Language Overflow

Anonymous

12:09 AM

Prepone sounds dialectal, while prepend sounds like jargon.

Anonymous

So one doesn't make me think of the other.

Damkerng T.

12:21 AM

I guess they're paired up for me because both are pronounced with "prep-n".

1

Q: Stay indoors vs stay indoor

From my understanding, "Bob stayed indoors" is a correct expression, while "Bob stayed indoor" is incorrect. Why is the latter incorrect? The term indoor is an adjective, and the verb stay is often followed by an adjective (e.g., "Let's stay focused.")

phrase-usage

I'm pretty sure that we can argue that indoors is a preposition, too!

I just heard Titanic being pronounced somewhat like /taijtanik/ (in Thai)!

Would most people feel the difference between /tai/ and /ta(i)(j)/?

Anonymous

I thought transcribing ai as aj in Thai transcriptions was a matter of convention rather than a phonetic difference.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Yes, one of those intransitive preposition thingies, called an adverb in traditional grammar.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat It is, I suppose, though I'm not that sure. (I'm not familiar with transcribing words in my own language in IPA!) Then again, I think some people really pronounce it like [tai], some [taj], and some [taij] (where [ij] sounds like a single phoneme).

StoneyB

1:07 AM

I think both prepend and prepone are 'inkhorn' terms, meaning "hang off the front" and "put on the front".

tchrist

2:02 AM

insert it at the front

Damkerng T.

3:19 AM

Word of the Day: philanthropist

@tchrist I'd expect that in programming manuals!

Nathan Tuggy

3:37 AM

I miss 2k tools (now 10k tools) so much.

I think I'm going through withdrawal

Damkerng T.

3:50 AM

@NathanTuggy It's really the downside of the graduation. I barely made 20k a couple weeks just before we changed our site's look.

Nathan Tuggy

@DamkerngT. *envious*

Damkerng T.

Anyway, hang in there. I always root for you when I see your edits.

Nathan Tuggy

But I knew it was coming

Damkerng T.

LOL

Nathan Tuggy

it's a good thing in a lot of ways

fewer terrible tags, tag wiki edits, edit approvals, close votes...

Damkerng T.

3:51 AM

nods

Nathan Tuggy

I did want to at least make 5k before we flipped the switch

but I couldn't quite muster the answers in time

Damkerng T.

@NathanTuggy But you're almost there!

Nathan Tuggy

@DamkerngT. Yes but it's not the same, you see

I can't check site stats now.

(not that that was likely too important, but still)

<s>approving</s> rejecting tag wiki edits is still a worthy aim, though

@DamkerngT. (I appreciate the kind words, btw)

Damkerng T.

@NathanTuggy nods -- Go for it!

(I lost my internet connection for a few minutes. Sorry about that.)

Nathan Tuggy

Ah, no problem.

IͶΔ

4:03 AM

@NathanTuggy ---Approving---

Hey @Nathan @Dam.

Nathan Tuggy

@IͶΔ ~~Approving~~ like this?

Damkerng T.

Hi!

Nathan Tuggy

also, hi back!

IͶΔ

It was the Majlis (Majles?) election yesterday. Schools are off today

\o/

Damkerng T.

Hehe! I'm happy for you. :D

Nathan Tuggy

4:06 AM

@IͶΔ WP seems to think either transliteration is fine, so there you go

Incidentally, wow, that's a fat stack of different parties represented.

IͶΔ

Yeah, it's always more of a mess than you think.

Nathan Tuggy

Over here, I'd prefer to have a bit more healthy variety, personally...

"There are only ever two parties anyone will ever care about" is a lousy way to run a government built around nuanced, principled compromise.

Anyway, enough of that :P

IͶΔ

How're stuff going in your end of the world?

Nathan Tuggy

Mostly OK; got enough work for now, and some interesting ideas to think over for quite some time to come

how about you?

obviously, time off school is great ;)

Hmm, I seem to have rather lost track of time... I should get off meta and chat and start winding down my daily routine.

ta ta for now!

