English Language Learners

Anonymous

21:03

1

Q: Using the phrase "from X to X" versus using "between Xs"

I want to say that physicians differ on the diagnosis of an illness for patient Joe. What is the difference between: The diagnosis differs between physicians The diagnosis differs from physician to physician Is the latter more informal (or simply incorrect)?

Anonymous

The answerers all like the phrase "differs between physicians"

Anonymous

It seems awkward to me.

Anonymous

Does it seem fine to everyone here?

Anonymous

The full sentences were:

Anonymous

> The diagnosis differs between physicians.
> The diagnosis differs from physician to physician.

Anonymous

21:05

One answerer felt that it was awkward making the diagnosis the subject―presumably because they have a preference for animate subjects?

Anonymous

Although I thought it was okay.

Damkerng T.

I'm not sure, but I think there must be some other better ways to phrase the idea.

Anonymous

It's difficult to phrase things naturally without context.

Anonymous

We always take information structure and other pragmatic concerns into account when forming sentences.

Anonymous

So in a question like this one―I suppose in most ELL questions―where we have no context, it can be hard to make naturalness judgments

Anonymous

21:08

Currently ELL is doing marginally better than Japanese.SE . . .

Anonymous

0

Q: Meaning and grammar of 「緊張しながら」

Could you explain more precisely the meaning and grammar of 「緊張しながら」? I know that 「緊張」 means "nervous" or "tension", but 「しながら」 - I can't understand this part.

grammar usage meaning nuances

Damkerng T.

Would this sound less awkward, "The diagnoses differ from physician to physician."

Anonymous

Here the OP asks about the adjunct kintyō-si nagara, which has multiple interpretations and can't be translated without context . . .

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I can't tell. I think they're both on equal ground.

Anonymous

Yours might be a little better.

Anonymous

21:16

I think that broadly speaking there is a preference for animate subjects over inanimate

Anonymous

Cross-linguistically

Anonymous

Related to the tendency to put agents in subject position

Anonymous

But how that tendency manifests differs from language to language, sometimes rather arbitrarily

Damkerng T.

nods -- It could even vary from one person to another within a same language.

^I'm not sure if it's okay in English, but I think I prefer "a same" to "the same" up there.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Then you want "within a single language"

Anonymous

21:20

Same is definite and *a same N is ungrammatical

Damkerng T.

Ah! Yes, that sounds better! Thanks a lot!

I thought it would be safer to write "the same" there, but somehow it didn't sound like what I was thinking of. "within a single language" indeed works!

Oh, oh, another alternative. I think what I thought was probably something like "within each same language".

Hmm...

Anonymous

Still not okay

Anonymous

The same would be fine.

Anonymous

See, when you say "vary from person to person within the same language"

Anonymous

The languages being discussed are coreferential. They're the same.

Anonymous

21:26

Language A = Language B

Anonymous

So we know the referent in both cases. A → B and B → A

Anonymous

That makes it definite.

Damkerng T.

I guess that "within each of the same language" still sounds less than natural.

Anonymous

I don't understand that phrase

Damkerng T.

I see. That's what I guessed.

Anonymous

21:28

5

A: "The same name" vs "a same name": what's the difference?

A noun phrase (NP) can be definite or indefinite: One way to mark an NP as definite is to use the definite article the. One way to mark an NP as indefinite is to use the indefinite article a. A speaker marks an NP as definite when they assume the listener will be able to identify what the NP ...

Anonymous

This isn't the best answer ever, but I did write about this subject previously :-)

Damkerng T.

In my language, we can emphasize the two senses, "same" and "each", in one phrase at the same time.

Probably I can't do that in English.

Anonymous

The definiteness of same varies from language to language.

Anonymous

In French, « même » is not definite like English same

Damkerng T.

It might feel the same for you, but "During a meeting, two replicas use a same name to access the pump object" is a world apart from my "each same" case in my idea.

"a same name" is clearly one, single entity: one name.

"*each same name" is multiple entities, covers everything at the same time, and yet considers each of them one at a time, at the same time, too.

