English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

1:15 AM

I call bull:

+1, I have the same difficulties, but they are correlated to the fact that my language has more than 15 articles. — Carlo_R. 56 mins ago

Robusto

@tchrist He might mean magazine instead of language. You never know with iCarlo.

Cerberus

Articles?

tchrist

He probably thinks a magazine is a store.

It’s a Japanese person having trouble with English articles.

Cerberus

Un, uno, una; il, lo, la, gli, i, le...

How many more are there?

tchrist

But Carlo’s problems with them, are certainly not related to the number of them that Italian has. Gender and number concordance is not the issue here.

Cerberus

1:22 AM

Do alla, dei, etc. count?

tchrist

Well, they shouldn’t, but he may be counting things like dei as partitives.

If so, I might begrudge him them.

Cerberus

Uhh...

What is a "partitive"?

tchrist

Moi, j’ai des amis qui disent que . . .

Cerberus

Dei = de + i, so you could count that as a separate "article"...

tchrist

Des is there a partitive.

Cerberus

1:23 AM

Who told you to call it that?

To me, des is an indefinite article there.

tchrist

I am so glad you asked, because I think it is idiotic.

Cerberus

To me, partitive is a function of a case or a preposition.

tchrist

Je voudrais de l’eau.

They teach you that "de l(e/a)" is a partitive article.

I am not kidding.

Cerberus

You could say de serves an elliptical partitive function, I suppose.

tchrist

I have never enjoyed the term used with articles.

Cerberus

1:25 AM

And is "dans la" a locative article?

tchrist

With pronouns, fine.

Or au?

Look right here. This is how French is taught.

Cerberus

If you have two separate words, calling both "an article" seems even farther fetched (excusez le mot) than with a compound of preposition + article.

tchrist

I told you, I have never liked it.

But that is how French is analysed.

Cerberus

Odd.

Not by me.

It is not the article that is partitive.

I don't know what we were taught to call du, but not that.

Unless I forgot.

tchrist

You know, I just realized that French lacks uns and unes — doesn’t it?

Well, I call it a contraction. :)

Cerberus

1:28 AM

Those are used.

But substantively.

tchrist

Darn.

Cerberus

Otherwise, use des.

Or sometimes de.

You can say les uns et les autres, for example.

tchrist

"Some friends of mine" — unos amigos míos.

Cerberus

Yeah, uns is not used adjectivally / not as an article.

I think only Spanish has this oddity?

tchrist

No.

It isn’t odd, either.

Cerberus

1:29 AM

I remember being surprised when I learned that in Spanish.

tchrist

Certainly Portuguese has it.

Cerberus

Well, un = one.

tchrist

ums and umas.

Cerberus

Right, Portuguese.

But...

French, Italian...

tchrist

The thing is, Spanish also has algunos.

Cerberus

1:30 AM

I don't know about Romanian.

tchrist

Which is the same thing, but stronger.

Cerberus

Latin certain doesn't have it.

tchrist

And can be used negatively, like aucun.

Cerberus

Algunos = quelques-uns, I believe?

Oh.

tchrist

Yes.

Cerberus

1:31 AM

So both aucun and quelqu'un.

Oops, the plural is quelques-uns.

tchrist

This is a series of strengths: Tengo ideas; Tengo unas ideas; Tengo algunas ideas; No tengo ideas; No tengo ninguna idea; No tengo idea alguna.

Cerberus

Makes sense.

Hmm.

Does algunas mean "several", and unas "some"?

tchrist

Although No tengo coño idea is stronger. :)

Cerberus

Con.

tchrist

@Cerberus Possibly.

They actually say "No tengo puta idea", and "No veo un coño" and such quite a lot.

Cerberus

1:33 AM

J'ai des idées, j'ai quelques idées.

tchrist

But you see that you have to do that "des" thing.

As though the plural of une were des.

Cerberus

Of course. The indefinite article, I would call it.

@tchrist Yes, that's the way we were taught to use un and des.

And des sometimes becomes de.

When followed by an adjective, I believe.

tchrist

I know it is used that way. Being actually taught the matter is so back I know longer remember it.

Cerberus

J'ai de bonnes idées.

tchrist

Right, you don’t need the de in Spanish or Portuguese.

Cerberus

1:35 AM

J'ai des idées originales.

tchrist

Tengo buenas ideas.

So when you add unas, it changes the nuance.

Makes it like "I have a few good ideas", I think.

Cerberus

Yeah, a true indefinite plural article may be exclusively French...

tchrist

But unos and unas are plural indefinitive articles, or ums and umas in Portuguese.

Aren’t they?

Cerberus

Well...

tchrist

They translate to some, normally. Mostly.

Cerberus

1:37 AM

Is "some" an indefinite article?

tchrist

I knew this would happen. :(

Cerberus

nods

tchrist

Mostly, yes.

