Language Overflow

nods -- I think Jasper was right.

Anonymous

8:22 AM

Completive done in AAVE and Southern vernacular AmE is typically followed by a past participle. The A Handbook of Varieties of English says "This auxiliary done in a verb phrase may aspectually mark a completed action or event, and may also designate intensity." (p.235) and gives the following examples: "He done asked her to marry him" "I done told you to take your shoes off before walkin' on that carpet". — snailboat Sep 14 '14 at 12:23

Anonymous

I wrote "The A Handbook of Varieties of English"!

Anonymous

I must have meant to write something like "The second volume of A Handbook of Varieties of English".

Anonymous

I wish I could go back in time and read my mind.

Anonymous

Sometimes I write the weirdest things and I can't figure out what was going through my head.

Anonymous

I wonder how I ended up with that error.

11:26 AM

yesterday, by Damkerng T.

So I think, this the article's translation (which was probably done by the author herself) intends to mean:

You're not alone. :D

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. This this the article is a lot like that the article! ;-)

Hehe!

Hey, remember that article about lazy Australian English?

I made a drinking game based on it: blog.jimsug.com/2015/11/02/…

Also there's some playful satire mixed in. Well, perhaps playful isn't the right word.

A drinking game?

Anonymous

@jimsug Mark Liberman wrote: "Mr. Frenkel seems to be serious, but if so, the Speculative Grammarian has lost a promising talent." (LL)

11:35 AM

But my article can get you dangerously drunk and hence able to comprehend drunk Australian English :P

Anonymous

So that's how it works!

Anonymous

My first time working with Australians, it took me about a day of constant exposure for the accent to click. Before it clicked for me, I had trouble understanding them. But one day later, it was hard to imagine I'd ever had a problem.

Anonymous

That was when I was a teenager.

It doesn't take long. Or too many drinks.

Anonymous

I've never had alcohol, so I probably wouldn't need very many.

11:41 AM

It depends on a lot of things.

Anonymous

I usually don't need high doses of medicine.

Anonymous

I don't know if my alcohol metabolism would be similar or not.

Hmm.

Anonymous

One of my friends has what I'd like to call an iron liver (and I don't mean she has hemochromatosis!)

Anonymous

Most medication just doesn't affect her much. Alcohol doesn't either.

11:45 AM

@jimsug Perhaps add another R skill: dRinking. :P

Q: Subject, Verb Object (and so forth) sentence analysis. In particluar: What's the Verb here?

Ha.

Anonymous

dRinking: the fourth 'R' and the fourth macronutrient!

Araucaria

11:59 AM

Bounty offered on the dark side ...

1

I need help! Could you please look at this sentence: When I obtained a credit card, I began spending money recklessly. I'm doing basic sentence patterns, and I don't know how to analyse this part: began spending money. Is began spending the verb in the sentence or just began without spend...

Don't think it's going to get an answer over there. Needs someone who can explain the difference between a Predicator and a verb! (or a part of speech and a syntactic function!!) Hint, hint ...

Nudge, nudge ...

@DamkerngT., @snailboat, @StoneyB

@jimsug?

So have a think guys! Got to rush. Have to teach .. :( Actually, that should be a :)

Anonymous

Have a good day!

still drunken (alcohol-less) -- Have fun teaching!

1:19 PM

> Here's How You Know You're With the Person You Should Really Be With

> So what's really the right amount of time to start talking about a vacation? When you're ready to get to know the person you're dating for who they really are.

> Someone you can be boring — but not bored — with: Of the 20- and 30-somethings Mic spoke to, nearly all agreed that there isn't a set timeline for when a vacation is right. Rather, you go when you feel ready, and that readiness is telling about the relationship itself.

^I think that's a strange use of "be boring with".

Perhaps they meant "Someone you can be bored together, but not bored with".

Anonymous

I think the original sounds okay.

Anonymous

For your version, maybe you should add with to the left side? "Someone you can be bored together with, but not bored with"

Anonymous

Although I'd personally just stick with the original

1:34 PM

@snailboat But what would it mean, "to be boring with someone"?

