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CowperKettle

04:14

> Don’t be A Freud, d-r Jung!

CowperKettle

07:03

Word of the Day: virelay

> a chiefly French verse form having stanzas of indeterminate length and number, alternating long and short lines, and interlaced rhyme (such as abab bcbc cdcd dada)

Virelai

A virelai is a form of medieval French verse used often in poetry and music. It is one of the three formes fixes (the others were the ballade and the rondeau) and was one of the most common verse forms set to music in Europe from the late thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. One of the most famous composers of virelai is Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300–1377), who also wrote his own verse; 33 separate compositions in the form survive by him. Other composers of virelai include Jehannot de l'Escurel, one of the earliest (d. 1304), and Guillaume Dufay (c. 1400–1474), one of the latest. By the mid-15th...

TO drift with every passion till my soul
Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play,
Is it for this that I have given away
Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control?—
Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll
Scrawled over on some boyish holiday
With idle songs for pipe and virelay
Which do but mar the secret of the whole.
Surely there was a time I might have trod
The sunlit heights, and from life’s dissonance
Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God:
Is that time dead? lo! with a little rod

Pronunciation: |ˈvɪrəleɪ|

I thought it was wire lay

Araucaria

14:34

tumbleweed ..................

Araucaria

15:46

Hmmm. Interesting one for British versus American English - especially given the very highly upvoted top answer. I guess we're outnumbered!!!! :-)

0

A: I demand that he leave or leaves?

I demand that he leave! I demand that he leaves! These are both examples of what are known as ᴍᴀɴᴅᴀᴛɪᴠᴇ ᴄᴏɴsᴛʀᴜᴄᴛɪᴏɴs. Sentences such as example (1) are known as sᴜʙᴊᴜɴᴄᴛɪᴠᴇ ᴍᴀɴᴅᴀᴛɪᴠᴇs. Examples such as (2) are known as ᴄᴏᴠᴇʀᴛ ᴍᴀɴᴅᴀᴛɪᴠᴇs. There is a third type of mandative called a s...

Anonymous

@Araucaria It's interesting: corpus.byu.edu/coca/?c=coca&q=65927541

Anonymous

I can't find a single example that is unambiguously covert!

CowperKettle

Just a mandative subjunctive

The word demand makes the meaning unambiguous for both versions

I'm feeling so tired and weak, and the doc cannot tell what's wrong

Spent the whole of yesterday doing nothing, and today

Araucaria

@snailboat No, me neither, which backs up what they were saying about American English!

@snailboat actually,there's no 25, and 84. And if you increase the hits also 116 128 140 141 164 180 183. For me, which I prefer depends heavily on the verb in question. more likely to be Sub after demand (and in present tense). More likely covert after suggests perhaps - I think. Petty there's no COCU!

Anonymous

16:04

Ooh, I missed those.

Anonymous

@Araucaria Here's the same search in the British National Corpus: corpus.byu.edu/bnc/?c=bnc&q=65927812

Araucaria

@snailboat Interesting. Still very Sub heavy ...

I was wondering whether removing that would affect the result, but I'm only getting examples of the noun!

Anonymous

I re-did the search with suggest on BNC: corpus.byu.edu/bnc/?c=bnc&q=65927998

Anonymous

Oh, maybe I should have done [suggest] instead of suggest to get all forms of the word.

Anonymous

I wish you could filter words based on meaning!

Anonymous

16:24

0

Q: Statistics of pronunciation of "poor"

I discovered recently that in England (where I live for the last 12 years) the more standard way to pronouns "poor" is pɔː rather than pʊə. It was a real shock to me since I was certain that one should say pʊə. So I would like to know how common is pɔː/pʊə pronunciation in UK, are there regional ...

pronunciation

Anonymous

And there's an LPD Preference Poll for this word, too :-)

Anonymous

It really gets me sometimes how hostile people are to questions about pronunciation.

Anonymous

It's like, "Let's get this off our site! It has to do with pronunciation! That couldn't possibly have anything to do with learning English, right?"

Anonymous

I see that sentiment time and time again, and I just don't understand.

userr2684291

17:49

@snailboat Oh you can use _v?z* for verbs in the third person singular.

I like it how you switched to favoured due to the polls' being about BrE.

