« first day (1962 days earlier)      last day (2977 days later) » 
02:00 - 14:0014:00 - 21:00

Mitch
Mitch
2:20 AM
@MετάEd haha that's funny because that means he could have killed you.
since you weren't friends
 
 
1 hour later…
sumelic
sumelic
3:25 AM
Spam:
For some reason, SmokeDetector doesn't seem to have noticed these.
 
SmokeDetector
SmokeDetector
[ SmokeDetector ] All-caps body, mostly non-Latin body: Have somebody ask fou you if have a degree? by lisheng on english.stackexchange.com …
[ SmokeDetector ] Manually reported question: Do you need to replace a lost or damaged degree? by lisheng on english.stackexchange.com …
[ SmokeDetector ] Manually reported answer: Have somebody ask fou you if have a degree? by lisheng on english.stackexchange.com …
[ SmokeDetector ] All-caps answer, blacklisted user: Have somebody ask fou you if have a degree? by lisheng on english.stackexchange.com …
[ SmokeDetector ] Manually reported answer: Do you need to replace a lost or damaged degree? by lisheng on english.stackexchange.com …
 
tchrist
tchrist
3:46 AM
@sumelic Thanks. But please don't one-box spam.
 
sumelic
sumelic
@tchrist: Got it! What is the effect?
 
tchrist
tchrist
4:11 AM
@sumelic Littering, at best.
 
 
1 hour later…
Mazura
Mazura
5:22 AM
Is this a comma splice error? "If it all of a sudden stops[,] you're likely in trouble." [then?] is missing and therefore it need be a ";" or is it grammatical as is?
@SmokeDetector Shields up! Red alert!
 
Mazura
Mazura
5:35 AM
Also, just don't ever use the word whom and I'm all good?
 
 
2 hours later…
SmokeDetector
SmokeDetector
7:46 AM
 
 
2 hours later…
Lawrence
Lawrence
10:00 AM
Has anyone else noticed that the system has been pulling up quite a few old questions? Here's one:
0
Q: such + noun phrase + that

AmghidConsider these two examples: My secretary is such an honest woman that she never says anything about my business. My secretary is of such honesty that she never says a word about my business. Why is 'such' in the second example preceded by the preposition 'of' and not in the first sentence?

descriptive-grammar
There's nothing wrong with revisiting old questions. It's just that there have recently been very many on the main (Top Questions) page.
 
 
2 hours later…
IͶΔ
IͶΔ
11:42 AM
Google's suggestions aren't "smart". AFAIK they're actually compiled from a user's subsequent searches/corrections. For example if a user typed "win2k" and got few results, they might type "windows 2000". After a few thousand or million people dong this, Google will offer suggestions and/or include the alternate phrase on future searches. This is easy for Google since they have an unbelievably huge dataset to work from. — DisgruntledGoat Sep 29 '09 at 22:51
This is the worst typo in the history of mankind.
 
terdon
terdon
@IͶΔ What typo?
 
IͶΔ
IͶΔ
@terdon I'd rather not point it out.
It's on the third line.
 
terdon
terdon
You're going to have to, I don't see it.
 
IͶΔ
IͶΔ
> After a few thousand people doing this
> After a few thousand people dong this
 
terdon
terdon
Ah! Damn, I did indeed miss that. Wow. That's the 2nd line though.
 
IͶΔ
IͶΔ
11:48 AM
It's the third for me
What's your screen?
 
terdon
terdon
Oh. Different resolutions, I guess.
1920x1080
 
Anonymous
Fifth on my phone. Not a useful way of indicating where the typo is, I'm afraid.
 
IͶΔ
IͶΔ
Yah, I should've said starting from which character. :P
 
Anonymous
Count in sentences instead.
 
terdon
terdon
That's so strange though. I read through the lines several times and very carefully. And I still didn't see it. Fascinating how the brain works. Or doesn't, as the case may be.
 
Anonymous
11:50 AM
Yeah, we automatically correct a lot of mistakes when reading.
 
IͶΔ
IͶΔ
@snailboat It's on sentence 3.4482959392004.
 
