Language Overflow

tchrist

17:12

You know, I’m wondering whether teaching learners detailed phonetics is such a good idea after all. Maybe they should only learn phonemics.

0

A: Not fully pronounced oʊ (ō) sound in some words

In North America (and also Scotland, amongst other places), the off-glides in both /eɪ/ and /oʊ/ are known to be realized as monophthongs in many speakers and environments: just [e] and [o] alone suffice. That’s what makes it a “long e” or “long o” to them, not whether it has a glide. This is no...

Damkerng T.

It could be useful, I think it's likely very useful, if it's taught properly.

Properly as in the right way; it doesn't have to be very technically precise.

Hmm... I think the OP is looking for the schwa.

tchrist

@DamkerngT. Oh?

Damkerng T.

> ... don't ... "cut in half." ... So, to me, most of the time the long o sounds more like "o" or maybe "ə" in the words ...

tchrist

Ok, I need to put my comment in my answer.

The thing is, the vowel in dough is not the vowel in don’t.

Damkerng T.

nods -- It's hard to be sure because we don't hear exactly the same utterance the OP've heard.

tchrist

17:24

It's true most Romance speakers needs to be taught that a vowel at the end of a word in English always has a glide fall-off, just as most English speakers have to be taught that in Romance, unless it is written, this not happen.

Damkerng T.

But I guess it's fair to assume that some of the examples the OP was thinking of are really schwas in unstressed syllables.

tchrist

In English, you cannot say "no say" without both those getting a glide at the end.

Damkerng T.

nods

Fantasier

I think phonemics suffices for learners (I actually had very little phonemics/phonetics education before I started university), but it seems to me the OP is interested in this for another reason that's not "just learning English?" (Maybe they have particular interest in English linguistics?)

Damkerng T.

It looks to me more like he(?) wants to verify what he thinks he's really heard.

tchrist

17:30

Edited.

I feel like his question needs phonemic slashes and/or phonetic brackets around parts of it.

StoneyB

@tchrist It's probably too technical to be worth noting in your post, but in "don't" the glottal stop doesn't literally replace the final /t/: it's ordinarily coarticulated with the /t/, and the /t/ is simply omitted, leaving the glottal stop there by itself.

tchrist

@StoneyB There's a diacritic for no audible release, but not for no audible onset. :)

StoneyB

!

tchrist

Because their teachers are trying trying to teach what they are calling long-short contrasts, natives are taught that mate and met are mēt and mĕt, not that they are IPA met and mɛt with a funny-lookin e in it. And certainly they are never taught about meɪt with a diphthong in it.

They don't need to be taught about glides because they're native speakers and therefore apply them naturally.

@StoneyB Isn't that a click?

Fantasier

ǂ !

StoneyB

17:48

@tchrist This [!] is a click. This ‹!› is a point indicative of affective surge.

tchrist

Oh, ok.

StoneyB

There! After n hours of labour I have reduced the number of QQ tagged grammar for which I have supplied AA to 500.

tchrist

Well Done! Were they tagged with just grammar and nothing else previously?

StoneyB

@tchrist Probably two thirds of them had other tags, which were mostly just as irrelevant.

tchrist

Yeah. Someone who doesn't know the language won't know the right tags.

StoneyB

18:03

Most people who do know the language don't know the right tags either. Maybe ten percent of the time I didn't know the right tags, but I made things up.

Is there a device for summoning only questions single-tagged grammar? Or do I have to go learn SQL?

tchrist

Yes and no.

Thank God.

While I go fetching that, cast a gander here: data.stackexchange.com/ell/query/370231/…

@StoneyB This is what you want.

Well, it's the start.

That display could be more useful.

I often like to know more about the posts than the post links alone, so that I can click on the various columns and get different sorts.

StoneyB

@tchrist That seems to say that I've edited 163 Questions to which I also provided Answers?

Life was much easier in dBase.

tchrist

18:42

@StoneyB Within 12 hours of doing so, in fact.

StoneyB

Good for me! (But I'm now discovering I should have done about 2,000 more).

tchrist

I know the feeling.

iamRR

Can I connect to any Hindi native speaker ?

Damkerng T.

