Language Overflow

Anonymous

6:09 PM

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Oh, it's funny. And it has nothing to do with IPA.

Anonymous

Steel pacifier gives me a pretty good mental image.

Anonymous

It seems a bit odd, though.

Anonymous

Someone needs to explain to this user what a 'collocation' is.

Anonymous

@CopperKettle I would say attributive noun rather than noun adjunct.

Anonymous

The latter seems to be popular among non-linguists, though.

CopperKettle

6:14 PM

Yes, "attributive noun" is better.

Anonymous

I guess people say noun adjunct to mean 'noun modifier', with Adjunct as an alternative term for Modifier function.

Anonymous

No one ever explains this term, though.

Anonymous

They just use it as an opaque string.

Anonymous

I don't think it usually has much value.

Anonymous

I'll admit I prefer it over adjectival noun, also seen today on ELL :-)

CopperKettle

6:17 PM

It's more understandable, yes.

Anonymous

So far, I think we have four main ways that people on ELL identify nouns as premodifiers in NP structure. They call them attributive nouns, noun adjuncts, adjectival nouns, or refer to the combination as a compound noun.

Anonymous

We're terribly inconsistent about it.

Anonymous

Have I missed any terms that we use here on ELL for this phenomenon?

CopperKettle

Dunno.. I only used the first two.

Anonymous

Among linguists who distinguish form from function, the usual name for the premodifier-in-NP-structure function that both nouns and adjectives appear in is 'attributive'.

Anonymous

6:21 PM

Or at least, we can call that position 'attributive position'.

Anonymous

Bas Aarts calls adjective or noun phrases in this position 'pre-Head Adjuncts'. (He uses the 'attributive' term for the position they appear in.)

Anonymous

That's the closest I know of to noun adjunct used by any modern linguist . . . I keep hoping that if I mention it in chat, someone will explain to me what framework noun adjunct is from :-)

CopperKettle

@BasAarts, please come here and explain! (0:

Anonymous

See, Aarts uses the term Adjunct instead of Modifier.

Anonymous

The convention from functional grammar, by the way, is to capitalize functions.

Anonymous

6:25 PM

That's why I have all these capital letters here :-)

CopperKettle

(0:

Anonymous

Huddleston and Pullum are on board with capitalizing functions too these days.

Anonymous

But they don't capitalize them in CGEL.

CopperKettle

nods

Damkerng T.

TIL acquisition can be a verb too!

CopperKettle

6:28 PM

Anyway, Vinay Kumar's question is strange. It's usually intuitively clear that a language can have trillions of combinations of words.

Anonymous

Yeah.

Anonymous

You can produce new combinations easily in natural languages.

Damkerng T.

The funny thing is when I looked it up in Macmillan, which I just did, the example sentence is exactly the sentence I just heard! macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/acquisition_2

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Interesting!

Anonymous

Requisition can be a verb.

Anonymous

6:30 PM

Maybe it was verbed by analogy.

Damkerng T.

nods -- I wonder if the series is the first use of the word as a verb.

Anonymous

I want to say no, but I don't really know.

Anonymous

books.google.com/ngrams/…

CopperKettle

0

Q: Tenses agreement. Was/is

So,the smallest of things give rise to questions in my head. And,i was wondering which of the following was the correct one. (or will it be,"which of the following is the correct one"?) "What i was going for was.." or "what i was going for is.." Should i keep the tenses in agreement,or could ...

sentence-construction

Anonymous

Looks like no

Damkerng T.

6:33 PM

Thanks!

CopperKettle

Google Ngram finds no instances of "What I was going for was"

..strange

Anonymous

That's okay. You can say it anyway.

CopperKettle

"DOUGLAS: What I was going for was that, I believe in the past, your comments that you said that Hitler was both extraordinary and... A.N. WILSON: And ordinary, yes. " (COCA)

Anonymous

Both was and is should be grammatical for the matrix verb.

