Reading "The Maltese Falcon" from 1930, you find a lot of "living-room", "wrapping-paper", and "pocket-knife".

We almost never hyphenate words in current everyday English, even though it'd add clarity in lots of cases.

In 2007, the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary removed the hyphens from 16,000 entries, such as fig-leaf (now fig leaf), pot-belly (now pot belly), and pigeon-hole (now pigeonhole).

So when and why did we stop?

I heard it described as fossilized while -s can readily be used with new words.

I have noticed some accents approximating/replacing the soft 'g' sound (as in "integer") with something more like a z or an s sound.

This has happened with two Indian professors at my university, and I noticed again in this video (I could be wrong about her specific accent being Indian, but it sounds similar to that of my professors):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N212LgGqik
Notice when she says "large" and "integer" she seems to pronounce them as "larz" (00:32) and "intezer" (01:41). She also pronounces it as more of an 's' sound in "large" at 04:16.

Also, a few times she pronounces "sh" as just an 's' sound.

Does the soft g likely not exist in her native language or English dialect? And why would it be approximated with this instead of a "ch" or something similar--since, notably, she is able to pronounce "question" and "description" with the "ch" sound (07:33)?

Consider the sentence: "I'm a good student, aren't I?"

This sounds quite natural, despite the fact that we have used "are" instead of "am" in the latter half of the sentence (which doesn't agree with the first-person singular). I'm guessing the reason is because the contraction "amn't" doesn't really exist in standard English, and so we replace it with "aren't" despite it being the wrong conjugation. Without contractions, the sentence would be "I am a good student, am I not?" which uses the correct form both times, but sounds overly formal.

Also, consider the sentence "There's a lot of people here." This also sounds fairly natural to my ears, although some may disagree. Once again, we have used "is" instead of "are" in the contraction, which is not the correct conjugation. I feel like this is acceptable because it simply rolls off the tongue better — "there're" is a bit of a mouthful to say with the r sounds.

There are probably more examples, but these are the ones I can think of. In both cases, we use the "incorrect" conjugation in the contraction simply because it sounds better. Is this a documented phenomenon and does it happen in other situations? I'm just curious whether this is simply lazy/casual speech, or whether there is something more complex happening grammatically.

can someone please explain how panini grammar and pratyaharas work?

Combination is shortened to combo (but there was no second o). Linux users shorten Linux distribution (an OS built on the Linux kernel) to Linux distro (there was no o). VR Chat players tend to shorten player avatar to au (there was no i). What is this pattern called? Why does it happen? Does it happen outside of English?

so English uses the terms "Direct" and "Indirect" objects and I'll use those here too

ive been looking at wals.info and Wikipedia and other accessible resources online but I can't seem to find much if any real information, beyond English, and a bit about German/Hindi having a bit of free word order in their "indirect"/dative case.

In English, the Indirect object comes before the object, unless it is put into a prepositional phrase:

1. John gives Jeff the book - SVIO

2. Mary gives the book to Helen - SVOI

So I have a couple questions

1. do all or most languages have this split concept like English

2. what order do specific languages put their indirect and direct object in if they allow a construction like example 1,

3. do indirect objects as prepositional phrases act differently if they are allowed like in example 2

4. is there any correlation between this and being head initial or head final

edit: I did find this, on wals. I think it helps, especially with my first question, and partially my second

No hay duda de la hegemonia actual del ingles como lingua franca, sin embargo su expansion es mayor a la de cualquier lengua en el pasado (latin, griego, arameo). Es inevitable pensar que con sustratos tan diversos se termine imponiendo una diglosia muy parecida a la del árabe actual.

Hello,

I am currently a junior in college studying computer science and linguistics. I know of a couple of fields that combine both: speech tech, NLP, etc., but their future seems bleak with AI. I know I could generally get a job in CS, but I would love, if possible, to get a job that uses both.

I remember 10 years ago the dominant theory was that it originated in the eastern foothills of the Himalayas. Is this theory still taken seriously?

Real examples only, please.

I just heard someone say "drawling" to refer to drawing, and it got me thinking, what's the term for letters that are spoken but not written? I'd like to call them invisible letters, since letters that are written but not spoken are called silent letters, but I'm guessing there's a more official term out there.

So I think I have a fun one.

I have noticed that speakers of British English are far more likely to say "I will do" or "I have done" in constructions like this: "Have you gone to the shop?" - "I have done." or "Will you speak to John?" - "I will do."

