1105: Word-Frequency Dec 18, 2017

Dictionaries can have thousands, even tens of thousands of words in them, but only a fraction of those words will be used with much frequency. Generally speaking, almost all words are rare, and in given text, it is not rare if only half of it will be made up of only 100 to 150 distinct words. For example, 80% of the Greek New Testament is comprised of merely 319 different words, while the remaining 20% is made up of 5,118. This is particularly noteworthy in English, as around 60% or more of the vocabulary can be considered Romantic in origin (particularly from Old French and Latin), while only 26% or so is Germanic. Nevertheless, it is not uncommon that sentences, especially concerning every-day, non-technical ideas, will contain all or almost all words that have Germanic origins. The reason for this has to do with the history of English.
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1104: Word-Order and Rearranged SVO Dec 17, 2017

Impersonal pronouns, such as 'it' in "it is raining" allow English speakers to—among other things—maintain the most common word-order in the language of subject-verb-object (SVO). Not only that, but also, even when rearranging the order of words in a sentence, the word-order is maintained with impersonal pronouns. The sentence "Elizabeth likes tiramisu" is in SVO order, but it could be rearranged with the object first for the purpose of adding focus to the direct object; this could be done with the passive ("tiramisu is liked by Elizabeth"), but it is also possible to start (sort of) with the object in the active voice. This would theoretically appear as "is tiramisu that Elizabeth likes", however, the pronoun 'it' is necessary to make this grammatical, so while more focus is placed on the object in the rearranged sentence "it is tiramisu that Elizabeth likes", the impersonal pronoun still is a subject in the first position.

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1103: All as a Submodifier and Intensifier Dec 16, 2017

While the word 'all' acts semantically to unify things (i.e. "*all* the parts of something), the use of the word extends to one as not only a submodifier with varied senses but also as an intensifier. One can say that someone is 'all wet' to mean that every part of someone is wet, but in other cases, such as 'all better', the meaning does not necessarily refer to the literal whole of someone, but contributes to a quality. In both cases, the word is a submodifier, but the literal sense was extended to a more abstract notion of a person in the latter example. Moreover, while 'every' refers to parts of something "all parts" "every part", it does not lend itself to modifying the way 'all' does, such that someone cannot be 'every better'. Furthermore, somewhat colloquially, 'all' can be used as an intensifier, such as in "you look stressed", to "you look all stressed".

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1102: Differentiation of Syllables through Stress (s.s.w.7) Dec 15, 2017

Stress and syllable-structures are linked in many ways, so while throughout the Syllables and Stress Week they have largely been considered separately, many of those ideas overlap. In English, a language heavily affected by stress, stress can be seen to affect the way individual words are pronounced, but language is more than individual words. The reason why Hawai'ian cannot have consonant clusters, for instance, is not only because those don't exist within words, but since words must end in vowels, clusters cannot appear within a sentence. With that in mind, it would seem that words like 'box' [baks] may be considered monosyllabic, but when followed by a word with no onset (most words that start with a vowel), one might assume that the [s] would become an onset, so 'box opener' would be something like 'bok sopener'. To some extent, this is true; were one to slow down a recording of speech enough, it is likely that it would be indistinguishable. However, one way that this does not happen frequently is that each word will have predicable stresses, and if words compounded (or otherwise merged), this changes the stress. Stress is, for example, altered for nouns when they become compounded anyway, which is how people can understand what is a compound when it appears in speech.

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1101: Possible Exceptions to the SSP (s.s.w.6) Dec 14, 2017

Syllables are notoriously hard to define, despite the fact that children can be taught to parse a word into its syllables with only instinct. Indeed, it was said by Ladefoged & Johnson, “[syllables are] a unit of speech for which there is no satisfactory definition. Syllables seem to be necessary units in the mental organization and production of utterances.” Though principles like the MOP and SSP can be trusted as a way to empirically break up a word (or more accurately: a phrase) into syllables, there are some oddities. The complex word 'sixths' [sɪksθs] not only has three consecutive fricatives, and four non-syllabic consonants in succession, but far more importantly, [k] has lower sonority than [s] or [θ], so it would seem like, according to the SSP, [sɪksθs] must have to be 2 syllables. For that matter, this is the case with other words like 'box' [baks] or anything other word such as those that end with a plosive and then quite commonly [s]. However, in words like 'box' and (arguably) 'sixths', the ending is still considered part of the coda, partly because the plosives can be so similar in sonority to the fricative [s] that any differentiation in stress or volume is difficult to notice, particularly at the end of a word. If you want to play around with this, I made a program last year that deals with syllables: http://snap.berkeley.edu/snapsource/snap.html#present:Username=emmettstone&ProjectName=Stone%20Final%20Project

