Obviously, the degree to which loanwords enter a language is highly influenced by culture - for instance, a community which has a lot of contact with another culture, through which many new objects / concepts are introduced, will want to have words for those things.
But I was wondering if there ...
I am somewhat familiar with (not at all learned of)the morphosyntactic criteria by which many languages are classified--such as the system by which the grammatical abstractions of agent, argument, and patient are treated-- and descried of the criteria potency unto a numerosity of classes yborn o...
the question about morphosyntactic alignment by Jarrod is written in some amazingly dense though perfectly grammatical English. I can't tell if he's a non-native speaker using a dictionary or translation tool, a native speaker playing a game, or some kind of AI!
I can play piano, sweet flute and guitar. I have played some drums and some exotic instruments like digeridoo and jew's harp... I tried to learn violin, but gave up quickly
I guess I'm not a very good player, but I've got a good "ear"
There are several families of languages where the same word can mean either a concept closely related to time or a concept closely related to weather:
Romance root: French temps, Italian tempo, Spanish tiempo, …
Slavic root: Bulgarian време, Croatian vrijeme, Romanian vreme, …
Celtic root: Gael...
Sometimes. Not always. My current contract is a little boring. I'm working for a big bank; and I feel like a cheap sell-out.
This particular bank employs hundreds of programmers. Like, I'm just one of the crowd. I don't feel like I'm making any contribution to the world, like I should be. Does that make any sense?
@OtavioMacedo I'm studying logic... and there it says that propositions with indeterminate (?) subject are either meteorologic or chronologic. Curious, isn't it
@OtavioMacedo I'm not familiar with this... the book I'm reading is very basic, it only says that propositions with indeterminate subjects refer to weather or time
@Tames Right. I guess the confusion existed in Latin and in Proto-Slavic, so it shows up in all Latinic and Slavic languagese today. But my question is whether the confusion between "weather" and "time" is related to the fact that both are the "default subject" when the subject is indeterminate.
It just seems to me that the "indetermiate subject" thing (as in English, French and Portuguese) probably developed independently from the "time weather confusion" thing; since the latter is not found in English, but is found in Slavic languages.
@DavidWallace there's a big discussion on this, in logic.. what does it mean to say "it is raining"... "the rain is raining"? "rain is falling"? I'm not sure
@OtavioMacedo because propositions must be analysed in the relation between subject and predicate, there are different theories on this... you should know what the subject is, so that you can make a judgment on the validity of the proposition
@Gigili Did somebody say something? I didn't hear anything!
But even if you say that the indeterminate subject is a placeholder for the weather, it still doesn't really make sense. You can't say "the weather is raining".
@OtavioMacedo maybe it doesn't... maybe there are languages in which people say "rain is falling", and this is similar to portuguese, not characterized as an absence of subject.. but some languages may allow a construction without subject
I don't know anything about Portuguese, but I suspect Spanish is going the same way as English - using the construction with estar in place of the simple present.
@OtavioMacedo I know.. yes.. it sounds poetic.. like "anoitece"...
@OtavioMacedo in general we rarely use the present tense like this, isn't it? in general we use the "gerundio"
someone will rarely say "leio um livro"
except if it is a profession like "faço mapas"
funny.. because it seems people will use the present to things they do with some frequency, and not to something they are actually doing in the present
Like, I think there are basically three aspects - perfective, progressive and habitual. In Slavic languages, progressive and habitual are grouped together and perfective is different. In English and the Latinic languages, perfective and habitual are grouped together and progessive is sometimes different (always for English).
I think that if you wanted to say "Every day, soldiers die in Afghanistan", you'd need a non-perfective verb. To say "John Lennon died in 1980", you'd need a perfective verb.
So in Slavic languages, verbs tend to come in pairs. We non-Slavs invariably use the wrong one.
@Tames It matters to the soldiers! :-) Umm, no, seriously, I think you still have to use a non-perfective verb. I'm not certain. I'll have to ask a Slav.
There are several families of languages where the same word can mean either a concept closely related to time or a concept closely related to weather:
Romance root: French temps, Italian tempo, Spanish tiempo, …
Slavic root: Bulgarian време, Croatian vrijeme, Romanian vreme, …
Celtic root: Gael...
