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5:02 PM
Interesting.
> Could you send the datasheet by the end of this week?
> Could you send the datasheet by this week?
> Could you send the datasheet this week?
 
Anonymous
@DamkerngT. "by this week" seems a little strange, but that might just because I'm thinking about it
 
Anonymous
Maybe in context I wouldn't think there was anything strange about it
 
The second one is quite weird to me, too.
 
It was Maulik's suggestion.
My first reaction was "that's odd".
Then I looked it up on the web, and found that some people really used it.
 
Anonymous
Yeah, I think in context you might not notice anything weird about it
 
Anonymous
5:05 PM
I'm trying to imagine it
 
Anonymous
But I'm not really sure
 
Anonymous
There are lots of uses where by this week would be fine.
 
Anonymous
Can you give some examples from the web?
 
a moment
> Last Sunday they drove out to their lot to look at the excavation that by this week will be their basement.
Most of "by this week" are from other constructions.
 
Anonymous
When I hear "Could you send the datasheet by this week?", it makes me think the endpoint is the end of the business week--perhaps 17:00 Friday
 
5:07 PM
Some of them used "this" when they were trying to describe some events, and "this" would be some specific week in the context.
 
Anonymous
Yeah, I looked through results in COCA and all of them seemed fine, but they used the string in other ways
 
Anonymous
Some didn't contain the PP by this week. For example, in "[they're] stopping by this week", by this week isn't a phrase
 
Yes, I classified that kind of sentences as "other constructions".
 
Anonymous
I'm attempting to agree with you
 
Anonymous
:-)
 
5:09 PM
I agree with you. :-)
 
Anonymous
Attempt successful!
 
Anonymous
Hooray
 
Yay!
> The mask will soon be ready, by this week in fact, Edmund and next week we should be able to implement our plots!
 
Anonymous
Yeah, it seems fine.
 
Anonymous
The mask was probably in preparation prior to this week.
 
Anonymous
5:11 PM
So it's suggesting an endpoint for a long-term process.
 
It seems like it was like that.
> By this week, your baby is about the size of your hand spread open ...
> -- Your Pregnancy Week by Week - Page 239
 
Anonymous
On the other hand, in "Could you send the datasheet by this week?", sending is punctual, it happens in a single point in time
 
nods
Perhaps that makes it sound a little odd.
 
Anonymous
And it's already "this week". But when I understand it as "by the end of the week", it makes sense to me
 
I know I wouldn't say it.
 
Anonymous
5:12 PM
And I think that would be my default interpretation
 
Anonymous
My intuition suggests removing by
 
Anonymous
But I wouldn't go so far as to call by wrong.
 
Mine too.
Me either.
 
I'm heading to bed. See you everyone!
 
Anonymous
Rest well!
 
5:23 PM
Sleep tight!
See you soon!
sad
 
Anonymous
Why are you sad?
 
I can't access UPSO anymore. :(
I could, yesterday.
Many interesting books there. :-)
So it's for North America only, I guess, and yesterday was admin's accident, maybe.
Btw, I can still access other OUP online resources just fine.
 
Anonymous
6:04 PM
I don't think it's for North America only
 
Anonymous
And anyway, I can't access it either
 
Anonymous
The libraryweek / libraryweek thing doesn't seem to work
 
Oh!
It may be excluded, then.
 
Anonymous
7:02 PM
I just discovered BCCWJ supports regular expressions to some extent.
 
Anonymous
The way it works: you can search for a string of characters in the entire corpus, or in a set of selected subcorpora. Each match has context before and after included. You can filter the before/after strings using some limited RE syntax.
 
Anonymous
In the matches for before/after, you can use things like . to match arbitrary characters, ^ and $ to match beginning/end, and you can create [character classes]
 
Anonymous
Of course, that's not much use to people in this chat room, but I'm happy about it :-)
 
Sometimes, a man has a problem and he thinks "I will use regular expressions"
Now, the man has two problems.
 
Anonymous
Oh! I'm lucky that doesn't apply to me, then
 
7:16 PM
Regex is a much over-used golden hammer :P
 
Anonymous
Not everything is a nail. Nails are nails, though. You might not have noticed
 
7:32 PM
I eat my nails. I hardly notice them at all.
Real programmers need only two keys. the 1 and the 0.
God programmers need only one key.
To punch holes in the right places
 
Oh, perhaps I was never a real programmer, then.
 
Anonymous
The concept of a "real programmers" is a long-running joke
 
Anonymous
oerkelens is just repeating the sort of joke he's heard, just as he was parroting the line about regular expressions
 
I wasn't that serious.
 
Anonymous
I didn't think you were serious
 
7:46 PM
I mean I usually couldn't find my own keys. :-)
 
Anonymous
Hehe
 
Anonymous
I have a bottle of ibuprofen (brufen). It has a label which wraps around most of it, and I just noticed the corner had a yellow box with an arrow saying "PEEL HERE"
 
Anonymous
So I thought, "why not?" I peeled there.
 
