The Italian Language Today, by Anna Laura Lepschy and Giulio Lepschy (2nd edition, 1988) is a useful guide for anyone who has been through a basic to intermediate Italian course. The book has 2 parts: part one The Linguistic Situation in Italy has 4 sections: Italian today; a historical view; Italian dialects; varieties of…… Continue reading The Italian Language Today
Tag: Affix
Suppletive aspectual pairs in Russian
Most Russian verbs are a pair of linked verbs marking one of 2 ‘aspects’: ‘perfective’ or ‘imperfective’. Different aspects are different ways of depicting the event or state described by the verb. Speaking very roughly, the perfective aspect depicts an event or state as a single undivided whole, whereas the imperfective looks inside the event…… Continue reading Suppletive aspectual pairs in Russian
Libfixes
I first read about libfixes on Daniel Hieber’s blog Linguistic Discovery. What is a libfix? A libfix is a part of word that has become a new affix. An English example is -gate which was part of the name of a building (Watergate) which became a label for the scandal that brought down US president…… Continue reading Libfixes
Avoiding dissimulation that would create new similarity even closer
I’ve mentioned before a dissimulation affecting the English suffix -al. A regular dissimilation from Latin – Language Miscellany I’ve recently come across an explanation of a further detail of this process. As I reported before: the derivational English suffix -al forms adjectives from nouns and is related historically to the Latin derivational suffix -alis.…… Continue reading Avoiding dissimulation that would create new similarity even closer
Notes on English inflection
In this post I discuss some features of English inflection: English identifies 6 combinations of person (eg 1st person singular, 3rd person plural) but mostly distinguishes only 2 categories: (a) 3rd person singular versus (b) all others. the most prominent inflectional ending in English is -s, which serves as both:- the 3rd person singular ending…… Continue reading Notes on English inflection
The verb that ran away from its inseparable prefix
German often uses inseparable prefixes on verbs. In almost all cases, these prefixes show up in a position where they are attached to verb. But counterintuitively, an inseparable prefix can occasionally appear without its verbal host appearing at all. This post covers such a case. Separable and inseparable verbal prefixes German makes extensive use of…… Continue reading The verb that ran away from its inseparable prefix
Vowel harmony in case-marked forms of Hungarian personal pronouns
There is an oddity in how Hungarian vowel harmony works with personal pronouns. Many Hungarian suffixes undergo vowel harmony: when a case marker is suffixed to a noun, the suffix undergoes vowel harmony, but when a personal pronoun is suffixed to a case marking prefix, the prefix determines the vowel in the suffix. The same…… Continue reading Vowel harmony in case-marked forms of Hungarian personal pronouns
Albanian verbs that can be transitive or intransitive
Many languages have pairs of verbs (one transitive and one transitive) that are related to each other morphologically. One such pair is Japanese ak-u ‘to open (intransitive)’ and ak-e-ru ‘to open (transitive)’. I’ve written before about a database of such pairs: the World Atlas of Transitivity Pairs (WATP). Some World Atlases about languages – Language…… Continue reading Albanian verbs that can be transitive or intransitive
Some similarities between Russian and German
I was 15 when I started learning Russian at school, after 4 years of learning German. Although there are many differences between German and Russian, my confidence grew early from discovering some similarities between those 2 languages. I discuss some of the similarities briefly below. 1. Cases Both languages have retained complex systems of case…… Continue reading Some similarities between Russian and German
Citation form for English verbs
The form used as the name of a noun or verb is sometimes known as the noun or verb’s citation form. In some Indo-European languages, the citation form for a verb is its infinitive. In many cases, the infinitive has an inflectional suffix, for example French infinitives generally end in -er, -ir, -re or -oir.…… Continue reading Citation form for English verbs