English Language Learners - 2014-07-27 (page 2 of 2)

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Anonymous

7:24 PM

12

Q: Sentence in which "its" and "it's" can be interchanged without changing the meaning?

A friend posed the following word puzzle to me: Can you think of a sentence that keeps the same meaning whether you use "it's" or "its"? He asserted that this puzzle does in fact have a solution. However, it has me completely stumped. I tried to solve an easier problem, to find a sentence w...

Anonymous

Is this the language equivalent of the code golf site?

To me, definitely! Considering that it's received well on ELU, I think we could ask crossword questions there too. :D

I'm really thinking about adding tags literary and outdated (or old-fashioned).

Anonymous

That's sort of what single word requests are, right?

Anonymous

The combination of an arbitrary requirement ("it must be one orthographic word") plus a question about language ("How do I say blah blah blah")

@snailboat I was thinking about something more exclusive to crosswords. :-)

Anonymous

7:27 PM

Is there a historical tag?

Anonymous

I suggested in a comment that Early Modern English should be on-topic on ELL, but not Middle English or Old English

Anonymous

Of course, that would ideally include only good questions about EME

My idea is a bit more aggressive than that. Let's say that if most native speakers think that "Where do you come from?" is outdated, questions asking about it should be marked so.

Anonymous

That one's tough, since people still say it

My idea is learners probably should be discouraged from using it.

Anonymous

7:30 PM

That seems fair enough

Anonymous

We could also deprecate "How do you do?" :-)

That's probably for the BrE tag. :)

Anonymous

Really? Does anyone say that anywhere?

Anonymous

I was under the impression the answer was no :-)

Anonymous

Lessee.

7:31 PM

Hmm... I think they still say "How do you do?" on the island. :D

Anonymous

I think it's hyperformal in both AmE and BrE

Anonymous

Though possible in both

I think many of InE speakers also still say the phrase.

nods

Ah, that convinces me that we should also add something like a formalism tag.

Anonymous

I found a claim online that people say it "quite a lot" in the UK

Anonymous

Hey, look!

Anonymous

7:33 PM

ell.stackexchange.com/q/4526/#comment6069_4526

Anonymous

That didn't onebox.

Anonymous

Somehow that got +13 :-)

No, you're wrong. It's not +13. :-)

Anonymous

Check out Matt's answer. He's a NSoBrE

Wow! I think that's a really great answer!

I always wonder why the correct response of "How do you do?" is "How do you do?" (though I know that it's the correct response). Now I know why.

Hmm... Between outdated and formal-english, probably "How do you do?" should get only a formal-english tag.

Checking out similar tags on ELU...

> http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/formality
This tag is for questions regarding formal, versus informal words and usage.

Anonymous

7:39 PM

Yeah, just formal could work

Anonymous

If we use the same tag as ELU, it helps with migrations

They use formality instead of formal (but they alias formal to formality, I think).

I think I will create these three tags: formality, outdated, and literary

(Between formal and formality, I prefer formal, but I think I will use formality just for the sake of ease of the migration.)

Anonymous

That makes sense to me.

But how can I create a tag? By just adding a tag to some question?

Ahh... We already have the tag formality.

Anonymous

Yes, that's how. I didn't realize we already had it

7:47 PM

Me either, but we don't have the other two.

Ah, we seem to have both formal and formality tags. Should we alias them?

Anonymous

Probably.

Anonymous

That's up to a moderator.

Anonymous

I mean, you can bring it up on meta.

Anonymous

There's a system for regular users to create tag synonyms, but it doesn't work well unless your site is significantly larger than Stack Overflow.

Anonymous

Since, in fact, there are no such sites on SE, it's probably designed wrong

7:49 PM

I think after creating the other two tags, I will post a meta post, and will include the issue of formal and formality tags in it.

Anonymous

So the proper route is to start a meta discussion, after which a moderator can create the tag synonym for you

Anonymous

Sounds like a plan!

It's already begun. :)

Tag: outdated

> This tag is for questions that are related to acceptable but possibly outdated usage of English, and thus while being useful for learners, this tag outdated is a warning that the learners should be discouraged from using it themselves.

What do you think about the description I wrote? (I haven't clicked save yet.)

Anonymous

I think the site has some hacks hard-coded in to remove things like "This tag is for" and "questions that", so after you submit they might disappear on you

Anonymous

I'm not sure which strings exactly it targets

Anonymous

7:55 PM

But you can pre-empt it

Anonymous

> Acceptable but possibly outdated usage of English. While it may be useful for learners to know, this tag is a warning that learners should be discouraged from using it themselves.

