Linguists don’t like the word axioms. as you can tell from the other answers: they imply a degree of mathematical rigour that just isn’t compatible with someone as messy as human language. But there are foundational assumptions to disciplines in linguistics, which are pretty much axioms. And they would be more overtly acknowledged, were linguists a more reflective bunch.

In historical linguistics, for example, you have the Uniformitarian principle. (I see from Wikipedia that Uniformitarianism is actually a geology thing, and you can see why linguists made the connection.) That’s the assumption that languages worked the same way 5000 years ago as they do now. You need that assumption to do any non-trivial historical linguistics: our documented processes of language change reach back only 2 or 3 millennia, and we need to assume that the same processes worked further back in time, if we want to say anything at all about Proto–Indo-European.

In generative syntax, you have configurationality, the principle that you can build up the syntax of a language out of phrase structure grammars (the kinds of grammar computer programmers are used to). Non-configurational language are a shock to generative syntax: they are languages where word order is seemingly random, and words do not hang together in well-defined phrases; so you can’t write a simple grammar (the kinds of grammar computer programmers are used to) to account for those languages’ syntax.

There’s other foundational beliefs, such as the primacy of spoken over written language, the “natural” evolution of language, the exceptionlessness of language change, the unidirectionality of grammaticalisation, the arbitrariness of the sign, and so forth.

It has been de rigeur in Greece to take your shoes off when entering a house, as owner or guest. Indeed, Greek has borrowed the Turkish proverbial expression about it: to “hand someone their shoes” is to invite them to get the hell out of your house. (του ’δωσα τα παπούτσια στο χέρι/pabuçu eline vermek).

I will note that while it’s a norm I follow to this day as a householder, it’s not one I experienced as a guest in Greece: I don’t remember ever having to remove my shoes when a guest. In fact, it was only when I crashed at an uncle’s place for a few days that the spare slippers would surface.

Originally Answered:

How does Quora combat duplicates of other questions and answers?

Dupes of answers: Quora does nothing to prevent us, and God preserve us from the day when it does. Bots unleashed to collapse answers left and right, muttering “this answer has three words in common with the next answer. Exterminate! Exterminate!”

Dupes of questions: Quora has conflated the search bar and the question bar, in the hope you’ll notice as you’re typing that similar questions have already been asked. Quora also displays similar questions in the sidebar, which triggers users to merge them. Both reasonable actions.

Surely, there can be only one.

Ben Folds Five: Song For The Dumped

Modern Greek:

Μια μπύρα [παρακαλώ] /mja ˈbira [parakaˈlo]/
“One beer [please]”

The “please” is really optional. In fact Greeks tend to get creeped out by such politeness. But as a foreigner you’d probably be expected to produce it.

Klingon:

DaH HIq HInob /ɖɑx xɪq xɪˈnob/
“Give me alcohol NOW”.

Any similarity of the word for alcohol and “hic!” is purely intentional.

Inertia. Census questions are a slow moving beast, and getting them updated is extremely difficult. The question on volunteerism in this year’s census was a request from Peter Costello, three censuses ago. The Australian Bureau of Statistics could not afford to spend the money to get rid of it.

There is plenty of cowboy stuff to blame the ABS for, but if they hadn’t been defunded and rudderless, they wouldn’t have gone cowboy to begin with.

That inertia is in play widely. People noted with dismay the lack of an intersex option on the census. State governments have been more proactive: in the ACT it is in fact mandated to offer intersex as an option in any government survey; and the data standard I help manage in the Australian school sector has been updated to include it.

But the federal bodies in education have not updated their data collection manual yet. And in fact the parenting role question has been a bone of contention between the state and federal bodies in education, for the same reason. Federal bodies are interested in establishing mothers’ role in encouraging education. State bodies have little interest anymore in differentiating fathers from mothers in their data collecting.

So it’s not really that they’ve chosen to exclude, it’s that they haven’t gotten around to updating.

It’s a tough one.

I know Klingon and not Elvish, like Brian Collins. I think I disagree with him: Tolkien gives slightly more opportunity.

• Elvish is a more complicated set of languages than the agglutinative Klingon.
• Elvish is much less well documented by Tolkien than Klingon is. That’s why people are very reluctant to use Elvish conversationally at all (and they put an asterisk next to the grammars done for the films). But that means you have to exercise a lot more linguistic and philological skill to get anything out of Elvish.
• Paramount only used Klingon for the Trek movies, and when they did, they asked the language inventor to do the job. TV Trek have either ignored Klingon, or used the “idiots with dictionaries” approach to language learning. (wIjjup for “my friend”. Where –wIj is a SUFFIX.) So even less chance of remuneration than for Elvish.

I think Elvish would be endlessly frustrating to work on, which is why I was never tempted. (That, and Tolkien’s mythology didn’t do anything for me.) But for that reason, it would be more of a mental challenge.

Quora’s answer to How do I share content from Quora?

Putting this up not because something has happened to trigger it, but because I just came across it again, and I’ve been meaning to pin it here.

What do Quora users think of Quora Product Management?

https://www.quora.com/What-do-Qu…

If they can always get more writers where we came from, and there is no need for Quora Inc to make its writers stakeholders (outside the secret Facebook group), then we are commoditized, and we are just product.

My own impotent response is:

• I will not thank them for it
• I will not help them in it
• I will not show them the respect they don’t show me

My loyalty is to my fellow Quorans. I do not consider Adam DiCaprio my fellow Quoran.

Kat Rectenwald disagreed with my retaliatory ethics, and I respect that. But that’s where I stand.

Frederick Douglass.

I mean, I’m white Australian, and I’m flabbergasted that Hollywood has still not gotten there.

Maybe it’s because I’m white Australian.

Epic Rap Battles of History is… a start, but he deserves a lot more: