English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Mitch

00:05

@Sᴋᴜʟʟᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ All

@Jasper That's uncool

@Jasper venting is ok.

@Jasper I don't agree exactly in details but I agree with your sentiment. I'd say people who don't actually know that much about language.

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

If it's all about overthinking no progress would be made @Mitch

The rabbit hole has no bottom.

user174558

@snailboat This time, I returned quickly.

Anonymous

00:25

Welcome back!

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

People are getting overly sensitive in the physics room again :-/

in The h Bar, 12 mins ago, by 0celo7

It's a sad coward who flags from the shadows

Mitch

@Sᴋᴜʟʟᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ Have you seen modern mathematics? Everyone is rushing down the rabbit hole as quickly as possible.

@Sᴋᴜʟʟᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ But I get your point.

But back to my point (!), a big (part of math (not all of it) is in thinking real hard in order to not have to think so hard (that is, creating lots of machinery to prove a succinctly stated and used theorem)

From @Jasper's deleted question:

> Correction, it is correct for all speakers, they just might find it alien. English is free, rules are rules and meant to be broken. It's also a lovely miasma of hodgepodge rules. Now unless you want to tell me some aspects or variants of spoken English is less valid than others... nah, you probably won't. – Sakatox 8 mins ago

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

00:43

I agree, but you did use the word "all." :)

user174558

@Mitch I saw that.

user174558

I see everything, lol.

Mitch

@Jasper chat didn't one box the link so I just copied the text straight.

user174558

@Mitch Yes, because it was deleted it did not one box.

Mitch

@Jasper You've convinced me that people use what you gave as an answer. But I do not, and think that other GenAmE speakers are the same.

And I was about to respond to Sakatox to tell him I think he is mistaken about English in particular and language in general.

user174558

00:45

@Mitch Thanks for telling me, but I don't need to convince anyone. I just need to get well, do math, and find Maria.

Anonymous

Enjoy math!

user174558

@Mitch Sorry to deprive you of that opportunity!

Mitch

@Jasper haha...I can do it here! or in comments to the OP!

I can annoy people anywhere! I will make a way!!!

blah! blah! blah!

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

:D

Mitch

Yes, Yes, You've succeeded in being annoying.

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

00:47

me?

Anonymous

@Mitch I think there are two main motivations to guide us in coming up with linguistic descriptions: ① Try to explain as much of the evidence as possible as simply as possible. ② Try to communicate your description effectively.

Anonymous

Those two can be in conflict sometimes, so sometimes we might choose to use an explanation that's easier to understand for pedagogical purposes, even if another description seems more parsimonious in terms of theory.

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

Sounds like trying to teach math :P

Especially number 2

The "as simply as possible" part of number 1 can be self-destructive to the entire process.

Mitch

@Sᴋᴜʟʟᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ haha no speaking to myself.

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

np

Anonymous

01:00

@Sᴋᴜʟʟᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ What if I said "as simple as possible, but no simpler"? :-)

Mitch

@snailboat sure. simple. but not too simple. not simpler than reality.

Anonymous

There's a lot of research in linguistics, though, that I think tries to simplify in ways that really make things more complex. The so-called "minimalist" program, for example.

Mitch

what's the minimalist program?

Anonymous

It's Chomsky's current generative framework.

Mitch

is that the successor to parameters?

Anonymous

01:03

Government & Binding was a while before the Minimalist Program.

Anonymous

I wish so much linguistics research wasn't done in Chomsky's frameworks.

Mitch

was that government and binding? I thought that was all about the semantics of pronoun referents, not the parameters of major syntactic features like left or right branching, pro-drop, etc

@snailboat Is it still?

Chomsky was a genius (but of course lots of little details arguable), There just doesn't sem to be anything worthwhile to replace it.

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

His daughter :)

Mitch

:D

I also don't think there are big areas that are not explained by or lots of little errors that could use a new theory to explain.

