This post is the 9th instalment of the Welsh leg of my current Celtic challenge. It covers chapter 8 of Colloquial Welsh. This post covers: prepositions (personal forms, temporary states) compulsion telling the time possessive adjectives with verbal nouns some indefinite pronouns form of auxiliary bod (‘be’) after subject question word For earlier instalments, please…… Continue reading Welsh challenge (9)
Tag: Auxiliary
Welsh challenge (5)
This post is the 5th instalment of the Welsh leg of my current Celtic challenge. It covers chapter 4 of Colloquial Welsh. For earlier instalments, please see Welsh Archives – Language Miscellany Mutation Table 1 provides a reminder of the aspirate and nasal mutations discussed in earlier instalments. Table 1. Aspirate and nasal mutations RadicalAspirateNasalcchnghpphmhtthnhg ngb md n…… Continue reading Welsh challenge (5)
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
The sins of Adam: more on the Italian verb ‘fare’
This post looks at how Italian uses the verb fare (‘do’, ‘make’) in making a verb causative. A short book Fare: Elementi di sintassi, by Nunzio La Fauci and Ignazio M Mirto (2003) analyses that construction in a chapter called Com’è che Eva fece peccare Adamo? (‘How is it that Eva made Adam sin?’) In…… Continue reading The sins of Adam: more on the Italian verb ‘fare’
Selecting the auxiliary for French and Italian anticausatives
In forming the perfect tense, both French and Italian use the auxiliary ‘have’ (Italian avere, French avoir) for most verbs, but the auxiliary ‘be’ (Italian essere, French être) for some verbs. Both languages use ‘have’ for all (non-reflexive) transitive verbs and use ‘be’ for reflexive verbs. For some intransitive verbs, both languages use ‘have’, but…… Continue reading Selecting the auxiliary for French and Italian anticausatives
Greenberg’s list of universals
How much do languages differ and how similar are languages? An early attempt to consider these questions was a conference on language universals held in New York in 1961. Papers based on those prepared for the conference were published in 1963 in Universals of Language, edited by Joseph H Greenberg. (a 2nd, paperback, edition, appeared…… Continue reading Greenberg’s list of universals
The passive. Is it really harder to understand than the active?
People who give advice on good writing often claim that sentences containing verbs in the passive form are harder for listeners and readers to process than sentences containing verbs in an active form. A paper I read recently provides evidence that these claims are overstated. The paper is Processing unambiguous verbal passives in German, by…… Continue reading The passive. Is it really harder to understand than the active?
Future tense and psychological distance
When a verb refers to the future, some languages require explicit marking of that fact. A recent paper presents evidence that companies in countries using those languages are slow in reporting that their goodwill has lost value. The paper suggests that this is because speakers of those languages perceive the future as psychologically more distant…… Continue reading Future tense and psychological distance
Similarities and differences within Scandinavian languages
The Scandinavian languages are similar to each other, but also differ from each other. Here is an example that illustrates nicely some of the similarities and differences. I came across it in The Syntax of Icelandic, Höskuldur Thráinson (2007). Although Höskuldur Thráinson uses the example to make one specific point about word order, I use…… Continue reading Similarities and differences within Scandinavian languages
Language sketch: Danish, Swedish and Norwegian
Here is a summary of some things I learnt about the Mainland Scandinavian languages (Danish, Swedish and Norwegian) a couple of years ago, when I was carrying out a self-imposed language challenge. http://languagemiscellany.com/2021/09/scandinavian-challenge-how-did-it-go/ I am commenting here only on those 3 languages, not their relatives, the insular Scandinavian Languages (Icelandic and Faroese). For an…… Continue reading Language sketch: Danish, Swedish and Norwegian