English Language Learners

Anonymous

10:04 PM

@DamkerngT. The question about whose each and whose every is really interesting!

Damkerng T.

:D

We discussed it a little several hours ago. :-)

Have you seen the examples I found on Google Books?

MARamezani

@snailboat Guilty as charged! How many times did I tell you not to take me seriously, again?

Anonymous

I usually refer to chapter four of The Interpretation of Quantifiers: Semantics & Processing when the topic of distributive quantifiers comes up (which in this case means each and every)

Damkerng T.

@MARamezani I guess you have to keep reminding people that. ;-)

*of that

@snailboat Wow, a long PDF!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. It's interesting that the asterisk has come to mark corrections in informal chat, while in linguistics the asterisk usually marks something as ungrammatical! :-)

Damkerng T.

10:08 PM

Indeed!

I guess it's probably like this:

MARamezani

BTW if this is unclear and shady somehow, I would really appreciate if someone points out my mistakes.

Anonymous

It's her dissertation. If you can tell your PDF viewer to go to page 111 (which should be marked page 98 at the bottom―the PDF page numbers don't match up), that'll bring you to section 4.2, Each vs. Every

Damkerng T.

> Linguistics: * == This is incorrect
Chat: * == Oops, I did a mistake. Here is what I meant!

Anonymous

In historical linguistics, an asterisk can also indicate an unattested or reconstructed form

MARamezani

@DamkerngT. This is another there's a difference ya know case, isn't it?

Damkerng T.

10:10 PM

@MARamezani I think so!

MARamezani

@DamkerngT. Funny sound again!

I'm on Lenovo.

Damkerng T.

lol

Anonymous

So I could say that Mandarin 蜗 wō 'snail' comes from Middle Chinese kwæ, from the reconstructed Old Chinese *k.rˁoj (Baxter & Sagart 2014)

Anonymous

Or more compactly: wō < kwæ < *k.rˁoj

MARamezani

O.O

Damkerng T.

10:13 PM

confused!

MARamezani

0

Q: Please move this helpful answer to the apt question?

Would a moderator please move this helpful answer (purposed for, and) to this question thread?

support

Anonymous

D'oh!

Anonymous

My explanation has failed :-)

Damkerng T.

It's a long stretch for me to think of wō < kwæ.

But I think now I get it.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Chinese used to have really long consonant clusters like English does today

MARamezani

10:14 PM

What is Law talking about?

Anonymous

That's how Chinese was able, long ago, to have mostly monosyllabic words

Anonymous

It had a maximal syllable of CCCVCCC, which means "three consonants on either side of a vowel"!

Anonymous

Like English strengths /streŋθs/, which is also CCCVCCC

Anonymous

But over time Chinese became more and more simplified, some Chinese languages more than others

Damkerng T.

I can't think of anything in Chinese that follows the pattern CCCVCCC!

nods

Anonymous

10:16 PM

So nothing approaching CCCVCCC is possible today!

MARamezani

No. You're NOT getting the star!

Anonymous

That means lots of consonants vanished :-)

Damkerng T.

lol

MARamezani

Okay, couldn't resist.

Anonymous

That's why Mandarin is much more bisyllabic today than Old Chinese ever was

Anonymous

10:17 PM

A lot of the time two syllables are necessary to distinguish what one syllable used to distinguish!

Anonymous

It has a lot fewer syllables these days.

Anonymous

And that bisyllabification is ongoing.

Damkerng T.

You mean two phonemes or two syllables?

Anonymous

Syllables

Damkerng T.

Eh?

I think it usually is monosyllable!

Anonymous

10:19 PM

There are still plenty of common monosyllabic words

Anonymous

The process is ongoing and nowhere near complete :-)

Anonymous

In fact, it's the most common words which resist the process!

MARamezani

Okay. Time to sleep for real. I'm dead (asleep) Later!

Damkerng T.

In this respect, Thai and Chinese are very close. (I know @MARamezani will say that I bring the Thai language up again!)

Anonymous

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=689

Anonymous

10:21 PM

Here are some of the most common bisyllabic words

Damkerng T.

@MARamezani Hibernate peacefully!

MARamezani

@DamkerngT. Before leaving: You bring the Thai language up again!

Damkerng T.

lol

Anonymous

The long term trend is to use two syllables where once used to suffice because of the number of homophones

Damkerng T.

Ah, I see. But that would depend on how Chinese defines what a "word" is.

MARamezani

10:22 PM

@DamkerngT. Like a, ... bear?

