English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2011-04-18 (page 2 of 4)

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2:00 PM

The only thing I remember is Clint Eastwood; I have never seen the movie.

Spaghetti westerns are what made Clint Eastwood.

in The Comms Room, 2 days ago, by MarkM

So I met this girl a couple of weeks ago (before you ask: yes, nice boobs), and the other day we were facebook chatting. She sent me a lmgtfy link and used define: in it. I think I'm going to marry this one.

And, incidentally, TGTB&TU is one of the finest westerns ever made.

I bet Ennio Morricone has something to do with the music of that movie.

If by "has something to do with" it you mean "composed it" then yes.

2:02 PM

OK, I remember the music too.

I am glad the movie is appreciated. I have never liked the phrase used to define those movies. :-)

I am sure they were undecided between "spaghetti western," and "spaghetti and mandolino western."

They could have used the mandolino to make nice music.

Yeah, for real, why not Farfalle Western?

@RegDwight — Nobody wore a bow tie in those westerns, silly.

@RegDwight I think I actually saw two identical gravatars a few months ago, in the First Hub of Reason room. I don't think I could remember the account names, though.

@Vitaly Sometimes the difference is extremely subtle. Like #6193ca instead of #6699cc.

@Robusto Thanks. I will be sure to claim that reference my own next time my gravatar is discussed.

@RegDwight Ok, I think I actually saw two identically-shaped gravatars. :)

2:08 PM

My point exactly.

@Vitaly — Wait, it's money that's the sincerest form of flattery. Not plagiarism!

Hey, how does editing work again: can anyone edit any answer by someone else, but he needs to get approval before it appears?

(I know that sentence was ramshackle. It sucked.)

@Cerberus — You just have to be really cool and know the right people.

@Rob: Then how do you do it?

I do it all the time. =P

2:09 PM

Oh, right. You know me.

@Vitaly Besides, what makes you think that both of them were generated? I could use your avatar any time.

Want me to edit something of yours?

Edit war!! You're on, buddy!

@RegDwight Well, I can't think of a reason to do that.

@RegDwight Because if you pass to farfallone, you change movie type.

2:10 PM

Yeah let's all use Vitaly's gravatar!

@Vitaly It doesn't matter as long as I can.)))

@Cerberus — I will edit some of your posts to make you sound very intelligent.

19

Q: We're all Rebecca Chernoff \o/

On this frabjous day, our community manager Rebecca Chernoff has graciously allowed all of us *1 to be her for one day, and one day only. And so, ladies and gentlemen, let me present to you: We're all Rebecca Chernoff \o/ A userscript dedicated to making all of you Rebecca Chernoffs. Reall...

discussion fun greasemonkey oy rebecca-chernoff

@Rob: That is doomed to fail...

user image

2:11 PM

Cute.

Though I won't mind if you use my gravatar, as long as you don't modify it. ;)

Especially if @RegDwight does that.

@Cerberus Oh come on. You post "Long time no see"? It's mentioned in the top answer.

Which is a bit off the mark, BTW. The question is not about calques.

And I don't like the "care less" answer, either.

I wonder who looked at my profile on EL&U.

It's watering down the question.

Why is that noone uses UNICODE in their names?

2:14 PM

@RegDwight What if you don't want to be Rebecca Chernoff?

This gravatar was randomly generated for me:

Apr 13 at 11:02, by Robusto

1 hour ago, by Robusto

user image

@Robusto Then you wait until April 2nd.

Oh Jesus!

@Robusto It has useless text and links.

Not a good gravatar.

The useless stuff can be cropped out.

Is that the "Red Cross," or the "White Cross"?

2:15 PM

@kiamlaluno — You mean you're actually looking at the hat?

It's Simplified Chinese for Asia.

@Robusto There are two of them in the picture.

@Robusto Exactly.

@Cerberus Is the name Stuyvesant associated in your country with the elite?

@Reg: Oh, I don't usually check links unless I am interested... but I shall remove it, then.

@RegDwight You mean you're actually looking at the crosses?

