Linguistics questions?

[dave10000]

HH -- Yes, those are the 11.

QM and HH -- no, none of the guesses as to #12 is correct. But the answer should be right in front of you . . .

[Quailman]

They have a special word for cyan?

[Tahnan]

As far as I can tell, the color "orange" historically comes from the object "orange", but it belongs on the list of basic English color terms because the color "orange" has its own definition for us independent of the fruit (unlike "salmon" or "olive", which as colors mean "the color of a salmon" or "the color of an olve").

I read the Scientific American article, and it's fairly interesting. It's a fascinating fact that languages with three color terms don't pick out pink, olive, and khaki (or indeed, even black, white, and khaki). There's a lot of interesting research to be done there.

How strongly this correlates with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (the SciAm article quotes Whorf: "We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages") is still not clear to me. A speaker of Dani, a language that distinguishes only "warm" and "cool" (or "white" and "black" perhaps) colors, will only use two different words to identify paint chips, classifying what we call "red" and "yellow" with a single word. But will a speaker of Dani, asked to sort the chips by color, only sort them into two piles, whereas a speaker of English would sort them into 11? (If asked to sort chips into piles by color, I'm not sure I'd distinguish "pink" from "red".) Perhaps so. Would a speaker of Dani despair when asked to sort the chips by color into six piles, because he can only see two? It seems unlikely.

The SciAm article mentions languages which use "north" and "south" instead of "left" and "right". They note, about the speakers of one such language:

[Hitchhiker]

Do "slang" words in a language seem to come and go in specific cycles?

How long must a word be in common usage before it is considered a permanent part of its language?

[Vinny]

Just the other day, when somebody asked me where his keys were, I said, "go google for it in the kitchen."

[jesternl]

I think the extra color is clear
Tahnan mentioned verlan as a language game, and the name of the game tells you what it does as well, verlan is the verlan of l'envers, the reverse. l'envers has two syllables/sounds, lan and ver. Reversing those two would make verlan.

As far as dreams go, I don't remember dreams very often, but usually I dream in English now as opposed to Dutch. I remember having dreams in glesh with Dutch subtitles, since Dutch TV is often subtitled.

Question, what is, in your opinion, the best way to raise a child multilingual? We're trying to raise our daughter bilingual Dutch and English, with English being the first language. I remember seeing some interesting things on tv about it, with children who were exposed for a while to a chinese language very early on, under 1 I believe, were later, after the exposure had ended, still able to hear distinctions between sounds that non-native speakers were not able to hear.
I think my daughter, who has just turned one, is able to hear and realize differences between the two languages, she will point at an object, asking my wife for the word for it, and then turn to me asking the name again, because she seems to realize that I use a diferent word that my wife does.

[Tahnan]

It's hard to tell what makes a word stick in a language. To ask whether a word is a "permanent" part of a language is in some ways to ask a meaningless question--though no less an interesting one, I should note. "Yclept" was once pretty solidly a word of English, not in any way slang, but it's pretty much obsolete by now. The truth is that language simply changes over time, so there's no guarantee that any word will really stay in the language. (Even basic vocabulary! In Old English, the word for a canine was hund, as it is in most Germanic languages. The word dog came from no-one-knows-where and replaced it, though "hound" did stay in the language with a changed meaning.)

Even so, it's hard to put a definite time on how long a word needs to be used before it's "permanent", because some words are used often but later disappear, either because the concept becomes outmoded ("trebuchet", say) or just because the language drifts ("caitiff", for instance, which was common enough to have appeared often in Chaucer; see http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cai1.htm ).

Alas, the other part of your question--how slang cycles--is one I don't at all know the answer to. I'd suspect that it also varies wildly by word, that some words spring into existence and disappear like mayflies, and others settle themselves into the language, and there's no good way to predict which is which. (Does anyone still use "dink" as a term for a childless couple who both work, from "Double Income, No Kids"? Or "grody" or "gnarly"? Could anyone have been sure that these would disappear while "go postal" remained?)

As far as raising a child bilingually: children are language-learning machines. Expose them to a language and they'll learn it. (On the other hand, stop exposing them and they'll forget it--I'll believe that the Chinese-exposed children were still able to distinguish sounds that are separate phonemes in Chinese but not in English, but vocabulary and grammar are less likely to stick.)

A child raised in America will almost certainly learn English by general exposure (unless kept isolated in a linguistic enclave--a community of Spanish immigrants who don't use English around the house, say, and even then there's English on television). The best way to ensure that a child picks up another language, such as Dutch, is to simply have her hear it--don't try to teach it to her any more than you'd teach her English, just speak it to her, and perhaps to other adults if you have any around. (Certainly that worked for the daughter of a friend of mine, whose father speaks only English. It helped that Oma en Opa lived nearby.)

