tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30114385.post6235699075824592634..comments2023-12-20T08:35:04.633+00:00Comments on Lingua Frankly: Can we trust quotes on language products?Titchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03003350618976942468noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30114385.post-59267948247325983062011-04-01T22:55:07.589+01:002011-04-01T22:55:07.589+01:00Oh yeah, Adger... And Gaelic syntax was even crazi...Oh yeah, Adger... And Gaelic syntax was even crazier - I have to admit that after reading...<br /><br /><i>Why can we cleft prepositional phrases using the relative proclitic </i>a<i>, but in a relative clause we find the dependent marking proclitic </i>an<i>? Why can we cleft aspectual phrases or finite clauses at all, since we don’t appear to be able to construct corresponding relative clauses?</i><br /><br />... I couldn't help remembering Joseph Heller's "I don't know what this means and don't want to have to find out."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30114385.post-37378829731481698882011-04-01T18:22:52.730+01:002011-04-01T18:22:52.730+01:00Haha, yes. I was stunned at how opaque some of th...Haha, yes. I was stunned at how opaque some of the most basic stuff was rendered in the essay "Gaelic morphology".<br /><br />It was quite funny how they threw about terms like <i>orthographic word</i> and asides like <i>Connected to this is the issue of register and style</i> without explanation, but saw fit to put quotemarks in something as mundane as saying that there are <i>many ways of saying the "same thing"</i>.Titchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03003350618976942468noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30114385.post-80232908385518020232011-04-01T13:00:35.768+01:002011-04-01T13:00:35.768+01:00Neither is it only grammar books. Know this one? T...Neither is it only grammar books. Know <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Edinburgh-Companion-Gaelic-Language/dp/0748637095" rel="nofollow">this one</a>? The back cover claims:<br /><br /><i>The book has been written accessibly with a non-specialist audience in mind.</i><br /><br />Inside there's no lack of sentences like the following one from the chapter "Hebridean and Mainland Dialects":<br /><br /><i>In clusters which show a vibrant this is not subject to palatalisation, but a following element may or may not be and, with SGDS reporting palatalised stops at Harris points as against retroflex in Lewis, the isogloss boundary there reported by Borgstrøm (1940:236) is validated in this case.</i>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com