Anonymous
The whole label came right off!
 
Hehe.
 
Anonymous
7:47 PM
Now I have an unlabeled bottle of ibuprofen.
 
LOL
OTF
Can I have some ibuprofen?
I think I found some of them on the floor. :D
 
Anonymous
I suppose so. But I can't throw that far.
 
Anonymous
@DamkerngT. Oh, no! The floor is not an appropriate place to store medication.
 
8:05 PM
Hello, people!
 
Hello!
 
Anonymous
Hello!
 
Anonymous
Welcome back to ELL chat! :-)
 
Long time no see!
 
I've popped in a few times to find nobody here.
 
Anonymous
8:07 PM
Damkerng and I are always here. In spirit, at least.
 
My avatar is always here.
 
Anonymous
Yes! The little astronaut keeps ELL chat alive!
 
You have achieved mental synchronicity
 
mopping the floor... I'm a robomop. :)
Oh, I also misspelled the words.
 
Anonymous
8:08 PM
Robomop?
 
Anonymous
I saw that movie.
 
@snailboat have you ever discussed your change from "snailplane"?
 
Yep.
 
Anonymous
@TylerJamesYoung People ask me about it all the time. I should wear a little tag that says "Ask me about vehicular polymorphism!"
 
@snailboat That was my cousin in the movie. :)
 
8:09 PM
Part man, part cleaning tool, all mop.
 
Anonymous
@DamkerngT. Ohh :-)
 
mopping...
 
Grime has a new enemy.
 
Anonymous
@TylerJamesYoung I originally signed up with my real name, but then I saw lots of people using handles on Japanese.SE, so I picked the name snailplane
 
There aren't many of us real-namers out there...
 
8:13 PM
Should I change my username to robomop?
:D
 
Anonymous
People told me "snailplane" sounded like a male name, which was just a little bit irritating--I think snails are cute, so I put snail in the name :-) And why plane? That would take me a while to explain. So I thought snailplane was a nice name. A little leisurely flying plane, hovering about at a snail's pace
 
Anonymous
Possibly carrying snails.
 
Anonymous
So, one day I got annoyed and decided to change it to snailboat, since I thought that sounded cuter
 
Yes, it's a lovely image.
 
Anonymous
You know, it's like sailboat?
 
Anonymous
8:13 PM
But snail.
 
I like snailboat.
The first time I saw the name, I thought it was sailboat.
 
Anonymous
 
I agree that it is cuter
 
Anonymous
My pet snail says hi :-)
 
8:14 PM
Hello!
Btw, my cat petted me sometimes.
 
Anonymous
Hee.
 
Anonymous
Cats are good at owning pet humans.
 
I'm not sure who should pet who anymore. :D
Or whom. :D
Your snail looks like she just won something.
\/ for victory!
 
Anonymous
Snails like to climb stuff.
 
Anonymous
So, in that picture my snail is probably happy about reaching the top of the plastic.
 
8:17 PM
My cat patted me once and ran away.
I think he was trying to tell me, "Look! There is another cat outside!"
Now he is running around.
 
Anonymous
 
Anonymous
This is a baby I found outside a few years ago climbing a three-foot leaf all the way to the top!
 
Wow, she looked like she was enjoying the leaf!
The leaf also looks very curious.
A pandan leaf?
 
Anonymous
I don't know. I don't know much about plants.
 
Anonymous
That plant kind of reminds me of a pineapple top.
 
Anonymous
8:23 PM
 
Me neither. But I got a few of pandan in my garden.
Oh, mine don't look like this. :D
 
Anonymous
 
Anonymous
They're all the same to me. I don't know how to distinguish plants
 
Ah, from this angle, it kinda looks like mine.
 
Anonymous
That second picture is a pandan.
 
8:24 PM
Mine are more like growing horizontally, not vertically.
Yes. I think that is a pandan.
 
Anonymous
I don't know if pandan is a mass noun or count noun
 
Me neither!
 
Anonymous
Maybe it depends on whether you're talking about a particular plant or the material.
 
And it's kinda small, so I'm not sure I should call it a pandan tree.
A pandan bush or shrub or brush?
 
Anonymous
You can call it a plant. Maybe a bush.
 
Anonymous
8:27 PM
I don't think people say "a brush"
 
Anonymous
A shrub is distinguished from a tree by its multiple stems and shorter height, usually under 6 m (20 ft) tall. Plants of many species may grow either into shrubs or trees, depending on their growing conditions. Small, low shrubs, generally less than 2 m (6.6 ft) tall, such as lavender, periwinkle and most small garden varieties of roses, are often termed subshrubs or bushes. An area of cultivated shrubs in a park or garden is known as a shrubbery. When clipped as topiary, suitable species or varieties of shrubs develop dense foliage and many small leafy branches growing close tog...
 
Anonymous
Since I don't know much about plants, I probably don't use plant-related vocabulary very precisely
 
Mine are less than two feet tall.
But maybe five feet wide.
 
