ELL's Cabin

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

17:04

Guys I need some motivation to write ELL's tag meta post.

Catija

Nope. I've had all the drama I can deal with in relation to tags on M&TV and I actually understand the tags here. Part of why I never retag stuff on ELL is that I don't actually know any terminology :P

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Catija I don't think there's a need for any kind of terminology for these set of tags.

tchrist

Rule 1: All questions’ tags need editing and reassignment when they are first posed.
Rule 2: People don’t ever suggest or vote on tag synonyms.
Rule 3: People don’t ever edit tag wiki excerpts or bodies.

Anonymous

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M That's why I was thinking we could have a chat event to get people's thoughts on the tags to start with.

Catija

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Um... yeah... because knowing what a "past participle" is... that's not important when writing a tag excerpt.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

17:08

@Catija Actually, I'm about to start two: One for ELL, and one for chem.

Chem people don't need long meta post for edits though.

It's really harder to get people on ELL to edit something. Oh wait, not really.

Stoney and Snail and Dam jump in, whether I ask them or not.

tchrist

Just get folks to assign tags to all new posts.

And never leave grammar unless it’s Dam’s. :)

Catija

0

Q: Is event time=situational time=time of situation

Is event time=situational time=time of situation., and in a sentence how to show or represent it I mean time of situation...give me some examples with suitable diagrams ?

tense

Um... what?

Anonymous

I think modal-auxiliaries would be better than modal-verbs. The modal auxiliaries form a syntactic class and mostly express modality, but modality can be expressed with lexical verbs too, e.g. It seems/appears that . . .

tchrist

I think by modal-verbs people are talking about the defectives.

Anonymous

Yes.

Anonymous

17:14

It's fine. I know what they mean. It's just a quibble :-)

tchrist

durst :)

Anonymous

Of course, there's a lot of modality in English that isn't expressed with modal auxiliaries.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@snailboat Then again there's the danger of making the tag more out-of-reach for the poor puzzled soul who needs to tag it that way. But then, I think every question on ELL should be edited for title and tags.

Anonymous

How do we organize tags that conceptually form a hierarchy? We have tense, present-tense, past-tense, tense-agreement, and future-tense. At least some of these can be arranged into a hierarchy.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I believe the approach many SEs take is to either burninate the broader tag or tell users not to use the broader tag when they can use the more specific one.

Anonymous

17:20

I think tense-agreement is another name for that "sequence of tenses" thing no one's ever succeeded in nailing down for English.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

BTW @TCh you mentioned a polysemy tag we could use.

I think some questions on ELL are about polysemy.

tchrist

I was kinda joking.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I'm not joking.

Not now.

tchrist

meaning-meaning-many-meaning

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@tchrist Too bad it can't be a real tag.

Anonymous

17:26

present-perfect past-perfect perfect-constructions perfect-aspect future-perfect perfect-continuous perfect-infinitive

Anonymous

Wouldn't it make more sense to have a single tag for the perfect and combine it with tags for present or past tense, or with progressive (continuous) aspect?

Anonymous

You can always search for two tags at the same time.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Jeez, this will take forever. Let's first take down Al pacino: grammar

Anonymous

At the very least, I can't imagine there's any difference between perfect-aspect and perfect-constructions, except that the former makes an assertion about whether the perfect is an aspect

Anonymous

infinitive infinitive-clause to-infinitive bare-infinitive infinitive-phrase perfect-infinitive infinitive-vs-gerund

Anonymous

17:29

I don't think we need separate tags for infinitive phrases and clauses.

user116848

Sup guys!

Anonymous

infinitive and infinitive-clause probably mean the same thing, with to-infinitive and bare-infinitive as subtypes.

Anonymous

I don't know how to organize this sort of hierarchy. I'm not convinced it makes sense to just kill the general tag, because a question may not be about a specific type.

Anonymous

That is, the distinction between to-infinitival clauses and bare infinitival clauses may not be relevant to many of the questions.

Anonymous

Alternatively, the question may be about the difference between the two.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

17:32

@snailboat We have to face cases where the broader tag would be useful.

