English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

I can't actually remember the actual instance though. But it's all in your head anyway. I could calim what ever bullshit I want about what I'm thinking.

Cerberus

Of course I don't mean to demythologise your experience...

Mitch

Which is exactly what bugs the crap out of me about continental philosophers.

Joseph Weissman

Just full of vitriol today, are we?

Cerberus

8:07 PM

Hmm what?

Joseph Weissman

That was a little symptomatic, I think :)

user19161

Is the bottom of this chat grey for you?

Matt Эллен

it's scarier when... Je suis déjà tu!

Cerberus

I live on the continent.

Joseph Weissman

Do you philosophy?

Cerberus

8:07 PM

(Just barely, as I am below sea level, but you get what I mean.)

user19161

I live on an island.

Matt Эллен

@JasonBourne I get that sometimes, but not right now.

Cerberus

I sort of have a BA in phil.

Joseph Weissman

Awesome!

Cerberus

I still have to finish it.

Joseph Weissman

8:08 PM

That's kind of badass.

Cerberus

Am supposed to.

Mitch

@Cerberus No. I really had an (internal) experience of when I walked into a room, feeling like I had ahad the experience of having deva vu of walking into that room before.

Cerberus

You?

@Mitch That is...odd! You are at leas one level above us.

Mitch

@MattЭллен depends on who tu is...are.

Joseph Weissman

@Cerberus Actually in the same boat with respect to credentials (have a BA that's lacking the last foreign language credits.)

Mitch

8:09 PM

Jennifer Lopez... that would be scary.

Cerberus

@JosephWeissman Ah, I see!

But we have probably concentrated on different things.

I mostly have mostly studied the history of philosophy, Antiquity.

Lucretius is my favourite.

Joseph Weissman

I would think so :) We seem to have very different interests, which would likely lead to different foci.

Mitch

@JosephWeissman ah .. no... I think others can attest I am only messing around. good naturedly trolling as it were.

Joseph Weissman

I love Lucretius.

Cerberus

Great!

Joseph Weissman

8:11 PM

@Mitch okay :)

Cerberus

He is one of the few whose style I actually enjoy.

Joseph Weissman

He's amazing.

Cerberus

I mean, Plato is a bit boring to read.

Joseph Weissman

Heh.

Cerberus

Aristotle is basically unreadable.

But Lucretius doesn't call up Venus for nothing!

Joseph Weissman

8:12 PM

I think he's more readable than Plato in some ways. It's more straightforward. Not couched in dialogue and so on.

Cerberus

Yeah, although its being poetry and a tad archaic makes it harder to read.

He was the first great Roman philosopher, one could say, and he had to coin all of philosophy in Latin.

He used very few Greek words.

Joseph Weissman

(I meant Aristotle, but yeah -- Lucretius is a more enjoyable read than Plato to me as well.)

Cerberus

Aristotle is hard!

Joseph Weissman

It depends on what you're trying to do with it :)

Cerberus

I am reading "The Greek Verb" before bed now.

Joseph Weissman

8:14 PM

The Poetics is relatively tame, especially if you've got lit/communications/media/rhetoric training of any kind.

Cerberus

Because my Greek kind of sucks.

Somehow, it helps me fall asleep rather quickly...

Joseph Weissman

Soporific?

Cerberus

@JosephWeissman ...which is in the end all based on Aristotle!

So you have already read his "shadows", to speak in Platonic terms.

@JosephWeissman Yes. Probably because it requires brain crunching. That makes me sleepy. A novel does not.

Is it not so for you?

Joseph Weissman

Yeah. I have also found I can't drag a novel to bed.

It pretty much has to be hard theory (ideally more nature than humanities).

Cerberus

Really?

What happens when you reads a novel in bed?

Joseph Weissman

8:17 PM

I stay up reading it :)

Cerberus

I enjoy it, but I don't fall asleep as easily—at least, not if it is in Dutch or English.

Joseph Weissman

"One more chapter" and so on...

Cerberus

Haha exactly.

German and French are hard enough to make me sleepy. Except when it's a really tense scene.

Jez

8:36 PM

trop dur

tchrist

@Cerberus What’s a Greek kind of sucks? Is that different from kinds? :)

I am pleased that my new bounty has attracted some answers.

tchrist

8:56 PM

Help! What do you call those voice prints that you can analyse on paper? They aren’t phonograms, let alone phonographs. What are they? Just voice prints?

Sonogram?

Oh. Is it just a spectrogram?

tap tap tap Hey, is this thing turned on?

