Language Overflow

Anonymous

00:08

I prefer paper books for most things, but ebooks are undeniably convenient.

Anonymous

An as aside, my phone thinks 'ebooks' is a typo for 'Ebola'.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Dictionaries are generally an unreliable source when it comes to identifying lexical classes. Unfortunately, each label for each class only makes sense within a coherent theoretical framework that lays out the implications of claiming a word in a given instance belongs to that class. Dictionaries contain no such theoretical framework beyond what you can guess based on their labels, and they tend to be inconsistent even at that.

Anonymous

What most people are interested in are the implications – that is, how is the word used? – not the labels that make those implications. But it's unclear what conclusions you can really draw from dictionary labels.

Anonymous

As always, looking at the actual usage is best.

Damkerng T.

@snailplane Haha!

I hope I didn't buy any Ebola. :P

Another mishearing of the day: What is Dale like? (actually: What's Adale like?)

Damkerng T.

00:39

1

Q: An idiom describing you need commitment from other people to reach some goal

In Spanish, we have an idiom: "poner el hombro". The literal translation is "Put the shoulder". You use that idiom when you are asking for help AND commitment from other people. You are, figuratively, asking them to help you push something in one direction putting their shoulders, with the aim ...

idiom-request

Robo-rephraser: We need to push hard if we want to make this recycling project work.

Unfortunately, Robo-rephraser doesn't sound very erudite. :P

Hmm... give it our best may sound better for all occasions.

Man_From_India

01:04

@snailplane @Araucaria i am really shocked by his claim that he is a linguist, the way he claimed. If he eere a linguist, how can he say that example is a relative clause. The last comment of his was really funny, at the same time a little pricky :-)

Man_From_India

01:18

@DamkerngT. I can't remember where, might be in Language Log, but I read there that because can be a preposition. But the NP follows has some restriction, not all NP can occur there. Let's see if I can search that Language Log post.

CowperKettle

01:35

@Cardinal Thank you! I get the general idea, now I'll try to read up more.

Good morning all!

CowperKettle

02:44

> Street art in Yekaterinburg: you can see how the buildings looked before being painted on, by using the slider
http://www.e1.ru/news/spool/news_id-447849.html

I made some photos of this art too, it's great sometimes.

El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha

Man_From_India

@CowperKettle really nice :-)

CowperKettle

yes ^_^

I shot this in 2012.

On Khokhryakova Str.

And this angel is still in its place, near the Officers' Building

And this is a plaque on 12 Gagarina Str.

Because Gagarin first flew into space on 12 April, they placed the plaque on building #12

Jim Reynolds

05:49

@DamkerngT. hi Dam!

Damkerng T.

@JimReynolds It's about time my message has finally reached you! :P

Jim Reynolds

:-) I can't keep up much of an ELL habit lately

Damkerng T.

Being busy with teaching, I guess.

CowperKettle

Morning, @Jim, Dam!

Damkerng T.

Morning!

Jim Reynolds

06:01

Hi. I saw your question about the table shows or was it the study shows?

Damkerng T.

I just stumbled upon this (viewer discretion is advised, BTW):

Russell Peters - What's So Funny About Chinese Accents

►

CowperKettle

@JimReynolds The study, AFAIK

1

Q: "The results demonstrate" vs. "The results have demonstrated" or "The results demonstrated"

From an analytical method validation report, a sentence coming just after a table that contains the final results of a method parameter investigation: The results demonstrate reliable detection of residual host cell proteins at the specified level and their reliable quantification in solut...

tense formal

No, it's "the results"..

Damkerng T.

(I was looking for something to counter that sad feeling I got from Empty Chairs at Empty Tables.)

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

Thanks for the viewer discretion advisory.

(0;

Damkerng T.

:D

I wish I had that kind of big nose too, sometimes. :D

Jim Reynolds

06:07

Right. So we won't use the perfect unless we want to communicate something specific. Perhaps to imply that what was shown is being or has been called into question.

