Language Overflow

Damkerng T.

01:31

@IͶΔ Where can I buy that?!

From this hint:

Look up the Quasi-Serial Verb (QSV) construction, e.g. Constraints on Intransitive Quasi-Serial Verb Constructions in Modern Colloquial English (Pullum 1990). It's been given a number of other labels, such as the go get construction or the go-V construction or the double verb construction. — snailboat yesterday

I found ling.umd.edu//~mkishida/ECO509/Bjorkman.pdf

> The final subject discussed in the paper is the behavior of the go-verb construction in ellipsis, as it bears on the licensing conditions for ellipsis gaps. As shown in (6), passive be can occur in then go-verb construction, but there it loses its normal ability to license the ellipsis of its own complement (8).

> This argues that the licensing conditions on the ellipsis gap cannot be simply that it be c-commanded by an auxiliary verb (as proposed, for example, by Gazdar, Pullum, , and Sag 1982 or Kim 1995). Instead, the site of ellipsis must not have any non-functional verb intervening between it and a c-commanding over Infl (Potsdam 1997).

> (6) a. John will go be arrested.
(6) b. *I'll make John be arrested.
(8) a. Was Alma arrested? Well, she tried to be arrested.
(8) b. Should Alma go be arrested? *No, but she will go be arrested anyway.

I wonder if the evaluations (whether 6b. or 8b. should get a star) are correct.

For me, 6b. is probably ungrammatical, but 8b. is probably grammatical.

(It's strange, to me, that the paper accepts Should Alma go be arrested? but not No, but she will go be arrested anyway.)

Man_From_India

01:58

Yes this seems strange to me too. But in the paper they must have given some explanation. Is there any?

Anonymous

The paper is saying:

Anonymous

> Should Alma go be arrested? No, but she will go be arrested anyway. ← no ellipsis, OK

Anonymous

> Should Alma go be arrested? No, but she will go be ~~arrested~~ anyway. ← post-auxiliary ellipsis, not OK

Anonymous

> Was Alma arrested? Well, she tried to be arrested. ← no ellipsis, OK

Anonymous

> Was Alma arrested? Well, she tried to be ~~arrested~~. ← post-auxiliary ellipsis, also OK

Anonymous

02:08

It's trying to say that be loses its ability to have its complement ellipted in this construction in the passive.

Anonymous

The explanation is on the previous page.

Anonymous

> As shown in (6), passive be can occur in the go-verb construction, but there it loses its normal ability to license the ellipsis of its own complement (8).

Anonymous

In the original, arrested is stricken through in 8b, but when you reproduced the example here you left out the strikethrough.

Anonymous

The star isn't meant to accompany the sentence without strikethrough.

Anonymous

Does that clear it up?

Anonymous

02:14

She also wrote: post.queensu.ca/~bb86/papers/…

Man_From_India

Read the paper. And it seems if we remove that arrasted, it's grammatical. So

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Ah, I see! That overstrike looks like underlining in my browser!

Thanks for the clarification!

Man_From_India

> Should Alma go be arrested? No, but she will go be ~~arrested~~ anyway.

Anonymous

Oh, it must have rendered incorrectly.

Anonymous

Rather, if you remove the arrested, it's ungrammatical.

Anonymous

02:24

Leave it there and it's okay.

Damkerng T.

nods -- So I thought, huh?, 8b. looks okay, why the ungrammatical star?

Anonymous

(That's what the paper claims, I mean.)

Damkerng T.

I agree that it's ungrammatical if arrested is omitted.

Man_From_India

Then the source is wrong 😂

Damkerng T.

It think the problem is on my side. The way it was rendered made me think, why is this underline so high? :-)

(It wasn't high enough for me to think it's a strikethrough, though.)

Anonymous

02:41

Damkerng T.

Oh, there wasn't even any underline or strikethrough on that line.

Anonymous

Damkerng T.

Huh? I reopened the paper again. This time everything looks the way it's intended.

The font looks much nicer than the last time.

Anonymous

Interesting!

Damkerng T.

I guess I probably opened too many tabs. Hehe!

