Linguistics thread

[md0]

Does anybody know how to draw syntax trees in Word?

Don't do that to yourself
If you want a simple way to generate trees, I recommend this web application. (help page)

[aaakknu]

Does anybody know how to draw syntax trees in Word?

Don't do that to yourself
If you want a simple way to generate trees, I recommend this web application. (help page)

Thank you so much!

[IpseDixit]

I was watching a video titled "comparing our cats" and I thought it would feauture some friends owning one cat each, whereas it turns out it's about a couple owning three cats.

So I started wondering whether there is any language that has different possessive adjectives and pronouns to disambiguate the two situations, that's to say a group possessing another group vs. a number of individuals possessing a different thing each. Basically the same difference that there is in English between saying "John and Karl's cats" and "John's and Karl's cats" only with pronouns/adjectives.

Also, does this thing have a technical name?

[vijayjohn]

Oops, meant to respond to this almost a month ago!

Basically the same difference that there is in English between saying "John and Karl's cats" and "John's and Karl's cats" only with pronouns/adjectives.

tl;dr Distributives?

I'm afraid that's probably not the best example of what you're trying to illustrate because both of those phrases can have both readings in English and can be synonymous (I'm not sure whether that's subject to dialect variation). Both can mean either cats that belong only to John + cats that belong only to Karl, or cats that belong to both of them. (They could even refer to a combination that's different from either of these options, e.g. cats that belong only to John + cats he shares with Karl).

It sounds like what you're looking for is distributive pronouns and adjectives, and a better example for the distributive meaning you're trying to express (as I understand it) might be John's cats and Karl's cats. You actually just used a distributive pronoun, each, and it is possible to use it for the sake of disambiguation in English, e.g. the cats that belong to each of John and Karl.

I think you might find this differentiation you were thinking of in a whole bunch of other languages, though.

[dEhiN]

It sounds like what you're looking for is distributive pronouns and adjectives, and a better example for the distributive meaning you're trying to express (as I understand it) might be John's cats and Karl's cats. You actually just used a distributive pronoun, each, and it is possible to use it for the sake of disambiguation in English, e.g. the cats that belong to each of John and Karl.

You could also use "respectively", such as "I bought some food for John and Karl's cats, respectively". To me that sounds grammatical, though I'd be more likely to use "each" instead: I bought some food for John and Karl's cats each. I've even seen sentences where both are used, though to me that's a bit redundant (or emphatic): I bought some food for John and Karl's cats each, respectively.

[vijayjohn]

That is true, but all of those possibilities are odd IMD.

[md0]

I hope you don't see this as spam, but our undergraduate linguistics conference here at my department is back, and this time we have gone international. Our CFP was just released (it should show up on LinguistList soon).
So, if you are (or know) a Bachelors student or recent graduate, and you needed an excuse to visit Cyprus, maybe we can be it

PS. We will immediately follow the 2nd Trans-Disciplinary Approaches to Language Variation workshop, which will bring together a lot of great linguists as plenary speakers, and that will also have a CFP out soon. Registration is free for both conferences.

[dEhiN]

I hope you don't see this as spam

No, your post isn't spam. You're a regular member, so a post like this isn't advertising but more informative (at least that's how I see it).

[md0]

I wasn't sure it fit this thread (not being a question or observation about linguistic issues), and not the Random Thread in the General forum. Glad it's ok!

[aaakknu]

Is there any way to download the book "Arc Pair Grammar" from the internet?

[md0]

This paper is just so good. It's always nice to see research that doesn't stop and call it a day after the first statistically significant result.

Sukenik, N., & Friedmann, N. (2018). ASD Is Not DLI: Individuals With Autism and Individuals With Syntactic DLI Show Similar Performance Level in Syntactic Tasks, but Different Error Patterns. Frontiers in Psychology, 9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00279

fpsyg-09-00279.pdf

[md0]

I am doing some transcriptions of recordings from aphasia patients and it's so fascinating
The first occurrence of a word retrieval deficit gave me chills. The patient could only retrieve the first syllable of the word even after many tries, yet they could fluently comment on their failure to find the word.

[vijayjohn]

I am doing some transcriptions of recordings from aphasia patients and it's so fascinating

This is the sort of thing one of my aunts really wishes (or used to wish) I would do.

[md0]

For the last two years I was not sure if I want to continue with theoretical syntax or with clinical linguistics, but now if I try to imagine what I would like to work on for the several next decades, it's working with impaired populations - research, rehabilitation, and advocacy.
I still enjoy studying syntax, but it's far from where all the action is. Who knew I would end up following the empiricist path

[dEhiN]

For the last two years I was not sure if I want to continue with theoretical syntax or with clinical linguistics, but now if I try to imagine what I would like to work on for the several next decades, it's working with impaired populations - research, rehabilitation, and advocacy.
I still enjoy studying syntax, but it's far from where all the action is. Who knew I would end up following the empiricist path

But you're going to do more than just research or gathering empirical data. You're going to work on social application of the data you gather, which to me is more than an empiricist path.

