1245: Phonetics of Loan Words May 7, 2018
Spelling is not a motivator for major linguistic change, but does contribute to some phonetic variation. This is clearly evidenced by the fact that English spelling no longer matches up with pronunciation, but neither do are English speakers known for bending over backwards, so to speak, in order to accommodate for the pronunciation of foreign words. For instance, the Catalan word 'paella' is pronounced /pajejə/ in US English (and Spanish and Catalan), whereas in the UK it is produced as [pajelə]; this however does not make speakers in the UK 'wrong', that is unless they try to use it in Spanish or Catalan that way, because words change when they enter another language. This of course also happens both ways, with English loan words changing to accommodate for other languages' phonetic rules or normalities, such as how 'merry christmas' changes in Hawaiian, or how the country 'Kiribati' (pronounced /kiribas/) comes from the name 'Gilberts'.
1244: Lack of Salish Lexical Classes May 6, 2018
Yesterday it was discussed how Salish does not distinguish between nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Salish does have the actual lexical classes—although nothing is impossible—there are not the same contextual limitations like in every other known language. What this means is not that the language relies on guessing, but for instance there is no distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs, every element of those four categories can take verbal suffixes, nominal suffixes etc., and no contexts in which one word from those categories cannot be placed, for examples. This is not true of all dialects of Salish though, as for instance there is evidence to suggest that Klallam Straits Salish distinguishes between verbs and adjectives in the predicate, but this still acts as enough of an argument against Chomsky's notion that all languages have nouns and verbs.
1243: Lexical Limitation May 5, 2018
The word 'back' is an adjective, verb, and noun; this sort of productivity is not possible in all languages, but even English has limitations. The uses of 'back' depend upon linguistic context, and that can be given in merely one other word; to make it a noun, add a determiner (e.g. 'the back'), for a verb, add a determiner phrase (e.g. 'I back [the company]), and for an adjective: a noun (e.g. 'back pain'). However, this means, this means that there are contexts in which back cannot exist. For instance, back cannot follow a preposition like "in back" (though "out back" is a phrase on its own), nor can 'back' be a noun and follow determiner phrase, although this is true throughout all of English and should not be terribly special. One could argue that this is only because word-order is so foundational to English grammar, but languages with more inflection tend to have less of this kind of productivity anyway. There is (at least) one language in which there is no such limitation, Salish, and this will be discussed tomorrow.
1242: Pronouns versus Anaphors in English May 4, 2018
English doesn't have a 4th person for verbs, and indeed most languages don't. However, it is with the 4th person that Greenlandic (Kalaallisut) distinguished between when a third person object of a third person subject (e.g. 'him' in "he loves him") is referential or not. Instead, English uses 'himself' and 'him' to show when one is referential and the other is not. Therefore, any direct object pronoun of a third person subject will refer to another person; in “Brian loves him”, ‘him’ can only refers to someone else, always. Where this gets tricky in English but wouldn't necessarily in Greenlandic is when there are multiple clauses, e.g. "Brian said that she loves him" where 'him' could refer to anyone except for the 'she' in question, because even though 'himself' exists, it cannot appear here *"Brian said that she loves himself". These are rules which any English speaker knows without being aware of necessarily.
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1241: History through Prefixes: 'ver-' / 'far-' / for-' May 3, 2018
Looking at other, related languages' evolutions can offer great insight into their history; indeed, this is why so little is known about Basque, which has no known relatives. However, there is a lot to see with the history of Germanic languages. For instance the prefix 'ver-' in German 'vergessen' ('forget') or Dutch 'verliezen' ('lose'), the English 'for-' as in 'forgive' or indeed 'forget' and even the Yiddish 'ver-'/far-' depending upon how it is written in the Latin script, or '- ווער' when it is written in Assyrian letters, as in 'farklemt' (both emotionally 'depressed' and physically 'pressed') all come from the same origin. The root for all of these had the effect of adding intensive force, semantically speaking, in the same way that 're-' does in 'remember'. Nevertheless, in all four languages 'ver-'/'far-'/for-' gained a negative connotation, and will express renunciation such as in 'forgo', prohibition as in 'forbid', or simply undesirable things like with 'forlorn'. Only looking at this in English [4], it could be thought of as an English phonomenon, but looking across languages we see that this pattern is much older.