Anonymous
Proofreading is really difficult.
 
terdon
terdon
@snailboat But I'm supposed to be really good at it! Mah daddy said so and he wouldn't lie!
Oh, @snailboat you might know. How do you explain to a non-native that "tree felling" is correct but "trees felling" is wrong? I was trying to explain that to a French friend and, since in French they only have the "felling of trees" construction and not the "tree felling" one, I couldn't find a clear way of explaining it.
It is very obvious to a native speaker but I can't put my finger on the relevant rule.
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
12:25 PM
@terdon tree is an adjective and felling is a noun, perhaps?
is meaning is kind of like
 
terdon
terdon
The whole thing is some kind of construct. I'm sure there's a name for it.
I called it "subject+gerund" for the question I just asked on ELL.
That is better suited to ELL, by the way, isn't it?
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
yes :)
 
terdon
terdon
Yay! And we can hold it as an example that even natives can ask on ELL and it's not simply a matter of how well the OP happens to speak English.
By the way, this is a good point:
The question is really why the plural of a noun isn't used adjectivally. It isn't only with gerund. Tree frogs not trees frogs. Tree diseases not trees diseases. — TRomano 3 mins ago
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
@terdon Maybe something to do with moving away from Latin syntax.
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
yes... that feels sort of unanswerable. why don't we use the plural? well... we never used it, so we don't
 
Anonymous
12:31 PM
Not actually true, though. We use plural nouns in attributive position quite often these days.
 
Anonymous
English syntax was never like Latin syntax.
 
terdon
terdon
I think it has something to do with the fact that "tree felling" is taken together. An "adjective phrase" perhaps?
 
Anonymous
Still, most of the time, attributive nouns are unmarked for number.
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
@snailboat do you mean like "lawns management"?
which could equally be "lawn management"?
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
@snailboat Ok, just a wild guess. I was thinking of pluralisations like governor general -> governors general.
 
terdon
terdon
12:33 PM
@MattE.Эллен Ewww. Is that a thing? I'd have said "lawn management"
 
Anonymous
(They don't become adjectives in attributive position because they don't take on any traits that adjectives have. They're still morphologically and functionally like other nouns.)
 
terdon
terdon
@Lawrence But still governor naming even if many are being named.
@snailboat But the noun here, is the noun phrase, "tree felling", right?
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
@terdon I don't know. I was thinking of "greens manager", which would never be "green manager" (where greens are large patches of grass)
but then I thought that would be really ambiguous, so I opted for lawns
 
terdon
terdon
True. I'm not sure if that's because of the inherent ambiguity in green manager though. Plant manager would never be plural.
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
@terdon Yes, definitely. I wasn't arguing for the trees frogs or trees diseases examples. Consider my original comment to have gone off on a tangent.
 
Anonymous
12:36 PM
@MattE.Эллен The Parks Department, Nixon's enemies list, the heavy chemicals industry, a soft drinks manufacturer
 
terdon
terdon
Hmm
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
@snailboat ah!
 
terdon
terdon
I would also accept a soft drink manufacturer if they only made one type of soft drink. The plural suggests they make many.
 
Anonymous
Yes, it's a plural of kind.
 
Anonymous
The language is changing, and attributive plurals are becoming more common.
 
terdon
terdon
12:38 PM
And what are attributive plurals when they're at home?
> A noun that modifies another noun attributively and that is optional (that is, it can be removed without affecting the grammar of the sentence); a noun used as an adjective.
For example, in the compound noun "chicken soup", the attributive noun "chicken" modifies the noun "soup".
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
noun-adjuncts that end in s
 
terdon
terdon
Thank you Google.
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
@terdon Consider hand-wringing - you can't actually do it with one hand, right?
 
Anonymous
in ELL's Cabin, Oct 2 '15 at 23:30, by snailboat
An Arts degree? A customs officer? A goods train? A soft drinks manufacturer? An appointments officer?
 
terdon
terdon
@Lawrence Heh, no. But that's even worse.
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
12:40 PM
Worse?
 
