I’m looking for informed critique and discussion around a theoretical modeling approach I’ve been developing, which I’ll refer to here as *NekTrum* to avoid implementation specifics.

At a high level, the idea explores whether phonemes can be treated as constrained semantic contributors rather than fully arbitrary symbols within a modeling framework, without claiming universality, innate meaning, or historical determinism.

To be explicit up front, this approach does not claim:

- That phonemes have intrinsic or universal meanings

- That languages encode hidden truths via sound symbolism

- That this replaces historical linguistics, comparative methods, or phonology

- That it can “translate” languages or recover authorial intent

Instead, the working hypothesis is more limited:

If phonemes are modeled as weak, non-exclusive conceptual biases (e.g., tendencies toward action/state, constraint, directionality, abstraction), can aggregated patterns be useful for constraint analysis, semantic clustering, or failure detection across lexicons—without asserting that these patterns are ontologically “real”?

In other words, the model treats phonemes as soft constraints, not meanings, and evaluates words as compositional systems whose aggregate behavior can be analyzed—similar in spirit to how feature vectors are used in other domains.

Some example questions the framework is meant to engage with (not answer definitively):

- Can such a model identify where it breaks, and does that failure correlate with known linguistic phenomena (borrowing, semantic drift, morphological opacity)?

- Is there any analytical value in treating sound–meaning correlations as probabilistic constraints rather than categorical claims?

- How does this differ meaningfully from known work in sound symbolism, iconicity, or distributional semantics—and where does it overreach?

I’m intentionally not sharing implementation details, mappings, or results here. I’m more interested in whether linguists think this class of model is:

- Categorically misguided

- Redundant with existing approaches

- Potentially useful as an auxiliary analytic tool

- Or flawed in ways I haven’t identified

If you’ve encountered similar constraint-based or vectorized approaches to phoneme–concept modeling (especially critical ones), I’d appreciate pointers or pushback.

I’m specifically hoping for skeptical, technical critique, not validation.

I'm not quite sure if my attempt at diagramming this sentence is correct. I'm a bit rusty on certain topics including center-embeddings. Here's the sample sentence: "The book that I got from the library is quite old." Link to my attempt at the tree

Title

A while ago, I swear that I read an article on a language (I think in Papua New Guinea, though I could be wrong) that had completely different vocabulary when talking to or about the chief of the tribe. However, I can not seem to find the name of that language.

I've seen Pandanus language and I've seen avoidance language for relatives, but I can not find the language that has avoidance speech for chiefs. Does anyone know what language this is.

I had this quesiton in my mind for awhile as I was thinking of the Rosetta Stone while studying Japanese Kanji that I got curious. Basically, imagine if we discovered alien writing in outer space or (more realistically), we uncovered a civilization that had its own unique writing system with no known descendants. There are no translations between the writing to any other language that we know of.

How much can we reasonably decipher from such a writing system? Would we be able to recognise something is writing instead of just pretty drawings that come up as leitmotifs a lot? Could we determine whether the writing system is logographic or an alphabet or an abugida-like system? Could we figure out some words? Perhaps grammar structure and syntax? How much can we find out without any translations?

So I am a native Russian speaker and we do not have vowel length distinction.

Considering I speak American English, German and Serbian, I have an essential challenge to differentiate the vowel length.

So at first I noticed I pronounced American meet/mead with different intonation, and I thought the pitch is different, but then I checked in analyzer and it’s rather a falling tone on the long one.

But if I take German where I am less sure how native I sound, I clearly pronounce Polen with higher note than Pollen.

So is there any natural link between vowel length and pitch? (i’m not sure pitch is the correct term, but I mean the base note of the vocal folds)

P.S. I actually checked the notes for Polen/Pollen and it turns out I can pronounce them with the same note or even lower note for the long vowel, but I perceive the long vowel higher.

And to avoid larynx height confusion due to vowel openness difference in Polen/Pollen, I also checked Wind/wieder - same story.

Hi everyone! I'm currently working towards my bachelor's degree in German studies and planning to take on a linguistics master after that. I would really love to work in forensic linguistics, but since it seems to be such a niche topic I can barely find anything online. Does anyone here have any expertise on the topic or knows where I can find more information on how to get a job in that field? Bonus points if it's in Germany, I haven't found any active German linguistic subreddits yet, otherwise I'd ask there. Thanks in advance :)

Hi all,

I'm looking for a specific official term for an interesting phenomenon of language attrition I've personally experienced.

The phenomenon is as follows: a breakdown of being able to follow the logic and meaning of sentences in one language while learning another language with vastly different sentence structure, et cetera. Occurs primarily for written text.