IͶΔ

\o

ell.stackexchange.com/a/82749/14111 -- VLQ @Dam please flag

Damkerng T.

4:23 AM

@NathanTuggy o/

@IͶΔ Wow, they even made a new account for that!

IͶΔ

New . . . account?

Well, I think an alien invasion has begun.

Man_From_India

8:10 AM

0

Q: Use of "Should" at the beginning of a sentence

So, I am given this sentence: Father will send you a message if his flight is cancelled. I am supposed to preserve the meaning of this sentence and transform it into another sentence beginning with "Should". So, I thought of this (I don't really know why I thought of this though): Shoul...

sentence-construction

What's that?

IͶΔ

It's a link that one-boxed.

Man_From_India

Why are this two new members talking Hindi in the comment? And that too not very much relevant to the question.

Damkerng T.

@Man_From_India O?

(scratching head)

IͶΔ

@Man_From_India flag -> too chatty.

Man_From_India

Nothing bad though, but I think stackexchange doesn't allow such kind of activity.

:') Bhai... tu bhi yaha par = ;') Brother... you too are here?

IͶΔ

8:16 AM

I SAID "flag-> too chatty". You too @Dam

Man_From_India

I am not very sure if there is any rule or not. I just felt that this is not acceptable. So I refrain from flagging.

Damkerng T.

One of them wrote stackexchange bahut acche forums hain. Now I wonder whether acche stackexchange bahut hain forums is correct or not, and why? :P

Man_From_India

I will translate it for you :P

IͶΔ

SE is technically, realistically and whateverestically not a forum.

Man_From_India

hahaha! bhaiya, stackexchange bahut acche forums hain, aur parso exam hai, so... :D = hahaha! Brother, stackexchange is a very good forum, and day after tomorrow is my exam, so... :D

Damkerng T.

8:19 AM

@IͶΔ I tried a lighter approach...

Subtitles, please! :-) — Damkerng T. 24 secs ago

Man_From_India

@IͶΔ That is what it says. A question answer site.

IͶΔ

Flags @Dam

Man_From_India

Flag is a bit strict action, in my opinion. There is nothing bad comment there, and considering they are new I think they should be treated lightly. After all they have not done anything really very wrong. As it is apparent they are new, they might not be aware of the etiquette of this site they prefer to call a "forum" . :-)

IͶΔ

No it's not.

Valid comment flags do nothing to the OP.

They just remove the unnecessary clutter.

IͶΔ

10:07 AM

Anybody in?

(/¯◡ ‿ ◡)/¯ ~ ┻━┻

Damkerng T.

going out...

IͶΔ

Nooooooooo

I actually have a half-baked idea about the featured meta post.

2

Q: Proposal: delete tags "meaning" and "word-meaning"

This is the description of the tag meaning: This tag is for questions which a dictionary cannot answer about what a word means. If the question is about the meaning of a word that can't be understood outside its phrase or sentence, the "meaning-in-context" tag should be also used; for the mea...

discussion featured tags tag-synonyms tag-cleaning

But it's half-baked. I'm stuck.

@Stoney please read this discussion

@DamkerngT. My plan is to expand the tags based on the topics they cover.

As been said, [meaning] is useless because I can't use it to search.

And it doesn't explain my question.

However, if we had a complementary [cooking] to go with it for example, things would've been different.

Now some questions rise.

Damkerng T.

Possibly a good tag: difference-between

I think a lot of meaning questions are about the difference.

IͶΔ

@DamkerngT. We already have [difference]. It's a meta tag and doesn't work well. :/

Damkerng T.

It's a bit more specific than meaning, afaict.

And it doesn't depend on context.

IͶΔ

10:13 AM

First, can everything fit in a topic.

@DamkerngT. Yah, but look at the questions it gets.

Damkerng T.

0

Q: what does engaged mean?

An engaged, informed workforce is a big competitive differentiator in today’s service economy. However, conventional intranets—even those with the latest search technologies and social 1.0 features—aren’t delivering a competitive advantage. Most employees still struggle to find information and...

meaning

IͶΔ

Damn this

Damkerng T.

