English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Cerberus

5:00 PM

@cc But you can put many things in a donut...

tchrist

Save to the broadcasters and stage performers of yesteryear.

Cerberus

@tchrist Yeah same here.

But would you date someone who spoke with a regional accent?

Maybe, but it is a lot to swallow.

tchrist

And technically, the /hw/ phoneme (for those who have it) is actually the [ʍ] phone.

@Cerberus This is a very tricky thing, because it is brings into the picture the realization that there are deeply rooted and wholly unconscious notions of prestige levels (and their inverse) when considering accents. Moreover, this is not transitive or necessarily even mirrored.

Cerberus

Transitive?

The thing is, you can try and wait for the stigma to disappear, but it never will.

The alternative is emancipation.

tchrist

Let a and b be regional accents, and p(x) be the prestige level attached to accent x. So speakers of a may perceive p(a) >> p(b), but speakers of b might only perceive p(b) > p(a), not >>. Furthermore, if you arrange for a set of accents a..d, then you get very strange orderings.

I can present a concrete example.

Matt Эллен

5:06 PM

what does >> mean?

tchrist

Much greater.

Matt Эллен

oh :D

thanks

tchrist

So speakers of the various NYC accents are considered rude by speakers of many of the various Southern accents, while in the other direction, speakers of those Southern accents are considered slow-witted by those with the NYC accents.

Cerberus

But accents like RP and Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands are perceived by everyone as >.

Nor is it a regional accent.

tchrist

Neither considers the Inland North accent as bad as they each consider their foil. However, Southern speakers still class the standard Inland North accent as a “yankee” accent, and though it is standard, it holds lower prestige for them because it symbolizes the Oppressor.

Cerberus

5:09 PM

There are different kinds of "prestige".

But the less culturally connected the regions in a country are, the greater the chance that there will be diverging kinds of prestige.

tchrist

Whereas the NYC people don’t consider Inland North to be lower in prestige at all, since it extends from eastern Wisconsin all the way to Upstate New York, running across the Great Lakes and top of the country.

Yeah, prestige is complex. Not easily accounted for on a number line.

Cerberus

Perhaps your South should be a different country...

hides

tchrist

@Cerb That’s a much better illustration for you of where the wine–whine does or does not occur, based on actual data. As you see, it is not purely in one or another region.

Although there is still an isogloss line.

Cerberus

It doesn't say what a dot represents. A single person?

tchrist

Yes.

From here

Cerberus

5:14 PM

I'm sure people with different accents move across the country.

tchrist

> Map 8 shows only 71 of 587 speakers who maintain it. In this case, "Distinct" includes all those who were heard by the analyst as pronouncing the voiceless bilabial clearly (62 cases) or not quite clearly (9) cases. There were 3 individuals who thought that the pairs were different, but made no distinction in production; they were considered to be merged.

@Cerberus Dint useta be that way, but now, yeah.

Cerberus

By the way, are the disguised Russian soldiers in Ukraine also consistently called "pro-Russian activists/separatists" in your media?

tchrist

@Cerberus ’Pends.

Cerberus

They are here, even though the articles sometimes mention they have to be Russian soldiers.

tchrist

> The scattering of distinct points in the Midwest does not clearly follow the North/North Midland isogloss. There are eight speakers who maintain the distinction north of that line, and nine south of it.

Note that by midwest, they mean the Great Lake cluster there.

> It is most clearly retained in two areas of the Eastern States: to a certain extent in Eastern New England (excluding Maine, as in the LAMSAS records), and quite solidly in the Lower South (excluding South Carolina, again echoing the LAMSAS data). It is also quite strongly maintained in Texas, particularly in the Dallas/Forth Worth region.

I have lived in southern Wisconsin, Dallas, and Boulder — all three of which have cyan circles.

So when I do it as I was taught to school, no one notices.

But most people don’t bother.

Robusto

5:17 PM

> I used to own most of these on well-worn vinyl, and am glad to be able to have them on my iPod now in this excellent direct transfer from the master tapes--sans surface hiss, cracks, pops, and skips.

Amazon takes em dashes and turns them into doubled hyphens. Stupid least-common-denominator bullshit!

Mitch

@Cerberus I'm not listening carefully, but all I hear is your phrase "pro-Russian activists/separatists". I've always thought cynically that they ust be infiltrating disguised soldiers, but I have no real idea.

tchrist

@Robusto The greatest common factor is stupidity, so that is what they do.

Robusto

chafes

tchrist

And yes, I’ve noted that very thing there.

