English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Cerberus

12:00 AM

Interesting.

Jez

if you dont wanna freak yourself out, dont read about cancer and its various symptoms

virtually any symptom can be cancer

virtually any bodily organ can get cancer

Cerberus

I know.

That is why everyone who is Googling minor symptoms these days thinks he has cancer.

Jez

mmm

but what to do?

tchrist

1

A: What is the origin of auxiliary verbs?

The rise of 'do' in the history of English The history of do has long been of interest to historical linguists, and there is an extensive literature on the rise of do in the history of English. The change took place over the course of the Middle English period, with the very earliest uses appear...

Cerberus

2:17 AM

@Jez Not worry.

Mitch

@Cerberus The lack of any symptoms at all is a sign of cancer. It's sneaky.

Cerberus

@Mitch Or...thinking that you might have cancer is a sign.

Jasper Loy

3:03 AM

Mental illness is cancer of the mind.

@Jez Virtually any symptom can be any disease.

Robusto

3:54 AM

@tchrist You should read McWhorter's take on do support in English. He believes it to be anomalous in European languages, a leftover artifact of Cornish and Welsh.

Feb 5 '11 at 16:15, by Robusto

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

You can see some of it starting there.

Freddy

10:51 AM

Matt Эллен

11:28 AM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 @RegDwigнt Lego washes up on British shores

Robusto

12:05 PM

Lego all washed up on British shores?

Faheem Mitha

I just wanted to check this edit was correct.

tex.stackexchange.com/posts/176178/revisions

Specifically, is "evolve the document into its final form" correct? "its" as opposed to "it's".

@Robusto I didn't know there was such a thing as Cornish. Except where applied to pastry.

Matt Эллен

@FaheemMitha apostrophe for contraction i.e. it's means it is

Faheem Mitha

@MattЭллен Yes, I know that. But I can not remember for the life of me when to put a comma with a possessive.

Andrew Leach

Possessive pronouns like his, hers and its don't use apostrophes.

Does that help?

Faheem Mitha

12:21 PM

@AndrewLeach It does. But in some cases commas are used, right?

I.e. Peter's pen?

or maybe Peters pen. You see? No clue.

Andrew Leach

Yes, "Peter's", but that's not a possessive pronoun. And it's an apostrophe, not a comma.

Faheem Mitha

@AndrewLeach Yes, I thought the former. But I don't see why that is correct and not "it's". And sorry, apostrophe, not comma. Careless me.

Andrew Leach

Peter is a proper noun, not a pronoun, so it takes an apostrophe.

Faheem Mitha

Maybe pronouns are just treated differently.

Andrew Leach

It is a pronoun, so it doesn't.

Faheem Mitha

12:24 PM

@AndrewLeach So the rule is just that pronuns are treated differently?

Anything else?

Andrew Leach

Pronouns have their own rules which differ from nouns.

But generally, pronouns do not ever take apostrophes.

It's is the only case of confusion, and that only uses an apostrophe for contraction of it is.

Faheem Mitha

@AndrewLeach Ok. Thanks for the explanation.

Andrew Leach

So your its final form was exactly right :-)

Faheem Mitha

So, is the dog's bone correct, for example?

Andrew Leach

Yes.

"The dog" is not a pronoun.

Faheem Mitha

12:26 PM

@AndrewLeach I knew it was correct. I wasn't sure exactly why.

@AndrewLeach Ok.

My grasp of English grammar is quite sketchy. Of course, it is a confusing and consistent language. It must be maddening for foreign language speakers to learn.

Though other languages might be as bad. I dunno.

Andrew Leach

I put together an aide-memoire for someone some time ago.

acleach.me.uk/apostrophes.htm

Faheem Mitha

@AndrewLeach Thank you. That is helpful. BTW, from an operational POV, what the relationship between this site and Learners? The area covered is similar. Do you guys talk to each other.

"Note: I’m criticising the education you were given, not you for having suffered that."

Funny.

My school sucked in many ways. I certainly don't recall any attempt to teach English grammar, though I would not have listened if they had.

Andrew Leach

@FaheemMitha We do talk to each other. The boundary is still blurry/there is some overlap. If a question is on-topic on whichever site it's asked on, it's not generally migrated.

ELL can often provide answers in terms which are more helpful to learners.

Faheem Mitha

12:45 PM

@AndrewLeach I see. Thanks.