Cerberus

Qua meaning, unos is not a conventional indefinite article; qua form, it certainly is.

tchrist

But of course it can be used substantively.

Would you like some?

I already have some.

Cerberus

1:38 AM

Möchtest du eines?

tchrist

You could do that in Spanish, too.

Right.

Cerberus

"Would you like [one]?"

Not quite the same as "some".

tchrist

¿Quisieras unas?

Cerberus

And singular, una can be used like that?

tchrist

Sure.

Cerberus

1:39 AM

Most probably.

OK.

tchrist

Now, Italian. Hm.

Cerberus

You can't use des like that, substantively.

Italian?

tchrist

I seem to recall Italian behaves more like French in this partitive thing than like the Iberian languages, but that in Sicily the situation may reverse.

That is a dim echo, and is probably wrong in the particulars.

Cerberus

Vorrei una rosa. Vorrei...de rose?

I can't think of any other way.

But perhaps they would always just use the definite article.

tchrist

I’d like some roses. Hm.

Cerberus

1:42 AM

Vorrei le rose.

tchrist

Do they have to use any article?

Cerberus

It sounds too bare without.

I vote for le.

tchrist

Google Translate disagrees, but that means little.

Considering how much I disagree with its Spanish translation of the same. :)

Cerberus

youtube.com/…

She sings "caramelle... non [le?] voglio piu // le rose e violini"

tchrist

I don’t want more roses and violins?

Cerberus

1:47 AM

Oh, no, the second line is incomplete.

tchrist

I don’t want roses anymore.

Cerberus

Caramels...I don't want them any more; roses and violins...give them to someone else.

tchrist

Hold on.

Yes.

cornbread ninja

hello.

Cerberus

I was unable to transcribe the second part of the second line correctly.

I know what she is saying, but not the exact words.

Hi!

tchrist

1:48 AM

I think she is putting the objects in front.

A stylistic thing.

I think I heard her repeat them as a clitic pronoun.

Cerberus

And then she says "violini e rose, le posso sentire...".

tchrist

That makes sense now.

Cerberus

Yeah, so that's special, like the caramelle.

tchrist

I can feel them, or smell them? :)

Cerberus

But le rose e violini is not.

Perceive them, but more poetically so.

tchrist

1:49 AM

Why are you transcribing Italian torch songs again? :)

Cerberus

Torch song?

I like Italian.

Ok.

Good evening

howdy @Mr

Parole, soltanto parole...tra noi.

"Words, [there are] but words between us."

Evening!

tchrist

1:52 AM

I think it's bullshit. Sometimes there's a baby in the car and sometimes there isn't. The sign is misleading unless it flashes when there is a baby in the car and doesn't flash when there isn't a baby in the car. And whether or not there's a baby in the car is irrelevant to me. It's relevant to the driver of the car. I understand the sign as an attempt to intimidate other drivers. — Bill Franke 11 mins ago

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

How is everyone

tchrist

At least it isn’t parole saltante, which I almost read that as the first time.

Cerberus

> La luna ed i grilli...normalmente mi tengo la sveglia

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tch I somewhat agree with Bill there. The sign is worthless. Not sure I'd call it intimidation though.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Good, and you? Do you know anyone who has got his hands on a Nexus 4 yet?

tchrist

1:53 AM

Oh how weird, this is the first hit Mr Google tossed at me. I think it is being a bit too personal here.

cornbread ninja

@tchrist I am to write a pipeline to find files in a directory that have not been accessed for 30 days and compresses them. Is this right? It can't be.

`find . -mtime +30 | compress -v`

tchrist

You forgot xargs.

Cerberus

@tchrist An article in Spanish about the US...well done.

tchrist

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I find the language a bit coarse for the general site.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist no argument there.

@cerb no, I don't know anyone with an N4. I keep refreshing the store page but no joy. Wish i could just order it, even if it's backordered

tchrist

1:57 AM

I didn’t know that Loughner addressed Giffords in Spanish.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 So that's where you've been all night, I see.

Desperately ramming F5.

tchrist

@Cerberus Here are the transcribed lyrics.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Yeah. I haven't been able to come here because j used up all my bandwidth just f5ing

tchrist

> Canto: Caramelle non ne voglio più

There is the partitive.

It’s a clitic pronoun.

Cerberus

Isn't ne = en le?

Or what is it.

tchrist

1:59 AM

It’s French en.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Hmm yes, of course.

tchrist

of them/it/whatever.

> Canto: Le rose e violini/ questa sera raccontali a un’altra, violini e rose li posso sentire/ quando la cosa mi va se mi va, quando è il momento/ e dopo si vedrà

cornbread ninja

@tchrist me?

tchrist

When you put the direct object out front, you have to dupe it as a clitic, as in "li posso".

cornbread ninja

I'm not sure how to refer to the files that meet the criteria.

