English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2012-11-09 (page 1 of 5)

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12:28 AM

$$\pi=\cfrac{4}{1+\cfrac{1^2}{2+\cfrac{3^2}{2+\cfrac{5^2}{2+\cfrac{7^2}{2+\cfrac{9^2}{2+\ddots}}}}}}
=\cfrac{4}{1+\cfrac{1^2}{3+\cfrac{2^2}{5+\cfrac{3^2}{7+\cfrac{4^2}{9+\ddots}}}}}
=3+\cfrac{1^2}{6+\cfrac{3^2}{6+\cfrac{5^2}{6+\cfrac{7^2}{6+\cfrac{9^2}{6+\ddots}}}}}$$

2 hours later…

2:44 AM

@RegDwighт No, apparently not. It seems to be called false ablaut: “Examples in English are think/thought, bring/brought, tell/told, sell/sold. (These verbs have a dental -t or -d as a tense marker, therefore they are weak and the vowel change cannot be conditioned by ablaut.)”

Think of the pasts of strong verbs: they do not take a -t/d to form the past: sing/sang, ride/rode, come/came, run, ran. Also, they tend to have a distinct past participle form.

A curiosity that English has but German apparently does not was the rare past participle type of brungen for bring. OED says:

> Common Teut.: OE. bring-an, brȩngean (pa. t. bróhte, pple. bróht), corresp. to OFris. branga, bringa, OS. brengian, bringan (MDutch brenghen, Dutch brengen), OHG. bringan (MHG. and mod.G. bringen), Goth. briggan (= bringan), pa. t. brâhta, pple. brâhts.

> Beside the type bring-an, the Saxon group has also *brangjan, brȩngian, brȩngean, brȩngan, app. after þankjan; from bringan, OE. had also a rare strong pa. pple. brungen (mod. dial. brung), to which later dialects have added a strong pa. t., so as to conjugate, bring, brang, brung. The stem is not known outside of Teutonic.

German (I think) has for bringen only bringe, brachten, gebracht, but not any brung-looking word.

An interesting case in English is buy, bought. It’s false-ablaut because of the final -t. The interesting thing is that there is an old irregular past participle boughten. It was actually created because of the similarity to fight, fought, foughten.

Well, how ablaut that.

Foughten is now archaic, and boughten is almost only ever now used in dialect, not in Standard English. For example, I grew up with a four-way buy, bought, bought, boughten, where the 4th form is adjectival only: the opposite of homemade was store-boughten, with an -en.

We always thought it was due to the very strong presence of German settlers there, but apparently this is not true. Anyway, you don’t get from kaufen to boughten.

Other four-way irregulars are I think always true strong verbs, like drink, drank, drunk, drunken.

@MετάEd Good evening.

Mitt, matt, mutt, mitten.

Smite, smote, smoot, smitten.

Work, wrought, rotten.

Speak, spake, spoken is strong.

I already was typing that.

The story with work, wrought is. . . more complex.

2:59 AM

You're wright about that.

The normal representative of OE. wyrcan would be *worch (for the vocalism cf. worm, worse, wort); the substitution of k for ch, producing the modern standard form /wɝːk/ instead of /wɝːtʃ/, is shown in north-midland areas c 1200, and is due mainly to work sb., though Scandinavian influence (see various forms above) is possible.
The new pa. t. and pa. pple. worked, formed directly on the inf. stem, became established in the 15th century; it is now the normal form except in archaic usage (in which the older form wrought may appear in any sense), and in senses which denote fashioning, shaping,…

Dive, dove is a new strong verb.

Jive, jove, byjoven.

Sneak, snuck is less new, but still newish.

Strike, struck, stricken.

wit/wot, wist and a myriad of other forms.

The -st was past tense marker, as in dare, durst.

3:03 AM

And speaking of drunken, here's to ya. Bunnahave, Bunnahad, Bunnahabhain

I see you’ve been.

What’s with the coneys?

Actually, I been've.

Radagast’s bunnysled has gotten to you, I see.

What? Bunnahabhain? Here, let me fix that for you.

Bunnahabhain (Scottish Gaelic: Bun na h-Abhainn) is a village on the northeast coast of the isle of Islay, which is in the Argyll and Bute area of Scotland, in the Inner Hebrides group of islands. It is also the name of a Scotch whisky distillery located there. History The village was established in 1881 to house the distillery's workers, and the distillery still employs the majority of the village's workers. The surrounding area is also steeped in local history. The ruined village of Margadale, nestled between Margadale Hill and Scarbh Bhreac, was once the busiest marketplace on Islay...

