The Story of Indo-European’s (Mostly) Lost Number Reading time: 10 minutes Introduction One book, many books. One cat, many cats. One woman, many women. One sheep, many… well, also sheep. In Modern English, the grammatical options for nouns are limted to two. A given noun can be singular, referring to one individual thing, or plural,Continue reading “The Fates of the Dual”
Tag Archives: grammar
Is This [Is] An English Question?
Reading time: 10 minutes For this November’s post, I’d like to shine a syntactic spotlight on an unusual feature of English word order. While you might not know it from my online offerings, I am first and foremost a syntactician: words are fascinating, but it’s how we arrange them together that interests me most. TheContinue reading “Is This [Is] An English Question?”
Re-Reduplication in La-Latin
In previous posts, I’ve written about the idea of stems and its importance for Latin. Simply put, the stem of a Latin noun, adjective or verb is an intermediate stage between the root (the meaningful part of the word) and the grammatical endings that make the word complete. In the second of the two piecesContinue reading “Re-Reduplication in La-Latin”
Latin Stems: Part II
Verbs and Verbal Stems A Recap In part one, I introduced at the idea of stems and how it works in Latin nouns and adjectives. We saw that Latin nouns and adjectives can be broken into three parts. root + stem vowel + case-number affix By “root”, we meet the meaningful part of any word,Continue reading “Latin Stems: Part II”
Latin Stems!
An Invaluable Tool for a Latinist’s Toolkit If there is one thing that I urge all Latin learners to get to grips with, it is the concept of stems. My passion for this topic is so great that I have structured my own Latin course around it, including and using it from the outset. IContinue reading “Latin Stems!”
Learning Czech – My Top Ten Terrors
It is a truth widely acknowledged that the Czech language is a bit tricky to learn. Naturally, ‘difficulty’ and ‘ease’ in second-language acquisition are inexact and unscientific concepts – a native Slovak speaker, for example, will have a far better time picking up Czech than someone like me, doomed to speak English. However, there areContinue reading “Learning Czech – My Top Ten Terrors”
Danny L. Bate 