Anonymous

How's that?

Neat!

Saved. One down. One more to go.

Anonymous

Hmmph, I got another downvote over on Japanese.SE.

Anonymous

I don't get those very often, but I've gotten two this month

Anonymous

7:57 PM

The question got a downvote, too

Eh? Is it because of that learning technique question?

Anonymous

No, it's here: japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/17990/…

Anonymous

It's a kanji question rather than (strictly speaking) a language question

Anonymous

I don't see any errors

Anonymous

Although Japanese.SE, like many (most? all?) other SEs has a fair amount of anonymous downvoting

8:00 PM

I'm afraid I can't have opinions on this one.

Anonymous

Oh, that's okay.

Anonymous

I wasn't asking for your opinion, I was just mentioning it because getting a downvote feels like getting frowned at by someone you don't know

Anonymous

"Who is this person and why are they frowning at me!?"

Anonymous

If it were about the language, I'd probably be feeling insecure. "Oh, no! What mistake did I make in my Japanese?"

From the image in your answer, they print the same character both ways!

Anonymous

8:03 PM

But since it's about kanji, I feel pretty confident in what I wrote, so I don't see any reason to change anything

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. See at the bottom it says 旧字? That's short for 旧字体（きゅうじたい） "old character form"

Ahh...

Anonymous

Radicals are arbitrary, in any case.

Anonymous

All they are is a system for indexing characters in dictionaries.

Anonymous

There's no platonic ideal radical for each character

Anonymous

8:05 PM

But the 康煕字典 is freely available online, and that's the dictionary that established the 214 traditional categories

You mean the 214 radicals?

Anonymous

Yes

Anonymous

Each radical is the head of a category.

Anonymous

All the hanzi are placed into one of those 214 categories, based on (hopefully) including one of those 214 radicals.

Anonymous

(Technically the 214 date back to an earlier dictionary, but they're generally identified with the Kangxi dictionary)

Anonymous

8:09 PM

Maybe they downvoted me for not mentioning that part :-)

Hmm... :)

Anonymous

But they're widely referred to as the Kangxi radicals, not the Zihui radicals.

Oh, this means that even the mods still don't know who downvote who!

Anonymous

Votes are private.

(I think that that information should be useful for the mods.)

Anonymous

8:11 PM

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to disclose what information is available

Anonymous

But there are ways to fight serial downvoters and such.

It's alright. I think it's better if you don't disclose anything.

Anonymous

8:22 PM

I added a footnote.

Anonymous

Probably not enough to get the downvote reversed, if that was what it was about :-)

Anonymous

I think people reversing downvotes is pretty rare on Japanese.SE.

Anonymous

The radicals are somewhat arbitrary, though.

Anonymous

They're just a system for indexing dictionaries.

nods

Anonymous

8:25 PM

In some older dictionaries, there were a lot more than 214 :-)

I guess that it came after most characters had existed.

Anonymous

Yeah, so…

Anonymous

Characters came into existence in various ways

Anonymous

Scholars aren't necessarily all certain or in agreement about the best way to analyze all of them

Anonymous

There's a traditional classification which is quite possibly fairly wrong

Anonymous

8:27 PM

A lot of archaeological evidence has been uncovered since that classification was established

Anonymous

But the largest portion of characters, called 形声文字（けいせいもじ） in Japanese, are made of a semantic element and phonetic element

Anonymous

For these characters, which are, after all, what you spend most of the time looking up, ideally the radical is aligned with the semantic element

Anonymous

But the 214-radical system doesn't really make that possible

Anonymous

It's a compromise.

Anonymous

You'd need to have hundreds more radicals if you wanted to align the semantic elements with radicals.

Anonymous

8:30 PM

So you find characters like 悶, where the radical and phonetic element are the same

Anonymous

(Why? 心 is also a radical.)

Anonymous

I'm going to go look that one up :-)

Anonymous

Oh, stupid dictionaries. They put it in different sections.

After the door character?

Anonymous

It is under 心 in the traditional classification.

8:33 PM

Ahh...

Anonymous

I've been hoodwinked by dictionaries classifying things differently. See what a mess it is? :-)

Anonymous

Some dictionary editors have tried to make things easier to find.

Anonymous

So they moved characters into different categories.

Anonymous

Or even merged entire categories together.