Anonymous

I'd like to see a consistent style in our tags. When they're count nouns, plurals would be nice. verb is not as nice as verbs.

Anonymous

I think tags that look like adjectives are weird. Why archaic?

Anonymous

I think cleaning up the tag system would involve removing and renaming lot of tags.

Anonymous

I think I'm going to go destroy the seinfeld tag.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Seinfeld?

Anonymous

17:36

Questions containing quotes from a TV show called Seinfeld.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Man . . .

Catija

@snailboat Good call. I wish I could do that over on M&TV but, apparently, it's on-topic over there ;)

Anonymous

functional-english doesn't appear to mean anything.

Anonymous

I think I'm going to remove that one, too.

Anonymous

It's only on two questions and neither of them mentions the concept of "functional English" anywhere.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

17:38

@snailboat Do experts in functional English run computations on how many "bah"s I said?

Catija

So, just saw the "indian-english" tag... not that I don't think we should have it... but I think it's odd that it's apparently so different... I mean, if I listen to the BBC and they're talking to someone in India (who speaks English) I don't hear any of the odd Indian-English-isms like "do the needful" or that sort of thing.

Anonymous

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I dunno. Those formal semantics folks sometimes try to treat meaning in terms of lambda calculus, but I don't think it has much relevance here on ELL.

Anonymous

I can't really guess what "functional English" means.

user116848

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M "Bah's" where?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Everywhere.

user116848

17:42

Why don't we have a tag for the TV show Person of Interest?

user116848

K.

Catija

How about literature?

user116848

Yeah.

Anonymous

That one has a tag wiki excerpt!

Anonymous

> Questions related to English vocabulary, forms, phrases, and syntax that is now more commonly seen in written literature than in everyday speech. Also used for questions citing excerpts from works of literature.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

17:43

@Catija I would love english better.

Anonymous

It looks like @DamkerngT. made the literature tag.

Catija

@snailboat Yeah... but there's tons of questions that are about literature sources that don't use the tag... so what's the point of it. We either need to use it consistently or burn it.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Can you explain the idea behind the tag a little?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Dam (ಠ_ಠ)=ε/̵͇̿̿/'̿'̿ ̿

Catija

@snailboat For example, all of those dozens of quesitons about "Baker's blue-jay yarn"... or whatever it was called.

Anonymous

17:45

I don't think we'll be able to get anyone to agree on what constitutes "literature".

user116848

At how much rep can we make a "tag"?

Catija

Or that question about a quote from Pride and Prejudice.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Arrowfar 300.

Catija

@Arrowfar ell.stackexchange.com/help/privileges

user116848

I see.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

17:46

Facepalm it's 150 in betas?!

Anonymous

time-construct ← This tag is silly.

user116848

I thought I didn't have that privilege ;-)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Honestly, I think one should have 1 or even 2k rep to create tags on ELL. :(

Anonymous

Say, have you ever noticed a lot of people type 'construct' on these language sites when they mean something like 'construction'?

Catija

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Meh, we can always blacklist bad tags.

Anonymous

17:48

Not that I know what a "time construction" would be.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@snailboat Seems so. Long verbs look like nouns to them.

Anonymous

Well, construct can be a noun or a verb.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Catija I think we should have 300 tag names in the balcklist for a start. :/

Catija

A construct of your imagination. Construct a building.

Anonymous

Unless you have a particular reason to say construct instead, though, I think it's usual to refer to grammatical constructions as constructions.

Anonymous

17:52

I think I've even done it before. Stupid snailboat!

Anonymous

Anyway, I think the time-construct tag looks a bit mysterious.

Catija

irrealis-mood What is this?

It looks like a bunch of random letters followed by "mood".

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

No that a thing.

Anonymous

Irrealis and realis are sometimes called 'unreal' and 'real' in books for learners.

Anonymous

The subjunctive is an irrealis form.

Anonymous

17:55

Think "un-realized" or contrary to fact

user116848

So if someone had a privilege for beta site at a certain rep do they lose that privilege when the site graduates, like ELL?

user116848

Because for beta sites rep related benefits are different.

