Subscribe to Blog via Email
Join 327 other subscribersJuly 2025 M T W T F S S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
Are there axioms in linguistics? If yes, which are they?
Linguists don’t like the word axioms. as you can tell from the other answers: they imply a degree of mathematical rigour that just isn’t compatible with someone as messy as human language. But there are foundational assumptions to disciplines in linguistics, which are pretty much axioms. And they would be more overtly acknowledged, were linguists a more reflective bunch.
In historical linguistics, for example, you have the Uniformitarian principle. (I see from Wikipedia that Uniformitarianism is actually a geology thing, and you can see why linguists made the connection.) That’s the assumption that languages worked the same way 5000 years ago as they do now. You need that assumption to do any non-trivial historical linguistics: our documented processes of language change reach back only 2 or 3 millennia, and we need to assume that the same processes worked further back in time, if we want to say anything at all about Proto–Indo-European.
In generative syntax, you have configurationality, the principle that you can build up the syntax of a language out of phrase structure grammars (the kinds of grammar computer programmers are used to). Non-configurational language are a shock to generative syntax: they are languages where word order is seemingly random, and words do not hang together in well-defined phrases; so you can’t write a simple grammar (the kinds of grammar computer programmers are used to) to account for those languages’ syntax.
There’s other foundational beliefs, such as the primacy of spoken over written language, the “natural” evolution of language, the exceptionlessness of language change, the unidirectionality of grammaticalisation, the arbitrariness of the sign, and so forth.
Where is taking off your shoes when entering a home common, and how common is it in those places?
It has been de rigeur in Greece to take your shoes off when entering a house, as owner or guest. Indeed, Greek has borrowed the Turkish proverbial expression about it: to “hand someone their shoes” is to invite them to get the hell out of your house. (του ’δωσα τα παπούτσια στο χέρι/pabuçu eline vermek).
I will note that while it’s a norm I follow to this day as a householder, it’s not one I experienced as a guest in Greece: I don’t remember ever having to remove my shoes when a guest. In fact, it was only when I crashed at an uncle’s place for a few days that the spare slippers would surface.
Which will get you further in life, learning Klingon or Elvish?
It’s a tough one.
I know Klingon and not Elvish, like Brian Collins. I think I disagree with him: Tolkien gives slightly more opportunity.
- Elvish is a more complicated set of languages than the agglutinative Klingon.
- Elvish is much less well documented by Tolkien than Klingon is. That’s why people are very reluctant to use Elvish conversationally at all (and they put an asterisk next to the grammars done for the films). But that means you have to exercise a lot more linguistic and philological skill to get anything out of Elvish.
- Paramount only used Klingon for the Trek movies, and when they did, they asked the language inventor to do the job. TV Trek have either ignored Klingon, or used the “idiots with dictionaries” approach to language learning. (wIjjup for “my friend”. Where –wIj is a SUFFIX.) So even less chance of remuneration than for Elvish.
I think Elvish would be endlessly frustrating to work on, which is why I was never tempted. (That, and Tolkien’s mythology didn’t do anything for me.) But for that reason, it would be more of a mental challenge.
Why does Esperanto use the letter Ŭ?
Hm. You didn’t ask why the letter looks like that, which I’ll answer anyway:
Italicised й:
й
Wikipedia Ŭ suggests it was formed by analogy with proposed Byelorussian ў. Like someone else said on Wikipedia: [citation needed]
Now, why <ŭ> and not just <u>? Zeibura, you dawg, you know that I love this kind of question, where I try to work out the answer from first principles. I’m pretty sure Gaston Waringhien has given a proper answer somewhere (after all, him and Kalocsay saw Zamenhof’s proto-Esperanto notes, before the Nazis torched everything). But let’s have some fun.
- In Zamenhof’s circumflexless (“telegraphic”) rendering of Esperanto, circumflexed letters get replaced by a following h: <ĉ> to <ch>. But <ŭ> could be rendered as just <u>. So Zamenhof was not overly concerned about ambiguity (and he normally was, which is why Esperanto is so neurotic about polysemy).
- I cannot come up with an minimal pair for au and aŭ or eu and eŭ. I’ve been racking my brains for an hour. For example, fra-ulo and fraŭlo would be different words; but there is no fra- root.
- Zamenhof had –aŭ as an odds-and-ends part of speech suffix; it dates from proto-Esperanto. The part of speech suffixes are otherwise vowels; so –aŭ in malgr-aŭ, bald-aŭ, apen-aŭ was deliberately intended to be a single syllable, just like bird-o, blank-a, kapt-i, plen-e.
