Linguistics Weekly Newsletter - Friday, November 28, 2014

Linguistics newsletter

Top new questions this week: Descendants of Latin vs. Greek? From Latin there descend half a dozen (or more) modern languages. Greek, by contrast, has simply changed over time but without branching into separate languages. Why the difference? Both were spoken ... latin greek   asked by user438 6 votes answered by Midas 4 votes Can you give some examples of counter-intuitive phenomena discovered by linguists? By counter-intuitive I mean, contrary to intuition of native speakers of some language, or contrary to some popular knowledge about languages (apart many cases of folk etymology)? (e. g. "strange" ... philosophy-of-language soft-question   asked by compendiumsprachez 4 votes answered by Dominik Lukes 7 votes What is the most recent example of a language which has split from another and become non-mutually comprehensible? I know linguists like to say "no languages are older or younger than other languages" because they all evolved from ancient roots. With exceptions such as Nicaraguan Sign Language. So let me explain ... historical-linguistics language-change history list-of-languages   asked by hippietrail 4 votes answered by Zyxoas 3 votes Which mutually intelligible language groups are spoken by more than 1 million people in Cameroon? Which mutually intelligible language groups are spoken by more than 1 million people in Cameroon? Wikipedia is not very helpful. the map below is the most useful thing I found thus far, which teaches ... african-languages   asked by Kasper Souren 4 votes Chomsky's Universal grammar and Evolution of human languages I've recently came across Chomsky's universal grammar, and I'm very much wondering about one specific question. I was trying to find references, however didn't find any explanation in the huge amount ... universal-grammar   asked by NicoDean 3 votes answered by XL _at_China 0 votes What's the use of Grammar? There's a question that bothered me for a long time when I am learning another language. English is not my first language, so when I was being taught, they told me all these grammars like like the ... grammar   asked by Clinttt 3 votes answered by oerkelens 12 votes Are there letters or diacritics in the IPA suitable for narrow/phonetic descriptions of the Malay final -h? In Malay there is a syllable-final -h with some unique properties distinct from the "normal" syllable-initial h. But in all the accounts of the language I can only see a single symbol used, the ... phonetics ipa transcription malay   asked by hippietrail 3 votes answered by Yellow Sky 1 vote Greatest hits from previous weeks: The relationship between "orange" the colour and "orange" the fruit This is something that bugged me before I studied linguists, and it still does - why is the word "orange" so often used for both the colour and the fruit cross-linguistically? Every language I've ... etymology semantics cross-linguistic colour-terms   asked by LaurenG 14 votes answered by Alain Pannetier 24 votes Theories on L1 transfer/interference in L2 pronunciation/phonetics/phonology What theories explain the transfer of phonetic and phonological features from the first language to a second or foreign language? How do these theories differ from each other? Such theories should ... phonology phonetics second-lang-acquisition   asked by robert 2 votes Can you answer these? Raising aspectual verb "stop" On this webpage http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/grammar/nonfiniteclauses.html prof.Geoffrey Pullum's explains basic syntactic tests used in distinguishing raised from ordinary subjects/verbs. The ... syntax verbs   asked by Rejlan Givens 1 vote Why might ergativity be correlated with polypersonal agreement? The Wikipedia article on polypersonal agreement states that it "has also been correlated with ergativity." This is certainly true of Basque, the only ergative language I have any familiarity with. ... ergativity polypersonalism   asked by Gregory Higley 1 vote How many different syntax patterns exist in standard English ? My command of the English language is quiet poor, I write by my feeling, and each sentence is just another chain element left behind not knowing how many Errors are within it. The feeling comes close ... syntax english grammar   asked by meireikei 1 vote

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