Language Overflow

Anonymous

09:21

0

Q: What do you call pants that don't go to the end of the feet?

Simply: what do you call these pants? maybe knickers ?

Anonymous

I call these "pants that are too short", but it has yet to catch on.

Damkerng T.

:D

Can I call them "almost trousers"? :P

Anonymous

Sure, though you'll be facing even more of an uphill challenge than me :-)

Damkerng T.

Hehe!

I think the names for this kind of pants are kinda funny in Thai. (I won't say that my understanding is the norm around here.)

I think the pants are called either กางเกงสามส่วน or กางเกงสี่ส่วน.

Anonymous

What do those mean literally?

Damkerng T.

09:29

กางเกงสามส่วน = pants three parts

กางเกงสี่ส่วน = pants four parts

I guess it's because in 3/4-length pants, there are both 3 and 4!

A little more seriously, I think the pants in the OP's picture could also be called "cropped pants", though cropped pants would usually be a little longer than those.

Another kind of pants that I'm sure if I understand its meaning correctly is สกินนี่ 5 ส่วน (lit. "skinny 5 parts").

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Yeah, I think crops are longer than capris.

Damkerng T.

I guess that it's because they divide the length of legs into 9 parts, and the so-called "skinny 5 parts" would be only 5 parts long.

Anonymous

I don't think there's a well-defined boundary between the two, though.

Anonymous

I don't think all the terms people are suggesting are actually synonyms.

Damkerng T.

^I dropped a not again! -- I should restart my browser soon.

Anonymous

09:37

@DamkerngT. Oh no! You'll have to add an extra one later to balance it out.

Damkerng T.

:D

I wish all answers were clear about the dialects. The OP is quite specific about the AmE and BrE tags.

I guess Matt is from the US?

Anonymous

0

Q: Why are some past participles listed in dictionaries as a single word, while others are not?

My question is when a past participle can be thought of as a single word, not a inflectional form of verbs?

grammar word-difference

Anonymous

A linguistics question!

Damkerng T.

ell.stackexchange.com/q/70831/3281

Ah, the OP just deleted it! -- It's actually another linguistics question.

Anonymous

That question is: "What is the understood subject of the subordinate clause to address the issue this fall in both sentences? How can we figure this out?"

Damkerng T.

09:43

Yes!

The ambiguity may not be obvious to some readers until they read it like a machine.

Anonymous

Unfortunately, it received an incorrect comment-answer from Maulik and was then deleted by the OP.

Damkerng T.

I think it happens sometimes.

Anonymous

ELL has many incorrect comment-answers.

jimsug

How many undelete votes does it take?

Anonymous

Three

Damkerng T.

09:45

Interesting! Let's try!

I wonder what kyu jeong would be thinking now. Would they be confused?

jimsug

It's an unremarkable question, though.

I don't know that it's worth undeleting. Except to provide a correct answer.

Anonymous

Well, it's too late to not undelete it.

Anonymous

I edited it.

jimsug

Those questions are syntactically ambiguous, right?

Anonymous

Yeah, I think so.

Anonymous

09:49

I mean, if you fix the error in the second example.

jimsug

I mean, I would strongly suggest that it is the conference that will address the issue this fall.

Damkerng T.

"as moving" or "as a move", I think.

jimsug

Actually, I'm having trouble parsing it with the White House as the agent.

Anonymous

Yeah, it's kind of a stretch.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I was thinking that it should have been tagged with "lexicography", and then I saw grammar!

jimsug

09:52

Ah wait, there we go.

Damkerng T.

But we don't have lexicography.

Ah, dictionaries would do!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. We could! Although I think that "listed in the dictionary" is a proxy for "is lexical (in the language itself)" and so the question isn't necessarily about actual dictionaries.

Anonymous

If I were to say that Japanese arigatō needs its own dictionary entry and isn't just an inflected form of the adjective arigatai, I'd be pointing out a property of the word itself more than a property of the dictionaries it appears in.

Anonymous

And if we take the mental model of a lexicon (the dictionary speakers have in their brains), we can say that we're all carrying around a separate listing for that word in our mental dictionaries.

Anonymous

In English, there's often a grey area where it's hard to tell whether a participial form should still be considered a verb form or should be considered a derived form of another class, most often an adjective.

jimsug

09:58

That was a surprisingly confusing answer to write.