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1240: clamber: From a Strong Verb May 2, 2018
In Appalachian English, people do not say 'climbed' and 'had climbed' but will opt instead for 'clamb' and 'clumb'. This word belongs in strong verb class 3, which you can learn about more in the most recent Word Facts video. However, this fact is not just something fun to say at parties, but also helps to understand an etymology which more people are probably familiar with today: clamber. The word 'clamber' is thought to ultimately derive from 'climb', but the reason that the word in question is not 'climber' is that it comes from 'clamb'. "Why did it come from a participle?" you might ask: no one knows; linguistic innovation is not always logical, whether that is in minority dialects or standard forms.
1239: Tense vs. Aspect: 'Do' and 'Have' May 1, 2018
The auxiliary verbs 'have' and 'do' (which is extremely rare outside of a few languages, having been borrowed from Cornish) have similar functions on the surface, but are extremely different. The difference between "I did [verb]" and "I had [verb]" is that while both 'do' and 'have' are often used to indicate past action instead of (or in addition to) conjugating the main verb, they show different grammatical aspects. Simply put, 'do' is for when the action is continuous or perhaps habitual "I did run" which is the imperfect aspect whereas 'have' only refers to that which has (had) an end, "I had run", which is the perfect aspect. This all becomes trickier considering the present tense "I have run" is the present tense but takes place in the past, and "I do run" is clunky; most people opt for simply 'I run' and only use 'do' for the negative form, or for emphasis.
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1238: I Forget/-got What to Call This Apr 30, 2018
It is not uncommon to forget a word at all, but we have some interesting ways of phrasing that; if you want to learn about Tip of the Tongue, check the link. The question today is, what should the tenses be with "I forget/-got what it is/was called". For the same reason that English teachers tend to dislike the use of the past tense in essays, logically it ought to be 'forget' since the act the speaker is describing is, presumably, in the present, and moreover, if what is being forgotten is the name for a proper noun or otherwise something specific, then it still would be called it in the present too. With all that being said, it would stand that the only sensible option would be to say "I forget what it is called", but this is not always the case, in some form or another. One explanation for this is that the speaker will be thinking back to the time of remembering the name for whatever is in question and will use 'was'. Looking at the reasons for 'forgot', this could be as simple as that it is a shorthand for the perfect construction 'have forgotten' to indicate not tense but rather aspect, but this is debatable.
To see some hypothetical Word Facts, visit Patreon.com/wordfacts. Check out the latest Youtube video too: https://youtu.be/T18K38h2ZHc.
1237: Translation Relation (re 'Shuld') Apr 29, 2018
Words have multiple meanings, but unsurprisingly, this leads to the problem of not being able to translate things from one language to another on a one-to-one level. Sometimes, and perhaps even more often, this will be random, but nevertheless there can be the ability to gain some insights about a cultural (or at the very least linguistic) zeitgeist. For instance, the German word for 'debt' is 'Shuld, but that word is also the same for 'guilt' and less commonly though still acceptably 'fault'. Again, this could have also happened in any language, but it could be noted that Germany has a payment surplus and the nation has very little private debt compared to other European countries. See yesterday's post for more on this idea of translation relation.
