English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2011-02-05

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12:04 AM

These questions are duplicates, in someway.

0

Q: How do you call who writes comments in a blog? Commenter or commentator?

How should I call a person commenting writing/adding comments (by pressing "add comment" link) to posts in this board - commenter or commentator? Update: Oi, the answer which I wanted to mark as the answer (while another to upvote only, and succeeded in it) disappeared. From that (disappeare...

1

A: "Commentor" vs "Commentator"

My own feeling about this is that "commenter" is a new word used to mean the people who make comments on internet blogs or forums etc. If you say someone is a "commentator" it sounds like they are the person who comments on sports games as you watch them on the television, hence the necessity for...

12:19 AM

It's embarrassing because Strunk & White wrote the most famous book about English grammar and usage—_The Elements of Style_—but it is a crappy book full of nonsense, stupid advice, and vacuous platitudes

there is this question

12

Q: What is Wrong in Strunk & White's "Elements of Style?"

I was reading the comments on this answer where several users claimed that Strunk & White's "Elements of Style" was "misinformed, hypocritical, and wrong" and "flat-out wrong or totally misleading" so I'd love to get a delineated list of where it is wrong (note: I have no position on this or ...

list-request writing-style

unfortunately, the highest-voted answers are apologia for the book

Oh. :-)

That is why I didn't find the word "strunk" on the dictionary.

10 hours later…

10:16 AM

@nohat: Thank you for the explanation.

I am sorry; I realized now that I didn't thank for that information.

1 hour later…

11:40 AM

@kiamlaluno: hey.

Sorry, but the NOAD isn't the place to look for a response to Yoichi Oishi's question about the meaning of "white" in population counts. Americans don't use the terms white and red the way you say.

11:59 AM

@Robusto: What would you check? The Italian dictionary? :-)

This is a case where you can look up a source and get a wrong answer.

As a matter of fact, it's just a question of wrong interpretation from my side, not what the dictionary reported.

Fair enough.

Sorry to differ with you. Your answers are usually spot on.

If I were you I would delete that answer, though.

There is nothing to be sorry. I just wanted to give an interpretation different from the usual one. It seemed too easy for me to understand white as referring to the race.

After all, Europeans were the first to use white to refer to the race.

It's time to eat something; proteins help to think. :-)

12:56 PM

0

Q: What are the criteria to adopt new words into English?

Long time no see is a typical example for Chinglish, though it is said that long time no see has been accepted by the mainstream English speakers. Recently, there is a neologism movement in the Mainland, and a few new Chinglish words have been invented to demonstrate the characteristics of the M...

vocabulary chinglish

It seems to me that the answer to the first question on the bottom is clearly "yes".

1:28 PM

I understand "mental viral symbionts" as a phrase.

@Kosmonaut: That is what I understood too. It still is confusing that the words are not quoted, at least for me.

Gee, I hope shitizen isn't in common usage.

@Kosmonaut: Thank you for editing my answer. I was not sure I could say "British pronunciation", as I read it in the NOAD. :-)

Also agree with @Kosmonaut that "mental viral symbionts" is apprehensible as a phrase, and an interesting one.

It sounds like a speaker trying to say citizen, but palatalizing the s before the front vowel :)

1:32 PM

I wasn't aware "Long time, no see" was from pidgin Chinese/English.

(Trying to pronounce "citizen".)

If so, interesting.

That is interesting.

Looks like it might be unclear whether this is based on Chinese-English pidgin or American Indian.

At some point, simplification leads to coincidental similarity maybe

?

Well, if you read about pidgins, it's very interesting.

They tend to have a lot of structural similarities.

For example, almost all pidgins are SVO, no matter what the order of the languages they are based on.

1:37 PM

Interesting.

Though there are certainly exceptions.

What do you call a constrution like "him fella"

*construction

I believe it means "he"

Well, I'd need more info about how it's used... but if "him" is used across the board, it would be because there is no case marking at all.

Or, "him" could be a demonstrative

ttp://books.google.com/books?id=pjWsAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA139&lpg=PA139&dq=%22him+fella%22+pidgin&source=bl&ots=jWIphYR_Ad&sig=mazdUXujAIJ9CH2jDv10D0glQ4w&hl=en&ei=SVNNTZK6IYSq8AaKhsCIDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22him%20fella%22%20pidgin&f=false

books.google.com/…

Sorry, didn't grab the initial h ...

