English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

it gives:

2042 ~$ cc -P lady.diff
ld: fatal: file lady.diff: unknown file type
ld: fatal: File processing errors. No output written to a.out
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
2043 ~$

Cerberus

And poly- comes from polus, yes.

David Wallace

For debugging I suppose. To see if it really pre-compiles the way I would expect it to.

No, no, it has to be a C program, not a diff.

tchrist

@cornbreadninja What are you trying to do?

David Wallace

2:10 AM

Or C++ of course. BUt not just a diff.

tchrist

@Cerberus i didn’t understand where the other lambda came from.

cornbread ninja

@tchrist "merge two files into a single file that contains C pre-processor directives."

Cerberus

Yeah, Greek is very irregular, and it has very many contractions...

tchrist

But if it has two stems...

@cornbreadninja Oh.

#ifdef FOO \n #include file1 #elif ....

cornbread ninja

@tchrist so it started with diff -Dflag lady3 lady4

David Wallace

2:12 AM

@cornbreadninja So you want to merge it first, and then preprocess it?

Cerberus

@tchrist You need to know which case/sex/number combo takes which stem, alas.

cornbread ninja

and then diff -Dflag lady2 lady4 > lady.diff

Cerberus

Megas is similarly irregular: mega-/megal-.

tchrist

At least it is not fully suppletive.

Oh, right.

cornbread ninja

and then cc -P lady.diff

Cerberus

2:12 AM

Yeah it's not suppletive.

Many common verbs are, though.

David Wallace

@cornbreadninja But what are you merging? I see lots of diffing but no merging.

Cerberus

Like horaô "I see", eidon "I saw", opsomai "I will see".

cornbread ninja

@DavidWallace I thought lady2 with lady4

Cerberus

And sometimes there are parallel, suppletive aorist forms.

tchrist

That is annoying. And it isn’t like to see is a supercommon verb like be/go.

Cerberus

2:14 AM

Yeah.

Well, it is quite common.

tchrist

@cornbreadninja I don’t really see why you are using -P.

David Wallace

@cornbreadninja So you want to diff lady4 and lady3, then apply the differences to lady2? Or something else?

tchrist

> -P Inhibit generation of linemarkers in the output from the preprocessor. This might be useful when running the preprocessor on something that is not C code, and will be sent to a program which might be confused by the linemarkers.

Cerberus

To go may or may not be suppletive: erchomai "I go", êlthon "I went".

Does that look suppletive?

tchrist

Well.

r/l may not count.

David Wallace

2:15 AM

> -P Only preprocess the named C files and leave the result in corresponding files suffixed .i. The output will not contain any preprocessing directives.

cornbread ninja

@tchrist I really don't know. It's what the book says. :x

Cerberus

Stems erch- / elth-.

tchrist

But I can’t see chi/theta.

Cerberus

R and L are otherwise quite distinct.

cornbread ninja

@DavidWallace It is supposed to create lady.i somehow.

Cerberus

2:16 AM

Never conflated or anything.

In Greek.

Yeah, chi and theta are also quite distinct.

tchrist

You can find a few that got lost from VL, but not many.

David Wallace

@cornbreadninja Right, which means its the version of cc that I quoted, not the one that tchrist quoted.

Cerberus

@tchrist What?

tchrist

That is, an R<>L swap in modern Romance compared with Latin.

Cerberus

So perhaps the resemblance is due to folk etymology.

cornbread ninja

2:17 AM

@DavidWallace u_u

David Wallace

@cornbreadninja Do you want to hop into a different room? This is too confusing with all the Greek interruptions.

Cerberus

@tchrist Oh, hmm, yes, I believe that happens in Portuguese?

It does occasionally happen in Latin.

But it's very rare.

Caelum => caerulus.

cornbread ninja

@DavidWallace it's okay. I'm in class and we're just adding to the list of errata for this book. :\

I'm going to move on with the chapter.

Cerberus

14 mins ago, by Cerberus

4 mins ago, by Cerberus

7 mins ago, by Cerberus

πολλῶνδἀνθρώπωνἴδενἄστεακαὶνόονἔγνω

tchrist

I was thinking of colonel for "kernel", where that was a column.

cornbread ninja

2:18 AM

kyrie eleison down the road that I must travel

tchrist

The French picked up an r.

Cerberus

Did it?

@cornbreadninja That's Greek!

tchrist

@Cerberus See your OED on colonel. Long story.

cornbread ninja

@Cerberus :D

David Wallace

@cornbreadninja OK, but like I said, you need to do a merge. One of those diffs was probably supposed to be a merge instead.

tchrist

2:19 AM

And remember, that word is pronounced homophonically with kernel in English.