Anonymous

> I apologize if I was rude. (realis)

Anonymous

> If I were rude, I certainly wouldn't apologize! (irrealis)

Catija

@Arrowfar Yes.... except ELL won't get the higher rep limits until we get a site design.

user116848

17:56

This page says it is all the same: ell.stackexchange.com/help/privileges

Anonymous

They're traditional grammatical terms. They have the advantage that they're used in the discussion of a very large number of languages. They have the disadvantage of sounding rather technical.

user116848

@Catija Ah, so after the site design then.

user116848

Bummer!

Catija

@snailboat And, as a native speaker, I've never heard them... I understand the concepts as you describe them :D So I appreciate that. But I've never run into the terms before.

Anonymous

Mood is an inflectional system to express modality. Modality is a kind of meaning that shows the relationship between the a proposition and reality (it might be true, it should be true, it could be true, I heard it's true, etc.).

Catija

17:58

Do we need past and past-tense?

Anonymous

The mood system in Present-Day English has collapsed and basically no longer exists.

Anonymous

The contrast between was and were is one of the last vestiges.

Anonymous

@Catija Oh boy. Add those to the tense list above, I guess :-)

Anonymous

Tense and time reference don't necessarily coincide.

Anonymous

> We play the Lakers next week.

Anonymous

17:59

Here we have the present tense used with future time reference.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Oh no, I started off a bit rant-ish, or maybe a bit joke-ish.

Catija

I believe there's also simply present.

Anonymous

Unfortunately, tense and time reference are traditionally not distinguished, so our tags related to time and tense are an incoherent mess.

Anonymous

But the word tense does make a difference.

Anonymous

I'm not sure what to do about our tense tags. I don't believe we can make them coherent.

Anonymous

18:01

I think they're being used to describe questions and answers that are conceptually incoherent.

Anonymous

We can at least make them less redundant, though.

Anonymous

I wonder how much overlap there is between backshifting and reported-speech.

user116848

"Backshifting" is my favorite tag.

user116848

It has solved a lot of my queries.

user116848

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I clicked on one of your meta post and my computer hung for a while :)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

18:06

@Arrowfar What can I say, the computers can hardly bear my awesomeness. ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ

Anonymous

I noticed we have a tag for let with no tag wiki, used for both causative let and let-imperatives.

Anonymous

But we don't have tags for the other verbs commonly used as causatives (make, have, etc.), and our fledgling imperative tag (missing its plural -s) has only 3 questions!

user116848

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M No, about "Formatting Sandbox".

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Arrowfar Mathjax takes time to load.

user116848

Apparently something to do with the codes blah blah.

user116848

18:08

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Now it makes sense.

Anonymous

@Catija The irrealis-mood tag is being used to refer to the use of irrealis were on a small number of questions. At a minimum, the tag could have were in the name.

Anonymous

Although it doesn't make sense to call it subjunctive, I imagine most people are familiar with that label for this use of were, and not with the irrealis label.

Anonymous

Quirk et al 1985 calls it the were-subjunctive.

Catija

@snailboat That sounds at least more understandable.

Anonymous

Simply were would probably be confusing, but were-subjunctive would probably be specific enough and get the idea across.

Anonymous

18:18

countability countable-nouns uncountable-nouns

Anonymous

singular plural singular-vs-plural

Anonymous

adverbial-phrase :-(

Anonymous

> Adverbial phrase (also known as adverb phrase) is a term for two or more words functions adverbially (i.e. as an adverb).

Anonymous

An adverb phrase is a phrase with an adverb as head.

Anonymous

Very quickly, for example.

Anonymous

18:24

I don't feel like I'm up to the challenge of figuring out how to sort this information right now.

Anonymous

But I think just starting by reducing the number of redundant tags would be great.

Catija

20:02

Anyone here?

> I was very excited when I heard a marriage proposal to me from my beloved.

Is the second part of that sentence passive?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Catija No.

Catija

Ok. Then it just sounds wrong.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I may be overlooking something, but it doesn't sound off to me.

Catija

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I'm not saying it's grammatically bad... I simply would never in a million years come up with that construction. It sounds backwards.

Why use so many words when you could say "I was very excited when my beloved proposed to me"?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Catija Because the sentence isn't real.

