1057: Recursion in Pirahã Oct 31, 2017

Because people can add on new information to a sentence or clauses with adjuncts or subordinate clauses as well as other modifiers, theoretically anyway, a sentence in English could go on forever and there is an infinite number of possible sentences, even though there are a finite number of words. This is the case for very nearly every language, except (at least) one, Pirahã, which is quite famous for being different in a number of ways to most. In addition to having an incredibly small phoneme inventory and not having words for numbers, Pirahã also does not allow for recursion for strings of adjectives into serials like in "large blue soft old (pillow)" nor recursion for possessives like in "my mother's uncle's cat's (toy)". Due to these observations made by Daniel Everett, as well as his conclusion that embedded clauses in this language can only have one level of depth i.e. "he knows about making food" would be acceptable but "he knows how to talk about making food" would require two sentences, he asserted that there are a finite number of sentences in Pirahã.

1056: Garden Path Sentences Oct 30, 2017

Intonation of individual words in a sentence, both in tonal language and non-tonal languages conveys syntactic information that is not present in written texts. Generally, because there are conventional ways to arrange a sentence, including information from word-order or even adjective-order cues, as well as having a knowledge of lexicon, this fact does not hinder readers. Nevertheless, certain sentences, sometimes called "garden path sentences" may appear initially ungrammatical at first but when stressed differently will make sense. One famous example is “fat people eat accumulates” which may be initially read with the phrase 'fat people' instead of thinking of them as two nouns, i.e. 'fat [that] people'. This type of confusion can come from all sorts of factors, but perhaps the most common reason is the use of substantive adjectives or the lack of hyphens in many compounds. It should be noted that this is not the same as syntactic ambiguity, because here the whole phrase only has one acceptable interpretation.

1055: Feminine Endings (IE) Oct 29, 2017

Looking at feminine nouns and given names, and the adjectives and pronouns that agree with them in Indo-European languages, especially in those from Europe, there is an tremendous amount ending in '-a' and '-e', while there is not such a broad trend for masculine or neuter words. The exact pronunciation of which varying slightly from language to language, but usually it is close to [a] or [ǝ]. In Spanish for instance, around 89% of feminine nouns end with '-a', and in given names the number rises to 98%. In Romance languages, this quality comes from the predecessor Latin, for which many feminine nouns and their adjectival and pronominal counterparts ended in '-a', as did many given names, a number of which were originally words anyway. Nevertheless, the trend among other language families such as Germanic or Slavic languages, while less prevalent in nouns, is still quite noticeable in given names. Some of the proper nouns would have ended in '-a' or '-e' naturally, but also some gained the ending from external influences (often Latin), such as the Germanic 'Brunhilde' or 'Hroswitha' which were originally 'Brunhild', and 'Hroswith' before they became Latinized. Around the world, plenty of masculine nouns or traditionally masculine names end in '-a', and this pattern is really just one of certain groups of a specific language family.

1054: Tip of the Tongue Oct 28, 2017

Every person will have experienced the feeling of having a word on the tip of the tongue, so to speak, and not be able to think of something but feeling that it should normally be simple. The name for this phenomenon is, unimaginatively perhaps, "tip of the tongue" (TOT), and though the knowledge of the neurological mechanisms for this need more research and there are several distinct theories about it, the experience of TOT is understood to be fairly universal, with people often remembering certain syllables, certain—usually first—letters, or only remembering words that are similar, either semantically or phonologically. TOT has implications in psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics, but also other fields which relate to memory or (meta)cognition.

1053: Hapax Oct 27, 2017

There are lots of ways to estimate the meaning of words—determining from context, looking to words that appear related, etc.—but sometimes words will only be found once for a certain author or in a certain language. This is called a hapax (legomenon), and it exists for dead languages and living ones, but for different reasons. In dead languages this happens sometimes because there is a limited, often small collection of words that survive, like for Old English with 'uhtceare' which meant ‘lying awake before dawn and worrying’, however, this can also occur in living languages, either by mistake, or when people use a word humorously, such as with 'runcible spoon'. There is no single way which these words' meanings can be determined, and even for words with established definitions, arguments among translators still occur.