Anonymous

So what factors would we take into account when saying an -ing or -ed form is "not a verb form", even if that's clearly what it was originally?

jimsug

Asserting that the White House is the agent was... very difficult.

Anonymous

That's more a discussion of the word itself, I think, than of the dictionaries it appears in.

Damkerng T.

@jimsug From a non-native speaker's point of view, I'd rely on the context.

I mean, we have less reliable patterns imprinted in our brains.

Anonymous

Should we point out move versus a move?

Anonymous

10:02

I know it's not what they're asking about.

jimsug

Oh.

I autocorrected that.

Umm.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. So my explanation above is supposed to show why I think it's not really about dictionaries.

jimsug

(In my mind.)

Anonymous

But that's just me.

jimsug

(But then left it in my answer for some reason.)

Damkerng T.

10:04

@snailboat It's a great argument! It also makes the question much more difficult, but perhaps that's the way it should be.

Anonymous

I think they could ask their question on linguistics.SE if they phrased it just a little differently.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

Is it time to re-protect that /l/ and /r/ question?

Anonymous

I unprotected it temporarily so that user could post an answer, but I don't think they're going to.

Damkerng T.

Don't know. Do we have a new strange answer? :-)

1

Q: AmEng: Is the T tapped (flap) in the compound noun hard attack?

Is the T tapped (flap) in the compound noun: heart attack ? I'm talking about the T in the word "heart".

american-english pronunciation consonants connected-speech flapping

Argh! Is it hard attack or heart attack?

Or are they trying to say that they can't tell the difference between the two?

Anonymous

10:09

Now it's my turn to say I mentally autocorrected :-)

Anonymous

I didn't notice the hard in the title!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I think the difference between the two is potentially neutralized in connected speech.

Damkerng T.

nods -- Unless it's the main, emphasized word in the utterance, I guess.

Anonymous

But of course a speaker could make it clear by using a non-flapped t or d.

Damkerng T.

Hmm... perhaps even that.

I'm glad that we have the OP around. (So we still have some new speaking/pronunciation questions.)

Anonymous

10:14

I like pronunciation questions!

Anonymous

Phonetics and phonology are really interesting to me.

Anonymous

I think that a lot of the interesting bits come up when you start to compare languages to one another.

Damkerng T.

To me too!

Anonymous

Because when you compare languages, you learn about things that were natural to you or that you always took for granted which are not at all universal―and you learn about new things that you never knew were possible!

Anonymous

Of course, I'm not very good at phonetics, but it's a great topic :-)

Damkerng T.

10:17

I still can't read spectrogram as good as I'd hoped.

Anonymous

Japanese.SE gets a lot of questions lately from native speakers of Mandarin about whether or not there's really a difference between /t/ and /d/.

Damkerng T.

Oh! /t/ and /d/ in Japanese?

Anonymous

Yes.

Damkerng T.

Ah, right! I think Chinese /t/ and /d/ are more like Thai's.

Anonymous

It's a different contrast from /t/ and /d/ in English, but we have a relatively easy time with it. Mandarin speakers have a hard time with it.

Anonymous

10:19

Mandarin /d/ is [t] and Mandarin /t/ is [tʰ].

Damkerng T.

nods -- Because they have another set of two /t-d/.

Anonymous

But they don't have [d].

Damkerng T.

I learned about Chinese /d/ (in pinyin) in an Olympic game, I think.

nods -- One of the best badminton players from China's name is Dong Jiong.

Anonymous

So in English, their /d/ is our /t/ in stop, and their /t/ is our /t/ in top.

Anonymous

Sdop!

Damkerng T.

10:21

The local narrators always pronounced his name differently from the official narrators (in the soundtrack).

@snailboat That's correct in Mandarin!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Well, the 'd' part is! :-)

Damkerng T.

I think if he (Don Jiong) were a couple years older at the Olympic game, he would've won the gold medal.

Anonymous

I don't know much about the Olympics.

Damkerng T.

I don't know much about cooking either. :D

Anonymous

I know some things about cooking! :-)

Damkerng T.

10:24

<-- definitely doesn't know how to make a pizza. :-)

Anonymous

I love making pizza! But I do it so rarely these days.

Anonymous

I cook almost everything I eat myself.

Damkerng T.