Cerberus

Yes.

cornbread ninja

@DavidWallace a-ha!

tchrist

> ‘The colonel was so called, because leading the little column or company at the head of the regiment’ (Skeat). The early Fr. coronel (whence also Sp. coronel) was due to the dissimilation of l-l, common in Romanic, though popular etymology associated it with corona, couronne crown.

David Wallace

So you often have to diff two files, then apply the differences to a third file, using merge.

cornbread ninja

@DavidWallace ach, there's no merge command

tchrist

2:20 AM

It is called patch.

Cerberus

Right, it's always dissimilation, probably, except in Portuguese, I think.

David Wallace

patch! That's right. I have been spoiled by guis.

tchrist

AUTHORS
       Larry Wall wrote the original version of patch.  Paul Eggert removed  patch's  arbitrary  limits;  added  support  for
       binary files, setting file times, and deleting files; and made it conform better to POSIX.  Other contributors include
       Wayne Davison, who added unidiff support, and David MacKenzie, who added configuration and backup support.

David Wallace

@tchrist and somehow I read that as homophobically.

tchrist

@DavidWallace Figgers.

@Cerberus Why Portuguese?

cornbread ninja

2:22 AM

I'm trying to dream up a working patch command.

Cerberus

I don't know, I believe they have several weird l-r Wechsels.

cornbread ninja

Lisa Wechsel?

Cerberus

@tchrist Like caramel.

Wechsel = swap.

cornbread ninja

More Storck chocolate Reisen please, Mrs. Lang.

Cerberus

Storck?

cornbread ninja

2:23 AM

storck.com/en/brand/riesen

Cerberus

A branch of my family is Stork.

Yay chocolate!

tchrist

@Cerberus I think so too, but am too tired to think of any. There are some that are just R/L swapped compared with Spanish.

Cerberus

I think they say calamelo or something.

David Wallace

How odd - a stork begetting a three-headed dog.

cornbread ninja

@Cerberus hear hear

Cerberus

2:25 AM

@DavidWallace Weren't we all once brought in by storks?

David Wallace

@Cerberus What do they call calamari?

Cerberus

I wish I knew!

My Portuguese is rusty.

David Wallace

It would be tragic to get the wrong thing. Like ordering ostriche in Italy.

Cerberus

And by rusty I mean what you find at the bottom of the sea after a thousand years.

What are ostriche?

David Wallace

I believe they're oysters. If John Patrick O'Grady is to be believed.

Cerberus

2:26 AM

Oh.

cornbread ninja

commuten

tchrist

@DavidWallace Calamares são calamares, não?

Cerberus

@DavidWallace Dictionary says yes!

tchrist

Oyster-Reich: The Kingdom of the Oysters.

David Wallace

I thoroughly recommend his books "They're a weird mob" and "Cop this lot", which he penned under the name Nino Culotta.

tchrist

2:29 AM

@Cerb branco vs blanco

Cerberus

Who says branco?

Portuguese?

tchrist

Yes.

Cerberus

There you go.

> πολλῶν δ᾽ ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα καὶ νόον ἔγνω

David Wallace

That lonely little delta sits all by itself?

Cerberus

"Of many men saw cities and mind knew."

@DavidWallace Yes, that's "de", elided.

De is a particle meaning anything between nothing and "but".

tchrist

2:33 AM

@Cerberus mutters about arma virumque cano and As armas e os barões assinalados

Cerberus

This is the third line of the Odyssey.

David Wallace

There are many words between "but" and "nothing" in the OED.

Cerberus

Assinalados?

@DavidWallace But between "nothing" and "but"?

David Wallace

Just as many. "Between me and you" means the same as "between you and me", right?

Please don't anyone bring up Antonio in the Merchant of Venice.

tchrist

@Cerberus assigned, assembled, marked, laid out, readied

Cerberus

2:40 AM

Ah.

tchrist

Barons is just men, really, not barons.

Cerberus

@DavidWallace This is between you and me, but...not always.

tchrist

So it starts with arms and men, the same as Aeneid.

Cerberus

Gosh.

Who'd have thunk.

tchrist

Well, it was written for the same purpose.

Propaganda.

A foundation myth.

There’s a loose English translation, but in verse still, here.

The original text is easily found.

It’s also more easily read than modern Portuguese, oddly enough.

Oh, there is a Richard Burton translation, too!

