Plural Dec 15, 2020
This is the final post of Pluralization Week. To see the whole collection together, visit this collection.
Notional agreement, also discussed under the broader label of synesis, is a phenomenon in which a grammatical construction will take on number or gender when relevant, which is not strictly grammatical, but which is otherwise implicit from the concept. For instance, in English plurals are often treated as singular or vice versa depending on how it is considered. Take for instance the seemingly contradictory grammar:
The British government are divided.
Great Britain is a wealthy nation.
This is especially common when there is something that distances the subject from the verb, such as:
*The number of people moving to big cities are increasing
*Five hundred dollars is a lot of money
2190: Plural as the Default Dec 13, 2020
Usually, plurals are formed from the singular, but this is not always the case. Exceptionally, in Welsh for instance there are words for which the plural is the base and singulars are formed off of that. This is on top of the fact Welsh has plurals where no non-affixed form exists: ‘merlen’ (a pony) and ‘merlod’ (ponies), but no *merl. Now, take the examples of
Llygod (mice, pl.) but llygoden (mouse, sg.)
Erfin (turnips, pl.) but erfinen (turnip sg.)
These have the same singular ending as with ‘merlen’ but the plural form is indistinguishable from a root, lacking any additional morphology. Keep in mind this is unlike languages like Latin or Finnish where endings indicate not only singular–plural, but also case. There is no particular reason why the singular will resemble the root if one would have to, but looking at how exceptional this is, it could be said to make intuitive sense. Celtic languages did once historically have cases which one could try to explain this with, but so did English, French, and many other such Indo-European languages where this does not happen.
2189: Massive and Numerative Plurals Dec 12, 2020
While some languages distinguish between paucal (unknown few) and greater plurals (unknown many), others have a massive plural and a numerative plural. To illustrate the difference—though keep in mind this does not exist in English—a massive plural implies indivisibility, such as using pluralization to discuss the "waters of the Indian Ocean". Of course in that example using ‘waters’ is not strictly necessary anyway so consider also that English distinguishes between ‘fish’ [singular], ‘fish’ [like a collective plural] and ‘fishes’ [like a divisible plural] i.e. ‘types of fish’. Languages that morphologically distinguish between massive plural and a numerative plural (unlike English) don’t necessarily have both, such as Welsh which has a separate singular, plural, and massive (collective) plural but not numerative per se. Because English has no productive way to distinguish mass nouns morphology, ostensibly singular nouns like ‘sand’ need to be disambiguated with whole phrases, in this case ‘grain of sand’. Slavic and Semitic languages etc. also distinguish certain qualities of massive plurals.
2150: ser/estar: Why Differ? Nov 3, 2020
The Spanish verb 'ser' is notable for a lot of reason, but both it and its counterpart 'estar'—meaning 'to be'—come from the Latin meaning 'to sit' (sedēre) and 'to stand' (stāre) respectively, which may help to explain why 'ser' is for permanent things, and 'estar' is more often for transient uses. This is not actually so rare to see verb meaning 'sit' or 'stand' used existentially. While in some languages this is standard, even English has the phrase "that sits well with me", though this is obviously not exactly the same. In the case of 'ser', the verb is irregular partly because some forms come from the Latin 'sum', always having meant 'to be', namely present tenses, the imperfect, and the preterite tenses.
2149: Celtic Mutation, & Vowel Harmony Nov 2, 2020
Learning a language and its irregularities can be a real frustration, but some languages make this harder than others. Hungarian, Finnish, and Turkish feature so-called vowel-harmony, where the vowels near each other change regularly depending on the how affixes are attached (and there are a lot). For instance in Hungarian, -nek/-nak are the same dative suffix, but change depending on the vowel in the root word.
város város-nak 'city'
öröm öröm-nek 'joy'
On the opposite conceptual end, Celtic languages have mutations, meaning—as in the chart below—that based off of the surrounding words there is consonant mutation. For example
coeden goeden nghoeden choeden
meaning 'tree' in Welsh are all different forms of the same word, depending on what comes before it, and this process is how words are formed normally.