Anonymous

21:31

Each name that is the same as what?

Damkerng T.

So I think it's the best for me not to say things like that in English.

@snailboat Oh, I meant "each same language".

Anonymous

Yes, but the same as what?

Anonymous

Same needs to equate at least two things.

Damkerng T.

Let's consider my full sentence, and try to thing of it from linguistic point-of-view, not only about English.

> *It could even vary from one person to another within a same language.

My idea was, within each language, it could vary from person to person in that same language.

Anonymous

Here, you're comparing multiple things. Person A speaking one language, person B speaking the same language. It varies for them, even though they're speaking the same language.

Damkerng T.

21:34

And the sentence was trying to generalize the idea, to cover every language I could think of.

Anonymous

Same can't have singular reference.

Damkerng T.

Yes, but there are C and D in another "the same language".

Anonymous

Yes, that's fine. This the is not that specific.

Damkerng T.

Then, E and F in yet another, and so on.

Anonymous

There is no pragmatically relevant distinction that makes us interpret the as referring to only one language. It is general.

Damkerng T.

21:36

What I think it seem to lack of is the sense of "each".

(Just like when I say "rock" in Thai, it will lack the sense of countability.)

Anonymous

"It could even vary from one person to another within the same language." This simply means that, for a given language, it may vary from person to person. Potentially true of multiple languages.

Damkerng T.

Yes, that was what I tried to say, but it's a broken English. -- Ah, you edited it!

Anonymous

That's what it means with the.

Anonymous

Yes, sorry, I didn't mean to copy it with a

Damkerng T.

In Thai, we can say something equivalent to that, and we can emphasize the sense of "each" by adding just one word to that basic version.

Anonymous

21:40

I would say the most natural interpretation of the sentence with the is that it's already general and not language-particular

Anonymous

It is simply the same for any particular comparison, while the set of total comparisons spans multiple languages

Anonymous

Although since it has modal could we don't know what languages the comparisons are present in

Anonymous

It doesn't necessarily imply in all languages

Damkerng T.

Hmm... I guess another alternative (which will lack the sense of "sameness") is to rephrase it as "It could even vary from one person to another within each language."

Anonymous

Although it's compatible with the idea that it's true of all languages

Anonymous

21:41

Each language? Out of what set?

Damkerng T.

Or maybe just "within a language".

Anonymous

Yeah, though a single would be more natural then

Damkerng T.

And that is back to your first suggestion!

"within a single language"

It's not very often that I will find that I can't express an idea effectively enough in English.

This reminds me of that whichth question.

Anonymous

I think the same is fine.

Damkerng T.

It is fine.

I didn't try to fight it.

It was like I came from a language that had a word for eachsame or singlesame and I couldn't find a good way to say that word in English.

I think you might have felt like this when you say a word such as "rock" in Japanese and it's unclear whether it's a single rock, or it the whole rock that forms a surface, or whether it's definite or indefinite and so on.

I guess that Japanese must provide good alternatives to express such ideas.

But what if we couldn't, or those alternatives didn't sound like what we wanted?

I think a lot of questions on ELL is similar to this case.

Basically, it's very difficult to think entirely in L2, even when we think in L2, because internally, we see the world mostly related to the way we do it in our L1.

Sorry that I turned our discussion from English usage into language learning in general again!

Anonymous

22:02

Well, the question is: what is the idea you're trying to express?

Anonymous

All of our grammatical alternatives so far have had the same propositional content.

Anonymous

> It could even vary from one person to another within the same language.
> It could even vary from one person to another within a single language.
> It could even vary from one person to another within a language.
> Within each language, it could even vary from one person to another within that same language.

Anonymous

These all mean the same thing.

Anonymous

The only difference in the last one

Anonymous

Is that the first three describe an unspecified set of languages, while each starts out with the set of all languages, but modal could weakens that and we're left with the same thing

Anonymous

22:05

As far as I can tell, the same is fine for the meaning you're trying to express

Anonymous

Not just grammatical (which was not in dispute)

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

But the reason I think that is because I can't see the difference in meaning you're trying to describe

Anonymous

They all express: "There is a set of languages N. For each language L in that set, there may be two or more speakers who differ on this point."

