Language Overflow - 2015-12-14 (page 1 of 2)

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12:43 AM

my father cannot pronounce "sword"

he is stuck at around /swɜd/

nowhere even close to the right way.

funny orthography confuses every learner.

Anonymous

1:11 AM

Orthography confuses native speakers, too! But of course it's different. Native speakers have always learned a large number of words simply by hearing them, while non-native speakers may or may not have, and even if they have, they might not have internalized them as well as native speakers.

Anonymous

But orthography definitely has a profound effect on how we think about language, even if we're native speakers.

Anonymous

Unfortunately, learning English largely from writing doesn't work terribly well.

2:19 AM

@Nihilist_Frost If it helps, perhaps you can tell him it's written "sword" but pronounced "sord". Or maybe "w" is absent. Or whatever that reminds him that English words aren't always supposed to be read the way they're written.

0

Q: IC -“derivation tree"

Could you please check my “derivation tree"? I'm not sure about position of article (the) and pronoun(her). Is it right to put them like this? Maybe other mistakes?

But what is IC, anyway?!

(I'm just curious, but not that curious.)

BTW, what I'm holding in my left hand looks yummy!

Anonymous

It's probably right within the framework she's being taught.

Anonymous

It entirely ignores function, unfortunately.

Anonymous

And I'd expect the NP and VP to be children of a parent S or C node.

Anonymous

(sentence or clause)

nods -- I expected an S, too, though I thought maybe she just left it out.

Oh, I guess IC is probably Independent Clause, then.

Anonymous

2:33 AM

It would be nice to have a tree that showed functions, too. Why? Well, what do the and her have in common? They have the same function, even though they have different parts of speech.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Oh! Yes.

Anonymous

The tree she's drawn is based entirely on the class the words belong to and not what the words (or phrases) actually do.

nods

Anonymous

But she probably isn't looking for that sort of feedback right now. She just wants someone to check her homework.

Anonymous

She wants to know if she's done it right within the framework she's being taught, most likely.

Anonymous

2:35 AM

So I decided to put my comments into chat.

0

Q: plump "as" she had become

[...] After marrying so young she was overwhelmed by it all, having a child so quickly, and nursing, and warming up bottles of milk and testing their temperature against her wrist while Raj was at work, dressed in sweaters and corduroy pants, teaching his students about rocks and dinosaurs. ...

comparative-constructions

It's a little surprise to me to read that our two answers don't think that adding another plump sounds wrong.

Where do they hyphenate earrings like that, though? That's odd.

I always pronounce what with a short U

and sometimes schwa

@Catija It's odd indeed!

> a) Raj never looked cross or harried, or plump as she had become after the first baby.
b) Raj never looked cross or harried, or plump as she had become plump after the first baby.

Anonymous

Short U meaning wedge?

Anonymous

2:50 AM

@Catija Mostly in the past.

Anonymous

But although earrings is the usual spelling in both AmE and BrE, it's not quite as uncommon to write ear-rings in BrE.

@snailboat I meant /ʌ/

@DamkerngT. a) is better. B has an awkward repetition.

Anonymous

That's what I meant by wedge, too :-)

Anonymous

Wedge is the common name for the symbol, though in Unicode it's called a turned v.

@snailboat Leads to the "wut" on chat slang

2:52 AM

@Nihilist_Frost On the scale of awkwardness (0-7), I'd give it a 6.

@DamkerngT. Is a higher awkward rating for something more awkward?

Yes.

Anonymous

@Nihilist_Frost Or more generally in eye dialect.

Anonymous

I think B is ungrammatical in the intended sense. It looks like an attempt to not ellipt something that must not be present.

Anonymous

It is grammatical with an alternative parse, and so of course readers will parse it that way, but it's not a very good sentence.

2:56 AM

funny that English's plural marker is a homophone of the possessive marker.

Anonymous

That's a useful thing to point out to learners. I mentioned it here: ell.stackexchange.com/questions/74308/…

^canon-like answer: possessives and s's (pronunciation)

@Nihilist_Frost I think maybe that's one of the reasons why some people write its for it's.

@DamkerngT. it's is more complicated.

Anonymous

Well, it's hard to keep track of such an arbitrary convention when the spoken language doesn't make the distinction.