Being in a boring situation?

Anonymous

You're with them, and you're being boring. At the same time :-)

Anonymous

It has a different grammatical structure.

Anonymous

In bored with X, the with-PP is a complement of bored.

Anonymous

But in the other phrase, the with-phrase is just an adjunct.

Oh, I think I get it. They meant that our date can accept us when we make ourselves boring at times during a vacation.

Anonymous

1:40 PM

Yeah, something along those lines. I mean, I'm hoping the rest of the article makes it clear what specifically they meant.

Anonymous

I haven't read it :-)

That sense didn't make much sense to me. And the rest of the article doesn't add anything much, I think.

Anonymous

I just skimmed it. It looks that way!

Anonymous

Well, I can't say it holds any deep meaning for me, but maybe someone else might see it and think, "Yeah! I know what you mean! That's exactly right!" :-)

Hehe!

Anonymous

1:45 PM

By the way, the preposition that goes with bored is changing.

Anonymous

In recent years, younger speakers have started saying bored of instead of bored with.

I wonder. What is the force behind the change? I mean, someone must've started it before it became widespread.

Anonymous

That's likely. These changes tend to happen by analogy, and then they spread from speaker to speaker.

Anonymous

Tired of X, bored of X.

Anonymous

On purpose, on accident.

1:53 PM

I don't know why I feel weird every time I hear an American /r/ in Thai speech when the speaker mentions an English word or name. (I just heard an announcement about a rerun of "I Am Number Four", and the /r/ was rather standing out.)

Anonymous

Oh really?

I think it'd be less weird if they pronounce the word in an American accent, not Thai accent.

Yes.

Anonymous

So they pronounced it with a Thai accent overall, but with an American English /r/ sound?

I think it didn't fit the rest of the way he pronounced it.

@snailboat Exactly!

Anonymous

Ahh

Anonymous

1:55 PM

There's the question of whether the speaker conceptualizes it as using an English word or using a Thai word borrowed from English, too.

Anonymous

It's common in many languages for speakers to act like loanwords still belong to their source language.

Anonymous

I think that has an effect on how people choose to pronounce things, and how people feel like they should pronounce things.

Anonymous

The words being pronounced were I Am Number Four, right? So it was actually English, and not loaned into Thai?

@snailboat nods -- In any case, the pronunciation of some English words of my generations could sound weird to previous generation as well.

@snailboat Yes.

I pronounce "gas" in Thai with an /s/ sound. Previous generations wouldn't use the /s/ sound, and simply pronounce it "gat" (long vowel).

And yet I pronounce "football" or "ball" in Thai with an /n/, not an /l/.

Anonymous

Oh, I see! Wide-scale borrowing in Japanese has led to a number of phonotactic changes and some phonemicization (turning allophones into full-fledged phonemes).

Anonymous

2:00 PM

Is /s/ in coda position in Thai innovative?

Anonymous

I'm wondering if the situation with Thai phonotactics is similar to Japanese.

I think in the case of I Am Number Four, the problem was that he pronounced /r/ but he stressed the wrong syllable of Number, which is okay in Thai, but it sounded weird with AmE /r/.

Anonymous

Oh! I see.

Anonymous

I guess it's difficult to learn syllable stress.

@snailboat Hmm... I think we only use such an /s/ only in loanwords, and only some of us would use it.

Anonymous

2:03 PM

In certain environments or with certain methods.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. A-ha!

Anonymous

The innovative sequences I was talking about in Japanese are almost exclusively in loanwords.

@snailboat And they'd be more common among the younger generations, I think, if the situation is like in the Thai language.

Anonymous

Yes! Although these changes have been going on for quite some time, so some of them are now firmly entrenched.

Anonymous

For example, [ti] used to be an illegal sequence. /ti/ was always [cɕi], never [ti].

Anonymous

2:08 PM

But [ti] started popping up in loanwords, and people started saying it, and today all but the oldest speakers have words with both [ti] and [cɕi].

Interesting.

Anonymous

So now there's a contrast there where there wasn't before.