@StoneyB On the behalf of the community, I'd like to thank you for the great effort!

tchrist

@iamRR Seems like a personal thing. :)

StoneyB

19:05

@DamkerngT. I'm just getting started!

iamRR

No. Not as such. Just to clarify some Hindi grammar rules

Damkerng T.

@StoneyB Ah! The quest continues!

StoneyB

@tchrist You've done proportionally more than twice as many as I have.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

19:30

@Man_From_India you may need to have some words with @iamRR.

Damkerng T.

0

A: "It is almost the reverse that is true" - Weird?

It sounds awkward. This is more natural: Once American films looked slick and commercial compared to European imports, however now the reverse is almost always true.

An interesting post, by someone who has already spent two years in an English speaking country.

Oh, it's the UK.

Does UK always mean Britain?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

It could also mean Unidentified Kangaroos.

Damkerng T.

Heh!

0

Q: Why is it offensive to ask someone: "are you gay?"

I just don't get it, maybe it depends of the context or maybe I just don't understand the sense of the language but I have asked more than one person and they have told me that it's not right to ask such question?!

word-usage

Hmm... I wonder if it's really about English.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Fanta that "just because people don't know other tags let a bad tag remain" is flawed. It's like saying "let them have rotten apples since they can't find good ones". Good is better than nothing, and nothing is better than bad. — inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M 13 mins ago

Damkerng T.

Is there any language that a common translation of "Are you gay?" isn't offensive in the slightest?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

19:35

@athlonusm And unfortunately, 1) bad tags have a history of getting applied more and more to questions on ELL (e.g. "word") and 2) A lot of learners only apply the closest tag they can find. I've seen numerous questions tagged with grammar in which the OP clearly stated they were looking for usage, meaning etc. So the thing that learners can't use other tags isn't a thing. Enough is enough, and if we want to clean up our tagging system we have to start by this tag. — inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M 10 mins ago

@DamkerngT. A language in which the notion doesn't exist.

@Fanta (•_•)=ε/̵͇̿̿/'̿'̿ ̿

Fantasier

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I don't think you're getting my point. I'm not saying let it remain as a bad tag; I'm saying redefine it, not delete it. I have proposed how to solve the bad points about it. It will be no longer a bad tag when you've improved it. Also, "nothing is better than bad" can't be applied here, because we can't have nothing. There must be something there. And if defined clearly and used correctly, grammar is not even bad.

I'm OK with the downvotes, but I would appreciate it if people give some real explanations for those.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Fantasier "Defined clearly and used correctly"? Really?

Fantasier

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Yes. Did you read my answer?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Fantasier Downvotes on meta mean disagreement, nothing else.

@Fantasier Yes. How will you define it? How can you make sure people read tag wikis?

Fantasier

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Yeah, but the explanations for them are encouraged (although not necessary).

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

19:38

@Fantasier My downvote is self-explained. :)

Fantasier

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M If you want to put it that way, then so be it. I'm just whining anyway.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@StoneyB I have a query for that.

Damkerng T.

Frankly, after seeing some of our results returned by Google, I think "grammar" is not that bad.

But whatever we agree upon, I'd accept it.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. Don't let it fool you.

A tag representative of a site is never good.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M You've seen a couple of screenshots I posted here, right?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

19:40

So we have "density-functional-theory" which is a subset of "quantum-chemistry", fine.

Fantasier

> We may also place an ad that links to the wiki, or a meta post specifically written for learners telling in simple language how the tag should be used. The post can even contain guidelines for other confusable tags as well.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Fantasier Look, a querent that doesn't even take a 2-minute tour won't read all that stuff.

Fantasier

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M ^

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Grammar has too many subsets to be useful itself.

Fantasier

Ahh, I don't want to go through the many arguments I have said before.

So it'd be appreciated if you could go back and read my arguments with Jimsug.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

19:41

@Dam @Fanta, I dare you to give me a question in which grammar can be the only tag, and the topic isn't covered by any subset tags.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Why does it have to be the only tag?

And why do we have to eliminate it like a plague?

Fantasier

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I dare you to give me a question in which nouns is the only tag, and the topic isn't covered by any subset tags.

^ Change that to verbs, subjects or many of other existing tags.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. A good tag should be able to stand as the only tag on a question.

