English Language Learners

Damkerng T.

21:00

Wow! How long was your bridge?

Anonymous

I can't remember details.

Anonymous

It was over 20 years ago.

Damkerng T.

It still sounds like fun, anyway.

Anonymous

So I was a small child.

Damkerng T.

But I think I've never done any gumdrop things before.

Anonymous

21:01

That was at a special school they took a few of us to with no grades

Anonymous

Standardized tests in the US are really funny things.

Damkerng T.

Eh? No grades?

Anonymous

In our class of 30, four of us tested at the 99th percentile.

Damkerng T.

Wow!

Anonymous

The tests are designed to be easy and use inflated curves so that lots of students end up in that percentile.

Damkerng T.

21:01

That's something!

Anonymous

I mean, you'd think 4 out of 30 would be unusual, but I'm not sure it was. I think the test scores were purposely inflated to make teachers and parents feel good about their students.

Damkerng T.

Oh, that reminds me of our education in the last decade.

Almost all of our kids would get 4.00 or something really close, because they changed the rules to include their GPA in the admissions too.

Back in my days, 3.00 was really hard to get. :-)

Anonymous

Me, my GPA was consistently over 4.0.

Anonymous

"Over?!" you ask, incredulous of our GPA inflation

Damkerng T.

Eh? Oh, in our system, 4.00 is the full score.

Anonymous

21:04

But you see, weighted classes at my school gave an extra +1.0.

Damkerng T.

Ah, I see. :-)

Anonymous

So if you were taking all weighted classes (which was not actually possible, since many subjects had no weighted classes available) and got straight A's, you'd have a 5.0 GPA.

Anonymous

In reality the most you could do was something like 4.7

Anonymous

Whether weighted classes exist at all varies from school to school in the US, and in fact at some schools they're heavily weighted (+2.0!)

Damkerng T.

Oh!

Anonymous

21:06

So college admissions typically ignore your GPA entirely and ask you to report all of your individual grades so they can independently calculate what they consider your GPA.

Anonymous

Funny, if you think about it.

Damkerng T.

I think that trend has developed here too, a few years already perhaps.

Anonymous

This was 1999 for me.

Damkerng T.

Almost all universities would issue their own tests.

Anonymous

So fifteen years ago, when I graduated. I was 17.

Anonymous

21:07

Now I'm 32.

Anonymous

In a couple years I'll have doubled that age. :-)

Anonymous

Funny how quickly time passes.

Damkerng T.

And within three years, you could sing that song. (There is a line about being 35, I think.)

Anonymous

Hah!

Damkerng T.

Time flies indeed.

Anonymous

21:08

I love to sing, but I'm a terrible singer.

Anonymous

I have a very good sense of pitch, though.

Damkerng T.

I bet I'm worse than you. :D

Anonymous

I think that pitch sense helps with language learning.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

Even languages without phonemic tone are melodic in their own way.

Anonymous

21:09

And you won't sound natural unless you learn the vocabulary of melodies each language possesses.

Damkerng T.

Some people complemented me with something like you have a good voice.

Anonymous

You do. You sound like a news reporter. Although that might have just been because you were reading a news report, biasing my perception :-)

Anonymous

Just a moment, I'm in need of more caffeine

Damkerng T.

But I think the next thing they would have said (but they usually didn't) is something like but you always sing out of the tunes.

@snailboat Thank you.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. "Out of tune" is frozen and doesn't permit variation

Anonymous

21:13

Although it contrasts with "in tune"

Anonymous

What can you do with "out of tune"? You can modify it: "way out of tune"

Damkerng T.

Ah, thanks! I suspected that what I said was a little off.

Anonymous

Comparative and superlative "more out of tune" and "most out of tune" work.

Anonymous

It works attributively: "an out-of-tune singer", "an out-of-tune guitar"

Anonymous

It doesn't permit any noun inflections: *out of tune's, out of tunes

Anonymous

21:15

Seems like you could call it an adjective.

Anonymous

If you wanted to, I mean. :-)

Damkerng T.

I think it's better to remember it as a set phrase.

out-of-tune looks more like an adjective.

Anonymous

That's probably a fine description.

Anonymous

No corresponding adverb with -ly: *out-of-tunely is attested but I think most people would call it nonstandard

Anonymous

"He sang loudly and out-of-tunely"

Damkerng T.

21:18

I think probably people would use it as an adverb too.

Oh, this comes back to that "play cool" question.

Anonymous

Yeah, you're right.

Anonymous

Hmm. I'm not sure that you can distinguish between an adjective and adverb in some constructions with "out of tune"

Anonymous

If it's an adjective, maybe it's also a flat adverb. :-)

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

(But I think most people would be happier calling it something like a preposition phrase.)

Damkerng T.

21:20

A-ha!

Anonymous

I'm trying to think of any reason not to consider it an adjective (and a single word)

Anonymous

Huddleston & Pullum use the term "syntactically inert" for a phrase which is still seems like a phrase, but doesn't really permit variation

2

Anonymous

For example, "many a", which we discussed a few days ago, is considered a syntactically inert determinative phrase in CGEL's jargon.

