Language Overflow

Cardinal

04:24

Tromano's word: terminus ad quem

2

Terminus post quem ("limit after which", often abbreviated to TPQ) and terminus ante quem ("limit before which") specify the known limits of dating for events. A terminus post quem is the earliest time the event may have happened, and a terminus ante quem is the latest. An event may well have both a terminus post quem and a terminus ante quem, in which case the limits of the possible range of dates are known at both ends, but many events have just one or the other. Similarly, terminus ad quem ("limit to which") is the latest possible date of a non-punctual event (period, era, etc.), while terminus...

In both cases we understand the meaning to be that the computer was working up until the moment the disk was inserted. The meaning is conveyed in the past progressive by the adverbial phrases only, and it is an inference.The meaning in the past perfect progressive is conveyed by the tense in combination with the adverbial phrases, and it is explicit, not merely implicit, since the past perfect casts "before you inserted that disk" as a terminus ad quem. I'd probably say until not before with the past. perf. — Tᴚoɯɐuo 7 hours ago

CowperKettle

09:18

userr2684291

12:38

I think you're mistaken and this is misleading. I simply can't parse it as a causative have unless we're talking about something habitual. E.g., I have it uploaded every day. I'm not a native speaker of English, but in my view, in this context, the two sentences evaluate to the same thing, essentially. I wonder if this is where the English perfect in fact originated. — userr2684291 9 mins ago

@snailplane Is there any truth to my idea?

userr2684291

13:00

I've been meaning to ask about this for a long time now because it might help in some cases, but the whole concept lacked certain things, such as when I say I've been there, how would I turn it into the construction with have and an adjective? I know that present-day German uses the verb to be (along with to have) in their version of the present perfect (nothing like the one in English since it's completely equivalent to the preterit), so there might be a combination that works.

Oh, well, the answerer decided to delete their answer, but I'm glad I came across it.

@Cardinal Would you like to offer a bounty on that question? If you don't, I will, haha. I'd really like to see an exhaustive answer on the matter.

But maybe it's something really simple that I'm missing.

@user178049 Hey, how's it going?

@user178049 Etc. is the abbreviation for the Latin et cetera ≈ "and [the] rest". "E.t.c." makes no sense.

In English it's not pronounced as "E T C" but as "et-cetera" or an English equivalent (e.g., "and so on"). (You'll also hear random uneducated people pronouncing it with an X, i.e., "exetera".)

Some (older) people also write it as &c., and that's okay because the ampersand is a ligature of the letters e and t (et), but it's simply unattractive and sticks out.

user178049

13:39

It makes sense, I think. The rest [of the verbs used with subjunctive]. My chest hurt and I keep coughing. I thought it was normal, but coughing for nearly two weeks.. I don't think that's OK.

Any news bout Damkerng?

Oh, I wrote "E.T.C". Edited

I forgot to ping @userr2684291

@Cardinal Why did you delete your answer?

userr2684291

@user178049 You might want to see a doctor.

@user178049 Not that I'm aware of, no. Only radio silence from Damkerng.

@user178049 Because it was misleading?

Three people upvoted it, but it's wrong, in my opinion.

user178049

@userr2684291 Yep, I will probably see a doctor tomorrow.

I hope he is fine.

@userr2684291 I upvoted it. I don't see anything g wrong.. Hmm..

Why you think it's wrong?

userr2684291

@user178049 I explained in my comment that I linked above.

user178049

13:55

Hmm.. Let's wait for snailplane. Btw, how are you? @userr2684291

userr2684291

So-so.

@user178049 There's a new answer by FumbleFingers you might want to check out.

user178049

@userr2684291 did you upvote it?

userr2684291

Yep.

user178049

I haven't read it yet. I'm so lazy now.. Haha.

userr2684291

I wonder how that differs from the achievement have: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/36116108#36116108

user178049

14:06

Well, I'm wondering too.

userr2684291

I couldn't find any actual examples (from a cursory Google search) where the achievement interpretation is obvious.

Aight. Laters.

Anonymous

16:02

@userr2684291 Imagine a parent going to work and telling their child, "Have your chores done by the time I get home." They probably don't expect the child to have someone else do the chores for them :-)

Anonymous

16:14

On the origin of the English perfect auxiliary have, from the OED:

Anonymous

> This use arose directly from sense 2 b [expressing possession], the object possessed having in agreement with it a passive participle of a transitive verb as attribute or complement; thus, I have my work done = ‘I possess or have my work in a done or finished condition’, whence, by inference of antecedent action from result, the actual sense ‘I have done my work’ [ . . . ]

M.A.R.