Possible replacement: meaning-elaboration

IͶΔ

Again, that's a meta tag.

BE GONE WITH THE META TAGS

Damkerng T.

What's your solution, then?

IͶΔ

10:15 AM

4 mins ago, by IͶΔ

As been said, [meaning] is useless because I can't use it to search.

4 mins ago, by IͶΔ

And it doesn't explain my question.

4 mins ago, by IͶΔ

However, if we had a complementary [cooking] to go with it for example, things would've been different.

Damkerng T.

Yeah, that's the problem.

IͶΔ

Topics.

Damkerng T.

What do you mean by "topics"?

IͶΔ

[cooking] [politics] [legalese] etc.

Damkerng T.

Let's say, what would be the best tag for "what does engaged mean?"

IͶΔ

10:16 AM

Something like the context of the question.

@DamkerngT. Yeah that's the problem.

Damkerng T.

[engaged]?

That's probably too hilarious!

IͶΔ

No, maybe [workplace]?

The problems are how to keep the numbers of these tags from growing like cancer.

And that whether everything can reasonably have a context.

Damkerng T.

I don't think engaged is really only used in the [workplace] context.

IͶΔ

Hmm.

It doesn't depend on the context.

Damkerng T.

That's right!

So, basically, lots of ELL questions don't have their topics.

IͶΔ

10:19 AM

And lotsa them have it.

But is there anything else we can do?

@Dam please don't shut down for 5 days and find a solution to the [usage] [meaning] family.

Damkerng T.

Informally, we could tag it with help-me-understand-this-word-in-this-sentence-in-this-passage.

IͶΔ

But sadly, the tag system won't let us.

Damkerng T.

(Thus, [meaning-in-context])

Then again, most of questions that appear to be [meaning-in-context] questions from the OPs' point of view aren't really [meaning-in-context] questions because the words or the sentences that the OP don't understand aren't really context-dependent.

IͶΔ

[meaning-in-context] is like a good version of [meaning].

At least, I don't wanna pinch it.

Yeah that's a thing. The OP's don't care or don't know about stuff.

Damkerng T.

Or they simply don't know much enough, and everything looks difficult to them.

IͶΔ

10:24 AM

Or they simply underestimate themselves, and go all reserved and stuff.

Damkerng T.

0

Q: meaning of a sentence in this paraghraph

A manager's core challenge is to blend the diversity (and imperfections) of their team into a group which wants to work together each day and produce results on behalf of the organisation. Yet for many managers the very concept of social within the enterprise still remains a vexed issue with s...

meaning

^9 minutes ago

IͶΔ

@DamkerngT. Awesome title.

ELL is becoming more and more like a help desk than a rich library.

Damkerng T.

@IͶΔ Almost identical to my proposed tag name!

IͶΔ

Ja

Damkerng T.

help-me-understand-this-sentence-in-this-passage

And the question has nothing but the quoted text.

IͶΔ

10:27 AM

@DamkerngT. :O OMG

Peter didn't use bold in his answer!!!!!!oneoneone!!!11!!

Damkerng T.

The text has already been emboldened in the question!

Anyway, I've gotta go. Be back later.

IͶΔ

@DamkerngT. \o

Well, I was rather expecting "The meaning of your sentence"

Hi, Dam, MAR!

Hullo

Glad you are here.

10:54 AM

"The meaning of your sentence"

IͶΔ

11:10 AM

I find myself downvoting way more often.

It used to be 1 or 2 downvotes a day.

Now almost half of my votes are downvotes.

StoneyB

11:49 AM

Hi, @IͶΔ. I don't think subcategorization on semantic fields is really going to help. 1) Most common words are employed across many semantic fields; and often a learner's problem with a particular world lies in its changes of meaning when it moves from one field to another.

2) I know of no 'received' list of fields (and if I did I'd probably argue with it). Everybody's gonna be making up their own fields (meaning-cooking, meaning-culinary, meaning-food), and we'll end up with two hundred useless tags instead of 5.

I think the only rational approach is to leave the 'meaning' tags alone. They fill up the required tag slot, and they don't misrepresent the questions.