@Fantasier I never said those are good tags.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I wonder if that's really the right way to think of tags, but I accept that it's SE's custom.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

> Episode 1 - The Big Boss

Fantasier

19:43

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M So you're going to remove every tag like those right?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. It's the right way to think of SE tags.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Which may or may not be the right way for language learning sites, imho.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Fantasier For a perfect tag system, yes. However, I'm not sure how many people will agree with me because you guys don't trust my meta experience.

Damkerng T.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I'm not representative of ELL.

Fantasier

19:45

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I think if we go into that direction, we're going to end up with a huge load of technical tags most learners haven't the faintest idea what they are.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. I don't see many conflicts rising because of the context.

Damkerng T.

I'm not sure if ELL looks friendly enough for learners, judging from the screenshot above.

Fantasier

And we'll end up being either Advanced English Learner's Stack or English Linguistics Stack.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Fantasier That's the thing. The tags we create should be simple and correct at the same time.

Fantasier

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Haha. How is grammar incorrect?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

19:46

@Fantasier Grammar isn't incorrect, RE: question 10 of my test. It's too broad.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I think you're forcing yourself to think that for each question, there must be only one good tag.

Fantasier

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Broad is good. (In this case, anyway)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. No, those were just measures of knowing whether a tag is good or not, in a simpler way.

I believe ideally there should be 5 tags on a question.

5 useful tags.

And SE believes the tags have no nesting, so!

@Fantasier Um, no.

Fantasier

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Um, yes. I beg to disagree

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Have you tried Pets.SE before?

Fantasier

19:48

Do I have to quote my answer again?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Fantasier Gimme your reasons again . . . And please don't tell me "but the poor souls can't find tags"

Damkerng T.

(If you haven't, it'd be great, because we could use it as a thought experiment.)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. If you want us to go back in time, I'm fine with a community consensus on nested tagging.

Damkerng T.

Go back in time what?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

But there's a problem, and it's that language has so many nests.

Damkerng T.

19:49

I don't understand the go back in time thing, how is it related to our discussion?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. ELL is 2 years in already. That's something one decides in the private beta.

That's what I meant.

Damkerng T.

So you're saying that Pets.SE is not a good example?

Fantasier

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Why can't the poor souls (people who know what they are asking is about grammar, but don't know the sub-set) can't find tags work as an argument?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

The community can sometimes override the norms if they wish, but that hardly ever happens this much into public beta.

Damkerng T.

Isn't it weird if I go to Pets.SE and find that questions about cats don't have cats?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

19:52

@Fantasier Because the rationale for adding "grammar" is seldom "because I didn't find another tag".

It's "because I didn't go and look for another tag".

Fantasier

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M You're getting it wrong.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Enlighten me please.

Fantasier

Read again. It's not "I can't find another tag." It is "I don't even know what else to tag correctly. I know from what I learnt this is about grammar, but what the heck are these aspects and subject-verb-agreement stuffs? Is it right if I tag them? Is it wrong? Oh dang now the grammar tag is gone what can I do I can't post a question without a tag!" Something like that.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Thing is, they don't know many linguistic expressions you think we'll use in tags if there weren't grammar (Heck, I don't either) but instead of going and looking for tags, they only apply grammar to bypass "you must add a tag" error.

Fantasier

The emphasis is that these people KNOW WHEN TO TAG GRAMMAR but not WHAT SUBSET TAGS OF GRAMMAR to tag.

I hate to use caps on the net, but there I did anyway.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

19:55

@Fantasier They know. They don't when they should.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M If even you can't make sense of our tags, who can understand our tags?

Fantasier

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M How do you know they know?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Fantasier Because I've seen questions tagged "grammar" with "meaning of X" as their title.

So why didn't they tag as "meaning"?

Fantasier

Those are one group of people. You can't argue from that and apply it to the whole.

I can say I've seen questions tagged "meaning" but asking about grammar. That doesn't really support anything.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. Look! I never said we should use contrastive-focus-reduplication. I never said grammar is simplistic or anything. I just said "grammar" is too broad. It's unrelated to its understandability.

@Fantasier Those are one group of people misusing the tag, and there's no one to edit their questions for tags, so why shouldn't we stop them.

Damkerng T.