Anonymous
Examples from Quirk et al 1985.
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
@snailboat Leaving the Arts degree and the manufacturer aside, the meanings of custom officer and a good train are completely different from the versions with plurals.
 
terdon
terdon
@Lawrence Worse in that since a single hand can't wring itself, it makes even less sense that we don't say hands wringing.
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
or coffees shop
 
Anonymous
It's somewhat incoherent to call a noun derived from the -ing form of a verb a gerund, since gerund is used to refer to the verb form used in a clause functionally similar to a noun phrase, and this form is demonstrably not a noun form.
 
terdon
terdon
12:42 PM
@MattE.Эллен Grocer's apostrophe? :P
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
@MattE.Эллен That's what I was trying to get at with the Latin syntax reference - how does the Latin differ between a shop selling one kind of coffee and a shop selling many kinds of coffee?
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
@terdon does starbucks only sell one coffee?
 
Anonymous
> He was expelled for [the wanton killing of the birds].
 
Anonymous
Killing is clearly a noun form. It takes a determiner, adjectival but not adverbial modification, and takes an of-PP as a complement rather than a direct object. It heads a noun phrase.
 
Anonymous
> He was expelled for [wantonly killing the birds].
 
Mitch
Mitch
12:45 PM
Singular if referring to a generic. Plural if specific set of more than one?
 
Anonymous
Killing is clearly a verb form. It does not take a determiner, it takes adverbial but not adjectival modification, and it takes the complementation the verb kill regularly takes. It appears in a clause, not a noun phrase, but that clause has a functional distribution similar to that of a noun phrase.
 
Mitch
Mitch
Also possessives don't count
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
 
terdon
terdon
@snailboat I think it is the the that makes the difference there: wanton killings of birds works fine and the wanton killings of birds only slightly less so.
 
Anonymous
We can't call both of these things "gerunds" when their grammatical status is completely different.
 
terdon
terdon
12:46 PM
@MattE.Эллен :)
 
Mitch
Mitch
@MattE.Эллен oh you
 
Anonymous
@terdon Well, everything I pointed out matters.
 
Mitch
Mitch
(Beat me to it)
 
Anonymous
> *He was expelled for wantonly killing of the birds.
 
Mitch
Mitch
Kids are bastards
 
Anonymous
12:48 PM
So in your question, if felling is a noun and tree is an attributive noun (and therefore is usually unmarked for number), felling isn't a gerund, it's a noun derived from a gerund.
 
Anonymous
A deverbal noun.
 
Mitch
Mitch
"Bullfighting is institutionalized animal torture by adults"
 
terdon
terdon
@snailboat OK. I have removed all mention of gerund from my question though.
 
Anonymous
I see. I didn't realize you'd edited it.
 
Anonymous
I was typing on my phone a few minutes ago. I've just gotten on my laptop :-)
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
12:49 PM
@snailboat I wish I could +1 this.
 
Damkerng T.
Damkerng T.
Ah, everyone is here. :-)
 
terdon
terdon
@snailboat No worries. I was pretty sure my original title was making a bad job of describing the question.
@Lawrence You can star it
 
Damkerng T.
Damkerng T.
@terdon Thanks for the feedback on the main site! (About their first languages.)
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
@Lawrence I don't know.
 
terdon
terdon
@DamkerngT. I speak 4 languages well enough to know whether this sort of thing would work there and none of them have the tree felling construct. Only the felling of trees. Granted, those languages are all IE (English, Spanish, French and Greek) but all are also western.
@Lawrence We'll have to ask @Cerberus probably.
 
Damkerng T.
Damkerng T.
12:54 PM
@terdon nods -- This is very interesting!
 
TRomano
TRomano
Shooting from the hip, I think it has to do with how compound nouns are formed in Germanic languages.
 
terdon
terdon
@TRomano Does German have a similar construct?
 