IͶΔ

09:19

IͶΔ

10:43

1

Q: Information about users

I think information about users should contain information about the country they live in and their mother tongue. Speakers of languages without articles tend to ask a lot of questions about articles. If his or her mother tongue is known such questions can be better understood.

We don't have articles in Persian, but I think my intuition works best when it gets to articles. O_o

We don't have articles in Turkish either.

Damkerng T.

@IͶΔ I know.

It's fair to talk about the tendency, though.

IͶΔ

@DamkerngT. \o

Damkerng T.

o/

IͶΔ

How's stuff today?

> Traffic signs and separate driving lanes are merely a suggestion in Beijing. Bikes, pedestrians, cars, buses and mopeds drive when and where they please. Horns are constant, but not in the North American "fuck you, buddy" way, but in the Chinese "you should move, i'm not slowing down" sort of way. Crossing the street is the most stressful part of our day.

Damkerng T.

@IͶΔ I was so surprised when I was in Germany the second time. I felt like I "owned" all the roads and streets!

IͶΔ

10:49

Hah

Damkerng T.

I mean, I think I could cross a street with my eyes closed. All the vehicles would stop until I got through.

IͶΔ

That's why that's Germany.

Damkerng T.

IIRC, the laws over there were quite serious.

nods

IͶΔ

11:59

> A buffet sign reads "ميت بول" ("MeatBall") transliterated into Arabic, with its translation as "Paul is Dead" in English, a literal translation of the text! The employees of the Erbil International Hotel seem not to have been aware that "Meat Ball" was not, in fact, an Arabic or Kurdish word!

LOL it's way funnier if you know both the languages.

LOLROTF

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=11530 -- LOL

This is such a fun day

Damkerng T.

@IͶΔ I think I can imagine that!

@IͶΔ It happens when people trust machines too much!

(And Translate Server?)

IͶΔ

@DamkerngT. Who broke English knew would it be so fun?

Damkerng T.

:D

CowperKettle

@IͶΔ I don't get it. Is "meat ball" in Arabic "Paul is dead"? O_o

IͶΔ

@CowperKettle They transliterated "meatball" to Arabic. Then they translated that into English as if it was something Arabic.

CowperKettle

12:14

Ah. "Meat ball" sounds like "Paul is dead" to Arabs

IͶΔ

The British pronunciation, yes.

And "Mayta", not "meat".

twitter.com/gourev/status/430917040464220160/photo/1

CowperKettle

Good afternoon, @DamkerngT.!

IͶΔ

Good afternoon, @DamkerngT.!

Damkerng T.

Good evening!

CowperKettle

@IͶΔ That means "Ice cream in assortment" (meaning, a variety of different flavors) in Russian, but they abridged that to "in ass". (0:

IͶΔ

12:17

CowperKettle

"в ассортименте" (in assortment) is kind of a stock phrase in Russian meaning "all kinds of something"

IͶΔ

And that's when you translate a name. ^^

CowperKettle

(0:

IͶΔ

Holy crap:

Oh hey, this one's philosophical @Dam:

CowperKettle

(0:

IͶΔ

12:19

Maybe @Man can tell us what it means?

CC @Dam

Damkerng T.

I think menu translation is one of the most difficult translation tasks.

But a description of a dish would be nice.

IͶΔ

Esp. with Google Mistranslate

@DamkerngT. Now what are those foods really?

Damkerng T.

Two squid dishes. The rest are crab dishes.

IͶΔ

Is the first one "steamed crab with lemons"?

I mean the second one.

The second crab one, dammit

Damkerng T.

Oh, no, not lemons. I think it's called basil. -- checking...

Yes, basil.

IͶΔ

12:27

Thai fun language is.

Damkerng T.

Ah, yes, the second crab dish is steamed crab in lemon.

IͶΔ

MAR funned Thai

Damkerng T.

Lemonade? Not sure. Lemonade is probably not the best word for it.

IͶΔ

Indeed menus hard are.

Translate to, mean I.

Damkerng T.

nods

IͶΔ

12:30

Damkerng T.

Cruel fruit juice!

IͶΔ

Translating alcohol to "spirit" seems to be very common. And yeah, there's that. It's prolly kiwi juice.

This one deserves a big bad facepalm.

Now that's a coke.