- As presented in Duonvokaloj kaj diftongoj, Zamenhof’s advice to correspondents early on insisted on the phonetic difference between monosyllabic aŭ/eŭ and bisyllabic au/eu (which certainly does occur in Esperanto).
So, why <ŭ>? Theoretically it could have determined a minimal pair, but it certainly wouldn’t have with Zamenhof’s vocabulary, and I doubt it does even more. And Zamenhof wasn’t fussed about the ambiguity in his telegraphic rendering.
No, it was because in Zamenhof’s own mental model of the language, aŭ/eŭ were single syllables, just like aj/ej/oj/uj are. That’s why –aŭ is a part of speech ending. After all, <au> is a single syllable in German, and <αυ, ευ> in Ancient Greek—which is what Zamenhof must have had in mind in his design.
Why do the Romani people in Bulgaria and Greece speak Turkish among themselves?
I don’t know the full answer, and I’m not seeing enough of an answer in Wikipedia. Let me put together what I know.
- There have been Roma in Greece for the better part of a millennium; we know linguistically that they went through Anatolia and Greece on the way to Europe, there is Greek in the Roma core vocabulary (such the work for sky), and there are historical records.
- Romani people: “The descendants of groups, such as Sepečides or Sevljara, Kalpazaja, Filipidži and others, living in Athens, Thessaloniki, central Greece and Aegean Macedonia are mostly Orthodox Christians, with Islamic beliefs held by a minority of the population. Following the Peace Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, many Muslim Roma moved to Turkey in the subsequent population exchange between Turkey and Greece.”
- Muslim Roma: “Greece (a small part of Muslim Roma concentrated in Thrace)”. After the Lausanne Treaty, Thrace is where the Muslims of Greece were exempt from the population exchanges.
- I remember the reprobate Bishop Augustin of Florina organising missionary work to convert Muslim Roma. The Greek Orthodox were chuffed to find someone to convert locally.
- Romany was the basis of cants, secrecy languages used in Greece. Traditionally, they were the cants of builders (which leads to the guess that many builders were Roma). Latterly, kaliarda, the gay cant (and Greek counterpart of Polari) had a substantial Romani basis, with a lot of French and English sprinkled on top. So there was bilingualism with Greek.
- One of the first Romani variants to be studied extensively (in 1981) was that of the Roma living in Agia Varvara, a suburb of Athens. (Ρομά – Βικιπαίδεια at least implies they are the biggest grouping of Roma in Greece.) They were originally from Turkey.
- There are Para-Romani languages throughout Europe: mixed languages spoken by Roma, displaying gradual language shift to the local languages. Romano-Greek language/Hellenoromani exists; a linguistics student found a settlement using it in the vicinity of Salonica. But that’s one settlement. The others speak either Greek, Romani, or Turkish.
- Per Muslim Roma, 40% of Bulgaria’s Roma are Muslim, and per Romani people they are concentrated in the south of the country, where the Bulgarian Turks are.
- Balkan Roma are commonly termed “Turkish Gypsies” (Romani people); this is likely more about them being Ottoman, but most of them are either Muslim or recent converts to Christianity.
So, from this bunch of stuff, I surmise:
- A. Many Roma in Greece came from Turkey, where they spoke Turkish, and they still do. It’s not like the Greek state was always bending over backward to make them feel Greek.
- B. Many Roma in Bulgarian and Greek Thrace are Muslim and live among ethnic Turks, so they speak Turkish for the same reason that group A do.
- C. There have clearly been Greek-speaking Roma (hence the Hellenoromani community and the cants, as well as the pre-Ottoman history of the Roma in Greece). They may well not be the majority of Greek Roma.
Which Greek stronghold with Catholic administration was the last to survive the Ottoman conquest: Crete, Cyprus or other?
As I pointed out in commenting Niko Vasileas’ answer, the Morea was reconquered by the Venetians after close to two centuries of Ottoman rule, whereas Tinos was under continuous Venetian rule right through to 1715.
Add to this the odd situation of the Ionian Islands. They remained under Venice until 1797. Then they fell under a sequence of regimes:
- The French departments of Greece (i.e. Napoleonic France)
- 1800: The Septinsular Republic, a Russian–Ottoman condominium
- 1807: The United States of the Ionian Islands, a British protectorate
- 1864: The Kingdom of Greece
Now if you count Napoleonic France as Catholic (I’m wary of doing so), the last Catholic administration of Greek territory ended in 1800. Then again, that assumes the Septinsular Republic was part of the Ottoman conquest: I don’t get the impression there was much of an Ottoman presence in the condominium at all, and Greek-language self rule by aristocrats is not quite the same as the Millet (Ottoman Empire).
