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

[eldin raigmore]

… 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. ....

Not to dispute anything you said, but, some words in English are "arbitrary coinage".
If this story were true (and maybe it is? but it seems doubtful), then "quiz" would be such an arbitrary coinage.
That's even more "just pop out of nowhere" than onomatopoeia, IMO.
Googling "arbitrary coinage" gives hits on, among others,
"rabulous"
"flabbergast"
"sylph"
"jillion"
"pyrex"
"idaho"
"zillion"
"zilch"

I don't know whether or not some of those are spurious, but I doubt they all are.

"zit", OTOH, is of unknown origin; that doesn't mean it doesn't have an origin, though perhaps it is an arbitrary coinage.

"zillion" and "jillion" rhyme with "million" and "billion", so they might be considered only partly arbitrary; depending on the considerer.

Googling on the etymology of "google" gives a story in which it was derived from the number-word "googol" which means 10^100 (and from which the related word "googolplex", meaning 10^(10^100), is also derived).
"Googol", OTOH, was, according to its first user (Edward Kasner), coined by Kasner's 8-or-9-year-old nephew.

See frindle for another example.

Another; "hexadecimal" was invented by IBM because they were shy about saying the at-that-time-more-correct "sexadecimal".

And there's "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious".

And so on.

[hr][/hr]

If you only want to include those which have been treated as roots and/or from which other words have been back-formed, or derived, or inflected, the number may be noticeably smaller in English; but it must include "quiz" and "flabbergast" and "sylph", and possibly "google".
(It almost certainly includes no substring of "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious".)

Some words in some natlangs' real lexicons, are invented the same way words in conlangs are.

[tezcatlip0ca]

Another; "hexadecimal" was invented by IBM because they were shy about saying the at-that-time-more-correct "sexadecimal".

Wouldn't the pedantically correct form be sedecimal anyway?

[HinGambleGoth]

There is an interesting phenomenon in where, unlike in or , /r/ is vocalized in onset and not in coda

so, rätt is /wɛt:/ but här is /hæ:r/.

this is similar to the phenomenon in where onset /r/ is uvular but alveolar in coda.

What would you call it? reverse-non-rhoticity?

[gach]

"zillion" and "jillion" rhyme with "million" and "billion", so they might be considered only partly arbitrary; depending on the considerer.

Ah yes, expressive analogy. A school friend of mine used to use kiljoona ("killion") for the same meaning of an arbitrary large number. I should test some day how English speakers react to that out of the blue.

[GrandPiano]

And there's "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious".

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious can be broken up into morphemes(?), though. According to Wikipedia:

The roots of the word have been defined as follows: super- "above", cali- "beauty", fragilistic- "delicate", expiali- "to atone", and -docious "educable", with the sum of these parts signifying roughly "Atoning for educability through delicate beauty." According to the film, it is defined as "something to say when you have nothing to say".

[Prinsessa]

Looks more like two words (adjectives) IMO.

Supercalifragilistic, expialidocious.

I can't spontaneously think of any compound adjective where one of the components ends in -ic so it sounds weird for me to consider this one word.

[Dormouse559]

I've always thought of it as one word, for one reason or another. You obviously never hear "supercalifragilistic" unless "expialidocious" comes after, so that might have something to with it. I don't take etymological analyses of it seriously. I mean, the creators chose real morphemes to make this word, but I think more for the sound or generally positive meaning of them rather than for a specific message.

[eldin raigmore]

Another; "hexadecimal" was invented by IBM because they were shy about saying the at-that-time-more-correct "sexadecimal".

Wouldn't the pedantically correct form be sedecimal anyway?

I don't know; maybe so. But the IBMer who told me what I told you said "they"(?) were avoiding "sexadecimal", so some of "them" must have thought "sexadecimal" would have been correct.
I've been in company meetings before when the first attendant to tell Zebigbos what something meant carried the day even if someone less quick to speak up had something more correct. So maybe someone in IBM thought "sedecimal" would have been better; but if so, never said so, or at least never convinced the majority.
Or maybe the whole story is apocryphal; I wasn't there, it's hearsay coming from me.

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tezcatlip0ca

The Aztec god of spirituous liquors?

[GrandPiano]

Apparently, the word "grinch" in the sense of "a person or thing that spoils or dampens the pleasure of others" comes from the Grinch in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and Dr. Seuss seems to have made up the Grinch's name without basing it on any other words, so that might be another example.

[alynnidalar]

"Cromulent" rather famously is from an episode of the Simpsons.

"Embiggen" was used in the episode as well, but that's clearly derived from "big" so it's not that arbitrary.