Yay! I cook only some. :D

Anonymous

So even though I wouldn't claim to be particularly skilled, I have to admit you do pick things up a little when you do it every day :-)

Damkerng T.

I don't know what I'm really eating sometimes!

0

Q: I want to ask about the difference betweeen "Grab Someone by the Arm" and "Grab Someone's Arm"

There is one teacher at my college, I really don't trust what he says because it seems pretty obvious that he had never lived or studied in any countries that use English as their first language. He said that these words, such as 'grab, pull, etc', whenever they are used, it has to be like this...

transitive-verbs

Anonymous

10:28

I did eat out a few times this year.

Damkerng T.

Aww... I don't like the tone of the question much.

Anonymous

It's not a bad question, though.

Damkerng T.

nods -- Just the opening sentence that sounds-- harsh?

Anonymous

Yeah.

Anonymous

I know what you mean.

Anonymous

10:30

I was trying to come up with a response to that.

Anonymous

Like, let's say you come to ELL and a native speaker answers your question. Does that mean they know what they're talking about? Unfortunately, no!

Damkerng T.

Sometimes it is so!

Anonymous

Personally, I like to put my trust in evidence rather than authority.

Anonymous

Authority is easier. If you can identify folks who tend to be right, that's a bit of a short cut―assume what they say is right, and you'll be right more often than if you believe everything you read!

Anonymous

Of course, you'll still be wrong sometimes. Everyone's wrong sometimes.

Anonymous

10:34

You could identify John Lawler as an authority and assume that everything he says is the Word of God. Well, he has an awful lot of good information to share, and you'd learn a lot by doing that!

Damkerng T.

@snailboat It's a bit sad that many people seem to treat the short cut as the truth.

@snailboat That's true!

Anonymous

And actually thinking for yourself and evaluating evidence on your own can be rather challenging.

Anonymous

So I understand why people use authority as a short cut.

Damkerng T.

Me too, but that one single sentence implies many things.

Besides native vs. non-native, it also implies non-native speakers who have lived elsewhere vs. those who haven't been to anywhere.

Anonymous

Part of the "rely on authority" model is filtering out information you think is suspect, and they're using a flawed approach to doing so.

Damkerng T.

10:36

Sometimes I think I read too much into what people say.

Anonymous

Listen to good, filter out bad.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

And again, I totally understand what you're saying and I had the same reaction.

Anonymous

I'd like to see people shift to a more evidence-based approach.

Anonymous

They could start by looking through a corpus like COCA.

Anonymous

10:38

They could start a dialogue with the teacher and present the examples that contradict the rule.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Ah, that'd be an interesting approach!

Anonymous

I don't know.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Students have to discuss the material and come to their own conclusions at some point, anyway.

Damkerng T.

I'm fine with "He grabbed her arm" or "She pulled his leg", by the way. :-)

Anonymous

Me too!

Damkerng T.

10:45

It's just not the same thing as "He grabbed her by the arm".

Anonymous

So there goes that proposed categorical difference.

Damkerng T.

I mean, not quite.

nods

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I have trouble articulating what the difference is, if any.

Anonymous

I don't mean to say there isn't one.

Anonymous

But I think it must be a pretty subtle difference in terms of meaning.

Anonymous

10:47

Grammatically they're different, of course! :-)

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I think it's quite like the simple past vs. the present perfect that sometimes the two could be used to describe exactly the same event.

Anonymous

Sure.

Damkerng T.

But the underlying meanings are a little different.

Anonymous

That's because the sentence isn't the situation itself, it describes the situation, and it's possible for a situation to be described more than one way.

Damkerng T.

Yes!

Ah, the answer is quite good!

Anonymous

10:49

Yay!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I've tried to write from time to time about exclusionary language on ELL, either in comments or on meta. I do think it can be damaging.

Damkerng T.

I thank you. :D

Anonymous

I think sometimes that if we encourage users to rely more on actual data (and to do so carefully!) we might end up with better answers.

Anonymous

data.stackexchange.com/ell/query/356917/…

Anonymous

Not nearly enough . . .

Anonymous

10:54

Well, there are other corpora besides the BYU corpora :-)

Damkerng T.

I used it only once!

Anonymous

But I've written hundreds of answers and have only referenced corpora a few dozen times.

Damkerng T.

But more importantly than using corpora is how we conclude anything from the data.