(Apropos of the "dog/hund" difference: I was playing with the little girl, K, one day, doing the usual games one plays with a two year old. I'd hold up a stuffed animal and say "What is this?" and she'd say "elephant" or "dog" or the like--never answering in Dutch, because she knew that Dutch was what Mom and Oma and Opa spoke, but not Dad or friends of Mom and Dad. On impulse, I held up the dog and asked, "Was ist das?", hoping that Dutch would be close enough to German for her to understand, not that I speak German either. I gather I wasn't particularly close, but she cheerfully answered, "Hund!" Kids are linguistically quite smart and have a very good grasp of the differences between languages.)

[dave10000]

Mostly just an interesting issue, but I'll keep it on topic by asking for T's thoughts at the end.

I read a few months ago that there are some 8 (or more) "categories" of adjectives that have a somewhat standard ordering when used in front of nouns. Thus, "color" and "size" are two of them (as I recall), and size is ordered before color, so we say "the big red ball" and not "the red big ball."

The article asked how one would naturally order the following alphabetized adjectives to complete the blank in the sentence that follows:

big
brown
her
hiking
leather
Mexican
old
two
ugly

She showed us ________________________ boots.

I proceded to order them they way they were "intended," and the way I suspect most native speakers of English would. (People might want to inviz their preferred orderings below, and see how consistent they are.)

But I had never "learned" this rule of ordering the adjectives (at least not as a rule, and at least not that I can recall learning), and I can't really explain why it "sounds wrong" to order them in other ways.

So, Tahnan:

(1) Any comments on the what this "rule" is, and the reasons for it?
(2) Do other languages (if you know) have similar rules for ordering adjectives, and are the orders comparable?
(3) Any comments on why this rule seems to be applied fairly universally and in the same way by speakers of English, even if they did not think they were following a "rule"?
(4) Is this really a rule or more of a guideline? In simpler terms, does the sentence "I saw a red big ball." contain (a) a grammatical error? (b) an error at all?

[Quailman]

Here's my guess:

She showed us [her two big old ugly brown Mexican leather hiking ]boots.

In this case it almost seems as if 'ugly' and 'Mexican' are adverbs that modify the ensuing adjectives, or at least they might be interpreted that way.

[dave10000]

I had "Mexican" and "leather" switched. There does seem to be a point, there, as to whether one considers certain adjectives to be modifying other adjectives rather than the ultimate noun. I wonder if a good example could be created in which it is pretty clear that the adjectives do not modify each other. Probably not.

And, in thinking further about it, I'm thinking that the original example in the article may have used "red" instead of "brown." That *shouldn't* change anyone's ordering (I think), but I wonder if it would.

[Lucky Wizard]

This is what I came up with: [her two big ugly old brown Mexican leather hiking]

Looking at Quailman's, I see that it's the same as his except [ugly] and [old] are switched.

[Vinny]

[She showed us her two big brown old ugly leather Mexican hiking boots.]

That was my natural order, and it looks like putting ["Mexican hiking boots"] together makes those three words a single unit (as opposed to say, ["American hiking boots"]).



[This message has been edited by Vinny (edited 05-05-2004 10:41 PM).]

[Aarondalf]

I did it the same as Quail because it seems nice to have them work in pairs.

[extropalopakettle]

Originally posted by Quailman:

---

In this case it almost seems as if 'ugly' and 'Mexican' are adverbs that modify the ensuing adjectives

---

Perhaps it's partially because the ensuing adjectives are words that also function as nouns (leather, and the color brown).

[Vinny]

We all put [hiking] right next to boot. Anywhere else would make the sentence "weird". Why is this?

[Quailman]

The way I ordered them was to put the possessive pronoun first, followed by the size, age and color (I think they're not inherently ugly, just an ugly shade of brown). Then I got more specific. Hiking boots are a specific type of footwear, so these two would always go together, I think. I couldn't hellp noticing that you could substitute 'tits' for 'hiking boots' in that sentence.

[dave10000]

Quail --

Perhaps that's because it would only require a change of a "t" to a "b".

