Reasons some languages are harder to learn

Re:Reasons some languages are harder to learn by Tainnor on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @01:38AM (#27191566)

Well, if you check my thesis (and can make sense of the convoluted sentences), a big part of it was wading through the mess of terminology and also quite imprecise definitions. I think Dixon's descriptions are a good first order approximation to understand the concepts, but they lack a certain amount of rigour, at least if we want to use them meaningfully for cross-linguistic comparison. That's why I attempted a definition more centred on Lazard and Haspelmath.

It's quite impressive how much you know without formal training. I spent years learning about these subjects. However, since graduating in 2013, I haven't really done anything with linguistics.

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Re:Reasons some languages are harder to learn by bradrn on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @04:08AM (#27192273)

> I think Dixon's descriptions are a good first order approximation to understand the concepts, but they lack a certain amount of rigour

Oh, I completely agree. I personally quite like Deal’s ‘ergative’ and ‘absolutive properties’ [0] as a first attempt; but I haven’t yet seen Lazard and Haspelmath, so I should look into that more.

[0] http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~ardeal/papers/Deal-ergativi...

> It's quite impressive how much you know without formal training. I spent years learning about these subjects.

Why, thank you! But I don’t think I’m so different in this respect: I spent a good portion of my spare time last year reading everything I could find about ergativity, and had read lots about linguistics even before that. (What can I say; it’s an interesting subject!)

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