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

[Prinsessa]

Is there any natlang that has an instrumental case that specifically denotes the means of currency, like paying with a specific thing?

[zyma]

Is there any natlang that has an instrumental case that specifically denotes the means of currency, like paying with a specific thing?

Very sorry to ask, as I'm sure this should be quite obvious, but what do you mean when you ask about an instrumental case that "specifically denotes the means of currency"? I assume you're not looking for a language with an instrumental case that can only be used to talk about money and such things, and nothing else? Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time interpreting the question in a way that I feel is likely to be close to the intended meaning, or in any other way at all. I'm probably too tired at the moment to realize the answer is right in front of me.

[Prinsessa]

Yeah, but it might as well jokingly or seriously be used on any noun that was used for payment.

Like, 'she got dinner sock-CURRENCY_INST' = 'she bought dinner for/using/with a sock', and it could never be ambiguously mistaken for some regular instrumental or comitative or benefactive or w/e.

[Thrice Xandvii]

I've never heard of such a thing, but it doesn't sound completely bonkers (only a little bonkers).

But now I'm really curious what plans you had for such a thing!

[Prinsessa]

Considering some languages seem to have more or less devoted cases to denoting "in (a language)", this doesn't seem too bonkers, no.

No real plans — just curious! It'd be very easy to add to my current conlang considering ATM "cases" are really just weakly stressed verbs and I could easily just use 'pay', so I'm just interested in general.

[Sights]

Does anyone know how languages that distinguish alienable vs. inalienable possession "usually" mark that difference in predicative clauses? Does either type correlate with a specific construction, etc.?

My conlang makes this distinction attributively, and I want to extend it to predicative possession. It seems sensible to me that alienable things use a verb that pretty much behaves like "have", but I don't know what to do for inalienable possession and I was trying to avoid the locational route ('At me is an arm' - 'I have an arm'), which also seemed like the most sensible choice...

[Creyeditor]

Does anyone know how languages that distinguish alienable vs. inalienable possession "usually" mark that difference in predicative clauses? Does either type correlate with a specific construction, etc.?

Do you think you that predicative inalienable constrcutions are that frequent? 'I have a head' or 'I have a mother' does seem somewhat odd to me. I know of at least one language that does not permit such constructions IIRC, which is Hoocąk.

[HoskhMatriarch]

Does anyone know how languages that distinguish alienable vs. inalienable possession "usually" mark that difference in predicative clauses? Does either type correlate with a specific construction, etc.?

My conlang makes this distinction attributively, and I want to extend it to predicative possession. It seems sensible to me that alienable things use a verb that pretty much behaves like "have", but I don't know what to do for inalienable possession and I was trying to avoid the locational route ('At me is an arm' - 'I have an arm'), which also seemed like the most sensible choice...

You could just do "my arm is/exists". That seems the most sensible to me. Or you could have another word for "have", which I've also heard of a language doing.

[Sights]

Does anyone know how languages that distinguish alienable vs. inalienable possession "usually" mark that difference in predicative clauses? Does either type correlate with a specific construction, etc.?

Do you think you that predicative inalienable constrcutions are that frequent? 'I have a head' or 'I have a mother' does seem somewhat odd to me. I know of at least one language that does not permit such constructions IIRC, which is Hoocąk.

Well no, but I'd rather allow them, uncommon as they might be, than forbid them. Also, it might sound less odd for whatever inalienables a language has that are not kin members or body parts.

You could just do "my arm is/exists". That seems the most sensible to me.

I would, but in my conlang existentials and locatives are the same, and given that they are sensible to the spatial proportions of the subject, that would be a bit weird.

Or you could have another word for "have", which I've also heard of a language doing.

Do you by any chance remember which language/languages do that?

[Sumelic]

You could say "I am with an arm." Or you could express the idea with a derived adjective, "I am armed."

WALS lists several other options in the chapter "Predicative Possession."

[Prinsessa]

Does anyone know how languages that distinguish alienable vs. inalienable possession "usually" mark that difference in predicative clauses? Does either type correlate with a specific construction, etc.?

Do you think you that predicative inalienable constrcutions are that frequent? 'I have a head' or 'I have a mother' does seem somewhat odd to me. I know of at least one language that does not permit such constructions IIRC, which is Hoocąk.

But the inverse of those sentences wouldn't necessarily be so weird: "I don't have a mother".

[Ephraim]

Does anyone know how languages that distinguish alienable vs. inalienable possession "usually" mark that difference in predicative clauses? Does either type correlate with a specific construction, etc.?