Celtic Vowel Mutations (imagine: public domain)
2140: Semantically Similar; Etymologically Different: -ment & -wise Oct 24, 2020
A lot of word in English that take the nominalizing ‘-ment’ suffix come from Romance languages, but this is not really related to the adverbial suffix in French ‘-ment’ such as with ‘finale’ + ‘-ment’ for ‘finalement’ (finally), nor its equivalents in other Romance languages like the Spanish ‘-mento’. This comes from the Latin the ablative form of ‘mens’, which means ‘mind’. In effect therefore, it is conceptually and functionally similar to the English ‘-wise’ that mean ‘in the manner of’ like ‘clockwise’, but which comes from a word (‘wise’) meaning ‘mind; manner’. The Latin was a feminine word, and hence the forms of the words to which it affixes are feminine, such as ‘vivement’ (lively) coming from ‘vive’, the feminine form of ‘vif’. The English -ment is also from Latin, but in this case it comes from a completely different word, ‘-mentum’.
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2127: Empathetic vs. Empathic Oct 11, 2020
There are two variants, 'empathetic' and 'empathic' which people use for more or less the same purpose. There are some regional differences certainly, but the more commonly used and the more generally accepted is 'empathic'. Due to the relation with 'sympathetic' however, there has been a gradual rise also of the word 'empathetic', especially in less formal contexts, which would follow a similar pattern ostensibly.
2111: Inconsistency of Prepositions Sep 25, 2020
Prepositions are considered to be in a closed lexical class, which essentially means it's very difficult to create new ones, unlike with nouns and verbs for which new words are created daily. This is because they indicate grammar more than meaning. Indeed, even though some prepositions like 'up', 'down', or 'on' and 'off' which seemingly have a consistent meaning aren't so consistent, such as how different dialects will say either "in line" or "on line" to refer to cueing. Another humorous example can be seen with
"The alarm went off, so I turned it off"*
This is also not to mention that translating prepositions is particularly difficult, because each holds so many varied meanings that the relations are not always one-to-one.
*(technically this is post-positive but they are classes as prepositions)
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1283: Reduplication of Verbs (LITW 4) Jun 15, 2018
The headline "Sessions ‘Hate, Hate, Hates’ Kushner’s Prison Reform Plan, Pardon Push" makes use of what's called emphatic reduplication regarding the word 'hate'. Moreover, because English has very little inflectional morphology, such as the '-s' ending on 3rd person verbs, in the childly question "Do you like him, or do you like like him", it is unclear whether the verb is being doubly conjugated, or indeed has no conjugation, as happens in small clauses. This headline, which uses the verb in the 3rd person, answers this question. Indeed, it shows not only is the verb only conjugated once, but that unlike in phrases like 'fancy-schmancy', with the verb, the original stays at the end, and not the beginning. This is the third part in a new segment called Linguistics in the Wild (LITW), and you can see the rest here.
1279: Non-Human Pronouns: Pirahã Jun 11, 2018
As was discussed during Gender Week, the assigning of gender to nouns usually is just an extension of the words for what determiners and adjectives agree with the words for 'man', 'woman', and possibly other objects, but these often get even more specific. For instance, many languages have specific pronouns and gendered declensions for water and other aquatic things, or commonly food. Pirahã has, essentially, 3 pronouns which translate into English as 'it'; one for animate non-human non-aquatic things, one for animate non-human aquatic things, and one for inanimate things. While grammatical gender tends to be framed in terms of nouns, (and adjectives and determiners), or in verbs Afro-Asiatic languages, the main focus in non-linguist English speakers is pronouns, but looking at other languages, there is an incredible amount of variability.
1277: Affixes on Loan Words: -ous Jun 9, 2018
There are a lot of affixes in English which are able to attach them selves to a lot of words, but some are less productive. For instance, the suffix '-ous' can affix itself to words like 'danger' or 'courage', but this is not always where it will be present. In this situation, it is a suffix, but many if not most of the word where it is found cannot be parsed because those words were adopted wholesale from French (mostly Old French), and Latin, such as 'horrendous', 'enormous', or 'tremendous'.
Make sure also to check out Word Facts' video which came out today with an analysis of the film, Arrival.
1269: Types of Compounds Jun 1, 2018
There are two types of compounds that are found in English. The first are the most common, and also they are the easiest to create on the spot. Synthetic compounds are words made up of the meaning of the sum of their elements, such as 'bookshelf' which is a shelf for books, or even German's famous rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz which is just a string of nouns (beef labelling regulation and supervision law). On the other hand, idiomatic compounds are made up of parts which only make sense as a whole, such as 'butterfly'. This is similar to how idiomatic sentences like "it's raining cats and dogs' only make sense when looked at as a whole.