Robusto

WTF does it cost them to leave things alone?

tchrist

5:19 PM

FFS WTF can’t we have bits > 7 character text now?

Cerberus

@Mitch It is well known that there are many Russian infiltrators from the Russian army. I'm sure your newspapers mention this too.

Matt Эллен

someone might be reading it back in 1995

bits were more expensive then

tchrist

@MattЭллен Or 1984.

Mitch

@Cerberus only for Texas is that considered a thing. not a real possibility, but something mentioned half in jest.

Robusto

@MattЭллен Then I'm going to invent time travel, go back and strangle those bastards!

Matt Эллен

5:20 PM

yes!

Robusto

It's the least I can do.

Matt Эллен

We'll owe you a debt

Robusto

I'll bill you monthly.

Matt Эллен

but we'll have been strangled, so we won't be able to pay it

tchrist

@Cerberus “Well-known”, well. Truth be told, my only broadcast media source is NPR and BBC. Everything else is either print (Economist, NYTimes) or Internet.

Cerberus

5:21 PM

@Mitch I know. Perhaps perhaps it would be for the best...

@tchrist My only sources are NRC (newspaper) and the Internet.

I don't own a television set, of course, as a proper snob. And I rarely watch any news in video online.

tchrist

And both NPR and the Beeb have been pretty clear to always mention that the so-called activists are either mysteriously unidentifiable or are believed to be Russian special forces.

@Cerberus Oh, no sound?

Matt Эллен

@Cerberus excellent choice, old chap.

tchrist

When I am in hotels, I occasionally watch the News Hour.

That’s PBS.

Jez

Ecco the Dolphin is so ludicrously hard. i dunno why it was popular

tchrist

You prefer Voici le Dauphin?

Matt Эллен

5:25 PM

Dark Souls is popular, it is supposedly very hard, too

(I haven't played it)

Cerberus

@tchrist No sound, it is less efficient.

Mitch

@Cerberus It'd be silly. no one considers it seriously. It's not like Quebec.

Cerberus

@tchrist Same here, but what name of they use?

@MattЭллен You are too kind.

tchrist

@Cerberus I would go so far as to say I watch news videos online less often than I catch airplanes.

Matt Эллен

►

Cerberus

5:26 PM

@MattЭллен You think you would like it? I hear you cannot pause it at all. I do like hard games.

tchrist

@Cerberus TMI

Cerberus

@Mitch I know. But perhaps it would be a good idea.

@tchrist Pah, you dirty mind.

tchrist

@Cerberus It’s all that’s left to me.

Matt Эллен

@Cerberus I don't know. I think I have it on Steam. I'm playing through Diablo 3 at the moment (or I would be if my desktop was fixed, but parts cost money...)

tchrist

Ukraine's troubled east: Blood in the streets

No mention of separatists or activists whatsoever. Bout time.

Cerberus

5:30 PM

@MattЭллен Funny...

"It takes years of study to understand a work like War and Peace" — that's kind of ridiculous.

War and Peace is an easy, straightforward read.

@MattЭллен Ow what happened to it?

Matt Эллен

maybe he picked it without knowing it, or maybe he knows it better than you?

tchrist

Sigh.

Cerberus

@tchrist I'm sure you could get the dirty body too, if you wanted.

tchrist

Ukraine’s security forces pressed their assault on pro-Russia militants in and around the separatist stronghold of Slovyansk on Saturday, even as the rebels freed seven European military observers and the Kremlin cited the deaths of dozens of people in Odessa as proof that Ukraine can no longer protect its citizens.

That was the sigh.

Matt Эллен

@Cerberus well, it started when the RAM seemed to be malfunctioning, then the graphics card stopped working. I think it might be the motherboard, or some combination of all three

Cerberus

5:32 PM

@MattЭллен No, in the context of the video, it makes no sense. You don't have to understand complicated things in order to just pick up W&P and enjoy most of it.

tchrist

@Cerberus PTSD

Matt Эллен

@Cerberus fair enough

tchrist

The Times is calling then “pro-Russia militants”.

Matt Эллен

that doesn't mean that he's wrong, just that he's picked a bad example

Cerberus

It is a silly, counter-productive reverence of classic works of literature as "difficult", while many aren't difficult to enjoy at all. Of course you will miss some references and such, but that's not a problem.

Matt Эллен

5:34 PM

but isn't the argument about the depth of enjoyment?

Cerberus

@tchrist Right, those terms sound similar to what we hear here. My suspicion is that everybody's just aping the AP or something.

