“Suffix” or “Ending”—Clarifying the Terminology

Aug 20, 2015 by

“Suffix” or “Ending”—Clarifying the Terminology

A reader of my earlier post “Some Observations on Morphophonological Adaptation of English-derived Loanwords in Russian Slang” pointed out that my use of the term “suffix” for the plural marker in Russian is incorrect; the term...

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Does Google Translate Output Accord with Reality?—And Remarks on the M...

Aug 17, 2015 by

Does Google Translate Output Accord with Reality?—And Remarks on the Morphosyntax of Russian Nominalizations

I have written extensively about problems with Google Translate and its many bloopers in both lexical choices and producing a grammatically cohesive output. It is thus ironic that Google Translate’s “translation” of the Russian...

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Mohawk’s Challenging Grammar

Aug 4, 2015 by

Mohawk’s Challenging Grammar

As mentioned in the previous post, an article by Judith Thurman, titled “A loss for words”, published in the March 30, 2015 issue of The New Yorker, does a good job discussing issues of language endangerment and revitalization....

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Are Languages of “Primitive Peoples” Primitive?

Jul 28, 2015 by

Are Languages of “Primitive Peoples” Primitive?

A recent discussion of Toki Pona, a conlang dubbed “the world’s smallest language” by Roc Morin on Business Insider Australia website, prompted me to write again on the issue of the so-called “primitive languages” (for my earlier...

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Is Fish “Who” or “What”?

Jun 22, 2015 by

Is Fish “Who” or “What”?

I was asked today whether ryba ‘fish’ in Russian is a “who” or a “what”. Fascinating question, as it turns out! “Who or what?” is a question of animacy, a feature that is both semantic and grammatical (morphological) in Russian. From...

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Some Observations on Morphophonological Adaptation of English-derived ...

Jun 22, 2015 by

Some Observations on Morphophonological Adaptation of English-derived Loanwords in Russian Slang

As discussed in an earlier post, loanwords (i.e. words borrowed from another language) often bear their foreign origins on their sleeve, so to speak. However, it is not true that loanwords always retain their pristine phonological...

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