2:16 PM

Hi.

I also notice a slight strabismo di Venere.

@kiamlaluno — Translation, please?

@Cerberus Or Roosevelt, for that matter.

Cleavage?

@Bill: I am pretty sure they are not nobility.

2:18 PM

@Robusto Strabismus of Venus?

Let me check the lists.

@Cerberus I didn't mean nobility; I meant business/scientific elite...there are lists?!

@kiamlaluno — I got the literal part. Strabismus means an ocular condition in which the two eyes fail to achieve binocular vision ... drift apart.

We have lists of the noble and patrician families. The rest I'd not call elite, but definitions may differ.

@Cerberus Linky, if possible? :) (Is it in Dutch? =/)

2:19 PM

@Robusto I am referring to that. Are you asking why I said "Venus's strabismus"?

@kiamlaluno — Yes.

@Bill: I am not sure whether they are publicly available. Let me check.

There is no Roosevelt in the lists, or any name remotely familiar (I checked different spellings).

@Robusto That is because it's what we say about a strabismic female. It is said the Venus (the godness) was strabismic.

Hmm ... and here I thought you were talking about breasts. Silly me. Still, I always think people are talking about breasts, so ...

@Cerberus Ah, thanks. Do you guys have any ennoblement titles?

2:23 PM

@Billare Where I come from, Stuyvesants are ~~fags~~ smokes.

@Robusto Well, you could say "eyes" to mean "breasts."

There is a Van Stuyvesant Meijen variant of the Meijen family, but they were entered into the book of Patricians ony after the war...

Che occhi belli che ha.

@Billare Like for example, in Austria-Hungary, I believe nobbles were ennobled with a "von" added to their surnames.

@Billare But in other countries, that didn't distinguish nobility.

@Bill: Sure we do! I have some barons among my removed-ish uncles and aunts.

2:24 PM

@Billare Why are you talking to yourself?

Oh, we do not have the nobiliary particle (that is what von would be).

Everybody and their mother has Van.

@Cerberus You have barons among your extended family? Wow.

Except Beethoven. He lost his.

@Cerberus I think in England that's a pretty significant title.

@RegDwight I do speak to myself all the times; it happens when I say "you smart man."

2:25 PM

@Cerberus It would have been the equivalent of a CBE or OBE today to be created a baronet, in a day not so far past.

CBE?

By the way, if somebody's last name is Hass, would you say "smart Hass" to him?

Maybe the October Revolution hadn't been such a good thing after all.

Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Ah.

2:26 PM

You didn't read my profile?

I am offended!

"Chief emperor of the Galactic Empire."

If those are what we have in the Netherlands too, they are nothing like titles of nobility: they cannot pass on to offspring.

@Reg: Oh I didn't know you were a Commander, though I did know you were commanding now and then...

@Cerberus What cannot pass on to offspring? Baronetecies? (sp?)

Should not it be "comma-nder"?

I added things to my profile just recently. Going to collect random bits of wisdom and stick them there.

2:28 PM

Dupe?

3

Q: Use of the superlative when only two items are present

When speaking with my mother a couple of days ago, I read to her a message I was sending to my cousin on her behalf ending with: "... the birthday of your youngest." [implying her child] She immediately leapt on this and said that as my cousin only had two children, the use of the superlative wa...

grammar rules comparative superlative count

1

Q: Using superlatives for comparing two things

Is it strictly incorrect to use the superlative when comparing only two things? i.e. I have two sisters. Mary is the eldest? Should it always be the comparative? i.e. I have two sisters. Mary is the elder?

comparative superlative

Er, I mean the other way round.

@Billare: The Dutch equivalents to CBE and OBE cannot; can the British ones?

@Cerberus No, I don't think so. I am actually pretty confused myself on how the British peerage system works.

Hey @RegDwight, does the @ operator take non-Latin names?

@Виталий Um. There are non-Latin names?

@Cerberus It seems that they simulatenously create people knights, which AFAIK are not heritable, and peers, which are heritable.