Another phoneme that may be worth looking for in Thai is /v/.

Anonymous

People invented new ways to use kana to represent sounds like these. ティ is "ti" while チ is "chi". トゥ is "tu" while ツ is "tsu".

Anonymous

Oh!

Anonymous

2:10 PM

We can compare to Japanese there, too.

Oh, and probably "th" too. /v/ and the two "th"s do not exist in Thai. But I think we can expect more and more younger people pronounce them in Thai.

Anonymous

But I want to say first that almost all the changes to the Japanese phonemic system are the result of sounds Japanese already had, just appearing in new positions. So Japanese may be analyzed as having 5 more phonemes now, but they were sounds Japanese speakers already made as allophones 150 years ago.

Anonymous

/v/ is something different.

Anonymous

Most Japanese speakers don't have /v/ today. Only some trendy young speakers do.

Anonymous

Most just say /b/ instead.

2:12 PM

I like the way you put it as "trendy". :-)

Anonymous

But although /v/ is still a foreignism today, it may succeed in becoming a sound of Japanese in the next 50 years.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. That's just my impression of the sort of people who say [v] :-)

@snailboat It's /f/ over here.

Hmm... wait. Perhaps /w/ most of the time.

Anonymous

Oh, I see!

Anonymous

Is /f/ a common sound in Thai, by the way?

2:14 PM

I think /v/ becomes /w/ in the onset position, and either /b/ or /f/ for coda.

@snailboat Yes. It's quite a common sound. :D

Anonymous

Japanese speakers invented a way to represent 'v' with kana.

Anonymous

ヴァ・ヴィ・ヴ・ヴェ・ヴォ 'va vi vu ve vo'

Anonymous

But I didn't write /v/ just now because there is no /v/ phoneme.

Anonymous

Even though speakers often indicate a 'v' in spelling this way, all it tells you is that it was a v in the original language. They pronounce it /b/. So

Anonymous

ヴァイオリン and バイオリン are both spellings of the same word with the same pronunciation.

Anonymous

2:17 PM

@DamkerngT. Oh I see! Do you have any sounds that are uncommon?

@snailboat Hmm... I don't know. Do we have any uncommon sound? Hmm... that's a tough question!

Anonymous

cmloegcmluin.wordpress.com/2012/11/10/…

I think we have some uncommon syllables (sounds), and a less common tone, but uncommon phonemes... maybe we don't have one.

Oh, the schwa!

Anonymous

Yep! :-)

Thai has some uncommon vowels too. (But not the pure vowel ones, I think.)

I don't know what the most common Thai vowel is!

Anonymous

2:21 PM

I remember when I was in grade school and a friend asked me what the most common vowel in English was. I guessed 'e', because at the time I thought vowel referred only to letters, and they said 'schwa' was the right answer! I was so confused! :-)

Oh, wait! Perhaps this one, the one we don't think of as a vowel. The one that we simply call "half an /a/". :-)

It's sort of like an undocumented vowel in Thai. :D

Anonymous

Oh!

Anonymous

What does that mean? :-)

Well, I think the concept of short-long vowels is common in most languages, right?

Anonymous

Sure.

2:23 PM

We do have such a concept in Thai. But!

Our /a/ sounds are special. We do have a short /a/, a long /a/, and...

Anonymous

Even shorter /a/!

we also have something we call "half a short /a/", which is I think not documented or counted as a vowel on its own!

Yes!

I think it's kinda like a schwa, but its position on the vowel chart would be at around the position of /a/.

In most dictionaries, this vowel will be transcribed as a short /a/, I think.

Anonymous

Oh, I see

For example, สระอา (meaning, the /a/ vowel, สระ = vowel, อา = /a/) reads "sa-ra-aa". The first "a" in "sa" is the half short "a".

Heh! Google Translate mispronounces สระอา!

Anonymous

Oh no! :-)

Anonymous

2:29 PM

How common is this super short /a/?

Quite!

Anonymous

Oh, I have a silly question.

Anonymous

Do many Thai names have /f/ in them?