The study still shows, so still true. We can pretty much use the present simple's "general or timeless truth" idea.

The present perfect can refer to present events/states or to finished events/states. We would avoid its use in this case because it's ambiguous where the present simple is clear or mote precise with relating time information.

goo.gl/images/Kd9P9A

That's not offensive, because I intend it as a parody of offensiveness.

Damkerng T.

Oh, no! Poor puppy!

:P

Jim Reynolds

Water freezes at 0C at sea level.

When would we say has frozen?

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

Below the triple point :-)

Jim Reynolds

What's a triple point?

Damkerng T.

That tri-phase diagram, IIRC.

Jim Reynolds

06:18

Illuminati?

Chem snails?

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

Where solid, liquid, and gas coexist

Damkerng T.

(Argh! I can't google anything right now! Don't know what happened. I can still chat, though.)

Jim Reynolds

Oh. That's inside Damkerng T.'s chassis

Damkerng T.

In most papers I'm familiar with (most are either engineering or computer science), I think some papers use the present perfect when they discuss the experiments, and the simple present when they discuss the applications and conclusions.

@JimReynolds Hehe!

Jim Reynolds

I can't see how that would make sense.

Damkerng T.

06:22

I don't know. I can only say that they come in different styles.

In any case, a paper written purely in the simple present is quite easy to find.

Jim Reynolds

I think "studies have shown" is common.

Damkerng T.

nods -- to refer to other studies, I suppose.

Jim Reynolds

Present perfect there emphasizes that such results may be called into question, or can suggest that.

But the table shows something and usually always will ahow it.

Damkerng T.

nods -- I think tables and charts would bring the results or data up to the foreground in the discussion.

Jim Reynolds

Or we can use the present perfect to suggest that a past event or state has become particularly relevant in the present.

I know that I'm half-articulating distinctions clumsily. It's good for me!

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

06:56

It's good for us!

Damkerng T.

:D

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

;0)

Learning a language is more about the effort of articulation than it is about the final product.

2

@JimReynolds and knowing is half the battle -GI Joe

Damkerng T.

G.I. Joe!

Oh, wait, maybe it's someone named GI Joe. :D

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

07:14

G.I. (military)

G.I. is a noun used to describe the soldiers of the United States Army and airmen of the United States Army Air Forces — and for U.S. Marines and Sailors — and also for general items of their equipment. The term G.I. has been used as an initialism of "Government Issue" or "General Issue", but it originally referred to "galvanized iron", as used by the logistics services of the United States Armed Forces. The letters "G.I." were used to denote equipment made from galvanized iron, such as metal trash cans, in U.S. Army inventories and supply records. During World War I, American soldiers sardonically...

originally referred to "galvanized iron"

Damkerng T.

:D

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

Interesting.

Galvanized Iron Joe

Sounds like iron Mike Tyson

Damkerng T.

Mike Tyson was in Ip Man 3, BTW! :D

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

Was he any good?

Damkerng T.

Donnie Yen praises Mike Tyson in new kung fu movie.

►

Apparently, his co-actor praises him!

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

07:23

Thanks for sharing.

Damkerng T.

My pleasure! Seeing Tyson in the movie was a little surprise for me. :D

Hey, that scene is on the web now!

Kungfu Vs Boxing Fight (Ip Man 3 showing in Filmhouse Cinemas)

►

Jim Reynolds

@Sᴋᴜʟʟᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ We talk less to show what we know than to discover and create what we know.

Um, I think.

Why not?

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

Well said @JimReynolds

"to discover and create what we know" sounds like "self-explanation training"

Damkerng T.

08:29

Margaret Gould Stewart: How giant websites design for you (and a billion others, too)

►

Should we think of this instance of her when as its weak form or strong form?

CowperKettle

> phrase of the day: analyzed in triplicate

Good afternoon, Arrowfar!

user208178

Good afternoon Cowperkettle!

