Since vowels in human speech are a continuous spectrum rather than a discrete set, many descriptions of languages I’ve seen — not only on Wikipedia — place the vowels of a language as dots in a two-dimensional grid. For example, here is the one for modern Hebrew:
The positions of these dots se...
In the following question on the French stackexchange site:
“La” or “le” before a person's name?
the asker refers to the phenomenon that in some rural/dialect settings the first name of a person is preceded by the definite article.
The same construction is always used in Austria in spoken Germ...
@OtavioMacedo and everyone else, about the Challenge Weeks: they work elsewhere... We're kind of the only ones that are failing at it... Is it just a matter of low visits?
@Alenanno that's an interesting one, actually. It happens all throughout Germany, even in the North where a grammar teacher would probably kill you on the spot.
This is a quick way to expand the scope of the site and generate new questions and answers.
How it works: - One topic will be designated each week starting Friday 0:00 (EST) and ending Thursday 23:59 (EST). The current topic will be listed below.
How to enter - In order to participate, simply...
@Alenanno More than just tolerated. In the dialect that I speak it's almost mandatory. I will always introduce myself as "Ich bin der Reg". Dropping the article is kind of unnatural.
Except if Robert should decide to shut us down. But somehow I don't think he will. For what does it cost to keep us in the air? Very, very little, and we function well.
@Cerberus I don't know the details, but even so... Why should they pay that for us and not for others? I'm not saying I'm happy to see this site being closed, but I don't blame them for not keeping it online if it costs.
@Alenanno They do pay this for others. And they have no reason to cut off something that costs them next to nothing but would cause many angry users if shut down.
I have problems understanding some answers/questions because the terminology being used is too technical. Where can I find out what is the meaning of a particular term?
Return to FAQ index
The resource has been created, see the Meta question FAQ: Linguistic Terminology. I'm tagging this status-completed.
If we make it ourselves (with the help of everybody), then I propose we use this scheme.
The question will be linked to our Community FAQ and will be "usable" by the users to ...
What is your opinion about the last question I linked above?
I assumed this "I was thinking... If we could slowly build our own resources, don't you think they would function as "keywords" that people will use to come here when they search on google?"
I am not saying we need to write any word now. I'm saying we can start now and slowly build it up together and it might bring additional visits. Anything can help right now and this thing would hugely help us.
I was thinking, in order to improve our community commitment and involvement, we could set up our own blog.
SE sites do not have a blog by default but we can request one. I ask you to read this blog entry, which is related to this topic.
Keeping in mind that we should post there at least once a...
@Cerberus I look upon all language use with kindness!
And yes
Actually I do have one thing but it doesn't need to be within the predetermined confines of our discussion
I did get some interesting feedback about the site in my Facebook campaign.
Hopefully the speaker doesn't mind me reproducing here:
"I keep hoping to see really technical questions there, but it mostly seems to be stuff that could be answered by reading a textbook or taking an intro class. Either that or highly specific typological questions, where the answers are never very explanatory nor particularly interesting. The questions mostly seem to be coming from language enthusiasts or similar amateurs. [...]
I keep waiting for questions like “What arguments exist for right-to-left argument evaluation in formal semantics?”, or “Which theories of morphology can handle long distance dependencies?”, or “Where did the idea of an evaluation metric go in formal syntax?” but people keep asking so many questions like these instead: [...]
“Can children learn up to 4 different languages?”, “Are there any “simple” languages?”, “Can I learn a new language just by listening or watching videos?”. It’s good for public outreach, but it just isn’t useful for me as an actual linguist."
but anyway it's a critique I understand, but I don't know how we could manage to have even more specialized answers going out in a reasonable timeframe.
People are already "nervous" to respond to things outside of their little bubble
First of all, this person seems interested in a particular Anglo-Saxon sub-field of linguistics, like formal Chomskey-like syntax. Secondly, we do have more specialised questions; but it is only to be expected that a freely accessible internet website should have many amateurish questions too.
Starting May 2012, the Linguistics site will hold chat events. They are not regular (yet) but they will, either once a month, or once every 2 weeks, depending on the needs. Information on the next Linguistics meeting can be found here.
You can find the saved transcripts below:
#1 Linguistics M...
Since vowels in human speech are a continuous spectrum rather than a discrete set, many descriptions of languages I’ve seen — not only on Wikipedia — place the vowels of a language as dots in a two-dimensional grid. For example, here is the one for modern Hebrew:
The positions of these dots se...
In the following question on the French stackexchange site:
“La” or “le” before a person's name?
the asker refers to the phenomenon that in some rural/dialect settings the first name of a person is preceded by the definite article.
The same construction is always used in Austria in spoken Germ...
This is a quick way to expand the scope of the site and generate new questions and answers.
How it works: - One topic will be designated each week starting Friday 0:00 (EST) and ending Thursday 23:59 (EST). The current topic will be listed below.
How to enter - In order to participate, simply...
lɪŋˈgwɪstɪks
lɪŋˈgwɪstɪks