Damkerng T.

I think this one is correct.

It's just an unfortunate name when being written in English. :D

0

A: who singular or plural?

knhgghkhkjkljjm.mkbkm..;jgikweq

^Free flag

IͶΔ

12:48

Damkerng T.

Yes you are right. But the people around me have been, in fact always, using the second one for years. — Subrata Dey Pappu 9 mins ago

IͶΔ

FACEPALM

Damkerng T.

^Not sure about the bolding.

@IͶΔ Sounds like fun!

I know a guy named Chris, even! :D

IͶΔ

Whoever loves Chris must be really happy. ^^

Damkerng T.

Oh, the typo reminds me of an episode in the Celebrity Apprentice show.

Someone got fired because the team spelled the name of the owner of the product wrong.

IͶΔ

12:57

O_O

IͶΔ

13:11

So that's Godzilla Lazagna?

IͶΔ

13:22

@Dam even menu descriptions don't help:

tchrist

> But with all its manifold new words from other tongues, English could never
have become anything but English. And as such it has sent out to the world,
among many other things, some of the best books the world has ever known.
It is not unlikely, in the light of writing by English speakers in earlier
times, that this would have been so even if we had never taken any words from
outside the word hoard that has come down to us from those times. It is true
that what we have borrowed has brought greater wealth to our word stock,

What do you see there?

IͶΔ

A chat message

tchrist

13:45

@IͶΔ What don't you see there?

It’s a serious question. Were I to cite the source, might it help?

> Thomas Pyles and John Algeo, The Origin and Development of the English Language, 4th ed, 1993, p. 311.

I bet Snails woud know.

> Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"
Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."
Holmes: "That was the curious incident."

It’s like that. It’s what you don’t see which is the curious part.

Damkerng T.

@tchrist It sounds like language evolution, of English specifically. Also, I think it shares a similar idea with my idea of "language layers" I can observe in Thai.

tchrist

@bjb568 Check the passage for Spanish words.

Damkerng T.

Oh! So it's about seeing something that's not there!

tchrist

It is the nature of all human language to evolve, certainly, and there is more more than one means by which this occurs over time, not all of which happen in equal measure to every language.

@DamkerngT. Yes.

IͶΔ

Foreign words?

tchrist

13:52

@IͶΔ There are those who might phrase it thus, yes.

Do you see any Persian words there?

@IͶΔ Perhaps because it refers to English philology it is not so clear to you as it would be if it were talking about your avocational passion, chemistry. Kindly permit me to therefore present you with a passage sharing the same characteristics yet more attuned to your own study interests:

> For most of its being, mankind did not know what things are made
of, but could only guess. With the growth of worldken, we began
to learn, and today we have a beholding of stuff and work that
watching bears out, both in the workstead and in daily life.

The underlying kinds of stuff are the *firststuffs*, which link
together in sundry ways to give rise to the rest. Formerly we
knew of ninety-two firststuffs, from waterstuff, the lightest and
barest, to ymirstuff, the heaviest. Now we have made more, such

Here the author needed new words for then-new things, but drew not upon classical influences for his coinages but rather upon northern ones.

IͶΔ

Firststuffs.

I heart that.

Damkerng T.

Haha! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncleftish_Beholding

3

Very nice!

tchrist

There is no Latin nor Greek in the first passage, not even by way of time’s needle via Spanish nor French nor Italian. The first passage, however, needed no new words for new things.

IͶΔ

@tchrist Dunno. I'm not very good at etymology, but if manifold isn't Persian, it's highly unlikely there're any Persian words there.

tchrist

@DamkerngT. Indeed. It was the use of word hoard in the first passage which made me think of Anderson’s famous work.

When I read the word hoard, I think of treasure hoarded up by an ancient dragon.

Damkerng T.

14:03

The word makes me think of WoW. :D

tchrist

Especially a treasure by a word-dragon.

A thesaurus. :)

The Latin-to-Spanish word for treasure is tesoro, which is what happened to thesaurus as time ground it down.

It turns out that it's pretty hard to make a long string of words like that — well, or also like this — without any that come from Latin or Greek or anything else but Old English. I would not think a speaker of other tongues could even make a try, not being as mindful of where words come from, of what their taste is in your mouth, as a speaker whose English is from birth might hope for.