My conlang makes this distinction attributively, and I want to extend it to predicative possession. It seems sensible to me that alienable things use a verb that pretty much behaves like "have", but I don't know what to do for inalienable possession and I was trying to avoid the locational route ('At me is an arm' - 'I have an arm'), which also seemed like the most sensible choice...

I don't know if there is any statistical correlation between different types of predicative possession and a distinction between alienable and inalienable possession. But there are many ways to do it. You could use different types of possessive constructions for different types of possession, or you could use the same major type of construction but with some difference (different verbs, different cases etc.)

Check out Stassen, Leon (2009) – Predicative Possession if you can find it, it's over 800 pages just about predicative possession.

From page 22 f:
"Likewise, there are languages in which the subdomain of inalienable possession has its own, separate encoding strategy, as can be seen from the b-sentences in the following examples from Trumai, Buli, and Supyire.

(29) trumai (Trumai)
a. Tahu ka-in ha k’ad
knife foc/tns 1sg have
‘I have a knife’ (Guirardello 1999: 217)
b. (inalienable)
Ha adifle ka-in
1sg sister foc-tns
‘I have a sister’ (Guirardello 1999: 216)

(30) Buli (Austronesian, East Indonesian)
a. Kore ni ebai
K. his house
‘Kore has a house’ (Maan 1951: 38)
b. (inalienable)
Mani lalo re faio
bird all with wing.its
‘All birds have wings’ (Maan 1951: 99)

(31) Supyire (Niger-Kordofanian, Gur)
a. Mìì túŋi mpyi ná pwunh-pole è
my father was with dog-male with
‘My father had a male dog’ (Carlson 1990: 249)
b. (inalienable)
Kàntugo na nye u na
back prog be at him
‘He has relatives’ (R. Carlson 1990: 248)"

From a footnote on p. 284:
"According to Freeze (1992), the Locational Possessive in Hindi – marked by the postposition paas/pas ‘proximity, near’, which governs the genitive – is used for alienable possession, whereas the Genitive Possessive mainly encodes inalienable possession.
(i) Hindi (Indo-European, Indic)
a. Larkee-kee paas kuttaa hai
boy-gen near dog be.3sg.m.pres ‘The boy has a dog’ (Freeze 1992: 591)
b. Baccee-kee dããt safeed hãĩ
child-gen teeth white be.3pl.pres ‘The child has white teeth’ (Freeze 1992: 591)"

Does anyone know how languages that distinguish alienable vs. inalienable possession "usually" mark that difference in predicative clauses? Does either type correlate with a specific construction, etc.?

Do you think you that predicative inalienable constrcutions are that frequent? 'I have a head' or 'I have a mother' does seem somewhat odd to me. I know of at least one language that does not permit such constructions IIRC, which is Hoocąk.

They are pretty frequent, actually, just not the examples you picked. "I have a brother", "I have a sister" or "I have a daughter" are common and they would typically be considered inalienable as well. I think the difference is that we expect that everyone has exactly one head and one biological mother (although they may be removed or dead, of course), so there wouldn't be any reason to point this out. But not everyone has siblings or children. Similarly, it's probably not that common to say "I have two eyes", unless someone else have declared that they only have one eye.

I guess some language could make a distinction between "essential possession", i.e. head and biological mothers which you have to have (or have had at some point) to be a human, and "non-essential possession" which could still still be inalienable, like a brother or a sister. Or perhaps you could have "expected possession" vs "non-expected possession". There are apparently natlangs that distinguish inherent and non-inherent possession, which I'm not exactly sure what the difference is but there may be some overlap between "essential possession" and "inherent possession":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possessio ... n-inherent
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yabem_lan ... possession

[Ahzoh]

I'm finding that an overwhelming majority of words in any language are ultimately derived from other words, but are there instances of words that have simply popped out of the blue?

[eldin raigmore]

I'm finding that an overwhelming majority of words in any language are ultimately derived from other words, but are there instances of words that have simply popped out of the blue?

In English, "quiz" is a famous example.

[Ahzoh]

I'm finding that an overwhelming majority of words in any language are ultimately derived from other words, but are there instances of words that have simply popped out of the blue?

In English, "quiz" is a famous example.

Even that word has several proposed etymologies... whether from Latin qui es or an English dialectal verb quiset or from inquisative...

[Avo]

I think we need to distinguish between words whose etymology is not known and words that don't have an etymology in the sense that they're not derived regularly from another root. I doubt there are many words among the world's languages that just popped up and started being used just like that. In English quiz or bad lack a proper etymological explanation, but so do hundreds of words and that doesn't necessarily mean they just appeared out of nowhere.

