Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 November 20

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November 20

Non-multigraphs

I encountered the term "Multigraph (orthography)" today for the first time, along with its collateral meanings such as Digraph (orthography) and Trigraph (orthography). Is there any "official" or standard term for a set of letters that function independently in a specific word, even though they're normally used as a multigraph? In English, such situations typically arise with compound words. An example is ⟨th⟩, which typically has the function of þ or ð, the voiceless or voiced dental fricative, but when used in "courthouse", the two letters function independently. Nyttend (talk) 02:41, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Not a direct answer to your question, but some orthographies have special devices to distinguish such cases -- in Catalan, "l·l" is quite different from "ll", while in Swahili, ng' with following apostrophe is different from "ng", etc... AnonMoos (talk) 04:40, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

In a number of languages, the trema (or diaeresis) performs the same function where vowels are concerned (so French Noël /nɔɛl/ is a two-syllable word exhibiting vowel hiatus (or diaeresis), and does not rhyme with gueule /ɡœl/). --Theurgist (talk) 10:32, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

What is the meaning of following sentence?

"He had to accept defeat in his brother's favour." Can it mean that the person accepted defeat for his brother's sake? 14.139.82.7 (talk) 11:11, 20 November 2013 (UTC)Vineet Chaitanya

The way I interpret it is that his brother is the one who beat him, but it's so oddly phrased, I'm not 100% certain. Clarityfiend (talk) 11:19, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Give us the paragraph around it, and it might be easier to figure out. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:15, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you very much to both of you for your responses. In the context its meaning is exactly what Clarityfiend proposed. I just wanted to know whether it could mean anything else in isolation or not. 14.139.82.7 (talk) 11:12, 21 November 2013 (UTC)Vineet Chaitanya

Sure, why not? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:32, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

The surrounding text is: "When he learnt that his elder brother had got the fruit by his fast thinking instead of running around, he felt ashamed at his own lack of deep thinking. Vinayaka had rightly won the contest by virtue of using his superior intellect and Kumaraswamy had to accept defeat in his brother's favour!" To me it appeared to be a "bad construct" so I just wanted to know if the reworded sentence in isolation becomes a misleading sentence. Kindly comment. 14.139.82.7 (talk) 05:38, 22 November 2013 (UTC)Vineet Chaitanya

It's not a particularly idiomatic passage as it stands. The changes I'd recommend are:

• "Got" isn't the best word to use in this sentence. "Won" or "obtained" or "captured" would be better.
• Either "by his fast thinking instead of his running around", or "by fast thinking instead of running around", with preference for the second option.
• Either "by virtue of his superior intellect", or "by using his superior intellect", but not both. Or, indeed, just "by his superior intellect".
• No exclamation mark.
• "Kumaraswamy had to accept his brother's victory" would be my suggestion. "Kumaraswamy had to accept [his] being defeated by his brother", or something similar, would also work. Tevildo (talk) 19:59, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. 14.139.82.7 (talk) 06:53, 24 November 2013 (UTC)Vineet Chaitanya

The first word with the meaning "word" written

In which language was the first word with the meaning "word" written? Tried to find that without success. Hornblower (talk) 13:01, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Cuneiform was probably the first form of writing to develop, so assuming the concept of "word" existed, probably Sumerian or something else from early Mesopotamia. Rojomoke (talk) 13:47, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Note that "word" has a number of different meanings, as does its equivalent in other languages (consider "the word of God"). The meaning "An element or unit of speech", which is what I guess you mean, appears in the OED entry on "word" as meaning 12. I suspect that this meaning arose later than other meanings, and it is possible that Sumerian, for example, had not word for "word" in this sense. --ColinFine (talk) 16:23, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

• The answer is easily Sumerian, which has the word inim "word". You'd have to get the appropriate volume of the Sumerian Dictionary of the University of Pennsylvania Museum to find the word's attestations. In many languages the word word evolves from either name > "noun", or call/command > "verb" (from PIE *wer-). μηδείς (talk) 18:03, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

According to this book, the notion that "inim" means "word" is mistaken. Adam Bishop (talk) 02:57, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

No analysis is given there, just the bald assertion. Halloran gives more than half a dozen compounds from inim with the sense "word, thing spoken" http://www.sumerian.org/sumerlex.htm. There are plenty of other sources, such as this UPenn site and other Sumerian terms for word or thing spoken.. Given exact one-to-one correspondences do not exist (compare word to Fr, parole, or wesiZulu igama "name, word") I fail to see the exact point of the objection. μηδείς (talk) 03:16, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Yeah...I was thinking, I don't know anything about Sumerian or Sumerian historiography, so I'm not sure what's a reliable source for this subject :) Adam Bishop (talk) 10:13, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Surely pre-literate languages must have had a word for "word". But, then we'll never know will we? Alansplodge (talk) 12:29, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't see why not. There are plenty of languages that were not written down until an anthropological linguist came along and transcribed the language for the first time. All we have to do is study those field notes and see if the linguist recorded a word for 'word'. Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:22, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Alansplodge -- "Word" in the specific sense is kind of a meta-concept or a product of some degree of linguistic analysis, and I'm not sure how commonly cultures would be expected to have a clearly-defined concept of "word", or much occasion to refer to it, before the rise of writing... AnonMoos (talk) 23:25, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

I have to agree with AnonMoos. "Word" in the sense of any part of speech consisting of a certain number of letters and suitable as the answer to a crossword puzzle question is a modern notion. But more concrete terms like, call, name, praise, summon, and so forth exist in most reconstructed languages. "Name" is the most abstract term on the Swadesh list, and Proto-Uralic *nimi is usually given as a cognate to PIE name. As mentioned above, terms like name will be used when the more abstract term word is needed but doesn't exist as a separate lexical item. μηδείς (talk) 00:34, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

I would have thought the answer is Greek: Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ Λόγος --Shirt58 (talk) 05:04, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

We have reconstructed the Proto-Indo-European word for "word", *werdʰo-, and it's different from the PIE word for "name", *h₁nómn̥. PIE was an unwritten language, though, as was Proto-Germanic, which also had both words: *wurdą and *namô. Aɴɢʀ (talk) 10:03, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

However, Germanic has a different ablaut grade. And I remain somewhat skeptical that Yamna Horizon semi-pastoralists in 3000 B.C. would have had much occasion to refer to the linguistic word unit. Certainly the Sanskrit cognate doesn't mean "word"... AnonMoos (talk) 13:14, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the root *werdʰo- existed in PIE and its reflex in English has many senses, one of which is, loosely, "unit of speech". But it also has other meanings like "promise" in I give you my word. If we were translating "He spoke just one word" into other PIE languages we would in most cases not use a cognate of word.

French: Il parla un seul mot.

Spanish: Él habló una sola palabra.

Russian: Он говорил только одно слово.

Greek: Μίλησε μόνο μια λέξη.

Note that none of theses words for word is cognate in these examples, but if we had used name instead they all would be. That implies "name" is a more basic word. Nevertheless it appears we have a word which is glossed as word in all known written languages. -- 17:59, 23 November 2013‎ Medeis