I think there was controversy over the formation of ELL. Some considered it unnecessary.

@AndrewLeach the last para is helpful. I've not heard that explanation before.

Though, as you say, it might not be a real explanation, it is still a handy way to remember the rule.

If in doubt.

Stack Exchange

5:04 PM

Limerick Machine: Why are we not saying “phrasing!” I think it appropriate hazing When someone says...

posted on January 04, 2015 by sgdi

Why are we not saying “phrasing!” I think it appropriate hazing When someone says “Hon, I want you to come.” The phrasing right there is a amazing

tchrist

5:37 PM

I loathe drive-by asshole downvotes who cannot condescend to comment on what they think is so wrong with your answer.

-1

A: Difference between lexicon, vocabulary and dictionary

Asking for “formal definitions” is fraught with peril: who is the recognized authority? In any event, “searching around the web” isn’t going to do you much good. If you want to know what a dictionary says about a dictionary, then you shall have to actually use one. :) All these words have multi...

TRiG

6:21 PM

Trying to find a word. The different train operating companies in the UK are not exactly competitors. They're ... members of the same cohort? If I was to say that TOC X has outperformed its ... what? Is there an equivalent to colleague for companies?

I don't see anything useful on thesaurus.com.

tchrist

Hm. Peer? Cousin-company?

How are they not competitors?

TRiG

@tchrist They operate in different (albeit overlapping) areas.

Virgin is not going to help you get from London to Leeds.

Virgin and East Coast both run from London to Scotland, but up different sides of the country. Neither run West or South from London.

tchrist

I keep looking for something complementary.

Foil? Not really.

TRiG

On the other hand, if you want to get from Bedford to London, you have the choice of East Midland or First Capital Connect. So they can be competitors.

tchrist

Its corresponding locale-specific work-sake?

Not making any headway here.

TRiG

6:27 PM

@tchrist Heh. I like that one, but it's not exactly going to fit into a sentence.

> East Coast actually collapsed, and was renationalized. As a public concern, it has outperformed its private [?]

tchrist

If you stop trying to use its, the problem may right itself.

TRiG

Meh. I might give up and use rivals.

@tchrist How would you word it?

tchrist

Related rail companies?

Dunno.

TRiG

> other members of the Association of Train Operating Companies.

tchrist

Other train companies?

TRiG

6:31 PM

That's basically the way the Guardian phrases it. I might take my guidance from them.

> No wonder they’re flogging off the publicly owned east coast rail franchise: its very existence is a stubborn rejection of “the market does best” dogma. Public ownership has routinely been caricatured as a wasteful, subsidy-guzzling failure. How infuriating it must be, then, for free-market ideologues that east coast depended on less public subsidies than any of the 15 privately run rail franchises.

The annoying thing is that I was sure that the word I wanted existed. And it wasn't till I got to that point in the sentence that I suddenly realized it didn't, which caused a sudden hiccough in my mental process.

tchrist

Taking your guidance from the Guardian, eh? :)

►

Never fails to crack me up.

TRiG

@tchrist Brilliant!

Of course, Arthur Dent also read the Guardian.

Szabolcs

Windmills (think old ones) have a "propeller" and the "propeller" has "blades". What are the correct English terms for these parts? What are the current technical terms and what are the terms people would have used a couple of hundred years ago?

tchrist

> windmill: A mill the machinery of which is driven by the wind acting upon sails, used (chiefly in flat districts) for grinding corn, pumping water, etc. The older and most characteristic European form consists of a conical mill-house with a dome or ‘cap’ carrying (usually) four sails; the modern American type consists of a disk of sails mounted on a framework of girders, and is used chiefly for pumping or sawing.

> A windmill is a mill that converts the energy of wind into rotational energy by means of vanes called sails or blades.

Jasper Loy

Hi.

tchrist

6:43 PM

Wind power

Wind power or wind energy is the energy extracted from wind using wind turbines to produce electrical power, windmills for mechanical power, windpumps for water pumping, or sails to propel ships. Wind power, as an alternative to fossil fuels, is plentiful, renewable, widely distributed, clean, produces no greenhouse gas emissions during operation and uses little land. The effects on the environment are generally less problematic than those from other power sources. Large wind farms consist of hundreds of individual wind turbines which are connected to the electric power transmission network...

