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Category: Linguistics
Why are the generic male endings -er and -or accepted as gender neutral but -man isn’t?
The archaicness of -trix is indeed very very relevant to the topic. I agree with Jason Whyte’s answer, I’ll just elaborate on it. In the past of English, gendering was overt, and feminine actor suffixes were quite marked. –er was masculine and had a –ress counterpart; –or was masculine and had a –trix counterpart; –man […]
Why does the definition of one word recall other n words and m definitions?
The question is somewhat opaque, but OP is getting to the question of, why is the definition of a word such a complex, and potentially circular, graph of links to other definitions. Your original question, OP, was in fact about circularity. The answer is: Dictionary definitions aren’t particularly concerned about rigour or non-circularity: you’re assumed […]
Why isn’t there a single Modern Latin language like Modern Greek?
How many months ago did you A2A me this, Zeibura S. Kathau? I’ve been clearing out my backlog. The question really is not why isn’t there a Single Modern Latin, but why is there a Single Modern Greek. Actually, there is not a single Modern Hellenic language. Under no linguistically informed notion of language is […]
Is the use of the word “niggardly” acceptable and politically correct?
There’s several perspectives one can take on the whole sorry-ass saga of niggardly, on which as always see Controversies about the word “niggardly”. There’s the perspective of the linguist, the language-lover, the activist, and the anti-American. The Anti-American first, so I can get it off my chest: Christ, I’m glad I don’t live in your […]
Are there any sources from antiquity about the study and teaching of foreign languages?
The closest we have that I know of (and it’s really not very close at all) are the Pseudo-Dosithean Hermeneumata. They’re a third century AD Berlitz phrasebook of Greek and Latin. Nothing about language teaching methodology, and of course not much of a language teaching methodology is on display anyway. I did find the following […]
What are the drawbacks to standardizing languages?
You lose linguistic diversity, as the dialects gradually die out, or at least are marginalised. You may not may not care about linguistic diversity, of course. You lose ways of saying things that are specific to non-standard dialects. Cretan dialect for example has a distinct word for “trickle”. (To my annoyance, I don’t remember it.) […]
What’s the onomatopoeia for a computer?
Thing about onomatopoeias is, they get conventionalised and stick around, even if the referent no longer makes that sound. I mean this sound? This sound, the doot doot doot bloop bleep flurgh frump virrrr of a dial up modem? Hasn’t been heard in functional use for what, twenty years? And yet it is still used […]
Why is linguistics considered a science?
Supplemental to the list given by David Rosson (ah, your American bias is showing, David 🙂 cc C (Selva) R.Selvakumar As Dmitriy Genzel points out, Historical Linguistics is an observational science, like Astronomy. A lot of hypothesis testing though. To add to Tibor Kiss’ list of German words, Linguistic Typology is a Versammelnde Wissenschaft: a […]
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 […]
Did the Doric Invasions really happen? Which regions became mostly Dorian and what were they before the conquest?
There are four major groups of ancient Greek dialects: Ionic, of which Attic is a subbranch North-Western, of which Doric and Achaean are subbranches Aeolic Arcado-Cypriot I’ve ranked them in impressionistic order of archaicness. The easiest explanation for the spread of the North-Western group is as a wave of settlement, that you might as well […]