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1100: Syllable Structures (s.s.w.5) Dec 13, 2017

So far in the Word Facts series, Syllable and Stress Week—the focus has mostly been on English. While English syllables are as interesting as any other perhaps, the rules for them are not universal. While English has, for instance, a limit (though not terribly strict) of how many consonants can cluster as a single onset—practically, it can have three, such as in 'spree' [spɹi]—other languages like certain Semitic or Slavic ones can have whole words composed of only consonants, including in the famous Czech tongue-twister 'strč prst skrz krk' ('stick a finger through the throat'). On the other hand, some languages such as polynesian languages like Hawai'ian can't have consonant clusters whatsoever to the point that syllables can't end in consonants because that could result in two consonants of separate syllables next to each other. Therefore, there are four types of syllables in Hawai'ian: V (vowel), VV, CV, (consonant-vowel), and CVV; this is called a 'null coda' or more generally, an 'open syllable'.

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1099: Positions of Stress: Lexical Stress (s.s.w.4) Dec 12, 2017

For most words, the stress does not really affect the meaning thereof, but there are occasions where stress is not simply a natural feature of a given term, but will change, for example, a lexical class (part of speech). For instance, for some nouns with corresponding verbal forms (or vice-versa) will have different stressing, such as ‘rebel’ or even ‘associate’, where primary or secondary stress is shifted to the end of the word when it is a verb. This type of stress, called ‘lexical stress’ or sometimes ‘word stress’, leads to more predictable positions for stress in English, where stressing can appear at first glance more or less random, unlike in ‘Finnish’ where the stress is always on the first syllable. Furthermore, words do not need to change lexical class to have variant lexical stress. ‘Defence’ in American English has stress on the first syllable when used for sports /ˈdiːˌfɛns/ whereas when the stress is on the second syllable, it tends to carry connotations the law or the military /dɪˈfɛns/. Some languages have tone that change the meaning of a word, but this is not the same.

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1098: Sound Shifts from Stress (s.s.w.3) Dec 11, 2017

Stress affects the way that certain sounds are produced fairly often, insofar as accentuation makes certain sounds more or less simple to create; whether or not one's emotional state changes one's speech is a different matter. For instance, historically, unstressed or lax vowels before an initial [h] would have led to the reduction of [h] entirely, so 'have' would have become [æv] but 'hay' would likely remain [heɪ]. This is related to why it is acceptable to say 'an historic...' or 'a historic...'. Moreover, many of the words sound the way they do today because unstressed or long vowels would often diphthongize, so an [æ] in 'has' (or 'hasn't) cold become [ɛ] as in 'bed', and then [e] to [eɪ] as in 'hey'. This is one proposed reason for how 'hasn't' could become 'ain't', or less controversially why 'have' does not rhyme with its derivative 'behave'.

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1097: Assimilation (s.s.w.2) Dec 10, 2017

It might not seem that assimilation—when one sound becomes similar to or completely elides with one that is adjacent to it—would have too much to do with syllables, but there are similarities. Rules for assimilation, in some language, are based upon sonority hierarchy, such as in Finnish in which a less sonorous phoneme can elide with a more sonorous one it precedes. For instance, [tn] could become [n]. Plenty of other languages use assimilation, including the English 'sandwich' which can be pronounced idyllically as [ˈsændˌwɪt͡ʃ], but may more likely appear as /ˈsænˌwɪt͡ʃ/ or /ˈsæmˌwɪt͡ʃ/ (with only [n] or alternatively [m]). In languages like Finnish however, because it follows the same patterns as the sonority hierarchy, this would change how many syllables are in a given word. Nevertheless, English has historically had assimilation (which is called diachronic assimilation) that changed the quality and number of syllables in words that are now consistently a certain amount of syllables. For instance, the '-ea-' used in orthography now often represents the way that people used to speak, such as in 'sea' which would not have rhymes with 'see' and would have had two syllables.

1096: Defining Syllables: the MOP and SSP (s.s.w.1) Dec 9, 2017

This post marks the 3rd year of Word Facts', and the start of Syllable and Stress Week (SSW). Thank you for the support

There are two principles that allow people to determine how a word is broken up into syllables, at least generally in English. First, there is the Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP) which was discussed here last week, and then there is the Maximum Onset Principle (MOP). Simply put, the MOP states that, between vowels, consonants are assigned to be the onset i.e. it is the first part of a syllable along with the vowel it precedes. It is for this reason that it has been found that people will almost certainly divide tatatata... as ta•ta•ta•ta... as opposed to tat•at•at•at.... Nevertheless, there are language-specific constraints on this, which is why syllables can end in consonants, because, according to the SSP, if a phoneme's sonority (how loud it is) falls between what is immediately lower in sonority (possibly the onset: optional) and what is higher in sonority (possibly the nucleus, usually a vowel), or vice versa (meaning the final phoneme is possible a coda: optional) that phoneme will not be part of a new syllable. If that is confusing, there is a graphic from bluelook.net that should hopefully clear up what those peaks and valleys look like in syllables, but also this will be explained further in the next few days.