Some answers abuse corpora just to make the answers look more authoritative. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.

Anonymous

Oh, I do.

Anonymous

I would prefer to say misuse most of the time because I don't believe it's usually malicious.

Damkerng T.

10:57

Ah, right! My bad choice of word!

Anonymous

I think the choice between misuse and abuse can be pretty subtle.

Damkerng T.

They're not very different in my L1, so if I'm not careful I could treat them the same sometimes.

Except in some contexts that the implication is obvious.

Anonymous

I do think it's pretty natural to start with some preconceived notion, check a corpus and interpret it in a way that backs up the feeling you had already, and then feel good because you not only had the right idea but you made sure it was right!

Anonymous

Unfortunately, I think that sometimes that very natural process skips over the step of trying to figure out why the data might not support your conclusion.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Yes, which is not quite the way we study anything academically.

Anonymous

10:59

Right, here on ELL we aren't particularly academic :-)

Anonymous

Or rigorous, or whatever adjective you'd like to use.

Damkerng T.

Hehe! True!

Oh, I wrote an answer to explain what 'non-deictic time' is in the Hitchhiker's Guide style a couple days ago. :D

Anonymous

Oh!

Damkerng T.

But I thought you might've already seen it.

Anonymous

I haven't.

Anonymous

11:01

Did you explain the concept of deixis?

Damkerng T.

Ah!

A moment.

4

A: Help understanding an explanation of deictic and non-deictic

Ideally, you should read The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CGEL) and understand the non-deictic past and the non-deictic present. Seeing that you've posted essentially the same question several times, I will risk explaining the terms deictic time and non-deictic time myself in this ...

I'd read someone explained it that way before (perhaps it was you! I'm not sure though), so I reused the same idea of a note on the floor.

Anonymous

That's not bad.

Damkerng T.

Hehe!

Anonymous

StoneyB's comment doesn't use the term "deictic time" in quite the same way as CGEL does.

Damkerng T.

I still haven't seen that page in CGEL, just only the part Listenever quoted.

Anonymous

11:06

Where is the part Listenever quoted?

Damkerng T.

She quoted it in this question:

3

Q: What is 'deictic time'?

[5] i If she beats him he’ll claim she cheated. [non-deictic past] ii If you eat any more you’ll say you don’t want any tea.[non-deictic present] The preterite and present tense inflections on cheat and do indicate that Tr is respectively anterior to and simultaneous with To, ...

grammar tense

tchrist

I've cast 5,114 delete votes on ELU.

Damkerng T.

Huh? "Delete" votes!

That's really a lot!

tchrist

Yeah.

More than everybody else put together except for mods.

Anonymous

Darn, there's no subscript d :-(

tchrist

11:10

I've only cast 34 delete votes on ELL.

Damkerng T.

I don't even know where to look if I want to know how many I've cast.

tchrist

Go to your profile, go to votes, then select just the delete votes.

Damkerng T.

Oh, there is a tab for it!

I always look at the "all" tab. :D

tchrist

Me too.

Damkerng T.

Ahh... 40 of them. Not too many, not too few. -- Oh, the system counts my votes to close as delete votes too.

Anonymous

11:12

I'd like to type a few messages in a row without messages from other people in between, if I can.

Anonymous

> Time of orientation and deictic time

Anonymous

> For primary tense Tₒ [time of orientation] is normally the time of speaking or writing. We use the term deictic time to allow for the fact that in special circumstances it can be the time of decoding rather than that of encoding. Compare:

Anonymous

> [4] i. I am writing this letter while the boys are at school. [Tₒ is time of encoding]

Anonymous

> [4] ii. You are now leaving West Berlin. [a written notice] [Tₒ is time of decoding]

Anonymous

> In ordinary speech the time of encoding and the time of decoding are identical, but in writing they can be different. Where this is so, the default identification of Tₒ, as in [i], is with the time of encoding, the writer's time, but in notices like [ii] it is identified as the time of decoding, the addressee's time. (footnote 29: The same applies to recorded speech, as for example in radio broadcasts - You have been listening to 'The Goon Show'.)

Anonymous

11:13

> The difference between these is not marked linguistically in any way and the term deictic time covers both cases: it is defined by the linguistic event itself.