Radagast! Surely that's a name from Narnia.

No money, no honey, no coney.

3:05 AM

No, from Tolkien. But there's a similar Narnian name, I swear.

But no lack of poney.

Oh, I thought you were pulling my hair.

Rabadash. That was it.

Radishing, simply radishing.

Ravish, Ravage, Geranium.

Rabadash was a black prince.

Do you know what they used to use to make jack-o’-lanterns out of before Columbus discovered pumpkins?

Geranium you almost certainly wouldn’t know if you chanced upon it.

It’s actually cranesbill.

There’s a one-minute clip of what Shore’s done for Radagast here at 8:46:

I love Geranium.

3:13 AM

What, the root of geranium?

user image

No, that one.

@RegDwighт Help, holp, holpen used to be a strong verb, but is customarily now a weak one, except in certain North American dialects, apparently. I believe I’ve caught you using it.

Of the strong inflexions, the normal ME. pa. t. sing. was halp; the pl. was holpen (with o of pa. pple.), later holp(e, which c 1500 was extended also to the sing., and continued in frequent use till 17th c.; it is now a rare archaism exc. in U.S. dial. use.
The pa. pple. holpen, kept alive by biblical and liturgical use, is still employed by poets and archaists (and occurs also in U.S. dial.); from 14th to 17th c. it occurs shortened to holp(e. The weak inflexion helped is found from c 1300, and has gradually become the usual form.

> Fremman ‘do’ belongs to the so-called “weak” class of Old English verbs, those that make the past tense by adding a dental consonant (-d- or -t-) as a suffix. The Old English weak verbs correspond roughly to the Modern English “regular” verbs.

> Helpan ‘help’ is a “strong” verb, one that does not add a dental suffix to make its past tense, but rather changes the vowel of its root syllable. The Old English strong verbs correspond to Modern English “irregular” verbs such as sing (past sang, past participle sung).

Only weak verbs formed their pasts using -d- or -t-. False ablaut occurred though.

Curious:

> Old English has no settled way of expressing what Modern English expresses with the perfect and pluperfect—that is, that an action is now complete or was complete at some time in the past.

> It can use forms of the verb habban ‘to have’ with the past participle, as Modern English does (hæfð onfunden ‘has discovered’, hæfde onfunden ‘had discovered’), it can use the adverb ǣr ‘before’ with the simple past (ǣr onfand ‘had discovered’), or it can use the past tense alone, in which case you must infer the correct translation from the context.

> The root vowels of strong verbs undergo i-mutation in the present second- and third-person singular indicative: thus the second-person singular of helpan is hilpst, that of faran ‘travel’ is færst, and that of ċēosan ‘choose’ is ċīest. The same does not occur in the weak paradigms or in those of strong verbs whose vowels are not subject to i-mutation (e.g. wrītan ‘write’, second-person singular wrītst).

> While a Modern English verb descended from the strong verbs never has more than one vowel in the past tense, most Old English strong verbs have two past forms with different vowels. The form used for the first- and third-person singular past indicative (e.g. healp) is called the “first past,” and the form used everywhere else in the past tense (e.g. hulpon) is called the “second past.”

@Cerberus Here is more material on preterite-present verbs.

3:40 AM

Strive and thrive used to be just like drive, but usually now are not so inflected. Striven is a tough sell. Thriven is even harder.

Dig and stick in contrast used to be weak, but are now strong. Or strung.

3:55 AM

Wow, I had no idea we knew how to pronounce Neanderthal.

3 hours later…

7:16 AM

@tchrist Hmm funny that they had different vowels in the past tense.

That does not correspond to what I know of Dutch and German.

1 hour later…

8:32 AM

Anyone around?

Yo.

Can you help me out with a dumb question?

Always!

Whilst I was working on my assignment I came across with this sentence: "Spill oil is move vertically in the water column in form of...."

I was wondering, why did the author use "is move" instead of "is moved"?

That was probably a typo.

"In form of" is also incorrect.

Should probably be "in the form of".

8:41 AM

Yep that one was my bad.

Oh hehe.

Now I ask, Why is it wrong?

