Language Overflow

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

21:00

What the heck!

Anonymous

Yeah, I know, right?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Well @snail, I went to my history, and copied the link to the search.

Anonymous

I originally thought I'd have something useful to say.

Anonymous

That's why I brought it up.

Anonymous

Turns out, not so much :-)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

21:00

It seems to try to open a pop-up.

Anonymous

Well, hopefully COCA will fix itself shortly.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Allow a pop-up, and you'll see a full-screen thingy.

Anonymous

Yeah! That's what I got.

Anonymous

That's not what I normally get.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

With the correct list.

Me neither.

Whee! 12 upboats away from Electorate.

@snail did you look at all of my recent answers? Anything I missed?

Cookies? Biscuits?

Should I edit something?

xkcd of the day:

Oh, @snail I figured out how to correct the links.

Anonymous

21:12

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I don't really think chat to is grammatical.

Anonymous

But.

Anonymous

The OALD does list it, and that makes me think there must be some usage out there.

Anonymous

It makes me wonder if it's dialectal.

Anonymous

I think chat to is basically not used in AmE.

Anonymous

Up Goer Five is dumb.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

21:13

Yes, the with versions, I read somewhere, are more colloquial in AmE.

@snailboat Yes, you are right.

I mean indeed.

Anonymous

Writing more simply can be very useful. But Up Goer Five isn't really writing more simply. It's adhering to an arbitrary constraint, and sometimes this constraint makes things more complicated, not less.

Anonymous

I'd be curious to see, for example, whether there are instances of chat to (where the to heads a complement PP denoting the other participants of the discussion) in the British National Corpus (BNC)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Precisely.

Anonymous

That would give us a strong hint that it's dialectal, if similar examples can't be found or can hardly be found in COCA.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Hey @snail, would you mind checking if the links work fine now?

Anonymous

21:17

Huh. You can use a slash instead of a vertical pipe for OR? I did not know!

Anonymous

Yes, I checked one of them and it worked fine :-)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Yay!

Anonymous

The second does, too.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Whee!

Anonymous

> ..., which indicates that many writers don’t interpret “talk to” to exclude a two-way conversation.

Anonymous

21:19

I agree with that.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Me too. That's my answer.

Anonymous

1

Q: I'd like to introduce myself to someone by using "a good side of me" and "a weak side of me"

I'd like to introduce myself to someone by using "a good side of me" and "a weak side of me". The reason I do this is that I know I can use "an another side of Korean drinking culture" when I need to bring up another sub topic of something that I'm currently discussing. So, am I right to do this?...

sentence-construction

Anonymous

Even though you could improve that grammatically by saying "one of my good sides", that would still sound pretty weird, wouldn't it? :-)

Anonymous

By the way, you don't BE an Achilles' heel, you HAVE an Achilles' heel

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Oh?

Anonymous

21:22

I suppose people don't usually include the apostrophe...

Anonymous

Yeah.

Anonymous

It's your weak point.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Tanks and jets, I'll edit.

Anonymous

You aren't your weak point, you have a weak point.

Anonymous

I might also say "when it comes to"

Anonymous

21:23

You made a typo in jealosy at the end.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I just used. . .

What did I use?

Anonymous

(jealousy)

Anonymous

You left out the 'u'

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Oh, about.

Sheesh.

Anonymous

There you go.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

21:25

Tanks and jets again, I didn't expect upboats, but corrections.

Cuz I'm too lazy to do it myself.

Anonymous

I have the strongest urge to reformat all of your ellipses.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I think my third answer will have more issues.

@snailboat Yeah. . .About that, @Man had a question. . .Lemme find the sentence.

Anonymous

I did it!

Anonymous

ell.stackexchange.com/posts/62613/revisions

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Hah!

Anonymous

21:27

You don't want the browser to wrap in the middle of an ellipsis, 'cause it's conceptually a single symbol.

Anonymous

There's a Unicode ellipsis → … ←

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Agreed.

Anonymous

But some people like their dots further apart.

Anonymous

That's why I used the Unicode narrow no-break space instead.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I would've used $\ldots$ if I could.

Anonymous

21:29

No need, you can do it without that stuff. :-)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Gimme teh Unicode'z char!

Anonymous

For narrow no-break space?

Anonymous

It's in here → " . . . "

Anonymous

The no-break thing means it won't wrap to the next line there.

Anonymous

The narrow thing means it's thinner than a normal space.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

21:32

Hey I know. I'm a semi-LaTeX guy you know.

What about my answer about the subjunctive mood?

Anonymous

Ehh.

Anonymous

Traditional grammar isn't really my thing.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Most of it is quoting verbatim from stuff.

Anonymous

But not modern grammar stuff.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

But I was so rash, it might have been wrong.

@snailboat Dunno.