Mitch

Finnegan's Wake is 'difficult'. 'War and Peace' is not

Cerberus

@tchrist How do you mean?

Mitch

except for all those names.

needs a family tree chart

tchrist

@Cerberus I’d rather not say.

Matt Эллен

5:34 PM

if something is boring, then it's difficult :D

Cerberus

@MattЭллен Yes, the central argument is correct.

Though a bit of a platitude...

tchrist

The burnt child fears fire.

Cerberus

@tchrist Hm OK.

@tchrist Even mere carnal fire?

Matt Эллен

@Cerberus sure some of this stuff is just to get people into it. they aim low to make people feel good that they can follow and then go into more interesting topics in other videos

tchrist

@Cerberus Much worse than that.

Cerberus

5:35 PM

@Mitch You can just ignore the ones you forgot. Or look up the occasional name when you need to.

W&P is hardly an academic article.

@MattЭллен Right, there is some merit in that.

@tchrist Hmm I see.

Mitch

@Cerberus almost as good as the twilight series

Matt Эллен

why does koningsdag have a 3 minute advert on youtube?

Mitch

because they didn't have 4 minutes of material?

Matt Эллен

I see

Mitch

marketing departments create all sorts of stuff they think is worthwhile that nobody in their right mind would bother checking out... except for other marketers.

Matt Эллен

5:39 PM

it keeps interrupting my viewing pleasure.

Cerberus

@Mitch I'm sure.

@MattЭллен Huh? What?

You get adverts for Dutch things?

Matt Эллен

@Cerberus there's an advert on youtube (I've only seen the first 5 seconds) that tells us that on Kings day they paint everything orange

Cerberus

Huh?

tchrist

Cerberus

@MattЭллен Why would anyone advertise a national holiday?

Matt Эллен

5:40 PM

goblin shark!

@Cerberus yup. don't know

Cerberus

That's baffling.

tchrist

Ding ding ding, give that boy a langostino on the house.

Cerberus

And Koningsdag was a week ago.

Matt Эллен

it can project it's own jaw at its prey

Cerberus

So what's the message of the advertisement? Come to Holland or something?

Matt Эллен

5:40 PM

@Cerberus that's what I thought

tchrist

@MattЭллен Just like in Aliens.

Matt Эллен

@Cerberus possibly. I should watch it, I suppose

Cerberus

I have posted a GIF of such a jaw here, I believe...

@MattЭллен Yeah, do it!

Matt Эллен

@tchrist yeah. it's really creepy

Cerberus

@MattЭллен One last question: why aren't you using Adblock?

Adblock Edge is the way to go these days.

tchrist

5:41 PM

Cerberus

I've never seen a Youtube ad on this computer.

Matt Эллен

@Cerberus I've decided to keep plugins off my laptop. no real reason. just to see what is different

Cerberus

Maybe in Chrome.

Okay.

Now you know!!

Matt Эллен

@Cerberus yes

tchrist

Sharkies from here

But Sharky’s from Orthanc.

Matt Эллен

5:43 PM

I like to give the people who make the videos I watch the revenue from the adverts, I suppose. I've got too used to adblock on the desktop, I had no idea how bad it was

tchrist

> “It was uglier than a mother-in-law,” according to Shiffman, a graduate student in Florida studying shark conservation and a popular shark blogger.

Matt Эллен

lol

tchrist

@MattЭллен It is intolerably bad to the point of inducing postal-level rage.

Cerberus

@MattЭллен You could use Flattr instead, it works for liking Youtube videos, if you turn that setting on.

Oh, I have to go.

Matt Эллен

@Cerberus wouldn't the creator need to enable a way for the flatr money to get to them?

@Cerberus OK CU!

@tchrist so many ads. and they're often longer than the video I want to watch.

Cerberus

5:45 PM

@MattЭллен Yes, but he can do so after received the Flattrs.

And an account is free and easy to set up.

blog.flattr.net/2013/04/adding-support-for-youtube

Matt Эллен

@Cerberus I see

tchrist

@MattЭллен It drives me to the brink of psychotic rage.

Cerberus

I am more than willing to spend some money on sites that I like. But I am unwilling to spend my valuable time or decrease the efficiency of my browsing.

tchrist

I wish I were kidding.

Cerberus

And you do not use Adblock?

tchrist

5:47 PM

An Austrian commission following up on claims that doctors deliberately infected patients with malaria to treat others with syphilis says hundreds of people, including orphans in a psychiatric hospital, might have been infected.

@Cerberus I block ads, yes. But without that, I cannot abide the Internet.