It happens in lots of words Thai's borrowed from Pali/Sanskrit.

Anonymous

I was just thinking about it and I couldn't think of any.

Anonymous

2:30 PM

@DamkerngT. Interesting!

@snailboat A lot! For example, ฟ้า (sky), เฟื่องฟ้า (a flower), ฝ้าย (cotton).

Anonymous

Oh, my. Try typing เฟื่องฟ้า into Google Translate.

Anonymous

It romanizes it as Feụ̄̀xngf̂ā and translates it to bougainvillea! :-)

Anonymous

Bougainvillea

Bougainvillea (/ˌbuːɡɨnˈvɪliə/ or /ˌboʊɡɨnˈvɪliə/) is a genus of thorny ornamental vines, bushes, and trees with flower-like spring leaves near its flowers. Different authors accept between four and 18 species in the genus. They are native plants of South America from Brazil west to Peru and south to southern Argentina (Chubut Province). Bougainvillea are also known as buganvilla (Spain), bugambilia (Mexico and Philippines), Napoleón (Honduras), veranera (Colombia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica and Panama), trinitaria (Colombia, Cuba, Panama, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic & Venezuela), Santa...

Anonymous

That's a word I don't know.

2:32 PM

@snailboat Yes, that's เฟื่องฟ้า!

Anonymous

They're beautiful, though!

Anonymous

How do you pronounce เฟื่องฟ้า?

Anonymous

→ upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/…

Hmm... it has a vowel that English doesn't have!

Google Translation pronounces it quite okay.

Anonymous

Oh, good :-)

Anonymous

2:34 PM

Thanks!

@snailboat Wow! It just came up after spinning for so long!

Anonymous

Oh, sorry, maybe it just embeds the full-size image with a small size specified instead of making a thumbnail, so it had to load the whole (very large) image.

How do you feel when you hear the "eu" vowel? Does it sound weird to you?

Anonymous

I'll put an arrow next to it.

Anonymous

That way it won't take up everyone's bandwidth :-)

Anonymous

2:37 PM

@DamkerngT. I like it! :-)

Ah, this sentence could be used to demonstrate the three vowel lengths in Thai: สนุกดีนะ ฮ่าฮ่า. Google Translate transcribed it as "S̄nuk dī na ḥ̀ā ḥ̀ā".

The first syllable of สนุก (S̄nuk), the "sa", is the half short /a/.

The /a/ in "na" is a short /a/.

The /a/ in "ha" is a long /a/.

@snailboat Yay!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Is the vowel [ɤ̃]?

Yes!

It's a diphthong in เฟื่อง (of เฟื่องฟ้า), [ɤ̃] + [a].

I'm not sure which IPA symbol is better for this vowel, between [ɯ] and [ɤ].

Hmm... Perhaps [ɯ] is better for this vowel in เฟื่องฟ้า. (Or other words like คือ, meaning "be"; ปืน, meaning "gun"me, etc.)

So we can use [ɤ] for the vowel in the second syllable of my name, ดำเกิง.

Anonymous

I've been pronouncing your name with English sounds in my head for so long I'll probably forget that!

Anonymous

I need to listen to the clip you recorded again :-)

2:45 PM

[ɤ] is supposed to be the closest Thai vowel to English schwa.

(BTW, Google Translate also pronounces my name correctly. I think its Thai TTS has been improved quite a lot in the last few years.)

Anonymous

Neat! :-)

Anonymous

It says your name means 'flourishing'.

Which is correct!

Araucaria

Thai is too difficult for me to think about today ...

The three main senses of my name are noble, civilized, flourishing.

Anonymous

2:52 PM

The weirdest thing happens, though, when I click the little icon to make it pronounce stuff.

Anonymous

Every time I click it, the rhythm is different. It stretches out one part or another.

@Araucaria Ah, sorry! Good afternoon!

Anonymous

I may have to try it on my other computer.

@snailboat It happens on my PC, too.

I think they use a strange algorithm. If we click the icon the second time, it will "enunciate" the words rather than just "pronouncing" them.

