Language Overflow - 2015-10-19

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12:46 AM

> Monica was educated in the French school system, grades 1-12, in Asia and the United States.

That explains why something doesn't sound quite right.

That's our mystery speaker.

> Monica was educated in the French school system, grades 1-12, in Asia and the United States. She has a BS in mathematics and philosophy from Georgetown University, an MA in pure mathematics from Catholic University, and a PhD in mathematics educa-tion from the University of Maryland. Her exposure to many cultures, her mastery of several languages, and her professional involvement in both the arts and the sciences provide her with a unique perspective on the learning and teaching of mathematics.

1:15 AM

What is the name of the bar that goes up to let your car enter in parking lots?

2:00 AM

@tchrist That explains it!

Though the difference is really, really small to me.

Then again, I'm pretty sure that it must've been quite obvious to you.

2:27 AM

user image

Can you read it?

(via: dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3112756/…)

@DamkerngT. เว็ปไซด์นี้มีเนื้อหาและข้อมูลที่ไม่เหมาะสม ถูกระงับโดยกระทรวงสารสนเทศและการสื่อสาร

I am so bored -_-

Oh, no!

It's just a news website for goodness's sake!

Basically, they tried to simulate the same level of frustration a dyslexic person would feel when they read things in general.

Yea. Couldn't have put it better.

2 hours later…

Anonymous

4:29 AM

@DamkerngT. I got it, but it took me a long time, and the message seems a little weird. It seems like it has an extra to read in there! Am I wrong?

Anonymous

> this typography is not designed to recreate what it would be like to read to read if you were dyslexic it is designed to simulate the feeling of reading with dyslexia by slowing the reading time of the viewer to a speed of which someone who dyslexia would read ← weird parts in bold

Anonymous

Also, I was a bit puzzled by the bottom lines in the E's in viewer. They're off to the right.

5:14 AM

ฃ

4 hours later…

9:21 AM

@snailboat That's what it says!

@snailboat You've got very sharp eyes!

10:12 AM

Today I learned about the etymology of "it's raining cats and dogs"!

I wonder if this is a false etymology, and wonder how popular it is. (Poor cats (and dogs, on the roof?), by the way.) I searched ELU and think the answers in this post are more convincing: english.stackexchange.com/questions/14273/…. — Damkerng T. 2 mins ago

A few more clicks gave me this: A false theory stated that cats and dogs used to cuddle into thatch roofs during storms and then be washed out during heavy rains. However, a properly maintained thatch roof is naturally water resistant and slanted to allow water to run off. In order to slip off the roof, the animals would have to be lying on the outside—an unlikely place for an animal to seek shelter during a storm. — Damkerng T. 50 secs ago

5 hours later…

Anonymous

2:42 PM

@DamkerngT. Well, when I first looked at the image I absolutely could not read it! It wasn't a matter of being slow, I just couldn't tell what was being said. I had to treat it as a puzzle! A few words like reading and speed were obvious to me, but I couldn't read most of the rest. But I used the few words I could read to figure out some of the letters, and that helped me figure out some more letters, and so on :-)

@snailboat Awesome!

Anonymous

I made a lot of wrong guesses at first but I eventually got it. Now I can read it.

In any case, I feel like I can understand people with dyslexia better, trying to read the message.

(The designer is one of them.)

Really challenging!

Anonymous

The bits of unnatural English made it harder to figure out, because of course we use knowledge about language to make guesses and fill in gaps, and the parts I bolded (the extra to read and of) were hard for me to guess!

Anonymous

It was fun though! :-)

2:46 PM

It also reminds me of my first attempt at reading a real English textbook. :-)

"Ah, I can recognize all the letters, but what are these words! What do they mean?!"

3

Q: How do we punctuate an abbreviation followed by a colon?

When making bullet points of details about something, do we punctuate the abbreviation? Is it this way? The details of the Vehicle are given below: Vehicle Chassis No.: [dot and colon with no space] Vehicle Chassis No. [dot only] Vehicle Chassis No. : [dot and colon with space] ...

Simple, yet intriguing, and a bit confusing/ambiguous.

I think J.R.'s advice is the best one.

I agree with @MamtaD – I think #3 is the worst of your options here. This is a matter of style, so it's not a matter of one of them being "right." If you look hard enough, you might even find conflicting guidance in different style guides. The most important thing is to be consistent; that is, do it the same way throughout your document. — J.R. ♦ yesterday

The OP mentioned "bullet points", and I'm not quite sure how they would write it in their bullet points.

BTW, 5 episodes of Heroes Reborn came out so far; no Hiro Nagamura yet!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. It's categorial grammar.

Anonymous

This stuff: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorial_grammar

Ah! That looks like what I thought!

I wasn't sure about the up-arrow, though.

Oh, have you seen this yet?

in ELL's Cabin, 3 hours ago, by Araucaria

Aaaaarrrgh @DamkerngT. Your help is needed here. More accepted questions with bad and wrong answers - which are being used as dupes. Downvotes required urgently!!!