1052: Perception of Past and Future in Aymara Oct 26, 2017

There is really nothing present in languages that can be said to be universal. Many ideas, even incredibly general ones like, to paraphrase, "a language will have nouns and verbs" or "a language will have sounds" are based on logical assumptions about the way people think but are then disproven by the existence a feature of even a single language, an idea which will be discussed more in the future. Furthermore, to continue the idea from yesterday about the relationship between motion and time, it is quite common to have words, including English prepositions, conjunctions, adverbs, and some verbs that relate to both forward movement or position and the future, or oppositely backwards movement and the past. Perhaps the clearest examples of this would be the fairly common phrases "look forward to [some future event]" or "put the past behind you". This exists—in some form or another—across numerous languages, but there is one that is quite famous for exhibiting this trend oppositely; in Aymara, a language with many similarities to Quechua, the past is related to forward motion or things otherwise in front of someone, and the opposite is true for the future. Until fairly recently, studies of Aymara were poor or would often view the language through a culturally Spanish lens, but the generally ascribed cultural reason for this is that the future is unknown, and unseeable: therefore as if it were behind someone.

1051: Time and Space in Language Oct 25, 2017

The sorts of connotations that people have with words in a language will inevitably change the way that the words—or derivatives thereof, after enough time—are used. Reviewing etymology, this is quite common as societies change, such as why 'aryan' means what it does today, in many ways opposite to what it used to. There is one relationship, however, that is fairly consistent over millennia, and it is that of space and time. Sometimes that happens for natural reasons, like the joint source of the words 'time' and 'tide', but this happens in grammar as well. For instance, prepositions that relate to space like 'before' (e.g. "kneel before royalty") also relate to time (e.g. "she arrived before him"); sometimes both interpretations are possible without any context, e.g. "he was standing before her". This is common across languages as well, in which—almost always—the future is associated with words that mean "in front of" and the past is accordingly associated with words that mean "behind". Generally this is ascribed to the fact that people usually move forward in space relative to them, while they also, obviously, experience time. Indeed, even the verb 'to go' can indicate motion, but it also conveys the future, e.g. "he is going to go home soon". More will be posted on this topic, and comparisons to this occurrence in other languages in the next few days.

1050: Hypercorrections Oct 24, 2017

Prescriptive grammarians may preach rules for the way in which a language ought to be used, and though this can come from good intentions, on occasion it may lead people to make more mistakes, both prescriptively and descriptively. This is called 'hypercorrection', and it takes many forms. As discussed a few months ago with 'whom' but also with 'me', the fear of misusing a word, or form thereof, can cause people to avoid it and use other terms, such as in this case 'who' or 'I' where prescriptivists would say it does not belong such as in *"he gave it to my friend and I". This also happens too with pluralizations like 'campus' mistakenly pluralized as *'campi'. All of those would be considered wrong by prescriptivists, but other examples, such as *"I informed her of all the things up to which I was" rather than "...I was up to" which attempts to avoid a preposition at the end of a sentence without recognizing the intention of the phrase, would be ungrammatical to anyone. Indeed, "up with this I will not put".

1049: footage Oct 23, 2017

There are many ways that a word might become dated, obsolete, or archaic. It is certainly possible that words will stop being popular without any particular reason, just like how "some pumpkins" used to be used as a synonym for 'impressive' (or as an exclamation) but no longer would be said ordinarily. Other times, technologies, cultures, etc. change and words like 'squiriferous' disappear because they are no longer needed, since people don't need, in this case, squires. Nevertheless, words can survive by taking on new meanings, such as 'footage' did. Like other words for distance, including 'yard', the suffix '-age' can be added to 'foot' to mean "a length measured in feet" but this took on the meaning of "a length of film". Film is much less popular now, but 'footage' has since come to mean the video recording of something, even digitally. It also used to denote a piece-work system for paying workers, but that meaning did not either continue nor adapt.

1048: No Subjects in Ergative Languages Oct 22, 2017

Word-order in English is fairly fixed because it needs to be due to a lack of much inflection that other languages like Latin have. This means that as flexible as the order was in English, classifying Latin as being subject-object-verb (SOV) has more to do with conventions than much else. Nevertheless, Latin had subjects at least which makes this sort of classification possible, but not all languages do. Ergative languages like Basque, Mayan, and even a few Indo-European languages like Gorani do not have subjects; instead what would be the subject of transitive verbs (i.e. ones that take a direct object) is called an 'agent' and behaves differently than the argument of intransitive verbs in that the arguments resemble the object of a transitive verbs. Though this is not the same as distinguishing between nominatives and accusatives, a rough English-equivalent, to alleviate confusion, might look like "she reads it" but "her dies". Classifying these languages as SOV (or any other order) is not suitable therefore. This is also not the same as simply dropping off a subject from utterances like in English.