Anonymous

Oh, now that I'm looking at it, here's a point I didn't think of while we were talking about it the other day

Anonymous

> The many component indicates a large number, but the a has an individuating and distributive effect requiring a count singular head.

Anonymous

21:26

That's an interesting way of describing it

Anonymous

It wouldn't have occurred to me

Damkerng T.

I think it explains why it should be Many a man is ...

Anonymous

Looking online, it appears that the opposite of "syntactically inert" is "syntactically active"

Damkerng T.

I think you used something like "productive" before.

Anonymous

Oh, yes, productive is a good general term to describe a process that can be applied synchronically

Anonymous

21:29

For example, -ly affixation is productive.

Anonymous

The basic idea being: when you add -ly to a word, you produce a new word

Anonymous

You can produce words or phrases.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

Or, well, anything really. As long as you can come up with a process that allows you to create new stuff, you can call it productive.

Anonymous

So I am rather fond of that bit of grammatical terminology.

Damkerng T.

21:32

I think you mentioned it the first time here because of that -fold thing.

Anonymous

The concept is closely related to the concept of a lexicon, that is, our mental dictionaries.

Anonymous

When we have a word that can no longer be produced in the modern language with the expected meaning, we have to store it in our mental dictionaries.

Anonymous

We can't come up with the correct meaning, usage, or whatever simply from looking at the parts.

Damkerng T.

Ahh... that's quite an interesting concept.

Anonymous

Some words were produced by processes that were productive in another language, but never in English; for example, confound was produced in Latin by com- + fundere

Anonymous

21:34

It wandered around a bit and eventually stumbled into English

Anonymous

We have to store it in our mental dictionaries as a single word because we can't put con- and found together and reach the desired meaning.

Anonymous

But once upon a time, it was produced using a productive process.

Anonymous

Look at disgruntled. We have to store that as a single word, too.

Anonymous

We can't stick dis- and gruntle and -ed together because we don't have gruntle anymore.

Anonymous

(People occasionally say something like "he's lost his gruntle", but it's wordplay, backformation--they don't actually have the original word gruntle in their lexicon)

Damkerng T.

21:37

But disgruntled is surely related to grunt, I think.

Anonymous

That's right.

Anonymous

But you can't figure out what disgruntled means simply by looking at dis- + grunt + -le + -ed, either.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

Hmm, should I write the frequentative affix as -le or -el?

Anonymous

The OED says -le

Damkerng T.

21:40

It looks like an -le to me.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Well, it is, but it appeared as part of -elen

Damkerng T.

Oh!

Anonymous

I changed my example to dis- + grunt + -le + -ed to reflect the makeup of the current word, but

Anonymous

I think thanks to French influence we often spell /(ə)l/ as le when you might expect el

Anonymous

Today I discovered that out of tune is an adjective! (Although I don't know if anyone will believe me :-)

Damkerng T.

21:44

Eh? Wasn't it an adj. for you before?

Anonymous

I never thought about it before.

Anonymous

My default guess would be that it's a preposition phrase since it's apparently headed by a preposition, out

Anonymous

(Though I think traditional grammar would call that out an adverb because traditionally only prepositions with NP complements are recognized)

Anonymous

I can't think of any tests for adjectiveness it doesn't pass. Can you think of any?

Anonymous

Admittedly it's spelled with spaces :-)

Anonymous

21:50

A-ha! I think I can come up with arguments that it's not a word.

Anonymous

You can perform conjunction reduction on it: "You're either in or out of tune, Jack."

Anonymous

And phrases like "out of luck and out of tune" seem intuitively parallel

Anonymous

These would point to it still being a phrase

Damkerng T.

Eh? I think we can do that to other adjectives too.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Give me an example.

Damkerng T.

21:52

Something like, "She is nice and kind."

Anonymous

Sure.

Anonymous

But this isn't the same.

Anonymous

> You're either [[in or out] of tune]

Anonymous

> You're either [in ~~tune~~ or out of tune]

Damkerng T.

Hmm... I probably should think harder. :-)

Anonymous

21:53

See, I coordinated across only part of the phrase.

Anonymous

That suggests that it's a string of words, not an individual word that happens to be spelled with a space.

Damkerng T.

Ah, I see.

Anonymous

Although we do sometimes say things like:

Anonymous

> [pre- and post-operative]　←　[preoperative and postoperative]

Anonymous

We consider these single words

Anonymous

21:57

Maybe I can still get away with calling it an adjective :-)

Damkerng T.

:D

@WendiKidd: Regardless of whether there's any possibility of a "satisfactory" answer (I certainly don't think there could be a single, unambiguously "correct" one), I just don't see why this type of question should be on ELL rather than ELU. It has no special relevance to learning English - it's just another one like the constant stream of SWR questions that turn up on ELU. Sure - they're often interesting, but in general I think they're usually about as on-topic as posting a crossword clue. Maybe the "topicality" of this one (here, as opposed to ELU) should be kicked around on meta. — FumbleFingers 5 hours ago

By the way, what does "SWR questions" mean?

Oh, it's "Single Word Request".

Anonymous

It seems like it'd work fine on ELU.

Damkerng T.

nods -- I think I agree with that.

Transcript for