Spectrogram

A spectrogram is a time-varying spectral representation (forming an image) that shows how the spectral density of a signal varies with time. Also known as spectral waterfalls, sonograms, voiceprints, or voicegrams, spectrograms are used to identify phonetic sounds, to analyse the cries of animals; they were also used in many other fields including music, sonar/radar, speech processing, seismology, etc. The instrument that generates a spectrogram is called a spectrograph. Format The most common format is a graph with two geometric dimensions: the horizontal axis represents time, the vert...

Hm, I guess.

I think I shall opt for voiceprints. I need words further removed from Greek or Latin today.

wishes all of our delightful moderators would visit this chatroom often enough that they were always autocomplete-pingable

@nohat You posted some spectrograms once. Know anything about them? Thanks.

simchona

@tchrist Do you need something?

tchrist

I need people smarter than me about the acoustic properties of linguistics.

And nohat may have that knowledge. I want him for his smartsnessy not his moderance.

@simchona But thank you kindly for asking. Seriously.

simchona

Maybe stop by the Linguistics chat?

tchrist

Oh, is the viable/vibrant/virile/alive?

simchona

Seems right up their alley

lɪŋˈgwɪstɪks

General discussion for linguistics.stackexchange.com

tchrist

9:03 PM

When I join ELU lo these many moons ago, I was thinking that that stuff would be here. Silly me.

For the most part, it just too rarefied.

simchona

The pineapples have become overgrown.

tchrist

We need an Answer Me These Questions Three joke-variant for ELU.

1. What is your favorite personal pronoun?

2. Why does English have so many French words in it?

3. What are the pros and cons of dependency parse versus a constituency parse?

:)

simchona

The third must be way more convoluted.

tchrist

Yeah, I know.

But it would still render our resident piñas like completely coladas.

Mitch

@JasonBourne you should totally just not bother. don't worry about quitting or not quitting. If you feel like participating , then great. If not, then the same.

tchrist

9:06 PM

Chat is the only place where we could make a game of such idle silliness.

Mitch

Idle game? You're on...

tchrist

You come up with your own Three Questions ere the other side he see.

I bet our regulars would do well at it.

Joseph Weissman

The Three Questions

The Three Questions is a short story by Russian author Leo Tolstoy first published in 1885 as part of the collection What Men Live By, and other tales. The story takes the form of a parable, and it concerns a king that wants to find the answers to what he considers the three most important questions in life. Synopsis The thought came to a certain king that he would never fail if he knew three things. These three things were *What is the best time to do each thing? *Who are the most important people to work with? *What is the most important thing to do at all times? Many educated men atte...

tchrist

Oooh, litty chur!

Mitch

OK...um...1) do you know what time it is? 2) what's in my pocket? and 3)... can you give me a suggestion for a third question?

tchrist

9:10 PM

Um, those are not ELU-related, my good sir.

Joseph Weissman

> What is the best time to do each thing? Who are the most important people to work with? What is the most important thing to do at all times?

Mitch

um... was that in the rules rules?

Joseph Weissman

(Now; whoever you are with; good for whoever you are with...)

tchrist

@Mitch Surely a putative (and wholly whimisical, not serious!) pineapple firewall must needs treat with matters eluvian!

Mitch

Grade: 1) correct, because I was asking for the time not if you knew it, and you gave the correct answer to that question. 2) wrong; who is not a what; for that you'd answer which. 3) that's a comment not an answer. and Comments are deletable so you essentially answering with not an answer. Well played. Two out of three.

tchrist

9:14 PM

@Mitch May I discreetly inquire whether to your knowledge you may have recently pissed off a non-moderator 20k users of this site? You do not have to tell me who it is, and perhaps even should not. But I am curious.

Mitch

@tchrist You had me up til eluvian. And that was too late so I went to bed.

@tchrist Re that...

Robusto

1

Q: "I would have liked 'to have seen'/'to see' New York before the cyclone"

Is "have" redundant when repeated in successive verb phrases? Well, let us read the following sentences: I would have liked to have seen New York before the cyclone, I would have liked to see New York before the cyclone. Am I right in saying that one instance of "have" seems to have p...

verbs

This has to be a dupe.

Mitch

somewhat redundant.

@Robusto If by dupe you mean a duplidiot, then yes.

tchrist

@Mitch What, you prefer antediluvian answers?

Mitch

@tchrist I'd prefer the answer to how to dry out my basement.

@tchrist that was explained. I think Jason had inadvertently voted to delete rather than just plain old downvoted. @Cerberus made him squeal on himself. messy cleanup.

Cerberus

9:17 PM

@tchrist Why?