TRomano
TRomano
noun noun, yes
 
terdon
terdon
I guess it would given its propensity for longwordformationtricks.
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
@Mitch bastard kids, but not bastards kids
 
TRomano
TRomano
12:55 PM
It's recursive
hence the possibility for length
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
@terdon That has a different effect. I want to acknowledge the worth of that message, not necessarily display it on a global list. Thanks for your suggestion, though. I realise that chat is a different environment.
 
TRomano
TRomano
contactlenscleaningsolution
 
terdon
terdon
@Lawrence Yeah, it's just the closest equivalent. And starring is very often used to signify agreement, just like upvotes.
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
@terdon Ok, a star it gets :) .
 
terdon
terdon
@TRomano and would the german version be tree felling or trees felling? Or trees frogs for that matter?
 
TRomano
TRomano
12:58 PM
Laubfrosch
is treefrog (singularsingular)
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
@terdon The reason for the singular in the English version is answered by that starred comment by snailboat.
"unmarked for number"
 
terdon
terdon
@Lawrence How? The comment explains that felling is not a gerund, not why tree is singular.
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
usually
 
TRomano
TRomano
That's not the reason, that's a description.
Why is it unmarked for number?
 
Mitch
Mitch
@MattE.Эллен depends on how many bastards
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
1:00 PM
@TRomano In trying to explain English constructs, description and reason are pretty close.
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
like you can say trees management but not bastards kids
 
TRomano
TRomano
Not close enough
 
Anonymous
Maybe try tests for compoundhood, like coordination. Television screens and computer screens can be coordinated as [television and computer] screens, but ice cream and custard cream can't be coordinated as *[ice and custard] cream. This is one test to determine that ice cream is a compound and television screen is not.
 
Anonymous
That is to say, television and screen are both syntactic constituents, but ice and cream are not.
 
Mitch
Mitch
'Bastard' is just blaming the victim. Why isn't there a bad name for the parents?
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
1:02 PM
maybe it's related to how long ago the noun got adjectivised. bastard has been an adjective for ages, but tree hasn't
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
@TRomano Because the number isn't important - the attributive noun tells you what kind of (um) other noun the other noun is, not how many. E.g. it's tree felling, not something-else felling.
 
Mitch
Mitch
Wait...there is
 
terdon
terdon
@TRomano Ah, but I have the feeling that compound words are different. For example, in Greek, compound forms would take the singular ("treeplanting"—δενδροφύτευση, but we'd say _trees planting_—kinda, declensions come into play here).
 
Mitch
Mitch
Bastards parents
 
terdon
terdon
@snailboat Yes, indeed. Good point.
 
Damkerng T.
Damkerng T.
1:03 PM
Is enemies hunting acceptable?
 
terdon
terdon
@MattE.Эллен I'm pretty sure that tree frogs have been a thing for quite a while.
@DamkerngT. No. It means that the enemies are hunting, not that you're hunting enemies.
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
@terdon which is why you can't have trees frogs
 
Mitch
Mitch
Ugh, tree frogs, the little bastards
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
but you can have trees management
 
terdon
terdon
@MattE.Эллен frogs made out of hair? :P
 
Anonymous
1:04 PM
@MattE.Эллен Particularly in British English, I think.
 
Mitch
Mitch
Can you? That sounds BrE to me.
 
terdon
terdon
Yes, trees management doesn't scan for me either.
 
Mitch
Mitch
@snailboat jinx
@terdon sounds like modern art
 
TRomano
TRomano
@terdon: I'm reluctant to bring non-Germanic languages into the picture. Not sure whether than shines light or casts shadows.
that
not than
 
Mitch
Mitch
You can edit
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
1:06 PM
@MattE.Эллен When do you find trees management?
 
Mitch
Mitch
See?
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
@Lawrence it's an example. like "parks management"
parks and recreations department
 
TRomano
TRomano
Thanks, Mitch
 
terdon
terdon
Well, the difference here with Greek is that the Greek form would be something like "tree's planting". To make the compound form you'd use the genitive.
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
@MattE.Эллен Well, the singular would be rather insulting to management.
 
Anonymous
1:07 PM
@Lawrence Probably around the second half of the twentieth century.
 