(I hope pidgin is not another noun for pigeon. :-) )

1:42 PM

So your suggestion of domonstrative seems spot on.

No, it's a simplified language shared between two cultures.

It happens when two very different cultures suddenly come into contact with each other, having no mutual language and a need to interact.

The origin of the word is quite funny, to me.

I got it. I cannot use that word to mean American Italian, then.

Usually it takes the vocabulary of the dominant language, along with some morphosyntactic features of the substrate language

13

Q: Is Yiddish a creole language? And if not, what is it?

A "creole" language is formed by the merging of two parent languages, usually through an earlier rudimentary mixture of the two. Does this make Yiddish a creole language? Was English itself a creole language in the century or so after the Norman Conquest? My question is really about what consti...

creole language-formation

Some interesting points about it here.

This answer is correct.

I wouldn't call it a pidgin either.

But why the hell is this on EL&U? :)

1:47 PM

Because it's about the use of the word "creole"?

I think using that logic, you could ask about almost anything.

I was going to say it doesn't suit on EL&U.

When one says the phrase "best book for studying for the TOEFL", what exactly does it mean? :)

I think I need to close that question.

The question is about the usage/meaning of an English word; it's not about how to cook eggs. :-)

But it is a great linguistics.SE question.

1:50 PM

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Is there a linguistics.stackexchange.com?

No, but there might be.

If you two are interested in linguistics questions, then you should commit to that site if you haven't yet already.

I asked that question early on in my tenure here at ESE. I probably wouldn't ask it here today.

So there is a beta LSE?

Not yet — it is in the commitment stage.

"linguistics questions" is too broad.

1:52 PM

In what way is it too broad?

32

Proposed Q&A site for professional linguists working in academia, industry, or the field, students of linguistics at the university level, and others with an interest in linguistic research and theory.

Currently in commitment.

Ha, there you go. Thumb your nose at Joel. :)

Take somebody who studies linguistics in Italy, and somebody who studies linguistics in USA; do they study the same thing?

Well, there are different camps that tends to cluster in different geographic areas, but essentially yes.

I went to a conference in France and met with people working on very similar stuff to me.

For example.

I mean, does the American person know about Italian linguistics as well?

Depending on what you are working on — yes.

Some people focus on phenomena within a certain language, but most people are looking at a phenomenon that many languages have in common.

So if you are interested in clitics, you would know about clitics in all the Romance languages, probably.

2:02 PM

I would think you have to be very familiar with a lot of different languages. Not necessarily to speak them well, but to understand their structures and how they deliver meaning, etc.

I guess that questions should be general enough to include more languages.

Yes, a linguist ends up knowing something about almost every language, but not much practical knowledge about actually speaking and understanding the language

@Kosmonaut: I committed to the LSE proposal with the stipulation that I am interested as a lay person. I hope that's enough.

Well, the proposal says: "...and others with an interest in linguistic research and theory"

I think that would mean a lay person who just finds it interesting.

So, for example, I know that in the language of Nakanai, they do infixation as part of their standard grammar that is similar to the way that hip-hop artists do iz-infixation ("house" -> "hizouse")

But could I so much as say hello in Nakanai? No.

infixation ... that is the term I should have known for answering this question:

1

Q: What does the term "crack-a-lacking" mean?

In the Gorillaz song Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach rapper Snoop Dogg uses the term crack-a-lacking. I've done some searching and can't find a reliable source for the origin and exact meaning of this term, but there are a few options. The term is not used in any specific context in th...

meaning vocabulary

2:10 PM

Actually, I think that is an instance of reduplication.

(Which is an interesting word by itself)

Reduplication, in linguistics, is a morphological process by which the root or stem of a word, or part of it, is repeated. Reduplication is used in inflections to convey a grammatical function, such as plurality, intensification, etc., and in lexical derivation to create new words. It is often used when a speaker adopts a tone more "expressive" or figurative than ordinary speech and is also often, but not exclusively, iconic in meaning. Reduplication is found in a wide range of languages and language groups, though its level of linguistic productivity varies. Reduplication is the standa...