1047: Syllabic Consonants Oct 21, 2017

Syllables can be fairly complicated, but the procedure for dividing them is fairly objective. In English, a syllable has an optional onset, which is a group of one or more consonants, then a nucleus which is usually—though not necessarily—a vowel (more on that later) followed by the optional coda. For example, in 'hugs' /həgz/, /h/ is the onset, /ə/ is the nucleus, and /gz/ is the coda. There will be a post explaining how this can be determined in the near future. Some consonants however, even in English, can be considered to compose the nucleus and the coda, which together is called the 'rhyme'. The sounds [m], [n], [ɹ], and [l] all can do this, such as in the end of the word 'column' where the pronunciation can be argued to switch from /l/ to /m̩/ (marked with a small diacritic underneath) without a vowel in the middle, though also sometimes it is written with the schwa [ə] in the middle for simplicity. In other words like 'hmm', it is even clearer, because one doesn't even need to open ones mouth. It is for this reason that the verb 'can' in a sentence is often not pronounced with the [æ] (for Americans) but may sound more like /cn̩/, even in words like 'cannot'.

1046: Hurricanes Oct 20, 2017

Every year, a number of natural disasters occur, but unlike earthquakes and other phenomena, hurricanes are given names. This has been done since the mid-20th century with names that would be associated with people, but until the 1950's they were marked by the year and order in which they occurred therein. The reason for this is that unlike earthquakes that occur only in one place for which it can be named, hurricanes move quite large distances. Starting in 1953, the United States began using female names for these storms as it was simpler to remember, and reduced confusion when multiple occur at the same time, as errors when using radio-communications were common. In 1978 and 1979 respectively, both men's and women's names were used for storms in the North Pacific and then the Atlantic basin based off of the names are designated by the World Meteorological Organization. Some names are retired if the storms that are associated with them are so disastrous that it could cause confusion, but also if there is an excess of hurricanes—more than 21 in a season—the World Meteorological Organization can use the Greek alphabet.

1045: -ling Oct 19, 2017

English has many affixes, but it also has number that are only slightly productive like '-th', or not at all like 'con-', but because the sample of words that can take those affixes is rather limited, looking at historical examples still offer a great deal of insight. For instance, the suffix '-ling' as in 'duckling' is diminutive, and can still be added to words like 'deerling' as an alternative to 'faun', but it goes back to Old English, and many words that took that suffix once have changed once it was affixed. 'Gosling' and 'darling' now no longer entirely resemble their respective stems, 'goose' and 'dear', however 'yearling' and 'youngling' do, and they do not have the meanings of "a young year" nor "a young young person (youth)". This is because the suffix was not originally diminutive but is believed to have come from a modification of '-ing' denoting origin, as in 'farthing', a coin which denoted a fourth (of a cent) and which led to words like 'duckling' or 'bearling', but also people, as in 'atheling', a word for Anglo-Saxon princes, which led to 'youngling', 'madling' etc. In this way, while there are only a few dozen words that have '-ling', many of which could be considered unacceptable today, we can still see the effect that it has had on English.

1044: Utterances Oct 18, 2017

It is often taught that every sentence must have a subject and a verb, thanks in part to Aristotle. This is true in English, in passive constructions too, but this does not mean that this is the manner in which English speakers always or even mostly speak. A general set of examples for this that requires little context is with answering questions, such as
Speaker 1: "what do you want?"
Speaker 2: "pizza"
which has no verb and, debatably, no subject, but is still pretty clear. It is also possible to replace phrases like "do you want to..." with "wanna..." which does not have subject, less (though still somewhat) debatably than before. These are not sentences though, but utterances, and while they may not be preferred for formal writing, they are absolutely fine in normal speech, especially because they can rely more on context, which is usually harder to gain from writing.

1043: Variety of L Oct 17, 2017

English has at least two different ways that the letter 'L' is pronounced. To hear the difference, say the word 'feel' and then 'leaf'. The distinction is fairly standard though blurred in words ‘feeling’. The reason for this is that it the /l/ and /ɫ/ as they are written in IPA depend largely upon where they belong in a syllable. If the 'L' is an onset, as in 'fee-ling', it will be pronounced as it is in 'leaf' with an /l/, whereas if it is said as the coda, as in 'feel-ing', it will be pronounced with the /ɫ/. This, however, can vary within a single accent or dialect.