THE feats of Arms, and famed heroick Hbslr
from occidental Lusitanian strand,,
who o'er the waters ne'er by seaman crost,,
fared beyond the Taprobane-Iand, l
forceful in perils and in battle-post,
with more than promised force of mortal himdY
and in the regions of a distant race
rearM a new throne so haught in Pride of Place :

Well, that was a mangled paste. I wonder why.

As armas e os barões assinalados,
 Que da ocidental praia Lusitana,
 Por mares nunca de antes navegados,
 Passaram ainda além da Taprobana,
 Em perigos e guerras esforçados,
 Mais do que prometia a força humana,
 E entre gente remota edificaram
 Novo Reino, que tanto sublimaram;

There is another one!

praia / playa

See?

I like Burton’s translation of "strand". :)

Literally means beach, in case you didn’t know. Plage.

For peril/danger, Portuguese has perigo but Spanish peligro, so the Spanish swapped it. Kinda.

Cerberus

2:49 AM

Of course. Dutch strand = beach.

David Wallace

I believe we have that in English too, albeit obscure.

Cerberus

Yeah.

Peligro for periglo, that's weird.

It should be periglo based on Latin.

tchrist

Yes, strand is English.

Just not so common nowadays.

Unless David is talking about English swaps instead.

David Wallace

No, but I'm now thinking of a Croatian one.

In Croatian, tko = who. In old Slavonic, kto = who.

tchrist

Found another one.

Tão brandamente os ventos os levavam,
 Como quem o céu tinha por amigo:

Pretty sure that must mean blandly, lightly, blew/raised the winds.

But they have br not bl.

Cerberus

2:54 AM

I already suggested that Portuguese had frequent l/r Wechsel, so it was as good as fact, should have been to you!

tchrist

Heh.

JSBձոգչ

@Cerberus there's nothing weird about it. it's just a sound change. the swapping of r and l is quite regular

Cerberus

Does plage come from pelagus or something?

tchrist

I don’t know.

Cerberus

@JSBձոգչ Well, not in Latin, and it looks weird.

JSBձոգչ

2:57 AM

@Cerberus because it's spanish. not latin.

tchrist

playa < (Del lat. tardío plagĭa).

There was a Late Latin plagia, apparently.

Cerberus

@JSBձոգչ Obviously, but to have a successor language change the original sounds so, that's quite funny.

David Wallace

There is a herd of elephants moving through the flat above me.

tchrist

The R/L thing happens a good bit, and not just in Portuguese.

Squirls.

Cerberus

And what is plagia?

David Wallace

2:58 AM

No, squirls would not be as noisy.

Cerberus

@tchrist But not in Latin.

It happens, but rarely.

tchrist

I don’t know what plagia is, but it certainly looks pelagic.

Cerberus

@DavidWallace Shoot them. Take their ivory.

tchrist

Squirls are horribly loud. They have stampedes above my head all the time.

David Wallace

That would be unneighbourly.

Cerberus

3:00 AM

All I can think of is Greek plagê, beating.

@DavidWallace shoot first, think later.

tchrist

plangent?

Cerberus

Yes.

David Wallace

I assume they are actually moving out, since I was told that the residence was for sale.

tchrist

@Cerberus You have a vacation cottage in Florida, don’t you?

Portuguese has pergunta for Spanish pregunta. Seems sloppy. :)

Cerberus

@tchrist That sounds...exciting.

@DavidWallace Rent it and sublet it to someone quiet that you can kick out if necessary.

@tchrist And peligro doesn't seem sloppy...

tchrist

3:04 AM

The fleet in Portugal is not a flota, but a frota.

Cerberus

Or, again, shoot the elephants.

@tchrist Enough!

tchrist

Fruity fleet.

Fleet of fruit.

Cerberus

We get the point. It was I who brought it up, remember?

tchrist

I lemember.

Cerberus

Very well.

Do as you must.

tchrist

3:06 AM

Oh, this is new.

plage1 see below.

Also 4 plaag, 6 plague.

Etymology: a. OFr. plage region (1290 in Hatz.-Darm.):-late L. plagia (see Du Cange) a plain, shore, prop. adj. (plagia regio), f. plaga a region. So Ital. piaggia. Hatz.-Darm. take plage in the sense ‘littoral tract, shore’ to represent plagia, but in the sense ‘region, extent of land’ to be a learned formation from plaga.

> 4. With pronunc. /plɑːʒ/. OF. plage in sense ‘shore’. The beach or sea-front promenade at a seaside resort. Hence (by metonymy) a seaside resort.