It was about verb+*ed* before a word starting with the "th" sound.

Anonymous

3:08 PM

It's rather sloppy of the authors to cite Moortgat (1991) as introducing that up-arrow operator, then fail to include the full citation at the end of the paper!

I just browsed through a TV corpus, and I think some of the "call(ed) th*" may sound identical out of context.

Anonymous

Not to mention, I don't see the quantifier scoping constructor anywhere in Moortgat 1991 . . .

Anonymous

Still, the authors do define it.

Anonymous

Ah, it's cited properly in Type-Logical Semantics (Bob Carpenter 1997) (where it is discussed on p.224)

Anonymous

The quantification calculus: Questions of axiomatisation. (Moortgart 1990)

Anonymous

3:21 PM

I just edited the link above to go to a downloadable version. (I meant to do that in the first place!)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. The answer there is already down to 0 and I don't necessarily want to pile on

Anonymous

It could use a better answer though! :-)

@snailboat Yes. I'm now wondering about the real answer. :-)

Anonymous

I'm afraid I'm not quite up to the task of interpreting that paper Man from India linked to this morning :-(

Aww... we can try it later.

3:57 PM

1

Q: Is "There's a parcel come for you" grammatical?

This is a sentence from a text book: There's a parcel come for you. I think it should be There's a parcel has come for you. Am I wrong?

participles reduced-relative-clause

This is very interesting!

What is the function of come in that sentence (There's a parcel come for you)?

A verb (participle?) or a preposition.

I think thinking of it as a participle makes more sense.

Anonymous

4:27 PM

@DamkerngT. I don't know. There's a parcel come for you isn't possible in my dialect, although of course I understand it just fine. Does it sound relatively normal in BrE?

Possibly! It sounds rather unfamiliar to me as well.

Anonymous

My guess would be that it's BrE, but I don't really know.

Ellen,' said she, laying her hand upon the young girl's head, who started and blushed at her touch, ' there 's a letter come for grandfather.'

(1869)

Anonymous

What is the source?

I've added the link

Anonymous

4:30 PM

Thanks! :-)

(0:

I think you'd occasionally hear it in BrE... But it's highly colloquial. Not what I'd call standard use.

"When he first got to be postmaster and was green in the business, there was a letter come for somebody he didn't know, and there wasn't any such person in the village."

(Tom Sawyer)

books.google.com/…;

> MUM: There's - a - parcel - come - for - you - wherever - have - you - been - to?

Ah, published 2004 in the UK!

Anonymous

@CopperKettle An American example! Though not a recent one.

4:34 PM

Yep!

Was that line in the story itself or in the book about Tom Sawyer?

Seems like it was a-okay in colloquial speech.

nods

"Tom Sawyer Abroad", by Mark Twain

Tom Sawyer Abroad

Tom Sawyer Abroad is a novel by Mark Twain published in 1894. It features Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in a parody of adventure stories like those of Jules Verne. == Plot == In the story, Tom, Huck, and Jim set sail to Africa in a futuristic hot air balloon, where they survive encounters with lions, robbers, and fleas to see some of the world's greatest wonders, including the Pyramids and the Sphinx. Like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, Detective, the story is told using the first-person narrative voice of Huck Finn. It is a sequel, set in the time following the title story of...

Hey, it looks like a nice book!

4:36 PM

nods

2 hours later…

6:38 PM

2

Q: I've just eaten a burrito

I've just eaten a burrito. Would this be correctly interpreted as "I've only eaten a burrito" "I've recently eaten a burrito" Or both? Why? Of course, in case it isn't already blindingly obvious, I already know from my own studies and research that just can be used with the meaning 'o...

That reminds me of "Chicken burrito her" in Battleship. "Chicken burrito" is a verb!

2 hours later…

8:36 PM

enjoying "Groundhog Day'...

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. BTW the most upvoted Q in M&TV is about Groundhog day.

Oh! It's a very nice movie!

Anonymous

There are a lot of time loops in fiction!

Anonymous

My first encounter with a time loop was in The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World.

Haven't read/seen that one, but the title is intriguing!

Anonymous

8:39 PM

Well, don't start with that one!

Anonymous

Start with The Stainless Steel Rat :-)

BTW, this is the first time I've noticed how cute the groundhog Phil is!

Anonymous

Groundhogs are adorable!

Kinda reminds me of my cat. :-)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Oooh nice, a @Dam version of a mouse?

Anonymous

8:40 PM

Have you ever noticed how cute armadillos are?

Anonymous

google.com/search?q=armadillo&tbm=isch

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M LOL

@snailboat Armadillo balls!

Anonymous

Do you distinguish rats from mice in Persian? In Thai?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

In Persian? No.

Anonymous

In English, we distinguish them. In Japanese, they aren't distinguished (although of course it's possible to distinguish them, they just aren't normally distinguished.)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

8:42 PM

That's why I confuse them in English.