Anonymous

Most people learn the difference when they're young, but not everyone is good at memorizing spelling distinctions like that.

3:00 AM

meanwhile, "it's" is a contraction!

Anonymous

Possessive its used to be spelled it's.

Anonymous

The apostrophe went out of fashion.

@Nihilist_Frost nods -- which complicates your observation even further!

@snailboat Extra complication

Anonymous

But there's no reason in principle why the original spelling wouldn't be just as good today.

3:02 AM

@snailboat Oh, I used to guess that, but only jokingly.

Anonymous

Comparisons to his and such make sense, after the fact.

Anonymous

We don't write hi's.

How about he's? :P

@snailboat "its" is indeed made from appending the possessive suffix after "it"

the apostrophe seems that it was removed because none of the other possessive determiners had the suffix.

Anonymous

That is possible.

Anonymous

3:06 AM

It is also possible it arose to avoid confusion with it's = it is

Anonymous

Or a combination of both.

@snailboat That's probable

Anonymous

I'm sure there's a discussion somewhere on English.SE already.

my, your, his, her, its, our, your, their.

0

Q: Dangling? I need some help

"Some seagulls squawked briefly when she stepped by them and quickly flapped away." I wonder that the bold part modifies for "some seagulls" or "when she stepped by them"? p/s: I added a comma to make sure the bold part modifies for "some seagulls".Is it correct? "Some seagulls squawked...

grammar meaning

Sadly, I still can't write a decisive answer to that.

> Some seagulls squawked briefly when she stepped by them, and quickly flapped away.

3:10 AM

French has mon/ma/mes, ton/ta/tes, son/sa/ses, notre/nos, votre/vos, leur/leurs

I think the comma should be fine, but what exactly makes it fine I'm not sure.

@Nihilist_Frost 3-3-3-2-2-2?

@DamkerngT. Gender distinctions.

masculine nouns, and feminine nouns that start with vowels use the masculine forms.

Wouldn't it be a little strange that they didn't make it four instead of just three forms?

feminine nouns that don't start with vowels use feminine forms.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Prescriptively, it's often claimed that the comma should not appear.

3:12 AM

plurals take plural forms, regardless of gender.

Anonymous

Descriptively, a neutral observer might note that commas often appear in exactly that position.

@snailboat nods -- I think that comma, if added, is for a pause.

and the gender of the determiner is based on the thing being possessed, and not on the possessor

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Why should it be four?

@snailboat Masculine and feminine plurals, that will be even funnier

3:14 AM

@Nihilist_Frost I don't know if native speakers of French will be confused which form to use at times. I suppose they might.

@snailboat M/F singular, M/F plural.

Anonymous

That's one way it could be four, not a reason it should be four :-)

Anonymous

Why not six? M/F/N

Actually six crossed my mind too!

But I wasn't sure how those words were arranged, but with 3, I guess something is asymmetrical.

English sure feels barbaric compared to the more-conjugation-heavy IE languages

Anonymous

Really? I rather like it :-)

Anonymous

3:20 AM

I wonder what you'd think of Mandarin!

@snailboat I like that fact too.

Those conjugation heavy languages must be kinda like some of Thai foods.

whenever I have to think about inflections, ZZZZZZZZZZZZZzz

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Great, once your tongue gets used to them? :-)

@snailboat LOL

People in the past had all the time in the world to do such things. :D

And they mastered their crafts!

Anonymous

3:22 AM

That image won't quite load for me, I'm afraid.

Oh!

user image

French present conjugation example:

j'aime, tu aimes, il aime, nous aimons, vous aimez, ils aiment

Six forms for one tense. English only needs two for present tense.

with "be" as the exception.

Anonymous

Be is one exception. What are the other exceptions?

am

@tchrist Am is be

Anonymous

3:25 AM

Well, it's an inflectional form of what I meant by be.

Do we count travel/traveling/travelling as three forms? :P

Anonymous

But it's my fault – I was unclear. I didn't say what I meant by be.

@DamkerngT. Isn't speech.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. For learners, it can be useful to describe words that are irregular in spelling (whatever that means) and words that are irregular in speech, and to point out when the two don't coincide. For example, says is formed regularly in spelling, but instead of the regular /seɪz/ in speech, it has the form /sez/.

