Today I learned ...

[Nachtuil]

I learned that nasals are also considered stops. Maybe I knew once but quickly just started referring to oral stops as stops and nasal stops as nasals.

[yangfiretiger121]

I learned that nasals are also considered stops. Maybe I knew once but quickly just started referring to oral stops as stops and nasal stops as nasals.

And, this is why "stop" is rarely, if ever, used anymore. To expound, nasals/"nasal stops," such as [n], are considered sonorants because of their non-turbulent airflow, while plosives/"oral stops"/"stops," such as [p], are considered obstruents because they completely obstruct airflow and, thereby, have turbulent airflow.

[shimobaatar]

And, this is why "stop" is rarely, if ever, used anymore.

Oh, where is this the case? Where I study, I almost never hear "plosive". Oral and nasal stops are typically just referred to as "stops" and "nasals", respectively. Of course, the full terms are used when clarification is necessary.

[eldin raigmore]

I call them “stops” in codas and “plosives” in onsets.
But on the ZBB they made fun of me.

[yangfiretiger121]

And, this is why "stop" is rarely, if ever, used anymore.

Oh, where is this the case? Where I study, I almost never hear "plosive". Oral and nasal stops are typically just referred to as "stops" and "nasals", respectively. Of course, the full terms are used when clarification is necessary.

I watched a few YouTube videos by a dialect coach, who used "plosive" when describing [q], and presumed that usage was the standard now.

[Pabappa]

context matters. If you say "voiceless stop" we can assume you mean plosives unless this is for a nonhuman language. Likewise "voiced stops" will generally exclude nasals, because few languages distinguish voice on nasals, though again context matters. (Note that voiceless nasals are not stops ... the difference between voiced and voiceless nasals is not quite the same as between and voiced and voiceless stops).

[GrandPiano]

(Note that voiceless nasals are not stops ... the difference between voiced and voiceless nasals is not quite the same as between and voiced and voiceless stops).

Can you elaborate on this? My understanding was that nasal stops are considered stops because they block the airflow in the oral cavity (even though they still allow air to pass through the nasal cavity), and that is the case for both voiced and voiceless nasals. How are voiceless nasals different from voiced nasals, other than the lack of voicing?

[Pabappa]

Sorry meant to answer this earlier. Wikipedia agrees that they re stops , but the description seems the same as that of a nareal fricative. A voiceless n resembles /nh/, not /nt/, so I would group it with fricatives at least acoustically.

[GrandPiano]

Sorry meant to answer this earlier. Wikipedia agrees that they re stops , but the description seems the same as that of a nareal fricative. A voiceless n resembles /nh/, not /nt/, so I would group it with fricatives at least acoustically.

[n̥] has the same place of articulation as [t] (and [d] and [n]). Other than that, I'm not sure how you would expect it to resemble [nt]. Just like voiced [n], it doesn't fully stop the airflow because it only blocks airflow in the oral cavity and not in the nasal cavity.

[Pabappa]

If you denasalize [n], as one might do with a cold, you get [d]. But if you denasalize a voiceless [ n̥] , I'm not sure what you'd get, if anything. Maybe some [x]-like sound? That's the asymmetry and probably a big reason why voiceless nasals aren't very common.

[Lambuzhao]

I call them “stops” in codas and “plosives” in onsets.
But on the ZBB they made fun of me.

They will do that there.

[Xonen]

If you denasalize [n], as one might do with a cold, you get [d]. But if you denasalize a voiceless [ n̥] , I'm not sure what you'd get, if anything. Maybe some [x]-like sound? That's the asymmetry and probably a big reason why voiceless nasals aren't very common.

Hmm, I've never read anything about voiceless nasals being substantially different from voiced ones (well, apart from the voicing itself), and at least for me, trying to say [an̥a] while holding my nose results in something that sounds quite a lot like [ata], much in the same way as doing the same for [ana] results in something like [ada]. Then again, IANAP, nor does my native language have voiceless nasals, so I guess I could be pronouncing them wrong or otherwise missing something. Still, I'd like to see a source for this.

And voiceless continuants are rare in general; an explanation I've seen is that they're acoustically not very distinct. Which sort of makes sense: without much frication, voiceless continuants (and vowels) don't really have that much to go on in terms of audibility. So they tend to either get lost, become fortified into more distinctive fricatives, or merge with their voiced counterparts.

[LinguoFranco]

The Sundanese language makes it’s nouns plural by using the the infix /ar/, though in some situations (such as if the noun begins with a vowel), it becomes a prefix instead. It can also become -/al/ if the noun starts with /l/. The affix can also be reduplicated to /arar/ to express “very” or “many.”

EDIT: Here’s an example. /budak/ means “child” in Sundanese, but /barudak/ is “children” and /bararudak/ is “many children.”

[eldin raigmore]

TIL that this thread is still ongoing!
I’m so glad!
Let’s all keep learning, guys(gender-neutral meaning intended)!

[Zekoslav]

After reading a good old essay by Émile Benveniste, I learned that Indo-Iranian split ergativity in the past tense has the same origin as the ubiquitous Western European "have-perfect"!

Basically, both branches developed a perfect tense by using a participle in whatever possessive construction the language had.

East: "To me (is) a book", "To me (is) a book written"

West: "I have a book", "I've written a book"

This is not actually the same as a passive construction (at least in Iranian, about which Benveniste is speaking), since there the agent is expressed by the instrumental case, while in the possessive and perfect constructions it's expressed by the genitive/dative case!

Since Indo-Iranian has zero copula at least optionally, the participle was reinterpreted as a finite verb and the genitive/dative case as ergative. However, during the transition from Middle to New Persian, ergative replaced nominative for pronouns and the construction was once again reinterpreted as accusative, gaining usual personal endings in the process!

(And Latin had both constructions, but the one with "have" won in the end.)

[gestaltist]

This was very interesting Zekoslav. The clearest explanation of the GEN>ERG shift I've seen so far.

[Omzinesý]

Turkish tense-aspect system is basically alike that of English: progressive vs. non-progressive

The plain non-progressive is interpreted as perfective in the past and future, when a past or future marker follows, and the habitual othervice, when zero tense marker follows. Habitual past is expressed perifrastically.
The same three tense markers can also follow the progressive aspect marker.

[eldin raigmore]

I’ve learned a lot since the 20th of March. For instance I learned that diabetics are at higher risk for abcesses than average non-diabetics. It was neither a cheap nor a painless lesson.

Anyone else learned anything recently?

[eldin raigmore]

Today I learned that guiacum entered the English language in 1533, and was the first word originated from the Americas to enter English.

Today I also learned that cheroot originated from Tamil.

[Khemehekis]

Today I also learned that cheroot originated from Tamil.

That's odd. In the spelling program I was in in junuor high, the word "cheroot" was on a list of words that had entered the English language through Spanish from a language of the Americas. (I was amazed by the number of tobacco, alcohol, marijuana and hard drug words that had been borrowed from Spanish: tequila, mescaline, sinsemilla, and so on.)