(L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here [2010-2019]

[Adarain]

At least all the signs that do not have diacritics. IPA is a phonetics phonology bastard after all.

Except ɱ

[Sumelic]

Does anyone know what are all the sounds in the IPA which are only known to be contrastive in one language?

At least all the signs that do not have diacritics. IPA is a phonetics phonology bastard after all.

Except ɱ

All4Ɇn said "only known to be contrastive in one language"; I think this means something different from "known to be contrastive in at least one language."

There actually is one IPA letter that is generally only used for one language, [ɧ] (the Swedish "sj") but its place of articulation is apparently debatable.

You can see more candidates in the answer to this Quora question: What unique sounds or letters exist only in one language?

[KaiTheHomoSapien]

One that I know (and that I don't see on the Quora page) is the voiceless bidental fricative. It seems to only occur in one dialect of Adyghe:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless ... _fricative

This is a sound that I've used in my conlanging since I was a kid, never knowing what it was called or if it was even a recognized sound.

[Dezinaa]

Are there any natlangs that have separate third person singular and/or plural pronouns for different distances from the speaker? Kind of like how proximal, medial, distal, etc. determiners work, except for pronouns.

[Iyionaku]

Sure, this is not even uncommon. Many languages don't have separate 3PS pronouns and exclusively use demonstratives instead. For example, Basque (Saltarelli et al. 1988: 213) uses the demonstratives hau (proximal), hori (medial) and hura (distal) as 3SG pronouns.

[KaiTheHomoSapien]

Why do the British pronounce the word lieutenant as "leftenant"? Is it the same type of sound change that occurred in the modern Greek diphthongs with u? Seems like an unusual sound change in English, but maybe I'm just blanking on other examples...

[zyma]

Wait, what? I've heard [lɛfˈtɛnənt] before, but I just assumed it was its own separate word, spelled "leftenant", and was a rank in the British military equivalent to or in addition to the rank of "lieutenant". But it's how some dialects of English pronounce "lieutenant"? That's really interesting. I'd very much like to know the story behind this, too.

[gestaltist]

Wait, what? I've heard [lɛfˈtɛnənt] before, but I just assumed it was its own separate word, spelled "leftenant", and was a rank in the British military equivalent to or in addition to the rank of "lieutenant". But it's how some dialects of English pronounce "lieutenant"? That's really interesting. I'd very much like to know the story behind this, too.

Not dialects - it's the standard British pronunciation of the word. But I don't know the story behind it.

[elemtilas]

Why do the British pronounce the word lieutenant as "leftenant"? Is it the same type of sound change that occurred in the modern Greek diphthongs with u? Seems like an unusual sound change in English, but maybe I'm just blanking on other examples...

The -f- pronunciation is very old in England, and there are old spellings that reflect it. OED indicates it's something of a mystery. The chain of descent from Old French and Latin is pretty clear. Just one of those oddities of language.

Wait, what? I've heard [lɛfˈtɛnənt] before, but I just assumed it was its own separate word, spelled "leftenant", and was a rank in the British military equivalent to or in addition to the rank of "lieutenant". But it's how some dialects of English pronounce "lieutenant"? That's really interesting. I'd very much like to know the story behind this, too.

"The story" is all over the map.

[zyma]

Wait, what? I've heard [lɛfˈtɛnənt] before, but I just assumed it was its own separate word, spelled "leftenant", and was a rank in the British military equivalent to or in addition to the rank of "lieutenant". But it's how some dialects of English pronounce "lieutenant"? That's really interesting. I'd very much like to know the story behind this, too.

Not dialects - it's the standard British pronunciation of the word. But I don't know the story behind it.

I'm not going to lie, your response here legitimately baffled me for a good minute or so. Maybe it's because it's so early here and I just woke up, but I had no idea what to make of it until I realized that we're probably working with different understandings of the word "dialect". For me, standardization doesn't make a variety of a language any less of a "dialect". Received Pronunciation and General American are still "dialects" in my mind.

"The story" is all over the map.

Thanks for the link… I couldn't get very far down the page, though. Personally I just can't stand statements in the vein of "you Americans don't know how to speak the language properly" or "the British just say some things wrong".

[Creyeditor]

From the link you gave I like the explanation based on [w]->[v]->[f]. So let's say old French <leu>, was pronounced [lew] or Middle French <lieu> was something like [ljew]. In Germane the same syllable because [loi] in the word <Leutnant>, which is perfectly regular, if we assume that it was pronounced [lew]. I suspect that the word was borrowed about the time English lost it's productive pattern of syllable final devoicing (alternatively you can call it voicing assimilation in this case). So maybe two forms were borrowed, one with syllable final devoicing [lef] and one without it. The one with final devoicing would then be an earlier loan than the one without.