Damkerng T.

Nice example!

CopperKettle

6:36 PM

"What I was going for is nice"?

Anonymous

@CopperKettle They only counted 1- to 5-grams, and that's a 6-gram.

Damkerng T.

@CopperKettle That sounds fine to me.

Anonymous

They also discarded n-grams with fewer than 40 instances from the publicly queriable index.

CopperKettle

@snailboat Thanks! here it is

Anonymous

So if they say they found no results, that doesn't necessarily mean there are no matches in the corpus.

CopperKettle

6:38 PM

nods

Damkerng T.

@CopperKettle Ah, I just found the question. I don't even understand the title!

books.google.com/ngrams/…

(Another take for past vs. present tenses)

CopperKettle

Nice choice of words!

Anonymous

I made a pseudo-cleft tag

CopperKettle

"Telling the truth about what I did is pointless if I don't atone"

Anonymous

But we could delete that tag

Anonymous

6:42 PM

In which case we should put them under our existing cleft-constructions tag

Anonymous

Intrepid taggers, feel free to retag . . . :-)

2

CopperKettle

(0:

Damkerng T.

BTW, A Man Called Intrepid is well-known over here.

CopperKettle

William Stephenson

Sir William Samuel Stephenson, Kt, CC, MC, DFC (23 January 1897 – 31 January 1989) was a Canadian soldier, airman, businessman, inventor, spymaster, and the senior representative of British intelligence for the entire western hemisphere during World War II. He is best known by his wartime intelligence codename Intrepid. Many people consider him to be one of the real-life inspirations for James Bond. Ian Fleming himself once wrote, "James Bond is a highly romanticized version of a true spy. The real thing is ... William Stephenson." As head of the British Security Coordination, Stephenson handed...

First time I heard about him.

Anonymous

Oh! Interesting. I haven't read that.

CopperKettle

6:46 PM

"Would it be okay if I called you when I got back home?" (Could this be grammatical, I wonder)

Damkerng T.

Perhaps beyond me, but I think it is.

CopperKettle

"So what I did is I would climb in the trees that were nearby and try to see where I was." (But this is clearly a thing completed in the past!) (COCA)

Damkerng T.

nods

CopperKettle

Probably a slip during speech.

Anonymous

@CopperKettle Oh? Does something sound wrong to you in that sentence?

Anonymous

6:50 PM

The is sounds fine to my ear.

Damkerng T.

Hmm... it sounds natural to me. I think it's why I feel okay with it.

CopperKettle

@snailboat both was and is would be okay?

Anonymous

Sure.

Anonymous

That was what they did, and that is what they did.

Anonymous

It became true when they did it, and it hasn't stopped being true since.

CopperKettle

6:51 PM

So what I did was I over-thought this, probably.

Damkerng T.

I think it depends on how we internalize our thoughts while telling the story.

@VarunKN Yep, the English word qi, chi borrowed from Mandarin 气 qì. I'm just commenting because you said they were hardly ever used, but I hear this one pretty often. — snailboat 2 mins ago

Anonymous

@CopperKettle Do you have the Declerck you referred to in the answer I edited earlier today?

Damkerng T.

Hehe! That's the word I thought at first glance too!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. It's an important word in Scrabble! :-)

CopperKettle

@snailboat I could download it any minute. I remember I hotlinked it.

Anonymous

6:56 PM

My housemate says she's harnessing her qi all the time. I have no idea what she means by it, but she says it.

Damkerng T.

LOL

CopperKettle

@snailboat The "qi" energy, probably.

Anonymous

Well, I know the word :-)

CopperKettle

(0:

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Maybe she's a martial art expert!

CopperKettle

6:57 PM

or a marital art expert (0:

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Gee, you guys are talkative.

Anonymous

Actually, it's a very important word in Japanese (where it's [kʲi] rather than [tɕʰì])

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Oh, a curious pronunciation!

