I was thinking recently about 2 apparently different uses of the word only. I had found myself writing example 1. (1) I’ve had a copy of Teach Yourself Welsh for about 50 years. It was only last year that I discovered that pages 97-144 are missing. I started wondering how that use of only contrasts…… Continue reading Only last year
Tag: Focus
Possessives in Maori
The Maori language (te reo Māori) of New Zealand (Aotearoa) has 2 entire series of possessive particles. In this post, I: summarise the form of the 2 series of possessive particles summarise when each series is used; and point out that other Central Pacific languages also have more than one series of possessive particles, giving…… Continue reading Possessives in Maori
Some things I like about Hungarian
Hungarian differs from most European languages in several ways, partly because it is not a member of the Indo-European family of languages. Hungarian is a member of the Ugric branch of the Uralic language family. https://languagemiscellany.com/2024/01/the-uralic-languages/ This post covers some fascinating features of Hungarian: vowel harmony front and back vowels in deictic words possessive word…… Continue reading Some things I like about Hungarian
Trying too hard to avoid the passive
The US government website plainlanguage.gov gives some useful guidance on plain writing Federal plain language guidelines. Not surprisingly, one section advises using active sentences. https://www.plainlanguage.gov/guidelines/conversational/use-active-voice/ This guidance is good, but it falls into the same trap as much other guidance by similar organisations. Although many writers use the passive voice too much, there are times…… Continue reading Trying too hard to avoid the passive
Saxon Genitive
English has two common ways of expressing possession: the ‘Saxon genitive’ form adds -’s to the end of the last word in a noun phrase referring to the possessor:the king’s wifethe King of England’s wifethe man over there’s wifeFor more on the Saxon Genitive, please see Does English really have case? – Language Miscellany the…… Continue reading Saxon Genitive
Stressful plans to leave
There is a difference in stress between (1) and (2), which use ALL CAPITALS to identify where the stress falls. (1) John has PLANS to leave. (2) John has plans to LEAVE. Edward Gussmann discussed these examples briefly in the Journal of Linguistics (Volume 24, Issue 1, 1988) in his review of The theory of…… Continue reading Stressful plans to leave
The Uralic Languages
According to Kiefer and Laakso (2014), there is a general consensus that there are 6 main branches of Uralic: Ugric: Hungarian (13 million speakers) and, in Western Siberia, the Ob-Ugric languages Khanty (almost 10,000 speakers) and Mansi (probably less than 10,000 speakers) Finnic: Finnish (5 million speakers); Estonian (1 million). Other Finnic languages have many…… Continue reading The Uralic Languages
How many cases are there in Hungarian and Finnish?
The Uralic languages are well known for having a large number of grammatical cases. The two Uralic languages with the most speakers are Hungarian and Finnish. Finnish has 15 cases and Hungarian has between 17 and 27 grammatical cases, depending on how some items are analysed. In contrast, looking only at some examples in languages…… Continue reading How many cases are there in Hungarian and Finnish?
Existential Perfect in Hungarian
Hungarian uses only stress and a change in word order to express a meaning sometimes called the existential perfect. This meaning refers to an event that occurred at least once in the past or will occur at least once in the future. The number of times the event occurred (or will occur) is indefinite). Background:…… Continue reading Existential Perfect in Hungarian