(Infixation reminds me of Esperanto.)

Is a reduplication a type of infixation?

No, infixation is simply putting a morpheme into the middle of a word.

Reduplication is copying part of the stem and using that as an affix

Part or all of the stem.

It's like patro and patrino in Esperanto.

Ah. Thanks for the distinction. And for adding two new concepts for me to pore over.

2:13 PM

The Esperanto example depends... it might be that that is actually suffixation.

The reason for the distinction is that the stem is probably patr-

The infix -in- is used to form the feminine of a word.

What would you call forte, fortissimo, and fortississimo?

And the -o is the gender marker

But not part of the stem.

I think those are cases of suffixation also.

Also, does semiotics come under the purview of linguistics?

Fortissimo means strongest.

Also in this case, -o is the gender marker.

Malsano, malsanulejo.

2:17 PM

In music, f, ff, and fff are directions to play in varying degrees of loudness. At the conservatory they were called forte, fortissimo, and fortississimo ... perhaps the last one is not proper Italian.

Dumb, dumber, dumberer

en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fortississimo

Fortissimissimo is used in not formal context.

Yes, I think some linguists are interested in semiotics

Well, when I would see it in a score, oftentimes I was wearing a tuxedo. :)

And Orchestra Hall in Chicago is an extremely formal venue. :P

2:20 PM

It would mean "stronger than the strongest"; I would not suggest to write it in a curriculum vitae. :-)

> "Semiotics is frequently seen as having important anthropological dimensions; for example, Umberto Eco proposes that every cultural phenomenon can be studied as communication."

> Semiotics differs from linguistics in that it generalizes the definition of a sign to encompass signs in any medium or sensory modality. Thus it broadens the range of sign systems and sign relations, and extends the definition of language in what amounts to its widest analogical or metaphorical sense.

Both from Wikipedia entry on semiotics

"il nome della rosa".

So it looks as if linguistics is a branch or offshoot or first-cousin of semiotics ...

I didn't know Umberto Eco was a semiotic (if that is the right word).

Semiotician?

2:28 PM

I have problems with words starting with semi. :-)

Umberto Eco is a semiotician.

Umberto Eco, , (born 5 January 1932) is an Italian medievalist, semiotician, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose (Il nome della rosa, 1980), an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory. He has also written academic texts, children's books and many essays. Eco is President of the Scuola Superiore di Studi Umanistici, University of Bologna, member of the Accademia dei Lincei (since November 2010) and an Honorary Fellow of Kellogg College, University of Oxford. Biograph...

Among other things ...

I missed that in the long list of things he does. :-)

I didn't know he was known outside Italy.

Very much so.

I read The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum and Baudolino with great relish.

He is the kind of writer I love: full of linguistic expressiveness, eclectic, a polymath, and writes a damn good story while educating me at the same time.

I wonder how the expressions he uses are translated in languages different from Italian.

I'm sure the original is better. But what can I do? I don't speak Italian.

2:34 PM

There are many Italian ways of saying that would not translate well.

The question is: does he uses expressions that are easily translated, or not?

Good question. You tell me.

Have you read any of his works?

I have read "The name of the rose", time ago.

I remember the professor was explaining why the title was that. :-)

Well, it seems the title is pretty translatable

A friend of mine was reading "Il pendolo di Focault".

Yes; but why is the title "the name of the rose"? :-)

> Even the novel's title alludes to the possibility of many meanings or of nebulous meaning; Eco saying in the Postscript he chose the title "because the rose is a symbolic figure so rich in meanings that by now it hardly has any meaning left".

2:43 PM

Does anyone have a link to poems using American Italian words? :-)

3:09 PM

@kiamalaluno: I wouldn't know the difference, sorry.

3:22 PM

@Kosmonaut: There seems to be a hitch in my commitment to LSE.

I get this message:

> Please confirm your email address! Your commitment won't appear to others until you do. If you didn't receive the email, try resending the confirmation email or changing your email address.

Are you logged in to area51?

But I am signed in to A51 and it recognizes my OpenID and my avatar and all that. I clicked the resending the confirmation email link but I get no email.

I notice that these SE sites can be hinky sometimes about recognizing OpenID in all of its particulars.