Mitch
Mitch
I think you've established that there's no rule. You have to learn every single one
 
terdon
terdon
Dammit. I hate it when that happens.
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
@Lawrence :D no moreso than if you were managing a single tree
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
@MattE.Эллен Might be a particularly precious tree.
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
Yggdrasil!
 
terdon
terdon
1:09 PM
:)
 
TRomano
TRomano
Johnny Appleseed was good at treeplanting, not at treesplanting.
 
terdon
terdon
Indeed. But English doesn't have declensions. The compound form in Greek would be closer to tree'splanting
 
TRomano
TRomano
He was good at the planting of trees
declensions only vestigially
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
In some countries, he could get pulled up for littering. :P
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
and it's called mansplaining, not mensplaining
 
Anonymous
1:12 PM
N-N compounds also tend to have stress on the first element.
 
terdon
terdon
@MattE.Эллен And yet it's menstruation :P
 
Damkerng T.
Damkerng T.
I don't know why it's huntsman or swordsman, but if it's the way it is, it's the way it is.
 
Anonymous
@DamkerngT. hunt's man
 
Anonymous
The first element there was originally genitive.
 
terdon
terdon
@DamkerngT. Yes, but those can be pluralized, one huntsman many huntsmen
@snailboat Really?
 
Anonymous
1:14 PM
Yeah, it wasn't a plural.
 
terdon
terdon
Yes, that makes sense now that I think about it.
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
What about swordsman, then? And nothing about the sword choosing the man, please.
 
terdon
terdon
Man of the sword -> sword's man -> swordsman ?
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
@terdon :p
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
@terdon That first transition changes the meaning of of, doesn't it?
 
Damkerng T.
Damkerng T.
1:16 PM
@terdon Ahh... I was wondering, how many swords would a swordsman know how to use? :-)
 
terdon
terdon
@Lawrence I think so, yes. Not really sure.
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
Maybe swordman just sounded odd to the person who coined the term.
 
Anonymous
Both of and 's express a very wide range of semantic relationships. Dozens.
 
Anonymous
Well, swordman is the older word.
 
terdon
terdon
Oh? It existed?
 
Anonymous
1:17 PM
I don't know why swordsman took its place.
 
terdon
terdon
And then you have seaman which is not seasman.
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
busman
(that might be BrE, too)
 
terdon
terdon
@MattE.Эллен Oh, busboys grow up, do they?
 
Anonymous
Yes, and batboys become Batman.
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
@terdon I just tried looking it up - found this:
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
1:18 PM
@terdon :D at least htey grow old!
 
terdon
terdon
@snailboat Surely they become batmen!
@Lawrence Yup, etymonline offers:
> 1670s, from sword + genitive -s- + man (n.). Earlier was swordman (late 14c.); Old English had sweordfreca in the same sense. Related: Swordsmanship (1765).
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
busman's holiday
Noun: busman's holiday ‎(plural busman's holidays)
  1. (idiomatic) A holiday or vacation during which one does something similar to what one does as work.
 
Mitch
Mitch
@TRomano Johnny Appleseed was good at treesplaining
@MattE.Эллен who does that?
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
Well, I suppose snailboat's message that I starred still forms the generic rule for which there are several exceptions.
 
Mitch
Mitch
Other than bus drivers?
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
1:21 PM
@Mitch busmen, apparently
@Mitch oh
 
Mitch
Mitch
Jinx
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
software developers take time off to do hackathons...
 
Mitch
Mitch
Oh
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
 
Mitch
Mitch
Tax preparers take a vacation to do their own
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
1:22 PM
:D
 
Mitch
Mitch
@MattE.Эллен ShariaCoke
 
terdon
terdon
@MattE.Эллен Sharia Coke?
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
plumbers go on holiday to places that have plumbing...
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
@MattE.Эллен It's a great job when you get paid to do what you really enjoy.
 
terdon
terdon
Jinx!
 
