There are 2 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: LLL idea
From: David McCann
2a. Re: Through the Language Glass - A Conlanger's Review
From: David McCann
Messages
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1a. Re: LLL idea
Posted by: "David McCann" da...@polymathy.plus.com
Date: Sat Oct 23, 2010 4:54 am ((PDT))
On Fri, 2010-10-22 at 19:28 +0200, Lars Finsen wrote:
> Den 22. okt. 2010 kl. 18.11 skreiv Jörg Rhiemeier:
> >
> > The sound change of the type /sp/ > /b/ looks unlikely to me;
>
> Why? You only need two steps: /sp/ > /p/ > /b/
There's no motivation for /p/ > /b/ initially, where there's nothing
preceding the /p/ to cause it to voice; voiceless stops are the "default
consonants".
Messages in this topic (14)
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2a. Re: Through the Language Glass - A Conlanger's Review
Posted by: "David McCann" da...@polymathy.plus.com
Date: Sat Oct 23, 2010 5:26 am ((PDT))
On Fri, 2010-10-22 at 12:45 -0400, Jim Henry wrote:
> In what grammatical category do "he", "she", and "it" differ, then?
> They're the same in person, case, and number, and the difference
> between them doesn't look like definiteness or any other category
> usually associated with nouns/pronouns. Some linguists (I think I
> first saw this in John Lyons, but I can't find the reference now)
> consider gender in English a crypto-category, requiring pronoun
> agreement but not adjective agreement and rarely marked on the noun
> itself. But I gather that's a minority usage, given how few of the
> Ghits for "crypto-category" have to do with linguistics rather than
> crypography.
They differ in gender, and agree with the noun to which they refer.
There's nothing odd about English here; it only looks odd compared to
other European languages in that a noun's gender is almost always
semantically determined. "Bull" is masculine, "cow" is feminine, "table"
is neuter, "conglanger" varies. As I said previously, Dravidian
languages are much the same, except that non-sentients are neuter. Pure
semantic assignment can also be found in Africa and Australia. There are
also a few other languages resembling English in only showing agreement
in pronouns, such as Zande.
There have been a few linguists who don't consider pronominal anaphora
to be agreement, but they don't have any convincing arguments. In
languages where several classes show agreement, it's a bit odd to say
that the choice between, say, "él" and "ella" represents a different
phenomenon to that between "hermoso" and "hermosa", when the same rules
are used.
Messages in this topic (12)
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