There are many things that he doesn't cover that I believe could be studied and theorized that are outside his framework (lots of semantics)

Cerberus

Surely there are other linguists yhan Chomskyists.

Especially outside Anglo-Saxon linguistics.

Mitch

01:13

@Cerberus I wouldn't know (haven't followed that stuff for ages). de Saussure? :)

user174558

Hi all. I am now a green square.

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

nice

user174558

I am going to delete my account soon. Yesterday was too tough...

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

burnt out?

user174558

I have deleted all the comments I left. They have served their purpose.

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

01:20

You fight a Nobel cause.

user174558

I am wondering where Maria is now.

user174558

I am wondering who Maria is, in fact.

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

There are not many Maria's out there that will recognize your cause.

Most of them have their own agendas

user174558

Will there be a miracle in my life soon? Hmm.

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

That is unknowable pal.

user174558

01:30

There can be miracles when you believe

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

"Belief" is all we have control over.

Nobody can take it away from you.

They can try though.

Anonymous

01:43

@Mitch Yep. Of course, a lot isn't, but a lot still is.

Anonymous

It was pretty influential in Japanese linguistics.

Anonymous

You can't ignore generative linguistics, either. You can discard the theoretical frameworks, more or less, but a lot of research is done in those frameworks, so you have to be prepared to extract the useful discoveries and insights and figure out how to incorporate them into whatever sort of framework you prefer.

Anonymous

Well, you can obviously judge for yourself on a case-by-case basis what can simply be ignored . . .

Anonymous

Here's cheat me of in COCA. You can see the specific examples the strings appear in and decide whether you think they sound natural, formal, old-fashioned, or whatever.

Anonymous

And here's cheat me out of in COCA. A pretty similar number of results, looks like.

Anonymous

01:49

I put cheat in square brackets so that it would match forms like cheats and cheating as well.

Anonymous

I think I would probably personally use the out of version in normal speech.

Mitch

Who are the big linguists? nonAngloSaxon

@Sᴋᴜʟʟᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ Abel I was ere I saw Leba

@snailboat 'of' vs 'out of' about the same. surprising to me in US. just 'of' sounds really wrong to me.

but that's an official corpus

(the google search found all these old weird examples, but COCA has them in modern texts)

argh!.. more wrongness in the world! Nutella pronounced 'new tella' (as opposed to 'nuh tella')

Anonymous

02:04

@Mitch Here's what I notice. 11 of 14 of the examples for of are from modern fiction, 1 is a quote from Shakespeare, and the last 2 are in a relatively formal sounding essay by a fiction writer.

Anonymous

They don't really represent everyday speech.

Mitch

11 ain't nothin

Anonymous

In the examples for out of, we find more of a mix. Some examples are from fiction, some are from spontaneous speech.

Mitch

but I know what sounds right and wrong. and I don't think I'm wrong (which is always a possibility)

Anonymous

Cheat me of may be more or less dead in spontaneous American English speech.

Anonymous

02:07

Calling things obsolete or archaic is often tricky because there's no point in time when it suddenly becomes true. Things often fade out pretty gradually.

Anonymous

But I don't think it's something I'd say, either.

Anonymous

It is, at least, part of the language that everyone still understands, I think.

Mitch

that's a problem with all naming. just the process of giving a name to something enforces a threshold, no room for vagueness. and few sequences of slowly increasing whateverness.

Anonymous

There are still some speakers today who say mayn't, but I think it's "dead" for the large majority of speakers.

Mitch

Really? very old people

Anonymous

02:10

Well, it's dialectal more than anything.

Anonymous

It was still commonly used a hundred years ago, though.

Anonymous

Its death is relatively recent.

Anonymous

But I can't put a year on it . . .

Anonymous

I think it's well and truly dead in American English, though.

Mitch

yeah I can't imagine anyone saying it nowadays in AmE

Anonymous

02:13

> And it may be old technology as well mayn't it?