Cerberus

Hmm plaga, yes, that is in fact a word.

tchrist

I wonder why it palatalized.

David Wallace

@Cerberus It would make more sense for me to buy it, or maybe the one next to it.

tchrist

But a plaga is a net.

Cerberus

@DavidWallace Yeah then do that.

tchrist

3:09 AM

But that says plaga was a region.

Not a normal net, more a snare it says.

Cerberus

Maybe plaga does mean region in poetry, I'm not sure any more.

Or a strip of land.

tchrist

† plage 2. Obs. rare-1.
Also plague.
Etymology: ad. L. plaga net, snare. A net, snare, toil.
1608 Topsell Serpents 273 ― Spyders··hang their threds in ayre aboue, By plages [1658 plagues] vnseene to th’ eye of man. [Here threds and plages seem to be erroneously transposed. The Latin rendered is: Sed liciis hinc densioribus plagas In aere appendunt.]

plague /pleɪg/, sb.
Forms: 4 plaage, 4-7 plage, 6 plag, Sc. plagge, plaig, 6- plague, (7 plauge).
Etymology: ME. plage, a. OFr. plage (14th c.), plague (15th c.) stroke, wound, ad. L. plāga stroke, wound (= Doric Gr. πλᾱγά, Attic πληγή stroke, blow), in late L. plague, pestilence, infection (Vulgate), f. root plag- of L. plangĕre, Gr. πλήγνυναι, πλήσσειν to strike. OFr. plage and plague were learned formations on L. plaga, the phonetic descendant of which was plaie wound.

That is a long a though.

And you were right about plangent.

Cerberus

Plaga means a region of land, I remembered correctly.

Related to planus, planca, and Greek pelagos.

From *pela-g-.

tchrist

Which is the pelagic one, the sea-going one?

pelagus

Cerberus

Yes.

Pelagus is the word borrowed from Greek.

tchrist

3:19 AM

Which has some irregularities about it in Latin, IIRC.

Cerberus

Yeah.

Inherited from the Greek semi-irregularities.

tchrist

In English, a pelagic bird never comes ashore, and a pelagic fish is from away, in the deep ocean. Both mean far from land.

Cerberus

That is, it belongs to a fairly large group of words from the 3rd declension that have weird contractions.

Never?

tchrist

Next to never.

Birds do have to lay eggs, though.

Cerberus

Indeed.

And hatch from them.

tchrist

3:21 AM

But they can sleep and screw on the wing.

Cerberus

Of course.

tchrist

The sleeping on the wing thing is weird.

Cerberus

Birds are weird.

See Birds.

Notice how I keep referring to the one film I know over and over again whenever I can @RegDwighт.

tchrist

@Cerberus I’m glad David is gone: he would call you a misogynist for saying that. :)

Cerberus

Heh.

That sounds a bit...dated.

tchrist

3:23 AM

That’s what I always thought!

But either David or Matt was today using it as though it were current.

Cerberus

We now use a specific species, excusez le pleonasme, right?

Chicks.

tchrist

I knew that was coming.

But in fact, a chick is not necessarily a particular species.

It can just mean the young of any bird.

Cerberus

I suppose chick as in "girl" doesn't come from chicken.

tchrist

You have The Book.

And I think we have been through this before.

Cerberus

What book?

I have several books, in fact.

If I had to designate one as the book, it would be the Oxford Latin Dictionary.

Because it weighs 10 kg.

Or something.

tchrist

3:26 AM

Probably in its origin merely a phonetic development, the final n being (in some dialects) lost, as in the inflexion of nouns and verbs, and the resulting final e then disappearing in the ordinary way.
A few examples of the intermediate chicke have come down; cf. also lent from lenten; often, ofte, oft; ME. selden, selde, seld, etc. Chick is now treated generally as a kind of diminutive of chicken; but in s.w. dialect, chick is singular, chicken plural; and it appears to be certain that there chick, chicken, are the worn down forms of ME. chike(n, chikene, OE. cicen, cicenu, the result bein…

b. A girl; a young woman. slang (orig. U.S.).

1927 S. Lewis Elmer Gantry vii. 114 ― He didn’t want to marry this brainless little fluffy chick.

So that very much looks like a birdie girlie.

Wow!

> but in s.w. dialect, chick is singular, chicken plural;

Cerberus

Scottish? Welsh?

tchrist

SW dialect would be Devon and Cornwall.

Maybe Bristol.

