#morphology

[isejas]

naguuu

Tuletusaluseks ning liitsõna moodustusosadeks võivad olla liht- ehk juursõnad, nagu pida/ma > pid/ur, vana + isa > vana/isa. Neiks võivad olla ka teised tuletised või liitsõnad, seega moodustus võib olla korduv, nt [sõber + lik > sõbralik] + us > sõbralikkus; [raud + tee > raudtee] + lane > raudteelane; [raud + tee > raudtee] + [töö + line > tööline] > raudteetööline. Moodustist peetakse tuletiseks või liitsõnaks viimase moodustusastme järgi, st tema vahetute moodustajate järgi. Nt raudteelane ei ole liitsõna, vaid tuletis, mille tuletusaluseks on liitsõna. Mõnda sõna võib siiski pidada niihästi tuletiseks kui ka liitsõnaks, sest esineb kombineeritud sõnamoodustust, kus tuletus ja liitmine toimuvad üheaegselt, nt sirge + selg + -line > sirgeseljaline (mitte: [sirge + selg > sirgeselg] + line > sirgeseljaline või [sirge] + [selg + line > seljaline] > sirgeseljaline).

hello. hello i love you hi omg

[lcatala]

It can be shown that the French verbal suffix complex is made of the following slots: (root)-[thematic vowel 1]-[irrealis suffix]-[auxiliary verb 1]-[thematic vowel 2]-[auxiliary verb 2]-[thematic vowel 3]-[thematic vowel 4]-[person & number marking] The full complex can be demonstrated by the first person plural conditional of the verb to leave: part-i-r-aβ-e-β-á-ó-mos Which after applying all relevant internal Sandhi rules manifests as the surface form [paʁtiʁjɔ̃]

This is what French grammar would look like if it was written by the kind of western linguists who way over-analyze the morphology of Native American languages.

[scienceguy22]

The microscopic phantom parasite, smaller than a grain of dust, the jellyfish cousin you can't see.

These are myxozoans, microscopic parasitic animals belonging to the same phylum, Cnidaria, the same group as jellyfish & corals. Their scientific name is Myxobolus szekeli. The species szekelyi is named after Hungarian parasitologist Csaba Szekely. They are classified as among the smallest animals ever discovered, only 8 to 10 micrometers, a unit of length, not mass. That means 0.0085 mm or 0.0003 to 0.0004 inches. For comparison, a human hair is 70 micrometers thick. Myxozoans are 7-9x smaller than a hair's width. They are also 10x smaller than many bacteria, 200x smaller than the smallest vertebrate embryo & 4,000x smaller than the smallest mammal & millions of times lighter. The smallest mammal by length is the bumblebee bat, only 1.14-1.29 in (29-33 mm). These animals are mostly water & have few cells. Myxozoans live in freshwater rivers & lakes & inside fish tissues (gills, muscles, skin, & heart), mostly in carp, trout, salmon, & minnows.

They survive by parasitizing fish. They invade tissues & use polar capsules (like tiny harpoons) to anchor. They absorb nutrients directly from host cells & release spores into water when the fish dies or sheds tissue. Myxozoans have no organs, no digestive system & almost no nervous system. They have reduced size enough to just have enough structure to infect & reproduce.

[thiswilldragon]

what's the silliest linguistics paper title you've come across?

How to do Things with Junk: Exaptation in Language Evolution by Roger Lass

It's about grammaticalisation - really interesting paper, too! I will note that first-year undergrad me put a note next to one of the paragraphs that reads "Pardon?" so I don't vouch for its clarity to a general audience. (I do understand it now...I am also doing a PhD.)

[scienceguy22]

The shark that treats a manta ray like a car wash. The shark that looks like a pink pickaxe.