Damkerng T.

I think my problem was in my L1 (I'm now guessing that this might be the case of some other languages too, considering those questions on ELL), I can express this the same or a single, too, and I can express a similar idea with another word which combines the two things.

Anonymous

22:08

So I don't see any difference in meaning between the sentences with the same and a single.

Anonymous

So I don't understand what it would mean to combine their meanings.

Damkerng T.

It's really hard to describe the difference!

Anonymous

Well, the English sentences here have the same meaning.

Damkerng T.

I understand that.

Anonymous

Hmm, I guess I won't be able to help then!

Damkerng T.

22:11

It could just be my idiosyncrasy. I mean, I'm sure that other people say the same thing I say too, in Thai, but they probably really think too much about what they say or what they use.

It's quite all right. You've helped me since you confirmed that "a same" is ungrammatical.

Anonymous

Yay

Damkerng T.

Yay!

Anonymous

You might find this passage interesting:

Anonymous

books.google.co.jp/…

Damkerng T.

Wow!

It sounds like they started to realize something important in around 1910.

I'm sure that English has influenced a lot of languages, Thai included, significantly.

Anonymous

22:19

During the Meiji Restoration (1868-1912), after the opening of the Japanese borders to the west, there was a strong push to westernize

Damkerng T.

And it's probably not just English.

Anonymous

The development of the Japanese third-person pronouns かのじょ "she/her" and かれ "he/him" are an example of the influence of English on Japanese during that era

Anonymous

To this day, neither pronoun is strongly integrated and they can still have a "translation"-ish feel to them if overused

Damkerng T.

Oh, you mean in spoken Japanese, they don't use these words?

Anonymous

Both the language itself and grammatical theories to describe the language were influenced during that era

Anonymous

22:21

@DamkerngT. Much less than in English!

Anonymous

However! Both words have additional meanings: "girlfriend" and "boyfriend"

Damkerng T.

A-ha!

The final results of the self-eval on ELL don't look so good, I think.

Anonymous

Yeah, not so much.

Damkerng T.

> 23, 15, 8, 7, 5, 3, 3, 1, 0, -2!

Anonymous

For comparison, here is Japanese:

Anonymous

22:29

4

Q: Let's get critical: Sep 2014 Site Self-Evaluation

We all love Japanese Language Stack Exchange, but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they arrive from Google, what will their first impression be? Let's try to look at this site through the eyes of someone...

discussion featured site-evaluation

Damkerng T.

-4!

Anonymous

And Linguistics:

Anonymous

2

Q: Let's get critical: Sep 2014 Site Self-Evaluation

We all love Linguistics Stack Exchange, but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they arrive from Google, what will their first impression be? Let's try to look at this site through the eyes of someone who's...

discussion featured site-evaluation

Damkerng T.

> 13, 13, 11, 9, 7, 5, 4, 3, 0, -4 -- from ~18 JSE reviewers

Anonymous

I don't know why that question is at -4.

Anonymous

22:31

Originally, the answerer made a mistake: they thought there was only one として

Damkerng T.

Only 7 reviewers on Linguistics!

Anonymous

But they edited their answer

Damkerng T.

@snailboat After the self-eval, probably?

Anonymous

No, before.

Damkerng T.

Oh!

Anonymous

22:32

I don't know why people rated it Needs Improvement.

Anonymous

Maybe they felt she should have elaborated a bit

Damkerng T.

Probably.

Anonymous

That was the first site eval in a while when I wasn't really represented

Anonymous

In the previous site evals, their RNG seemed to pick on me! :-)

Damkerng T.

:)

Anonymous

22:35

1

A: Let's get critical: Sep 2013 Site Self-Evaluation

Final Results Ex 　Sa　 NI　 sc 　9　　3　　0　　9　　　What is the yomikata of 値 in 破格値? 　7　　3　　0　　7　　　Is there any reference material for the origins of kanji on-yomi? 　7　　2　　0　　7　　　what is the logic for assigning Kanji characters to certain radicals? 　7　　3　　1　　6　　　What does にゃ mean at the end of a sentenc...