[pittmirg]

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

Could happen in a setting that includes a vehicular language used for trade, imo; then I think it probable that minor languages would borrow stuff related to the act of purchase in order to facilitate transactions, maybe even an adposition or affix. It could have a broader meaning in the source language, only being narrowed down in the process of borrowing. Think of internationalisms such as 'bank', 'credit', 'debit', 'cheque', 'account', 'in bianco' &c.

[Prinsessa]

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

Could happen in a setting that includes a vehicular language used for trade, imo; then I think it probable that minor languages would borrow stuff related to the act of purchase in order to facilitate transactions, maybe even an adposition or affix. It could have a broader meaning in the source language, only being narrowed down in the process of borrowing. Think of internationalisms such as 'bank', 'credit', 'debit', 'cheque', 'account', 'in bianco' &c.

I guess even closer is how some languages have loaned "à" from French (Swedish "5 ting à 10 kr"; "five things at 10 SEK each").

[GrandPiano]

I recently noticed that I sometimes pronounce words like "submitted" as [sb̩ˈmɪɾəd], with a syllabic . Are there any languages that have consistently syllabic voiced stops that can occur in any syllable (not just unstressed syllables)?

[eldin raigmore]

I recently noticed that I sometimes pronounce words like "submitted" as [sb̩ˈmɪɾəd], with a syllabic . Are there any languages that have consistently syllabic voiced stops that can occur in any syllable (not just unstressed syllables)?

I don't know of any.
According to what I've read, syllabic consonants are (almost?) never in stressed syllables; it's very unlikely any natlang has them consistently in stressed syllables.
(Most) Syllabic consonants (and consonantal syllables) are diachronically short-lived.

Edit: "diachronically short" is probably between a large fraction of and a small multiple of the lifespan of a single language.

And syllables with consonants for nuclei rarely have more than one other consonant. They may be just the nuclear consonant; or the nucleus plus a one-consonant onset; or the nuclues nucleus plus a one-consonant coda. But they rarely, if ever, have both an onset and a coda; or an onset-cluster; or a coda-cluster.

The syllabic /b̩/ in [sb̩ˈmɪɾəd] is a good example; as is the consonantal syllable [sb̩].

The more sonorant a consonant is, the likelier it is to appear as the nucleus of a consonantal syllable.
Semivowels are probably an exception, because if a "semivowel" is the nucleus of a syllable, it's likely to be re-analyzed as a vowel.
But liquids like /l/ and /r/ and nasals like /m/ and /n/ are quite commonly nuclear in English, for instance.
If a word contains a simple unstressed syllable ending or beginning with one of those consonants, its vowel is likely to get reduced from a schwa to nothing-at-all, leaving that syllable with a consonantal nucleus.
Voiced fricatives like /z/ and /v/ and /ð/ are probably next-most-common nuclear consonants in English (that's my guess -- no citation to back it up). The same mechanism applies; a simple syllable, whose margins aren't clusters (it may not have both margins), has a voiced fricative as either onset or coda, and it's unstressed, and its vowel has already been reduced to a schwa; the next step is to elide the vowel entirely.

I'm not sure that doesn't also happen to voiceless fricatives. If so, how do you know you're saying [sb̩] instead of [s̩b]?

Edit: I don't doubt there's a perfectly valid answer; but I am honestly curious what it is. It's probably obvious, except not to me.

[GrandPiano]

According to what I've read, syllabic consonants are (almost?) never in stressed syllables; it's very unlikely any natlang has them consistently in stressed syllables.
Syllabic consonants (and consonantal syllables) are diachronically short-lived.
And syllables with consonants for nuclei rarely have more than one other consonant. They may be just the nuclear consonant; or the nucleus plus a one-consonant onset; or the nuclues plus a one-consonant coda. But they rarely, if ever, have both an onset and a coda; or an onset-cluster; or a coda-cluster.

Some Slavic languages seem to allow this. For example, Czech has words like krk [kr̩k] "neck" and Slovak has words like vŕba [ˈvr̩ːba] "willow". Also, many varieties of Mandarin have syllabic fricatives (e.g. 是 [ʂʐ̩˥˩] "to be") and Cantonese has syllabic nasals (e.g. 五 [ŋ̩˨˩] "five"), but neither of them are usually analyzed as having phonemic stress.

[HoskhMatriarch]

I recently noticed that I sometimes pronounce words like "submitted" as [sb̩ˈmɪɾəd], with a syllabic . Are there any languages that have consistently syllabic voiced stops that can occur in any syllable (not just unstressed syllables)?