Anonymous

> Tₒ, we have said, is normally interpreted as Td [deictic time]; in this case, illustrated in [1 - from the previous page, I haven't typed this part up], we say that the tense is interpreted deictically. But it is not invariably interpreted in this way. (Listenever's quote follows)

Damkerng T.

"owr tiing"? -- I think it's "our something".

Anonymous

Did I type owr tiing?

Damkerng T.

Thanks! -- Um, was that all? Or did I interrupt you?

Anonymous

This is from a big section where CGEL is defining each of its terms related to time (and they do so in a way that isn't quite the same as the Reichenbach model), along with the abbreviations for each.

tchrist

11:16

You type very quickly.

Anonymous

I typed it into a text editor, then pasted one line at a time. That's what I usually do.

tchrist

Me, too. I hate web widgets for text entry. They don't do vi.

Anonymous

Actually, I paste the whole thing into the box, then I cut everything from line two and past, then I hit enter, then I paste again :-) And again and again. Like that.

tchrist

I do that sometimes, too.

Anonymous

I'd prefer to paste everything at once, but sometimes I want to have formatting, and that doesn't work in multi-line messages.

Anonymous

11:19

@DamkerngT. Well, it's a big section and you might want to read all of it once you get your copy, at least if you want to understand how they use these terms.

Anonymous

I'm not a big fan of questions like this one where the technical terms are taken out of context, because in those cases you can only answer them by looking at the text she didn't provide.

Damkerng T.

I saw her on ELU sometimes. Not very often, iirc. -- I wish I had more time to read more ELU posts.

Anonymous

I only mean to talk about this particular question.

Anonymous

Although I'd say the same thing of any similar question.

Damkerng T.

Ahh -- "decoding time" is what they mean.

tchrist

11:23

Some users take a year off from ELU, vacationing in ELL.

Damkerng T.

@tchrist Like myself. :D

"the tense is interpreted deictically" -- That's the key part.

Anonymous

In their terms, deictic time usually refers to the time of encoding (when the messages was written or recorded), but it can also refer to the time of decoding under certain circumstances. If you're hearing or reading a message as it's spoken or written, then the two are equivalent and the distinction is unimportant.

tchrist

@DamkerngT. Aye, but you weren’t in a red penalty box. :)

Damkerng T.

Right! :D

I still read ELU posts every now and then.

Anonymous

So if someone wrote you a message saying "I'll see you tomorrow", then the reference of deictic tomorrow is relative to the time the message was written.

Anonymous

11:26

In either case it's relative to the situation being described―just like you said.

tchrist

But this is not clear: "He said he'd see me tomorrow."

Anonymous

StoneyB's comment, which is quoted in ram's question, says: "Deictic time references are related to the speaker's perspective[.]"

Anonymous

Which is usually true but not always.

Anonymous

At least in the way CGEL frames it.

tchrist

That's how I would take it. The tomorrow is with reference to the speaker recounting when he said he’d see me.

Anonymous

11:29

@tchrist That's a great example! :-)

Damkerng T.

So tomorrow in He said he'd see me tomorrow would be deictic.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. The question is, what is the deictic center?

Damkerng T.

Ah, I'm not sure about the definition of the "deictic center".

tchrist

With scant exception, tomorrow is always deictic.

Damkerng T.

But I think it'd be tomorrow of "today/now".

tchrist

11:32

Yes, the speaker’s tomorrow.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

Deixis is usually "centered" on the speaker. Tomorrow comes after the speaker's time and yesterday comes before the speaker's time.

Damkerng T.

Ah, then it'd be the speaking time.

Anonymous

It's not always centered on the speaker.

Anonymous

In CGEL's example above, You have been listening to 'The Goon Show', it's relative to the listener instead.

Damkerng T.

11:34

nods -- It's the speaking time in the sentence above. In CGEL examples (in ram's question), it's the conditional.

nods

Anonymous

So I upvoted your answer, but I wanted to point out that detail.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Comments are welcome! Or additional answers, even!

Speaking of radio shows, it's sad that Bob Parlocha had passed away earlier this year.

And I just learned about it only yesterday!

(Sometimes I listen to his program on KUVO.)

Anonymous

I wish the OP would mention CGEL in the question itself. I can edit it in, but I imagine we'll get more questions in the future that omit key context like that.

Anonymous

The way a term is used in CGEL isn't necessarily the way the term is used outside CGEL, if it's used at all!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Oh, I'm afraid I don't know who that is.