@Cardinal Tromano of the day?

Oh cool, another fancy sounding latinobabble I could use to sound literate

Anonymous

16:25

Darn, CLS7 (Proceedings of the Seventh Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society) doesn't seem to be online anywhere. That publication has Robin Lakoff's Passive Resistance (1971) on pages 149–162, which has the John had his dishes washed example with discussion.

CowperKettle

@M.A.R. you can use it ad nauseam

@snailplane You can try sci-hub

M.A.R.

Tsk tsk tsk @Cowp

CowperKettle

16:56

photos of today's Yekaterinburg - there was a gullywasher today

userr2684291

17:14

@snailplane That's equivalent to the uploading example. Am I wrong?

Anonymous

@userr2684291 Let's see.

Anonymous

I'm looking at Cardinal's deleted answer.

Anonymous

> I have uploaded it means you have done it yourself.

Anonymous

I agree with this part.

Anonymous

> I have it uploaded means you ask someone else to do that for you.

Anonymous

17:17

I think that is one possible interpretation.

userr2684291

@snailplane In what sort of context?

Anonymous

Let's say I'm a gazillionaire musician. I do the music, but I leave the website stuff to other people. I have a new song uploaded by my staff each week. I don't do it myself.

userr2684291

Yeah, so something habitual.

Anonymous

That doesn't mean it would necessarily be the most salient interpretation in most contexts, but it's possible.

Anonymous

Another interpretation would be similar to one of the interpretations of I have uploaded it.

Anonymous

17:21

By the way, that sentence feels a bit unnatural without a contraction unless I'm stressing have for some reason. I've uploaded it sounds a lot better.

Anonymous

(Of course, I've uploaded it technically has a number of interpretations available.)

userr2684291

@snailplane What I'd like to know is whether the achievement have is equivalent to the perfect interpretation of have.

Anonymous

Perfect have has several interpretations. Achievement have is not compatible with all of them.

Anonymous

Imaginary context: My sister and I take turns updating a website. She complains that I always make her do the updates, and I never update it. I protest that this is untrue – I've updated it! I've updated it lots of times. Just, y'know, not in the past year or two.

Anonymous

This can't be expressed with I have the website updated, which carries an implication about the current state of the website, whereas my experiential I've updated the website lots of times above carries an implication about my current state (of having those experiences in my past).

Anonymous

17:29

I have the website updated means that the website is updated, and I am responsible for putting it into that state.

Anonymous

(Well, it could also mean I make other people update it, as we discussed before.)

userr2684291

@snailplane I don't know if you'd misunderstood me, but by "the perfect interpretation of have" I was referring to the construction I have the site updated. Is that the achievement have?

Anonymous

@userr2684291 Oh.

Anonymous

I was a little confused.

userr2684291

I'm sorry.

Anonymous

17:34

Perfect usually refers to a grammatical construction which has a number of interpretations available.

userr2684291

Yeah, I didn't know what to call it.

I'd call the perfect, with all its interpretations just that.

Cardinal

@user178049 beacuse it was wrong. In fact, OP's intention was obscure.

userr2684291

@snailplane So... were we talking about the same thing – is the achievement have the construction that means someone has put something in a certain state (I have the website updated)?

Anonymous

So when you say "perfect interpretation", I am left wondering which interpretation you mean. The unified semantics of the perfect construction, in my mind, are that an event takes place anterior to a reference time, causing a change in state which continues to that reference.

Anonymous

So if we drew it on a timeline, the perfect would have a starting point, and then an arrow continuing forward to a later time.

Anonymous

17:44

But the reason linguists don't describe it solely in those terms is that you can imagine uses which fit those semantics for which the perfect is not used. Instead, linguists find uses fit broadly into several more specific uses, which they give labels like "experiential perfect" or "resultative perfect".

Anonymous

So usually linguists stick to the more specific labels when discussing meanings.

Anonymous

@userr2684291 Yeah. Resultative have, if you prefer that terminology.

Anonymous

Adversative have has also been called experiencer have.

Anonymous

If that helps with looking it up.

Anonymous

@CowperKettle Hey, look, a Cowper! post.queensu.ca/~bb86/papers/…

Anonymous

17:51

I like the way the examples are phrased here.

Anonymous

> 1. I had my car spraypainted by experts.
> 2. I had my car spraypainted by vandals.
> 3. I had my car spraypainted by lunchtime.

userr2684291

Those're very good, self-explanatory examples.