Where did you face it?

Anonymous

20:16

2

Q: Is it right to say 'a marriage proposal to me from my beloved'?

Is it right to say: I was very excited when I heard a marriage proposal to me from my beloved ?

grammar

Catija

Yes, thanks, @snailboat

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Great tagging.

CopperKettle

Tatyana is probably a Russian girl, so she made up a slightly carbon-copied sentence.

Catija

@CopperKettle Meaning she's directly translated it from Russian?

Anonymous

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Well, the question doesn't ask anything in particular, so you can hardly expect it to have a specific tag.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

20:18

They always overcomplicate stuff.

CopperKettle

@Catija I'm not sure, but could be so. (0:

Anonymous

It does have two upvotes, but it seems to be a straightforward proofreading request, so I'd expect it to be closed as off-topic.

Catija

@snailboat Hmmm... you have a point there.

CopperKettle

@Catija On Russian Google, I find questions like "How to do a (marriage) proposal to a girl?" Actually, it's oftener without marriage.

user116848

Preevyet @CopperKettle!

Anonymous

20:20

Using a light verb construction instead of a (simple) verb.

CopperKettle

@Arrowfar Hi, @Arrowfar!

user116848

I hope I spelled "Preevyet" correctly :)

Catija

@CopperKettle Interesting. I wonder... in English, I think "proposal" really only applies to one thing (in that sort of situation), so including the "marriage" is unnecessary.

Anonymous

We have a few light verb constructions that are common in English. We say things like make a mistake where the verb make doesn't carry much meaning. Instead, the noun complement a mistake carries most of the meaning.

Anonymous

Compare gave him a kiss to kissed him.

CopperKettle

20:21

@Arrowfar I never saw it spelled in English, so I don't know (0:

Anonymous

In the former, the verb give doesn't really add any information.

Anonymous

And we have a few phrases like these that are common and idiomatic.

Catija

@Arrowfar Seems that "Privyet" is perhaps slightly more common? privyetrussian.com

Anonymous

But often a simple verb is better: proposed versus did a (marriage proposal)

user116848

@CopperKettle So... Kak pazhivayesh?

Anonymous

20:22

The latter is awkward and possibly has the wrong light verb (make?)

CopperKettle

@Arrowfar Great! I'm fine! (0:

user116848

@Catija Yeah.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I think I should sleep; schools start tomorrow.

CopperKettle

@Arrowfar Sorry, I'm too sleepy to ask you the same in Urdu! (0:

user116848

Rest well @inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

20:23

And BTW I think I'll get the grammar thingy done by tomorrow.

CopperKettle

I'll go catch some z's too (0:

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Night y'all!

CopperKettle

Bye!

user116848

See ya @CopperKettle!

user116848

Night!

CopperKettle

20:24

Bye, @Arrowfar!

Anonymous

On the other hand, heard a marriage proposal isn't really a "light verb construction". Hear is a regular verb with that adds its own meaning. But does hear really communicate what you want to focus on?

Anonymous

You're putting all of the important stuff into the NP complement, and then adding adjunct PPs to me and from my beloved to the end like they're afterthoughts.

Anonymous

It's like: you happened to hear a proposal, and it just happened to be to you, and it just happened to be from your beloved.

Anonymous

You're presenting all the information in a way that's profoundly counterintuitive.

Catija

@snailboat It'd be more like "receive"?

@snailboat Which is why my comment to @CopperKettle was:

@CopperKettle That would certainly help... but it makes it a bit ambiguous... the writer could easily fake out the audience and turn the sentence around: I was very excited when I heard a marriage proposal from my beloved... until I realized he was asking Jenny and not me. It's just so idiomatic to say "he proposed to me" that making it backwards seems odd. — Catija 23 mins ago

Anonymous

20:28

@Catija Yeah! The situation you've created for that example makes hear felicitous (= it makes sense to use that particular verb in the context you've created) and also makes it felicitous (= it works in context) to delay the information about who's being proposed to.

Anonymous

I don't think I could really put together a complete answer, but I think information status would be part of it.

Anonymous

Well, they don't necessarily need what I'd consider a complete answer.