What might be done is track through the 'meaning' questions and make sure the key term is in the title, so the Q shows up near the top on manual searches.

CopperKettle

12:21 PM

On the streets of Moscow.

The authorities' preparations for a peaceful Nemtsov commemoration march.

StoneyB

@CopperKettle Well, I don't see any actual tanks.

Maybe they're around the corner.

CopperKettle

They are around the corner in Ukraine. (0: In Moscow, there's only riot police.

In Krasnoyarsk, someone kidnapped the person responsible for the meeting, and the police banned the meeting on the grounds of him being absent.

Man_From_India

12:59 PM

@StoneyB I was thinking about the other than question. What is the parts of speech of other than, except in the following sentences -

> Nothing we can do other than accept it.

and

> He does nothing except eat all day.

CopperKettle

1:17 PM

"other than" = "but", so it must be.. a conjunction?

Man_From_India

I am not very sure.

CopperKettle

nods

Man_From_India

Ah I found it. According to CGEL it's a preposition, and the complement it takes is not something similar to the one a preposition normally license. The complement except license is Matrix-licensed-complement.

StoneyB

1:39 PM

I'd call it other than a comparative construction, with inversion because no other thing than is expressed with no thing closed-up. But it amounts to the same thing.

V.V.

1:53 PM

There should be a negation in the main clause, right?

His examples make no sense

CopperKettle

Good evening, @V.V.!

I just heard a great poem on BBC Radio

2

need to jot it down somewheres.

(0:

Mark the interesting use of Past Perfect in "Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold".

StoneyB

2:11 PM

@Copperkettle : Haven't seen that since I was a kid.

V.V.

2:46 PM

It can be used in statements as well. "apart from". @CopperKettle. Good evening! And @StoneyB

StoneyB

@VV and you.

CopperKettle

Yes, a great poem.

BBC comes up with good poetry once in a rare while.

BBC Channel4 is better, but I can't seem to find the stream file to plug into my foobar player.

Anonymous

I don't suppose anyone wants to cast the fifth reopen vote on this question? english.stackexchange.com/q/309718/28567

StoneyB

3:12 PM

There you go.

CopperKettle

4:58 PM

0

A: The structure of a sentence in "A Living and a Dead Faith" by William Cowper

Yes, this is an example of poetic license. That stanza as prose would make no sense.

A quick answer is not always the right one.

IͶΔ

A quick answer is rarely the right one.

CopperKettle

5:12 PM

Maybe there's a dash missing.

And called-for fruit as well as sound.

Anonymous

@StoneyB Thank you! :-)

IͶΔ

@Stoney I concur.

But what other options do we have?

(/¯ಠ_ಠ)/¯ ~ ┻━┻

IͶΔ

5:40 PM

> Note that 5 answers from new users in 24 hours is the threshold on most sites; on Programmers, ELL and The Workplace, it's 3 in 24 hours.

ELL is popular, but quality is slowly degrading.

"It's just a stale and boring talk of tags, let's read the post about site design for the nth time"

If of course does with getting more popular, but the problem is that we're doing nothing to counter it.

Anonymous

What should we do?

IͶΔ

First, we have to choose one between coddling the OP and enforcing quality.

I'm writing a meta post for that matter.

These days, the main arguments again moderation are this: "But the poor OP definitely can't tag responsibly/write a good title/use proper formatting/do some research/eat English pies."

V.V.

5:58 PM

MAR, you are a born orator

IͶΔ

@V.V. Oh I am honored

Anonymous

What's an English pie?

IͶΔ

Don't ask me!

V.V.

6:22 PM

I am not joking. Such ardent speeches. I even went to read your comments on meta.

CopperKettle

StoneyB is a wizard.

That stanza was quite tough

Good-bye, Snails!

Another US person failed to twig the meaning.

1

A: The structure of a sentence in "A Living and a Dead Faith" by William Cowper

There are two finite verbs in this stanza, expressed and called; their subject is the priestly vest (vest for vestment, 'robe' in the Authorized Version)— see Ex 28:33-34 And beneath upon the hem of it thou shalt make pomegranates of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, round about the hem th...