Windmill sail

Windmills are powered by their sails. Sails are found in different designs, from primitive common sails to the advanced patent sails. == Jib sails == The jib sail is found in Mediterranean countries, and consists of a simple triangle of cloth wound round a spar. The mill must be stopped in order to adjust the reefing of the sail. Though rare in the UK, at least two windmills are known to have had jib sails (St Mary's, Isle of Scilly and Cann Mills, Melbury Abbas). == Common sails == The simplest form of sail. In medieval mills the sailcloth was wound in and out of a ladder type arrangem...

Hello, sailor.

Szabolcs

Thanks!

Cerberus

6:59 PM

@TRiG I'm sure counterpart is not what you wanted, but it might fit the sentence.

TRiG

@Cerberus That might work, actually. The question has now been posted, but I might edit it. Thanks.

0

Q: Why is East Cast being reprivatized?

The various private rail franchises in Britain have all had their share of difficulties. East Coast actually collapsed, and was renationalized. As a public concern, it has outperformed the private rail franchises. So now, of course, it is being reprivatized. Owen Jones in The Guardian, possibl...

tchrist

Cast?

Cerberus

7:12 PM

@TRiG OK good luck...

The main site is down for maintenance?

tchrist

And meta.

Jasper Loy

What's there to maintain?

Cerberus

An inscrutable face?

Mitch

Perfectly scrutable.

I thought this was funny:

Is the feminine for “scientist”, “scientista”? There's no real translatable equivalent for "female scientist." The Inuit people called it "aqilokoq", which, loosely translated, means "snow.

Andrew Leach

7:29 PM

@tchrist Coast.

tchrist

In the Fantasy States of America, franchises are frenchizes but dans l’Union Canadienne they’re just frenchees. :)

Cerberus

7:48 PM

@Mitch Haha, aquilokoq should mean an eagle's reproductive organ.

@tchrist I am looking at Greek typefaces: greekfontsociety.gr/pages/en_typefaces20th.html

tchrist

@Cerberus You don’t like Douros’s?

Cerberus

Which one is that?

It's not on that page, which has quite a few good ones.

Oddly, the font that all those Bible-starers use, Gentium, doesn't work properly for me: somehow accented characters need to be supplied from some other font, with an ugly result.

tchrist

@Cerberus users.teilar.gr/~g1951d and there are various.

Jasper Loy

@Cerberus Do bibles often use Gentium?

Cerberus

@tchrist Oh, I have a few of those installed. But the ones I tried had the same substitution problem, so I figured I should look at specialised Greek fonts again.

@JasperLoy I don't know.

tchrist

7:55 PM

It looks like he’s withdrawn the text fonts.

I think I have a tarball of them here somewhere.

Cerberus

What do you think, does this look good?

The lines are a bit thin unless I make the font this big.

tchrist

Something looks wrong there: look at the right-hand stroke on the small cap U.

Those look like faked small caps.

Or maybe it is as you say, and the thin strokes are just thin.

If that is a web page, may I have its URL so I can check?

Cerberus

archimedes.fas.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/…

tchrist

(looking)

Cerberus

I am using Elpis, from that link I gave you.

The problem seems to be that those Havard pages don't prescribe a font.

So I need to set the default serif font in my browser to something that properly renders Greek.

tchrist

8:02 PM

Okay, the problem is actually that it uses the CSS font-variant: small-caps; without using the special magic needed to actually get them.

Cerberus

Ah.

tchrist

Also, the letter-spacing is dubious.

Therefore the browser fakes it even if it doesn’t need to.

Cerberus

The letters seem to be a bit too far apart.

tchrist

Yes.

More fakery trouble.

Cerberus

But I'm not sure what I can do.

tchrist

8:03 PM

Probably isn’t worth fretting.

Cerberus

I just want a font that nicely renders both Greek and Latin; one would think this was an absolute basic...

tchrist

True.

The small caps bug is something else.

You would have to override the CSS for the author element. They have:

author {
    font-variant: small-caps;
    letter-spacing: 0.1em;
}

But they need:

author {
    -moz-font-feature-settings:"smcp";
    -moz-font-feature-settings:"smcp=1";
    -ms-font-feature-settings:"smcp";
    -o-font-feature-settings:"smcp";
    -webkit-font-feature-settings:"smcp";
    font-feature-settings:"smcp";
}

Something like that.

That would fix the letter-spacing bug, too.

