Guess who this is.

And what's going on in the picture.

Incidentally, his wife is gorgeous.

I need help writing a good simile in a tricky situation. See writers.stackexchange.com/q/26051/13494 Please note, I have a tight deadline. Hoping for some help by Monday evening at the latest, thanks.

@Cerberus The guy on the right is an emergency first aid technician/waste removal engineer and is sucking the blood out of the left guy's shoulder where he got bitten by a snake. the left guy is some kind of royalty, judging by his wife and by the fact that he has two watches.

Did I win?

@Cerberus You?

Turns out no. moroccoworldnews.com/2016/08/195590/…

@and married to...

Well, she can't pull off a 'dangerous archer' look.

I like those who can.

@Mitch Merrida from Once Upon a Time!

@MattE.Эллен It's a mixed marriage

She's a queen. I'm surprised she was willing to share her Kingdom

like peanut butter and chocolate

eww...

@Mitch that's how they make nutella

confused look

slow realization of the horror

absentmindedly ties noose

writes apologetic farewell note about how never meant to hurt anyone

except for Bob. You know what you did

he invented Nutella

Nutella Fitzgerald.

is not Ella Fitzgerald.

Nutella is the girls’ version, Nutellos is the one for everybody.

Do you feel there's something odd about this use of unless? What exactly is it?

> I'll be surprised unless the car breaks down soon.

Compare with:

> I'll be surprised if the car doesn't break down soon.

@Færd Well, it doesn't sound grammatical to me. I can't remember why, but I've read why somewhere somewhen.

It sounds grammatical to me, but only in a very formal sense, and cognitively difficult to figure out/not at all expected.. I can't imagine saying it that way. The 2nd sentence is how you say it.

Wait...I don't what either says any more.

@Mitch IKR?! It's crazy when that happens.

Those examples are from Practical English Usage. This is the explanation that the author gives:

> Unless means 'except if'. Unless is not used when the meaning is more like 'because ... not'.

Maybe it merits more clarification. I don't know.

Hey @M.A.R.!

\o

@Færd argh! more and more with examples like these, it feels like language just isn't so easily one-to-one replaceable. 'unless' = 'except if'? mostly. I suppose.

Mhm.

So, if the protasis (= the negation of what comes after unless) tells you about the cause of the apodosis, it's not grammatical.

> *My eardrums will break unless you don't shout.

@Færd Well, that sounds wrong because it doesn't make sense.

Or wait, does it?

I guess it does make sense after all; I just mentally mis-negated it. I don't know if it's ungrammatical so much as very confusing, therefore people don't use it.

Yeah it seems to me this sort of sentence probably finds its way into contracts

evil contracts, yet, legally enforceable

@Færd "My eardrums will break unless you stop shouting" is certainly grammatical, and much more understandable.

This should be a question on the site.

@sumelic That's equivalent to "If you don't stop shouting my eardrums will break.", which gives the cause of the apodesis in the protasis. Right?

I, too, thought it could be acceptable, and not as funny-sounding as the first one.

@Færd I'm not used to using the terms "apodesis" and "protasis", so I need to acquaint myself with what they mean.

So the explanation in Practical English Usage is incorrect or incomplete.

Protasis = the if clause, apodosis = the then clause (or the main clause of the conditional sentence).

Actually if clause and then clause are easier to understand.

What do you think about this one? :

@Færd I suppose so. The meaning isn't exactly "because... not" because you can't say "My eardrums will not break because you stop shouting".

> My wife will be angry unless I get home by 7.00.

@Færd Certainly grammatical, and it seems entirely unremarkable to me.

Funny. PEU says otherwise.

If only we could pin it down what exactly is wrong with this:

Maybe I'll ask it on the main site, but not until I think about it more.

@Færd Now I'm second-guessing myself. It might only sound OK to me, and be unlikely to be produced by a native speaker. But I did find a Google Books example that seems analogous: "Damm, dog, you've got blood all over ma superdry hoodie – I'm ain't never gonna get that out in the wash unless I get home in the next five minutes and soak it thoroughly"

@sumelic I guess that gives a condition, not a cause.