19:57

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M But you want to remove grammar and replace it with something else.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Fantasier That supports that "meaning" is a bad tag either.

Fantasier

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M So nobody is willing to edit out the incorrect tags, so just delete those tags so that we don't have to work?

Damkerng T.

Wouldn't that something else look like contrastive-focus-reduplication?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. Not replacing, we have many many tags that cover all of the grammar questions here. If we don't, we can always add one.

@Fantasier You should fight with a wart.

Fantasier

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M lol

Damkerng T.

19:59

Like time-expressions?

Fantasier

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M But being broad is precisely why it is understandable by learners.

Damkerng T.

(Which is a real example in the screenshot above.)

What is "time expressions"?

Fantasier

If the tags are solely for Answerers, and they are the ones who put the tags up, and the ones who mainly use the tags. I wouldn't object at all.

But the askers are the taggers.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I still haven't seen a good argument from your side guys. When I say "grammar" is bad, you say "so tag X is good?" When I say it's broad, you say "but it's understandable". A tag can be understandable but not broad.

Like, meaning-in-context. It could be applied better and needs some polishing, but it's good for a start.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M By eradicating grammar you're forcing our users to use uncommon tag names, time-expressions is just one real example.

Fantasier

20:02

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M A tag can be understandable but not broad. But nothing replaces grammar. Nothing broad and understandable can cover the same category.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

There is a point to which we should coddle askers. Coddling too much hurts quality.

Fantasier

That's what I call transforming ELL into Advanced English Learner.SE.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

And what strikes me as odd is, adding something to the policy faces "but they're poor poor askers" yet we end up answering them with not understandable answers.

Fantasier

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M That is another problem I brought up. Although as snail pointed out, we can have several kinds of answers.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

What percent of your answers do you think the asker has understood perfectly?

I doubt it'll be more than 25% for anyone with more than 10 answers.

Fantasier

20:04

I'm a fan of simple answers.

And that's actually as irrelevant to this argument as my saying "so tag X is good?"

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Yet they don't happen, because this is reality.

And somehow surprisingly, posters' cooperation with meta is low on ELL.

@Fantasier That's an example, not an argument.

Fantasier

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M An example of what?

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M We already can't keep up with the questions, can we?

StoneyB

The question I keep asking is what use does grammar serve -- beyond, clearly, providing questioners a default category which others may refine later?

2

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. Because, again, we're not a whole.

@StoneyB It serves nothing more than untagged.

So

Fantasier

20:07

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M At the moment, yes. It can be more than that, though.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Fantasier But editors aren't editing, and worse than that, not teaching and thus, the impact of the decisions on meta keeps fading and fading.

Damkerng T.

I think we really need a tagging manual.

Fantasier

From the start, I've never said we shouldn't do anything about it. We should. But the thing to do is not remove it, in my opinion.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Meta.ELL had to fight with word thrice.

StoneyB

@Fantasier Give me an example of a restrictive definition of grammar which would serve either my need, or yours, or a hypothetical user's.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

20:09

@Fantasier Refining it will mean removing it from 4400 questions. Not much different from removing, eh? And the tag wiki isn't going to be read by people who most need to read it, so that would also fail.

Fantasier

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M No, a lot of current questions can still have the tag even when we redefine it. You're exaggerating.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Guys, let me repeat:

8 mins ago, by inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

There is a point to which we should coddle askers. Coddling too much hurts quality.

@Fantasier Example?

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M What does that mean?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

What do you mean what does that mean?

Damkerng T.

I think the two sentences contradict each other somewhat.

Fantasier

20:11

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Can you go up and look at my talk with Jimsug? Or wait a moment because I'm replying Mr Stoney.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Fantasier Where? At Cabin?

Fantasier

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Here. Above.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

BTW @Stoney here's something for you: data.stackexchange.com/ell/query/368033/…

StoneyB

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M ty - useful

Fantasier

@StoneyB Tag grammar when you want to ask about the structures and units inside a sentence, and how they change forms.

Less than ideal, but I've tried.

StoneyB

20:16

@Fantasier While you're collecting your thoughts: I've just finished retagging about 100 questions tagged grammar which I had answered. Of those I was tempted to retain the grammar tag on exactly one, where I explicitly addressed the useful limit of formal grammar in the case of an idiomatic expression.