Damkerng T.

I mean, for example, 中国 Zhōngguó China, each of 中 and 国 has its own meaning.

@MARamezani Like a Lenovo. :P

Anonymous

Yes, as morphemes

Anonymous

Just like in tricycle, both tri and cycle have their own meanings

MARamezani

@DamkerngT. The Lenovo company will plagiarize this motto.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

10:25 PM

www-rohan.sdsu.edu/dept/chinese/old_site/aspect/…

Damkerng T.

I guess most people would think of แม่น้ำ as a single word (which it is!) for "river". But แม่ = mother, น้ำ = water, i.e. "mother of water = river" makes perfect sense for me.

In the sense that "mother of water" is the source of water we drink and use.

That's a bit stretching example. A simpler example is ลูกสาว (daughter). ลูก = son/daughter, สาว = woman/female. However, most people would still think of ลูกสาว as a single word, though obviously it's "a son/daughter who is female".

It's funny what a word exactly is!

Anonymous

It's true

Anonymous

Linguists often use more precise terms like lexical item

Anonymous

Over time, what was once syntax becomes morphology

Anonymous

Grammatical particles become morphologized into inflectional endings

Anonymous

10:30 PM

Phrases and compounds are lexicalized into words

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

The example I used the other day, goodbye, used to be God be with you, four words! But now it's one

Damkerng T.

Oh, yes, indeed!

Anonymous

In Japanese, the calque ka-no onna 'that woman' created to translate English her in the 1800s

Anonymous

Became ka-no jo, and is now kanojo, treated as a single word

Anonymous

10:31 PM

(Onna and jo are two different readings for 女)

Anonymous

The phrase equivalent today in speech would be a-no onna 'that woman'

Damkerng T.

Eh, maybe I've heard kanojo in dorama. I think it's kinda like "master (who is female)".

Anonymous

Well, it was created as a loan translation for her because Japanese had no such word

Damkerng T.

Ahh

Anonymous

And it's still used that way, but it's taken on additional meanings such as 'girlfriend'

Anonymous

10:33 PM

And the frequency of kanojo as a third person pronoun with female reference is much, much lower than the frequency of she or her in English

Anonymous

It wasn't part of the language historically and that shows in how the language is used today

Anonymous

But it's an example of lexicalization.

Anonymous

0

Q: When and why did 'another' start being used as one word?

I assume the word came from a meshing together of 'other' with its indefinite article'. When (and why) did English speakers begin to use this version, instead of 'an other'? And why is it still separated from 'the'? Shouldn't there be a word like 'thother'?

english word-formation words

Damkerng T.

lol

How coincidentally!

I think I've seen someone use some words which I thought should be written as two words before around here.

... Ah, yes, someday.

Anonymous

But these changes happen very gradually over time and we can't usually pinpoint something and say "This phrase became one word in 1975!"

Anonymous

10:41 PM

Yeah, in English, we do have orthographic words

Anonymous

They're indicated by spaces and such.

Anonymous

They aren't necessarily the same as any other thing you might call a "word"

Anonymous

Each other, for example.

Anonymous

Clearly two orthographic words. (Well, pretty clearly. Some people write eachother, but it's considered non-standard.)

Anonymous

But it's pretty well grammaticalized

Anonymous

10:42 PM

In Middle English, you could still stick a word between each and other.

Damkerng T.

That reminds me of a comment of my own...

Don't forget that we also write "your own self", not "yourownself". — Damkerng T. 10 hours ago

Anonymous

But today, you can't.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Hah!

Anonymous

So did it become one word? By what definition of word?

Anonymous

When did it happen?

Anonymous

10:43 PM

It's all kinda fuzzy.

Anonymous

Is kinda one word? It's usually written kind of.

Damkerng T.

nods -- But also pronounced as kinda.

Oh, it's has its own entry! macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/american/kinda

Perhaps someday we'll have afraida. :P

Anonymous

Yeah, I think that most of the time the reduced form of of, pronounced /ə/, is written as -a in only a few fixed phrases like kinda or sorta

Anonymous

Otherwise we usually write of, even if we don't pronounce the /v/

Anonymous

But you can find examples of -a on the internet, including afraida, if you look :-)

Damkerng T.

10:51 PM

Oh! I was just kidding! :-)

Anonymous

Damkerng T.

:D

Anonymous

Mmm, capsaicin

Damkerng T.

Oh, that scary movie mask!

Hey, we looked at the same thing and see what came up to our minds first!