CopperKettle

@snailboat oops, no I don't have it. It turns out I was using snatches of pages from Google Books.

Damkerng T.

A related word: qigong

Anonymous

7:01 PM

@DamkerngT. It had a /k/ in onset position in Middle Chinese, and that's when Japanese borrowed it.

Damkerng T.

Ahh

Anonymous

The [tɕ] results from historical palatalization of [k] before [i] in Mandarin

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Yes! In Japanese, きこう

Anonymous

Rather than /qìgōng/, it is /kikoʜ/

Damkerng T.

It must have been another /k/ in Middle Chinese!

Anonymous

7:04 PM

Oh, well, the first part is the same word :-)

Anonymous

So it's really the same /k/.

Damkerng T.

But the gong part?

Anonymous

Oh!

Anonymous

It was, but I don't know how it became /g/.

Anonymous

It's not always safe to assume that a /k/ in a Sino-Japanese morpheme comes from /k/ in Middle Chinese, though.

Anonymous

7:06 PM

In Old Japanese, there was no /h/, so Middle Chinese /h/ was borrowed into Old Japanese as /k/.

CopperKettle

Maybe we should introduce the tag "generic" for this question

Anonymous

That's why hanzi (Hàn zì, the Han characters) is kanji in Japanese.

Damkerng T.

@CopperKettle generic, as the new grammar?

@snailboat Oh, right!

CopperKettle

@DamkerngT. I mean, because the purpose of the question is to produce a generic sentence about generic bananas in a generic climate.

Anonymous

An NP with generic reference

CopperKettle

7:08 PM

yes.

Damkerng T.

Oh, I see!

Anonymous

Perhaps we could tag it generic-noun-phrases.

CopperKettle

The problem is, "a generic climate" would be non-generic; that what the OP needs to know.

@snailboat nice!

Anonymous

Or generic-reference

Anonymous

I like the former though

Anonymous

7:10 PM

Failing that, generics would be okay. :-)

Anonymous

But maybe not as clear or easy to Google up.

Anonymous

I think if people search for "generic noun phrases" in quotes, they'll be able to find useful pages.

Anonymous

(I always imagine this is what people do with tags they don't understand that sound like technical terms. I don't know if it's true :-)

CopperKettle

Indeed, I found some info - just googled for "generic noun phrases"

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

What do you say we undelete this question?

Anonymous

7:13 PM

Ah, Jane Austen's doesn't work as an genitive attributive because it has specific reference, so it would have to be in (central) determiner position, but there's already a word in that slot, the indefinite article a

Damkerng T.

@CopperKettle Maybe a simple example like "Anteaters eat an ant" vs. "Anteaters eat ants" may be helpful. :-)

Anonymous

So it appears to have two determiners side-by-side, which is ungrammatical.

CopperKettle

@DamkerngT. nice!

Anonymous

In contrast, Jane Austen is non-genitive and does work attributively.

Anonymous

So it coexists happily with the existing determiner and works semantically.

Anonymous

7:14 PM

Are you going through deleted questions for fun, @Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.? :-)

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@snailboat For science.

Anonymous

That particular aspect of NP structure is something I've noticed many learners have trouble with.

Anonymous

I suspect it's because they have trouble acquiring it intuitively, and the grammatical descriptions that most students are given of the determiner and attributive slots is inadequate.

CopperKettle

0

A: Is "Bananas grow in a tropical climate" grammatically correct?

It is legitimate and grammatical to say Bananas grow in a tropical climate. Consider Bananas grow in a tropical climate as opposed to a desert climate. And Struggling teens grow better in a protected environment.

"Fruit flies like a banana" - then that would be generic too.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

That's why I say we should undelete it.

CopperKettle

7:20 PM

Okay, I've voted for undeletion. Resuscitation. Revival. Renaissance. Renascence.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

(づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ

CopperKettle

(0:

Damkerng T.

