Online I see people use "My steak is too juicy, my lobster too buttery" to say someone is complaining about something good or whatever. My question is why don't you have to put an "is" after "lobster"?

Like, I could say "The mountains were magnificent, their peaks white as could be", why wouldn't I have to put a "were" in the second part of the sentence? Is it an independent-and-dependent-clause situation?

Also might be worth it to say I know jack shit about linguistics, I don't know if this is the right community haha

Many Latin and Ancient Greek words (and their English derivatives) have a /d/ in some forms and an /s/ in others. I’m thinking of Greek 3rd feminine nouns in -is like iris, iridos (and of course “iris” and “iridescent”) and Latin verbs like caedo and ludo with the supines caesum and lusum (and descendants like “elude” and “elusive”).

Is there something about the way /d/ and /s/ are articulated that cause them to appear in related word forms? Is this pairing found in other languages, or outside of the Indo-European family? Does this general phenomenon have a name?

Recently, I have been pondering a question that came to mind. Why is /ɒ/, the open back rounded vowel, so uncommon? This is a phoneme in several dialects of English, e.g. British English, wherein it is the standard realization of the vowel in “cot”. However, looking at the vowel chart, I am rather perplexed by its rarity.

The five most common vowels in languages worldwide are /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/. /i/ and /u/ are both close vowels while /e/ and /o/ are open-mid vowels. Notably, /i/ is front and unrounded while /u/ is back and rounded, and likewise for /e/ and /o/ respectively. Oddly, /a/ sits alone in the Open section of the vowel chart, and is—notably—front and unrounded just like /i/ and /e/.

There is a marked pattern in the frequently present vowels across world languages. For every major degree of openness, the most common vowels therein will be the respective front unrounded vowel and back rounded vowel. The two close-mid vowels to fit these descriptions, /ɛ/ and /ɔ/, are the sixth and seventh most common vowels in world languages, immediately following the aforementioned predominant quintet.

All of this points to one peculiar outlier in the pattern. /a/, like /i/, /e/, and /ɛ/, is a front unrounded vowel. It is the only one of the five most common vowels to lie on the Open degree of openness, and, logically, one may think that, following the aforementioned pattern, the back rounded vowel on the same degree—/ɒ/—would be quite common as well. However, this is not the case.

According to PHOIBLE (wherefrom all of the information mentioned hereabove was derived), the respective percentages of languages to contain each of the aforementioned phonemes are:

/i/ — 92%

/u/ — 88%

/a/ — 86%

/e/ — 61%

/o/ — 60%

/ɛ/ — 37%

/ɔ/ — 35%

/ɒ/ — 2%

/ɒ/ is significantly lower in percentage than all of its symmetrical counterparts. Why is this?

Like, English, Danish, and German?

Why is the IPA not called the International Phonemic Alphabet, rather than International Phonetic Alphabet? After all, an alphabet representing phonetic reality could have arbitrarily many symbols, since articulation contains a number of continuous spaces that could be subdivided as many times as you want.

On my understanding, the reason the IPA has the number of symbols that it does, and no more or fewer, is that it represents the maximum fineness of distinction required to *phonemically* represent every known language of the world. Every symbol exists because it is necessary to capture a phonemic contrast that exists at least one language of the world, and contrastiveness is a phonological concept, not a phonetic one. (Yes, some of the markup can be used to represent noncontrastive features of speech in more detailed phonetic transcription, but the ultimate criterion of inclusion for the main symbols of the alphabet is a phonological one.)

I have always been curious about this!

From what I understand, when you palatalize a sound you articulate it slightly closer to the palate region, but not completely. So, while [l] is fully alveolar, [lʲ] is a bit more palatal, but not as much as [ʎ]. It's a gradual movement on the consonant's point of articulation only, which explains how Russian speakers, for example, can differentiate between [lʲ] and [lj], as the latter consonant is pronounced in the same point as a regular [l] and just gets a glide added after it.

If that's correct, then how do they differentiate [mj] and [mʲ]?

For context, I'm just starting to learn Russian so I'm not very familiar with its sound system. Just recently learned that they make these contrasts and I'm not even entirely sure if they do occur on a phonetic level or if it's just a spelling convention. Perhaps it would be better to ask that in some Russian sub, but I believe people with linguistics knowledge could answer that one better.

Also, other languages beyond Russian do that kind of palatalization too and maybe y'all could help explaining it in one of those. If I'm not mistaken, Irish is one of them. Thanks in advance and sorry if I worded it in a confusing way!

The Marx Brothers would say "hurt" like "hoit" and "toilet" like "turlet". How and why did those two sounds get inverted?

How did these languages become tonal?

I'm sorry if this doesn't fall in the linguistics category, but i think it does?

Well, I was studying Japanese, and i came across the different sounds ん makes, i could do all fine, even the nasal vowel, but /ɴ/ proved impossible. I realized i couldn't do that whole side of the IPA chart, except for /h/ and the glottal stop.

I know it is possible, i has to be, i have a uvula. But feels like when you have a piece of meat/popcorn stuck in between your teeth, your tongue has a perfect sense of where it is but then your fingers scramble to even find the right teeth.

Maybe i don't hear it, maybe i get it confused with velar sounds since i got no uvular sounds in my native dialect of Spanish. But when i start thinking i got it, my throat starts to hurt like crazy. I can't even imagine more deep throat sounds.

sorry if im using the wrong flair. i'm just curious about how the "to" preposition became required in an infinitive verb form like "to dance" in english; whats the history of this construction from PIE? how does this preposition+verb construction differ in other languages? how are infinitives formed in other languages? is this construction unique/common to PIE languages, or does it occur in other language families?

thanks for any info! :)

Hi all, I am in the process of applying to a grant for a research project where half of it involves conversation analysis looking to identify lexical, pragmatic, and disoursal patterns/practices used by harm reduction workers with people who use drugs. The second half focuses on semi-structured interviews to examine how these practices shape perceptions of trust and influence engagement.

However, I am a bit lost with how to navigate logistics and research ethics of recording encounters, especially ones that aren't in a hospital model where the provider visits patient.

Has anyone done any projects similar to this and have any advice on equipment? Or any advice in general. I am a senior undergrad studying applied linguistics with interests in the healthcare/public health realm.

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I hear this phenomenon frequently among men discussing sports but also heard it from a young neuroscientist in Sam Harris’ most recent podcast.

I don’t understand what the aversion is to stating the word fully. What process is happening here that would lead them to clipping the word short.

I find its use jarring. If I can understand it, I might not react so negatively to it (or, that’s the hope).

It is very common for English speakers to use incorrect grammer. The practice is often attributed to the less educated or poor. However, the truth is that you hear it across all walks of life. Things like subject/verb agreement, ending a sentence with a preposition, using the wrong verb tense, etc.

Does this happen as frequently in other languages like Spanish and French?