:P

Well, you can't have a form of be with an infinitive (move) like that.

You need a participle, like moved or moving (different meanings).

But didn't you just say, that it was a typo? So it is moved

Yes, is moved would be correct, and that was probably what he intended to write.

1 min ago, by ChairOTP

Now I ask, Why is it wrong?

I was replying to this ^.

8:44 AM

Oh!

Or did you mean something else?

So if the author had written "is moved" he could have used in form of?

Oh, no.

That is completely unrelated.

"In form of" just doesn't sound right in any context.

Oh ok, I got it. So I should stick to "In the form of"

Yes, or in a form of, depending on what you want to say.

Can there theoretically be several forms, in this context? If yes, then you must use an article (a(n) or the).

8:47 AM

The author used "in the form of droplets", I could rearrange the sentence in a totally different context and say "in a form of game"?

Even though "in a form of game" sounds weird to me.

Umm probably not: what is it supposed to mean?

You probably mean in the form of a game.

I was just trying to think of an example where I could use "in a form of"

Ice is a form of water.

Democracy is a form of government.

Oh geez, I think my lacking of sleep is getting to my brain.

Haha.

8:51 AM

Of course I get it now.

I think the phrase "in a form of" is not very common.

Thinking about it, yes, I don't know what was in my head when that example popped up.

But you can always Google it if you want to find some examples; and search in Ngrams if you want examples that are most probably correct English (there are many low-quality texts on the internet).

books.google.com/ngrams/…

I wasn't aware that published books may have typos.

They often have some typos, but much less than the average internet page.

8:53 AM

Because when I look up for something, the punctuation, orthography and redaction says a lot about the author, and the information itself.

What I meant was that Ngrams is better than Google Search if you want to check whether a certain construction is used in proper English/French/etc., or if you want to see how it is used.

I guess, it's just one typo in the whole book so it doesn't really matter.

@ChairOTP Absolutely!

@ChairOTP Many books have a typo every so many pages, alas. Some books even have several typos on a single page.

I'll keep in mind the Ngrams stuff. I usually have a lot of doubts whether which sentence should I use.

Do you know you can click on the years, like 1991-2000, to see examples in context?

8:57 AM

@Cerberus If I notice several typos on a single page, I will hardly keep reading it. I don't think just because you can't spell correctly doesn't mean you don't know about whatever topic you're writing about. But I would rather quote an author that knows how to write properly.

@ChairOTP That may or may not be true. But you can also judge the content of the text on its own merits in many cases, can't you?

If a book is very interesting and cleverly written, but contains many typos...

But I agree that it can say something about a book.

Well that's true, but if you are able to publish a book, and still don't know the difference between you're and your, that says a lot!

I wouldn't actually judge the book, or the information it contains, rather, I'd judge the author.

And don't get me wrong, by judge I don't mean a bad thing.

@ChairOTP Ugh, that would be ugly indeed.

I was rather thinking of real typos, like the one you mentioned.

Move instead of moved.

I hope to never see a your/you're mistake in a printed book!

Me either. I hardly contain myself when on Internet people try to use them correctly and just end up interchanging them. I'd prefer not to use it at all, than to attempt to. Of course, on internet.

9:30 AM

Heh.

But it is difficult not to use common words...

Doesn't that defeat the purpose?

9:56 AM

What do you mean?

I'm not following.

1 hour later…

11:07 AM

This is hilarious.

russian.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/568

I so want to ridicule it, but I can't. It ridicules itself.

11:42 AM

Haha.

12:19 PM

@Cerberus An example is that 1/3s for “to help” in OE was healp while 2s was hulpe, pl hulpen. It really doesn’t show up in any notable way in Modern English, since we don’t have 2s in general use, plus most people don’t know what is correct for it anyway. But no, I don’t remember there being a difference in any German strong verb’s 2s vowel compared with its 1/3s vowel.

user image

@Cerberus So you can develop some proper notion of scale.

I think @Mahnax has shown us that either the song is wrong, or it’s not fall any longer.

Everybody seems to have recorded that song. John Denver. Johnny Cash. Neil Young wasn’t even the first.

12:58 PM

@tchrist And this is the past tense, right?

@Cerberus Yes. See the OED on help for forms.

The OED doesn't mention differences between persons in the singular past.

Yes it does.

At least not my OED...