Anonymous

11:40

I don't listen to the radio very often.

Damkerng T.

He was, and still is, in a way, my connection to jazz music.

Anonymous

David Sancious - Piktor's Metamorphosis - 1976

►

Anonymous

A little fusion, then :-)

Damkerng T.

Thanks!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I used to know this nice older Japanese couple, and every time I saw them, the husband would tell me a new jazz album I needed to hear :-) Starting with Take Five!

Damkerng T.

11:46

I wonder how long his list would be. :D

Anonymous

Jazz is a fairly broad category.

Damkerng T.

0

Q: What are some words I can say to acknowledge or let the other person know that I am listening?

I always use "ok" when I talk to my coworkers and want them to know that I listen and understand what they say. I found that it's redundant and repetitive and want to know alternative words that mean the same thing.

word-request

It's a strange question (though it could be not that strange).

I don't think we need to say anything in face-to-face conversations.

tchrist

There's a term for that, I think.

Anonymous

Backchannel expressions, or aizuchi.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat aso!

Anonymous

11:57

They're more common in some languages than others.

Anonymous

That's something you have to get used to when learning to have a conversation in another language.

tchrist

What do you mean?

Anonymous

If you speak a language which has a low frequency of backchannel expressions and you start learning, say, Japanese, you might feel like people are constantly interrupting you, but all they're trying to do is acknowledge what you're saying.

Anonymous

They're very frequent in Japanese, more so than in English, although we use them too, of course :-)

Anonymous

I think some languages use them less frequently than English. I don't know enough about the topic to describe different languages in detail.

tchrist

12:01

This can be a problem with phone conversations.

Damkerng T.

nods

tchrist

Can't see nodding on the phone.

Anonymous

One of the answers suggests saying "Correct". I think that might not always go over well!

Damkerng T.

On phone in English, I think the sounds would sound like "Uh-huh" or "Aha".

tchrist

Mmm.

Damkerng T.

12:03

Not sure how it should be transcribed in letters.

tchrist

ACK

Damkerng T.

LOL

Let's see if there is a good page for "backchannel expressions" on the web...

A-ha! The sounds I was thinking of could be transcribed as uh-huh, mhm.

Anonymous

I think sometimes people do write uh-huh even if they don't open their mouths, though I suspect not everybody writes these things down the same way.

Anonymous

Ever hear someone hum the melody to I dunno, mouth shut? How would you write that?

Damkerng T.

Wow, this one looks quite good! cs.utep.edu/nigel/bc

@snailboat Miming? :P

Anonymous

12:09

@DamkerngT. That does look like a good page!

tchrist

@snailboat 1 4 2

It's a perfect fourth ascending for the first pitch change, but that's common.

Anonymous

By the way, the first Japanese example on that page, un, is actually pronounced [ʔɴ̩ː] or [ʔm̩ː] most of the time. (Those are Vance's transcriptions, from Vance 2008 p.104)

Damkerng T.

Oh! Thanks!

Anonymous

He gives [ʔm̩m̥m̩] as a transcription of one possible English pronunciation of uh-huh for comparison on the same page.

Anonymous

It makes me want to draw little curves to indicate pitch contours over the transcriptions.

Damkerng T.

12:18

This is neat, eh? :-)

Anonymous

Ooh, fancy!

Anonymous

Maybe you could share that link somewhere on the backchannel question.

Damkerng T.

nods -- I think it's a little too much for me to wrap it as an answer, but I sure can post a comment!

Anonymous

> To listen to the data on your local system may require some persistance and luck. On some systems Netscape does a better job with audio, on other systems Explorer does better, and some installations you may have to download the audio files and play them by hand.

Anonymous

This page must have been written a while ago!

Damkerng T.

12:23

Netscape!

This kind of feedback is known as backchannels. I found a good page about it: cs.utep.edu/nigel/bc. On the page, it lists a few common backchannels in American English: yeah, uh-huh, hm, right, okay. More interesting part is the pitch contours of some backchannel examples. Also, be careful, as noted on the page: "Obviously one can backchannel when the other person has the floor, but backchanneling just anytime can be rude." — Damkerng T. 41 secs ago

What?!

What's with the votes in that question?!

jimsug

Oh wow. Remember the days when Netscape and IE were the only choices? shudders

Damkerng T.