Anonymous

But I think the reason you thought of passives, @Catija, is because when passives feel weird, it's very often because of the information status of the subject and by-phrase.

Catija

Considering it's not really a "complete" question by our standards, that's true.

Anonymous

Basically, when you take a regular active clause and turn it around, without any justification for doing so, you end up with a sentence that feels backwards.

Anonymous

20:33

You have something shoved towards the end of the sentence without a reason for doing so, and likewise you've moved something from the end to the beginning without a reason for doing so.

Catija

@snailboat Ah. Hmmm. That makes sense. I just had this overwhelming feeling of it being off and flipped around.

Anonymous

And although we don't think about things like information status consciously, we do notice that it's weird.

Anonymous

Yeah, this likewise is presenting information in a way that seems backwards.

Catija

I'm glad to have that clarified. :D

Anonymous

We made a community ad for our resources page on Japanese.SE: meta.japanese.stackexchange.com/a/1429/1478

Anonymous

20:37

Should we do something like that for ELL?

Catija

@snailboat Maybe... but I thought the resources page really needed some help... I feel like the last time we talked about it, you mentioned that a lot of the sources aren't particularly good.

Anonymous

Yeah, I do think it needs work.

Anonymous

Of course, we could make the ad and improve the page. :-)

Anonymous

Also, maybe if people saw it more often (due to the ad), they would contribute to it more often.

Anonymous

I don't know. Just thinking out loud :-)

Anonymous

20:39

I may try to overhaul a section or two later.

Catija

That's certainly true. :D

Anonymous

I want to divide the dictionaries list up so it starts with learner's dictionaries, and then shows other dictionaries below that.

Anonymous

Of course, learners may want to use both types, depending on what they're looking for. Usually learner's dictionaries are a better choice, but people writing answers may want to use another dictionary to find (for example) a definition that fits exactly what they want to convey, or perhaps historical information that's relevant to the answer that wouldn't be in a learner's dictionary.

Catija

... so is "lens" spelled with an "e" on the end (lense) in BrE?

0

Q: Can i use " at the hands of" this way? plus,is my example grammatically correct?

It's the article i posted on my facebook. 1, "Taking off the lense , i always feel a tingle of something annoying. maybe i touch my eyeballs removing the lense more often than not, it actually feels like there is something like parethesia , AT THE HANDS OF bloody lense , rubing deep in my whole ...

grammar american-english british-english

Anonymous

Umm.

Catija

20:42

Because I've never seen that...

Anonymous

corpus.byu.edu/glowbe/?c=glowbe&q=41579907

Anonymous

A lens wins out over a lense by a huge margin in both the US and GB columns.

Catija

OK, so it's just wrong, then.

Anonymous

That's a pretty scary example our friend 오준수 has written!

user116848

Should I edit their question?

Catija

20:48

@Arrowfar I refrain from editing if the sample sentence is where the issue lies... If it's the body, that's one thing but I try not to "fix" their examples.

Damkerng T.

3 hours ago, by snailboat

> Questions related to English vocabulary, forms, phrases, and syntax that is now more commonly seen in written literature than in everyday speech. Also used for questions citing excerpts from works of literature.

user116848

@Catija Yeah, sure.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I'm not sure if I wrote that, but it looks like what I would write!

Anonymous

I believe you did!

Anonymous

I checked the tag wiki excerpt history earlier.

Damkerng T.

20:49

I mean the reason behind the tag.

Anonymous

ell.stackexchange.com/posts/30108/revisions

Catija

@snailboat He's also been tagging things british-english and american-english a lot... not sure why.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Help us get our Japanese.SE resources page community ad up to +6! :-) meta.japanese.stackexchange.com/a/1429/1478

Damkerng T.

Maybe because back then we have a lot of questions like, what does this "strange sentence" or "strange quote" mean?

@snailboat Wow, that's really nice!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. We could base an ELL resources page ad off of his ad, if people thought it was a good idea.

Damkerng T.

20:53

I guess that we had lost some of questions tagged with literature (because they were deleted by the OP).

Anonymous

Oh, I see

Damkerng T.

@snailboat nods

@Catija "My brothers must be gone and looked for (by me)." -- What?!