Anonymous

That was the eval from a year ago

Damkerng T.

Somehow my answers have never been on a site eval.

Anonymous

I wrote the answers to the first three . . . :-)

Damkerng T.

The top three!

Anonymous

The reviews pick questions that are 30-60 days old.

Anonymous

22:37

So they're sort of a snapshot of a particular point in time and maybe not the entire preceding six-month period

Anonymous

Since people go through phases where they answer, then they don't, etc., I wonder if the snapshot might not be totally representative

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

I've never entirely stopped answering questions on ELL

Anonymous

But I haven't been doing it as much lately, I think

Anonymous

Sort of off-and-on for me

Damkerng T.

22:40

Yay! for not stopping.

I think I'm on a laying-low phase. :)

Anonymous

I answered 16 questions last month.

Anonymous

9 in the month before that.

Anonymous

13 in the month before that.

Anonymous

7 in the month before that.

Anonymous

28 in the month before that.

Anonymous

22:42

17 in the month before that.

Damkerng T.

I answered much less than that!

Anonymous

18 in the month before that.

Anonymous

27 in the month before that.

Anonymous

20 in the month before that.

Anonymous

31 in the month before that.

Anonymous

22:43

21 in the month before that.

Anonymous

37 in the month before that.

Anonymous

29 in the month before that.

Anonymous

So

Anonymous

Overall I'm answering fewer questions this year

Damkerng T.

Since July, I answer only 4-5 questions each month.

Anonymous

22:45

I still haven't asked any questions on ELL

Anonymous

I could follow JR's suggestion and ask and answer my own question to post about a topic

Damkerng T.

+1!

Anonymous

1

Q: “Don’t say” vs. “let’s don’t talk about it” vs. “let’s not talk about it”

Imagine there are three individuals in a small room. Person A is going to say something that person B should not be made aware of. What sentence should person C use to stop A from continuing his speech, such that B wouldn't notice that C does not want him to know? Here is a possible conversatio...

grammaticality word-choice phrase-request

Anonymous

This OP is long gone and may never read any of the responses

Anonymous

They did ask about "Let's don't"

Anonymous

22:47

Which no one really addressed

Anonymous

I'm skeptical of any claims that "let's don't" doesn't make sense

Damkerng T.

Somehow "Let's don't" alone sounds rather okay.

Anonymous

Since "let's" has its own unique grammar to begin with, anything we say about it will be specific to "let's"

Damkerng T.

(Probably because of The Simpsons!)

Anonymous

So I don't see any reason why "let's don't" couldn't have its own rule

Anonymous

22:49

Do they say that in The Simpsons?

Anonymous

People say it in real life. I think it's nonstandard.

Damkerng T.

I imagine that Bart would say it.

Probably, Homer too!

Anonymous

So we can likely assume that learners want to know it's "incorrect"

Anonymous

Because we usually presume that the goal of learners is to learn the standard language, and therefore standard = correct and nonstandard = incorrect

Anonymous

Which is fine.

Anonymous

22:51

So maybe there's not much need to describe the usage of "let's don't" from a learner's perspective.

Anonymous

Although I imagine most learners are at least somewhat interested in nonstandard usage

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I can imagine it.

Anonymous

I don't have any particular memory of anyone saying "let's don't" in fiction

Damkerng T.

I think it's fine (for learners) to learn mainly only standard English, but it's rather unrealistic to treat everything outside of standard English as incorrect.

Anonymous

But I've probably heard it before without committing it to memory :-)

Anonymous

22:52

@DamkerngT. Well, I suppose it depends on what your assumptions are

Anonymous

Would it be marked incorrect on a test? I'm pretty sure it would be.

Anonymous

That's useful for a learner to know.

Anonymous

Well, for some learners.

Anonymous

I know not all learners are taking tests. :-)

Damkerng T.

:D

Anonymous

22:53

As a general matter, I'd rather call it nonstandard than incorrect

Anonymous

We can save "incorrect" for "Me Thog is! You Thogra is!"