Cerberus

Same.

tchrist

Oh those lovely Austrians!

Such nice people.

“Bill Gates on track to own no Microsoft stock in four years” — See, I always knew he was a rat.

Rats are smart enough to get off a sinking ship.

What’s the difference, if any, between saying that someone stood down and that they stepped down?

Matt Эллен

hmmm

Robusto

@tchrist If you stand down you are desisting from some activity. If you step down you are leaving some sort of position, usually an important one.

tchrist

That’s what I thought, too, but they said that Bill Gate$ “stood down” from his Chairman role @ M$FT.

Robusto

5:55 PM

I was just thinking about how the greetings "good day" and "good night" are actually not greetings but conversation finishers.

tchrist

Gates handed the CEO role to Ballmer in 2000, and stood down as chairman in February.

That is not the way I would have expected it to be used.

Robusto

@tchrist Well, then I would say this: step down is what I said it is, and stand down is sometimes used by shoddy journalists who can't write their way out of a Glad® bag to mean the same thing..

Good day to them, sir.

c c

Robusto

What do you call the opposite (converse, reverse, whatever) of a greeting?

Matt Эллен

ODO says both meanings are used wrt stand down

Robusto

6:00 PM

@MattЭллен You're just exhibiting Oxford bias because you live there.

Matt Эллен

@Robusto a parting?

@Robusto it's true

!!define parting

KitSox

@MattЭллен parting The act of parting or dividing; the state of being parted; division; separation.

Robusto

@MattЭллен Specifically, a verbal greeting: what's the opposite?

I could ask on ELU, couldn't I?

Matt Эллен

yes

SWR!

Robusto

i no rite

Cerberus

6:02 PM

@Robusto There is closing...

Robusto

We should have cloth badges we can sew to our clothes representing our various ELU badges. That would be the nerdiest thing ever!

Cerberus

As in a complimentary closing.

Robusto

@Cerberus Well, I'm not thinking of letters.

Cerberus

Oh.

What other genre uses anything like that?

Robusto

Read above, what I said about "good day" and "good night."

They're supposed to be greetings, but actually serve as conversation terminators.

Cerberus

6:04 PM

Are they supposed to be greetings?

Robusto

"If that's all, Mr. Smythe, then good day to you."

Cerberus

You can wish someone a good day on parting?

Robusto

@Cerberus "Good morning, good evening, good afternoon"—all are greetings.

@Cerberus You wish someone a good day as a way of indicating that the conversation is over.

Cerberus

Yes, and good day can be either.

Robusto

But "good night" never is.

Cerberus

6:05 PM

Yeah.

tchrist

@Robusto salutation vs valediction?

Cerberus

But you said "they're supposed to be greetings".

Robusto

And "good day" more often functions as a terminator than a greeting.

Cerberus

Yes.

Robusto

@tchrist Hmm.

tchrist

6:06 PM

Well, either that or the opposite of a byebye is a hihi.

Matt Эллен

@Robusto there were gold badges available a while ago for such a thing, but they didn't have the name of the badge

Robusto

But valediction doesn't have the feeling of a deliberate termination.

Matt Эллен

Blog - Stack Exchange: “Earned a Stack Overflow gold badge” Badges!

Laura Dobrzynski-Gessner on December 22, 2011

After much anticipation, we are happy to announce that our friends at Nerd Merit Badges have created a Stack Overflow GOLD Badge. That’s right:

If you’ve earned one of our virtual gold badges on Stack Overflow, you’ve put a lot of work into doing something awesome. We give you flair so you can direct people around the Internet to your profile and show off all the badges you’ve earned, but we wanted to enable you to show off your accomplishment in real life, too.

It’s not all fun and games, though; John and Randy point out that this badge comes with responsibility: …

Robusto

@MattЭллен Whoa, didn't have the name of the badge? Then you could just buy your way in to our august membership?

Matt Эллен

@Robusto yeah. it was an honour based system

Robusto

6:07 PM

@MattЭллен See? I think a thing and already someone has done it.

Mitch

@Robusto That's an insult.

Robusto

@Mitch Insults can be conversation terminators as well.

Mitch

"Hello...

... and I mean it to sting."

An good insult is like a conversation piece. oils the skids so to speak.

"Hey, you old bastard, how are my kids?"

"Great, great. I'm divorced though. You?"

Robusto

Last year I came up with the idea for FauxFu® (rhymes with tofu), which would be real chicken that vegans can serve their carnivorous friends who have dietary restrictions regarding soybeans. A simple web search revealed that someone had already fleshed out the whole idea for the joke. Life ain't fair.