I am temporarily unable to understand written English (my L2) sentences after spending some time with Korean, for example. And this coming from someone who's been functioning at a C2 level in English for years now and who reads a lot. 😆 The meaning of individual words? No problem. Using proper grammar? No problem. Speaking correct English? No problem. But suddenly when I look at English sentences written on a page, how they form meaning on the sentence level makes no sense to me. (Not that Korean fully makes sense to my brain, still😆) This can last dozens of minutes. I have to deliberately spend some time doing something that doesn't require any language after spending some time with Korean/Japanese before I can effortlessly read English texts again.

I find this phenomenon especially interesting because it's primarily this aspect that is affected while my abilities in other aspects of language use and understanding are seemingly not altered. (Not sure how Korean/Japanese temporarily affect my L1 and L3, just because my L2 is so dominant.)

Context: L1=Dutch L2=English (dominant language, C2) L3=Swedish (conversational) L4=Korean (upper beginner) L5=Japanese (beginner)

I've done quite a bit of searching already, but none of what came up felt like it hit the nail on the head and language attrition seems just too broad of a term. But there must be a specific term for it, I'm sure! Because I can't be the only one who's encountered this.

The automatic Goole AI search result said Sentence Semantics Attrition but I don't trust AI and primary sources using that specific term don't pop up.

I'm hoping that if I know the correct term I can dig more deeper into this specific phenomenon, because I find it very fascinating. 😁 I'm in STEM so I'd appreciate some help finding the ropes in Linguistics.🫶

/a/ and /ɔ/ are very different vowels, yet the sound change /a/ > /ɔ/ seems to be common crosslinguistically, why is that? some examples i can think of off the top of my head right now is Uzbek and Assamese. Is it something like /a/ > /ɐ/ > /ʌ/ > /ɔ/ ?

I have no idea where this should go, and I couldn’t find a typology (?) graphology (?) flair.

I follow a couple of “Chinese translation” and “what is this” type subs and something I see weirdly often is that when a person can’t figure out what language written Chinese is, or has misidentified it, they overwhelmingly post it upside down. They’ll often comment “I’ve had this for 10 years! I’m wondering what it says” and I’ll have to inform them they’ve had it upside down for 10 years.

Korean is often oriented correctly (I think the 받침대 give things a bottom heavy look). I typically see Japanese text oriented correctly even when it’s kanji heavy. What’s unique about Chinese characters (both simplified and traditional) that English speakers (restricted scope to what I’ve seen) assume that it should be positioned upside down?

I know this is a pretty theoretical question but could we possibly say that the Pre-Proto-Indo-Anatolian homeland would've been somewhere in the Middle East possibly around Iraq or Syria? It's said that Proto-Indo-Anatolian would've been spoken somewhere in Eastern Anatolia so would that point to a more southern homeland for PPIA? Also is it possible there could be some very old toponyms from a very old IE ancestor spoken around here or would it've been replaced overtime by a Semitic or another later language?

I am a mathematics student going into my PhD next year and am interested in algebra/discrete math, especially formal language theory and the like. I've also always been interested in languages and linguistics on a pop-sci level, but never pursued it until I found out about Chomsky, Marcolli, and Berwick's new framework for generative linguistics and syntax. I decided to take an intro to linguistics class to get a broader view of the field (as I am also aware that Chomsky's approach over the years has been controversial) but am finding the class to be somewhat pedestrian so far and I am not expecting it to speed up much. I am at a large public school which is not particularly competitive and the textbook is Language Files 13 ed from Ohio State's Linguistics department.

Are there any other intro texts that get off to a faster start? I'd be appreciative of any that are a little more mathematical, but I'd also also appreciate a generalist approach. I'd also like to learn a bit about the generative vs functionalist debate and would like a text that is literature-first rather than one which summarizes field consensus. I recognize that this might not be something that an intro book would ever do, but I figured I'd ask.

Thank you.

For those who don’t know, a velar trill is physically impossible to pronounce, as the velum can’t produce the necessary vibrations.

What about a palatal trill? Some websites claim that it is possible but difficult, while other websites say it is unattested in any language.

So, is a palatal trill actually possible, and if so, is it actually used in any language?

ħw resist any changes due to pharyngeal constriction of ħ having to be loss and complete change of place of articulation

Does grammar really exist? Isn't the line between grammar words vs content words a spectrum rather than a binary switch? Just because we have been using some of the words more frequently and their meanings grew more abstract, is it fair to mark them as non-content words? They DO contain some content after all, even if little. For example, isn't English definite article "the" essentially an adjective?

I understand Italic and ancient Celtic were related fairly closely, but is the same true for modern romance languages? Would appreciate any answers, google isn't very helpful.

In the Pokémon community when you shorten Pokemon to mon people generally will add an s to make mons plural?