I don't know of any.
According to what I've read, syllabic consonants are (almost?) never in stressed syllables; it's very unlikely any natlang has them consistently in stressed syllables.
Syllabic consonants (and consonantal syllables) are diachronically short-lived.
And syllables with consonants for nuclei rarely have more than one other consonant. They may be just the nuclear consonant; or the nucleus plus a one-consonant onset; or the nuclues plus a one-consonant coda. But they rarely, if ever, have both an onset and a coda; or an onset-cluster; or a coda-cluster.

The syllabic /b̩/ in [sb̩ˈmɪɾəd] is a good example; as is the consonantal syllable [sb̩].

The more sonorant a consonant is, the likelier it is to appear as the nucleus of a consonantal syllable.
Semivowels are probably an exception, because if a "semivowel" is the nucleus of a syllable, it's likely to be re-analyzed as a vowel.
But liquids like /l/ and /r/ and nasals like /m/ and /n/ are quite commonly nuclear in English, for instance.
If a word contains a simple unstressed syllable ending or beginning with one of those consonants, its vowel is likely to get reduced from a schwa to nothing-at-all, leaving that syllable with a consonantal nucleus.
Voiced fricatives like /z/ and /v/ and /ð/ are probably next-most-common nuclear consonants in English (that's my guess -- no citation to back it up). The same mechanism applies; a simple syllable, whose margins aren't clusters (it may not have both margins), has a voiced fricative as either onset or coda, and it's unstressed, and its vowel has already been reduced to a schwa; the next step is to elide the vowel entirely.

I'm not sure that doesn't also happen to voiceless fricatives. If so, how do you know you're saying [sb̩] instead of [s̩b]?

Well, it's pretty easy to tell which consonant is the nucleus for me. I can't think of any minimal pairs where there are different syllabic consonants but the sounds are the same though. With a syllabic s the word would probably be heard as usbmitted and not submitted (I said it and that's what I heard).

Also, I'm not sure I'd say syllabic consonants are always diachronically short-lived. How else would Nuxálk happen?

[Creyeditor]

I recently noticed that I sometimes pronounce words like "submitted" as [sb̩ˈmɪɾəd], with a syllabic . Are there any languages that have consistently syllabic voiced stops that can occur in any syllable (not just unstressed syllables)?

https://udel.edu/~heinz/classes/2012/86 ... dlaoui.pdfPDF Berber has consistent voiceless syllabic stops, according to this paper.

[Thrice Xandvii]

I recently noticed that I sometimes pronounce words like "submitted" as [sb̩ˈmɪɾəd], with a syllabic . Are there any languages that have consistently syllabic voiced stops that can occur in any syllable (not just unstressed syllables)?

Really? That sounds super weird to me. Where are you from and/or what variety of English do you speak?

My version of that word is pretty close to: [səbˈmɪ.ɾəd]. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say it without some sort of vowel in the first syllable.

[clawgrip]

I think I do something similar. However, I believe there is in fact a schwa, but it's extremely short.

[Lambuzhao]

Yesterday I went to the local annual Lithuanian Mugė. The veal dumplings were incredible, and the kapustai was out of this world.

I met a former boss, in the potato pancake line, of course.

Whenever I see her, she feels compelled to tell me about some obscure piece of Lithuanian culture, history or Mythology. I just happily let it all soak in. With the thoroughness of The Giver, She was telling me about this very very old leader of Lithuania, Vytuvidis, who was the progenitor of the Lithuanian race, with his brother Brutyno (my spelling is based on how I heard her, and from what I understand of Lithuanian orthography). She showed me this picture of what was a 'flag' or banner of sorts. I googled it when I came home, and here it is:

http://www.demonicpedia.com/wp-content/ ... dewuto.jpg
http://www.thechurchofthedivineearth.or ... perkun.gif

Now, it's not the actual McCoy (or even MakVytuvidis) but another author's recollection of it (a monk named Grunau, 16th cent).
But there's some kind of writing....!


Anybody know a little more about this Old Prussian Script? I could not find too much at all. Are there other examples of it?

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BTW, the potato pancakes were supernal, with sour cream and applesauce.
And the mead-tasting was exactly what my rusty sore throat needed.
...and definitely go for the Svyturys Baltijos red- extremely tasteable!

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Lithuanian National Anthem - Lietuva, Tėvyne mūsų
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5FK7UTo0l8

The Anthem against Communist Oppression in Lithuania - marija marija skaisčiausia lelija
(quasi-official alternate National Anthem)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOKOhp1rOcA

A not too shabby cover version by a choir from Argentina
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMadaZXxsm8

http://sd.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk/i/keep ... tuva-2.png