Anonymous

This is from ICE-GB, which contains one million words of spoken and written British English from the 1990s.

Mitch

Some BrE people use whilst and amongst which are unheard of in AmE

Anonymous

I think that is more true of whilst than amongst.

Anonymous

Even though the ratios in both cases are rather large, while:whilst is a considerably larger ratio than among:amongst.

Anonymous

It's difficult to go off of raw ratios, though, because the less common your results are in a large corpus, the more likely the number of false positives is throwing it off significantly.

Anonymous

02:18

When I investigated a sample of while and whilst for false positives a while back, I found that the true ratio in COCA is probably significantly larger than what you'd find with a simple search.

Anonymous

The raw result counts right now are 349891 for while and 621 for whilst, which would suggest whilst is used about 0.18% of the time, but I don't think it's nearly that frequent in AmE in reality. Many of the examples are from British English speakers or fiction.

Anonymous

I have a lot of personal chat logs saved, by the way, and sometimes I use that as a corpus informally. A surprising number of my AmE-speaking friends have said amongst at one time or another.

Anonymous

No whilsts, though.

Anonymous

So I would agree whilst is all but unheard, but I think amongst is merely uncommon.

Fard

Hi @snailboat!

Anonymous

02:28

Hi, @Fard! :-)

Fard

Good afternoon/evening, I suppose!

Anonymous

It's 19:29 here.

Fard

Do you know if there's a reason why Merriam Webster doesn't tell why a noun is uncountable or not?

Anonymous

Maybe they want you to use another dictionary.

Anonymous

macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/american/snail

Fard

02:31

I thought maybe they want to say that it's fuzzy.

Sort of reject the idea that an uncount noun cannot be made plural ever.

There are some or many example of nouns that are deemed to be always uncountable, but have been used in plural. I came across elations the other day, for instance.

Anonymous

I don't know about this "always uncountable" business.

Fard

Some nouns can be countable in some senses and uncountable in other senses.

Sorrow, for example: macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/sorrow_1

Anonymous

If you want to know more about the conventions used by a particular dictionary, you can usually find explanatory material inside the front or back covers.

Fard

But some are considered to be always uncountable, by dictionaries.

@snailboat Right. I will do that.

Mitch

@snailboat yeah. I see that.

Anonymous

02:41

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary doesn't appear to have any explanation as to why they don't mark nouns as count or non-count.

Anonymous

I just checked.

Anonymous

But remember it's a dictionary primarily written for native speakers. It's not a learner's dictionary.

Fard

I don't see why such a comprehensive dictionary would leave you to other dictionaries just in this matter.

Anonymous

Of course, there are dictionaries that aren't which nonetheless give that information.

Anonymous

I don't know, I never use that dictionary :-(

Fard

02:43

Their Unabridged Dictionary is like that too.

Anonymous

I just checked that one! My housemate's copy :-)

Anonymous

I don't have the unabridged myself.

Anonymous

Lately I'm focusing on collecting Japanese dictionaries.

Fard

I like to believe that's because there aren't such strict rules here. But I'm afraid I might be wrong.

Anonymous

It could be, but I'm afraid there might not be such a deep reason behind the omission.

Fard

02:45

@snailboat Good luck with your Japanese study. :)

Anonymous

Thanks! :-)

Fard

How is it?

Anonymous

I have a lot of dictionaries I seldom use, but I like collecting them.

Anonymous

How are my Japanese studies going, you mean?

Fard

Yes.

Anonymous

02:46

Dunno. It's been about eighteen years, I guess.

Fard

Wow! So you must be fluent now.

Anonymous

Right now I'm interested in the functional distribution of interrogative clauses.

Fard

If you give me examples, I might understand that!

Anonymous

Okay, just a sec.

Fard

At your leisure.

Mitch

02:50

@snailboat is there a concept of uncountable nouns in Japanese?