Cerberus

2:01 AM

@tchrist Right, now that you mention it. I still wouldn't call it partitive, because it can be more.

tchrist

@cornbreadninja Yes, in your pipeline. find . -mtime +30 lists them. Are you trying to compress the names, or the contents? The contents, right? So find ... | xargs compress -v.

Cerberus

@tchrist Yes, we had established that.

tchrist

I am pretty sure than French en and Italian ne were both taught to me as partitive clitic pronouns.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist Do you have an opinion on find -print0 ... | xargs -0 ?

tchrist

Yes.

Cerberus

2:03 AM

But you can say j'en ai parlé.

Nothing partitive there.

You can use en anywhere you can use de.

tchrist

You talked about it.

Cerberus

I have talked about it.

J'en suis le Roy.

tchrist

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 My opinion is that you should shoot people who put newlines in filenames, and that xargs should have a one-per-line mode.

Cerberus

I am its King.

Some any function that de can have.

tchrist

You’re not the boss of me, Louee!

Cerberus

2:05 AM

Yeah.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist what do you mean, "one per line" mode?

tchrist

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Isn’t there something that xargs does with funny characters in its input stream?

  (echo foo bar; echo fie fum) | xargs cmd

How many arguments are passed to the command? 2 or 4?

I believe it is going to be four, and there are times I want it to be two.

So only accept newlines as argument terminators.

Not whitespace in general.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I thought xargs was called once per line for each line of the input

tchrist

You mean cmd.

No.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

er, right

tchrist

2:08 AM

xargs bundles.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

are you sure? I could have sworn I've used xargs with commands that would fail if it were called only once per invocation

tchrist

It is the job of xargs to bundle up a stream of filenames into MAXARGS chunks.

And to call the cmd as few times as possible.

Within that constraint.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

hmm... the man page I'm reading doesn't seem to specify either way. I was under the impression that it essentially put the input file's line on the command line of the command, so your echo foo bar example would call cmd twice with two args each.

anyway, the -0 mode is good for handling whitespace in filenames, which I have lots of.

cornbread ninja

@tchrist thank you! :D

tchrist

chthon(tchrist)% (echo fee fie; echo foo fum) | xargs perl -le 'for($i=0; $i<@ARGV; $i++) { print "$i $ARGV[$i]" }'
0 fee
1 fie
2 foo
3 fum

That is proof that it is doing what I said.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

2:17 AM

huh. Well, TIL.

tchrist

Is TIL like QED? :)

Or YLSNED?

IDK.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

yeah, sorta. Except you'd say QED since you D'ed it, and I'd say TIL because I L'ed what you D'ed

tchrist

You Learn Something New Every Day.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

yup

So I'm trying to find documentation that explains that xargs works that way and I can't seem to find it in the GNU docs. Clearly it is working that way but I can't believe I never knew that.

Robusto

@Cerberus is a classical scholar, so he learns something old every day.

Cerberus

2:26 AM

@Robusto Hmm what?

I do indeed.

And so do we all.

tchrist

And something blue.

Robusto

Wedding Bell Blues?

tchrist

Hey check out our flag queue: I have never see something like that on SO.

Here.

Robusto

►

tchrist

[Varys listens to the bells toll the alarm before the battle]
Lord Varys: I've always hated the bells. They ring for horror. A dead king, a city under siege...
Tyrion Lannister: A wedding.
Lord Varys: Exactly.

Robusto

2:30 AM

@tchrist I don't know as I'd want to flag those. Seems rather extreme.

tchrist

That is what I am thinking.

I think something must be set funny on ELU compared with on SO.

Because I never see an autoflag with a score.

At least, I don’t think I do.

Wait, lemme check.

For Rob’s eyes only.

I haven’t looked through all 89, but I don’t see any (auto)s.

That autoflag of ours seems less than optimally useful.

Given the first-post etc queues.

I’d ask Reg, who seems to be putzing around, but he should go to sleep before dawn for a change.

Robusto

Yeah.

Auto-flag someone just because they're new?

tchrist

They are already in the first-post queue.

And the low-quality queue.

Hm. Let me check the LQQ@SO.

Well, there is nothing on it on SO, and you cannot really check the history very well.

But I have never seen an autoLQ score on an LQ-flagged posting.

Shouldn’t there be a diff between autoLQ and flaggedLQ?

I would have thunk that the review queue should just be for the autos, and the flags queue only for the non-autos. But it does not seem that way.

Did you know you can no longer to closevote with migration to Server Fault?

Only to Superuser. Which isn’t about superuser things, as it turns out.

It changed in the December rollout, replaced with SharePoint.SE. No kidding.

@Rob And now there are three.

@Reg When you wake up, could you please explain, or even just hazard a guess, what this low-quality autoflagging on ELU is about? It does not happen on SO, and I wonder whether it actually helps in a way distinct from what the low-quality review queue. Thanks, now go back to sleep.