Anonymous

21:34

I don't think it's really necessary to claim that English has a subjunctive mood anymore.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

But I find myself using it a lot.

Anonymous

Using what?

Anonymous

The claim that English has a subjunctive mood, or a thing that you would like to call the subjunctive mood?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Because it's a pretty much alive aspect in Persian. Well, not so much.

Anonymous

Moods are not aspects.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

21:36

@snailboat Using it in my sentences.

Anonymous

Moods are grammatical forms (generally morphological forms of verbs) which primarily express modality.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@snailboat No, it's an aspect in Persian.

That's why I think there are differences.

Anonymous

It makes no sense to say that there's a subjunctive aspect.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M To counter that xkcd, try the lyrics of this song: azlyrics.com/lyrics/paulmccartney/thisneverhappenedbefore.html

Anonymous

Modality and aspect are semantically separate categories.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

21:37

But my mindset is set to use non-factual thingies a lot.

Anonymous

Modality has to do with how the speaker expresses the relationship between the proposition expressed by the sentence and reality.

Anonymous

Aspect has to do with the internal temporal consistency of a situation.

Anonymous

A mood is a grammatical form whose main purpose is expressing modality.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. I believe the first go that guy used in his poem needs a more advanced learner parsing than most of the not upgoer five thingies.

Damkerng T.

Hah!

You're probably right.

Anonymous

21:38

Of course, Persian may have a subjunctive mood or some kind of non-subjunctive aspect that you use. Lots of languages have subjunctive moods. Lots of languages have aspects of various sorts.

Anonymous

But that's not an argument that English has a subjunctive mood.

Anonymous

Subjunctive is one of the few grammar terms most English speakers are familiar with.

Anonymous

Although most of them seem to think it means specifically saying "If I were" rather than "If I was"

Anonymous

I don't think most people know what a system of mood is. (And that's okay.)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@snailboat The other one is tmesis.

Damkerng T.

21:42

@snailboat I don't even think that most people really know what tense is!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Yeah, the popular notion of tense includes just about everything related to grammar.

Damkerng T.

1

A: All was happened due to his carelessness. All happened due to his carelessness

The first sentence is incorrect -- you don't say "All was happened...". But you could say in passive voice: All was happening due to his carelessness. The second sentence is correct as-is.

Anonymous

People say things like passive tense.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

K I'm off to sleep.

Damkerng T.

That's my example.

Anonymous

21:43

google.co.jp/search?q=%22passive%20tense%22 ← See? I'm not even kidding.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Sleep well!

"Passive tense review"!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Ouch.

Damkerng T.

Repeat after me in passive voice...

"All was happening due to his carelessness."

:P

Anonymous

First, we'll need to add some kind of object... "All was happening Bob in the face due to his carelessness." Now we can make it into a passive: "Bob was being happened in the face due to his carelessness."

Anonymous

Ta-da!

Damkerng T.

21:47

Yay!

Anonymous

Poor Bob.

Anonymous

7

A: When should I use the subjunctive mood?

What is called the "subjunctive" or the "present subjunctive" is in fact just a simple untensed variant of normally tensed that-complement clauses. Unlike real subjunctive systems in languages like German or Spanish, this construction appears - only in subordinate complement clauses, never ...

Damkerng T.

Oh!

Anonymous

This has downvotes and not as many upvotes as the two top answers.

Anonymous

But I think it's a better answer.

Damkerng T.

21:49

(Why has JL's answer got only 7 upvotes?)

Anonymous

Because people don't like modern grammar on ELU.

Damkerng T.

Ahh

Anonymous

It's one of several things that pushed me away from the site.

Damkerng T.

> never in main clauses, or other kinds of subordinate clauses;

Oh, I haven't realized that until now!

Anonymous

It only occurs in main clauses in fossilized constructions, which can be considered outside the grammar of modern English

Anonymous

21:51

> Long live the king!

Anonymous

> God bless you.

Damkerng T.

Oh, yes.

Anonymous

These don't obey the rules we use to put words together in English today.

Anonymous

Instead, they're pre-built units we keep in our heads more or less the same way we keep other vocabulary items in our heads.

Damkerng T.

When people translate the phrase God bless you into Thai, they have to add May.

Long live the king! is more like May the King live long! in Thai.

I'm not sure why.

Maybe phrasing an idea with may or beg is more compatible with Old Thai.

I upvoted JL's answer!

Anonymous

21:55

Yay!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Optatives!

Anonymous

You know you're just encouraging me to keep saying gibberish like optatives! when you star my messages like that :-)

Anonymous

Optative mood

The Optative mood (abbreviated OPT) is a grammatical mood that indicates a wish or hope. It is similar to the cohortative mood, and is closely related to the subjunctive mood. English has no morphological optative, but there are various constructions with optative meaning. One uses the modal verb may, e.g. May you have a long life! Another uses the phrase if only with a verb in the past or past subjunctive, e.g. If only I were rich! Another uses the present subjunctive, e.g. God save the Queen! Examples of languages with an optative mood are Biblical Hebrew, Ancient Greek, Albanian, Armenia...

