Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 July 6

= July 6 =

Questions
--40bus (talk) 19:22, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
 * 1) Is there any Spanish dialect (other than Judaeo-Spanish) that has a phonemic contrast between close-mid and open-mid vowels?
 * 2) Is there any dialect that pronounces the P in word psychology? Several other languages pronounce it.
 * 3) Is there any Spanish dialect (other than Judaeo-Spanish) that has /z/ or /v/ phoneme?
 * 4) Is there any Spanish dialect (other than Judaeo-Spanish) that has a /b/-/v/ distinction?
 * 5) Is there any Spanish dialect (other than Judaeo-Spanish) where j / soft g is a coronal sound, rather than velar?
 * 6) Is pronouncing the T in words tsunami and tsar more common that pronouncing P in psychology?
 * 7) Why letter S is silent in viscount? Silent letters don't typically appear at the ends of non-initial syllables.
 * 8) Are there any words in English with coda /sl/?
 * 9) Are there any words in English that have a consonant cluster containing an affricate?
 * 10) Are there any words in English that have affricates or /h/ in complex onsets?


 * As for 8, "hassle" etc, if you're willing to accept syllabic L. AnonMoos (talk) 20:22, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
 * As for 6, many people pronounce "tsar" as if spelled "zar". I don't think there's much initial /ts/ except in Tsetse fly. AnonMoos (talk) 20:22, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
 * As for 7, presumably borrowed from French after the amount of silent consonants in French had increased... AnonMoos (talk) 20:22, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I figured it might have been a later "etymological spelling", such as isle or debt. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 00:05, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Definitely from Old French. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:11, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
 * As for 9, if medial clusters are allowed, there's "judgement". AnonMoos (talk) 20:22, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
 * There are accents where 'tree' is pronounced "chree" and (I think) 'dream' is "jream". And of course many people still pronounce 'which' as "hwich". Also 'hue'. — kwami (talk) 08:56, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
 * The /b/–/v/ contrast in Spanish is reported in the US, northern Mexico, and Puerto Rico (Exford 2018). Nardog (talk) 09:39, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Is there any Spanish dialect (other than Judaeo-Spanish) that has a phonemic contrast between close-mid and open-mid vowels?
Spanish phonology:
 * In Eastern Andalusian and Murcian Spanish, word-final /s/, /θ/ and /x/ regularly weaken, and the preceding vowel is lowered and lengthened:[157]
 * /is/ > [ɪː] e.g. mis [mɪː] ('my' pl)
 * /es/ > [ɛː] e.g. mes [mɛː] ('month')
 * /as/ > [æː] e.g. más [mæː] ('plus')
 * /os/ > [ɔː] e.g. tos [tɔː] ('cough')
 * /us/ > [ʊː] e.g. tus [tʊː] ('your' pl)
 * A subsequent process of vowel harmony takes place so lejos ('far') is [ˈlɛxɔ], tenéis ('you [plural] have') is [tɛˈnɛj] and tréboles ('clovers') is [ˈtɾɛβɔlɛ] or [ˈtɾɛβolɛ].[158]

I guess that is phonetic rather than phonemic. --Error (talk) 00:59, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Numerals
Do numerals constitute a distinct part of speech in English? --40bus (talk) 21:04, 6 July 2024 (UTC)


 * They're not usually considered to do so. AnonMoos (talk)


 * In general, cardinals would be nouns, and ordinals would be adjectives. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:06, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
 * In Finnish, it is a distinct part of speech. Even words like sata (100) and tuhat (1000) are definitely numerals, and not nouns. --40bus (talk) 06:16, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
 * (ec) Grammarians may label some word as a distinct part of speech, but is this reflected in its actual use in the language? The word sata can be inflected just like a common noun such as utu, so it can function as a noun, just like an English numeral such as hundred, which can be qualified with an adjective ("the happy hundred") and has a plural ("hundreds of people agree with me"). What makes cardinal numerals distinct from common nouns, though, at least in some languages, is that they can be used as determiners of nouns ("the first hundred years"). You can substitute the noun "lot" for "hundred" used as a noun ("the happy lot"; "lots of people agree with me"). You cannot do this with "hundred" used as a determiner (*"the first lot years"). That is IMO enough reason to assign cardinal numbers their own part of speech, but an alternative is to assign several parts of speech. Wiktionary classifies Finnish sata as only a numeral but English hundred as both a numeral and a noun. The English word some is classified as a pronoun, a determiner, and an adverb.
 * Rather in general, grammarians do not agree among themselves on which parts of speech there are and which ones should be assigned to given terms. The common assignments are also a matter of what is conventional, rather than theoretically sound. --Lambiam 08:57, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Parts of speech are to some extent subjective. There are different kinds of noun that might be considered different parts of speech, and to some extent it's just tradition that they're not. English numerals, if you want to call them nouns, behave differently than other nouns. In "two [dogs] bark", "two" is not your typical noun. It doesn't take the plural, yet counts as a plural for the verb. (That's different than "I wrote four twos", where it does take the plural and does behave as a typical noun.) It's attributive ("two dogs bark"), yet can occur without the main noun ("two bark"), which is also odd. There's lots of behaviour like that that would be odd for a noun, so you could say that it's not a noun. — kwami (talk) 08:52, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Back in 2017, Zompist had a post on the syntax of mathematical sentences (e.g. "two plus two equals four"). Double sharp (talk) 09:14, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

NB (I don't know if this is the reason for your question, 40bus), if a numeral is not a part of speech, then the second bullet at Numeral needs to be corrected. I'm not bold enough to do it myself since I don't know what exactly is a "numeral" or a "part of speech". AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 13:22, 9 July 2024 (UTC)