Fard

Good question. Or any other language?!

Anonymous

@Mitch Not really. You could argue that the concept is relevant in some ways, but Japanese is essentially a classifier language, and it has no determiners or plural marking (in the general case), so there's usually no grammatical distinction to be made.

Anonymous

@Fard In Japanese, forming an interrogative clause is pretty simple in the general case. You take a declarative clause and add the question particle ka to the end. For wh-questions, you can have a wh-phrase of some kind. There are a few additional rules, like the da ka sequence being prohibited in matrix interrogatives.

Anonymous

But the basic way to form a question is add ka with rising intonation. Omit ka and keep the rising intonation, if you like.

Fard

Seems easy enough.

Anonymous

02:55

But most of the complications in English like subject-auxiliary inversion, wh-fronting, pied piping (percolation), and so on don't apply.

Anonymous

Just add ka, instant interrogative.

Fard

So, that's what functional distribution mean?

Anonymous

No. I'm just explaining how to make an interrogative clause. So far we're just talking about making a basic question.

Anonymous

So once we've got the idea of an interrogative clause, we can talk about where those clauses show up.

Anonymous

The simplest one is as a sentence by itself, as a main clause (or matrix clause).

Anonymous

02:57

But they show up as subordinate clauses all over the place.

Fard

Aha.

Anonymous

Like for example: [Dare (da) ka] shiranai kedo 'I don't know [who it is], but . . . '

Anonymous

You can tell it has the form of a subordinate clause because da is optional.

Anonymous

In a main clause, that da ka sequence is prohibited.

Fard

@snailboat In Farsi, we add aya, instant interrogative.

Anonymous

03:00

Neat!

Anonymous

No other fanciness required? :-)

Fard

There maybe some other ways, but I have to think!

Anonymous

What is the subordinate interrogative is doing in my example above? Its role in the sentence is called its 'function', and the set of all the different functions a constituent can have is called its 'functional distribution'.

Fard

Now the penny dropped. :)

Anonymous

The da ka rule is an example of how we can tell that subordinate interrogatives and matrix interrogatives differ in form.

Anonymous

03:02

Here's another: ka can't be omitted from the subordinate clause, but Dare da! works on its own as a matrix clause.

Anonymous

(I just used an exclamation point, but it's really a question in form, so I could have used a question mark too. I'm being influenced by Japanese punctuation conventions here.)

Anonymous

So we can divide interrogatives into subordinate and interrogative. We might be able to divide those up further into smaller categories, too. And then we can look at what range each type appears in.

Fard

So how do you research on that? There are Japanese corpora?

Anonymous

I could say that shiru 'know' takes a subordinate interrogative clause directly as a complement. Some linguists would say it's an object, though in that case it's curious because the particle which would usually mark an object, o, is usually omitted.

Anonymous

@Fard I do do that! But I also collect interesting examples of Japanese utterances every day.

Fard

03:07

@snailboat In Farsi grammar, they take the interrogative clause after 'know' as a compliment I guess (a subordinate clause). In Arabic they take it as an object.

Anonymous

Of course, there's more than one grammatical theory for any widely studied language.

Fard

There should be a Global Grammar.

Anonymous

It's popular in Japanese linguistics to treat subordinate interrogatives as nominalized. Some consider ka itself a nominalizing particle, but many subordinate interrogatives unmarked by ka have distributions similar to that of a noun phrase.

Anonymous

And there are a number of fixed phrases like ni kakawarazu that license specific kinds of interrogative complements.

Fard

I watched anime and stuff in my younger years. My ear is familiar with how it sounds.

But that's about it.

Watashi wa Fard des.

Anonymous

03:11

> [ Sanka suru shinai ] ni kakawarazu, kanarazu henji o hagaki de dashite kudasai.

Anonymous

> Regardless of whether you're going to participate or not, please make sure you respond by postcard.

Fard

Oh.