Cerberus

Let me try that...

tchrist

But I agree, a modern typeface should certainly render all three of Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic reasonably.

Cerberus

tchrist

8:08 PM

Hm.

Cerberus

Apparently, they don't like it.

tchrist

Well, just drop that line. I cribbed it from blog.webink.com/opentype-features-css

I actually changed the c2cp to smcp throughout, so that may be it.

Because like the OED they wrap an author element with mixed case: <author>Plu.</author>, so the mapping needed is small-to-smallcap.

Cerberus

It doesn't do anything.

tchrist

Which bowser?

Cerberus

Firefox.

tchrist

8:11 PM

> Yes, Mozilla Firefox is in there twice. You can drop the second version if you don’t care about Firefox versions prior to FF 14. Also, Opera is listed even though they don’t yet support this stuff.

Ah.

Can you bring yourself to test with Chrome?

Cerberus

Oh, why not...

tchrist

Wait, I know what it is.

Cerberus

One click on the mouse.

tchrist

You have to actually use a font with small caps in the font proper.

Cerberus

By the way:

tchrist

8:12 PM

So whichever serif you or they are using must not actually have them.

Cerberus

This is what it looks like if I don't mess with the fonts.

tchrist

That’s terrible.

Do you have any Slimbach fonts installed?

Cerberus

Now you understand why I need to set the default font in Firefox (and Chrome, apparently) to something Greek.

Which are those?

tchrist

Things like Minion Pro or Arno Pro.

Either would work fine and include small caps in the real font.

Otherwise, tell me what you are using and I will check in the font browser if I have it installed.

Cerberus

I don't know how styles work in Chrome, I'm afraid.

tchrist

8:15 PM

Co Koder

Hi All

tchrist

That’s without the small-cap hack to the author element, but with a better font.

Co Koder

I have a quick question. What is the difference of "cue" and "hint"?

Cerberus

That's nice.

I have Minion, let me see...

tchrist

I’m using Douros’s Alfios font in that specimen.

Robusto

8:19 PM

Chrome's image rendering for single images appears to be broken. Every time I click on an image in chat it doesn't resize to max width/height if the image is larger than the viewport. It used to do that just fine.

Cerberus

Hmm Minion is nice enough.

Except for the small capitals, as you say.

tchrist

Minion Pro definitely has real small caps; I am not sure about the non-Pro version. It should have Greek.

Cerberus

@Robusto Hmm odd. Could it be an advanced setting somewhere?

tchrist

I think the Pro-vs-non-Pro bit is probably more weights.

Cerberus

@tchrist I have Pro.

tchrist

8:23 PM

Ok cool.

Cerberus

tchrist

At least you shouldn’t have font-sub bogosities now.

Cerberus

@CoKoder There is very little difference, depends on context. And hello!

tchrist

Maybe @Rob can comment on the per-browser magic needed to fix the author CSS element.

A difference between Minion Pro and Arno Pro is that Arno Pro has many more code points, notably including Cyrillic ones. However, some systems have trouble with it for reasons that you really do not want to know about.

However, some aestheticians feel that Arno Pro goes too far into the Old-Style direction compared with Minion Pro.

I withhold judgement.

Co Koder

@Cerberus, ok. Let's say I want you to help to remember what you ate yesterday. If I say: you ate the same meal today". In this case, should I use cue or hint?

tchrist

8:26 PM

Arno Pro has so many sorts that it blows up the kern tables in some software.

For sort, read glyph.

Cerberus

What is Old Style?

tchrist

Like the original typefaces from the first century of Western printing.

Humanist.

Cerberus

Ah.

I find Alfios a bit hard to read.

Your image above with Alfios looks bold?

tchrist

It does, doesn’t it?

adobe.com/type/browser/landing/arno/arno.html

Notes that all three of Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic not only have genuine small caps, but that there are "swash alternates" to provide genuine italic capitals, not just sloped ones. They are not, however, the default.

But Minion Pro also provides the same genuine italic capitals.

Note that in Minion Pro, the Medium weight is a very tiny bit heavier than the Regular weight.

Both Slimbach faces support polytonic Greek well.

Well, as far as I can tell. I am no Greek specialist. The Douros faces have more special ligatures available for some of his Greeks, more chancery-Greek style.

Cerberus

I have downloaded Arno...

tchrist

8:37 PM

Taking up Russian? :)

Cerberus

Why Russian?

tchrist

Cyrillic support.