Damkerng T.

I think we're retagging questions for our own use.

Fantasier

As I said, if we as a community really think it's impossible to define grammar clearly, then let's remove it.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. That's what tags are for. For use.

Fantasier

I'm obviously not the most capable.

Damkerng T.

Which is okay, I think. Our users may not use the tags anyway.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M So, the bottom line of our consensus is, tags are for answerers, I think.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

20:18

@Fanta simply put: No matter how well we redefine grammar, people are going to mistag it just because they are doing now. It's the tag's name, not its definition, that is the main culprit.

@DamkerngT. Tags are for anyone who wants to do searches.

Damkerng T.

Hmm... I wonder if our new set of tags will really improve the situation.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. Improve what situation? Searchability, yes.

StoneyB

@Fantasier That's a start (limiting 'grammar' to 'morphology'). But it seems to me that if if the question is narrow enough to be acceptable here, it's going to have to address some much narrower category of grammatical usage -- and that is what should be the primary tag. ... Let visitors tag grammar, but go back and change it to a category which reflects the actual question.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M That's exactly what I doubt.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

What are tags good for when I will never contain any of the current tags in any of my searches on ELL?

Fantasier

20:21

@StoneyB Yes :-) I'd prefer that to killing grammar completely.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

Fantasier

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M What are searches good for if you can't find questions based on what you know (like grammar)?

I'd be so surprised to find out that an English learning site doesn't have grammar as a category--of anything.

(Not to mean that it is bad; but it is unusual indeed)

StoneyB

Well, but a search which returns four-thousand-some-odd results is pretty useless.

Damkerng T.

An example: the last question I tried to find a duplicate of asked about: "I want to ask a question and get "James Monroe was the fifth President of the United State" as the answer" -- how can I use a tag to search for it?

Fantasier

It's half past three in the morning here. I need to go to sleep.

Damkerng T.

20:24

nods -- Have a good sleep.

Fantasier

Good night everyone!

StoneyB

I tagged one of those today, and plan to go and find others: ordinality. It won't do our questioners any good, but it would help you.

Damkerng T.

G'night!

StoneyB

Sleep tight @Fantasier!

Fantasier

If anyone wants to ask anything or leave me any message, please do. Be merciful, though, because I'm all alone on this side (sort of, anyway)

Damkerng T.

20:26

@StoneyB It could be only useful if I know that we have ordinality for this purpose.

And I have no idea what ordinality would cover.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Something tells me I just should choose the line of apathy; my meta post should be one of the other 513 meta posts that were never practically useful and were used to get some "nods"; and I'm really getting tired of telling you that redefining a tag with so many mistags will fail; and I really like to leave it be so that you guys would see how bad leaving it will fail. Heck, I have an exam tomorrow and I should be studying that.

"Grammar" is a bad tag. We have to kill it. That's all that matters.

So, any more arguments?

StoneyB

Perhaps of attacking the symptom, overblown monster tags, we should start at the bottom. Find or invent the narrowest tags, create adequate tag-wikis for them, then track down and retag all the questions that involve them. That puts each tag's utility in the hands of somebody who's interested in it; it would actually be fun to be productive; and eventually we'd reduce the problem to manageable dimensions.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Dam @Fanta trust me. I know what I'm doing. I've read about tagging experiences here. I've seen why some ideas good on paper didn't work in practice, and vice versa.

Damkerng T.

IMHO, grammar is better than sentence.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@StoneyB Actually, yeah, that should be what we're doing next.

Damkerng T.

20:33

We choose to kill grammar simply because too many people (askers) seem to use it as their default tag, the way I see it.

To be clear, I'm neither for nor against doing anything with the tag.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Then, we'll have a TRE.

@DamkerngT. We choose to kill grammar because no other action about a frequently used but very redundant tag would be useful.

StoneyB

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Whether grammar gets killed or not, you've done a Very Good Thing by raising the question. It's got me and others operationally conscious of tagging. That's a major achievement, and you should be proud of it.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

You can't redefine "grammar" is the querent's head.

@StoneyB Yeah . . . The only thing that gets me weary is the special resistance here because "askers can't doez dat!".