Anonymous

@Fard When you write that, write desu. The final /u/ is generally considered to still be there phonologically even if it's entirely absent phonetically.

Anonymous

Sanka suru is 'participate', and sanka shinai is 'not participate'. When you coordinate them like this, you can pull out the common element sanka (this is called "left-node raising" in the literature) and end up with sanka suru shinai. Although there's no ka here, there's a coordination of alternatives: one affirmative, one negative.

Anonymous

Desu doesn't mean anything. In your sentence it's a polite copula.

Anonymous

03:14

Oh! Your question vanished.

Anonymous

In watashi=wa fard=desu, the copula desu translates to 'am'.

Fard

I realized I interrupted you talking about interrogatives.

Anonymous

I was just giving an example of a special kind of subordinate interrogative that isn't marked with ka.

Anonymous

So if ka were really responsible for "turning the constituent into a noun" (nominalizing), then it's strange that other subordinate interrogatives are nominalized without the presence of ka.

Fard

Maybe with a difference in intonation?

Anonymous

03:17

It's not intonation, really, it's the presence of ni in this particular construction that allows it.

Anonymous

It goes back to Old Japanese, before the merger of the conclusive and adnominal forms of verbs. Verbs used to have separate adnominal forms that were sometimes used as (what Shibatani calls) "headless nominalized clauses", treated as noun phrases even though the following head nominal was missing.

Anonymous

So you could treat any ol' clause as nominal by changing the final verb to that form.

Anonymous

The two forms merged over the last thousand years, and today in Modern Japanese there is no separate form.

Anonymous

And that particular use is no longer productive, but it's preserved in a fairly large number of fixed phrases.

Anonymous

So although ni doesn't generally license this sort of complement, in the fixed phrase ni kakawarazu it does.

Anonymous

03:21

You just can't see that the complement is in that adnominal form because the form is no longer distinguished.

Fard

I see.

Anonymous

So synchronically speaking, you might ignore that history and suggest that it takes a subordinate interrogative complement.

Anonymous

There's also the curious case of the subordinate interrogative with an external head:

Fard

So this is the modern grammatical interpretation, and that one (which took the interrogative as object) was a traditional one.

Anonymous

> Keisatsu wa [ dare ga hōseki o ubatta ka ] sono hannin o shitte iru.

Anonymous

03:24

> 'The police know who stole the jewels.'

Anonymous

@Fard It's not nearly so settled as that.

Anonymous

To be honest, "traditional grammar", whether we're talking about English or Japanese, isn't a single coherent entity everyone agreed upon.

Anonymous

Traditional grammar was tremendously insightful and useful and is the basis for all modern linguistics, but people disagreed back then and they disagree now.

Fard

Right. So what is this external head now?

Anonymous

I don't think there's a really coherent account of the functional distribution of subordinate interrogatives in Modern Japanese yet.

SmokeDetector

03:27

[ SmokeDetector ] Chinese character in title, mostly non-Latin body, mostly non-Latin title: 怎么办理♥皇家墨尔本理工大学毕业证成绩单（Q微860155399）办理澳洲毕业证成绩单学历认证RMIT University by Ko Be on english.stackexchange.com …

Anonymous

Okay, so, keisatsu wa sets the topic ('the police'), which is also the subject of shitte iru 'know'. 'The police know . . . '

Anonymous

The rest, all that stuff in bold, is the object of shitte iru 'know'. It's what the police know.

Anonymous

You can see the subordinate interrogative in brackets, dare ga hōseki o ubatta ka 'who stole the jewels'.

Anonymous

That has the shape of a fairly normal subordinate interrogative clause.

Anonymous

But following it is sono hannin 'that culprit'.

Anonymous

03:29

Semantically, sono hannin 'that culprit' is linked to the subject of the subordinate interrogative, dare 'who'.

Fard

So it's 'The police know that culprit who stole the jewels.'?

Anonymous

And the entire string [ dare ga hōseki o ubatta ka ] sono hannin seems to be the direct object.