That’s Douros’s Alexander face.

Mitch

They need all the support they can get.

tchrist

With some of the Greek ligatures.

Cerberus

Ah.

tchrist

8:44 PM

I’m getting really really tired of the blatant Teutonic racism this poster cannot help but push at people:

Some people cling to old ballast to show they can handle subjunctive forms, others throw ballast away as the statement with indicative is the same. French suffers from a subjunctive disease, English and German managed to get rid of it. — rogermue 2 hours ago

That’s offensive. At least to the French. :)

How tolerant should we be of racism in comments?

It’s nearly Aryan, and that has to rub some people the very wrongest of ways.

Cerberus

Hmm I'm sticking with Minion for now, thanks!

@tchrist I see neither black nor yellow people in that post.

Nor even red or white ones.

It's just a little chauvinist joke.

tchrist

@Cerberus Nicolas Chauvin was French.

Cerberus

Well, of course.

Who are more chauvinist than the French?

tchrist

> a. Fr. chauvinisme, orig. ‘idolatrie napoléonienne’ La Rousse; from the surname of a veteran soldier of the First Republic and Empire, Nicolas Chauvin of Rochefort, whose demonstrative patriotism and loyalty were celebrated, and at length ridiculed, by his comrades.

After the fall of Napoleon, applied in ridicule to old soldiers of the Empire, who professed a sort of idolatrous admiration for his person and acts. Especially popularized as the name of one of the characters in Cogniard’s famous vaudeville, La Cocarde Tricolore, 1831 (‘je suis français, je suis Chauvin’); and now applied to…

Cerberus

Does that not describe the user?

tchrist

8:55 PM

ptet

Cerberus

Un petit peu.

tchrist

See the starboard.

Germans characterizing the French as diseased may be read in a more chilling light than mere chauvinism alone.

Jasper Loy

10:09 PM

Hi.

@JohanLarsson I just brushed my teeth.

Robusto

10:36 PM

@tchrist What precisely are you looking for?

Faheem Mitha

@tchrist Well, you learn something new every day.

tchrist

@Robusto The magic that gets modern browsers to use the font’s real small caps not the emulation. Scroll up a bit to see the two variants.

However, I don’t know whether my incantation failed because @Cerb wasn’t yet using a font that actually had them.

Or maybe there is some !important screaming needed to override the site; not sure.

tchrist

10:55 PM

Hm, looks like you need something the Stylebot extension for Chrome for persistent editable per-site css overrides. Haven’t tried it. You’d probably have to get rid of their author css first; I don’t like the 0.1em fake letter-spacing.

Hurray, that worked!

@Cerb I managed to make your site look pretty now.

Those are with the real small caps and without the bogus letter-spacing.

Notice how they are a little bigger than the font’s x-height and now have the proper stroke-weight that matches the rest of the text.

And of course, the letter-spacing no longer sucks.

Here’s the site's css using Arno Pro as the default serif:

And here with the edited author element css, again using Arno Pro this time as the serif:

Almost embarrassingly improved, eh?

If you load both images and flip between them fast, your eye will do a "visual diff" of what's changed from between them. Quite compelling tale, I think.

tchrist

11:29 PM

@Andrew I feel a bit bad for the person who naïvely asked about how to pull out all the verbs from a text for a programming class. That’s a seriously hard problem requiring some statistical NLP approach that also does POS assignment on the fly. Those tools exist, but it is summarily wicked for the poster’s instructor to assign such a task to a beginning programmer.

Andrew Leach

It is. cogcomp.cs.illinois.edu/page/demo_view/SRL doesn't get it right.

tchrist

I usually throw the Stanford parser at things for a first approximation.

Andrew Leach

However, lists of verbs are off-topic. I think. Unfortunate.

tchrist

Oh, was that really what it was asking for? I was confused.

I think she just can’t figure out the parse: hence the missing-word question. This won’t format prettily in a comment, but I don’t think she realizes that her sentence actually parses out to something like this: (S (NP (NNP Liddy)) (VP (VBD held) (NP (NP (DT a) (NN brass) (NN andiron)) (, ,) (SBAR (WHNP (WDT which)) (S (NP (PRP it)) (VP (VBD was) (NP (NP (DT all)) (SBAR (S (NP (PRP she)) (VP (MD could) (VP (VB do) (S (VP (VP (TO to) (VP (VB lift)) (, ,) (CC let alone) (VP (VB brain) (NP (NN anybody)) (ADVP with)))))))))))))))) (. .)). — tchrist Dec 21 '14 at 3:26

That’s what I did there, but as you see it’s actually giving functional bits for the constituency parse, not just POS assignments.

