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: Infinitive
Names for some Portuguese tenses differ between Portugal and Brazil
Portuguese grammars in Brazil and in Portugal have different names for some tenses (table 1). Table 1. Names for some Portuguese tenses In PortugalIn BrazilEnglishIndicativo futuroIndicativo future do presentoFuture (indicative)CondicionalIndicativo future do préteritoConditionalConjuntivoSubjuntivoSubjunctiveInfinitivo flexiandoInfinitivo pessoalInflected (or personal) infinitiveInfinitivo não flexiandoInfinitivo impessoalInfinitive The English labels given in the right-hand column are from Willis (1971). Willis (1971)…… Continue reading Names for some Portuguese tenses differ between Portugal and Brazil
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
What is a word?
Ordinary people and linguist talk about words all the time, but it is surprisingly difficult to define what a word is. In a recent open access paper in the journal Word, the linguist Martin Haspelmath has had a go. The paper is Defining the word, Martin Haspelmath (2023), WORD, 69(3), 283–297. https://doi.org/10.1080/00437956.2023.2237272 Proposed definition of word…… Continue reading What is a word?
Borrowing verb forms from another verb
Sometimes, an inflected form of a verb was originally an inflected form of another verb. For example, went, the past tense form of the English verb go was originally the past tense of the now obsolescent verb wend. This phenomenon is called suppletion. One striking example of suppletion occurs in the verb meaning ‘go’ in…… Continue reading Borrowing verb forms from another verb
Keep it concise, but not too concise
Editors often advise writers to keep their texts as concise as possible. That is generally good advice. Concise texts are easier to read and understand, and easier to refer back to. But it is important not to carry that advice too far. If you delete from a text every word that is theoretically dispensable, the…… Continue reading Keep it concise, but not too concise
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
Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian
I have just read a paper describing 16 differences between Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian. The description was in a paper that looked for the border between language varieties separated by each difference. The paper also looked at whether those borders match national borders and how close the varieties are to each other. The authors…… Continue reading Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian
Scandinavian language challenge day 36
Today I worked through chapter 11 of Norwegian in three months, covering: more expressions of timein order to more about ‘det’ verbs of position other words More expressions of time Prepositions: for … siden (ago): for fjorten dager siden (a fortnight ago)om (in, for [yet]):om en ukes tid (in a week)først om tre dager (not for…… Continue reading Scandinavian language challenge day 36
Scandinavian language challenge day 30
Today I worked through chapter 9 of Norwegian in three months, covering: more about conjunctionsmore about word orderconditional that clausesother words More about conjunctions Conjunctions—time: da (when)når (when)idet (As)mens (while) før (before)etterat (after)siden (since)inntil (until) Da expresses what happen once in the past (den gang: da). Når expresses what usually happens, what used to happen or…… Continue reading Scandinavian language challenge day 30