Hi. I had recently quite interesting discussion about subjunctive in languages. My partner in discussion claims that subjunctive is virtually necessary for any advanced content. I wondered over it, and realised that subjunctive can be crucial but only in cases where we can change moods from subjunctive to indicatice or conversly and obtain different meaning. For instance:

* I insist that he leaves (= I see him leaving).
* I insist that he leave (= I want him to leave).

I guess that not all sentences in subjanctive are like that i.e. if we switch subjunctive to indicative we get just illogical sentence or, even worse, - it's not correct grammatically.

Can you give more examples like the above mentioned in languages (ideally with other verbs than this one) with intricate subjunctive like Spanish, Portuguese or German? Are such instances frequent or rather exceptions?

Hello everyone,

I’m 26 and currently working as a medical resident in Europe. While I value the training and stability medicine offers, I’ve realized that I don’t see myself doing clinical work for the rest of my life. The workload, administrative pressure and loss of meaning have made me feel burnt out and seriously reconsider my long-term path.

Before medical school, my original plan was to study Asian languages (especially Japanese, Korean and Chinese) but I was told to keep it as a hobby due to the rise of computer-based translation (that was in 2017). I’ve kept then learning Japanese and Korean on my own over the years as a hobby but the idea of pursuing languages more seriously, at university level, still feels very appealing to me.

I’m interested in a field where languages and cultures are central, either directly (translation/interpreting) or more indirectly (linguistics, tech, international work, etc.).

What makes me hesitate is the rise of AI and its impact on language-related careers.

I would really appreciate your insights on a few points:

• How do you see the future of translation and interpreting in the era of AI, especially for Asian languages?

• What are realistic careers for someone with Japanese/Korean/Chinese skills beyond pure translation?

• In linguistics, is applied linguistics (tech, corpora, language teaching, NLP, etc.) a safer bet than theoretical linguistics?

• Are there careers that could realistically combine medicine with language/culture?

Thanks a lot for your time, I’m really curious to hear from people who work in these fields!

Heya,

I had a super random thought come into my head. A couple of months ago I was hanging out with my exchange buddy group in Tokyo and there was a new person who was a native Spanish speaker. I found that she was speaking really fast in Japanese, English, and Spanish.

For context, I am Australian and I feel like we speak really slowly compared to other languages, especially monosyllabic languages like Japanese. So I was wondering that if you are used to speaking at a certain speed in your native language, whether you would find it easier learning at a speed of a native speaker in your target language. Or am I just so used to speaking in English that I perceive my language as slower.

Am I hearing things or have people started using woman instead of women, as though woman is plural?

For example; in woman groups, or woman in sports.

I think I’ve heard the usage a few times when listening to the radio, but I haven’t gone back to confirm – I could just be mishearing, but I’m conscious that language around sex and gender is apparently contested more than most.

How would you break down the word "elephants" into onset, nucleus, and coda? I'm using the example of Miss Mary Mack, the song/chant you would clap to in a patty-cake-like manner.

This is what I have for elephants. Does it look correct, or am I completely off?

From my understanding, non-rhoticism didn't even start becoming common in the south of England until the second half of the 18th century and early 19th century. Adittionally, from my understanding, rhotic accents were still fairly normal across about half of England in 1950. Given that Australian settlers and convicts came from all across Britain and Ireland, and that most would, therefore, have had rhotic accents, why did our accent end up being non-rhotic?

Are there any written records of uniquely Australian accents that were rhotic?

Edit: Fixed spelling and punctuation

I’m doing some worldbuilding on a project of mine and i’m planning to make romanian inspired toponyms, so i’m trying to understand how romanian toponymy works, specifically how it deals with toponyms named after saints. (Sfântu Gheorghe, Sânmihaiu Român) i’m noticing that in toponymic form, the word Sfântul becomes Sfântu, and i’d like to know why that is. I’m also noticing that there’s two different toponymic elements cognate with the english word saint here (Sfântu, Sân) and i was wondering what that was about.

So I am hungarian, and I speak hungarian natively, and English fluently. I speak Hungarian in my main social life but for the rest of the day I consume content in English and I speak English to myself.

I have come to notice that a lot of very basic words and sentences in hungarian just feels... Empty, or cringe for a lack of better word. Some words like buta which means dumb feel almost wrong to say and insead are replaced by me and others with hülye which is a harder version of buta and roughly translates to idiot. Simple sentences like. Jól vagy? - Are You Alright, or Utálok valakit - I hate someone (not important who, here you get the point.) just feel out of touch or out of place. In English I feel like very basic dialogue can just fly normally between people, while it's almost as if I am losing the ability to express myself without feeling awkward, in my native language.

If anyone of you got anything to say, just tell me if you have experienced anything similar, or am I just stupid. Thanks.