Mitch

They stole the idea from the future you.

goddamn time travellers.

flatronka

6:11 PM

Hi everyone! May I ask your opinion about this empty screen(dropbox.com/s/0dh696c31hydx8x/empty_state%20copy%20copy.png) ? Are that 2 english sentences okay :)?

Robusto

51 mins ago, by Robusto

@MattЭллен Then I'm going to invent time travel, go back and strangle those bastards!

Mitch

can you type or cut and paste the two sentences here? I'm sure they're not long.

@Robusto use their time machine that came forward in time. You know, physics and stuff, conservation of time.

Robusto

If physicists were so concerned about conserving time, why would they waste so much of it arguing about how many dimensions there are?

Mitch

PV = nRT where T = time, P = people, V = volume of a person, R is the relativity constant and n is the number of the elevator bank you're in.

flatronka

Thanks @Mitch, I uploaded to dropbox because of the context :).

Mitch

6:15 PM

Because elevators are disguised time machines.

flatronka

It is a screen for an iOS app.

Mitch

ever noticed how you arrive earlier than if you had taken the stairs? It's so obvious.

Robusto

@Mitch We don't use elevator banks in America. We have ATMs.

Mitch

@flatronka you can upload pictures here.

flatronka

Mitch

6:16 PM

@Robusto If you ever need change for elevators, just send them to me and we'll do a wire transfer.

@flatronka nice...thanks.

flatronka

thanks for the reply :)

Robusto

@flatronka You haven't slept this period. Choose another period.

Mitch

"an other" -> "another"

jinx

Robusto

You don't want to tell them to try to choose another period, because it bespeaks a lack of confidence in your ability to provide a good user experience.

flatronka

thanks :)

Mitch

6:18 PM

Maybe it shows a lack of confidence by you in the user's abilities to execute your suggestions.

Robusto

Either way, lack of confidence.

Chicks don't dig that.

flatronka

that is true :))

I try to rethink the empty screen.

Robusto

@tchrist: Why is UTF-8 blank from 80 to A1?

tchrist

@Robusto Those aren’t legal start sequences.

flatronka

i.stack.imgur.com/OepFR.png this one is from the live application. I made the previous for the empty data.

tchrist

6:22 PM

That is, they cannot be the first byte in a UTF-8 multi-octet representation of a Unicode code point.

Robusto

Ah.

tchrist

Or are you actually asking what the names for U+0080 .. U+00A1 are?

You seem to be conflating UTF-8 and Unicode, and I’m confused.

Robusto

@tchrist If you're confused, imagine how I feel.

tchrist

First, I am going to assume you meant to say Unicode not UTF-8.

Robusto

I actually typed Unicode first.

tchrist

6:24 PM

The C2 control codes occupy that territory.

Robusto

var ary = [], docText;

for (var i=1; i<16384; i++) {
	ary.push(i.toString() + '\t' + i.toString(16)  + '\t' + String.fromCharCode(i));
}

docText = ary.join('\n');

I ran that code.

And noticed the blanks from 80 to A1.

tchrist

Well, they aren’t blanks.

Robusto

OK, they don't show up as anything I can see.

tchrist

That is correct.

0080        <control>
0081        <control>
0082        <control>
    = BREAK PERMITTED HERE
    x (zero width space - 200B)
0083        <control>
    = NO BREAK HERE
    x (word joiner - 2060)
0084        <control>
    * formerly known as INDEX
0085        <control>
    = NEXT LINE (NEL)
0086        <control>
    = START OF SELECTED AREA
0087        <control>
    = END OF SELECTED AREA
0088        <control>
    = CHARACTER TABULATION SET
0089        <control>
    = CHARACTER TABULATION WITH JUSTIFICATION

Robusto

Ah, OK. That explaineth it.

tchrist

6:27 PM

C0 and C1 control codes

The C0 and C1 control code or control character sets define control codes for use in text by computer systems that use the ISO/IEC 2022 system of specifying control and graphic characters. Most character encodings, in addition to representing printable characters, also have characters such as these that represent additional information about the text, such as the position of a cursor, an instruction to start a new line, or a message that the text has been received. The C0 set defines codes in the range 00HEX–1FHEX and the C1 set defines codes in the range 80HEX–9FHEX. The d...

Robusto

And I wondered why A0 would be "blank" as well, but I see it's the no-break space, which makes sense.

tchrist

The C1 codes are the high-bit control characters.