2:30 PM

(I guess I will not go to Zelig, this year.)

@Billare — Knight titles are not hereditary in England, IIRC.

@Billare: Yeah I believe peerage and knighthood are separate things.

@Виталий Oh I see what you did there.

@Cerberus For example I think Thatcher got a CBE or OBE and was also create a Dame.

@Cerberus Which would be a female barotency, which is heritable, I think.

@RegDwight So it does. Cool.

2:30 PM

Elisabeth Taylor had a title.

Hmm is Thatcher's title or whatever it's called inheritable?

@Robusto i suspect that McWhorter is right, though i haven't personally surveyed every language in the world in order to be able to find out. typically the 3sg is the least marked verb form in languages with subject agreement

@Cerberus I dunno about the baronets; I do know that the higher ones are, Dukes and Earls and Marquesses, but I think they've stopped creating them -- I'm not sure.

@Billare: No she only has a life peerage.

@JSBangs — Thanks for the reply.

2:33 PM

@Cerberus Yeah, you're right; I just checked that.

@JSBangs That doesn't apply to Italian, as every grammar person is equally marked.

They is whether a title is inheritable, and how long a family has held it.

Io mangio, tu mangi, egli mangia.

@kiamlaluno — The original question is whether 3sg as the exclusive marker in present tense is unique to English.

To comeback to Roosevelt: I think most people who went to the colonies were not of the elite, unless they were sent as high officials.

2:34 PM

@Cerberus Ahh...it appears only baronetecies are being created now, and they are not heritable. Although some created earlier WERE heritable, but those barons were not peers.

@Cerberus Confusing!

@Cerberus Really...astounding to me.

@Billare: Yeah I can never remember the British system either...

@Cerberus I was just reading up on the Stuyvesant family, which I believe may or may not have been all descendant from a Peter Stuyvesant.

@Robusto I was referring to "typically the 3sg is the least marked verb form in languages with subject agreement."

@Cerberus It seems they have dominated New York society since the 1680s.

@kiamlaluno i'd say that italian is an example, since the 3sg is the bare theme vowel

2:36 PM

"Languages with subject agreement" includes also Italian.

@kiamlaluno i never said it didn't

@Cerberus And you may or may not know that our FDR, man of the people, was a high society scion either.

@JSBangs I was referring to what @Robusto said.

I think Stuyvesant was upper middle class at the time. The fact that they aren't really in the lists now would concur with your theory that there were no Stuyvesants left here until some emigrated back to Holland much later.

Roosevelt family

The Roosevelt family is a prominent American business and political family of Dutch descent whose members include United States Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and his fifth cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt. History Van Rosevelts of Oud-Vossemeer It has been suggested that Claes van Rosenvelt was related to the Van Rosevelts of Oud-Vossemeer, who were amt lords in the Tholen region of the Netherlands. While evidence suggests that Claes van Rosenvelt, the ancestor to the American Roosevelt family, indeed came from the Tholen region where the Van Rosevelts were land owners, no records exist ...

2:37 PM

but the 3sg is just the theme vowel. all of the pl are formed with theme vowel + something, while the 1sg and 2sg drop the theme vowel

It has been suggested that Claes van Rosenvelt was related to the Van Rosevelts of Oud-Vossemeer, who were amt lords in the Tholen region of the Netherlands.

"Amt lords"?

@JSBangs Does that mean that if you read "mangia" you know the verb is using the third singular person?

An amt/ambt is a domain.

@kiamlaluno, um, yes? isn't that the point of subject agreement? (it could also be 2sg imperative, i believe)

Mangia che si raffredda.

2:39 PM

Hey @Kosmonaut, you here? Catching up? Writing a response?

@JSBangs Exactly; it could be the second person of the jussive mood.

@kiamlaluno i'm not sure what point you're trying to make

Yes I'm here

@Kosmonaut Cause I'd like to have your opinion about a question or three.

@RegDwight — Kosmonauts always talk to you from orbit. Sometimes they are over the horizon and can't hear you.