Anonymous

Since spelling is so irregular by nature it can be difficult to pin down what exactly "irregular in spelling" means, but we can at least draw a useful contrast for examples like that.

3:28 AM

I guess says can be tricky for many learners.

@tchrist They're alternative forms of each other. Doesn't count.

Frankly, I used to hear it as "saidz".

@DamkerngT. My mom had trouble with that

I think I understand her.

grapheme combos have random behavior

<gh, ei,> tons more

and then you have the "iron" annoyance

randomly metathesized without fixing spelling.

Anonymous

3:33 AM

Yeah, sound-spelling correspondences can be pretty tricky in English. Phonics is useful :-)

Anonymous

Since spelling is ultimately arbitrary, it helps for learners to have a good dictionary with (audio) pronunciation available.

yup

Back to my video games: ゴウ was romanized Gough, but the voice actors rhymed it with "cough".

demonstrates the weirdness of the <gh> grapheme in a nutshell.

@Nihilist_Frost What?! -- Shouldn't it be "Goooo!"

@DamkerngT. This is because the voice actors misread the <gh> in the English version of the name!

Anonymous

4:02 AM

@Nihilist_Frost What game was that, out of curiosity?

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. It should be [goː]

@snailboat Dark Souls.

Anonymous

Though in English, we'd expect it to become something like [ɡəʊ] or [ɡoʊ].

I started playing that when I heard of it being infamous for difficulty. Not that hard, really

Anonymous

I've heard of that game, but I've never seen it.

Anonymous

4:07 AM

I don't play a lot of video games these days, but I did buy a 3DS this year! :-)

@snailboat They're making a fourth game (Dark Souls is the second game)

dark souls iii

Anonymous

4:19 AM

Right now I'm playing Hats.

5:40 AM

I've got a hat!

A nice video: British astronaut Tim Peake is tested on his Russian skills

6:40 AM

1

Q: Need to know the correct one: 'before' vs 'in front of'

Which one of these is correct - "It happened right before me", "It happened in front of me"? Meaning wise, it seems the second one is correct, the first one seems more 'dialectized' English, taken from grammar constructs of other languages by non-native English speakers. Is my analogy correct, ...

People love to speculate the dialects/accents of other people, but I wish they'd avoid judging too quickly.

@CopperKettle This content doesn't seem to be working. said BBC.

@DamkerngT. nods

@DamkerngT. Very strange. I've re-checked. Worked like a charm. (0:

What do you think about his Russian? I'm curious. :D

@CopperKettle It happens quite often with anything BBC on this machine.

Maybe I can try it on my iPad later.

@DamkerngT. His Russian is great!

Oh, that's nice! :D

He makes some wrong decisions considering word endings -- adds vowels where there are none.

But this is not that important. (0:

6:47 AM

nods

He says "zvezda", not "zvezda" (star)

Ahh... stressing.

and "kozmos", not the right thing: "kosmos"

nods -- I guess it's because cosmo in English is pronounced with the /z/.

Yes, that's why.

and he adds ee at the end of nevesomost' (weighlessness)

6:50 AM

nevesomost looks almost like an English word!

The word ends in a soft sign, but there's no ee sound

He says "nevesomosty"

But he should stop short of vocalizing y and just indicate the softness of t.

again, he says "skafandra", not "skafandr" (spacesuit)

It's hard to pronounce several consonants in a row

I'm sure I'll have the same problem!

"skafandr" is actually derived from Greek: skaf = swim + andr = man

(How can I pronounce skafandr without any vowel after r!?)

@DamkerngT. here's how (0:

6:53 AM

Ah, thanks!

Hmm... sounds sort of like a schwa to me.

@DamkerngT. do you mean "skafandər"?

To me, it sounds rather like "drə" where "ə" starts almost at the same time as "dr".

Ah, I see.

1 hour later…

8:24 AM

@snailboat - if we created the "generic noun phrase" tag, this would be a fit question for it, methinks:

2

Q: Singular or plural when indicating something unique owned by many

In the following sentences, which one is correct? Tom likes dogs with long tails. Tom likes dogs with a long tail. There are many tails because there are many dogs. But each dog has only one tail. I prefer the second sentence, but I am not sure if it's correct.

articles indefinite-article singular-vs-plural

Anonymous

@CopperKettle No, no, no . . .