Damkerng T.

It's curious that the word thesaurus literally means treasure in another language.

tchrist

Even so, one must work at it, as I just did.

Then too is the trick of a text in which each word has just one beat to it. This you will not do but in this tongue that I write here, for it is rare for a tongue to be so rich as ours is in such short words as these, what with four out of five ten squared of the most used words of that ilk.

No other tongue close to ours has this trait, this strength.

Do yours?

Hm, do you like five score more than ten squared?

S.R.I

No, other than the thing about getting weird looks around for saying "five score" :-)

tchrist

One day when I have more time, I will write all that I say here in verse that rhymes and scans.

S.R.I

14:17

You mean, you don't now? :P

tchrist

This is not that day.

S.R.I

Live in the now.

Not in the day that will come (or not)

tchrist

The day is come.

S.R.I

So do

tchrist

Debts to keep before I sleep.

Else stay I would and you would weep.

S.R.I

14:18

Give tips to the barkeep

Damkerng T.

@tchrist Short words make me think of Chinese languages and Thai.

I'm not sure if there is a specific word for monosyllabic languages.

Oh, right! I've run into it before!

> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolating_language

tchrist

Four hundred of the five hundred most common words in English have only one syllable, something that cannot be said for the other European languages.

Damkerng T.

nods

2

A: Considered vs Considered AS

In your example, when two things are compared to be equal (this job == dream job), "as" is indeed not necessary. However, it would be wrong to state that "as" should be omitted after "consider" altogether, because it can be used in other contexts: The tool A was used as a solution to the prob...

> "The professional linguist has very little to contribute to style considered as the best words in the best order." -- F.W. Bateson, The Scholar-Critic 100 (1972).

That confirms it. Considered as can be used in such contexts.

bjb568

15:02

@tchrist What passage?

tchrist

15:27

@bjb568 This one:

2 hours ago, by tchrist

> But with all its manifold new words from other tongues, English could never
have become anything but English. And as such it has sent out to the world,
among many other things, some of the best books the world has ever known.
It is not unlikely, in the light of writing by English speakers in earlier
times, that this would have been so even if we had never taken any words from
outside the word hoard that has come down to us from those times. It is true
that what we have borrowed has brought greater wealth to our word stock,

CowperKettle

15:42

1

Q: "the getting-to-know-you stuff"

We don’t talk about anything substantial, it’s just the introductory session, the getting-to-know-you stuff; he asks me what the trouble is and I tell him about the panic attacks, the insomnia, the fact that I lie awake at night too frightened to fall asleep. I have noticed that in English is of...

grammar

I wonder if this "getting-to-know-you" could be technically called a compound adjective, or it is a modifying phrase/clause.

Where's @snailboat.. (0:

Dobry vecher, @V.V.!

V.V.

16:09

Dobry. @CowperKettle

CowperKettle

@V.V. Are by chance you sending your chat messages using Pochta Rossii? (0:

"Russian Post Service. We invented dried fruit."

S.R.I

that bad, eh?

So bad that dry fruits look like a happy accident? @CowperKettle

CowperKettle

I sent a couple of books to my friend in the US, and it took exactly a month.

I don't know if that's long or not. (0:

The bulk of the time the parcel spent in Russia.

S.R.I

They were far more cautious with you than sending that parcel to USA

CowperKettle

(0:

Anonymous

17:37

Most words in Mandarin are two syllables, but the most common words are still one syllable.

Anonymous

Other Chinese languages aren't as far along in moving to two syllable words.

Anonymous

The Mandarin syllable is much, much simpler than the Old Chinese syllable, so there are a lot more syllables that sound alike these days, a problem which moving to two-syllable words solves.

Anonymous

Other Chinese languages have somewhat more conservative phonotactics and have more possible syllables, so they have less motivation to move to two-syllable words.

IͶΔ

That sounds complicated.

CowperKettle

Good evening, @snailboat!

IͶΔ

17:51

@Dam what's with the random pinned message?

Anonymous

Good morning!

IͶΔ

Mornin'

Anonymous

@CowperKettle Well, Chinese was originally a language where one word = one syllable.