Anonymous

In the traditional system, 肉 and 月 look pretty much identical as elements in other characters

Anonymous

8:35 PM

So the editor of one dictionary I have merged them all into 肉

Anonymous

I suppose you don't need to know any of that

Anonymous

You don't need to navigate the maze of radicals because their sole purpose is as an indexing mechanism, and you have modern dictionaries available :-)

Anonymous

With other look-up methods.

Anonymous

You're so lucky! :-)

Probably. :)

Anonymous

8:36 PM

Ahh, kanji.

But the radical system might influence the order of characters in Unicode, I guess.

Anonymous

Really?

I don't know. :)

But I guess that they must order them somehow.

Anonymous

They're in a bunch of different blocks.

Anonymous

I think that by code point they're way out of order

Anonymous

8:39 PM

I'm not sure how the Unicode Collation Algorithm orders them. It must do it somehow :-)

@jimsug O, I will for thy bravery hail praise upon thee,/ for an animadversion thou lodgeth 'gainst StoneyB./ — user8153 13 hours ago

Oh, my.

Anonymous

There's an awful lot about Unicode I don't know.

(I was looking for a candidate for literature question, and found it!)

Anonymous

I figured out a way to rephrase my answer without implying that the Kangxi dictionary was the first to use the Zihui system

Anonymous

Yay!

Anonymous

8:40 PM

Er.

Anonymous

Yay? :-)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I probably actually just remembered that it was exceptional in having 門 as a phonetic element rather than a semantic element, and confused them.

Anonymous

In most characters with 門, the thingy under the gate is the phonetic element.

Anonymous

I remembered that it was an exception, but the wrong kind of exception :-)

Anonymous

What's a good example of one where the phonetic element is the radical, I wonder…?

Anonymous

8:43 PM

How about 錦?

Anonymous

Lemme look that one up so I can avoid putting my foot in my mouth again :-)

Anonymous

Yep, it's under 金. And it's pronounced like 金, not like 帛!

Anonymous

So that's a better example than 悶.

Anonymous

帛 isn't one of the 214 radicals, so 錦 can't be under it.

Anonymous

But if you were going to line them up and say something like "radicals indicate the semantic portions of semantic-phonetic characters", you'd have to put it in a 帛 section.

Anonymous

8:49 PM

It's starting to show that it's been a while since I studied kanji :-)

Anonymous

But that's okay. I can read Japanese fine, which is all I really need.

I'm not sure if it's a good idea, but I will try to let the Jingle Effect help me on kanji. ;-)

Anyone knows why OxfordLearnersDict pronunciation of pen is /pen/ and not /pɜn/?

I've seen it in many other words too.

Anonymous

@jinawee They're the same sound.

Anonymous

English doesn't have a phonemic contrast between [e] and [ɛ]

8:58 PM

Also, you might want to check this out: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_respelling_for_English

Anonymous

Because it doesn't, some lexicographers choose to transcribe the phoneme whose basic sound is [ɛ] as /e/

Anonymous

You might say that using e is less accurate, but it's also simpler, easier to type and to read―as a general principle, using as few special symbols for phonemic transcription as possible is a good thing

According to the page, NOAD seems to really use /e/ for IPA /ɛ/.

Anonymous

Some dictionaries use /ɛ/ instead, and that's fine too. Just keep in mind that they're transcribing the same phoneme, and that it doesn't represent a difference in pronunciation

Anonymous

Uh oh, did I mix up the left-facing and right-facing thingies? Just a moment

Anonymous

9:00 PM

I did mean ɛ, not ɜ. Let me go edit what I wrote

Any particular reason why urban is /ɜːbən / and not /eːbən/?

Anonymous

Fixed! :-)

It's typically /ɜr/, but some dialects are non-rhotic.

Anonymous

I made the mistake of just copying and pasting what jinawee wrote :-)

Anonymous

ɜ is more central. Let me go look that up so I can get on the same page…

9:03 PM

Hmm... NOAD seems to use /ər/ for this /ɜr/.

I didn't even know /ɜ/ existed, that seems really messy.

Anonymous

Hmm. You were the one who brought up ɜ

Oh, it's the one in "work"

Anonymous

Where did you find /ɜːbən/?

Anonymous

Is that RP?

Anonymous

9:05 PM

I see it in Collins

Anonymous

So I guess it is!

I usually use this page as a reference for English pronunciation in IPA: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English

Anonymous

Thanks!