[extropalopakettle]

From this page: http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/adjectives.htm

[/b]
<tr>

THE ROYAL ORDER OF ADJECTIVES
Determiner	Observation	Physical Description				Origin	Material	Qualifier	Noun
		Size	Shape	Age	Color
a	beautiful			old		Italian		touring	car
an	expensive			antique			silver		mirror
four	gorgeous		long-stemmed		red		silk		roses
her			short		black				hair
our		big		old		English			sheepdog
those			square				wooden	hat	boxes
that	dilapidated	little						hunting	cabin
several		enormous		young		American		basketball	players
some	delicious					Thai			food

[dave10000]

[Vinny]

Maybe because "hiking" sounds like a verb?

You never say "hiking old" or "hiking big" or "hiking brown" in common usage.
You can say "big ugly" and "ugly old" or "brown leather" easily though.


So according to that royal chart extro provided:

[She showed us her two ugly big old brown Mexican leather hiking boots.]

["her two ugly"] sounds right.

["big old brown"] sounds weird to me.

["Mexican leather hiking boots"] sounds right.



[This message has been edited by Vinny (edited 05-06-2004 05:54 PM).]

[extropalopakettle]

"ugly big" sounds wrong, as opposed to "big ugly", and in general I think the chart is flawed in having the "observation" column before the "size" column. For instance, "big gorgeous eyes" or "gorgeous big eyes"? By the chart, it's the latter.

[dave10000]

A good observation by extro, and one that comes close to the line as far as my own "inner ear" is concerned. But a coda, as follows:

I like "big, gorgeous eyes" better than "gorgeous big eyes," which I like better than "big gorgeous eyes"

Huh? Does the comma make that big a difference? I think it does. *With* the comma, we are setting "big" and "gorgeous" on more or less the same plane. But without the comma, we are (I think) looking at the construct more as: gorgeous (big eyes), in the same way that "gorgeous blue eyes" sounds much better (to me) than "blue gorgeous eyes." But if I wanted to emphasize both that her eyes were blue and that they were gorgeous in equal amounts, I might be convinced to say "blue, gorgeous eyes" (with the slight pause suggested by the comma).

But the issue is close enough to equal in my head that I expect there to be a significant difference in personal preferences due to regional, and I'm sure many other, particularities. And perhaps even whether it is more important to you whether her eyes were big or blue or gorgeous -- and indeed this might even change from paramour to paramour (perhaps I might like Jane's gorgeous big eyes, but Anne's big gorgeous eyes).

[Stubby]

[Hitchhiker]

I would like to mention that I brought up this issue way back in reply 22.

Better late than never.

[dave10000]

quote:

---

I would like to mention that I brought up this issue way back in reply 22.

Better late than never.

---

Er, um, Tahnan, what's that called again when people post questions in a thread without checking whether they'd been posted before?

[Vinny]

n00b?

[Vinny]

maybe "punk" would be better?

That brings up something I want to ask:

Why are cuss words "bad"? Why are people so afraid of saying/hearing bad words? Is this a social thing?

[Tahnan]

Um, yes, it's a social thing (he said, somewhat belatedly). Typically of course such words are associated with taboo topics (various bodily functions), though of course religion has its share (which are often considered "bad" words because the religion in question disapproves of their casual use, lest their religious meaning be bleached).

[MacSulach]

I know it's a bit late, but I'm pretty sure that the english word for orange (colour or fruit)comes from the spanish for that fruit.

[Tahnan]

Zag asked, in this thread:

[MatthewV]

Do you have your PhD now? This should be an easy question for you to tackle :-)

[Jack_Ian]

The Irish language declines its prepositions.
e.g. "Tá ocras orm" means "I am hungry" (literally it means "hunger is on me") and "Tá ocras uirthi" means "she is hungry" (on her).
Are you aware of any other languages, modern or otherwise, that do this?

[Tahnan]

MatthewV: ask me again in three weeks. :-)

Jack_Ian: I have to say I honestly have no idea. Knowledge of facts across languages is sadly far from my strong point. I'll admit that, looking at the chart, my reaction was, "Huh? Really? Weird", but that's not a scientific reaction. :-) I'll poke around, see what I can find out.

[Ningal]

Interesting. Finnish, if memory serves, does something kind of similar with some postpositions, tacking on possessive suffixes (so kanssa "together", kanssani "with me"). In this case, it looks kind of like shorthand for the genitive otherwise governed by the postposition.

[inHimshallibe]

Oh, I'm studying to become a sociolinguist (freshman undergrad here!)

Just thought I'd let you know that. I may have a question later.
_________________
V-A-N-D-Y! Vandy, oh heck yeah! Go Commodores!

I bring you good tidings from the land of MS.

[MatthewV]

I am curious if there are languages other than Russian with the damned "soft sign" and annoying but infrequent "hard sign"

[Jack_Ian]