Cerberus

Ah, SW.

Oh, the moors of Devon.

tchrist

I’ve been to Devon, at least once.

Taught at Exeter.

Took the train that time.

They were all awfully nice folks there.

Cerberus

3:41 AM

Yeah it's nice.

tchrist

Plank?

Something is nagging at my brain.

Cerberus

Yes.

Robusto

@Cerberus Is that where we get plagal cadence in music?

tchrist

That means going back to the tonic.

IIRC

plagal /ˈpleɪgəl/, a. Mus.
Etymology: ad. med.L. plagālis (whence Ital. plagale, Fr., Ger. plagal), f. med.L. plaga the plagal mode (Du Cange), app. a back-formation from med.L. plagius, a. med. Gr. πλάγιος plagal (πλάγιος ἡ̆χος a plagal mode), in class. Gr. ‘oblique’, f. πλάγος side. (Cf. Ger. Seitenton a plagal mode.)
a. In Gregorian Music, Applied to those ecclesiastical modes which have their sounds comprised between the dominant and its octave, the final being near the middle of the compass. b. plagal cadence: that form of perfect cadence in which the chord of the subdominant (major or…

David Wallace

Specifically from the subdoinant.

Err, subdominant. I can't type.

Robusto

3:47 AM

A plagal cadence is IV-I, not V-I.

It has a gentler feeling of resolution.

IV is subdominant, yes.

tchrist

More Du Cange refs. Who was that guy?

David Wallace

I had many attempts at typing that. Most of them began before tchrist pasted his part.

tchrist

Did you guys hear about the recent study that looked at pop music over the last something-years and studied the chord progressions used?

Robusto

To my ear, a plagal cadence works like a gentler version of a suspended fourth of the tonic, resolving into the third again.

David Wallace

It doesn't seem gentler to me; but somehow more final.

tchrist

3:50 AM

Yes, there is the tyranny of I-IV-V7, but they were surprised at how much more minor mode stuff, and off-chords, that are now used.

Robusto

C-F-G => C-E-G has some of the same feeling as C-F-A => C-E-G

tchrist

I think it feels like you're left hanging with CFG.

Robusto

@tchrist The Beatles (no surprise) introduced a lot of altered chords and odd voicings to rock music.

@tchrist That's what I said.

tchrist

But I do not get that with C-F-A.

Robusto

Hence the "gentler" version.

The suspension introduces the major second dissonance.

Cerberus

3:52 AM

@Robusto That's from Greek plaga, no doubt, "blow, stroke".

Robusto

Which is a major third in a IV chord.

The suspension insists on resolution; the plagal cadence just eases into it.

Cerberus

Hmm oh wait, it doesn't mean what I thought it meant.

tchrist

thinks about i-iv instead of I-IV

Rob you were up all night, weren’t you? I saw you in the logs at like 2am or something. How come you are not falling over?

1597 Morley Introd. Mus. Annot., ― Euery song··which in the middle hath an eight aboue the finall keye, is of an autenticall tune; if not it is a plagall.
1609 Douland Ornith. Microl. 13 ― Euery Song in the beginning, rising straight beyond the final Note to a Fift, is Authenticall: but that which fals straight way to a Third, or a Fourth, vnder the finall Key, is Plagall.
1796 Burney Mem. Metastasio III. 197 ― If you find yourself involved in the difficulties of the Plagal tones, I am not among the Authentic.

Robusto

OK, bonus points if anyone can tell me what V-I is called at the end of a piece in a minor key?

In other words, you're in c-minor and you end with G-C instead of G-c.

David Wallace

That's just a perfect cadence with a tierce de Picardy, right?

Robusto

3:55 AM

That's a bingo!

David Wallace

Or is it Picardie?

tchrist

Everybody knows that.

Robusto

Close enough.

tchrist

Check the logs. :)

Robusto

Not everyone knows that.

David Wallace

3:55 AM

Tom is about to pull a Reg.

tchrist

Aug 17 at 3:49, by tchrist

A Picardy third is when you raise the third at the cadence, switching a minor-key piece so that it suddenly ends on the major. It’s somewhat cliché if overdone.

David Wallace

See.

Robusto

All right, next question: how would you interpret a D-flat major chord in the key of C harmonically?

tchrist

I do not understand the question.

Robusto

@tchrist OK, point taken. I must have missed that conversation.

@tchrist I mean how do you interpret a D-flat major chord in the key of C. What would you call it?

David Wallace

3:57 AM

Why would there be a D-flat major chord in the key of C?