Probably not. They're all-- wait!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

O.o

So you say

mouse = เม้าส์; mouse and rat = หนู. :P

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Redundancy error. Let's run a retagging event and clean the first one up.

เม้าส์ = a computer mouse, btw.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

8:44 PM

Oh.

Anonymous

Is it also used for a living mouse?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

What is a computer rat called?

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M There is no such thing!

@snailboat No, hehe!

Anonymous

user image

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Weird name.

Anonymous

8:44 PM

Computer rat!

Hahaha!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

> Sir, my There's no such thing is broken. Could you fix it please?

It's ellipsis.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Who's ellipsis?

"There's no such thing (as such a rat)!"

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

8:47 PM

That's even a longer name!

pointing to the rather cute rat above...

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

> My There's no such thing (as such a rat)'s battery is dead.

Aww... please use your tablet instead.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

It isn't, that was an example.

Actually I'm using touch pad.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. They are cute. And smart!

Anonymous

8:49 PM

Rats are more intelligent than most rodents.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

> 528 halpful flagz

ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ

Hmm... I think so. Sometimes I think I have a chef rat around.

(Think Ratatouille)

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Cool! On ELL?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. What does robo-food taste like?

@DamkerngT. Of course not, comment flags were reported to get declined here.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I'm having human food lately, so it's the same. :-)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

And considering how eloquently mods are helping with grammar, I'm not looking to barber the comment chain on ELL.

931 CV review, I'm almost there!

Anonymous

8:53 PM

@DamkerngT. And rats eat most human food!

They sure do!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@snailboat I believe humans eat most rat food.

I wonder who is smarter, a squirrel or a rat?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Oct 16 at 14:21, by StoneyB

Does anybody know a useful and used term for naming 'forked' constructions like as .. as, so .. as, both .. and, neither .. nor? Is there a treatment which aligns these comparative and conjunctive expressions?

Hmm, IIRC I saw someone call these something . . .

My memory isn't helpful when it should be.

Ah, perhaps I should unpin that. Problem has already been solved, I think.

Anonymous

9:02 PM

@DamkerngT. Probably squirrels.

But they can't remember their seeds! :-)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. They do, though! Grey squirrels bury hundreds of nuts and then remember where all of them are!

Anonymous

Squirrels have more neurons in their brains than rats. More than twice as many.

Oh! So they can remember but they just want more!

Anonymous

It's hard to put a number on "intelligence", though.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

9:06 PM

@snailboat I'm 100 inteligence/mol.

Anonymous

livescience.com/5899-bigger-brains-smarter.html

Anonymous

I don't know a lot about this subject.

Anonymous

Although I'm interested! :-)

> In fact, these models suggest that counting could be achieved with only a few hundred nerve cells and only a few thousand could be enough to generate consciousness.

That's kinda scary!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@snailboat Of course I'm smarter.

@DamkerngT. Notice "could".

Guyses "could" and "might" in bio articles always mean "this is too far from being real science".

Anonymous

9:10 PM

Well, we don't have a working definition of "consciousness".

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Precisely.

> (Interestingly, the human brain is shrinking as we continue to evolve, other researchers say.)

Anonymous

It's not clear that there is a meaningful definition.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. Don't worry, robot brains stay the same.

Haha!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

9:12 PM

I believe I'll get a "please be indirect next time" just about$\,\ldots\,$now. — inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M 8 hours ago

Anonymous

But brain science is really interesting to me.

Anonymous

Especially because of how much we've learned only very recently!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I wonder if my meta post has syntactical errors.

@snailboat Well, you first need to get many people agree with what you say in the bio field, which takes 15 years at best, just to get media to change "could" into "does", and just to realize someone else already has negated your theories.

It's a bit weird.

Anonymous

I think it parses if you're willing to spend enough effort on it.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Chem, on the other hand . . .

Oh whoops, wrong chat.

9:42 PM

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M When’s the last time somebody told you that your icon looks like a minimalist sketch of a stereotypical propeller-head? :)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Hehe, @Jim it's your turn to tell me what my avatar looks like.

So far, we have very similar results:

> @Dam: Kaiju
> @Snail: Snail
> @TCh: Propeller head

9:54 PM

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M "Snail" is the first thing I thought of when my attention was drawn to it.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Surprised snail, but I think you may have primed me.

user image

@tchrist In my day the propellor was fixed to a beanie, not a baseball cap.

@StoneyB Aren't beanies and baseball caps the same thing?

10:10 PM

Heavens no! Baseball caps have always been cool; beanies have never been cool.

A beanie has no visor and perches on the top of the skull.

@tchrist Beanies conform to the shape of the head much more closely than do baseball caps

Beanies are the budgie smugglers of the head.

This is a beanie:

user image

In my youth, fraternity pledges were obliged to wear beanies. That's how uncool they were.

Public humiliation was the order of the day.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Looks like it’s Jewish. Or papal.

A bit bigger than a yarmulke or zucchetto.

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Oct '1519

Language Overflow

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