(Though it's rare that I will look things up on it. :-)

I thought it was said ɛːbən and then copy-pasted ɜːbən from oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/urban without noticing the difference

Anonymous

9:07 PM

Ugh, English vowels

Anonymous

Why do we have so many? :-)

Hah! I thought you knew it. :)

Anonymous

Honestly, I thought I knew the IPA for English vowels, but I'm feeling a little confused at the moment :-)

Anonymous

It doesn't help that different people write them different ways.

Isn't it strange that I read it in a book that English is still understandable without any vowels?

Anonymous

9:08 PM

@jinawee Are you learning British English pronunciation?

Compared to other languages I know, I think English is quite phonetically rich!

Anonymous

Yes!

Anonymous

A blessing and a curse. :-)

Anonymous

Thai has a fair amount of vowels, though, doesn't it?

Thai has less pure vowels. What we do have more are triphtongues.

Anonymous

9:12 PM

@jinawee I found the blog post on John Wells' blog about e and ɛ.

Anonymous

phonetic-blog.blogspot.com/2009/03/more-about-e-and.html

@snailboat I don't really know. I'm trying to see the differences between both. I think I'm learning more Am pronunciation because of TV series, although I've lived in England.

The first few things about English came to mind: BBC, and Stephen Fry.

So right now I guess I'll mix both accents.

Anonymous

When I was trying to describe two symbols used for the same sound, I was more or less trying to say what John Wells says there. (John Wells is the author of the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary)

Anonymous

9:16 PM

Oh, this is the original post:

Anonymous

phonetic-blog.blogspot.com/2009/03/e-and.html

Anonymous

> In your dictionary, words such as "bed" are transcribed with an [e], when elsewhere I often see the same vowel rendered as [ɛ]. Also, when I listen to various vowel recordings I find that [ɛ] comes closer to the sound I make when I say "bed". Of course, I am not a native speaker of English, and it may well be my Dutch or Norwegian that is creeping in, but I was wondering as to the nature of your choice for using [e]?

Anonymous

There we go :-)

Anonymous

I should just save links like this rather than trying to explain stuff myself

Oh, see how short Hollywood movie's titles are: The Heat, The Bay, The Croods, Planes, Epic!

Anonymous

9:22 PM

Frozen was originally titled Anna and the Snow Queen

Anonymous

That's what it's called in Japanese: アナと雪の女王

Ah! Frozen is also short!

Anonymous

Hollywood does like pretty short titles, huh?

Anonymous

One or two words.

Anonymous

Occasionally three? :-)

9:24 PM

Hehe!

Anonymous

You know, if the words are short enough: "Men in Black"

Anonymous

Have you ever seen the title of Fiona Apple's second album?

Anonymous

It's a poem.

Anonymous

But most people abbreviate the title to "When the Pawn…"

LOL

Anonymous

9:25 PM

→ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_The_Pawn

The title somehow reminds me of the official name of Bangkok. :)

Anonymous

Ah! I remember :-)

Anonymous

Um, I don't remember the whole name. I remember that it exists :-)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. My revised kanji post got an upvote :-)

Yay!

Anonymous

9:33 PM

What was your standard for posts? They need at least 3 upvotes?

nods -- For posts on ELL. :-)

Anonymous

Hmm…

Anonymous

I have two recent posts on Japanese.SE which don't meet that criterion: japanese.stackexchange.com/users/1478/…

Anonymous

Maybe the bar needs to be set higher on Japanese.SE

Oh, that one was only posted 5 hours ago. We can wait for a while. :)

Ahh... jimsug just raised an interesting issue on the meta.

Anonymous

9:38 PM

This one got a downvote, too, but no comment explaining why: japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/17888/…

Anonymous

I wish people commented more often with downvotes, but whatchagonnado? :-)

Anonymous

1

Q: Why were my comment flags on this comment declined?

What does this quote from Shakespeare mean? [on hold] The above comment doesn't seem to be useful, and it seems to be a defensive remark (indeed, something the commenter admits to in another comment that they made, which was deleted after I raised a flag on it. @jimsug O, I will for thy brav...

discussion moderators moderation

I flagged the other comment (now deleted) that targeted on jimsug earlier.

I once got a similar feedback.

Apr 9 at 7:10, by Damkerng T.

> Alright, fed up with this. every translation of the text, also very authorative, says you are wrong. Finished.

Anonymous

Ahh, I've seen that sort of comment

Anonymous

Flagging is the right thing to do, probably

9:44 PM

This is what jimsug got earlier...

20 hours ago, by Damkerng T.

