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an amateur linguist
"Not all grammar is cut and dried, right and wrong, but imbued with points of variability to explore." Pam Peters
"It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him." G. B. Shaw, Pygmalion
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May 4 |
revised |
Achievement Verbs with the Progressive Aspect added the link |
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May 4 |
suggested | suggested edit on Achievement Verbs with the Progressive Aspect |
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Mar 14 |
awarded | Yearling |
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Mar 9 |
comment |
On the Origin of the Universal Quantifier: A Semiotic Etymology Wikipedia says "The traditional symbol for the universal quantifier is "∀", an inverted letter "A", which stands for "for all" or "all". The corresponding symbol for the existential quantifier is "∃", a rotated letter "E", which stands for "there exists" or "exists"." |
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Feb 26 |
comment |
Why does “contrary” have two different pronunciations? @tchrist, you really say country [ˈkʰʌntʃɹi]? I mean with a sibilant? |
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Feb 26 |
comment |
Why does “contrary” have two different pronunciations? They haven't updated the entry for "contrary" for a while. If I understand correctly, the OED editors use data from Upton et al. 2001 for pronunciation. And Upton et al. 2001 say the following: contrary1 'opposite' CON-; contrary2 'perverse' BrE -TRA-, AmE two variants, CON- and -TRA-. Naturally, the dialectal and uneducated labels have been completely removed, as it should be. |
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Feb 25 |
comment |
Why does “contrary” have two different pronunciations? @FumbleFingers, Wells 2008 (LPD-3), Roach, Hartman and Setter 2006 (CEPD-17): adj 'perverse, obstinate' 2nd syllable stressed conTRAry; adj 'different, opposed' and also a noun, 1st syllable stressed CONtrary. |
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Jan 31 |
comment |
Why is 'worthy' pronounced with a /ði/ unlike 'healthy', 'wealthy' and 'stealthy'? Some thoughts: 1. in OE, in a position a stressed vowel+fricative+(liquid)+unstressed vowel, fricatives were always voiced. 2. First documented occurrences (OED): worthy (c1220) - the oldest (!), wealthy (1430), earthy (1398), healthy (1552), filthy (1382) etc. Not sure whether this is relevant though. |
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Jan 25 |
revised |
Why do photons and protons exhibit such anomalous behavior? added 216 characters in body |
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Jan 25 |
comment |
Why do photons and protons exhibit such anomalous behavior? @NewAlexandria, in Russian in words like proton, electron etc. stress is always on the last syllable. |
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Jan 25 |
revised |
Why do photons and protons exhibit such anomalous behavior? added 187 characters in body |
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Jan 25 |
answered | Why do photons and protons exhibit such anomalous behavior? |
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Jan 25 |
comment |
Why do photons and protons exhibit such anomalous behavior? Professor Wells summed it up pretty well "It is unfortunately the case that English aspiration is not a matter of all or nothing. In some positions voiceless plosives may have a certain amount of aspiration, but not enough to call them fully aspirated. The VOT in such cases is intermediate between that of “aspirated” voiceless plosives and that of “unaspirated” ones." phonetic-blog.blogspot.com/2009/04/vot-is-more.html?m=1 |
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Jan 24 |
comment |
Why do photons and protons exhibit such anomalous behavior? @tchrist, "The mid-word aspirated ‹t› also occurs in futon and wonton (as in wonton soup), but not in Briton, Milton, tartan, titan, wanton (as in a wanton woman)." How do you know this? Is it purely impressionistic? |
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Jan 20 |
comment |
Why do photons and protons exhibit such anomalous behavior? @tchrist, and your observation is based on ...? Can we see your spectrograms? |
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Jan 16 |
answered | What did we gain in return for the loss of phonemic vowel length from Old English? |
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Jan 7 |
comment |
What did we gain in return for the loss of phonemic vowel length from Old English? I see. No, I can write it here - in a couple of days though (need some time to put things together, insert links etc). Meanwhile, you may want to take a look at Welna 1998 degruyter.com/view/books/9783110804072/9783110804072.471/… (not exactly what you're interested in but closely related) |
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Jan 7 |
comment |
What did we gain in return for the loss of phonemic vowel length from Old English? An interesting question - why not move it to Linguistics SE? I could share my thoughts on this there. |
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Jan 5 |
comment |
What's the difference between “bucket” and “pail”? Answer: depends on your dialect, esp. in American English. See DARE dare.wisc.edu and some discussion languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4141 |
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Dec 30 |
comment |
Is English 'issue' etymologically related to Russian 'ищу'? @lechlukasz, right. You may want to take a look at this etymolog.ruslang.ru (in Russian) |