Also, you can restrict meanings somewhat by using the synonym function [=verb]. But I don't know how reliable their dictionary of synonyms is.

@snailboat Well, they told you why they considered the question off-topic; they thought it's opinion-... word.

userr2684291

18:12

I haven't really seen that sentiment in action. What I have noticed is that many questions on pronunciation are basic and are justifiably closed.

Araucaria

18:25

@userr2684291 but that pron question wasn't basic. It was observant and interesting!

@userr2684291 I'm a pron fan, so I'm biased, but I think good pron information is very hard to find. So it's veryy important that we answer basic pron questions here. Basic isn't a close reason!

userr2684291

P sure it is.

I agree that this question was observant and interesting.

Araucaria

@userr2684291 you mean 'basic' IS a close reason???

userr2684291

But I might be biased because I wondered about the same thing a year ago, heh.

@Araucaria Yes. The close reason I'm referring to goes something like "Basic questions on pronunciation, spelling, blah blah..."

I skimmed over the last 50 or so questions tagged with the pronunciation tag. Some of them were interesting, but there were some really bad questions which can be answered with a dictionary.

Araucaria

@userr2684291 Ah, but there's a very, very important DEFINING RELATIVE CLAUSE there!

userr2684291

"Basic questions on spelling, meaning or pronunciation are off-topic as they should be answered using a dictionary."

Anonymous

18:37

Wait, you put it in quotes but you changed the stuff between the quotes!

Anonymous

Didn't you?

Anonymous

Lessee.

userr2684291

Nope.

1

Q: How do we pronounce "Universe"

Which is closer to the right transcription of the word "Universe"? junɪvers or junɪvr̩s Do we actually pronounce the e that is before the r. In other words, do we say vrse or v'e'rse

pronunciation transcription

Anonymous

Oh, here we go:

Anonymous

> Policy for questions that are entirely answerable with a dictionary

Anonymous

18:38

Those are the key words.

Anonymous

That's the part I always remember, because that's the criterion.

userr2684291

And... when I said basic I meant that.

Anonymous

My feeling is that if we think we can add value on top of what a dictionary would say, then it's probably fine to keep them open.

Anonymous

But if the dictionary is sufficient to completely answer the question, and it's not a specialized dictionary not everyone has access to, and the entry isn't particularly difficult to find, then I would close it.

Anonymous

So you can see I'm somewhat biased toward keeping questions open.

Anonymous

18:41

@userr2684291 Just for reference in case it helps anyone else: ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/claws7tags.html

Anonymous

When we used to quote the BYU corpora more often in here we'd link to that from time to time.

userr2684291

Thank you.

Anonymous

@userr2684291 I don't really feel like that should be closed.

Anonymous

Dictionary transcriptions don't necessarily answer questions like "Is this an /ər/ sequence or just a syllabic /r̩/?" And they certainly don't explain what it would mean for it to be one or the other.

Anonymous

I don't think this question is "entirely answerable with a dictionary". Dictionary transcriptions don't necessarily answer questions like "Is this an /ər/ sequence or just a syllabic /r̩/?" And they certainly don't explain what it would mean for it to be one or the other. A good answer here would discuss whether the distinction is meaningful and what the phonetic realization of these phonemic sequences would be. Then learners could apply that knowledge to other words in the future with similar transcriptions. — snailboat ♦ 54 secs ago

Anonymous

18:48

Does that seem fair?

Anonymous

I haven't actually reopened it at this point, but I want to.

userr2684291

I actually think this one should be opened, lol. Really digging my grave here.

I think syllabic r's are pretty frequent in my first language. After all, we have words like smrt, vrt, Krk which are pronounced "as written".

Anonymous

19:05

Fun experiment: Try saying "errrrrr", record it, and then play back the recording backwards.

Anonymous

Preferably with a rhotic accent :-)

userr2684291

19:18

@snailboat I'm pretty sure it will sound the same both ways for my trilled r.

( :

+/- the first/last phoneme.

And my wannabe English rhotic r doesn't work so I don't know if I'd get what you'd expect me to get.

Anonymous

19:54

@userr2684291 Well, what I'd expect is something like [ʔɻːːːːʔ] both ways.

userr2684291

Okie.

Anonymous

22:27

@Araucaria By the way, I did reopen this question about pronouncing universe: ell.stackexchange.com/questions/161653/…

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