@jimsug you are wrong. This is for English Language Learners for petes sake. Not Comptemporary English Learners! Why are you so purblind and parochial? Maybe you could use some liberal thinking like those Republicans in COngress who insist birth control is sacrilegious...7 — user8153 2 hours ago

@user8153 There's no need to make things personal, I don't know what this has to do with the US government, which I am pleased to say I have absolutely nothing to do with. You'll see in the help center that historical English is explicitly defined as off-topic. Certainly, feel free to make the case that Early Modern English should be on-topic. But making ad hominem arguments is probably not the right way to do it. — jimsug 15 hours ago

@jimsug O, I will for thy bravery hail praise upon thee,/ for an animadversion thou lodgeth 'gainst StoneyB./ — user8153 14 hours ago

I wish all comments and questions would exist permanently and no one would be able to delete them, not even the owner, except for the moderators.

@snailboat I think it's rather clear that there're three accounts.

Anonymous

His writer's voice is rather unique :-)

I don't know how many rude messages went by under the radar on the main site.

Anonymous

As is his style of asking questions

nods

Anonymous

10:27 PM

I do think discussing Early Modern English should be on-topic

Anonymous

Assuming it meets the other criteria an ELL question should meet, of course!

I think it's fine, as long as we make it clear that it is not what we use today.

Anonymous

Yeah

(Actually, it's the reason behind my initiative of those tags.)

Anonymous

It's not okay, for example, to ask a question about a quote from several centuries ago that's apparently ungrammatical now, without letting anyone know what its source is

Anonymous

10:29 PM

Because then you might get, for example, responses saying "That's ungrammatical. Replace am with has"

Anonymous

Then the OP leaves a comment responding "But it's such-and-such famous writer!"

Anonymous

Which is something they should have said in the first place.

Also, considering the level of those comments, it seems like the level of command of English required to write them is well above average learners...

so it's only fair to ask the OP to state their idea first...

or reveal the translation or interpretation or whatever they already have in mind...

or else our answerers would become victimized, imo.

We don't answer homework questions, why we answered "What does this mean?" of these rarely used (and thus, less likely to be useful for most learners) words and phrases for this specific OP?

Anonymous

I don't know. It's hard to come up with a fair policy on "What does this mean" questions, I think

Anonymous

Ideally the OP should say something more than just "what does this mean", though

Anonymous

10:34 PM

They should explain what trouble they're having understanding it

Anonymous

Or, well, something

So, source should be required for these literature questions, but only source shouldn't be enough, imo.

Anonymous

Yeah, that seems fair

Anonymous

ELL has an awful lot of low-effort questions, really

Anonymous

10:56 PM

Seriously, my brain has not been working well today. I'm glad I haven't tried to do anything important :-)

2

Q: Which is his name: the Fat Friar, Fat Friar?

Then something happened that made him jump about a foot in the air - several people behind him screamed. "What the ––?" He gasped. So did the people around him. About twenty ghosts had just streamed through the back wall. Pearly-white and slightly transparent, they glided across ...

This question makes me think hard... What is name? :-)

I know that we won't call (the) Fat Friar a name in my L1.

Anonymous

Fat Friar…?

Anonymous

I don't remember that part of the book at all :-)

It's just something we call someone else.

Me either. Probably not in the movies.

Anonymous

It appears to be capitalized, like some kind of title

Anonymous

11:08 PM

Ah, I actually did see the first 5 movies

Anonymous

But I read all 7 books in English

I think it might be more interesting to ask is if the name of (the) Philippines is "Philippines" or "the Philippines". :-)

Is Fat Friar a friend of Fat Albert? :)

Anonymous

Well,

Anonymous

(i) You're unlikely to say "My dear The Friar"

Anonymous

My takes the determiner slot

Anonymous

11:15 PM

(ii) He seems to sometimes be called Fat, and other times not

Anonymous

But it's not like a string literal

Anonymous

You don't go around calling him Mister The Fat Friar

Anonymous

If you had more than one of them, you wouldn't call him A The Fat Friar

Anonymous

I mean, you could, but it would be silly :-)

Interesting! Which one do you prefer between our Philippines and our the Philippines?

(I think this could be extended to the UK and the USA, too.)

Anonymous

11:17 PM

Really? "Our the"?

Anonymous

Hmm. How do I communicate this?

I just tried to test the feeling. (Mine as well.)

Anonymous

We still analyze these names syntactically.