7:37 PM

→ 30 messages moved to Trash

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Thanks @Dam for inviting me to trash.

Damkerng T.

You're welcome, both here and there. :P

BTW, the "tropical climates" question gave me an idea.

Genuinely Ambiguous Sentence of the Day: Can I read a book in the library?

Anonymous

I'm at a computer again!

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Welcome back!

Anonymous

Thanks :-)

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

7:41 PM

@snailboat \o

Damkerng T.

2

A: Is "Bananas grow in a tropical climate" grammatically correct?

It is legitimate and grammatical to say Bananas grow in a tropical climate. Consider Bananas grow in a tropical climate as opposed to a desert climate. A sentence with an analogous structure is Struggling teens grow better in a protected environment.

I think the answer is a little off.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@DamkerngT. Oh! I thought bananas grow in antarctic. </sarcasm>

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Just as it's hard to answer questions about which article to use without context, it's hard to tell exactly what is implied by an example of a particular article without context.

Damkerng T.

Hmm... I can't think of a good use of Bananas grow in a tropical climate in any context.

Except for, of course, as an example sentence.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

0

A: Why is it correct to drop the 's in "a Jane Austen['s] fragment"?

In this case, the noun phrase a fragment [of text] can be modified attributively: a short fragment an isolated fragment a Jane Austen fragment However, it cannot be modified by a possessive determiner for two reasons: First, it contains the determiner a, which occupies the centra...

MWAHAHHAHAHHA

CopperKettle

7:46 PM

@DamkerngT. I think that answer is plain wrong. But I need to catch some z's.

StoneyB

@DamkerngT. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously, but bananas grow in a tropical climate.

Damkerng T.

LOL

CopperKettle

@StoneyB So that answer is not wrong? I thought "a tropical climate" might imply a non-generic climate here.

Anonymous

I'm not sure the answer is "wrong", but I wouldn't want to rule out someone writing a more useful answer.

Anonymous

Which is why it's often a good idea to wait to accept an answer :-)

CopperKettle

7:49 PM

(0:

Anonymous

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. There are attributive genitives in English: an [old people]'s home

Anonymous

Here, old people's isn't in the determiner slot. It coexists with an just fine.

Anonymous

It's an attributive modifier, and we can have more than one of these.

Anonymous

> a fine [old people]'s home

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Just to be sure, what am I going to insert in that "old people" slot?

Anonymous

7:52 PM

See, it's not only coexisting with a determiner happily, it's even following an adjective phrase!

Anonymous

Old people's fits into attributive position just like an adjective.

Anonymous

But attributive genitives are fairly limited in English.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Oh.

Anonymous

There are a couple types, and the kind that refers to people has general reference.

Anonymous

So you can say an old people's home, but you can't say *a Frank Sinatra's home

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

7:53 PM

I should study about this. I don't even know much about it in other languages.

Anonymous

This is very much a language-particular phenomenon.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Oh version 2.

Anonymous

Since Jane Austen has specific reference and not general reference, you can't put Jane Austen's in attributive position.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Interesting.

Anonymous

This is covered in CGEL starting on page 469.

3

Anonymous

7:55 PM

Since you can't put it in attributive position, it has to go in the determiner slot. And that's why the phrase doesn't work.

Anonymous

It's already got a determiner.

Anonymous

Does that help clarify what I wrote earlier in chat?

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Oh!

I'm just starting to get it.

Anonymous

Oxford Dictionaries says "also chi or ki" under their definition for qi. That makes sense, but chi and qi are alternate spellings, while ki is both spelled and pronounced differently (because it was borrowed indirectly through Japanese).

Anonymous

I feel like ki should have its own entry.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

8:01 PM

You learn something new everyday:

9

A: Do the following negations mean the same thing?

Think is one of the verbs that govern the rule called Negative Raising. Nothing actually gets raised, though. What this means is that the verb think is transparent to negation, because it doesn't really mean anything except to identify what you're thinking about. Consequently - X think (not Y...

