Just read that animals use icons and signs to communicate but not symbols. I guess the first question would be whether ‘use’ also implies ‘understanding’, but, aren’t the words we use for commands symbols? I am not saying animals use ‘language’ but I wouldn’t say they don’t use any symbols…heeelp!! @linguistics@anthropology#linguistics#language#animals
@linguistics@anthropology Aaaahhh. Thanks so much @mammut This is what I wanted!! “Animals communicate using iconic or indexical signals to refer directly to objects or actions, although some species can be taught to use symbols”. That totally answers my question!!! I ❤️ Mastodon
Hey #linguistics folks — is there a word for, and if not can someone coin a word for, things whose functionality is dependent on their existence in the plural?
Some examples:
Telephones — Alexander Graham Bell was initially disappointed with the apparent uselessness of his first telephone, until the Ghostbusters quote “Who you gonna call?” fell through a rift in time and he realized he needed to invent the second telephone too.
Train stations — Congratulations! You’ve built the world’s first train station. Where do the trains go?
American English first and second person pronouns (2023):
I/me - first person singular
We/us - first person plural
Us all - first person plural inclusive
You - second person singular
Y'all - second person plural
All y'all - second person plural inclusive
Chat - second person, excluding the listener
A #Linguistics question prompted by "Crime Wave at Blandings", the first story in "Lord Emsworth and Others, which I currently #AmReading. PGW has Lord Emsworth saying "dooce" a lot. In my quasi-literate ignorance, that seems like an Americanism, the sort of thing PGW might have picked from living there. Would a very English Earl of the era have said "deuce" as "dooce" , or would he have been more like to say /djuːs/ ? @bookstodon
@Grizzlysgrowls@ronsboy67@bookstodon
Strictly speaking Sanskrit is not really "in the roots of" European languages. Rather, Sanskrit and most European languages have a shared ancestry in the same root language (Proto-Indo-European). In consequence, there are a lot of similarities - sometimes very close - between Sanskrit and e.g. Slavic languages, Lithuanian, etc.
(A bit-nitpicky, but I feel a professional duty to dispel any misunderstanding that European languages evolved from Sanskrit.)
> There are thousands of languages in the world, 1,000 to 2,000 of them in Africa alone: it’s estimated that the continent accounts for one-third of the world’s languages. But though native speakers of English make up just 5% of the global population, the language dominates the web—and has now come to dominate AI tools, too.
A fun read from Philip Durkin's "Borrowed Words: A History of Loanwords in English" - an extract from a 1403 letter written in a mix of English and Anglo-French. Franglais has a LONG history indeed. Somehow I don't think extracting the ALT text from the image will be much help here 🤣 #AmReading#Linguistics#History#NonFiction#ebooks@bookstodon
@Yora@bookstodon To paraphrase Mark Twain. "rumours of English having been hijacked by French have been greatly exaggerated"
It is still possible to construct sentences in English with only Germanic components. It's not easy, and the sentences are awkward and awful (imo), but it can be done.That's not possible (afaik) using only non-Germanic elements.
A clear case of an indirect #speechact 👉
Me very kindly taking my sister to the station by car, despite having better things to do on a Sunday morning. My sister: “Are you tired? Do you want me to drive?”. Real meaning: “You suck at driving please let me do it” @linguistics#linguistics
@Rainer_Rehak@linguistics the “assumption of intent” is tricky indeed! In this case specifically, I know my sister very well and, to be fair, driving is not my thing :)
I’ve recently received a peer review overall positive and very informative, but critising precisely my use of the verbs “to try” and “to attempt” because, according to the reviewer, “not adequate in academic writing”. Here’s a reminder of why we should value transparency and why framing our methods in terms of attempts and intentions can actually be a good thing. #linguistics#corpuslinguistics@linguistics@academicchatter
I would certainly not claim familiarity with Baltic languages, but this dispute over whether the city name Rīga can be used appositionally in the nominative with the name of the train station, or whether the city name must appear in the genitive preceding the name of the train station, touches upon a variety of sociolinguistic issues I always find fascinating.
@sylkeweb@michaelmeckler@linguistics That depends on whether it means "small pole-street" or "small-pole street". I often noticed people inflecting "ich wohne in der Alten Poststraße" when that road used to be "Poststraße" and then turned into "Alte Poststraße" because a new "Poststraße" was named. While people didn't inflect and said "ich wohne (in der) Alte Poststraße" when the road was named after the old "Post".
@historiavocis@michaelmeckler@linguistics
If you leave out the bracketed part it just about works being uninflected but as soon as the preposition is there it sounds weird to me. And those distinctions in meaning have gone lost in the minds of people over time for most of those road names. The way I described it, is what I have been hearing around me for years and years. Maybe there is a change upcoming and it’s slowly creeping in. That’s fine, I’m just observing and comparing with what I’m used to.
I asked people which one was their favourite vowel phoneme (from the list of 5 basic vowel phonemes). The ranking was: a > e > i > o > u. Do with that information what you want 💁♂️ @linguistics@linguisticsmemes#polls#phonology#linguistics
It's likely not an orthographic frequency effect because “a” and “I”, being words, way outrank “e”, “o” and “u” (as “words”), and “e” outranks the others in letter frequency
@amyfou@linguistics not the most telegenic guitar tech. Medical device vibes. I do remember the strange sound of "talking steel" from clear channel radio in the 60s.
One of the people in my dream last night was speaking Spanish and used the word "disposa" to mean "restroom." ("Donde esta la disposa" or perhaps, incorrectly, "Donde esta el disposa"). However, I just looked up "disposa" in Wiktionary and it isn't even a Spanish word, let alone one that means "restroom." Mi español es muy malo, and apparently even worse in my dreams. #Linguistics#Dreams#Spanish#Language@languagelovers
@ChasMusic@languagelovers
I once had a dream where the Spanish word "tenedor" meant something like noble or
landowner, like someone who holds title to some land. This is completely logical.
@petealexharris@ChasMusic@languagelovers I am to inform you that your dream was absolutely right, it means amusingly both things, for example recently there was a law that was directed to taxing "grandes tenedores" and I can confirm it taxes people who owned more than 10 properties, not people who eat with comically big forks.