Cardinal

Hi all

user208178

Hi Cardinal

CowperKettle

Namaste, Cardinal

Cardinal

08:40

Is it correct to describe a bad paractice as:
> It is a big step in the wrong path

CowperKettle

> It's a big step in the wrong direction.

Cardinal

@CowperKettle Indian greeting looks cool

CowperKettle

Yes, it's concise and sounds nice.

Cardinal

@CowperKettle thanks, Is "step" right in this context?

CowperKettle

Yes

Cardinal

08:42

nods

user208178

Word of the day: Gaslighting

user208178

@CowperKettle do you get power outages there in Yekaterinburg?

Damkerng T.

Nice word!

user208178

yes it is.

Damkerng T.

(I thought it was something about the Bunsen burner at first glance. :-)

user208178

08:51

Hello Damk!

Damkerng T.

Hi! :D

user208178

how are you this fine afternoon?

Damkerng T.

I'm good, thanks! How are you?

user208178

yeah I'm good, thanks.

user208178

just lurking in chats :D

Cardinal

08:53

@DamkerngT. Me too

Damkerng T.

I was trying to figure if words such as if, when, while, etc., should be considered "weak" when they're reduced.

@Cardinal Hehe! -- Good afternoon!

Cardinal

@Arrowfar Similar to what happened to Shaw in Person of Interest

@DamkerngT. Thanks, you too

user208178

@Cardinal heh. I love that show! :)

user208178

it ended sadly.

Damkerng T.

I missed all of it!

user208178

08:56

it is pretty good :)

Cardinal

@Arrowfar Yes, I do love it.

BBL

user208178

see ya.

Cardinal

I got to go

Damkerng T.

I'm looking forward to seeing Mr. Robot and the coming Star Trek series on my cable, if they run it.

See you, @Cardinal! o/

CowperKettle

@Arrowfar Yes, but very rarely. We had one some 5 days ago

Power was back in about 30 minutes

Anonymous

09:07

The "present relevance" explanation of the perfect never quite sat right with me. I don't mean to say that it's wrong exactly, but I think if you try to think about whether something is "relevant to the present", you'll find that it's not a very good criterion…

Anonymous

"Who ate all the pie? I want pie, and now I can't have any." ← The pie being eaten seems relevant to the present.

Anonymous

I feel like that explanation doesn't really make it intuitively obvious when to use the perfect.

Jim Reynolds

11:13

Test

CowperKettle

Roger that.

Jim Reynolds

But I have a reply to snailplane that I can't post for skme reason.

@snailplane I agree. There is always a connection between something we mention and the present, given that we . . . mention it in the present.

But there is a reason why so many grammars describe this use of "connection to the present". How can we better describe it? It's often a combination of uses and functions interacting, isn't it, including sometimes to signal not a/some use/s associated with another form? I haven't read CGEL on this yet.

There are multiple uses of the present perfect, for example. The most general, common, or fundamental, in traditional guidance, that makes some sense to me, is "finished event in an unfinished time period", but that contextual time period is also implicit in you pie example.

CowperKettle

11:50

Is this a Thai prince?

ucha

sorry for interruption
Is my usage of "in which" true?
Deltas are very rich habitats in which land and sea, fresh water and salt water ecosystems meet.

Or should i put "where" instead?

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

I would leave out the "land and sea" part

and use "where"

ucha

okay, it was not my thesis but i will leave out land and sea and inform her for this change

CowperKettle

12:07

but "in which" is not, stictly speaking, wrong, IMHO

ucha

if in which is not wrong, i learnt something today.
i don't know when we should use in which, i'm going to google it right now.

CowperKettle

12:39

I've a question too

> As part of the robustness investigation, we assessed the impact of changing the concentration of the anti-E. coli protein antibody solution, as well as the concentration of the conjugate solution.

Should not it be "impacts", if we assessed two things separately?