I am not sure what the solution would be.

user image

Sometimes when I join these sites it doesn't recognize me and wants me to sign in even though it shows me as signed in.

Did you try changing your email address?

3:33 PM

I always use the same one for these sites.

I mean, did you try setting it to another one you use, and then changing it back to the usual email address you use for SE?

No.

I can try that in a minute, I guess.

There is another question about "me" and "I".

0

Q: "...and me" or "and I"?

Which one of the following sentences is correct? "Elvis and I went to a party." "Elvis and me went to a party." Does it matter if I change the order of the two subjects?

Closed

3:50 PM

It is starting to get a nightmare. I am sure I will start to use "me" when I should use "I". :-)

I wonder if the next question will be "Why is the IRC command /me, and not /I?" ;-)

Probably because the default case in English is accusative.

So when I label a photo of myself in English, I write "me", not "I"

In Italian, you probably would write "io"

Yes.

The equivalent of "it's me" in Italian is "sono io", which is the inverse of "io sono" (I am).

English uses "it is" more than Italian.

Actually, Italian doesn't have the equivalent of "it is" with that meaning.

That kind of phrase can take many different forms, depending on the language

The German equivalent is "it gives"

French is "il y a" which I guess means "it has here"

In Arabic, they say "fii" which means "in"

Are those phrases the equivalent of "it's me"?

Those are the equivalent of "it is" or "there is"

4:00 PM

(Maybe they are the equivelent of "it is".)

To say "it's me" in German you say "ich bin's" ("I am it")

"That's me right there, next to the palm tree."

"Quello sono io, vicino alla palma."

Police offering a photo array of suspect. Victim points: "That's him. He's the one."

(I could not translate "right there" in Italian. :-) )

4:06 PM

But German has a true nominative case.

In German I would label the photo "ich" :)

Yup

> *Wer ist hier so interessant? Wem suchen sie hier?"

> "Ich! Ich bin hier?"

Sorry, meant exclam instead of question at end of last sentence.

Who is so interesting hier? Who are they looking for?

Me! I am here.

Is the second part answering the question from the first line?

Yes

A self-posed question.

I guess it is answering the first question rather than the second

4:10 PM

Yes.

I actually only included the second sentence parenthetically to give the context. I probably should have put parentheses around it.

It's clear from case marking which question is being asked

I mean answered

@Kosmonaut: Do you know of John McWhorter?

It's time to leave here; my Calabrian woman arrived. :-)

Buh bye.

bye.

@Robusto: I know of him.

cya kiamlaluno

I'm reading his book Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue. Finding it pretty interesting.

He argues that much of what separates English from other descendants of proto-Germanic are the influences of Cornish and Welsh.

4:15 PM

Might be.

I don't know enough about Cornish and Welsh to weigh in on that.

Evidence includes the meaningless "do" and the fact that English is the only one of the lot to use verb-noun progressive to express present tense.

Both exist in Cornish and Welsh.

Are you talking about so-called do-support when you refer to "meaningless do"?

That's what McWhorter calls it.

That's fine — just making sure that's what you mean. There is another arguably "meaningless" use of "do", as a light verb

like "do laundry"

Anyway, that is really interesting that it exists in Cornish and Welsh.

He claims that the linguistic community has tended to dismiss Celtic languages as influences on English, but fail to explain how English acquired those constructs.

> English is the only language that developed in a context where Celts were the original inhabitants — and English is also the only Germanic language that turned its verb-noun progressive into its only present tense. [ibid., p. 28]

4:27 PM

Hm

I found the book in Google

The verb-noun progressive thing I am a little confused about

English is the only Germanic language that turned this into its only progressive tense

He is saying that Welsh has the verb-noun construction and English once did, but now it is something else... right?

What I am confused about is that German has this verb-noun progressive, if it is like how I am reading it.

He covers that.

You can say "ich bin am sterben" (I am on dying) to mean "I am dying"

Yes, but it's different. Hold on.

He says

> English is peculiar, however, in taking the ball and running with it, to the point where the bare verb is nosed out completely.

Does he mean the fact that it replaced "I die"?

Yes.

4:34 PM

Okay, I think I get it.

Well, that's interesting.