Anonymous

@Fard It doesn't have the shape of a relative clause.

Anonymous

Your English example does.

Fard

How does it semantically differ from that?

Or does it?

SmokeDetector

03:32

[ SmokeDetector ] Chinese character in title, mostly non-Latin body, mostly non-Latin title, blacklisted user: 怎么办理♥南十字星大学毕业证成绩单（Q微860155399）办理澳洲毕业证成绩单学历认证Southern Cross University by Ko Be on english.stackexchange.com …

Anonymous

Silly spammer.

Anonymous

@Fard If you just remove sono hannin, it doesn't really change the basic meaning of the sentence.

Anonymous

The police know who stole the jewels. They know who the culprit is.

Anonymous

I can't put both of them into a single interrogative clause with the same meaning in English.

Fard

So it's Keisatsu wa [ dare ga hōseki o ubatta ka ] = [sono hannin] o shitte iru.

Anonymous

03:34

Sure.

Fard

Curious indeed!

Why should sono hannin be considered as the head of the clause then?

Anonymous

It's called an external head because ① sono hannin seems to be part of the same constituent, ② it seems to be head of that constituent, but ③ it appears outside the portion we would normally call a subordinate interrogative clause, after ka. Usually the ka is at the end.

Fard

Uh huh.

Anonymous

@Fard Well, there's a sequence of two thingies here. What kinds of thingies? One looks like a subordinate interrogative clause, and the other looks like a noun phrase. But the two are licensed where that type of subordinate interrogative clause is licensed, and constituency tests show they're one constituent.

Anonymous

Since the functional distribution seems to be the same as that of a similar subordinate interrogative clause but without the following NP, it seems like the constituent as a whole is an interrogative clause.

Anonymous

03:38

I don't know. It's hard to analyze.

Anonymous

I can give you further references if you want to read about it.

Anonymous

I'm particularly interested in bare (zero, null) coordination in interrogatives.

Fard

Thanks for explaining that to me. But I guess that's enough Japanese grammar for me now!

Anonymous

Sorry I made it complicated instead of simple :-)

Fard

No, I managed to understand a good portion of it.

Anonymous

03:41

A lot of the same general concepts apply in English grammar. Figuring out the functional distribution of different kinds of constituents and all that.

Fard

Do want to join me for breakfast? :-)

Anonymous

Mmm, breakfast.

Fard

Anonymous

Is that seriously your breakfast? It looks really nice.

Fard

It's kind of like that. yes.

Cheese, butter, bread, tea, honey, omelet, ...

tchrist

03:46

@Mitch I hear amongst pretty often, in part because I notice it.

Fard

Well I better go eat my breakfast before it gets cold.

Thanks @snailboat. And bye all. :)

tchrist

Happy breaking fastness time.

Lawrence

05:18

@snailboat How about They cheated him of his promotion.? That sounds better than using "out of" instead of just "of". They cheated him out of $50 is likely split, with each side holding a strong preference. Then there's They cheated him out of revenge, which takes an opposite meaning without out.

@snailboat Then there's whence, which occurs in maths (or math, for AmE speakers) and hardly anywhere else.

Downgoat

06:03

Hi, is anyone here right now?

SmokeDetector

06:24

[ SmokeDetector ] Chinese character in title, mostly non-Latin body, mostly non-Latin title, phone number detected in title: （蒙特利尔办理毕业证）Q/微信2516986537UBC英属哥伦比亚大学毕业证【加拿大文凭学历认证】University of British Columbia by nb40df4 on english.stackexchange.com …

[ SmokeDetector ] Chinese character in title, mostly non-Latin body, mostly non-Latin title, phone number detected in title: 办博尔州立大学毕业证书学历认证文凭可加（Q/微2727586870）修改成绩单、教育部认证、使馆认证、在读证明Ball State University by 文凭认证 on english.stackexchange.com …