2:40 PM

@Billare: I think the Roosevelts were farmers when they emigrated; they certainly climbed the social ladder well in the New World!

@Cerberus Is there really no marker of the upper class in the Netherlands? No prominent identifying mark people notice?

@RegDwight OK

@Cerberus Here, I notice they tend to be of Puritan or Dutch stock.

“Display name may only be changed once every 30 days; you may change again on May 18 at 14:15” — ZOMG.

It wasn't there a few months ago.

1

Q: What are some examples of "widely accepted as correct" English being downgraded to slang or incorrect by "authorities"?

If, for the sake of argument, you wanted to write a left-wing thesis arguing that the imposition of externally-generated grammatical, spelling and word usage rules was historically - in part - a tool of oppression and class division, what would you cite as evidence?

2:41 PM

@JSBangs The -a in mangia is not associated with the third-person; then there isn't a suffix for the third person, and none for the first singular, the second singular, the third plural, etc.

Oh my

@Billare: It is quite easy to notice, but it is manners and speech rather than something about the name. That is, double-barrelled last names are a weak indicator; and of course if you happen to know the name.

Oh his

@Kosmonaut If you feel it should be killed, just kill it.

And in very official invitations, titles and predicates of nobility will be mentioned.

2:42 PM

@Cerberus If you read the book Albiion's Seed you can read about how age-old differences in demographics still manifest themselves in American history.

I was trying to decide if it is off-topic or subjective.

(Why are we back to "oh ..."?)

I still think there's a valuable question somewhere in there. But the current form is, well...

@Billare: Oh, what kind of differences? Ancestry I mostly consider a fun toy to play with, like an heirloom, a curio.

It seems a rant, rather than a question.

2:43 PM

@Cerberus I think it was De Tocqueville commented how you up North one would see prim, stately rows of shrubs amongst the Puritans and wilder, more overgrown amongst hte Scots-Irish.

Plus, there aren't authorities for the English language.

@Kosmonaut: okay, next one:

4

Q: Examples for formerly wrong expressions (e.g. by foreigners) that are so funny that they become mainstream English

I am not a native speaker of English but in German we have some expressions that are literally wrong but so funny that they got mainstream (sometimes tongue in cheek). Examples are "Hier werden Sie geholfen (should be: "Hier wird Ihnen geholfen", "You get help here"" or "Ich habe fertig" (should ...

phrases list-request examples

@Billare: Haha, yes, that would make sense. Silly stubborn Calvinists...

@Cerberus I think it was De Tocqueville commented how you up North one would see prim, stately rows of shrubs amongst the Puritan descendants and wilder, more overgrown amongst hte Scots-Irish.

@kiamlaluno you're misunderstanding my point. i'm not saying that there is no 3sg marker in italian. i'm saying that the italian 3sg marker is "just use the theme vowel", while the markers for the other persons are something more specific. the fact that the imperative also uses the theme vowel does not refute this

2:45 PM

@JSB: Would you call the a in parlare a theme vowel?

@Cerberus Rather, the problem is I haven't finished Albion's seed...I may give it a go tonight actually.

The second a.

@Cerberus Hold on, let me scrounge up a review.

@Cerberus yes

@JSB: OK. So is there any difference between saying "the stem of verb x ends on a" and "verb form y of verb x has theme vowel a"?

2:46 PM

@JSBangs It's not true that 3sg is the less marked verb; they are all equally marked, in Italian.

@RegDwight The German stuff should definitely be deleted — it is basically irrelevant.

Do you think the rest is worth anything as a question?

Albion's Seed by Brandeis University History Professor David Hackett Fischer is the history of the four main regional migrations from Britain to North America in the 17th and 18th centuries. Professor Fischer examines each of these four migrations in great detail, describing the origin, motivations, religion, timing, and numerous cultural attitudes or folkways for dealing with everyday life, including birth, child rearing, marriage, age, death, order, speech, architecture, dress, food, wealth, and time, to cite only a few. He devotes special attention to the different concepts of liberty an…

Formerly wrong/foreign expressions that have become mainstream in English

Considering that the infinitive is mangiare, there is no difference as per number of letters between mangio and mangia.