CowperKettle

@snailboat I bet there's some hidden complexity still.

Anonymous

But they had a lot more possible syllables back then, with a maximal syllable of something like CCCVCCC.

IͶΔ

17:53

Oh my god

I can't even begin to try to try to try to try to pronounce that.

CowperKettle

nininihaoninini

that's basically it (0:

You have a hexane with a v-bond in the middle.

Anonymous

An English word like strengths is CCCVCCC. Three consonants at the beginning, three consonants at the end, with one vowel sandwiched in the middle.

Anonymous

C = Consonant, V = Vowel

CowperKettle

ah.. now I see.

> I can't understand why should I use the indefinite article before small space, because according to dictionary "space" is a mass noun.

Seems like a violation of the Penthouse principle.

And Scrooge is CCCVC

Anonymous

@CowperKettle It does.

Anonymous

18:00

The maximal syllable in Mandarin is now more like CCVC, but the second C can only be a glide, and the final C can only be two or three different consonants

CowperKettle

nods

Anonymous

Or it can have an off-glide in place of the final consonant

Anonymous

But the syllable inventory is much smaller overall

Anonymous

Still larger than a language like Japanese, though :-)

CowperKettle

(0:

Anonymous

18:03

Japanese words have to be polysyllabic almost as a rule.

Anonymous

But Japanese is very different from Chinese.

CowperKettle

Yes, it feels.

We have free Chinese courses for students. I saw some notices.

My sister tried to learn it, but it turned out very hard.

Anonymous

It's not an especially easy language.

CowperKettle

nods

Anonymous

Learning the orthography is an added challenge.

CowperKettle

18:08

She tried Hebrew, French..

Anonymous

It's also tonal, which is hard for speakers of non-tonal languages.

CowperKettle

nods

Anonymous

But the grammar isn't especially difficult.

Anonymous

It's more difficult for speakers of languages where the grammar is very different.

CowperKettle

Then there must be some compensating complexity..

Anonymous

18:09

It's actually surprisingly similar to English grammar and word order :-)

Anonymous

Well, it's not simple.

CowperKettle

(0:

Anonymous

But depending on what languages you speak, you might find it easier or harder.

CowperKettle

nods

Anonymous

I guess Russian would be rather dissimilar!

Anonymous

18:12

Plus, you've got so few cognates.

Anonymous

Going from Russian to Chinese sounds hard.

CowperKettle

Russian is fusional.

Anonymous

Chinese has very little inflectional morphology, even less than Present-Day English.

CowperKettle

> Chinese is also to some degree a pro-drop or null-subject language, meaning that the subject can be omitted from a clause if it can be inferred from the context

Like Russian.

Anonymous

Oh, something in common! :-)

CowperKettle

18:16

> In the next example the subject is omitted and the object is topicalized by being moved into subject position, to form a passive-type sentence. (

Anonymous

Japanese, too. And Spanish.

CowperKettle

> "Food make complete".

It's like Russian "Yeda prigotovilas'"

Anonymous

English left edge deletion may be moving in that direction.

IͶΔ

O_o

Y'all are weird @Languages.

Anonymous

~~Do you~~ want to go see the new Star Wars movie? Nah, ~~I'm~~ not really a fan.

CowperKettle

18:18

yes. (0:

"Wanna look at the stars tonight?"

IͶΔ

Yes!

CowperKettle

In Russian, it's more natural, because the word "wanna" will carry the ending indicating the singularity or plurality of the addressed person.

IͶΔ

@snailboat So is Persian

Anonymous

I know so little about Persian!

IͶΔ

Arabic is very very weird. Hence Persian is very very weird.

Anonymous

18:20

I loved reading about Persian light verb constructions, though.

CowperKettle

I know only about Persian rugs, Persian cats.. Persian chemists.

IͶΔ

@snailboat Prolly more than I can say.

@CowperKettle Persian chemicals.

CowperKettle

Yes!

Anonymous

@CowperKettle the getting-to-know-you stuff is interesting. If we treat it as a compound, it's probably a nonce formation, a temporary combination that isn't meant to stay in anyone's lexicon. It doesn't have any of the hallmarks of an adjective, though.