As to your question, it is a bit confusing. I presume you are talking about American pronunciation?

tchrist

Because you can see the puff of air of an aspirated consonant in a spectrograph, which I think it was nohat showed. And I believe that Lawler said you can make out the distinctive fingerprint of secondary stress, or of its absence.

No.

Cerberus

No?

tchrist

I am not talking about “American pronunciation”.

Cerberus

Then why did you mention "photon", but not "photo"?

tchrist

I have never heard any native speaker of English fail to aspirate the unstressed t, and I want to know why.

Cerberus

9:20 PM

Because the t's sound the same in standard (RP) pronunciation, but not in American pronunciation.

tchrist

That is a very good question. In photon it is aspirated but in photo it is not.

I don’t believe you.

Cerberus

Well, it is true.

tchrist

Proof?

Cerberus

Uhh isn't it evident?

tchrist

Huh?

It is evident that it is there.

Please do not tell me that even you of all people are being confused about flapping versus aspirating.

simchona

9:21 PM

@Mitch How do you inadvertently delete vote? It's not next to the downvote arrow

tchrist

I am not talking about flapping.

Mitch

@tchrist photon is not an iamb more of a spondee

Cerberus

It is evident to me as someone who normally uses British pronunciation. But then listen to Howjsay:

howjsay.com/index.php?word=photo&submit=Submit

tchrist

I am talking about aspriration.

Mitch

@simchona I'm just reporting what I heard.

tchrist

9:22 PM

Sigh.

I thought you were saying that they did not aspirate, not that they did!!!

Cerberus

2 mins ago, by Cerberus

Because the t's sound the same in standard (RP) pronunciation, but not in American pronunciation.

Note also that "aspiration" can be a tad confusing, because English has weak aspiration.

I think /tʰ/ is normally used for strong aspiration.

tchrist

“O Lord my Lord”, implored the crippled one-legged man, “I can stand this no longer. I beseech that that thou shouldst make one leg like the other!” And he fell immediate fell over, his prayer having been granted.

This things can go both ways, you see.

How was I to know you meant you want both legs to be functional?

Cerberus

I have no idea what you're talking about, but anyway, your question appear to be about American pronunciation only.

tchrist

English does not have /tʰ/. It has only [tʰ].

No, god damn it. It is not.

Cerberus

I see some of the other commentators have already told you so.

tchrist

9:25 PM

They're dumb.

Mitch

@simchona Maybe not inadvertently exactly, he just, well, listen to his words...

Cerberus

No, you are...

Mitch

19 hours ago, by Jason Bourne

@tchrist @waiwai I was the one who cast the delete votes on Mitch's posts. They were already at negative votes when I cast them! No need to start a private room for this! Also, it is not revenge. Mitch is my friend. I give him upvotes all the time! Also, I visit his posts now and then and open many tabs at the same time, so they were done quickly. QED. Any more questions?

tchrist

Everything you read tells you otherwise.

Cerberus

Nothing I read tells me otherwise.

tchrist

9:26 PM

I will cite references if need be.

I am not making this shit up.

Cerberus

Are you sure you're not confused by the vowels?

tchrist

OFFS

ME?

Cerberus

The second o is very different between photo and photon in RP.

tchrist

Doesn’t matter.

English has four allophones of [t].

Cerberus

But the t is not, at least not significantly.

tchrist

9:27 PM

You apparently claim not to be able to tell the difference between two of them.

Cerberus

Suit yourself, then. I'm not going to answer your question.

tchrist

Because you believe it has a false premise.

Cerberus

Being uncivil doesn't help either.

tchrist

> English voiceless stops are aspirated for most native speakers when they are word-initial or begin a stressed syllable, as in pen, ten, Ken. They are unaspirated for almost all speakers when immediately following word-initial s, as in spun, stun, skunk. After an s elsewhere in a word they are normally unaspirated as well, except when the cluster is heteromorphemic and the stop belongs to an unbound morpheme; compare dis[t]end vs. dis[tʰ]aste. Word-final voiceless stops optionally aspirate.

The t in top is aspirated; the t in stop is not.

Flapping is red flapping herring.

Cerberus

I got this e-mail today, which I thought was rather funny:

tchrist

9:31 PM

Similarly, the t in intolerable is aspirated, because it is a the onset of a stressed syllable.

Cerberus

Apparently, there is a Cicero on Facebook, and I sought his friendship a while ago, of which I remember little.

He does look bald as a pea.

tchrist

But the t in photon is also aspirated, and there is no stressed-syllable onset there.

So why?

Flapping is a red herring.