Anonymous

Clearly Thog does not speak fluent Caveman.

Anonymous

I actually like "let's don't", by the way.

Anonymous

I think it sounds cute.

Damkerng T.

It's cute, indeed!

Anonymous

23:25

There, I answered another question.

Anonymous

I'm done for the day :-)

Damkerng T.

Hooray!

> that which belongs to or is connected with her (Merriam-Webster’s Learner’s)

Probably, that that which should be avoided in dictionaries for learners.

Anonymous

I suppose that's fair

Damkerng T.

Oh! They might intend their dictionary for native learners.

Anonymous

Usually in this context "learner" means "non-native speaker"

Anonymous

23:39

Although I suppose some people object to that use of the word

Anonymous

Some people don't like to be called "learners" all their lives just because they're non-native. Other people, native speakers, don't mind being called "learners".

Anonymous

Me, I'm fine with being called a learner of Japanese. The issue doesn't come up for me since I'm not so good at the language :-)

Damkerng T.

Agree!

Anonymous

I decided to try to avoid using the term "learner" for people unless I think those people believe it's appropriate

Anonymous

My favorite term is L2 speaker

Anonymous

23:40

But 'round these parts, I don't always know if jargon like "L1" and "L2" will get my message across

Anonymous

Thankfully, I know you'll know what I mean :-)

Damkerng T.

Hmm... I think I should borrow your idea.

Anonymous

So I can use L1 and L2 freely talking to you.

Damkerng T.

I'm positive that I know what you mean. :)

Anonymous

I'm positive that you know, too! :-)

Anonymous

23:41

It's other people I'm worried about.

Anonymous

Not everyone knows those terms.

Anonymous

So if I'm avoiding "learner" and "L1/L2", I go for "native [speaker]" and "non-native [speaker]"

Damkerng T.

I'm listening to a radio drama. It might have some effects on my English at this time. :D

@snailboat I think speaker is a more friendly term for a lot of non-native speakers.

I don't know why, but in the radio drama, they seem to use "at this time" instead of "now" all the time. :)

Anonymous

I think sometimes the distinction between native and non-native speakers isn't totally relevant

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Interesting!

Anonymous

23:46

I've hardly ever listened to an English radio drama.

Damkerng T.

Oh!

Anonymous

Japanese radio dramas have their own scene-setting devices.

Anonymous

Narrators talk in ways that people normally don't.

Anonymous

I suppose part of it must be a signal that the narrator is somehow objective, not a part of the story but telling the story

Anonymous

When you said "at this time", I imagined you were talking about a narrator.

Damkerng T.

23:48

This one, the one I'm listening to, is a live remake of an old radio drama. They do it in front of the audience. I enjoy it a lot.

@snailboat I think I've heard at least two characters used it. Maybe three.

Anonymous

Ah, characters!

Anonymous

Now I'm wondering if it's a marker of formal style.

Damkerng T.

It's "Forbidden Planet Decoded". Probably, that's why!

Anonymous

I guess I shouldn't jump to conclusions without context :-)

Damkerng T.

In case you might interest: video.wpt.org/video/2365096641

Anonymous

23:53

When do they say it? :-)

Anonymous

I just watched the first scene

Damkerng T.

Oh, I forgot about when.

Anonymous

I just misheard something.

Anonymous

I went and played it back and I heard it completely differently.

Anonymous

It made me wonder if the audio had gotten slightly out of sync with the video and the playback jumped the audio

Anonymous

23:55

I felt so confident in what I heard that I started questioning the playback!

Anonymous

But I wonder if I actually just misheard it

Anonymous

I heard "soon enough" as "soonf"

Anonymous

When I went back, it sounded totally normal!

Anonymous

Very disconcerting :-)

Anonymous

I've been focusing so much on listening lately, mostly to Japanese, but I do pay attention listening to other languages

Damkerng T.

23:57

@snailboat Oh, that's interesting. Probably it's a technical problem.

I noticed that sometimes the quality of the streaming is downgraded without any obvious reason.

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