Catija

@DamkerngT. That's not the version I was talking about when I wrote my comment... that answer got added later.

Damkerng T.

I have a hunch that I could find it in Wren and Martin.

Ahh

Catija

The one I thought was good actually has a downvote... probably because of its brevity but it seems like a decent enough construction: "Going and looking for my brothers must be done by me." It's a little awkward but, considering the question, it's not bad.

Damkerng T.

21:00

True!

Ah, John Lawler just posted his answer!

Catija

@DamkerngT. Hmmm... it's a bit combative... considering it's his kid's 4th grade homework. But seems decent enough.

Anonymous

Yep, he covers the points: ① It's not possible. ② Clauses are passive, not sentences. ③ Get a new book.

Catija

The problem is that if it's a 4th grader, they're unlikely to be able to get their teacher to change what book they're assigned to use.

But my guess is that he didn't see that part because it's in the comments of the question rather than in the question itself.

Anonymous

@Catija I guess he knew the plural lenses and tried to form the singular from it, and figured it was lense⋅s rather than lens⋅es.

Anonymous

@Catija On the bright side, fourth graders are smart enough to learn that teachers and books aren't always right. :-)

Catija

21:13

@snailboat Sure. :)

@snailboat Indeed. Plus, it's not always the teachers that are wrong... sometimes they're required to use information/textbooks that are poorly written and there's not much the teacher can do about it

Anonymous

When I was in second grade, I had a teacher who taught us some basic anatomy using a plastic model with removable organs. She insisted, though, that the model was wrong, and that the heart was in the center, and the lungs were both equal in size.

Anonymous

I didn't really learn much in grade school. :-/

Catija

@snailboat Wha? How do these people get allowed to teach??? seriously. This is what happens when we refuse to pay teachers really well... kids get taught all sorts of crap.

Anonymous

I have no idea. I already knew better, and I was a second grader! :-)

Damkerng T.

21:36

1

Q: will be vs. gonna be

1. I wonder who is gonna be the new actor director XY is gonna shoot with. 2. I wonder who is gonna be the new actor director XY will shoot with. 3. I wonder who will be the new actor director XY is gonna shoot with. 4. I wonder who will be the new actor director XY will shoot with. Can ...

tense

I wonder what a real sentence would like like if we're going to say something like that, with two verbs.

> I wonder who Cameron is gonna work with in his next movie.

One verb is enough, imo.

> I wonder what/which actor Cameron is gonna work with in his next movie.

^If I want to be a bit more specific about "actor".

Hmm... maybe...

> I wonder who is going to be the lucky actor Cameron will choose to lead his next movie.

Anonymous

21:59

@DamkerngT. Seven verbs! :-)

Damkerng T.

Ah, only two verb groups! (or verb phrases?)

Hello, @StoneyB!

Anonymous

Let's go with groups. And there are three. Don't forget the whole thing is embedded in I wonder []!

Damkerng T.

Ah, yes!

Anonymous

who is going to be the lucky actor Cameron will choose to lead his next movie is an interrogative content clause.

Anonymous

And [that] Cameron will choose ＿＿ to lead his next movie is embedded inside that!

Damkerng T.

22:11

Based on the information in mitun.yolasite.com/resources/Voice%20change.pdf

I think the passive of I must go and look for my brothers would be:

> I'm obliged to go and look for my brothers.

Anonymous

I don't see any must-oblige substitution in any of the examples.

Damkerng T.

(It's not that clear what the PDF author would use, though.)

Anonymous

Anyway, that's not any passiver.

Damkerng T.

Under rule 5, there is something similar:

> Active -Please, do not smoke.
Passive -You are requested not to smoke.

(It's interesting, the way they don't write a space before example sentences.)

IMHO, it's best to think of those passive exercises as yet another language.

Anonymous

Languages are natural phenomena and are interesting.

Anonymous

22:17

Wow, what do the authors of this PDF think the 'future indefinite tense' is?

Damkerng T.

:D

Anonymous

Oh, that wasn't rhetorical, it's a totally serious question :-)

Anonymous

I can't understand anything but the English bits sandwiched in.

Damkerng T.