1042: colonel Oct 16, 2017

English has odd standards for its spelling to put it simply, but for some words it makes much less sense than others. Like one of the pronunciations for another military-position, 'lieutenant', 'colonel' may seem to be missing letters to represent the way it is spoken. It is, sort of, in part due to the same reason as many words: pronunciations change after the spelling was standardised, which is inevitable anyway. The word 'colonel' comes from a now obsolete French word, 'coronel' which later developed into the French 'colonel' but did not change this way in English, though 'coronel' also originated from words that did not have this 'r': via the Italian 'colonnello' meaning ‘column of soldiers’, ultimately from the Latin 'columna' for 'column'. Indeed, 'coronel' was also fairly usual until the mid 17th century, but that is not the spelling that dominated in the end.

1041: Eye Dialect Oct 15, 2017

Because there are standards for the spelling of English, and also because the orthography of English is not phonetic, writing in a way that captures accents and dialects is tricky. Nevertheless, people get around this problem by using what is called 'eye dialect', which is the orthographical denotation of, generally, nonstandard dialects. This can still be used to imply the pronunciation of the standard dialect, such as 'wuz' instead of 'was', or 'coz'/'cuz' instead of " 'cause", which can be quicker to write, and also would give the impression of being humourous or otherwise informal. Other times, like with this example from alphadictionary.com "Ahm agonna gichew ifn yew don't quit bothern my dawg!" which is meant to represent the way that Southern American English is spoken (though I would have written 'mah' instead of 'my'), existing conventions in the standard orthography are used to denote specific sounds in non-standard writing. As a sidetone, it is thought that 'OK' comes from a eye dialect: "oll korrect" ('all correct').

1040: Determiners versus Adjectives Oct 14, 2017

Sometimes, explanations given to children about grammar are not exactly accurate. On the website linked to here for instance, it states that an adjective should be able answer certain questions pertaining to a noun: "What kind of noun is it? Which noun is it? How many are there?". Though sometimes these are applicable, at least for the very vague first two questions, many types of words have functions similar to that of an adjective but are not adjectives. Participles are among these types, but the focus today will be on determiner's; while adjectives describe the quality of a noun, determiners indicate the reference a noun has, such as 'every', 'that', or 'the'. However, determiners also include numbers, and possessives like 'my' and 'her', but also words that have the possessive suffix '-s' [3], like in "Beth's", even though it could be said that "Beth's" and 'two' in "Beth's two dogs" answer the questions of "which noun is it?", and "how many are there?". A good trick for those now unsure of what is an adjective or not is that they describe quality, and two-ness, for instance, is not a quality; indeed, no determiner can take the suffix '-ness' which adjectives can. More about determiners will be explained in he near future.

1039: Flexibility among Nouns Oct 13, 2017

English is fairly flexible when it comes to syntax. Not only is it possible to make many verbs into nouns and vice versa by simply putting it in the sort of context that a noun or verb takes, giving us the ability to say "I'm going to walk" and "I'm going on a walk", but different types of words within one lexical class, such as mass nouns like 'milk' or 'glass' and count nouns like 'shirt' are also somewhat interchangeable, with understood variation in meaning. Though generally mass nouns do not take a pluralizing '-s' like count nouns do (e.g. 'a dog' and 'dogs'), when they do, it means "varieties of", so 'milks' would not refer to an quantity of milk but could denote kinds of milk like whole-fat, skim, chocolate etc. On the other hand, singular count nouns take articles like 'a' or 'the', but when they don't, and are used like mass nouns, it can have several different meanings. For animals, English-speakers can refer to meats by using the singular version of the word with no article, e.g. "I like horses" versus "I like horse". Other times it can mean "bits of", such as, "after that car-crash, there is car/deer/tree/street-sign all over the road", which functions like a mass noun.

1038: Productivity Oct 12, 2017

Affixes all attach themselves to individual words, but some have the ability to be affixed to more than others. The term for this is 'productivity'. For instance, the suffixes '-ness', '-ity', and '-th' can all be added to adjectives in order to make nouns (with some variation in meaning), however, '-ness' can be added to far more adjectives than '-th' can'; indeed, sometimes, '-ness' even can replace '-th', though this is not possible the other way around. Therefore, it is said that '-ness' is more productive than '-th'. Also, certain affixes may have meaning for some words, but will not add additional meaning to others. 'In-', with some words, for example 'invoke', cannot be removed from the root, whereas with 'inbreed' it can be, so it is said that 'in-' is productive in certain circumstances, because it only produces new meanings that are separate from that of its root some of the time. Furthermore, for words begin with 'con-' or 'com-'—which are historically the same prefix that has been modified for phonological reasons— such as 'compute', 'convict' or 'convoke', the affix cannot be removed ever (i.e. there is no 'pute', 'vict', not 'voke') so it is said that 'con-' is non-productive.