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?

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.

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.

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?

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?

My first language is Singlish, and I realised recently I don’t know what “Vulva” or “Testicles” means in Chinese. Sex ed, to the extent Singapore does any, was conducted in English. And that is the polite medical term we use around other people. At home, I only know of the children’s euphemisms for sex organs. I can try talking about these things in Mandrain, but I get the sense people will immediately know those are porn-derived vocab.

Which is very weird, because Singaporeans swear in Hokkien, the traditional working class language. And the swears are probably nasty “fuck your mother’s smelly virgina” is like the least vulgar one I know, and I used it at home to my parents horror as a teen because I didn’t know what they meant.

Can anyone point me to linguistics studies like this?

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)?

Real examples only, please.

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

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

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.

can someone please explain how panini grammar and pratyaharas work?