Really, is this incorrect?!

-1

A: What are some words I can say to acknowledge or let the other person know that I am listening?

I use or I've seen used also following: definitely sure all right oki doki etc.

Anonymous

There's also evidence that backchanneling is more frequent among female than male speakers, at least in English and Japanese.

jimsug

The answer is really something more like:

> All words, because you can show that you are listening by repeating or paraphrasing what they have said. Additionally, other backchannel communication can be used: uhuh, mmm, right and so on.

Damkerng T.

@jimsug I do! Back then, one was the only choice on UNIX, and the other was the only choice on Windows!

Anonymous

12:33

@jimsug Nope! :-)

Damkerng T.

I think Netscape on Windows did exist, but I hadn't really tried it.

Anonymous

I've always used other browsers.

Anonymous

My first browser was a text browser.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Oh? On Mac?

@jimsug That could be an answer!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. The first time I got to use the web was using lynx on a shell server in 1994.

Damkerng T.

12:35

Oh! I kinda like lynx (still use it)!

Anonymous

My parents didn't let me use the internet until around that age, and we didn't get a PPP connection until 1997.

Anonymous

So I didn't use a graphical browser until a few years later!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I don't! I use w3m, though! :-)

Damkerng T.

Oh, cool! It's from Japan!

Anonymous

> AMONG OTHER REACTIONS, listeners use verbal and nonverbal signals, or backchannels, to display their attentiveness to speakers' utterances. The relationship between gender and use of backchannels has been investigated fairly extensively. The evidence has suggested that in Britain and the United States, women use these forms more frequently than men do (Duncan & Fiske, 1977; Hirschman, 1974, quoted in Thorne & Henley, 1975; Roger & Nesshoever, 1987).

Anonymous

12:41

Those are the first few sentences from a paper titled Gender, Social Context, and Backchannel Responses.

Anonymous

As you might imagine, the data's been interpreted multiple ways.

Anonymous

> This tendency among women can be explained in terms of their lower power in everyday interactions, which manifests itself as a readiness to support men's conversation topics (Fishman, 1980). More positively, it can be seen as an expression of women's more empathic style of communication (Coates, 1986; Maltz & Borker, 1982).

Damkerng T.

I choose to believe the latter. :P

For the reason that I've observed women seem to use backchannels quite naturally in women-only conversations.

(In my first language, btw.)

Anonymous

Ooh, On the gender differential use of listener responsiveness (Marche & Peterson 1993) fights back: "It is argued that claims of gender differences in back channel behavior should not be uncritically accepted; there are limitations in previous research that make such acceptance questionable." and "We conclude that wholesale acceptance of gender differences in back channel behavior is not warranted."

Anonymous

@tchrist Your picture changed! :-)

Anonymous

12:52

Mandarin seems to be a good example of a language with infrequent use of backchannels.

tchrist

@snailboat Did. But I have no picture editor to blank out the four white corners, darn it.

Unless there's one by default on the Mac that I don't know about.

My Mac with Photoshop has a boot sector issue.

The four corner triangles outside the rotated square should be transparent.

Damkerng T.

I wonder if transparent part in an image will be displayed correctly on SE.

tchrist

I'm surprised it showed up here without me typing anything.

Anonymous

I just loaded it in an image editor and they are transparent in that editor.

tchrist

Hm.

Maybe that's it.

They might remap transparent. Not sure.

Damkerng T.

12:54

@snailboat That could be related to why I use nods more often than giving verbal feedback.

Anonymous

They do it when resizing, it looks like.

tchrist

Oh.

Anonymous

When I downloaded, I trimmed the &s=128&g=1 args off the end, so I got the one with transparency.

Damkerng T.

12:56

@snailboat I can't tell the difference because it's on white, but I believe you!

Anonymous

Oh, oops! I forgot it would do that.

tchrist

Everybody else is so square, I wanted to be off-axis.

Damkerng T.

0

Q: How to reply to " good day, sir "

How to reply to Good day, sir in the beginning of the conversation as a greeting?

conversation

I feel like I want to quote Gandalf.

> "What do you mean? Do you wish me a good day, or mean that it is a good day whether I want it or not; or that you feel good today; or that it is a day to be good on?"

:P

tchrist

I don’t think good day is often used as a salutation in America, and when it is used, it’s a valediction.

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