To see some hypothetical Word Facts, visit Patreon.com/wordfacts. Check out the latest Youtube video too: https://youtu.be/T18K38h2ZHc
1236: Linguistic Similarities Across Languages ('Leichter') Apr 28, 2018
Looking at other languages—particularly Romantic and Germanic ones—offers a great deal of insights about English. Take the German word 'leichter' for instance. In English it would translate as 'lighter', except that while the '-ch-' in German is pronounced with the velar fricative, this is not the case in English anymore; the '-gh-' however used to represent this same sound, before it was assimilated. Not only does it show related (or at least historical) similarity in pronunciation, but also, both 'leichter' and 'lighter' refer to 'light' as in lacking significant weight, and light as in 'easy', and 'leichter' is related to 'beleuchten' which refers to the sense of 'light as brightness'. This semantic similarity shows how words, even across languages and across cultures, may often share connotations due to (somewhat) universal connotations, and likely in this case also due to cultural and linguistic similarities historically.
To see some hypothetical Word Facts, visit Patreon.com/wordfacts. Check out the latest Youtube video too: https://youtu.be/T18K38h2ZHc
1235: (Possibly) Confusing Clauses Apr 27, 2018
English clauses can have multiple verbs for a variety of reasons, but there will not be two finite (that is to say conjugated verbs) together. The possible confusion at first glance is that "what she does is (to) run" is acceptable in English, and clearly has two finite verbs ('does' and 'is') side by side. Moreover the tense marker 'to' is optionally omitted, so it can appear that there are even more. However, there are two different clauses here, one of which is a relative clause "what she does" and the other is a verbal phrase "...is to run", which may be more easily reconstructed all together as "to run is what she does" or even "running...". This topic was a fan-question; if you have your own queeries, do feel free to send a message or write a comment.
To see some hypothetical Word Facts, visit Patreon.com/wordfacts. Check out the latest Youtube video too: https://youtu.be/T18K38h2ZHc
1234: sample and example Apr 26, 2018
There are plenty of words that sound alike but by random chance happens to have a similar phonetic composition as another word with a different meaning and etymology. These such homophones including 'dear' and 'deer' are fun but are not especially insightful. What tends to be more linguistically rich is looking at words that have one origin and have since split. For example, 'example'—as with most words beginning with 'ex-'—comes from Latin 'eximere' meaning 'take out', however, while 'ex-' is often a prefix, it actually does not relate to 'ample, but does have the same root as 'sample'. This diverged from the Old French 'essample' as a noun, however in many ways, 'sample' as a noun can usually be replaced by 'example', though it might sound a little weird.
To see some hypothetical Word Facts, visit Patreon.com/wordfacts. Check out the latest Youtube video too: https://youtu.be/T18K38h2ZHc
1233: Reduction of Relative Clauses Apr 25, 2018
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1232: Are Filler Words Actually Words? Apr 24, 2018
When does a noise or a pause become a word?
Historically, linguists did not consider 'uh' or 'um' to be words because they were not seen to be "intentionally produced", and there is necessarily syntax for them. However, there is a great deal of evidence to suggest otherwise. First, from a logical standpoint, if these filler words were unintentional, there would not be different versions in various languages and various dialects; not only is there a dialectal difference between the more American 'um' with the British 'erm' or 'em', but there is the Chinese 'nage' and 'zhege', or the Japanese 'eto' and 'ano' to name a few. And furthermore, referring back to a post on Word Facts the other day, there are places where these fillers are more likely to appear, meaning that there is some argument for their having a syntactic role as well. Considering that 100 years ago, 'the' and 'a(n)' were considered adjectives rather than being their own class of articles, it is certainly imaginable that one day there will be another lexical class in English. What do you think?
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1231: Passival pt. 3 Apr 23, 2018
There are a lot of ways to use the passive voice in order to deflect blame. For instance, "mistakes were made" does not reveal who made said mistakes. However, a few verbs allow for this hidden agency to be carried across without the passive, per se. 'Broke' for instance in "my pencil broke" is active in the way that it is formed, but it's passive semantically, because pencils cannot break themselves. This is another example of the passival, which is a generally overlooked and fairly rare middle voice in English. Also, it might be interesting to note that while 'broke' and some other verbs can be active, passive, and passival, intransitive verbs cannot even be passive; no one could say "he has been died" nor "she has been slept" because those verbs do not take objects ever, and in this situation, the subject is also the object.
Check out the video that came out today!