Anonymous

It's a famous Munch

Anonymous

10:52 PM

Called The Scream

Anonymous

The Scream

The Scream (Norwegian: Skrik) is the popular name given to each of four versions of a composition, created as both paintings and pastels, by the Expressionist artist Edvard Munch between 1893 and 1910. Der Schrei der Natur (The Scream of Nature) is the title Munch gave to these works, all of which show a figure with an agonized expression against a landscape with a tumultuous orange sky. Arthur Lubow has described The Scream as "an icon of modern art, a Mona Lisa for our time." Edvard Munch created the four versions in various media. The National Gallery, Oslo, holds one of two painted versions...

Damkerng T.

Oh, yes!

Anonymous

Speaking of northerners

Anonymous

mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/quit-dr-who-over-northern-5515270

Anonymous

> Christopher Eccleston has revealed he quit Doctor Who because bosses wanted him to drop his northern accent.

Damkerng T.

10:56 PM

> “We shouldn’t make a correlation between intellect and accent. That still needs addressing.”

True.

Today I learned: chip on shoulder

Anonymous

I wonder where that phrase comes from

Damkerng T.

Wikipedia has a page for it.

Anonymous

EtymOnline says: To have a chip on one's shoulder is 1830, American English, from the custom of a boy determined to fight putting a wood chip on his shoulder and defying another to knock it off.

Anonymous

Is that about what Wikipedia said?

Damkerng T.

Chip on shoulder

The phrase having a chip on one's shoulder refers to holding a grudge or grievance that readily provokes disputation. == History == "A chip on the shoulder" comes from the ancient right of shipwrights within the Royal Navy Dockyards to take home a daily allowance of offcuts of timber, even if good wood was cut up for this purpose. The privilege was instated as a prescriptive right from 1634. By 1756, this privilege had been abused and was costing taxpayers too much in lost timber for warship repair and construction. The decision was then made by the Navy Board to limit the quantity a shipwright...

It goes way back to 1634!

But the usage seems to be from 1756.

Anonymous

10:58 PM

It's very interesting that they phrased the article title as chip on shoulder

Anonymous

While I understand that, I wouldn't expect to see someone talk about the phrase without some sort of genitive pronoun before shoulder

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

Chip on my/your/his/her/their/one's shoulder. Hmm, chip on its shoulder?

Anonymous

Maybe when speaking of a robot. Present company excepted, of course :-)

Damkerng T.

Robots usually focus on logic.

So either its or his is acceptable. :-)

Anonymous

11:02 PM

Yes! That's how they can do things like invent the Zeroth Law!

Damkerng T.

:D

Oh, @JimReynolds What brings you at this early hour?!

user116848

@snailboat Hi there snail :p

user116848

Hi Jim

Anonymous

Hello!

Anonymous

Oh, while I'm still here, I wanted to share a link:

Anonymous

11:06 PM

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=18667

Anonymous

It's about forgetting a language and re-learning it, or perhaps about not really forgetting a language at all

Anonymous

A topic we've discussed previously :-)

Damkerng T.

> "As it turns out, a language is rarely truly forgotten, merely submerged."

Doesn't that sound like something I had said!

I think I used the word suppressed.

Anonymous

11:20 PM

If you check the Tunstall dissertation I linked to earlier, you'll see discussion of each and every. In particular, the author discusses the emphasis on the universal or exhaustive nature of what's being quantified with every

Anonymous

In fact, every can even be used non-distributively, unlike each, in which case there's even more emphasis on the universal part of its meaning

Anonymous

Now let's think about the collocation whose every. Are we emphasizing the universal or exhaustive nature of what's being quantified?

Anonymous

Are we focusing on each of the things being quantified individually?

Anonymous

I'd argue that it's usually the former, and every is what makes sense semantically

Damkerng T.

I'd argue that it's all of the above.

(I'm trying to use it in the mathematics context, like defining a set or a list.)

Anonymous

11:23 PM

Chapters four and five go into detail about distributivity, if you'd like to read more and see how the author describes the two

Anonymous

I'll just put that link here one more time, since Jim and Arrow weren't here earlier when I linked to it: folk.uio.no/daghaug/corpusseminar/Tunstall1998.pdf

Anonymous

Not that I expect anyone in particular to be interested in it! I'm just posting a link in case, so folks don't have to go through the logs :-)

Anonymous

Anyway, I have to go, but I'll be back later to make another attempt at discussing each and every

Damkerng T.

Later!

Anonymous

I'll be interested to read alternative points of view!