A. Illustrations of Forms of Pa. t. and Pa. pple.
1. Strong past tense. a. 1st and 3rd sing. ɑ1 healp, 2-3 hêlp, 5 huelp. β3-5 halp. ɣ6-7 holpe, 6- holp; (U.S. dial.) holpen.
b. 2nd sing. 1-3 hulpe, (3 holpe). Subj. 1-3 hulpe.
c. plural. ɑ1 hulpon. β3-4 holpen. ɣ4-7 holpe, 6-7 holp, (4 hylpe). δ4 halp. ɛ5 heelp.

Maybe you weren’t looking in the right place, or noticing. But I bet that the text above is in your version.

2. Strong pa. pple. ɑ1- holpen, (4-5 -yn(e). β4-7 holpe, (4 hulpe), 6-7 holp.
3. Weak pa. t. and pple. ɑ3- helped, (4-5 -id, -yd, -et, -it, -yt), 6-9 helpt. β6-7 holpt.

1:06 PM

Ah, under Illustrations, yes.

I only looked at the etymological section.

Sorry. Some of the “bigger” verbs have a distinct Illustration of Forms section where they break this down.

In fact, if the dual-vowel notion in the past of strong verbs is correct, a lot more should have such as well.

Probably.

I wonder what the Greek letters are.

The numbers are probably centuries?

hello

I know all three answers.

1. On "probably", see take.

2. The OED uses Greek letters for historical collections of forms or senses that have converged in a modern word.

Yo.

1:11 PM

3. The numbers are indeed centuries, almost. 1 means 1000AD or earlier. 2 is 12th century (1101–1200), 6 is 16th century (1501–1600), etc.

gawd. how are you supposed to deal with working in the same office as the most beautiful woman in the world, again?

Right.

Picture!

hypothesizes that Jez is actually female, and has a mirror in her office, and so is referring to herself

She would like that.

But no.

As Zeus said to Narcissus, Watch yourself!

1:16 PM

God.

Another horde of tourists gaping up at my window.

the worst thing is that even if i were to get another girlfriend right now, i'd just be thinking of this girl anyway

Turn off the red light.

Aww.

Dating someone you have to see every day is just not a good idea.

Not sure what happened here: seek, sought; beseech, besought; teach, taught. There is a -k in one of those but not the others. I used to think sought was the past of search, not seek.

@Cerberus nice try, but cold comfort

1:22 PM

And then there is the question of the base verb in a situation fraught with peril. There’s a folk etymology related to being afraid, rather than to freight — which is no longer even close to a verb in English.

@tchrist No you didn't. Seek - sought, search - searched.

I think beseech and seek come from the same root?

@Cerberus It was when I was a kid.

@Cerberus I think so.

@Cerberus Take off the garters and fishnet stockings and close the curtains, fer chrissakes.

is besought a word?

@Robusto But I was trying to have some fun!

@tchrist Odd.

1:27 PM

@Cerberus And see what that got you!

Matt Эллен

@Jez can you use it in a sentence?

Well.

Next time I'll try something else.

Matt Эллен

I thought we were all naked

or is that only if you're carrying a gun?

1885 Ruskin Præterita iii. 105, ― I besought leave to pat him [a dog].
1622 Mabbe Aleman’s Guzman d’Alf. i. 97 ― Both which besought to be baptized.
1709 Tatler No. 42 ⁋2 ― A Poor Man once a Judge besought, To judge aright his Cause.
1844 Brougham Brit. Const. xvi. (1862) 243 ― He besought the King to refuse his consent.
1859 Thackeray Virgin. (1876) 539 ― The wretch··besought him for mercy.
1647 W. Browne Polex. ii. 298, ― I prayed, and with teares besought for an end of our contestations.
1805 Southey Madoc in W. v, ― We now besought for food.

> besought /bɪˈsɔːt/, pa. t. and pple. of beseech.

@MattЭллен She just did.

Matt Эллен

pshaw

1:30 PM

Is that the past tense of pschitt?

no, that's pshought

> flaught /flaxt/, v. Sc. and north. dial. ‘To card (wool) into thin flakes’

Now I am forced to wonder whether flax and flake have any connection.