It is immaterial.

And no American flaps that anyway.

You are right: I am frustrated by others’ misunderstanding.

Or are you going to start telling me that despite everything that is written about it, in fact Brits secretly aspirate all their t's no matter where they encounter them? I disbelieve in the most extreme possible terms. Just listen to them. They do not.

I think you are perceiving a t that does not reduce to a flap as being ipso facto aspirated, and that is where confusion lies. It does not.

Cerberus

I don't know what you're reading, but the t is photo is the same as in photon.

Mitch

@Cerberus I don't think he's a good friend.

Cerberus

Listen to Hojsay if you don't believe me.

@Mitch !

Mitch

9:34 PM

@Cerberus I don't pronounce them the same.

Cerberus

How dare you?

@Mitch But you're American.

Mitch

Oh I dared!

Cerberus

This is about RP.

Mitch

@Cerberus Yeah. What's it to you bub?

Oh.

Cerberus

Tchrist's question is about American pronunciation, but he thinks the Commonwealth speaks as he does. Canada excepted, of course.

Mitch

9:36 PM

Well...

Cerberus

Two Brits have tried to explain it to him.

Mitch

well I was answering about AmE. I don't know -what- the other side does.

Cerberus

I know.

Mitch

I was listening to Downton Abbey the other night and...

tchrist

@Cerberus Because they do not understand what I am talking about. It is enfuriating.

Cerberus

9:36 PM

howjsay.com/index.php?word=photo&submit=Submit

user19161

@Mitch In case that was not clear, let me make it clearer. I was trying to cast the delete votes on your negatively voted posts to "help you not lose more rep". It was not an accident. It was done on purpose. But of course, I shouldn't really do that now that I think again.

Cerberus

@Mitch Listen to the t in photon and the t in photo on Howjsay.

tchrist

These are allophones. They are mistaking one for the other.

Cerberus

@tchrist Or you're just wrong.

tchrist

4 mins ago, by tchrist

Or are you going to start telling me that despite everything that is written about it, in fact Brits secretly aspirate all their t's no matter where they encounter them? I disbelieve in the most extreme possible terms. Just listen to them. They do not.

Mitch

9:37 PM

and I was trying to figure out who came from where. Is it the Irish thing to do to pronounce 'money' as 'moh NAY'?

tchrist

Can you tell the difference between an aspirated and an unaspirated t?

Mitch

@JasonBourne Oh I don't care about all of it, but only because I know the explanation. If I didn't I'd probably be pissed that someone was voting to delete my answers.

tchrist

IF you say you can, and then you say Brits aspirate all their t’s, then I just do not understand what you are talking about. The don’t. And I will prove with a spectrograph if need be.

JASPER! You aren’t supposed to downvote people even! What has come over you?

Mitch

@tchrist I think, @Cerberus, that that is what tchrist's point is, that BrE doesn't aspitrate and he wants scientific looking data to prove it. That's all.

user19161

Also, I admit I cast revenge downvotes now and then, but they are few and far between, and not in this case.

user19161

9:41 PM

Really, I will give you a totally honest answer to whatever you ask, you don't need to try to guess.

Mitch

@Cerberus yep, the 't' in photo sounds aspirated to me. But maybe tchrist can prove that that is deceiving by using science and stuff.

tchrist

Just because someone aspirates the t in particular does not mean they also do so with the one in partisan. As always, it is the stress that makes the difference. And I am not talking about flapping, dangblastiphon. @Cerb you seem to be claiming otherwise, that the Brits get all puffy there in the middle, and I do not understand that. It is outside my auditory experience.

Mitch

@JasonBourne I think you have, I have no problem. But really, delete votes are for -deleting- things that shouldn't appear here, like spam or junk answers.

user19161

@Mitch Hmm OK. But on that point, not about your posts, I disagree.

simchona

Don't use delete votes for posts that are still answers

user19161

9:43 PM

Hmm, OK.

Mitch

@tchrist That could be misconstrued as commenting on a weight problem. In England. I don't think they're doing well there, but as usual I'm sure Americans are winning the Girth War.

tchrist

@simchona That is an interesting matter, actually.

I believe that nonmod deletion of questions is there to spare you guys from having to answer all the non-an-answer flags yourselves. But I may be wrong.

Mitch

@JasonBourne so what is that you don't disagree with, what do you think answer deletion is for?

tchrist

Oh wait, I know where to look. Moment.

user19161

@Mitch Hmm, I think delete votes are rightfully for whatever you think shouldn't be there. I am not referring to your posts here. But of course, others may think otherwise, and I will take note.

simchona

9:46 PM

@JasonBourne -1 isn't bad enough to delete. That's not crap yet.

tchrist

Oh drat. I was wrong, @sim. I thought there were guidelines here:

20

A: What is community moderation, and what can I do to help?