Anonymous

They are not black boxes, they are not inviolable strings whose contents are irrelevant to their treatment

Anonymous

Compare, though, New York

Anonymous

11:19 PM

This is more or less a single word syntactically, although we're aware of its syntactic origins

Anonymous

If you ask someone to stop and think about it, they'll probably be able to connect it to York, or to New New York (from Futurama)

Oh! Apparently, our the Philippines can be found on Google Books!

Anonymous

S'got to be pretty rare, though…?

Extremely rare.

Anonymous

Do you remember the beginning of The Tick?

Anonymous

11:20 PM

"The City. My The City!"

Anonymous

When he says this, he treats "The City" as though it's a single word

Hah! (I can't remember its first line.)

Anonymous

Probably a lot of names exist on a spectrum of how analyzable they are

Anonymous

The White House, for example, is clearly the definite article the as one word,

Anonymous

but White House seems more like one word than two

Anonymous

11:22 PM

House never receives separate stress, nothing can come between the two, and you can't shorten it to House

> I rise reluctantly to speak in opposition to sending our the United States Armed Forces into ...

Wow! I didn't expect that.

Anonymous

Looks like a typo or mistake of some sort.

Anonymous

It's obvious that White is etymologically a separate word, an adjective.

Anonymous

But even though we're aware of White as though it's a separate word, we treat White House as though it's a single word most of the time

But I guess that the is never really part of the word.

Anonymous

11:24 PM

I can't think of an example where the has really been lexicalized

Anonymous

A little voice in the back of my head is whispering that most of the things I'm saying today are slightly wrong in one respect or another. :-)

I think we have a question about the New York Times or something like that posted recently on ELL.

Anonymous

I hope you don't mind that I'm sitting around and chatting anyway.

Never. :)

Anonymous

A lot of names have strong preferences for one article or the other, or neither: The Appalachians, Microsoft

Anonymous

11:27 PM

The Himalayas

nods

Anonymous

But we always treat these as actual articles

Anonymous

We never say the the Himalayas

Ah! I think that's useful for almost all learners!

Hmm... but that's probably only one-sided test. (It doesn't really say anything about just Himalayas.)

Ah, StoneyB posted an answer to that question.

Anonymous

corpus.byu.edu/coca/?c=coca&q=32212897

11:31 PM

0

A: Which is his name: the Fat Friar, Fat Friar?

None of these is a name. Friar, if lowercased, designates a man who has taken religious vows and joined a mendicant order. Uppercased it is the title by which a friar is referred to and addressed, like ‘General’ or ‘Doctor’. If the friar's religious name were ‘John’, he would be referred to as ...

"None of these is a name." -- Ahh... I like it when StoneyB's answer is decisive.

Oh, we can have a lot of things before Himalayas!

A-ha! Nepal's Himalayas and China's Himalayas are good examples!

Anonymous

And Tibetan

But then the example is the cascading Tibetan Himalayas.

Anonymous

Oh, yeah, I guess that wouldn't be a determiner

Anonymous

0

Q: What is this construction?

She was as beautiful a girl as well might be in the whole wide world. (Garden of Love) by Jeniffer Jackson This pattern is new to me. Usually could is used . Is "well might" used here to have the same meaning?

Anonymous

Is that a real book?

Anonymous

11:37 PM

I'm having trouble finding evidence of its existence, though all I've done is search online

I couldn't find the phrase by googling for it.

Oh, you mean the mentioned book.

Anonymous

Yeah.

I think it's a strange sentence.

Anonymous

He might have written it himself.

Even with could be, it is still a little odd.

Anonymous

11:42 PM

What year was this book written? — snailplane 9 secs ago

Anonymous

It would help to know if it's an old book

If plagiarism is a word for claiming other people's work or using it as if it were one's own, what is the word for claiming that someone's work exists when it actually doesn't?

(Should I post it as a question? :-)

Anonymous

Um… Fiction? :-)

LOL

Anonymous

That reminds me again that you should either read or see The Princess Bride, or preferably, both!

2

11:48 PM

Eh? (Can't relate things together!)

Oh, probably the word fiction rang the bell.

Hmm... Maybe falsification could work.

Anonymous

The book is supposedly an abridgement of another book written by S. Morgenstern, an author who does not exist :-)

Hehe!

Anonymous

House of Leaves does something similar, except that the author goes way over-the-top

Oh, it is an interesting novel style!

Anonymous

It's a framing device that's been used by a number of authors

Anonymous

11:59 PM

I'm not sure who did it first

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