Dr. Linguo

daily posts about #linguistics #language #academia & #LaTeX https://mastodon.social/@DrLinguo

[quoting-my-linguistics-lecturers]

"John and Mary are always up to something."

- My linguistics lecturer on the frequencies of names in example sentences

[quoting-my-linguistics-lecturers]

"What is time? Does it even exist?"

- Semantics lecturer getting existential on us again

[quoting-my-linguistics-lecturers]

"'Yassifiable' is not that new a word anymore"

- My lecturer spent several minutes just trying to make random words by combining morphemes.

[drlinguo]

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[drlinguo]

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[yvanspijk]

Queens, queans & gynes

The word queen is distantly related to the first part of gynaecology and the second part of misogyny.

It’s also related to Norwegian kone (wife) and kvinne (woman), but they’re not full cognates.

While queen comes from Proto-Germanic *kwēniz (wife), kone and kvinne stem from *kwenōn (woman). In English, this became the disparaging – and now archaic – word quean (slut).

[theoddkepple]

[weaponwifer]

[official-linguistics-post]

official linguistics post

[tayalla]

got tricked into majoring in linguistics because they said they had PIE and IPA. thought I was getting dessert and beer, got all these nerdy tables and diagrams instead.

[yvanspijk]

Probly haplogy

Probably is often pronounced /probly/. The syllable ba is deleted because it’s followed by another syllable starting with a b. This is called haplology – or haplogy if you will.

Some people have an issue with /probly/, but what they don’t know is that their beloved form probably is the result of haplology too: in Middle English, it was probablely: probable + ly. The part le was lost because it was followed by ly.

Haplology can be found in all ages and places. My new infographic shows cases from English, Latin, French, Greek, German, and Portuguese.

Haplology is a so-called sporadic sound change. In the short article on my Patreon (470 words, tier 1), you'll learn all about the difference between sporadic sound changes such as haplology, and regular sound changes.

[drlinguo]

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[drlinguo]

[drlinguo]

[drlinguo]

[drlinguo]

Ambiguities in PP attachment 💁‍♂️

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[drlinguo]

... logic

[drlinguo]