[KaiTheHomoSapien]

Thanks for the link… I couldn't get very far down the page, though. Personally I just can't stand statements in the vein of "you Americans don't know how to speak the language properly" or "the British just say some things wrong".

Yeah I saw that page too when I initially Googled this and was cringing at some of the comments. Linguistic rubes, the lot of them ;)

Thanks for your answers, guys. I had never noticed this pronunciation until last night when I was sick in bed, binge-watching Agatha Christie's Poirot and there was a character named Lieutenant Race, whom the other characters were all addressing as /lɛf'tɛnənt/. I had never heard such a thing, but I immediately thought of the Greek diphthongs. It's interesting that this pronunciation is a bit shrouded in mystery though

[LinguoFranco]

In English, the general rule for making a verb past tense is adding -ed to the end of the verb. However, Spanish has various suffixes for marking past tense, for each person and number and whether the verb is preterite or imperfect. Why did these evolve differently?

[qwed117]

In English, the general rule for making a verb past tense is adding -ed to the end of the verb. However, Spanish has various suffixes for marking past tense, for each person and number and whether the verb is preterite or imperfect. Why did these evolve differently?

Spanish's different suffixes come from Latin, while English's tenses come from Old English. Part of the reason the two developed differently is that English became extremely "analytic", meaning that morphemes hold less information. If you're asking why English became analytic, there really isn't any surefire answer. All I could find were Quora commentators

* As Oleg says, frequent contact with other languages and wide speech.(but this doesn't explain why Hungarian and Finnish, both in contact with the Indo-European neighbors on all sides, continue to become LESS analytic. Also doesn't explain why Arabic and Russian, both widely spoken outside their core countries, are still quite synthetic!)
* Erosion of simple case-endings and verb gender/number conjugation endings over time and with changes in accent rules. (But why do cases not get added as well?)
* Semantic overlap between cases sometimes leads to the cases merging over time. This is true for all languages so it really doesn't explain why just the Indo-European ones are doing it either.

The actual answers to this one are still in question. Anyone with a good suggestion, please let me know, since it's my current dissertation topic.

Follow-up: I am currently leaning toward change in accent/stress rules being the root of the change.

[GrandPiano]

In English, the general rule for making a verb past tense is adding -ed to the end of the verb. However, Spanish has various suffixes for marking past tense, for each person and number and whether the verb is preterite or imperfect. Why did these evolve differently?

Spanish has different preterite and imperfect endings for different persons and numbers for the same reason that the other tenses and moods have different endings depending on the person and number. This is an inherited feature that goes back to PIE (although PIE also had a dual number with its own set of endings). English has slowly lost this feature over time, and now the only remnants are the -(e)s ending for 3SG.PRS.IND and was/were. However, Old English had different verb forms for 1SG, 2SG, 3SG, and PL in both the non-past and past indicative, and separate singular and plural endings in the non-past and past subjunctive; Proto-Germanic made all of the person and number distinctions PIE did except that it lacked a 3rd-person dual (going based on Wiktionary). As for how PIE ended up with these different endings, based on similarities in the endings between different tenses (e.g. -o/-as/-a/-amos/-áis/-an vs. -aba/-abas/-aba/-ábamos/-abais/-aban), my guess is that the TAM endings and the person/number endings were originally separate suffixes were eventually merged.

The fact that there are different endings for the preterite and imperfect is simply a result of the fact that Spanish (along with most Romance languages) distinguishes between the preterite and imperfect and treats them as completely different tenses; thus, just as there are different verb endings for the present and future, there are different verb endings for the preterite and imperfect. This is an inherited feature from Latin, which made the same distinction (in fact, the Spanish system is actually a simplification of the Latin one, which also had endings for the future perfect and past perfect). I'm not entirely sure how Latin ended up with this distinction, however, since, at least according to Wiktionary, PIE only distinguished between the present and the past.

I guess that'll be my quick question: Where did Latin get all of its verb tense endings from when PIE apparently only had a present and past? Were any of Latin's verb endings inherited from the PIE past indicative, which I'm having trouble matching up with the Latin perfect, imperfect, or pluperfect, or did the PIE past indicative not survive into Latin? Also, did PIE verbs have an infinitive form? If not, where did the Latin and Germanic infinitive come from?

OK, that was more than one question, and they might not be quick.

[qwed117]

In English, the general rule for making a verb past tense is adding -ed to the end of the verb. However, Spanish has various suffixes for marking past tense, for each person and number and whether the verb is preterite or imperfect. Why did these evolve differently?