It’s C0 and C1, not C1 and C2 as I had mistakenly alluded to.

Unicode eventually got around to allowing the C1 names to be used for those code points.

macbook# perl -le 'print ord "\N{NEL}"'
133

macbook# perl -le 'print ord "\N{VTS}"'
138

flatronka

Thanks for the ideas and the corrections. I made a new version:).

Robusto

> The show (Breaking Bad) became the highest-rating television series in history, according to Guinness World Records, with Australia leading the field in illegal downloads.

flatronka

Robusto

6:32 PM

@flatronka I still don't like "Try to choose . . ." That works for "try to sleep" but not for choosing.

You could say "Either choose another period . . . or try to sleep!"

flatronka

Thanks I do the correction.

tchrist

macbook# uniprops -ga U+00A0
U+00A0 ‹ › \N{NO-BREAK SPACE}
    \s \h \pZ \p{Zs}
    All Any Assigned Blank InLatin1 Changes_When_NFKC_Casefolded CWKCF Common Zyyy Z Zs Gr_Base
       Grapheme_Base GrBase HorizSpace Latin_1 Latin_1_Supplement Print Separator Space
       Space_Separator SpacePerl XPerlSpace White_Space WSpace X_POSIX_Blank X_POSIX_Print
       X_POSIX_Space
    Age=1.1 Bidi_Class=Common_Separator BC=CS Bidi_Class=CS Block=Latin_1 Block=Latin_1_Supplement
       BLK=Latin1 Canonical_Combining_Class=0 Canonical_Combining_Class=Not_Reordered CCC=NR

flatronka

Could you give me some thought for these? :-s

These are screenshots for apple.

If you have ios7 device I can send you promotion code at least.

Cerberus

6:53 PM

@flatronka Wow looks slick.

Despite the dated device hehe.

flatronka

thanks:), dated device?

Matt Эллен

@flatronka the only thing I'll say is that you've misspelt habit the second time you use it

flatronka

@MattЭллен thanks

Matt Эллен

np

flatronka

Do you think that the others are good?

Matt Эллен

6:59 PM

I haven't spotted any other errors

flatronka

@MattЭллен nice, I make some frequently:).

Davïd

7:17 PM

I would be grateful for a bit of advice from EL&U experts. I've pushed the boat out, and proposed a Poetry Q&A site on Area51. I was thinking about putting a discussion topic in English.SE meta, like this one at BH.SE meta (where I'm more active). Would this be advised? or no? Thanks!

skullpatrol

yes

Matt Эллен

@Davïd that should be fine

@Davïd have you asked Writers, too?

skullpatrol

Good idea^

!!wiki hermeneutics

KitSox

Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics is the theory of text interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. The terms "hermeneutics" and "exegesis" are sometimes used interchangeably. Hermeneutics is a wider discipline that includes written, verbal, and nonverbal communication. Exegesis focuses primarily upon texts. Hermeneutic, as a singular noun, refers to a single particular method or strand of interpretation (see, in contrast, double hermeneutic). The understanding of any written text requires hermeneutics. Hermeneutics initially applied to the i...

c c

7:39 PM

!!wiki dialectic

KitSox

Dialectic

Dialectic (also dialectics and the dialectical method) is a method of argument for resolving disagreement that has been central to European and Indian philosophy since antiquity. The word dialectic originated in ancient Greece, and was made popular by Plato in the Socratic dialogues. The dialectical method is discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject, who wish to establish the truth of the matter guided by reasoned arguments. The term dialectics is not synonymous with the term debate. While in theory debaters are not necessarily emotionally inv...

Davïd

7:52 PM

@MattЭллен Thanks - will do; good suggestion about Writers, too.

tchrist

I smell the fragrance of roasting nuts.

Your entire premise is quixotic at best. You wrongly assume that there is something ugly or wrong with using relative pronouns to connect and coordinate subordinate clauses. That’s nonsense, and you will never find a writer whose prose lacks these purely grammatical function-words. Now, your particular “in which” example is a classical example of pied-piping, which is an unnatural convolution of English syntax that’s been imposed on the masses by mis-educated Latinists who don’t understand English to begin with. — tchrist 1 min ago

Anonymous

8:07 PM

@flatronka Bed rather than bead

Davïd

0

Q: Any EL&U appetite for a Q&A Poetry site?

I'm wondering if this community of experts in English language would be interested in a site devoted to an aspect of English literature? English.SE has a poetry tag, but it is obviously about language usage within poems -- at least mostly so, scanning the list of highest-voted questions for that...