Anonymous

You can't coordinate it with an adjective, it's not gradable, etc.

CowperKettle

18:24

@snailboat Thank you, Snails! So it's a 'modifying phrase' then.

Anonymous

It doesn't have the functional distribution of an adjective. It's in attributive position, which is what it has in common with an adjective, and there are a few attributive-only adjectives, but overall tests for adjectivehood don't point in the direction of it being an adjective.

Anonymous

It might be simpler to say it remains s phrase.

Anonymous

Oops, phone typo! s = a

CowperKettle

Yes, I've just reworded my answer. Phew.

(0:

Anonymous

I don't know if there's a single established analysis for this sort of nonce-modifier.

Anonymous

18:27

I'll look it up later, though :-)

CowperKettle

There surely is. Linguists are horribly inquisitive about such things. (0:

Anonymous

I know I've read about them before.

Anonymous

It's said that there are as many grammatical theories as there are linguists :-)

CowperKettle

(0:

IͶΔ

@snailboat What about mini-linguists?

CowperKettle

18:30

> The verb to be is not used in Chinese the same way as it is in English. In Chinese, 是 (shì) is for connecting nouns, and is generally not used with adjectives.

IͶΔ

How many Shis do we have in Chinese?

Anonymous

A lot!

Anonymous

There's a famous poem written with only that syllable.

Anonymous

Well, it depends what variety of Chinese how close they are to shi.

Anonymous

> sì sì sì, sí sì sí, sísì sì sísì, sìsí sì sìsí.

Anonymous

18:36

That's a tongue twister pronounced in Southern Mandarin! I just yoinked it off the bottom of this Wikipedia page:

Anonymous

Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den

The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den (simplified Chinese: 施氏食狮史; traditional Chinese: 施氏食獅史; pinyin: Shī Shì shí shī shǐ; literally: "The Story of Shi Shi Eating Lions") is a modern poem composed of 92 characters written in Classical Chinese by Yuen Ren Chao (1892–1982), in which every syllable has the sound shi (bearing different tones) when read in modern Mandarin Chinese. It is a noted example of a one-syllable article, a form of constrained writing unique to Chinese. == TextEdit... ==

Anonymous

That's the poem I was talking about.

CowperKettle

> Yoink: An exclamation that, when uttered in conjunction with taking an object, immediately transfers ownership from the original owner to the person using the word regardless of previous property rights.

Anonymous

Aw, the text is missing.

Anonymous

Yoink!

CowperKettle

18:39

(0:

Anonymous

en.wikipedia.org/w/…

Anonymous

Text!

CowperKettle

Yay!

Anonymous

Plus the letter t, twice, added by some sort of anonymous vandal.

Anonymous

This version looks better:

Anonymous

18:47

en.wikipedia.org/w/…

Anonymous

@IͶΔ Please see the link above :-)

CowperKettle

A local woman surgeon made 900 operations in the last 2 years

She is a surgeon in Asbest.

Asbest

Asbest (Russian: Асбе́ст) is a town in Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia, located on the Bolshoy Reft River (right tributary of the Pyshma) on the eastern slopes of the Ural Mountains, 70 kilometers (43 mi) northeast of Yekaterinburg. Population: 68,893 (2010 Census); 76,328 (2002 Census); 84,470 (1989 Census). == Etymology == The town is named for its asbestos industry. == History == It was founded in 1889 as Kudelka (Куделька). It was granted town status and given its present name in 1933. == Administrative and municipal status == Within the framework of the administrative divisions, it is, together...

And her father died in Los Angeles in 2005.

He was one of the key inventors of horisontal multichannel drilling

Headed a company called "Grigoryan Branched-Horizontal Wells"

Quite a family.

Good night, Snails!

ArtOfCode

19:03

Someone tell me if I'm being too stubborn or if WBT is being too pedantic here - ell.stackexchange.com/a/83428/22838.

IͶΔ

19:38

@snailboat Yeah, that shi shi shi thingy was the reason I said that.

@ArtOfCode Both, but lemme take a look.