We don't say "I eat." We say "I'm eating."

Personally, I think it would be more surprising if Welsh and Cornish had no influence on English at all.

His point exactly.

That does sound like an interesting read.

I asked the "creole language" question as a candidate for LSE on A51.

4:43 PM

I hope linguistics.SE makes it.

Yeah, me too. I think it would be an interesting site.

5:01 PM

@Kosmonaut: lol someone already downvoted the creole question for LSE

I wonder why?

I voted it up just now in any case, so that evens that out.

Hm

Actually...

Maybe it is because the "sample question" stage is already over.

There seem to be a lot of irascible people out there, looking to use the downvote to lash out in general. I picture them as scowlers.

If the sample question stage is over, why let questions be asked then?

I am fairly new to the area51.SE thing myself, so I am not sure, but that might be the case.

See, that's why the drive-by downvote is such a problem. You don't know what the reason is.

I think this section might be for more meta questions related to the site proposals themselves.

We'll see.

5:13 PM

@Kosmonaut: The email from A51 came to my cell phone gmail account, but doesn't show up on gmail itself. That's why I missed it. Very weird.

5:24 PM

@Kosmonaut: The question got labeled as Science. Maybe someone doesn't think linguistics qualifies as a science?

Ha... that is really odd!

4 hours later…

9:40 PM

Hi there! :)

@drachenstern Are you there?

drivel does not improve the usefulness or quality of chat. I have already acknowledged that I am lurking. If you have a question, say the question. Asking if I am ready to answer a question is useless.

Is this correct?

> I've read something.

I would not post a comment on a question that I had a comment to post

That may or may not be correct. What is the context of that quoted sentence?

@drachenstern for example:

"Have you ever read anything on the topic of supercomputing?" "I've read something" would be appropriate.

9:46 PM

Jan 1 I'm reading XY.

Jan 4 (reading complete) I've read XY.

"Did you read a book for class?" "I've read something" may be considered a sarcastic reply.

I don't understand the question. That is the correct conjugation of that verb if that is what you're asking.

According to Google Translate, it's correct… at least when translating to Hungarian – my primary language.

Do you mean to say "when translating from Hungarian"

@drachenstern Nope.

Then why would google translate give you the English conjugation when you convert to Hungarian?

9:50 PM

[EN] I've read something.
[HU] Olvastam valamit.

[HU] Olvastam valamit.
[EN] I read something.

[HU] Elolvastam valamit.
[EN] I have read something.

@drachenstern See this. In the first case, the Hungarian text is correct, too, and means what I want to say.

Both "I've read something" and "I read something" are accurate, it just depends on the context as to which sounds better. "Did you read it?" "I read it" ... "have you read it?" "I've read it". Both cases are appropriate.

@drachenstern Thanks.

It would be better to respond to "Did you read it" with "I did read it" but "I read it" is sufficient. Bear in mind the pronunciation is different tho:

I will read this -> I will reed this

I read this (past tense) -> I red this

I will have read this -> I will have red this

I intend to read this -> I intend to reed this

Someone not familiar with the English language, or a native attempting to make a joke as a non-native speaker, may say "I read this now" (I reed this now) and then reading something. Very rarely would someone say "I reed this" as a native speaker.

10:05 PM

leaving, 'night :)

10:21 PM

@drachenstern: Agreed, drivel does not improve the quality of chat. Neither does lurking.

@Kosmonaut: The creole question was closed as off topic.

> Questions on Area 51 Discussion are expected to generally relate to new proposal ideas, existing proposals, or anything else having to do with the new site creation process, within the scope defined in the faq.

I'm confused now about the entire mechanics of A51.

Okay, so I guess the sample question period is over

I guess once it went into the commitment stage, the sample questions were set and none more are to be added

That is what I have surmised

A51 is not a user-friendly experience. When I get up the energy to explore it in detail, I'll find out more about it. Meanwhile, weekend ...

:)

10:45 PM

@Robusto touche, but he was pestering us to say hello and I was encouraging him to just ask the question. I don't intend to lurk, but I also am loathe to say hello just because someone says hello. The exchange had been ongoing for at least three minutes.

@Robusto that is unfortunately a common feeling, have you seen the new updates?

@Kosmonaut I think so.

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