Oh! Umm... I guess they mean "shall be, will be".

@snailboat Me either!

Perhaps "indefinite" = "simple".

Anonymous

Maybe 'indefinite' is their way of acknowledging that shall and will carry modal meaning.

Anonymous

22:20

But they still want to call them elements of a 'tense'.

Damkerng T.

I think it's much simpler than that. (In this yet another language, everything is supposed to be simple and governed by rules.)

Anonymous

I can't see any way that indefinite could mean something like 'simple'.

Damkerng T.

We have past, present, and future tenses (in this particular language).

And we have indefinite, continuous, and perfect as something we can add to those tenses.

Anonymous

My guess is that it means that the future situation described by the clause may or may not occur and is therefore indefinite.

Damkerng T.

So we have future indefinite tense (note the missing article), future continuous tense, and future perfect tense in this language.

Anonymous

22:22

That makes considerably less sense, so it would be unfortunate if true.

Anonymous

> I went to the store.　←　What is indefinite about this?

Damkerng T.

Because its form is indefinite. :P

Anonymous

I don't understand.

Anonymous

I assume when they chose labels for the forms, they had a reason for doing so.

Anonymous

It may or may not be a safe assumption. :-)

Anonymous

22:24

But it is at least the charitable assumption.

Damkerng T.

I usually think of this particular language as an invented language based on the 19th century English, having been streamlined and governed by rules. :-)

StoneyB

@DamkerngT. Hi, DT

Damkerng T.

Hi!

Anonymous

English didn't have a future tense in the 19th century. It never had one.

Damkerng T.

Eh? Then why did all those grammar books published 30-60 years ago have it?

Anonymous

22:25

It's an artifact of analysis.

Damkerng T.

Ahh

Anonymous

If it had one then, it has one now. If it didn't have one then, it doesn't have one now.

Anonymous

You know when people talk about an indicative-subjunctive-imperative mood contrast in English?

Anonymous

And then people say things like "English doesn't have a subjunctive mood!"

Anonymous

And other people get super grumpy about it?

Damkerng T.

22:26

Yep!

Anonymous

That reflects an actual change in the language.

Anonymous

People are presenting a new analysis of Present-Day English in which they say the mood system has collapsed, and the terminology is no longer appropriate because the grammar is now different.

Anonymous

If you want to talk about older forms of English or English across time, there's no question that you need to talk about a mood system.

Anonymous

But this future tense thing? That's not a change in the grammar.

StoneyB

English clauses have future tense, subjunctive mood and all those other things. English verbs have various forms which are variously elicited by those clausal qualities.

Anonymous

22:28

To be sure, there are differences in how future time is expressed in English, and some of those differences are grammatical, but there was no collapse from three tenses to two in the history of the English language.

Anonymous

People who say there are only two tenses say there were only ever two tenses.

Anonymous

See What's will? at Language Log.

Damkerng T.

The oldest grammar book I have (Living English Structure, 1959) has tenses, cases, and voices, but no moods.

Anonymous

Also see John Lawler's web site: www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/tense.html#tenselist

Damkerng T.

(It has Future Tense, too!)

Anonymous

22:31

People still talk about 'future tense' in English. People like StoneyB :-)

Damkerng T.

Oh, maybe I should look into the passive voice section in the book!

StoneyB

Strictly speaking, those two 'tenses' aren't really tenses: they are forms whose respective 'core' uses are to express tense, but they have a lot of other uses, too.

Anonymous

See, I like that, except I say "time reference".

Anonymous

And I say tense is a grammatical form, typically an inflection, whose primary function is to show time reference.

StoneyB

@snailboat <pout>I try to be careful to say things like 'future reference', or to speak of a clause being cast in the future tense using 'will' or 'be going to'.</pout>

Anonymous

22:34

In Japanese linguistics, tense is used almost exclusively to mean 'time reference'.

Anonymous

That is, it's a semantic term.

Anonymous

I don't even know what to call the morphological contrast between -(r)u and -ta, since it can carry any of temporal, aspectual, or modal meaning.