Click it again, it will just pronounce the words plainly on the third time, just like the first time.

So I think it switches between the plain pronunciation, and the careful pronunciation, back and forth.

Anonymous

When I put my earbuds in to listen, the rain sounds like a squirrel eating something.

2:55 PM

Hehe!

The sound of applause can sometimes sound like rain on my TV, too.

Anonymous

That's not surprising.

Anonymous

Applause and rain are both sounds with a very large number of unpredictable transients which are extremely hard to represent with perceptual audio coding

3:12 PM

ell.stackexchange.com/revisions/72339/3

@snailboat You left this as is: "Though the word success is a singular,". Does this mean that "a singular" is kosher?

Anonymous

Um.

Anonymous

No, it just means I don't read very carefully :-)

Ahh

BTW, it's weird that the answer has got +8 votes. I think a good answer to that question at least should try to address why it wasn't "a number game".

I mean, though "a number game" is not quite an idiom, we could assign a meaning to it as well.

(Which wouldn't fit the "success" context.)

Anonymous

A numbers game has one of those new-fangled plural attributive nouns. Like enemies list.

Q: Our minds are extremely potent devices

I remember enemies list!

2

Our minds are extremely potent devices. This is a sentence of a novel. But is mind not a single entity? How can we use minds and devices here, which are showing plural form. Suggestions please. Thank you.

sentence-construction sentence-meaning

I think we have quite a lot of questions that can be boiled down to the way we internalize nouns in English.

When the same noun can be used countably and uncountably, particularly.

And sometimes dictionaries aren't really helpful.

OALD: oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/mind_1?q=mind: 1. [countable, uncountable] the part of a person that makes them able to be aware of things, to think and to feel

Macmillan: macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/american/mind_1: [countable/uncountable] the part of you that thinks, knows, remembers, and feels things

Though this sense is listed as both countable and uncountable in both dictionaries, how can a learn know when they should use which? Or does this mean that it doesn't matter?

Also note that neither of the two dictionaries give any example with "a mind" or "minds" for this sense. It always is the uncountable "mind"; otherwise, it's unclear.

> There were all kinds of thoughts running through my mind.

It's unclear whether "mind" in "my mind" is countable or not.

> His mind was full of the things he had seen that day.

Same for "his mind".

HforHesham

3:44 PM

hi

Hi, @HforHesham!

5:29 PM

@HforHesham Hullo!

6:50 PM

These days I'm missing the main conversation in LO. :(

7:05 PM

Hmm... I was writing an answer to why the tense which is used with “Never” is Present Perfect Tense, and I wrote "I lived here all my life" is incorrect.

Then I paused, and asked myself, "Is it really incorrect?"

So dramatic . . .

I wanted to contrast it with "I've lived here all my life."

Yes, I know.

There are 68 results of "I lived here all" in Google Books.

I'm not sure if it's grammatical or not.

7:08 PM

Some examples are in the narrative past , so it's normal.

> I lived here all my adult life, in this town, in this house. It is full of memories of you children growing up and my husband and our long life together. I'd rather stay here. You know, I've even signed up to volunteer some work at St. Michaela's ...

This one is clearly in the narrative present.

Hmm... wait. Maybe their "now" doesn't include their "adult life".

> “I lived here all this time and have never asked you what your name is.”

Both the past simple and the present perfect in the same present simple sentence!

> “I lived here all my life. I don't even know that preacher man's name, I never seen him before. Makes you wonder where he was last summer when there was no rain, don't it?”

Of course, "I've lived here all" has more results (436 results).

I wanted a sentence in the present perfect that sounds wrong in the simple past. It's strange that I can't come up with one.

(Apart from the difference in meaning.)

Nihilist_Frost

9:35 PM

Does ひ really have a palatal fricative?

9:45 PM

Not that I'm aware of.

10:15 PM

This pernicious doctrine is generally, almost universally, derided under the name Fowler gave it, "elegant variation". — StoneyB 1 hour ago

I guess I saw a result of the elegant variation last week on ELL.

Anonymous

10:48 PM

@Nihilist_Frost Yes.