Spanish has different preterite and imperfect endings for different persons and numbers for the same reason that the other tenses and moods have different endings depending on the person and number. This is an inherited feature that goes back to PIE (although PIE also had a dual number with its own set of endings). English has slowly lost this feature over time, and now the only remnants are the -(e)s ending for 3SG.PRS.IND and was/were. However, Old English had different verb forms for 1SG, 2SG, 3SG, and PL in both the non-past and past indicative, and separate singular and plural endings in the non-past and past subjunctive; Proto-Germanic made all of the person and number distinctions PIE did except that it lacked a 3rd-person dual (going based on Wiktionary). As for how PIE ended up with these different endings, based on similarities in the endings between different tenses (e.g. -o/-as/-a/-amos/-áis/-an vs. -aba/-abas/-aba/-ábamos/-abais/-aban), my guess is that the TAM endings and the person/number endings were originally separate suffixes were eventually merged.

The fact that there are different endings for the preterite and imperfect is simply a result of the fact that Spanish (along with most Romance languages) distinguishes between the preterite and imperfect and treats them as completely different tenses; thus, just as there are different verb endings for the present and future, there are different verb endings for the preterite and imperfect. This is an inherited feature from Latin, which made the same distinction (in fact, the Spanish system is actually a simplification of the Latin one, which also had endings for the future perfect and past perfect). I'm not entirely sure how Latin ended up with this distinction, however, since, at least according to Wiktionary, PIE only distinguished between the present and the past.

I guess that'll be my quick question: Where did Latin get all of its verb tense endings from when PIE apparently only had a present and past? Were any of Latin's verb endings inherited from the PIE past indicative, which I'm having trouble matching up with the Latin perfect, imperfect, or pluperfect, or did the PIE past indicative not survive into Latin? Also, did PIE verbs have an infinitive form? If not, where did the Latin and Germanic infinitive come from?

OK, that was more than one question, and they might not be quick.

Didn't PIE have three aspects in the past (simple, aorist, preterite)? Maybe some of Latin's tenses are derivative of them?

[GrandPiano]

Wiktionary's PIE conjugation tables only list the present indicative, past indicative, imperative, subjunctive, and optative... It's possible that Wiktionary's tables are inaccurate or incomplete, though.

[qwed117]

Wiktionary's PIE conjugation tables only list the present indicative, past indicative, imperative, subjunctive, and optative... It's possible that Wiktionary's tables are inaccurate or incomplete, though.

I think WP merely looks upon the stative/eventive conjugations as affixes added to the root. At least, that's the feeling I get from going through the verbal morphology page

[KaiTheHomoSapien]

I guess that'll be my quick question: Where did Latin get all of its verb tense endings from when PIE apparently only had a present and past? Were any of Latin's verb endings inherited from the PIE past indicative, which I'm having trouble matching up with the Latin perfect, imperfect, or pluperfect, or did the PIE past indicative not survive into Latin? Also, did PIE verbs have an infinitive form? If not, where did the Latin and Germanic infinitive come from?

OK, that was more than one question, and they might not be quick.

This is what I know:

Latin inherited its present from PIE (the subjunctive comes from the PIE optative). Some Latin future forms are inherited from the PIE subjunctive (which was often used as a future); others are innovations (i.e. the -bo, -bis, -bit future). Latin innovated the imperfect, pluperfect, and future perfect (PIE had an imperfect, but Latin did not inherit the forms). And the perfect is inherited from both PIE aorist and PIE perfect. The PIE perfect can be seen in Latin reduplicated perfects, the aorist can be seen in perfects formed with -s-.

When you say "PIE past indicative", what do you mean? Aorist or imperfect? Both were past indicative forms (and could exist in other moods); the aorist was perfective aspect and the imperfect was imperfective aspect, so thus PIE had two aspects in the past. The perfect was probably a stative and not really "past"; it wasn't associated with any tense.

All the daughter languages form infinitives in such unique ways that it's hard to trace an original PIE infinitive; they all come from various verbal noun forms that seem to be innovated in each branch. I don't know the origin of Latin's -se (-re) infinitive, though, but it's not inherited from PIE.

Sorry this is kind of all over the place. Hope this helps a little :)

[GrandPiano]

Latin inherited its present from PIE (the subjunctive comes from the PIE optative). Some Latin future forms are inherited from the PIE subjunctive (which was often used as a future); others are innovations (i.e. the -bo, -bis, -bit future). Latin innovated the imperfect, pluperfect, and future perfect (PIE had an imperfect, but Latin did not inherit the forms). And the perfect is inherited from both PIE aorist and PIE perfect. The PIE perfect can be seen in Latin reduplicated perfects, the aorist can be seen in perfects formed with -s-.

Interesting. Is it known how Latin's innovative verb forms were derived?

When you say "PIE past indicative", what do you mean? Aorist or imperfect? Both were past indicative forms (and could exist in other moods); the aorist was perfective aspect and the imperfect was imperfective aspect, so thus PIE had two aspects in the past. The perfect was probably a stative and not really "past"; it wasn't associated with any tense.

I was going off of Wiktionary's conjugation tables, but like I said before, they could easily be inaccurate or incomplete. Do you know of a better resource for PIE verbs and their conjugations?