@Kosmonaut I'm talking about the question as a whole, yes. I dunno. Also, the German stuff highlights how the calque answer is completely off the mark.

The question is most definitely not about calques.

2:49 PM

@Cerberus Hackett Fisher's point is that basically cultural differences between the founding British groups of America are still relevant today in terms of things like college education, relative poorness of states, dominance of American society.

@Cerberus you could construct equivalent analyses. let parlo = parla + o, etc.. if you go that route, the 3sg is totally unmarked, since parla has no ending at all. but i think this is somewhat misleading for italian, as i'd rather say that the stem is bound parl-, but has a characteristic theme vowel a which slots into various places in the verb paradigm

@Cerberus Much like how I was commenting to you that those of Norman descent were still dominating British society more than a thousand years after the conquered it.

@RegDwight I like that the question requests "If you could please also state the background/origin, meaning and normal would be usage of these new phrases." Yet the author of the question refuses to explain his German examples any further.

@Cerberus So to look for explanations of today's patterns, it's necessary to hearken back to the class structures of the past.

the motivation for analyzing with theme vowels is that the repertoire of theme vowels in italian is highly limited. there are no -u- verbs, for example.

2:51 PM

@Kosmonaut Haha, yes. Well the question is asking for stuff such as "all your base are belong to us" and "long time no see" and "me love you long time". (I know you know that.)

@Billare: That is interesting! So the Puritans are supposedly the most well off? And what about immigrants from other countries, like the Dutch...

My main problem is that it's starting to collect rubbish answers, which is partly OP's own fault, partly just because "funny" is subjective.

Right.

@Kosmonaut Do you rememeber the Massachussets governor candidate who has really far back ancestry, like to the Mather area?

@Cerberus Well, that's where the whole WASP stereotype comes from.

@Billare No, but I'm not from Massachusetts.

2:54 PM

@Cerberus And why previously, before Church came less important in American life, it was a sign of upward mobility to convert to the Episcopalian church.

@JSB: Okay, I see. I asked because there is a problem in Greek: many verbs have both what we call theme vowels and stems that end on a vowel. Consider the imperfect 1st person sg. of poi-e-o-n: root poi-, stem vowel -e-, theme vowel -o-, ending -n. The whole contracts to poioun in most dialects.

@JSBangs Egli fù.

Geezis, Facebook sucks. I'm trying to find the list of my FB friends and I can't. Every frickin' time I visit they change it.

@Cerberus It also explains why the Mormons are quite successful, despite what I'd consider to be retrograde cultural practices before their recent reformation; they came from NE stock.

@kiamlaluno that's preterite, and irregular. not a data point.

2:56 PM

@JSBangs Isn't it a verb? (It's the passato remoto.)

@Cerberus en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Weld

William Floyd Weld (born July 31, 1945, in Smithtown, New York) was the 68th Governor of Massachusetts from 1991 to 1997. From 1981 to 1988, he was a federal prosecutor in the United States Justice Department. In November 2006, he rejoined the international law firm of McDermott Will & Emery as a partner in its New York office. Weld family William Weld's ancestor Edmund Weld was among the earliest students (Class of 1650) at Harvard College. He would be followed by eighteen more Welds at Harvard, where two buildings are named for the family. General Stephen Minot Weld Jr. fought with d...

@Billare: Oh, but if Episcopalian was "higher" than Puritan... I thought the Puritans were the first group of immigrants?

@kiamlaluno what i mean is that there is no verb like (made-up) (*coppure: coppo, coppi, coppu, etc.)

and passato remoto = preterite (in english)

@Cerberus i'm familiar with greek, but in ancient greek at least, i'd argue that what you have is a different thing, with both a vowel-final stem and a theme vowel

the latin system may be descended from something more like the greek system, i don't know.