Man_From_India

13:08

@RoaringFish that's fine :-) for more information about this topic, please refer to Cambridge Grammar of English Language page 615. It will be helpful. — Man_From_India 9 hours ago

And this is what I get :(

I think you should read that again. It says what I said in my initial response to your answer - you cannot assign a word class on the basis of its complement. You have to look at the way the word functions, which is precisely why I keep asking you to explain how when is functioning as a preposition in the OP's example. — Roaring Fish 6 hours ago

I think he's not ready to listen to anything else :(

CowperKettle

I have a table in the document, with empty cells for "corrective measures" in case the analytical procedure has some issues. The legend above one cell says "To be executed before:". I wonder if that's a correct wording.

In Russian, it looks okay.

"Должно быть выполнено в срок до:" (Must be executed in due time before:)

I never read official documents in English.. D'oh.

Evening, Man from India! Hope it's not very hot today.

Man_From_India

13:26

Humid here.

It's rainy season here. Good evening :-)

CowperKettle

Haha: I translated a line saying "corrective measures taken". Next comes a line saying "Deviations approved by:" -- what the hell? Turns out the Trados software incorrectly parsed the sentence. It's a whole sentence, meaning "The steps taken to address the deviations were approved by:"

@Man_From_India Monsoon! You're in Delhi?

Man_From_India

No in Kolkata now.

CowperKettle

I see!

In Russian, it's still "Calcutta"

Oh, it's close to Bangladesh

> In 2011, the city had population of 4.5 million, while the population of the city and its suburbs was 14.1 million

Man_From_India

Yup

CowperKettle

Yekaterinburg is a village in comparison

A mere 1.5 million

Man_From_India

13:34

They say time stopped here. But I don't feel the same way about Kolkata

Any more

CowperKettle

You have a metro, 24 stations, cool

Man_From_India

Hehe. The first metro in india. And that too underground.

CowperKettle

(0:

We have a very short metro, about 12 stations, one line.

Man_From_India

On transit now, returning home.

CowperKettle

Nice!

At home now, finishing a translation.

Man_From_India

13:42

Yay. Happy weekend!

CowperKettle

Same to you! I've got a (the?) feeling that I'll be reading up on statistics theory through the weekend, to improve my translation.

A happy chance to know more about the f-test and the t-test, and the variance.

(0:

Man_From_India

Statistics and translation?

CowperKettle

@Man_From_India Yes, there are some statistics terms that I'm unsure how to translate.

I translated it as-is, but knowing more would improve translation quality.

I've also had to read about the ELISA technique, absorbance measurements, chromatography, etc.

Man_From_India

Great.

CowperKettle

Before that, I spent about 40 hours reading about steel pipe production, pipe rolling mills, pipe rolling stands, hotworked pipes, coldworked pipes, pipe drawing technologies, pipe measuring technologies, welding technologies.

In order to apply as a translator at a local pipe rolling plant.

Man_From_India

13:53

Great.

CowperKettle

Heh

Now I'm equally baffled by pipe tech and biotech.

CowperKettle

18:09

> Several people have been shot dead in a shooting at a shopping centre in the German city of Munich, police say.

bbc.com/news/world-europe-36870874

Another terror attack. They seem to come each week.

Anonymous

@CowperKettle The world is crazy :-(

CowperKettle

@snailplane My sister had nightmares after seeing some terror attacks online

StoneyB

@CowperKettle As you see, there are lots of things even more baffling than pipe tech and biotech! You and I are blessed: we're in professions that require us to learn interesting stuff we would never have given a thought to otherwise.

CowperKettle

18:24

@StoneyB True! Good evening, @StoneyB!

StoneyB

Hi, @CowperKettle, @snailplane, @Man_From_India, @anybody else that's around.

@snailplane It doesn't make it obvious. A present perfect isn't an assertion about a past event which is relevant to the present; it's a statement about the present to which the past event is relevant.

(That's in English. A German Perfektum is quite different: it's an assertion that a past event occurred.)

CowperKettle

19:55

Turns out there's a Grammarly plugin for MS Word, and a fellow translator uses it.

I wonder if it's of any help.

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