Anonymous

It has to be the generic noun phrases tag :-)

Anonymous

Look at that indefinite-article tag.

Anonymous

So essless!

Anonymous

Does it look happy to you?

Anonymous

8:29 AM

I don't think so.

Anonymous

@CopperKettle Yay! You asked the question about the masochist!

Anonymous

Or did you ask a question about the masochist?

@snailboat Good afternoon! I guess the question since we discussed it some time ago. (0:

"Done," says the King with a stroke.

I should be proofreading a longish text.. Bye, Snails!

Anonymous

Yeah, I went with the, but I think a is possible too :-)

Anonymous

Enjoy!

8:45 AM

I wonder if we can title an article "Counterterrorism policy of Russia, India and China: a Comparative Study" --- there are three countries after all.

I'll fix it to policies.

Anonymous

9:27 AM

How about "Counterterrorism policy in Russia, India, and China"?

What a brutal test! (fingernail punishment)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. What is this in response to?

Anonymous

Oh! I found it

The masochist question.

Anonymous

4 hours ago, by CopperKettle

A nice video: British astronaut Tim Peake is tested on his Russian skills

9:33 AM

Yes!

Ah, no! Not that one.

Anonymous

Wait, is that connected to the the masochist question?

Anonymous

Oh, I got confused! :-)

Anonymous

Oh, I really don't like that answer . . .

Anonymous

But it has three upvotes already . . .

Anonymous

Dot dot dot

9:34 AM

> If someone were told he had a year to get as good at either Russian or Hebrew as possible, and would lose a fingernail for every mistake he made during a three-minute test of his competence, only the masochist would choose Russian – unless he already happened to speak a language related to it.

Oh, it's wrong?

(I just thought it's not very technical-ish.)

Anonymous

Well, I think it's wrong. Other people appear to disagree :-)

Anonymous

It's difficult to contradict without writing up a competing answer.

I admit that I didn't read it very carefully.

I thought it worked similarly to "the rich", "the young", and so on.

Anonymous

Ah, those are different.

Anonymous

To be similar, it would have to be the masochistic :-)

9:39 AM

Hmm... right. :-)

Anonymous

Though people don't generally say that.

Anonymous

Which is not to say that they couldn't in theory.

8

Q: a role in whatever Western diplomatic effort might eventually bring the war to an end -- why is there no "that" after "effort"?

Source: Russian media is spinning the downing of a Russian jet fighter into a wider conspiracy theory Example: In Given the alternatives, that’s good news: It means that Russia is unlikely to respond to the Turks militarily and unlikely to drag NATO into broader conflict. It could also mean ...

It's a little sad that he doesn't like my answer.

Anonymous

Well, you can't make people agree with you.

The bounty has already just gone, too.

nods

10:17 AM

1

A: Is "money" a countable noun?

Indians don't speak pure English most of the time. They speak Hinglish or Marathi-English or other such variant, so they tend to use the original language's grammar constructs while speaking English. I have experienced this first-hand as I am also Indian (coincidentally, my father's name is also ...

It's an interesting answer.

If the answer is correct, I think it would mean that in many Indian languages, few and little are different words.

(It's the same word in Thai, because Thai doesn't have the countable/uncountable forms.)

Anyone interested in Literature?

3

But then again, why many Indian learners of English seem to have problems with countable/uncountable nouns.

Hi, sounds cool! I'll follow the proposal!

Grrreat. :D

Is it "star/pin" worthy? @DamkerngT.

Pinned!

BTW, why can't I log in to Area 51!

Dunno.

I'm really digging the name of this room.

It is sorta like thumbing your nose at MathOverflow :P

10:26 AM

Yay! I can log in just now!

@skillpatrol :-)

area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/93238/literature/93255#93255

LOL, I thought it was from another stack (scifi.stackexchange.com). :D

:D

That's where I found out about it.

Would I Lie To You? - Kevin Bridges (HD)

10:45 AM

A horse!