Anonymous
But to me, a shrub is a smallish plant, and a tree is a tallish plant which probably grows mostly straight up
 
Anonymous
Or angling a bit
 
Anonymous
8:28 PM
At any rate, it has something like a trunk.
 
Anonymous
I do have one tree which doesn't grow straight up.
 
They have!
 
Anonymous
I thought it was horribly diseased because it bends around in such strange shapes
 
Anonymous
I thought for sure it would need to be removed
 
Anonymous
But it turns out that species of tree is just like that :-)
 
Anonymous
8:29 PM
It's healthy!
 
It depends on its species, I think.
Yeah!
 
Anonymous
Shows what I know about trees. (Not much!)
 
Btw, I think I have this very big tree in my garden.
I think it is the tallest tree in our village!
 
Anonymous
Are you about to show us a picture or something like that?
 
I'm not sure how high it is.
I haven't taken any picture of it.
 
Anonymous
8:32 PM
I expected this to refer to something previously mentioned or about to be mentioned
 
I used this because I was about to tell more about it.
 
Anonymous
Informally, people sometimes say things like "I have this really big tree in my garden" introducing a topic, but for some reason I think this usage is incompatible with "I think"
 
I see.
 
Anonymous
So I was waiting for you to identify the referent of this :-)
 
Anonymous
(A picture, or a name of a species, or such--something that would make it more specific)
 
8:34 PM
It's because I can see this tree on my side, but you can't.
 
Anonymous
Stupid S key.
 
Not that I can really see it now. It's dark outside.
Oh, I remember now.
 
Anonymous
Well, words like this are about the shared frame of reference between speaker and listener
 
I was about to say that I don't know the name (or the species) of this tree.
So I call him, Big Brother.
 
Anonymous
Ahh
 
Anonymous
8:35 PM
It watches everything you do? :-)
 
I think it (he) watches everything in the village!
 
Anonymous
Oh!
 
Anonymous
Arbor Panopticon
 
Have you read Foucault, snailboat?
 
@snailboat Oh!
(Took a long while before I could look them up.)
 
Anonymous
8:41 PM
@DamkerngT. Well, there was Argus Panoptes
 
Anonymous
I tried to hang my joke on that hook, but I'm not sure how well it worked :-)
 
Anonymous
@TylerJamesYoung Not so much. A little bit in high school is all. I'm uncultured!
 
I think it didn't work really well, but it still worked somewhat.
 
Anonymous
Thank you for your joke rating! I will take this feedback into account when making future jokes.
 
Anonymous
I'm going to share another snail picture.
 
8:43 PM
Actually, I like jokes that I have no clues, so I can learn something from them!
 
Anonymous
 
Anonymous
The snail's triumphant moment!
 
Anonymous
They went as high as the leaf could take them!
 
Oh, how could she be in that position!
An acrobatic snail!
 
Maybe Arbor Panoptes would be better
 
Anonymous
8:44 PM
Yeah, I mixed them up when I typed it.
 
Anonymous
Shame on me!
 
Even though I've read the classics, Argus just reminds me of Ween
 
By the way, the walls of my village are particularly high.
 
Anonymous
I'm not familiar with Ween
 
Anonymous
But what if you go for Argos rather than Argus? Still Ween? :-)
 
8:45 PM
I think panopticon is apt.
 
The Panopticon is a structure
For me, that makes it less apt
 
Anonymous
Panapticon!
 
Anonymous
You know how we say apt and inept?
 
Anonymous
I always want to say ept.
 
8:47 PM
Oh!
 
I've heard people say "ept" but only joking
 
Anonymous
Yeah, that's me, too. Ept, but only joking.
 
Anonymous
Poor ept. It'll never be a real word. :-(
 
and usually explicitly establishing it as the opposite of inept
 
It is one, you just used it.
 
8:48 PM
yeah, it has to hang out with gruntled
 
Anonymous
Yeah, that's the lot of this sort of backformation.
 
Anonymous
Gruntled used to be a perfectly cromulent word
 
Anonymous
But now? It's just a nonce-word in contrast to disgruntled
 
Anonymous
Hard times, gruntled, hard times. :-(
 
8:48 PM
embiggens!
 
em- and -ens in the same word!
 
Anonymous
@DamkerngT. It's true. Any word I use is a word, more or less by definition.
 
To answer your earlier question, Argo makes me think of They Might Be Giants
 
Anonymous
But whatever "realness" is (a concept I deliberately avoided defining), I think it's something ept lacks.
 
Anonymous
8:50 PM
And when I said "it'll never be a real word", I was thinking of poor Pinocchio.
 
Anonymous
So I had to use real if I didn't want to make a mental detour.
 
I already forgot the ending of Pinocchio.
 
Anonymous
Oh!
 
Did he become a real boy in the story?
 
8:53 PM
haha
 
Oh, lots of noses!
 
Welcome, Sari!
 
Anonymous
I added Sari to the write access list. Users under 20 reputation normally can't talk in chat
 
Oh, I see.
 

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