1095: Dropping Fricatives if e'er They're in the Middle Dec 8, 2017

People who have studied literature are probably familiar with the form of 'e'er' for 'ever', or other examples—particularly in poetry—where the fricative (usually [v]) is dropped from the middle of a word. This can be seen repeatedly in the first four lines of An EPITAPH by Joseph Giles(*):
If e'er sharp sorrow from thine eyes did flow,
If e'er thy bosom felt another's woe,
If e'er fair beauty's charms thy heart did prove,
If e'er the offspring of thy virtuous love...
By the eighteenth century, this was fairly common in poetry, though not as popular in everyday speech. What was becoming more common at that time was to drop a fricative from the contracted forms, so 'isn't' might become 'in't', which is still used by some people as an alternative form of 'ain't, but also this occurred with 'wasn't and 'hasn't' and many other words. As is always the case with the evolution of language, it was faced with some protest, but there are still some traces today.
Tomorrow is the 3-year anniversary of Word Facts, and the start of a week of posts covering syllables and stresses.

(*) A Collection of Poems in Six Volumes. By Several Hands. Vol. V. London: printed by J. Hughs, for R. and J. Dodsley, 1763 [1st ed. 1758], pp. 92-93. 6v.: music; 8⁰. (ESTC T131163; OTA K104099.005). Retrieved from http://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org

1094: Isopsephy Dec 7, 2017

Several cultures have used letters to represent numerals. Famously, the Romans and other Europeans used Romans numerals, which assigns numbers to letters, but quite often, people would do it the other way around. Isopsephy is a Greek word denoting the practice of taking the sum of the numbers assigned to a word, but this requires that every letter in a given writing-system has a numeric value. This practice was Greek, but other cultures with other writing systems did this as well, including with the Roman alphabet, the Hebrew alephbet, and the Arabic abjad. Some people used this for prophesies, while other people would use this alphanumeric system as a code of sorts. While certainly less popular today, the notion that the number of the beast is 666 or, historically, 616 comes from this practice, but given that different people assigned different numbers to letters in both the same and different writing-systems, the same word will often yield varying results.

1093: Negative Forms with Distinct Pronunciations Dec 6, 2017

For many people—particularly outside of the U.K.—the vowel in the negative contraction of 'can', 'can't', is the same one, either [a] or [æ], as is used for the positive form. This should make sense, since with the exception of 'do', none of the commonly used words with a negative contractional form change their vowels, but this was not always the case. In Middle English, many verbs that were irregular would have a phonetically distinct negative form. Then, 'can' was pronounced [kæn] like its pronounced in Standard American English today, but 'can't was pronounced as [kɑ:nt]. For this word, there is a similar situation that happens in Received Pronunciation, or other souther English dialects, but this occurred in many more words at the time. Not only was the vowel different, but one the positive form was short while the negative form was long.

1092: Trilling: ɾ (pot of tea and para ti) Dec 5, 2017

Standard American English has the sound [ɾ], called a tap or a flap, in words like 'city' [sɪɾi] which in Received Pronunciation would be with a [t] ([sɪti]) or would be a glottal stop in some other dialects in Britain [sɪʔi]. This [ɾ] sound is produced by placing one's tongue on the roof of the mouth (specifically the alveolar ridge) for less time than one would to pronounce [t] as in 'tango'. This process is also sometimes called trilling. Trilling does not exist just as an allophone of [t], but also is an allophone for [r] or [ɹ], or a whole bunch of other sounds, theoretically. Indeed, in Spanish, the 'rolled R' or 'trilled R' written orthographically with a double-R in the middle of words is the same phoneme as this. In fact, the phrase "pot of tea" in Standard American English is more or less phonetically identical to the Spanish "para ti", which would be transcribed [paɾati]. The reason that IPA [ɾ] looks more like a lower-case R and less like a T is because of this in Spanish.

1091: Allophones (Articulation) Dec 4, 2017

As discussed yesterday, if a phoneme consistently morphs into a different sound in a consistent phonetic context, this means that the sound which it becomes is an 'allophone'. Another example from English that was not looked at yesterday was that the glottal stop [ʔ] and the tap [ɾ] are considered allophones of [t] because they appear as the onset for certain syllables (which will be discussed specifically during Word Facts' Syllable and Stress Week starting December 9th) such as in 'butter': [bʊɾɚ] in Standard American English and [bʊʔə] in some northern dialects of British English. There all should make sense as allophones, as they all (including the examples from yesterday) share the same manner of articulation (row on the chart below) or place of articulation (column on the chart below).