More Bollocks People Tell You - Laura Tong, Mark Tong

@Færd Maybe that's the reason.

The main point that PEU maintains is that if you want to convert "If not A, then B" to "B, unless A", then not A shouldn't be the cause of B.

Me too.

But not the car break one, right?

@Færd As a native speaker, what I don't like about that sentence is that you wrote "7.00" instead of "7:00"

I just quoted it from the book.

Maybe it's the British way. Dunno.

I agree that the car break sentence is odd. But the construction seems fine.

"I'll be hungry unless I eat soon" sounds fine to me

Something about surprised doesn't work there

@snailplane Well, yes and no. As a native speaker, the rest of the sentence is unremarkable to me.

Good.

> I'll be on time unless the car breaks down soon

Fine, right?

> I'll be happy unless the car breaks down soon

@Færd yeah

I'll be damned.

> I'll be purple unless the car breaks down soon

> I'll be considering retirement unless the car breaks down soon

I think the problem is that "I'll be X unless" indicates an ongoing thing and "surprised" isn't ongoing.

If you would concentrate on finding more odd examples (rather than natural ones) it would be more constructive. :)

well, to do that I'd need to know why it's odd

Fair enough.

> ?I'll be disintegrated unless the car breaks down soon

logically, the sentence might make sense, but something about the construction makes it hard to understand.

@Færd Close!

@Færd Oh I thought those were called the hypothesis and the consequence

@Cerberus You must be the heir then.

I wish.

I don't think their heirs have that lavish a lifestyle.

hm... though private jet to Paris. That's not unlavish

It's lavish enough. On the slavish<->lavish spectrum, it's closer to lavish.

@Mitch Those too, I guess. Maybe consequence restricts it a bit.

maybe it's a cheaper jet, one you have to fly yourself.

The then clause is not always about a consequence.

well, I'm not used to prolapsis or whatever as terms either.

to me it's as inarticulate as 'It's the Q of "P->Q"'

mind your Ps and Qs

NOU

XYZ PDQ

Maybe the odd thing about the car break sentence is that what surprises you usually comes in the unless part, not in the main part.

It's like you've set your mind on being surprised unless by a remote chance something miraculous happens. That's absurd.

@Mitch +++ATH0

@Færd yeah, you don't plan to be surprised

Even the more logical construction is usually a little hyperbolic. "I'll be surprised if it doesn't break down soon" -- does this mean every day you're literally surprised if it is still running? Every morning you turn it on and ... surprise! it starts?

Funny car.

Correction: what surprises you usually comes after if, not if not.

I'm going to settle on this until tomorrow.

See y'all later.

@Mitch Those are commonly used terms, though.

@Cerberus different magisteria

from mathematical logic they call them the antecedent and consequent

And in philosophical logic.

Which is really the same.

@Cerberus but you (or someone) called them... checking above ... 'protasis' and 'apodesis'. I'd never heard of those before and so guess they come out of the philosophy/philology tradition.

@Cerberus they should be the same, but are often not.

@Mitch How do you mean?

The logic is the same.

@Mitch And linguistics, and I don't know.

I've never heard any other terms used with respect to real language (so outside formal logic).

@Cerberus i mean terminology, methods, emphasis (yes, you'd hope they are the same!)

logic as taught in philosophy depts tend towards rhetoric, supporting lawyerly arguments, where as math depts tend to focus on formal proofs (as mathematical objects themselves), axiom systems, validity/tautology, propositional/predicate calculus (math tends to ignore almost entirely the rhetorical part)

@Mitch Terminology and method are the same, as far as I know.

@Mitch That is not at all my experience.

At my university, philosophical logic involved ordinary predicate logic, truth tables, propositional trees, and the like.

Nothing rhetorical or lawyerly.

Analysing rhetoric was part of argumentative studies under philosophy.

Like fallacies, different kinds of arguments, implicit rules of discussion, etc.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body: A word that refers to both jewelry and cosmetics? by bobbiesrichards on english.stackexchange.com