I believe VBS is verb-singular. I don’t know what the OP’s first/second/third-form stuff was about though.

And VBD is past-tense verb.

It uses Penn tags, like most everybody. Unfortunately.

Andrew Leach

Oh. I was referring to this one.

-1

Q: files for all form verbs

for one of my programming problem, i need all(if possible) possible verbs of English in a text file.can some help me i found a file that containing all form of verbs under single file. i but i need them separately e.g one file for first forms ,one for second forms etc. can some help me in that fr...

verbs

tchrist

11:35 PM

Right, I know.

I just mentioned that I recently threw a sentence at an NLP tool regarding a different question.

“All possible English verbs” is not a closed set.

Andrew Leach

Right. Sorry, it's getting late! How do you rate the Illinois one with your text?

tchrist

So it cannot be held in a text file as literals.

Oh, let me check.

Andrew Leach

Even with some of their own samples, it seems to get confused between subject and object.

tchrist

My goodness, it’s still thinking about it.

Answer: It gets rather crappy answers.

Try it with: We got to the door, somehow, and Liddy held a brass andiron, which it was all she could do to lift, let alone brain anybody with.

"Let" is not a verb there.

In my estimation.

Andrew Leach

Ooh. That is complicated. One of their own examples is "The stocks declined on Tuesday . John declined the cake ." and I'm sure the result is wrong.

tchrist

11:39 PM

But they seem to find it one.

NLP Barbie says me parse English hard.

Andrew Leach

I would say "let alone" is a verb, in imperative mood.

tchrist

That takes an infinitive complement? Hm.

Andrew Leach

Yes. It's idiomatic, which means it has its own rules. And that's nice and convenient :-)

tchrist

I read it as: it was all she could do to ((lift it) let alone (brain anybody with)), because the to is controlling two verbs separated by some sort of conjunctive thingy.

Kinda like "or even".

However, your read of it as a verb would still work in taking a bare infinitive.

Andrew Leach

Let alone = leave aside any mention of

= drop from consideration

tchrist

11:44 PM

Yes, you could s/let alone/not to mention/ and it would still read just fine.

Andrew Leach

Illinois seems to have done OK except for let=allow.

They need to recognise let alone as an idiomatic thingy.

tchrist

Yes, the "let alone" bit seems to confuse everything. I wonder why.

The OED has "let alone" as its own thingy.

Andrew Leach

Thingies is hard.

What did you make of "The stocks" being a patient, an object, in "The stocks declined"?

tchrist

Let me run it.

What looks odd to you in their results for those two sentences?

Andrew Leach

"The stocks" being described as an object [A1].

tchrist

11:51 PM

They realize that the second version has a direct object but that the first does not.

I think they are saying that "on Tuesday" is a temporal constraint whose object is "Tuesday".

They don’t say what their orangey color is for; perhaps it’s for prepositional objects.

Andrew Leach

But "the stocks" is described only as "logical subject", then "patient", "[A1]" which is "object".

I think that first sentence is entirely wrong.

Mitch

oink

tchrist

Oh, it is marked as an object not a subject!

Because it is intransitive perhaps?

No idea how one looks at these things.

Andrew Leach

They seem to have parsed it as passive-voice, somehow.

Intransitive verbs only have a subject.

tchrist

Well it kinda could be if that were the start of a longer phrase. Just not here.

> Once the stocks (were) declined, only the bonds remained.

But I don’t see why stocks can’t be a subject of declined.

Seems the obvious read.

Andrew Leach

11:58 PM

Exactly. Stocks decline (reduce in value); that's spontaneous, grammatically.

In other news,...

0

Q: What is the origin of National Spaghetti Day?

Happy National Spaghetti Day! I'm curious how to determine the origin of this "holiday". Also, what is the process for officially declaring today as National Spaghetti Day?

etymology proper-nouns origin-unknown

I think I'm giving up for the day.

tchrist

Yeah, I saw that and went off to blow my close votes. :)

40 seconds left.

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…