Posts by msh210
The word אֶת /et/ is used with the following meanings: In Biblical Hebrew, it means "with". In modern Hebrew it survives, but only with a complement-of-the-preposition pronoun suffix: "with me", ...
Arnold Zwicky and Geoff Pullum's paper "Cliticization vs. inflection: English n't", published in the September 1983 issue of Language (volume 59, number 3), indicates that I'd've exists. While I'm ...
I think questions about linguistics as applied to a language one is constructing (or has come across) should be on-topic as linguistics questions. For example: "Here's a description of how noun cas...
In my experience of speaking with immigrants from China to the United States, it seems many of them pronounce the word idea with a final ɹ (even before a consonant). Why?
It seems that people used to say "listen to" and "hear" television, a holdover from radio, and that that gave way to "watch" and "see" over time. Has anyone any information on the timeline of this ...
This is the kind of question there's more than one correct answer to. Most trained linguists will tell you to do whatever is most natural or whatever everyone else does. They tend to be a descripti...
Lawrence Sanders, Caper, 1980. 1987 paperback edition, page 61: We saw crumbling walls, decayed ceilings, cracked plumbing fixtures, exposed electrical wiring. We saw one room that appeared to h...
I don't know the linguistics behind it, but perhaps can address one of your questions— Can you please make this shift feel more intuitive — by noting that prepositional phrases sometimes beco...
One of the infinitives in Hebrew is translated "to [verb]" and starts with ל, l. For example, ללמוד, lilmod, "to learn", and להשאר, l'hishaer, "to remain"; it's used often. But two of the verb cons...
I know some people pronounce caution with an /ʃ/ and others with a /ʒ/, and the same is true of cautious. I wonder if anyone can provide information on who says each (by region, time, etc.).
If you're around tomorrow, stop by. I'll eat when I'm hungry. She'll be coming around the mountain when she comes. You're around tomorrow, I'm hungry, and she comes are describing fu...
Most פָּעַל-construction verbs have the פּוֹעֵל form as the masculine singular present tense; for example, לָמַד→לוֹמֵד and צָבַע→צוֹבֵעַ. But some פָּעַל-construction verbs have the פָּעֵל form ...
In George Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language", he refers to "[t]he jargon peculiar to Marxist writing (hyena, hangman, cannibal, petty bourgeois, these gentry, lackey, flunkey, mad d...