StoneyB

No; but you can make grammar obsolete: you can turn it into a flag that says "RETAG ME! RETAG ME!"

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Maybe we shouldn't blacklist it but retag any new questions that come with it.

StoneyB

20:38

Perzackly!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

So, enough with the talking, we need to do something.

Approaching the next phase: Find tags we should replace grammar with.

And that's where the query comes in play.

StoneyB

That's a Q by Q endeavour. My search is 'user:me [grammar]'; I just sort on Newest and start at the top.

Damkerng T.

At the moment, I have 440 tabs on this window, and that means the questions on my tabs still haven't been answered (and I don't know the correct answer), or I think something is not quite right about existing answers.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Well, I'm gonna take a look at the questions with only grammar.

Guys are you sure we can pull all of the needed tags off by ourselves?

Damkerng T.

How about this one?

1

Q: Wish you never + gerund or verb?

Which is true and please explain why? Happy birthday. Wish you never grow up ! Happy birthday. Wish you never growing up !

grammar verb gerund

I wonder if verb and gerund are the right tags.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

20:43

Gerund seems legit.

Damkerng T.

I'm not sure if it's really a gerund.

I'm not sure if the example is even a good sentence, either.

Or even the meaning the OP really wants to convey in the sentence.

Is it "Happy birthday. Wish you were a Peter Pan!" or "Happy birthday. Wish you had never grown up this fast!" or something else?

StoneyB

Ayup. But it's not really a 'gerund' question, it's a licensing question, with an ancillary misuse of wish; it should be Hope you never grow up!

Damkerng T.

nods -- That's why tagging is always a difficult task for me.

Another style of tagging could tag it with wish or wish-common-errors.

StoneyB

The other side of grammar is lexical meaning -- and I don't know how you get useful tags for that short of a distinct tag for each word. But then in theory that should be closed as a dictionary question ...

Tag + tag-wiki for all words would in effect be a learner's dictionary.

And now we're edging over into what the Mothership is talking about doing with Documentation.

Damkerng T.

I think most grammar books (like PEU) cover only a few hundred function words (wish and hope are of course a couple of them).

We could do lexical tags for these function words, if we want to. Function word tags have a big advantage in that everyone knows what each of them is about.

StoneyB

20:56

You wanta do a tag-wiki on, say "on"?!!

Damkerng T.

We already have prepositions!

(with lots of questions, I think)

StoneyB

More today than we did yesterday; I put that on at least a dozen.

Damkerng T.

I meant only those function words that we don't have clear names used by most grammar books.

whether is another good candidate.

Oh, come to think of it on is not really a bad idea!

If I'm not mistaken, the search engine ignores some function words in our searches. Perhaps on is one of them.

In a way, I think we can think of prepositions the same way we can think of grammar.

Let me try searching for "in or on" to see how our search engine behaves.

StoneyB

OED 1, which LeP constantly whines is too 'terse', has ten columns on on.

Damkerng T.

Oh, it seems to work well enough!

I thought it would strip out on, or, in before the search.

@StoneyB I wonder how he would define 'terse'. :-)

StoneyB

21:03

And what could we say about on in the scope of a tag-wiki that wouldn't be found in a reasonably mature dictionary?

Damkerng T.

Indeed! -- I just thought that we could use it in our search string, like tag:on +tag:in, but it seems like we don't have to do that.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

So, do we want a "what additional tags do we need to cover grammar?" meta post?

StoneyB

we have 217 QQ involving wish and 307 involving hope

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

And I believe half of them are dupes of the other half?

Damkerng T.

@StoneyB That's quite a lot!

StoneyB

21:09

But only 28 & 28 with wish*/*hope in the title.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Only two are marked as duplicates.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Yeah well, ELL needs more of those votes.

Damkerng T.

0

Q: How to convert a statement about the Xth president of the US into a question with X as the answer

John Monroe was the fifth president of the United States. The sentence mentioned here is the concept. If our answer is only the word "fifth", what would be the interrogation sentence for it?

questions interrogative ordinal

Ah, we have that question again!

StoneyB

I just flagged it -- same guy reposting after being dupeclosed.

Damkerng T.

I think they're the same user; one posted the old question unregistered, the other user posted the new question after registration.

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