Damkerng T.

I've seen only chi, but never ki.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I don't think using the Japanese version in English is as common.

Anonymous

I've heard both, though.

Anonymous

I wonder how many people see qi and think it's pronounced /ki/.

Damkerng T.

BTW, Thais would feel awkward to say "ki" in the same tone as "chi" for qi.

Anonymous

8:07 PM

Qi has a falling tone in Mandarin, and in Japanese ki is unaccented.

Damkerng T.

nods -- It's rise-then-fall in Thai.

Anonymous

Interesting!

Anonymous

I don't know that much about the history of tone systems in Chinese languages, so I don't really know how it would have been loaned into Thai.

Damkerng T.

See if GT can pronounce it right... (ชี่)

It's a little off, but not too bad.

Anonymous

It sounds like it starts high rather than rising.

Anonymous

8:09 PM

Is the initial rise actually necessary in Thai?

Anonymous

Or can you just start high and fall?

Damkerng T.

nods -- That part of off; I think the ending is off too.

Nihilist_Frost

@snailboat Anyone not familiar with pinyin would end up saying /ki/

Anonymous

@Nihilist_Frost I assume that a lot of speakers learned it by ear, though.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Hmm... if it's the first word, I think we have to rise it, but in the middle of an utterance, I'd say it depends.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

8:10 PM

@DamkerngT. Gabriel Tesse?

Anonymous

So then there's the question of whether they can intuitively match up the unusual qi spelling with the word they learned, or if they end up thinking chi and qi (ki) are two different things :-)

Nihilist_Frost

@snailboat Exactly

Anonymous

I imagine it could get confused in all sorts of different ways.

Damkerng T.

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. But what is it?

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@DamkerngT. A chat message.

Damkerng T.

8:11 PM

Oh, I meant Google Translate!

Nihilist_Frost

I'm pretty sure Q is taught as /k/ in English, which appears before /w/ (as <qu>)

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Mhm.

Anonymous

I didn't learn anything about Mandarin pronunciation until I was 14 or 15, I think.

Nihilist_Frost

I wonder how did English evolve the /sf/ cluster

Anonymous

Like in sforzando?

Anonymous

8:16 PM

I guess you're thinking of sphere :-)

Nihilist_Frost

@snailboat Yes.

Anonymous

There are really very few examples of /sf/ that don't span morpheme boundaries, though.

Nihilist_Frost

@snailboat That is the question.

Anonymous

They seem to be from several different sources, though.

Anonymous

Wait, how would you syllabify atmosphere?

Anonymous

8:19 PM

I was assuming /s.f/, but maybe it should really be /.sf/

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

O_O

Nihilist_Frost

@snailboat at-mo-sphere

Anonymous

Well, that's what the Maximum Onset Principle would suggest.

Anonymous

So I guess with that in mind, there are more examples of onset /sf/ than I initially thought.

Anonymous

But I dunno.

Anonymous

8:21 PM

Phosphate? That's /s.f/, right?

Damkerng T.

Another word with /sf/: US Forex

:P

Anonymous

Townsfolk? That's /s.f/ too, right?

Anonymous

Oh, that's /z.f/.

Anonymous

That one doesn't count :-)

Damkerng T.

I wondered that myself right after posting it. :D

Anonymous

8:22 PM

@DamkerngT. Hah

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@snailboat Definitely /s.f/

What about phosphine?

Anonymous

See, even after all this time, I still get confused by spelling. Orthography has a really profound effect on how we conceptualize pronunciation.

Damkerng T.

The S in US is /es/, right?

Anonymous

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Dunno. MOP sez /.sf/

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

What about phosphorus itself?