SmokeDetector

06:48

[ SmokeDetector ] Chinese character in title, mostly non-Latin body, mostly non-Latin title: 没毕业能办理认证吗?Q/微869520616杜伦大学Durham毕业证成绩单学历证书留学回国人员证明Durham University by gtrbhnjm02 on english.stackexchange.com …

SmokeDetector

07:54

[ SmokeDetector ] Chinese character in title, mostly non-Latin body, mostly non-Latin title, phone number detected in title: 办ANU毕业证书学历认证澳大利亚国立大学文凭可加（Q/微2727586870）修改成绩单、教育部认证、使馆认证、在读证明The Australian National University by user166976 on english.stackexchange.com …

[ SmokeDetector ] Chinese character in title, mostly non-Latin body, mostly non-Latin title: Q微 (文凭毕业证成绩单)+181144918办理美国雪城大学SU毕业证成绩单学历认证使馆认证文凭学生卡驾照 Syracuse University by jimlongs on english.stackexchange.com …

IͶΔ

@Downgoat Maybe

SmokeDetector

08:09

[ SmokeDetector ] Chinese character in title, mostly non-Latin body, mostly non-Latin title, blacklisted user: {毕业证成绩单+认证}{Q/WeChat181144918}办理英国谢菲尔德大学毕业证成绩单学历认证 University of Sheffield by jimlongs on english.stackexchange.com …

[ SmokeDetector ] Mostly non-Latin answer, blacklisted user: Q微 (文凭毕业证成绩单)+181144918办理美国雪城大学SU毕业证成绩单学历认证使馆认证文凭学生卡驾照 Syracuse University by jimlongs on english.stackexchange.com …

[ SmokeDetector ] Mostly non-Latin body, blacklisted user: Please delete this stuff! by jimlongs on english.stackexchange.com …

[ SmokeDetector ] Mostly non-Latin answer, blacklisted user: {毕业证成绩单+认证}{Q/WeChat181144918}办理英国谢菲尔德大学毕业证成绩单学历认证 University of Sheffield by jimlongs on english.stackexchange.com …

[ SmokeDetector ] Chinese character in title, mostly non-Latin body, mostly non-Latin title: 制作美国学历证书，密歇根州立大学MSU毕业证文凭【Q/微308057815】办理成绩单学历认证 Michigan State University by hvcu on english.stackexchange.com …

[ SmokeDetector ] Mostly non-Latin body, blacklisted user: Please delete this stuff! by hvcu on english.stackexchange.com …

[ SmokeDetector ] Mostly non-Latin body, blacklisted user: Please delete this stuff! by jimlongs on english.stackexchange.com …

Anonymous

08:24

Wow, that's a lot of, um.

IͶΔ

A lot of um indeed

The spammer also learned there's an answer functionality @Snail.

Anonymous

Uh oh.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector ] Chinese character in title, mostly non-Latin body, mostly non-Latin title: 真实教育部认证{Q微541520157}办理加拿大多伦多大学UT毕业证成绩单学历认证使馆认证文凭★诚招代理★ University of Toronto by ghcd8067 on english.stackexchange.com …

Anonymous

At least they're disappearing pretty fast.

Anonymous

I've seen spam on some sites sit around for hours.

Anonymous

08:38

"Some sites" means ELL.

IͶΔ

Sure.

Anonymous

It's my secret code.

IͶΔ

Beta sites

Anonymous

There was a spam on ELL the other day, post-graduation, which stuck around for three hours before it got enough delete votes.

Anonymous

These spams on EL&U disappear quickly, I assume, because Smokey catches them.

Anonymous

08:39

Which is nice. :-)

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

Talking about code have you read the da Vinci code?

Anonymous

I have not.

Anonymous

I've only read the review on Language Log.