What is community moderation? Community moderation is the "cleaning up" of the site by users like you! It involves flagging, closing, commenting, editing, and sometimes deleting posts. It also involves "implicit" moderation — not doing anything considered inappropriate for this site (e.g. ...

Cerberus

@tchrist Perhaps before attacking me, you should not invent a position that was never mine. It is impossible to aspirate the t in partisan. I am talking about photo.

user19161

Also, there are many "official positions" on matters, like how "thanks" should be removed. But the truth is, there are many high rep users who don't think so and don't follow these things. This is just a general remark.

tchrist

@simchona I confess I tend to cast delete votes on really negative answers, like on certain things that start drifting down towards the double digits. Not all of them; it just depends. But some of them are complete junk, so I do. Is that alright? Wish there were guidelines.

@Cerberus I apologize for attacking you, or even appearing to do so.

simchona

@tchrist I think when it hits double digits, it's pure crap. But for -1 or -2?

Cerberus

9:48 PM

@simchona Yeah that's what I told him. Only vote to delete if the answer is complete and utter crap, not useful to anyone as a dissenting opinion. As examples I gave "something totally irrelevant", "something rude", and "a single word".

@tchrist Okay, then.

tchrist

@simchona I would only vote on a -1 or -2 if it really complete crap, and I assure you it would not not remain at the number when I had had my way with it. If it is bad enough to merit a delete vote, it surely is bad enough for a normal downvote.

user19161

@Cerberus Anyway, it is not possible to type a single word is it!

tchrist

14

Q: Please add a "When should I delete answers?" section to the 20k privileges description page

The privileges description for 10k rep has a pretty in-depth explanation of how deleting posts works, and it elaborates on specifically when you should consider voting to delete a question under the subsection titled "When should I delete questions?". I find this very helpful, not only for my own...

feature-request deleted-answers

They added the privilege for a reason, and I have reason to believe that that reason was one geared towards making the site work better, not towards putting a feature in people’s caps. But I am anything but certain.

There's more than enough "me too" and "thanks" NAA style answers for 20K users to use all their delete votes everyday. — Flexo Aug 14 '12 at 21:03

Joseph Weissman

memegenerator.net/Scumbag-Analytic-Philosopher

tchrist

But on ELU, our moderators are so assiduous in their approach to their jobs, and our volumes so low, that I wonder how much it really helps them/you.

@sim May I please ask in what ways you see 20k users making your life any easier? I think that is the main reason the 20k level exists, so I would like to know how to use these powers wisely.

user19161

9:55 PM

It's kind of strange that the close and reopen votes have to decay.

tchrist

Ah, MSO has made 20k a tagsyn for trusted-user. Intersting.

simchona

@JasonBourne It makes perfect sense that they should

@tchrist I usually spend my time doing edits or merges, and there isn't a lot of crap in general on the site. Let me pay a bit more attention and I'll get back to you

Cerberus

@JasonBourne I don't know!

tchrist

@simchona Ok thanks.

The thing I wish 20k users would do more of is exert their tag-wiki privs. Nobody does that.

Cerberus

@tchrist You might also consider such common words as water.

tchrist

9:58 PM

Maybe we need more badgers. :)

Cerberus

I am downloading an Ab Fab episode for you now!

tchrist

@Cerberus What of it?

user19161

I see that Reg also has the sportsmanship badge now.

Cerberus

How the t is / can be aspirated in RP.

tchrist

Water has [t] (or rarely [ʔ]) in British, but is has [ɾ] in American. (There are some Brits who also flap, but not many.) But the point is that it never has [tʰ] anywhere by anyone.

And that is what I am talking about.

Cerberus

10:01 PM

It can sound just like photon.

tchrist

gives up and goes away

Cerberus

> British English loves this sound and makes it lightly and neatly with the tongue tip on the toothridge (behind the top teeth). We make it like this in all positions - so in team, butter and neat - there will be a light little puff of air as the T releases.

> In American English it's more complicated. At the begining of words, it's likely to be made similarly to the English sound. But in the middle of words (butter, later, little, rated) it is more like a /d/ sound. And at the end (neat, lot, rate) it is stopped half way through - that means that you make the block with the tongue-tip, but don't release it with the puff of air. The delicate little aspirated /t/ sounds in British English are the main reason it can seem fussy to American speakers.