One thing that comes to my mind that kinda is "words popping out of the blue" is onomatopoeia. The words hiss in English and the German verb with the same meaning, zischen, are both of onomatopoeic origin. Further words were derived from the root zisch- later in German, establishing it as a true root that just turned up in the language at some point.

[Ahzoh]

I think we need to distinguish between words whose etymology is not known and words that don't have an etymology in the sense that they're not derived regularly from another root. I doubt there are many words among the world's languages that just popped up and started being used just like that. In English quiz or bad lack a proper etymological explanation, but so do hundreds of words and that doesn't necessarily mean they just appeared out of nowhere.

One thing that comes to my mind that kinda is "words popping out of the blue" is onomatopoeia. The words hiss in English and the German verb with the same meaning, zischen, are both of onomatopoeic origin. Further words were derived from the root zisch- later in German, establishing it as a true root that just turned up in the language at some point.

Yes, I was certainly making that distinction when I was asking the question. But this leads me to the confusion of how to form words with a newly developed phoneme.

Like if I developed the palatal nasal through palatalization, how am I going to come up with words where the palatal nasal appears before a back vowel or word-finally after a back vowel and all without really any indication of sound changes?

[Sights]

Pretty detailed and helpful post

I'm sure Stassen will come in handy. I'm digging that example from Buli already. Thanks a lot!!

(Thanks to you too, Sumelic, Creyeditor and Hoskh )

[Avo]

I think we need to distinguish between words whose etymology is not known and words that don't have an etymology in the sense that they're not derived regularly from another root. I doubt there are many words among the world's languages that just popped up and started being used just like that. In English quiz or bad lack a proper etymological explanation, but so do hundreds of words and that doesn't necessarily mean they just appeared out of nowhere.

One thing that comes to my mind that kinda is "words popping out of the blue" is onomatopoeia. The words hiss in English and the German verb with the same meaning, zischen, are both of onomatopoeic origin. Further words were derived from the root zisch- later in German, establishing it as a true root that just turned up in the language at some point.

Yes, I was certainly making that distinction when I was asking the question. But this leads me to the confusion of how to form words with a newly developed phoneme.

Like if I developed the palatal nasal through palatalization, how am I going to come up with words where the palatal nasal appears before a back vowel or word-finally after a back vowel and all without really any indication of sound changes?

Analogy is one way. If a word has *n in the proto-language and in the daughterlanguage, this *n appears as either /n/ or /ɲ/ in a given word's paradigm, it wouldn't be too unlikely that one of the two reflexes levels the other one out, disregarding the expected outcome of the sound change that lead to the split of *n.

The other way would be loan words. There are numerous examples for this. In Spanish and German, the phoneme /tʃ/ is very rare in pure inherited vocabulary because it is the outcome of a few highly conditional sound changes. Spanish then got a whole bunch of words with /tʃ/ from indigenous languages of the Americas, German uses /tʃ/ in onomatopoeia and loans from English, among others.
Ossetian developed ejectives in a few words inherited from Indo-Iranian due to unknown conditions. Yet, ejectives are all over the place in the language because of a huge influx of loanwords from surrounding native caucasian languages. Japanese lost it's /p/ in all positions except when it was geminated, but regained it from loanwords. Hopi's four way velar contrast was phonemicized in a similar way if I remember right. And the list goes on and on.

[gach]

One thing that comes to my mind that kinda is "words popping out of the blue" is onomatopoeia. The words hiss in English and the German verb with the same meaning, zischen, are both of onomatopoeic origin. Further words were derived from the root zisch- later in German, establishing it as a true root that just turned up in the language at some point.

Squirt seems like another good English example. And of course, onomatopoeia is a fairly common origin for names of birds. Aside from strictly imitative onomatopoeia, you can also have more abstract sound symbolism at work in the creation of new descriptive words. Both /r/ and /ø/ are quite likely to be found on the first syllables of colloquial Finnish descriptives having somewhat emotionally loaded or negative connotations. Such words include rötvätä ("to lounge", common in army slang) and örveltää ("to rage while drunk"). Even romu and roju (both "junk") may belong to this category* and they are perfectly acceptable parts of the standard language. The same sound symbolism probably also plays a role in how new onomatopoeia widen their use area. Pöhinä (and the root verb pöhistä) probably originally referred just to a huffing noise but these days it has a very fashionable use as "exited activity".

* Both of the words lack known etymologies and the fact that there are two words with the same meaning and differing only by the internal consonant suggests that they are in fact the same word with a level of instability in how it's been standardised. Of course, the initial /r/ can also be given an onomatopoeic explanation by connecting it to the clattering sound you might get from a pile of junk.