1230: When to...Pause Apr 22, 2018
Do people think in terms of individual words, or clauses as they speak?
The answer is that, while of course people think of the actual words, people largely think in terms of clauses. That is why most pauses will happen between clauses, but not between, say, an adjective and a noun. However, while so called 'major-delays' (around a second) may happen between clauses without sounding abnormal, if a speaker used one between words it would sound extremely choppy, and often speakers will paraphrase or go as far as to ramble in order to remain fluent until the end of a clause. So called 'minor-clauses' still do exist between words if the speaker is searching for the word, but again, this will rarely be more than .6 seconds. There will be more about this in the next few days. Stay tuned tomorrow for the next Word Facts videos.
To see some hypothetical Word Facts, visit Patreon.com/wordfacts. Check out the Youtube too: https://youtu.be/Kgg5P7IIzvk
1229: Where Long Vowels (may) Originate Apr 21, 2018
English does not distinguish phonetically between long and short vowels, but plenty of other languages such as Hebrew do. There is still some level of mystery about how long vowels develop, though for that matter, there is no one reason that short vowels should be presumed to be a constant nor a default. One theory as to why Hebrew developed long vowels is that in many words with glottal stops, the glottal stop was lost which left either two of the same vowel next to each other (which is essentially what a long vowel is) or otherwise the first vowel was assimilated into the second (vocalic elision), and this would result in the latter vowel lengthening. For instance, the word שעונים /ʃeʔo'nim/ loses the glottal stop and becomes [ʃoː'nim] (the ː represents a long vowel). This would not explain vowel length for every language, and especially not the middle length in languages like Mixe.
1228: English Right-Hand Rule Apr 20, 2018
There is a reason why negative affixes are going to be prefixes in English is the same reason why derivational affixes such as '-al', '-ness' and '-ate' will be suffixes. English has what is called the "English right-hand rule" which states that usually, the right-most element is the head of the word, and will determine the syntax and or meaning. This is true of most adjectives, compounds where the first element acts almost like an adjective, and affixes. With the latter, negating prefixes such as 'in-', 'un-' and 'non-' all can be attached to adjectives (among other things) and the word will still remain an adjective (or whatever else) whereas the aforementioned suffixes will all make a word of one part of speech become a word of another lexical class. This is the case with most affixes in other Germanic languages as well, though there are a few notable exceptions within each, and is one of many significant reasons why English will not be considered a Romance language despite strong influences from vocabulary.
To see some hypothetical Word Facts, visit Patreon.com/wordfacts. Check out the Youtube too: https://youtu.be/Kgg5P7IIzvk
1227: Why England has so many Dialects Apr 19, 2018
Compared to the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa, the UK has many more dialects. The reason for this is because English has been spoken there for longer, but that has to be interpreted in two different ways. The first is the more obvious: there was more time for the dialects to diverge as any tend to do naturally, and have more or less influences from other languages like Danish, Norman French, and a few Celtic languages. However, the second, and less obvious reason, is that what we think of as English now comes from a variety of different dialect groups, and while they merged to a great extent, it was not complete. Why so many dialects in England often goes all the way back to Old English, and the Northumbrian, Mercian, Kentish, and West Saxon dialect groups that developed into regional dialects of modern UK English. Many of the syntactic features that differentiate the various Northern, Midlands, and Southern dialects today date all the way back to Old English or Middle English.
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1226: Cases are from Verbs Apr 18, 2018
Even though case is reflected on nouns, and sometimes adjectives and determiners, verbs assign case. In all languages—except for one very famous example which will come up here some time this week—verbs can either be transitive (i.e. there can be a direct object) or intransitive (there is no direct object), even if it is a similar meaning. For instance, 'kill' is a transitive verb, and one can say "he killed her" but 'die' is an intransitive verb and no one can say "he died her". In ergative-absolutive languages, these are especially important because they change the case of the "subject" as well. All of these cases are determined by the verbs, and this is still considered to be the case in situations where the verb is omitted.