Damkerng T.

Hee

Oh, "..., Sanskrit, and Turkish."

> English has no morphological optative, but there are various constructions with optative meaning.

I think I can say the same thing about Thai for a lot of things.

Even tenses.

> The Japanese optative is formed by using a conditional such as ba (-ば) or tara (-たら).

Hee

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Well, there's nothing stopping you from defining tense in a language-particular way, if it helps you discuss the language more simply

Damkerng T.

22:02

nods -- My point was about Thai having no morphological forms.

Anonymous

Although modern linguists tend to restrict tense to a system of inflection whose main purpose is locating a situation in time, this definition isn't used by all linguists

Anonymous

The tense-time contrast is fairly useful when discussing English.

Anonymous

In another language, it might not be a distinction worth making.

Damkerng T.

nods -- So, I think maybe it'd be considered correct if I say something like, "Thai has no morphological tense, but there are various constructions with tense meaning."

:D

Anonymous

Of course, even in English, not everyone uses the word tense that way.

Anonymous

22:04

@DamkerngT. Sure. I like to say "locate a situation in time"

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

For short, I would go for "with time meaning", although I don't know if everyone would like that :-)

Anonymous

Might be too vague, anyway.

Damkerng T.

I like it!

Anonymous

But it's all okay. Labels Are Not Definitions.

Anonymous

22:05

When we use labels, we also tell people what they mean, or we assume they can arrive at the definitions we're using either through prior knowledge or by consulting a reference work.

Anonymous

But the more technical we get, the more likely we're defining things in a particular way that needs some explanation.

Damkerng T.

nods -- Particularly when there several overlapping frameworks competing against one another.

Anonymous

That's because we use labels to correspond to our definitions, but we're trying to make our own definitions as accurate as we can―which probably means we're going to end up making them at least slightly different from everyone else's!

Damkerng T.

@snailboat That reminds me of an argument about new programming languages.

I remember someone said that a new programming language must be better than the existing ones in some ways, at least to the language designer.

Anonymous

Ahh, I remember the first time I made a programming language…I'm so glad no one can see that language today :-)

Damkerng T.

22:08

@snailboat Hehe!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Of course, people make domain-specific languages all the time.

Damkerng T.

DSL became so popular recently, I think.

I sometimes got a weird look when I introduced such an idea two decades ago.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Ah! I wrote my first one when I was trying to make a game as a teenager, and I wanted to have dialogue shown to the player as you progressed :-)

Damkerng T.

Oh, that makes perfect sense!

Anonymous

At my first job people used lex & yacc. I didn't, but I sometimes had to work with the things they made.

Damkerng T.

22:11

Ahh... I usually crafted that good old recursive descent parser by hand.

Until I found Tcl.

Anonymous

I like lua!

Damkerng T.

Lua is nice too!

I wrote a couple of SciTE extensions in Lua, and that's probably all I ever did in Lua. :-)

BTW, what would you imagine, reading this sentence?

5 hours ago, by Damkerng T.

> Mikey tipped back his helmet and wiped a dirty glove over his face.

Anonymous

I dunno, maybe he's wearing full leather and a motorcycle helmet, like, on an actual motorcycle? But it's hot outside, so wearing leather kind of sucks, and he tried to wipe off some sweat...

Damkerng T.

22:28

I wondered whether his helmet had a visor or not.

To me, "tipped back his helmet" in order to "wiped ... over his face" is interesting.

Anonymous

I guess I imagined it not having a visor, or the visor was already up, but the helmet was covering part of his face, so he had to tip it back a little.

Damkerng T.

A-ha!

Anonymous

Since a lot of his sweat was on his forehead.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

Anyway, that's just what I imagined.

Damkerng T.

22:33

I thank you anyway. :-)

Damkerng T.

23:18

That's weird!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Sacramento must have fallen into a black hole again.

Anonymous

I used to use the weather widget on my Mac, some years back.

Anonymous

It tended to work well, but on occasion I'd check and the weather would be NaN°

Anonymous

You know if the temperature isn't even a number that it's pretty bad outside!

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Hah! NaN!?

0

Q: Descend Into Acrimony

I have a question about the usage of the phrase "descend into acrimony" here: Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, has been accused of highlighting the fact her Labour leadership rival Liz Kendall does not have any children to win votes as the contest descended into acrimony. Acco...

grammar meaning usage

> But the meeting soon descended into acrimony, with the French Ambassador storming out of the room.

> --Hard Choices by Hillary Rodham Clinton, pg. 307.

Anonymous

23:35

Oh, meatie.

Anonymous

The answer is still no.

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