The first 2 topics will center around sharks. Buckle up. This one concerns oceanic whitetips, silky sharks, tiger sharks & reef sharks—they've all been filmed repeatedly rubbing their bodies, gill slits & faces against the broad, sandpaper-textured backs of manta rays. They do it to relieve annoying skin itches that are otherwise hard to reach. Their skin has parasites, copepods (small crustaceans), dead skin buildup, small wounds, bacterial films, & irritation around the gills. It turns out that manta rays are perfect for relieving their itch, as mantas have rough, tiny, diamond-shaped dermal denticles that act like a giant exfoliating board. Sharks approach slowly, angle their bodies, & press into the manta's back. The manta holds still, suggesting tolerance rather than distress. By habit & history, mantas know they won't be eaten by sharks.

Why? It's simply not worth the energy costs. Predators follow energy economics: high reward + low risk = good prey. Low reward + high risk means avoid. A manta ray is up to 23 ft (7 m) wide & up to 3,000 lb (1,360 kg), a powerful swimmer capable of sharp turns & bursts of speed. That's not an easy meal—it would be a dangerous & exhausting fight. Much better to use them as backscratchers. Sharks aren't alone in using fish to relieve itches. Mantas themselves gather in Hawaii, the Maldives, Cocos Island, Revillagigedo (Mexico), French Polynesia & the Red Sea, which are hotspots where manta cleaning stations exist—places where mantas gather to be cleaned by small fish. Sharks cruise through & opportunistically rub on mantas.

2nd. The pink pickaxe shark is the goblin shark. They are deep-sea, slow-moving, soft-bodied sharks that live in the depths of the sea, 3,300-4,300 deep (1,000-1,300 m). They're often called "living fossils" because their lineage dates back 125 million years. They have a pickaxe-looking snout (rostrum) that is long, flat & blade-like. It's packed with electroreceptors that help detect prey in pitch-black water, which consists of squid, deep-sea fish & crustaceans. When prey gets close, the shark's jaw explodes forward using elastic ligaments, rapid muscle contraction & a hinge stem unique to their family. This is called "slingshot feeding." Their jaws can shoot forward 3-4 in (8-10 cm). It's one of the fastest jaw-protrusion mechanisms of any vertebrate.

They have pink, translucent skin. Their skin is so thin you can see blood vessels, giving them a pinkish, corpse-like color. They live in Japan, South Africa, the Gulf of Mexico, Portugal, Brazil & Australia. Join me in the next post focusing on sharks that "walk."

[coquelicoq]

«Nous n'enseignerons plus que "le masculin l'emporte sur le féminin"»

[Tribune] 314 membres du corps professoral de tous niveaux et tous publics, enseignant la langue française ou ayant à corriger des copies ou

Nous, enseignantes et enseignants du primaire, du secondaire, du supérieur et du français langue étrangère, déclarons avoir cessé ou nous apprêter à cesser d'enseigner la règle de grammaire résumée par la formule «Le masculin l'emporte sur le féminin». Trois raisons fondent notre décision:  • La première est que cette règle est récente dans l'histoire de la langue française, et qu’elle n’est pas nécessaire. Elle a été mise au point au XVIIe siècle. Auparavant, les accords se faisaient au gré de chacun·e, comme c’était le cas en latin et comme c’est encore souvent le cas dans les autres langues romanes. Bien souvent, on pratiquait l'accord «de proximité», venu du latin, qui consiste à accorder le ou les mots se rapportant à plusieurs substantifs avec celui qui leur est le plus proche. Par exemple : «afin que ta cause et la mienne soit connue de tous» (Ronsard, épître à la Response aux injures et calomnies…, 1563). [...] • La seconde raison est que l’objectif des promoteurs de la nouvelle règle n’était pas linguistique, mais politique: «Parce que le genre masculin est le plus noble, il prévaut seul contre deux ou plusieurs féminins, quoiqu’ils soient plus proches de leur adjectif.» (Dupleix, Liberté de la langue françoise, 1651) ; «Le masculin est réputé plus noble que le féminin à cause de la supériorité du mâle sur la femelle» (Beauzée, Grammaire générale… 1767). Si l'école de la République a préféré abandonner cette formule au profit de celle qu'on connaît, c'est en reconduisant l'ordre de valeur qui est à son fondement. Un ordre que les classes politiques maintenaient parallèlement, en refusant aux femmes les droits politiques jusqu'en 1944, et en refusant plus longtemps encore de leur ouvrir les grandes écoles ou d'abroger les dernières dispositions du «Code Napoléon». • La troisième raison est que la répétition de cette formule aux enfants, dans les lieux mêmes qui dispensent le savoir et symbolisent l’émancipation par la connaissance, induit des représentations mentales qui conduisent femmes et hommes à accepter la domination d'un sexe sur l'autre, de même que toutes les formes de minorisation sociale et politique des femmes.