@Cerberus Eh, you are right, Puritan and Episcopalian are not quite the same thing, but I was considering them "close enough"; they are closer than the difference between Methodist &

Episcopalian, and Presbyterian & Epsicopalian

@Cerberus The Quakers were another really smart group that have had outsized influence on American life.

@JSB: A different thing from the Latin system? My problem is that we use "theme vowel" differently to describe Greek than it is apparently used to describe other languages. Would it make sense to say that some Greek verbs have two separate theme vowels?

@Billare: Ah ok, got it.

3:01 PM

@kiamlaluno huh? in what sense is the passato remoto not a verb? i only said that it was a verb in the preterite tense

@JSBangs That's fine: all the infinitives end in are, ere, ire. Also fù is a verb, though.

@Cerberus Perhaps the Netherlands are simply more democratic than other European nations...you guys were first to invent the mercantile system, so maybe everyone gained an equal foot at the same time, with fewer class divisions

When you analyze egli fù, you don't say that fù is an adjective.

@Billare — The Dutch are nothing if not mercantile.

@Robusto Hard to parse all that negation...come again?

3:04 PM

@Billare: Oh, you are trying to explain why the descendants of the Dutch are more or less a single class in America?

@Billare — It means "The Dutch are mercantile, oh my yes." Or to turn the negation around: "If there's one thing the Dutch are, it's mercantile."

@Cerberus Well, why they are singularly successful here. Almost on par IMO, with the Puritans.

Yeah we are not entirely opposed to trade...

@Cerberus i would say this: greek has only one theme vowel, which sometimes combines with a final vowel in the stem. latin may be descended a similar system, but sound changes in latin have proceeded to the point where the final vowel of the stem is inseparable from the theme vowel, so it's more straightforward to say that latin has a few different theme vowels, which are specified lexically by the stem

Even so, I am proud to say that no-one in my family has engaged in such perfidious practices as trade over the past centuries!

3:06 PM

@Cerberus But it seems there was significant intermarriage too, between the Dutch elite and WASP elite here....one of the Stuyvesant's descendants is now a Fish, which is definitely a surname English in origin.

@kiamlaluno i have been agreeing with you all along. i just said that fu was preterite. preterite is not the same thing as participle. preterite is just the name for the past tense, it is the appropriate english translation for passato remoto

Peter Stuyvesant, that is.

@Cerberus — By the way, I do not mean that as a slam. Nothing gets done in this world until a sale of some kind is made.

This "class", I'm referring to, is commonly known here as the Boston Brahmins.

Boston Brahmins are upper class Yankee families with a wealthy but highly discreet and non-showy life style. Based in and around Boston, they are part of the historic core of the East Coast establishment. They are associated with the distinctive Boston Brahmin accent, and with Harvard University. Characteristics The term Brahmin refers to the highest caste in the Indian caste system. In America it has been applied to the old, upper crust New England families of British Protestant origin that were extremely influential in the development and leadership of arts, culture, science, politics, ...

@Kosmonaut: I have closed the question now. And left a comment.

3:08 PM

@JSB: Okay, that is more or less how I was led to believe things worked. But that leaves me with a theoretical question: what is the principal difference between a theme vowel and a stem-end vowel? Why is it useful at all to use two different terms, if their uses across different language cannot be caught in one consistent definition?

@JSBangs OK. It seemed to me we were saying two different things. Well, the present participle of "eat" is "eating" for all the grammar persons.

@Billare: I always imagined that the oldest groups of immigrants started to mingle pretty well after a few centuries...

@Cerberus If there are not significant differences in class between a group of people, intermarriage occurs.

@Cerberus If not, class divisions and marrying practices strengthen.

@Cerberus i dunno, really. theme vowel is not really a linguistic universal or anything, it's just a common grammatical feature of IE languages. i'd say that it depends on the language under analysis. the only reason that i say greek has only one theme vowel is that the stem-final vowel can be disentangled from the theme vowel and actually occurs separately in some contexts, eg. Homer, and in poetry up through late Attic IIRC

@Rob: Absolutely right! I didn't take that as a slam either. However, it must be said that occupying oneself with money per se does not always bring out the best of one's character... greed and amorality are well-known dangers.