Anonymous

Yeah, I'm gonna steal those.

userr2684291

@snailplane But now I'm starting to wonder why the experiential perfect is a thing. Is the past simple devoid of any kind of interpretation leading to a conclusion about the person's experience, even an obvious one – that if something happened in the past, it also has happened in the past?

Anonymous

An interesting question :-)

Anonymous

17:59

I don't know if I have a satisfactory answer for you.

Anonymous

I do think that the experiential perfect, like all perfects, is really a statement about now (or whatever the reference time is). That "present relevance" thingy people always talk about.

Anonymous

And the perfect expresses the connection between the past situation and the present.

Anonymous

Linguistics does tend to focus more on what questions than why. A lot of the time, it's easier to describe what the language looks like than figure out why it ended up that way. Although the latter is not uninteresting.

userr2684291

18:28

@snailplane Hm, statement about now...

ell.stackexchange.com/questions/133506 The native speakers commenting here say the present perfect cannot be used at all even when we're really talking about now. That is, you can't say "Oh, sorry, I've left my wallet at home", but instead you have to say "Oh, sorry, I left my wallet at home".

(I think the context is obvious.)

So now we obviously can reason (arrive at conclusions) from the past simple, and there's no connection between the present and the past.

Cardinal

Why apologize is a performative? And if so, how you can use the verb with a present simple like others performative verbs?

For instance,

> We advise you come to the place an hour earlier.

I'm wondering how to use "apology" in that form.

It's interesting that my grammar book says it's a performative verb "and" we use present simple with performative verbs.

Cardinal

18:55

I guess that I have found them:

> I apologize you feel that way.

userr2684291

@Cardinal Apologize is performative because you can say "I apologize" and that effectively means the same as saying "I'm sorry", even though apologize by itself merely describes the action of apologizing; i.e., you can use it normally to describe someone who apologizes.

Cardinal

> I apologize you think our service is terrible.

userr2684291

When you say "I apologized for it", the verb isn't performative anymore, it describes the action. So it's only (I can't really think of other examples) performative when it's used in the present simple. If you say "I'm apologizing right now", that's again describing it, the action of apologizing, but it doesn't mean you're sorry.

Cardinal

@userr2684291 My main problem was forming a sentence with present simple similar to advise example.

It seems that it collocates with thinking or feeling verbs!

And it's not a surprise!

userr2684291

@Cardinal No.

Cardinal

19:04

I mean apology is related to intellectual or emotional stuff, hence the collocation.

userr2684291

I don't think to collocate means simply "to frequently use certain words together".

Snailplane once pasted the definition here, though. Sec.

Cardinal

> (of a word) be habitually juxtaposed with another with a frequency greater than chance.

en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/collocate

> (of words and phrases) to often be used together in a way that sounds correct to people who have spoken the language all their lives, but might not be expected from the meaning

dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/collocate

userr2684291

Yes, that.

Just understand it like this: A common reason why someone would apologize is someone else's feelings.

So feel is often used with apologize.

Cardinal

@userr2684291 Would be any difference if we insert "that"?

> I apologize that you have to wait a long time.

> I apologize you have to wait a long time.

Maybe the former is more formal.

userr2684291

Maybe the definition snailplane pasted fits because feel isn't that common with apologize. I refuse to accept that feel and apologize are collocations, that's it, haha.

userr2684291

19:27

@Cardinal Hm, yes, maybe a bit. It's the same with all sentences with an implicit that. Apologize collocates with for, though, but I don't think that (or a that-clause) is actually ungrammatical. I've definitely heard it before.

userr2684291

19:39

@CowperKettle What Do You Call A Sudden, Very Heavy Rain? I didn't know these kinda survey websites existed.

Some people apparently call it a trash-mover or goose-drownder, but frog/toad-strangler takes the cake.

Anonymous

@userr2684291 Hrm, I'm having some trouble with the idea that you can't say "Oh, sorry, I've left my wallet at home", which sounds perfectly fine to me.

Anonymous

@userr2684291 Apologize takes a for-PP as a complement. Apologize that is, if I recall correctly, fairly well-established but much less common.

Anonymous

I'm not sure if all speakers are comfortable with apologize that.

Anonymous

I believe it's a relatively recent construction. I'm young enough that it sounds fine to me.

userr2684291

@snailplane In normal speech, native speakers will almost never use it in this context. We would use the simple past, as in "Oh, I forgot the money!" or "Oh, I left the money at home!"

Of course they can't speak on behalf of everyone, but it's a sure sign it's not natural.

If that's not the quintessence of "present relevance", I don't know what is.

I mean, that sentence and context, not their reply.

Anonymous

19:50

@userr2684291 Oh, sure, I think the simple past would be favored by a significant margin.

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