7 novembre 2017

[darnassian-conlanging]

Grammar: Morphology

Morphemes (particularly bound morphemes): word parts that modify the meaning of a root word.

Derivational morphemes change the meaning or the part of speech of a word (i.e., they are morphemes by which we “derive” a new word). Examples are un*, which gives a negative meaning to the word it is added to, *y, which turns nouns into adjectives, or *ness, which turns adjectives into nouns.

Inflectional morphemes (sometimes just called "inflections") add grammatical information to the word, such as *s on runs, which tells us that it is 3rd person singular present tense verb, or the *s on boys, which tells us that there is more than one boy.

Here I am using a nonstandard means of marking an affix, which is and asterisk (*) marking the position of the root word instead of the standard hyphen (-); this is because Darnassian uses hyphens as part of the affix sometimes, and so I need to be able to mark when that's the case. So, a suffix that doesn't use a hyphen will be written as *suffix (ex. *s/as + dala -> dalas), whereas one that does will be written as -suffix (ex. -lo + arith = arith-lo).

This is an incomplete list that I expect to continue updating.

Darnassae's inflectional morphemes (with any canon examples):

-dae on verbs: progressive/continuous

-lo on verbs: past tense

-na(h) on verbs: future tense (falah-nah)

-nir = periodic vernal tense (something that occurs consistently in spring)

-ral = periodic autumnal tense (something that occurs consistently in autumn)

*s/*as on nouns: plural (dalas, sharas)

-sher = periodic estival tense (something that occurs consistently in summer)

-thal = periodic hibernal tense (something that occurs consistently in winter)

Darnassae's derivational morphemes:

*ae(/*ssae?) on nouns: "of [noun]" or "from [noun]"? (Darnassae)

*al = possessive adjective/determiner suffix

an*: masculine marker

'do: honorific suffix

'el on verbs: becomes a passive participle (ie the hunted mouse)

in* on nouns: becomes an adjective

me*/mi*: feminine marker

*n/*en on verbs: becomes a noun (agent) (ie hunt -> hunter)

'ne on verbs: becomes an active participle (ie the hunting cat)

sa* on verbs: becomes a noun (abstract) (ie deliver -> deliverance)

savi- = uncertainty prefix

tae- = negation verb/adjective prefix

tho*, sometimes th* on verb: marks a verb affected by a catenative verb (ie I want to run)

[scienceguy22]

The snake with a fake head on its butt.

I'm talking about a brand new species of snake found in China called Calamaria incredibilis. The snake measures about 8-9 in (20-22 cm) long, has a slender, brownish body, is non-venomous & has a tail that is short, blunt & shaped like its own head. The purpose of the fake head is to act as a decoy to trick predators into attacking the wrong end, giving the snake time to escape. In fact, if Calamaris is attacked, it immediately coils its body, tucks its real head inside the coil & exposes only the fake-headed tail. It turns out that even if its tail is bitten, it is resilient and disposable, and if it survives, it will eventually heal. Scientists found 2 specimens of this new species separated by 100s of miles on the road, which is surprising because these are burrowing snakes, but in both these cases, the snakes ventured out from their burrows & wandered on roads where they were spotted.

Its name, Calamaria, refers to the genus of small, burrowing reed snakes found across Asia, & "incredibilis," Latin for "unbelievable," was chosen because the researchers themselves were astonished by the tail-end mimicry. Scientists confirmed it was a new species using micro-CT scanning, which is basically X-ray vision that builds a 3D model of the skull without cutting the animal open. The fact that they never observed another snake with the same skull structure demonstrated that the skull shape was distinct enough to be a new species.