That’s why most people would not even consider the Ionian islands for this answer: they never were really ruled by the Ottomans.
When, and why, did the word ‘sure’ become so ubiquitous at the start of answering a question?
I’d like to thank my wife for arranging access for me to the State Library of Victoria (for free!) Inter alia, this gets me access to the OED.
OED?
First attested use: 1651, in a trial transcript:
Att. Gen. Was Mr. Love present when this letter was read? Far. Yes sure, he was present.
First instance in their list without a yes or aye, with sure at the start: 1914:
P. G. Wodehouse Man Upstairs 133 ‘Is that a fact?’ ‘Sure,’ murmured Archibald.
Then 1963:
Mrs. L. B. Johnson White House Diary 26 Nov. (1970) 11 If it had been a request to chop off one’s right hand one would have said, ‘Sure’.
The sarcastic sure example they give (“orig. N. Amer”) is earlier, 1907:
L. Scott To him that Hath iii. ix. 250 Just then her hand happened to fall on mine—accident, oh, sure!
OED does say that it is “chiefly N. Amer. in later use”.
So: popularisation was American, and probably the ’60s; but if P.G. Wodehouse used it, then America is not where it came from.
What languages did people in Anatolia/Turkey speak prior to the arrival of the Seljuk Turks?
Originally Answered:
Which languages were spoken in Anatolia and modern Turkey when Turkic arrived?
I’m touched by Anon’s A2A’ing assumption of my omniscience, but I’m going to Wikipedia here, to confirm my vague hunch that the Anatolian languages of yore were long, long gone by the time the Seljuks came to town.
and it is generally thought that by the 1st century BCE, the native languages of the area were extinct.
With one exception:
Known from some thirty short inscriptions from the first to second centuries CE, it appears to be closely related to Lycian and Sidetic.
The Greek historian Arrian in his Anabasis Alexandri (mid-2nd century CE) mentions the existence of a peculiar indigenous language in the city of Side.
(The inscriptions we have are from 3rd–2nd century BCE)
In particular, if there was any evidence of Cappadocian surviving, we would likely have heard something about it from the Cappadocian Church fathers. Early research into Cappadocian Greek went hunting for evidence of Cappadocian in the language; lots of amateur speculation ensued, but no professional thought it worth pursuing.
So our default assumptions remain: the Seljuks found Armenian and Greek. And whatever babel of Caucasian languages there is in Lazistan.
What are the two most studied foreign languages in your country? (excluding English)?
To my amusement, when I googled for this in Australia, I found that I know the researchers that came up with the latest research on this. The latest research I found was 10 years ago, though (which is why I know them); and I don’t think the numbers will have stayed the same.
http://research.acer.edu.au/cgi/…
As of 10 years ago:
- Japanese: 333k
- Italian: 322k
- Indonesian: 210k
- French: 207k
- German: 127k
- Chinese: 81k
French and German are the inherited elite education languages (they’re what I did). The newspapers have been bemoaning the fall in Asian language enrolments; so Japanese and Indonesian will have dropped; Chinese as a community language will have risen and Italian fallen.
From Languages in Victorian schools, the most popular taught languages in Australia now are French, German, Indonesian and Japanese. That means Italian has collapsed as a community language taught in schools, and Chinese hasn’t broken through yet (which surprises me).
Is there a way to accent an “e” to make it sound like “ah?”
I echo other respondents in expressing frustration at the vagueness of the question.
In English, there are two diacritics that can be applied to <e> to change its pronunciation.
<è> is occasionally used to ensure that the <e> is pronounced and not silent.
The grave accent, though rare in English words, sometimes appears in poetry and song lyrics to indicate that a usually-silent vowel is pronounced to fit the rhythm or meter. Most often, it is applied to a word that ends with –ed. For instance, the word looked is usually pronounced /ˈlʊkt/ as a single syllable, with the e silent; when written as lookèd, the e is pronounced: /ˈlʊkᵻd/ look-ed). In this capacity, it can also distinguish certain pairs of identically spelled words like the past tense of learn, learned /ˈlɜːrnd/, from the adjective learnèd /ˈlɜːrnᵻd/ (for example, “a very learnèd man”).
I make a point of writing learnèd. Very very few people do.
<ë> properly is used to split up a digraph, so the preceding vowel and the <e> are pronounced separately; e.g. Zoë /zoʊi/. However, <ë> was occasionally used for the same reason as <è> was. So (Brontë family) Brontë was a much more posh-looking rendering of the Irish surname Ó Pronntaigh, than the normal anglicisation Prunty or Brunty. Tolkien picked up that function of <ë> in his renderings of Elvish languages.