Questions tagged [grammar]
A body of rules, features, or generalizations which reliably differentiate between grammatical and ungrammatical constructions.
573 questions
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The difference between compound sentences and complex sentences
I'm trying to wrap my head around the difference between compound sentences and complex sentences. From what I've read, a compound sentence contains 2 independent clauses, joined by a coordinating ...
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In any language, can a single word or phrase in a sentence ever do double duty?
This is probably a bit of a strange question, but I'm thinking about how we parse sentences, and it seems to me generally a rule that if a piece of sentence belongs to one piece of meaning, it rarely (...
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Terminology around possessor vs. possessee as the head in possession
I have a question that I want to ask about the typology of possession, but I don't know how to ask because I don't what the relevant terminology for it is, so first I have to ask about terminology.
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Is there a name for transformations that manipulate constructions with semantically overlapping constituents? [closed]
Is there a name for transformations like the following where there is semantic overlap between the means, purpose, and action described by the construction?
Action/means:
Open the door by turning the ...
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Can adjectival prepositional phrases ever precede the noun/pronoun they modify?
In the following sentence:
Except for Cat, we all wanted to order pizza during lunch.
is "Except for Cat" an adjectival or adverbial prep phrase?
I think it is modifying "we", but ...
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Any language with some segments reserved exclusively for grammatical function only?
Usually grammatically words use a subset of the consonant/ vowel inventory (eg. In Georgian ejectives are for lexical words only) but there are African languages with tones reserved for grammatical ...
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Linguistic map of direct speech VS indirect speech
I would like to have a linguistic map of whether indirect/direct speech are commonly used in languages:
Categories:
Both indirect and direct speech
Mainly direct speech (or a mixed indirect speech ...
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Is this sentence an example of inversion, or of a presentational construction?
I’m trying to understand the difference between inversion and the presentational construction.
Inversion is verb-subject order without the word “there”. For example, Down the street came a procession ...
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Does any language distinguish the agent of a monotransitive clause from the agent of a ditransitive clause?
I'm going down a bit of a rabbit hole at the moment trying to understand how morphosyntactic alignment works when accounting for ditransitive clauses too, not just monotransitives and intransitives - ...
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Disagreement over the grammatical function of problem – what’s your take?
I came across a grammar question and I’d love to hear your take on it. The sentence is:
I tried to solve the problem
Only the word problem is underlined, and the question is asking for its ...
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In the Romanian language why do some words derrived from latin use the hyphen and others do not?
For example, we have vere and unus (vere-unus) from latin, which turned into vreo, vreun, vreunul and vreuna
Per my understanding, in the past those words used to have a hyphen.
By what logic was the ...
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how to form adjective-type names like patronyms from nouns in hindi
What is the general rule to form the word 'vaidik' from 'veda', 'bhaarat' from 'bharat', 'kaunteya' from 'kunti', 'atreya' from 'atri'?
For example what will be to Hindu as 'vaidik' is to 'veda'?
What ...
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Corpora for Bantu languages
Does anyone know free-to-use corpora for Bantu languages that have a morphological search (like the Russian national corpus)?
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Definition of Relative clauses
According to Jae Jung Song in his "Linguistic Typology: Morphology and Syntax" relative clauses
are defined to be a clauses that identify a subset of the domain referred to by the head noun.
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Adpositions and Cases
It is often said that adpositions take NPs and determine the case of the head.
This is the case with locative adpositions:
Я стою на столе (Locative case)
Я стою за столом (Instrumental case)
Я стою ...
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