Nihilist_Frost

8:24 PM

phosphorus = phos-pho-rus

Anonymous

Hmm. Phosphorus has to be /s.f/

Nihilist_Frost

according to Merriam-Webster

Anonymous

I don't think onset /sf/ can appear before ɚ

Nihilist_Frost

and Dictionary.com

Anonymous

Dictionaries are notoriously useless for syllabification

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

8:26 PM

@snailboat (づ๑³๑)づ︵ԀOW

Nihilist_Frost

chat crashed on my face, argh

Anonymous

Oh! I hope your face is okay.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@Nihilist_Frost Pats chat

You meanie! You hit the poor chat with your face!

Nihilist_Frost

English doesn't seem to like (C)(s) syllable-initially

e.g.

xylophone, psychology

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Not many languages like it/them/him/her/whatever.

Anonymous

8:30 PM

@Nihilist_Frost Yep, we undo onset /ks/ and /ps/, along with /ts/ in tsunami and tsetse

Anonymous

A small minority of speakers have onset /ts/, though.

Anonymous

(Many more speakers believe they have onset /ts/ but actually don't.)

Anonymous

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. They're fine in a lot of languages.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

My theology teacher would definitely onset /ts/.

Anonymous

It's not physically hard to say /ks/ or /ps/ or /ts/ in onset position.

Anonymous

8:31 PM

English speakers just don't know how because our phonotactics largely prohibit them.

Nihilist_Frost

Several Romance languages infamously dump <e> in front of clusters starting with <s>

Anonymous

If we try, we tend to insert an epenthetic schwa.

Anonymous

There are a few ways to "repair" words to fit the phonology of the language they're being loaned into. One of the most common repairs is epenthesis. Another is deletion.

Nihilist_Frost

as in "psychology"

Anonymous

In English words that look like they should have onset /ps/ or /ts/, the initial consonant is generally deleted.

Nihilist_Frost

8:33 PM

then you have assimilation.

Anonymous

/ks/ is kind of a special case.

Nihilist_Frost

/ks/ undergoes a whole sound shift.

Anonymous

Also compare clusters like /gn/

Anonymous

Poor knight, de-k-d and de-gh-ed!

Anonymous

Well, historically.

Anonymous

8:35 PM

But if you actually try to pronounce an illegal cluster, you'll probably end up resorting to epenthesis.

Anonymous

I mean, maybe not you you, since you're studying phonetics.

Anonymous

So you can probably pronounce lots of clusters that English speakers have trouble with :-)

Nihilist_Frost

How would you tell someone how to produce /h/ if their native language didn't have it?

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@Nihilist_Frost "Strangle yourself"

Anonymous

Start by pronouncing the following vowel, but voiceless.

Anonymous

8:38 PM

Then transition into a voiced sound.

Anonymous

So to say /ha/, say [ɑ̥ɑ]

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Or I'll just punch them in the belly.

^ transitive verb.

Anonymous

/h/ can be thought of as an archiphoneme with voiceless versions of every English vowel as allophones

Nihilist_Frost

Now, what about /v/?

easier to explain?

Anonymous

/v/ is pretty easy to teach.

Anonymous

8:40 PM

You show where the teeth go on the lip.

Nihilist_Frost

top teeth to lower lip, easy.

Anonymous

Since it's right at the front of the mouth, people can see your teeth and do what you do.

Anonymous

With /h/, you have to start by explaining what voicing is.

Anonymous

You can do that by teaching people to put a pair of fingers on their voice box, making them say things, feeling for the vibration.

Anonymous

Once you teach them a voiced-voiceless pair, you can teach them how to go back and forth.

Anonymous

8:42 PM

And you can talk about how the air goes out faster when it's voiceless, and how voicing a sound slows the air down.

Anonymous

It's a little complicated, but people usually get it pretty fast :-)

Nihilist_Frost

How do etymologists detect metathesis?

compare wolf to lupus

Anonymous

I guess they start by looking at wolf and think to themselves, "It's not lupus."

Anonymous

Not funny? :-)

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