3:12 PM

@Cerberus This is what happened in India...it's now very controversial to assess genetically how much of which group contributed to which ancestry.

@Cerberus I am nebulous because I've forgotten the real history, I know it's not that simplistic history of the Aryan invasion.

@Cerberus — Yes. And greed and amorality are not confined to capitalism.

@JSB: That is very true: in Greek, the distinction makes sense. But I am just uncomfortable using "theme vowel" to mean contradictory things in different languages. For example, I'd be forced to say "the IE stem vowel e in this verb became the stem vowel e in this Greek verb, but it became the theme vowel e in Latin". That sounds very... unsatisfying and confusing. I'm not sure what would be the best solution, though.

@JSB: And even within Greek there'd be a problem: the -a- in nouns of the first declension is called a theme vowel in most IE languages; but what to do about it in Greek?

@Billare: Yeah genetic research often smacks of eugenetics to some people, which is sort of taboo.

@Cerberus nouns is a whole nother thing. i don't usually hear the term theme vowel applied to nouns at all

@Cerberus I remember why I thought the Roosevelts were significant nobility now.

@Cerberus Apparently, they had their own crest. A red rose on a plain. Roose-velt.

In Indo-European linguistics, a thematic stem or vowel stem is a noun or verb stem that ends in a vowel that appears in or otherwise influences the noun or verb's inflectional paradigm. The vowel is called the thematic vowel. The noun or verb is also called thematic. In Latin, nouns of the first, second, fourth, and fifth declensions are considered thematic; the first declension has the theme vowel a, the second o, the fourth u, and the fifth e. Stems with i are treated together with athematic stems in the third declension. A similar situation appears in the Latin verb: the first conju...

3

3:18 PM

@Cerberus i'd say "the PIE theme vowel has merged with the stem in various ways in Latin, creating four (IIRC) different conjugations with distinct theme vowels" -- or something along those lines

@Billare: I read they invented their arms around 1900. That doesn't count.

The coat of arms of the Dutch burgher Claes van Rosenvelt, ancestor of the American political family that included Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt, were white with a rosebush with three rose flowers growing upon a grassy mound, and whose crest was of three ostrich feathers divided into red and white halves each. I

The coat of arms of the Dutch burgher Claes van Rosenvelt, ancestor of the American political family that included Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt, were white with a rosebush with three rose flowers growing upon a grassy mound, and whose crest was of three ostrich feathers divided into red and white halves each.

@Cerberus The coat of arms of the Dutch burgher Claes van Rosenvelt, ancestor of the American political family that included Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt, were white with a rosebush with three rose flowers growing upon a grassy mound, and whose crest was of three ostrich feathers divided into red and white halves each.

That's from Wiki.

Sorry for the repetition, lol.

@JSB: I still think the "theme vowels" in Latin verbs are better compared to the stem vowels of Greek verbs, not their theme vowels. Consider, for example, the fact that which theme vowel to use in Greek depends on the ending, not the stem, whereas the "theme vowel" in Latin verbs depends wholly on the stem. In addition, the 4th Latin conjugation is called "consonant-stem conjugation", which is correct; and it does have the typical theme vowels that depend on endings.

the Greek nouns are in basically the same situation as the Latin verbs (and nouns). the theme vowel has been bludgeoned in various ways, making the original theme vowel basically unrecoverable in a synchronic analysis, and forcing us to talk about multiple theme vowels for the different declensions

@Cerberus that's a very good point. if you're looking at it from the point of view of IE diachronics, that's certainly the case. i'm not dogmatic about the terminology or the analysis in any case, though

@Billare: I recently read an article about bearing arms in America, and it stated, in a well documented manner, that most of the "arms" of prominent Americans, including the Roosevelts, were invented by their most prominent figures in modern times. The Roosevelt case was particularly well documented, with all kinds of references and explanations, though I forgot the details.

3:25 PM

@Billare LOL! Interesting, never heard that before.