Is that Keira Knightley, one of the competitors? She looks like her, but somehow doesn't look quite like her, so I'm not sure.

1 hour later…

12:09 PM

HATS!

Conga-rats!

2

Q: "You reduced me to tears", What does it mean?

It is from an old movie. I don't remember the title but this sentence is also used in 'Grace Kelly' of Mika. Does it mean 'You made me cry'?

Hmm...

reduce someone to tears: "Literally it means that the person is gone and nothing is left except his or her tears."

An interesting interpretation.

12:36 PM

@DamkerngT. Hmm.

Now I'm officially the top reviewer of chem.SE, all-time.

Conga-rats one more time!

Ranking first in three queues, second in two queues and third in one. (Which is becoming a second rank anyway)

Ron, the highest rep user, is the second reviewer.

Ranking first in three queues, second in two queues and fifth in one.

ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ

Maybe you deserve it? :-)

winterbash2015.stackexchange.com

@Dam have you noticed those guys hit each other really hard?

Those guys? Oh, I just noticed that they throw something at each other!

Supposedly snow balls.

12:45 PM

Sbow nalls.

Yeah.

But the effect makes them look more like rocks or stones!

M-e-d-i-c!

@DamkerngT. They look like bombs to me.

LOL

I wouldn't get thrown like that if I were hit by an airplane.

Hey, I have an eye on a hat!

250 votes on 7 consecutive days. Sounds like my hat!

12:48 PM

@DamkerngT. The vote one, or the edit one?

@DamkerngT. That's yours!

I'll earn it on chem.

I wonder if I'll be successful if I run for mod on chem.

I guess it's not a difficult one.

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Will there be a re-election soon?

@DamkerngT. No one knows, but I think not.

LOL @Mart's hat really suits him: chemistry.stackexchange.com/users/4945/…

:D

My hat makes me look like a sad teddy bear.

It's difficult to notice your hat in chat rooms.

I wonder why they don't add hats on our avatars on the right side of the chat page.

12:53 PM

What about now?

LOL -- Cool!

2

Q: the meaning of "there" in the particular sentence

The main safeguards are the Constitution and the Constitutional Court, which are there to prevent such an injustice as the majority deciding to abscond with the property of the minority. Source: http://www.fsfinalword.com/?page=archive&show=1&day=2015-12-14 Why is the word "there" used in t...

Hmm... is it really an existential-there?

Anonymous

1:12 PM

It is not.

…and I reject the possibility of the existential "there is" in the that clause. But what about the word order? I would await "which there are". — bart-leby 2 mins ago

@snailboat Why it isn't?

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Great. (0:

Anonymous

It's not in subject position, it's not reduced phonologically, it's not accompanied by a postverbal NP corresponding to a non-existential subject, it has its lexical meaning

Anonymous

The question should be "Why isn't it?"

@CopperKettle That's not how we define 'existential there'.

@snailboat Touche!

Anonymous

1:16 PM

So it doesn't seem to me to be dummy there in an existential construction

But this there clearly indicates the mere existence.

Anonymous

Well, you can make an argument that I'm wrong if you like :-)

Anonymous

I will be able to type more when I'm at a computer

Okay. I put it to you, Snails, that there is an existential construction by the merit of indicating existence. What have you to say to the jury? (0:

(off to proofread some more)

Anonymous

Then we've lost our handy term for describing constructions like "There are three snails on the leaf", because the term "existential construction" is now too general and includes dozens of unlike constructions with different grammar and usage. So what will be our new term for existentials with dummy there?

2

1:23 PM

@snailboat Stupid 'there' since it's dumb.

1:38 PM

@snailboat In Russian we simply say "On leaf three snails" (На листе три улитки, Na liste tri ulitki)

RIP Firefox OS -- techcrunch.com/2015/12/08/…

@DamkerngT. FumbleFingers OS could return in some far future.

There are three snails, which are there on the leaf. ;-)

Anonymous

1:59 PM

My three snails are on a leaf of romaine :-)

@snailboat - I wonder if you would agree with Ricky's comment:

@CopperKettle: Yes, but the former would sound more condescending. — Ricky 4 hours ago

Anonymous

Nope.

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Dec '1514

Language Overflow

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