Good evening, @StoneyB!

Thanks for the answer!

StoneyB

Hello, Gospodin! My pleasure.

Consider it repayment for Abou Ben Adhem.

@IͶΔ Well, you could do one tag for every word. ;}

IͶΔ

Oh my.

Hullo @Stoney

StoneyB

Or you could simply accept the fact that tags just don't work for some subjects and spend your energy on more useful things.

IͶΔ

Or we could unite and shout out loud that we want a hierarchy system in tags and then realize nobody's listening anyway.

StoneyB

6:35 PM

I don't want a 'hierarchy' system on meaning questions. They're basically dictionary questions for which existing dictionaries don't provide adequate answers, and their inherent form is the same as a dictionary exhibits: a list, not a hierarchy.

V.V.

It was a wonderful answer. I wonder if you write poems.

StoneyB

I have written about 3400 poems here and on ELU.

3

V.V.

I also read your article about Past Perfect And wanted to thank you personally for that

IͶΔ

@StoneyB Mhm, so you're basically saying that those tags are solely meant to exist to make a list, not be searchable? Makes sense.

Anonymous

@CopperKettle Good-bye and hello!

StoneyB

6:46 PM

99.9% of the questions about 'meaning' are not about meaning in and per se but about the meaning of a specific word or phrase. What kind of hierarchy can you impose on that, beyond the alphabetical 'hierarchy' of the dictionary?

@V.V. Thank you; but I'm afraid it really needs to be rewritten from the ground up. Right now it's just sorta background to draw on for Real Answers to Real Questions.

V.V.

I would like you to add more examples when to use it.

StoneyB

@V.V. mmm... Pick up a novel or a history and you'll find all the examples you need. Run em up against the rule of thumb: ☛ Use perfect constructions to introduce prior eventualities as context for the current discussion.

Anonymous

Biber et al. 1999, a corpus-based grammar, divides their corpus into four subcorpora: conversation, fiction, news, and academic. In those four, the past perfect is by far most common in fiction and least common in conversation.

Anonymous

7:01 PM

It also appears with some frequency in the news corpus, but not nearly as much as in fiction.

Anonymous

(p.461)

IͶΔ

@V.V. From my experience, examples have two big disadvantages: 1) They make something that isn't long and intimidating look long and intimidating. 2) They restrict the ambition, creativity, and the thoughts of a learner.

The best tutorial is one with the least examples.

Use them as much as it gets your reader out of confusion.

Anonymous

It makes sense that it appears most often in fiction, because most fiction uses the past tense as its basic narrative tense.

IͶΔ

Just as much.

Anonymous

@IͶΔ That's an interesting view.

Anonymous

7:04 PM

I think that humans essentially learn language by imitation.

Anonymous

So I tend to think of examples as essential.

IͶΔ

Well, if I go and talk about articles without any examples, no one will understand what I wrote.

But bringing the second example is always redundant unless you bring a totally different perspective to the field.

StoneyB

@snailboat Doubleplus. BUT: Examples need to be in context (especially when you're talking about perfects!)

Little piddly isolated sentences don't teach anything except maybe syntax.

Anonymous

I'm always saying that about articles :-)

StoneyB

You mean determinative articles or scholarly articles?

Anonymous

7:10 PM

The former.

Anonymous

I guess I should start saying that about not just articles, but articles as well!

StoneyB

I try to avoid talking about them!

Anonymous

7:21 PM

corpus.byu.edu/coca/?c=coca&q=45482623

Anonymous

I was surprised by the results with at.

Anonymous

> It was like a war zone. But it happens every year at spring break. And everyone down there knows about it - but they don't do anything about it.

Anonymous

> I moved out at spring break and moved to my grandma's house and had better grades.

Anonymous

My ear expects on, which does seem to be more common than at by about a 10:1 ratio.

Anonymous

But people do use at.