@JSB: Yeah the nouns are problematic. We never say they have theme vowels, and yet I found several references to theme vowels in nouns on Wikipedia, both about Greek and about Latin. My proposal would be to simply call anything a stem vowel whose colouring is mostly determined by the stem vowel, as it was before it and the theme vowel were contracted. If the resulting vowel is coloured more by its theme-vowel component, then call it a theme vowel (but I expect this will rarely be the case).

@JSB: For example, I believe Wikipedia calls the o in the nouns of the 2nd declension in Latin theme vowels, as well as the a in those of the 1st. It would be ridiculous to use a different label for the exact same o and a in Greek.

@Billare: I don't remember whether the article was 100% certain about the Roosevelts; but it was at least very likely.

@Cerberus and @Robusto: "Geld verdirbt nicht den Charakter eines Menschen, es entlarvt ihn!" (Attributed to Max Frisch.)

@Reg: Hah that is a pretty metaphor! I like it. It is true, to some extent.

3:43 PM

@Cerberus Quick note: that's actually not a metaphor. Entlarven ("expose") doesn't really have anything to do with Larve ("larva") anymore.

If that's what you mean.

@Reg: Oh that was what I meant. So you say the metaphor is really dead in German? That is sad...

Well, how many people realize that integer and entire go back to the same root?

I do! Probably. When I think about it...

I'd say it depends on whether the author realised it and had any expectations that his readers might, too.

All the quote is saying, money doesn't spoil the character; it exposes it. It's profound enough without any metaphors.)))

I find language a much richer, more powerful thing when one is aware of as many connotations as possible, especially historical and etymological ones.

3:47 PM

Well, I've heard good things about character names in Club Dumas.

@Reg: I suppose so. Moreover, the metaphor doesn't really work unless you assume a harmful moth...

Integer, entire, task, taste, contact, tangent, contaminate go back to the same root? Really?

3

@Cerberus Genau.

Task and taste I did not know!

@Vitaly I feel a bit misquoted, but yes.)))

3:48 PM

Haha.

According to the AHD at least, those share the same Indo-European root tag-

That is a pretty ugly metathesis, from tactus to task...

Oh!

Yes, if they do not come from Latin, those two, it makes sense.

integer and tangere go back to it accordting to the AHD

Yes, and so do the other ones.

the two are Latin words that share the tag- root

3:50 PM

Contact comes from Latin contangere, past participle contactus, etc.

I suspect that contaminate made a pit stop at Italian or something.

No, that is nonsense.

It already existed in Latin.

*n̥-tag-ro-, “untouched, intact” → contaminare → contaminate

Nasalized from tangere *ta-n-g- → tangere (Latin) + tactus (Greek) → contact etc

according to the AHD, again

? Tactus is not Greek.

Alas, I have to go. На самом интересном месте!

TTYL.

"It was interesting?"

Bye! It was.

@Cerberus well it's ambiguously phrased in the AHD, so my bad

Later @RegDwight

3:54 PM

@Vitaly: Hehe ok. My brain just goes into crazy drooling mode when it senses Latin.

on the other hand, tassein and taxai are definitely Greek

Yes.

Tassein would be taktein in Attic.

So there you have your stem.

Our word tactic comes from that.

Taxai? Why do they mention that? It is the aorist infinitive of taktein/tassein.

No idea.

tag-
To touch, handle.
1. Nasalized form *ta-n-g-. tact, tangent, tangible, task, taste, tax; attain, contact, intact, tactoreceptor, tangoreceptor, from Latin tangere, to touch, with derivatives taxāre, to touch, assess (possibly a frequentative of tangere, but probably influenced by Greek tassein, taxai, to arrange, assess), and tāctus, touch.
2. Compound form *n̥-tag-ro-, “untouched, intact” (*n̥-, negative prefix; see ne). entire, integer, integrate, integrity, from Latin integer, intact, whole, complete, perfect, honest.

I also think our word tax comes from Greek taktein.

Jinx!

Hmm tax seems to be dubious, could be a mixture of both Greek and Latin.

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