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

Me too :)

Pullum stumbled across Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code in an airport and gleefully tore it to shreds in a series of blog posts: “one of the worst prose stylists in the history of literature,” he wrote. “I had such fun writing about his novels, and I almost feel it’s unfair,” he says. “But then I think, he’s got so much money that he doesn’t ever need worry about what I think. He could run me down in his Lamborghini.

His style is dreadful, his metaphors are awful and sometimes he picks words out of a thesaurus, but he made a good living out of it, and I think he deserves credit for that.”

@RegDwigнt^

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector ] Chinese character in title, mostly non-Latin body, mostly non-Latin title: Q/微信176212772办理美国UCD加州大学戴维斯分校毕业证成绩单文凭Diploma学历认证回国人员证明University of California Davis by xiguai041 on english.stackexchange.com …

Anonymous

08:50

Wow, gone already!

Anonymous

I didn't even get my free flag.

SmokeDetector

09:10

[ SmokeDetector ] Chinese character in title, mostly non-Latin body, mostly non-Latin title: Q微(文凭毕业证成绩单)+285347871办理美国加州大学欧文分校UCI毕业证成绩单学历认证使馆认证文凭学生卡驾照University of California, Irvine by nivahkb on english.stackexchange.com …

[ SmokeDetector ] Mostly non-Latin answer: Word for stealing an item then returning it without the owner's knowledge? by nivahkb on english.stackexchange.com …

Ms Yvette ǝʇʇǝʌʎ sW

You've been hit hard with spam. I'm almost out of flags

IͶΔ

Three flags remaining.

Ferrybig

I have 1 flag remaining because all of the recent spam here

Anonymous

I've got 15 remaining right now.

Ms Yvette ǝʇʇǝʌʎ sW

I have 3

Anonymous

09:19

I think I've used 5 so far today.

Ms Yvette ǝʇʇǝʌʎ sW

well after today we should all get an extra flag

Anonymous

Thanks for helping with the flagging :-)

Ms Yvette ǝʇʇǝʌʎ sW

that's ok, we live in charcoal HQ

IͶΔ

They give you an extra bullet for shooting. They want this war to continue.

Anonymous

Hey, I get 45 flags/day over at ELL. Neat!

IͶΔ

09:22

@snailboat How many on Japanese?

Anonymous

54.

IͶΔ

How many is the most you get?

Anonymous

Looks like 100.

IͶΔ

On which site?

Anonymous

Is that 54 number meaningful? I mean, given that I'm a moderator on Japanese.SE.

Anonymous

09:23

Er, I thought you were asking what the most possible was.

IͶΔ

Nope

Nope again

Anonymous

So I said 100.

Anonymous

But I just checked, and I guess it's 54 for me.

Lawrence

At least you're not flagging :) . In effort.

IͶΔ

97.

On chem.

Anonymous

09:25

97! How many useful flags do you have over there?

Ms Yvette ǝʇʇǝʌʎ sW

stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/flag-posts

100 flags per day max

Anonymous

Thanks :-)

IͶΔ

Lemme check

857

Anonymous

@Lawrence I would never flag smiley face period. Smiley face period is my favorite punctuation sandwich!

Anonymous

@IͶΔ Wow!

IͶΔ

09:28

7 flags declined, 20 disputed

Makes a total of 884.

It's full of disputed flags because people on chem are editing pretty much everything.

Ms Yvette ǝʇʇǝʌʎ sW

1342 on SO

IͶΔ

@MsYvetteǝʇʇǝʌʎsW Cheater! :P

SO is a flag heaven, chem is not.

Ms Yvette ǝʇʇǝʌʎ sW

@IͶΔ ah

Anonymous

I have helpful flags on Japanese.SE, but I can never get any badges for them. :-(

IͶΔ

I have 101 rep on SO and 247 helpful flags.

So it is kind of easier to get halpful flags there.

Anonymous

09:31

I have 10 helpful flags on SO! :-)

IͶΔ

The total number of my reviews on Chem is more than my rep.

IͶΔ