Tag: Particle

Welsh challenge (8)

This post is the 8th instalment of the Welsh leg of my current Celtic challenge. It covers chapter 7 of Colloquial Welsh. For earlier instalments, please see Welsh Archives – Language Miscellany I’ve used bold type below to highlight words affected by mutations, SM  after words that induce soft mutation and SM before words affected…… Continue reading Welsh challenge (8)

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

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

Mainland Southeast Asian languages

Mainland Southeast Asia is home to speakers of around 280 languages spread across 5 families: the Mon-Khmer branch of Austroasiatic (including Vietnamese and Khmer) Sino-Tibetan (including Mandarin and other Sinitic languages, and Burmese and other Tibeto-Burman languages) Tai-Kadai (including Thai and Lao) Hmong-Mien (languages of southwest China) Austronesian (languages spoken mainly in Oceania, but represented…… Continue reading Mainland Southeast Asian languages

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 hadted to do it

My grandson (8 years, 11 months) and his brother (6 years, 6 months) both form the past tense of had to in an unusual and interesting way. They have both been doing this consistently and reasonably often for several months, perhaps as long as a year. I don’t know which one started doing this first,…… Continue reading The hadted to do it

German ‘ohne’ and English ‘without’ as not-with

Does the German word ohne (‘without’) correspond to a single mental concept? A recent paper argues that it does not. Instead, it has 2 components. One component corresponds to what the paper calls the cum concept (English with). The other corresponds to a negation or antonymity concept, which the paper calls anti. The paper also…… Continue reading German ‘ohne’ and English ‘without’ as not-with

Back to Earth

On the radio this morning, someone was talking about an uncrewed mission that has just collected samples from the asteroid Bennu. The spacecraft bringing the sample came back to Earth in September in the Utah desert. Nasa is distributing fragments to researchers across the world, including the UK. The interviewer started to say ‘bring the…… Continue reading Back to Earth

Surprised by genitive -s in Swedish

Swedish uses a morpheme -s to form genitive noun phrases and, surprisingly, uses it in much the same as English. This post looks at how this works. Much of the discussion here comes from Börjars (1998). Genitive form of unmodified nouns Like English, Swedish creates a genitive form of nouns by adding -s to the…… Continue reading Surprised by genitive -s in Swedish