Anonymous

I want to call it tense because its primary function is locating situations in time, but then I have to lay out my theoretical framework every time I open my mouth. :-)

StoneyB

@snailboat That's "classical" Comrie, 1985. I think the Chomsky crowd use 'tense' as the name of a feature. ... and they all get shirty when most of the world keeps using 'tense' to mean 'distinct verb inflection or construction', as they have been since the 19th century. "Anti-prescriptivism" ends at the borders of linguistics!

Anonymous

@StoneyB CGEL uses tense to mean something like the last―distinct verb inflection or construction whose primary use is to locate a situation time.

Anonymous

22:40

And they've defined the perfect as a secondary tense system!

StoneyB

"The general term tense applies to a system where the basic or characteristic meaning of
the terms is to locate the situation, or part of it, at some point or period of time."

Anonymous

Hey, nice note-taking! :-)

Anonymous

You had that quote ready!

StoneyB

(I happened to have my .pdf of CGEL open to that page, for other reasons!)

"The remainder of this chapter is concerned with the verbal systems of tense, aspect,
and mood, which are **marked inflectionally on the verb in just one case (the distinction
between present and preterite tense)** and otherwise analytically by auxiliaries."

Anonymous

So they don't reject will as a future tense marker on the grounds that tense cannot be analytical.

Anonymous

22:42

Rather, they see the modal meaning as primary.

Anonymous

@StoneyB Chat will defeat any Markdown you put into a multi-line message except for > at the beginning of the first line or all lines.

Anonymous

it's
    a
_feature_!

StoneyB

<grumble>I wish they'd pick one set of features everywhere.</grumble>

Anonymous

I like how strikethrough is ① unsupported in comments, ② supported three different ways in posts, and ③ supported only in a fourth way in chat!

StoneyB

I think of future tense as a modality. I ran across (approximately) this somewhere (I can't remember where, and I've looked through everything on my hard drives): "The core meaning of all the modal verbs is to mark the action as something that »hasn't happened yet«."

»take that, SE!«

Anonymous

22:48

The SE takes 3 damage! It recoils in fear!

StoneyB

What besides <s>?

Anonymous

<del> and <strike>, I think.

Anonymous

You can also fake strikethrough in all three contexts using Unicode, but I think that silently fails for some folks, which makes it not so good.

StoneyB

Three modes of strikethrough, but NOT A SINGLE BLOODY UNDERSCORE!

Anonymous

Underlines would be nice for Japanese. Japanese is rarely italicized.

Anonymous

22:49

So we've got, well, bold!

StoneyB

I could do underscore in WordStar 35 years ago.

Anonymous

I wonder if you could use overlines.
                          ‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾

StoneyB

Whoa, Nelly! Howdju do that?

Anonymous

I suppose it could work.
             ‾‾‾‾‾

Anonymous

The ‾ character is an overline. I put it on the line underneath. :-)

StoneyB

22:52

Ah. That's why you went to monospace. grump

Anonymous

Yeah, sadly. Anything that isn't monospace will probably only line up for people with the same browser / font combination as you, or if someone happens to be particularly lucky.

Anonymous

I guess you can use Unicode to cheat l̲i̲k̲e̲ ̲t̲h̲i̲s̲, but it might look ugly on some browsers . . .

Anonymous

So I don't really recommend it.

Anonymous

this is a ͟t ͟e ͟s ͟t ͟

Anonymous

The underline actually looks bad in every browser combination I've tested. :-(

tchrist

22:59

̲t̲h̲i̲s̲ ̲i̲s̲ ̲u̲g̲l̲y̲ ̲

̲ｔ̲ｈ̲ｉ̲ｓ̲‪̲ ̲‪̲ ̲‪̲ｉ̲ｓ̲‪̲ ̲‪̲ ̲‪̲ｒ̲ｅ̲ａ̲ｌ̲ｌ̲ｙ̲，̲‪̲ ̲‪̲ ̲‪̲ｒ̲ｅ̲ａ̲ｌ̲ｌ̲ｙ̲‪̲ ̲‪̲ ̲‪̲‌ｕ̲ｇ̲ｌ̲ｙ̲‪̲ ̲‪̲ ̲‪̲ ̲

Anonymous

:-( !

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