[Vlürch]

I have a question about some grammatical cases: equative, semblative, comparative and formal. Based on Wikipedia, they just sound like different names for the same thing... but is that really the case (no pun intended), or am I missing something?

[md0]

For the last two years I was not sure if I want to continue with theoretical syntax or with clinical linguistics, but now if I try to imagine what I would like to work on for the several next decades, it's working with impaired populations - research, rehabilitation, and advocacy.
I still enjoy studying syntax, but it's far from where all the action is. Who knew I would end up following the empiricist path

But you're going to do more than just research or gathering empirical data. You're going to work on social application of the data you gather, which to me is more than an empiricist path.

Yeah that's true.
Also, when I am thinking research, I am not thinking Big Data research where you just look at enough data to make any hypothesis work. I still want to start from a rationalist basis. But I guess I have to admit my department has some anti-empiricist bias, maybe it's our version of Catholic guilt

[vijayjohn]

I have a question about some grammatical cases: equative, semblative, comparative and formal. Based on Wikipedia, they just sound like different names for the same thing... but is that really the case (no pun intended), or am I missing something?

That is basically just how terminology works. People who work on minority languages in Russia don't tend to be the same people working on indigenous languages of Australia, etc., so different traditions exist for naming linguistic phenomena that aren't super-common across languages.

This reminds me of how if you wanted to say what would you do if you had a million dollars? in Romance languages vs. German, the equivalent of would you do would(!) be in the conditional mood in Romance languages but in the subjunctive mood in German. (My understanding is that this is because subjunctive means something very different in the context of the Romance languages). Similarly, if you wanted to say I told him a story, then him would be in dative case in a lot of languages but in sociative case in Malayalam. (This is because Malayalam also has a case that is called the dative case but cannot be used in the context of telling someone a story).

EDIT: Which in turn reminds me of the fact that some languages are supposed to have a comitative case and others supposedly have a sociative case.

[Vlürch]

That is basically just how terminology works. People who work on minority languages in Russia don't tend to be the same people working on indigenous languages of Australia, etc., so different traditions exist for naming linguistic phenomena that aren't super-common across languages.

So they're basically the same, more or less? Now I'm wondering if the function of comparative adjectives could be conveyed through a noun case, and whether that would also be called the comparative? Like, "more than a house" or "less than a house" or something. Does any language do anything like that?

This reminds me of how if you wanted to say what would you do if you had a million dollars? in Romance languages vs. German, the equivalent of would you do would(!) be in the conditional mood in Romance languages but in the subjunctive mood in German. (My understanding is that this is because subjunctive means something very different in the context of the Romance languages).

Hmm, clearly I've never been into German enough because all I can think to say is that that's some confusing terminology. I mean, this says it's called "konjunktiv" in German, which apparently exists in English as "conjunctive" as an alternative to "subjunctive"... but I have no idea how the word "conjunctive" describes what it does. Kinda fun that German grammar seems so simple, though, but of course it has its own quirks that'd take years to master.

Similarly, if you wanted to say I told him a story, then him would be in dative case in a lot of languages but in sociative case in Malayalam. (This is because Malayalam also has a case that is called the dative case but cannot be used in the context of telling someone a story).

Interesting. The Dravidian languages are really starting to interest me, heh. Every time you say something cool about Malayalam and its cool features, I get wanderlusts for all of the Dravidian languages at the same time. And hmm, this pdf about Brahui says 10% of its vocabulary is from an unknown origin. That sounds like a lot! I tried to google around for a list of (some of) the words with unknown etymologies but couldn't find anything, unfortunately, because my outer megalumper would be in heaven with a language whose vocabulary consists of so many mystery words, trying to figure out where they could've come from.

...of course I could just try to find a Brahui dictionary and then try to spot the words that don't have cognates in other Dravidian languages and aren't loanwords from Indo-Iranian languages or Arabic, but that's too much work especially since I don't really know anything about any Dravidian language and my Indo-Iranian and Arabic vocabulary is literally just some random Persian and Arabic words, so I'd have to look up pretty much every word in a bunch of different dictionaries. I don't have that kind of dedication or attention span.

Which in turn reminds me of the fact that some languages are supposed to have a comitative case and others supposedly have a sociative case.

I've always thought there'd logically be a fairly clear difference between the two even if there's a lot of overlap, although I'm not sure... something like: sociative is for situations where both the "sociater" and the "sociatee" are experiencers or agents while comitative has no implications beyond togetherness? Eh, I could be totally wrong, and it's not like that kind of a distinction would make much sense anyway, and I don't know if any language even has both.

[dEhiN]

(My understanding is that this is because subjunctive means something very different in the context of the Romance languages)

What does subjunctive mean specifically in the context of Romance languages that is different from Germanic languages (or even just English)? I'm starting to learn about when to use the French subjunctive, but my belief was you do it when you're unsure of something - kind of like a contrast to the indicative mood?

EDIT: Which in turn reminds me of the fact that some languages are supposed to have a comitative case and others supposedly have a sociative case.

I think I've seen both terms used by (different) native Tamilians to describe the same case in Tamil. Though, I have seen more of and I personally use sociative case.