Even the revision doesn't do a good job addressing the core issue. Once you get to "I have a small space under my stairs" you've repeated the essence of the example before having aided understanding of the core issue. Dan Bron's comment does a much better job of explaining this. Your last paragraph seems to confuse things more than it helps. — WBT 44 mins ago

Huh?

Maybe they looked for a linguistic explanation.

I used to be like that too.

Over the course of time, I've understood that that's too much to expect from an ELL answer.

Dan's comment is good though.

Anonymous

They mentioned it being a mass noun, so they're probably mentally contrasting ∅ and a(n) rather than the and a(n).

Anonymous

Dan Bron's answer seems to be on point.

Anonymous

Although it mentions positive anymore without mentioning that it's dialectal. I wouldn't teach positive anymore to learners without explaining that point.

Anonymous

So I can't upvote his answer either.

Anonymous

Although I wouldn't downvote either of the answers, since they both contain helpful bits :-)

Anonymous

20:06

@CowperKettle CGEL lists them under nonce-formations on p.444 but doesn't elaborate very much. Also on p.1660.

Anonymous

> This is an area where it is difficult to draw a clear line between syntax and morphology, but it may be best to treat them as compound adjectives.

bjb568

20:39

@tchrist Me parece es complicado. No sé nada sobre español.

Pero es probable hay muchas palabras allí en inglés de español.

Anonymous

21:15

@CowperKettle I like your new name :-)

Damkerng T.

23:40

@IͶΔ For further discussion. :-)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I like pins, but I wish they didn't disappear after 14 days.

Anonymous

I guess you're using them with that in mind, though! For your puzzles of the day and such.

Damkerng T.

nods -- Hello!

Anonymous

Hello!

Damkerng T.

The auto-unpinning in 14 days is quite handy for Puzzles of the Day. :D

Anonymous

23:42

Hey, I don't think I tried that one before.

Anonymous

Is there anything like a spoiler tag for chat, so I can post my answer but keep it hidden from people who haven't listened yet?

Anonymous

I hear "Pna V qb na vagreivrj sbe n fpubby cebwrpg ba zragny vyyarff?" "Ab!" (rot13)

Damkerng T.

I guess you can start the message with (spoiler). :-)

Anonymous

Oh, but you can read more than one word at once! By the time you process spoiler you might have already read the rest of the message :-)

Damkerng T.

@snailboat The school project was tricky for me.

Anonymous

23:45

Yeah, especially the end, right?

Anonymous

I could hear it all the first time, but I wouldn't say the speaker was enunciating particularly clearly.

Damkerng T.

Oh, yes! I also missed the last word because of the visual cues.

Anonymous

Oh, I see. I only had audio.

Damkerng T.

They cut the scene right after "mental", so I missed the word "illness", and heard only "No".

Anonymous

Can we all decode rot13 easily here?

Damkerng T.

23:47

Hmm... cut the scene is probably not the best word. What they did was like switched to another angle.

Anonymous

Ooh, I could write (rot13) with a link to a decoder.

Damkerng T.

I remember that I used a website to encode the evaluation for Jim once.

Anonymous

I have alias rot13='tr a-m,n-z,A-M,N-Z n-z,a-m,N-Z,A-M' in my .bashrc.

Damkerng T.

Oh that's need. I could do that. :D

Done! :-)

Anonymous

Yay!

Damkerng T.

23:56

@snailboat I heard it as schoolpod and even though I hadn't heard schoolpod before, I thought it could be a new thing. :P

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Sure, it could be :-) Though we tend to take what we hear and adjust it to match what our brain tells us is most likely in context, given our knowledge of the language.

Anonymous

If they had said schoolpod very clearly, we probably wouldn't jump to the same conclusion. But when we hear this clip, as is so often the case, we hear something that isn't terribly clear, and we (unconsciously) realize we have to make adjustments to what we hear.

Anonymous

It happens mostly automatically and without us noticing, but I find that in Japanese (where I am not as good a listener) there is more often a conscious element to it.

Anonymous

In English, it's usually entirely automatic for me.

Damkerng T.

nods -- I guess the fewer words and patterns (collocates) we know, the more challenging it could be.

Anonymous

23:59

Yeah, there's a lot in Native Listening (highly recommended) about the ways we use language knowledge in listening.

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