It may sound odd at first, but in kiSwahili, [d] as in 'delta' is considered an allophone of [l] as in 'lima'. This is because, before an [n], [l] becomes a [d], such as in 'ulimi' meaning 'language' or 'message', which, when pluralized with 'n-' becomes 'ndimi'. Not only that, but also [l] and [d] share the same manner of articulation.

1090: Allophones (Definition) Dec 2, 2017

There are certain pairs of phonemes (sounds) that—in very specific contexts—would probably be indistinguishable in English, such as [p] or [b] in 'spot' (or 'sbot'). Nevertheless, the phoneme [p] can represent the sound produced by 'p' in 'pot', 'spot', and 'stop', even though they are all slightly different. While [b] and [p] may not be distinguishable in a few words, there are occasions when the difference changes the meaning, such as 'bin' and 'pin'. However, none of those different words before that have a sound represented by 'p' will change or lose meaning (in English) if one is used instead of the other. These are called 'allophones', because they all act as the same sound, in that one can be substituted for the other to an odd-sounding effect but identical meaning. In other words, these allophones are not part of a language's phoneme inventory. 

Another criteria for allophones, however, is that if one sound consistently assimilates to another in some given context, it is an allophone. Therefore, even though the sound [t͡ʃ] (like the CH in 'church') can create different meaning when it replaces [t] such as in 'porch' and 'port', because a T [t] before an R [ɹ] becomes a [t͡ʃ] (consider 'tap' [tap] and 'trap' [t͡ʃɹap]) [t͡ʃ] is considered an allophone of [t]. It should be noted that allophones change from language to language. There will be more on this tomorrow, considering other languages.

1089: Unstable Vowels Dec 2, 2017

'Do', 'does', and 'don't' are obviously related to each other, as the latter two forms are only versions of the first. Nevertheless, each one of them has a different vowel; in Standard American English, the vowel is 'do' is [u], in 'does' it is [ʊ], and in 'don't' it is [oʊ̯]. You can see these on the chart (which is modelled after where a tongue has to move to pronounce the vowel) from speechmodification.com below. These vowels are said to be unstable, and 'do' is not the only word to have this unstable vowel historically, but it is a good example of how these tend to lengthen and lower (see chart and observe that [ʊ] is produced physically lower than [u]). Some of the reason for this is that it can be easier to produce, but in some languages, vowels will change regularly depending upon which consonants potentially follow them; this concept will be explored in the future soon.

1088: Untranslatable Colors Dec 1, 2017

Linguistics requires a lot of scientific analysis, but since there are certain cultural elements that influence the way people speak, unless one who is studying a language understands this, linguists can misunderstand the way that people talk, due to their own biases. For example, some languages have fewer words for colors than others, which is fairly easy to describe, but sometimes comparing words for colors is not so simple. Hanunó’o, a Filipino language, has terms for ‘light’ and ‘dark’ which is understandable from an English-speaking perspective, but colors can also be described as ‘wet’ and ‘dry’, which has no equivalent in English. Without knowing this, it could seem that Hanunó’o has fewer words for colors than it actually does.

1087: S-Selection (Grammatical but Nonsensical) Nov 30, 2017

Neither sentence: "I see he" nor "I run him" can be considered acceptable, but the reason for each is different. In the first one, the problem is that 'he' is only used as a subject, even when it appears in the middle or end of a sentence, but given that 'see' takes an object, it would require 'him' to be used. This issue does not have to relate to what each word means semantically, but how it all fits together syntactically (or not in this case). On the other hand, with "I run him", while it is possible for 'run' to take an object, such as in "I run a race", this sentence does not make sense considering the meaning of each word together. Chomsky's famous sentence—whether you agree with his conclusions—"colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is an example of how people can see that something is grammatical but nonsensical.

1086: Sonority and Syllables Nov 29, 2017

Sounds are not created the same way physically, and this not only—though most obviously—changes the way the sound (phoneme) sounds, but also it changes how loud it will be on average. Vowels, for instance, are the loudest while stops (such as [t] or [b] are the least sonorous. All phonemes can be placed on the sonority hierarchy which goes, from loudest to quietest: vowels, approximates (like [l] or [r]), nasals (like ([m] and [n]), fricatives (like [f]), affricates (like [d͡ʒ], or the J in 'jump') and the last category is stops. Aside from simply being an amusing fact that some sounds are generally louder than others, it is because of this hierarchy that syllables exist, because when one speaks, as the sounds decrease and then increase in volume, more or less accidentally or at least coincidentally, this creates—simply put—the rhythm of syllables. This is a rich topic, and this hardly at all scratches the surface, so expect more in the future soon.