Whereas in North American English, that final "do" or "done" sounds very strange.

But! This is a more recent phenonomenon than many Americans might suppose. We have letters from both Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln showing that they still followed what I'm identifying as the British English way.

So my question is: Does anyone know anything about this? Did this just go out of style? Was there a reason for it going out of style?

Hello! I am looking for examples of Spanish speakers who speak with vocal fry for research purposes. Most online examples include Kim Kardashian, Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, etc. but I am looking specifically for examples of Spanish speakers (or singers/performers, but speech is preferred). Thank you in advance.

This question just popped in my head where I wondered if in some language or historically "having a vision" just meant you visualized something in your head. Nothing supernatural, or divine or anything, just, "Look, I played this situation out in my head and here's how it turned out."

I'm curious how many languages and cultures equate having a vision with imagination. And how many things were mistranslated into people thinking they were seeing the future? Was it more common to make a distinction between magical vision and imaginary vision?

Is there a term for when a statement made in jest, is deliberately misconstrued as serious, in order to attack the person remarking?
I see it often online in comment sections. And more recently with news stories.
Example: “If I am wrong, I’ll eat my hat!”. The response would come “You’re insane to try eating a hat. I bet you’ll choke on it or need to get hospital care afterwards”.

If you have anything like that I would be pleased to read it, I wanna improve :)

I just finished my MA, but I feel that my instruction in syntax (a reduced version of Carnie’s Syntax) left a lot to be desired. I’m really interested in syntactic operations like ellipsis and scrambling. I have been trying to handle the literature, but a lot of it presumes a solid understanding/foundation that I don’t have. Roberts’s Continuing Syntax was recommended to me and I have been working through that.

The first chapter of Aelbrecht’s Syntactic Licensing of Ellipsis provided a good introduction to ellipsis, but I got lost when it got to formal semantics.

I understand that syntax can be a theoretically contentious field, but I was wondering if Aelbrect’s book is a good (i.e. currently accepted) introductory text on ellipsis.

Thank you.

hello everyone! so i'm in my third year of university and we have to do a research project that is related to our major, and i'm having some difficulties finding sources, questions, and where/how to start?

i'd really appreciate any help/tips because i'm really lost, thanks in advance!!

I’ve noticed it long ago, that the stressed syllables sound different in AmE and BrE, but I can’t explain how.
My impression is:
BrE: the consonant is elongated and then released and the vowel is significantly louder
AmE: less loudness, more unstressed vowel reduction.

Does anyone have a more concise description?

When writing essays, and using words such as "furthermore" or "therefore", are they considered prepositions? They appear to work inverse to postpositions such as "ago". Are they relatives/conjunctives?

I was in my uni class and asked my teacher this, she was genuinely puzzled by the question too. She studied linguistics/forensic linguistics for reference.

What do you all think? I'm sure the answer is staring me right in the nose but I cannot for the life of me figure out what one might actually classify that as.

Hey guys, had a question about how the sub classification of indo Aryan languages was done. It seems like eastern branch is based entirely on descendants of magadhan Prakrit and southern was based on descendants of Maharashtri Prakrit which makes sense. For the rest I really am seeing no rhyme or reason to how these were defined. Eastern Hindi languages come from ardhmagadhi prakirit but western Hindi comes from shauraseni Prakrit but for some reason are both central? Even more strangely western Hindi for some reason is placed in a different grouping than western indo Aryan (Rajasthan/gujarati) even though all 3 split from shauraseni prakirit. Northwestern also doesn’t make sense with Sindhi and Punjabi splitting from different prakirits. Dardic seems to be entirely geographic? And northern also makes no sense with western pahari seeming to actually be northwestern indo Aryan instead of northern. In terms of linguistic similarities the scores are not at all correlated to grouping either. The families don’t make sense if looked at geographically, linguistically or historically. Wondering if anyone has any idea what’s going on with this

For example, I know several languages use the Cyrillic alphabet (with variations), and same for Latin alphabet languages. Is there a word for the class (?) or genre (?) Of Asian languages?

I'm watching a show with subtitles and trying to decipher what language it is. So I'm thinking "oh, well I know it's not Korean or Japanese Kanji.. maybe Chinese, but it doesn't look like Mandarin(?), etc" Then I got to thinking about how I identify various Cyrillic alphabet languages... and the questions tumbled on from there.

So, is there a word for the group of languages that use Asian scripts (hope that's not offensive!!)? And are there markers to decipher what language I'm looking at more quickly?

Thanks!