Anonymous

7:24 PM

1

Q: at/in/on summer break

You know there are some breaks when students don't go to school for a while like Thanksgiving break, summer break, spring break, winter break, etc. My questions are what preposition is used before these breaks. What is the right collocation? We had fun at/on/in summer break. Do all breaks ...

collocation

Anonymous

I suppose they're asking specifically about We had fun __PREP__ summer break.

Anonymous

Oops, it turned my double underscores into bold.

WendiKidd

9:31 PM

@IͶΔ response to the chat conversation you linked to:

I just read though the chat log you posted, and I too now have a half-baked idea... If a question is tagged meaning, but not meaning-in-context, I can only think of 2 categories it might fit into: 1) closed as answerable by dictionary; 2) OP wants further explanation than a confusing dictionary entry provides. And these are Qs that others might have in the future.

So what if we had meaning-in-context and meaning-beyond-dictionary/definition (or something that sounds better but means that). Would that take care of the two main cases?

IͶΔ

Hullo @Wendi! Welcome to LO!

WendiKidd

:) Loving the new chat theme! Our design makes me very happy <3

IͶΔ

How're you doing?

I'm actually about to go to sleep.

0

Q: The contradiction that lies beneath

The TL;DR; version is more or less the last section. I recommend that you don't skip and read all I have to say, though it's your own choice. Preamble Just like how life gets interesting when you get opposing views, and just like how the US (or any) election would be very boring with only one d...

discussion

WendiKidd

@snailboat @DamkerngT @StoneyB I see our three resident chatters have remained steadfast over the years! You're always here whenever I pop in to check on things ^^

@IͶΔ I'm doing well! And please, don't let me keep you from sleep. You can ping me later if you'd like to discuss further.

IͶΔ

Regarding that, @Wendi, I just don't want next time that I expect people do research tell me "but how can an ELL do that?!?!?!?!?!?!?"

4 hours ago, by IͶΔ

These days, the main arguments again moderation are this: "But the poor OP definitely can't tag responsibly/write a good title/use proper formatting/do some research/eat English pies."

Damkerng T.

9:40 PM

@WendiKidd We're persistent! ;-)

WendiKidd

@IͶΔ There's a happy medium somewhere that we need to find, I feel. Expecting perfect grammar and spelling is unrealistic. Expecting more than a copy-paste of a sentence is not. I think the Details, please post and our dictionary-definition closures support that philosophy.

Damkerng T.

Good afternoon! (I guess)

WendiKidd

@DamkerngT. :D Our new chat color matches your icon! And haha, good afternoon! What time is it for you?

Damkerng T.

It's 4:42 in the morning. ;-)

IͶΔ

@WendiKidd My elaborate scheme on making @Dam chat less and answer more has failed.

WendiKidd

9:42 PM

@DamkerngT. o.o Why are you not asleep?!? Are you actually a robot in a space suit?

Damkerng T.

@IͶΔ But, but, but I wrote an answer today!

@WendiKidd Actually I just woke up. :D

IͶΔ

@WendiKidd Big problems we need to address; with these meta posts I want the community to start adhering to what J.R. wrote before, aaaaaand g'night an angry dad is approaching.

WendiKidd

@IͶΔ haha. Even if Damkerng never wrote another answer again (even though I'd cry) his duty to ELL has been more than done; without those three I named above ^, ELL would not be what it is today. We should have like deputy moderator crowns to hand out to people (a winter hat?) for having insane contributions. Well, I guess when our swag is ready, the top users will get a sort-of crown in the form of swag?

@DamkerngT. haha well then good morning!

@IͶΔ haha night! We can chat about it later.

Damkerng T.

Thabks!

@IͶΔ o/ :-)

Our new theme is very nice. On the other hand, I wish we could have kept our bar at 2k or something lower than 10k for a while for the moderator tools access.

Then again, the change could encourage some of our users to post answers more often.

StoneyB

10:01 PM

@WendiKidd Hi, Wendi. I'm just an occasional visitor here: Dam and snail and now the polynomial @IͶΔ pretty much keep things going from hour to hour.

Damkerng T.

10:20 PM

@Man_From_India I wonder on what page it is discussed!

In COCA, other than getting 25, other than get 10.

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