> flax Etymology: Com. W.Ger.: OE. fleax = OFris. flax, OS. *flahs (MDutch, DU., LG. vlas), OHG. flahs (MHG. vlahs, mod.G. flachs):-OTeut. *flahsom str. neut.; commonly referred to the OTeut. root *fleh-, flah- to plait:-OAryan *plek-, plok-; cf. Ger. flech-ten, L. plec-tere, Gr. πλέκ-ειν. Some think however that the root is flah- (:-OAryan *plak-) as in flay v., the etymological notion being connected with the process of ‘stripping’, by which the fibre is prepared.

"Some think". Hm.

Why don’t restaurants ever serve you your flaming yon while it is still on fire?

After you eat be sure to floss.

the world would be sooo much simpler if basically we just assumed that those people who were single were definitely up for it.

and those who are single must advertise the fact.

Not even the fancy Shadow Brie Yon comes in flames. What is that about?

1:43 PM

that should be the societal norm.

@Jez I thought that was what the forehead paint was for.

recommends Jez seek out Onan and Rosie for his relief rather than neurotically taking it out on others

who are they?

@tchrist Did you just tell @Jez to take himself in hand?

Get a grip on himself?

Or herself.

1:47 PM

Or itself.

that's a bizarre euphemism

@MετάEd Can’t use it on sentients. Are you roboticizing her?

@tchrist I'm pronouncing.

Smells more like nancing about to me.

And I'm out in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...

1:50 PM

Out to where @MετάEd

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

user image

tf?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I like the lady in the first picture

For certain values of lady.

I didn’t know Dame Hillary knew ASL.

work is the most frustrating environment to have a crush on someone

1:54 PM

Nov 5 at 16:12, by Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

It seems like every time I open up wikipedia I learn a new fact about animal penises.

@RegDwighт can you set mass-nouns to be a synonym of uncountable-nouns

personally i think having a bone in it is wrong. imagine being able to break your penis.

pretty pretty please

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 who is the couple in the top picture there?

Heh.

That’s Leppy Khan and his trollop.

@JSBձոգչ Frenchy

1:56 PM

Sarcozy?

Yeah. Looks like him

Less cosy of late than then.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

and carla bruni

And why is the last one alone?

Isnt she M Obama?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I don't know who the middle people are.

1:58 PM

It’s all about ladies doing “it was SO big” hand gestures about their recent researches in hoohoodillies, kinda like fishermen’s tales.

Oh drat, we’re about to lose 50 degrees again. I hate that.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

do you have an oed entry for hoohoodillies?

He doesnt, but OED should probably add one.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Isn't that Hillary and Netanyahu?

@Cerberus It is. He is trying to act a bit like a politician...

Silly.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

2:05 PM

@Cerberus yes, I guess it is.

Does anyone know about Spiritual Ignorance?

-2

Q: Is this an imperative sentence?

Is this sentence an imperative sentence? Or is it has conditional meaning? [example] You hang around with riffraff like the Weasleys and that Hagrid, and it’ll rub off on you.

conditional imperative

This isn't a bad question, actually. I'm kind of surprised at all the negative attention, especially with no votes to close.

@Noah I feel the same way about Spiritual Ignorance as I do about Spiritual Apathy: I don't know, and I don't care.

2:21 PM

Carla: “It was so big (read: like 2″ long).” Hillary: “It was so big (read: like ¾″ long).” Michele: “It was so big (read: so like 8½″ long).” It’s a once-you’ve-tried-Black/Barak,you’ll-never-go-back kinda visual joke.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

2:36 PM

@tchrist Did it really need that much explanation?

@Robusto So why not post your comment as an answer?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I don't have time to give it the attention it deserves. The use of the "and" conjunction to express conditionality deserves a more thorough analysis than I can manage with my workload today.

isn't it ridiculous the way our brains work? there must be millions of very attractive, eligible women out there who'd make great partners, but we're so primitive that if we don't see them, we don't get frustrated by not having them. but the one(s) who are in sight are constantly on our mind.

A bird in the hand?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Jez you're frustrated by not having any of them, not her in particular. But she's the most recent one you've seen so she becomes the personification of your desire.

user image

2:55 PM

Ecco l’ Homo patheticus.

@tchrist Who you callin' a homo?

Lui.

Lui XIV?

Lui Says.

Simon Sez.

2:57 PM

Simony is a cry’em.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yeah...although this frustration is not necessary to fall into the trap of proximity.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

What a simonyzing job.

However, simonizing is not.

Gotcha.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

dammit

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Nov '129

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