Mitch
Mitch
1:23 PM
@MattE.Эллен that doesn't sound right
 
Anonymous
artsman, clansman, cliffsman, cocksman, draughtsman, fraughtsman, guardsman, guildsman, gunsman, groomsman, headsman, huntsman, leadsman, linesman, loresman, marksman, meadsman, mobsman, monthsman, privateersman, sailsman, seedsman, statesman, swordsman, talesman, topsman, townsman, tribesman, wealsman, weeksman
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
@Mitch maybe get your pipes checked
 
Mitch
Mitch
:)
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
This discussion is going down the drain.
 
Mitch
Mitch
Clansmen drive big ok' clans?
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
1:25 PM
woman
 
Mitch
Mitch
@Lawrence rimshot
 
terdon
terdon
@snailboat Cocksman, really? I looked it up expecting fowl and found something quite different.
 
Anonymous
Well, it's an older word than either of us.
 
Mitch
Mitch
The tiller man on a crew skiff?
Coxswain?
 
tchrist
tchrist
spokesman, kinman, salesman, oarsman, marksman, guardsman, moorsman, hillsman, helmsman, draughtsman, docksman, cragsman, fieldsman, almsman, batsman, cliffsman, dalesman, plainsman, craftsman, gownsman, landsman, moundsman, ombudsman, bondsman, and more.
 
Mitch
Mitch
1:27 PM
Dalesman? That's going too far
 
tchrist
tchrist
Lots of land features.
Says the riverman.
 
Mitch
Mitch
I can't find my ombud. You know, to keep up my pants
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
on the other hand, it could be simply as everyone was saying before, the number you're attributing the nounjective to: a tree frog can only be on one tree at a time, bastard kids are individually bastards, but the parks department departs many parks.
 
tchrist
tchrist
woodsman, tidesman, woldsman, islesman, steadsman, passman, palesman, magsman, nagsman, downsman, deathsman, headsman.
 
Anonymous
Well, the reason I went with "usually unmarked for number" is that I think they aren't specifically singular or plural most of the time.
 
Anonymous
1:32 PM
If you have chicken soup, that's not because you used exactly one chicken to make it.
 
Anonymous
Hmm, what would be a good example?
 
Anonymous
Well, let's go with Nixon's enemies list, because that's one that, for whatever reason, someone cast in the plural, and it stuck. Most people copied it and used the plural.
 
Anonymous
Some people objected to it and decided to use enemy instead, but these people are in the minority.
 
Anonymous
But if we say Nixon's enemy list instead, what does the lack of plural marking tell us about number?
 
tchrist
tchrist
This is an artifact of writing, not of speech.
 
terdon
terdon
1:36 PM
@snailboat I think that's what I would say, were I to say it.
 
tchrist
tchrist
Perhaps the list is one made up by Nixon's enemies: it's Nixon's enemies' list.
The homophone would drive out the wrong one in speech.
 
Anonymous
Well, people say an enemies list in politics. President Nixon kept "an enemies list".
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
it's always OK to be singular, but if the nounjective could be plural, you can make it plural if you want?
 
tchrist
tchrist
Can't have two determiners, but that's slippery to stand on.
 
Mitch
Mitch
Nixon just had one list
All enemies
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
1:38 PM
Mcarthy's red list
Mcarthy's reds list
 
Mitch
Mitch
Like mossy rocks
 
tchrist
tchrist
Keep it clean.
 
Mitch
Mitch
The noise tube can be plural or singular
The modifier can be most anything
I'm leaving that autocorrect for posterity. But I mean 'nounjective'
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
no, because apples cider is wrong...
 
Mitch
Mitch
Idiomatic
 
terdon
terdon
1:40 PM
@snailboat Ah, but is that a title instead of an adjective?
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
@Mitch rofl
 
Anonymous
@MattE.Эллен Unless it's conventionalized, like an Arts degree.
 
Mitch
Mitch
Could have gone another way
 
Anonymous
@terdon I don't see any adjectives.
 
Mitch
Mitch
Shut yer noise tube
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
1:41 PM
@snailboat true
 
Anonymous
You can say an art degree, but it doesn't necessarily mean the same thing.
 
terdon
terdon
@snailboat Um. I'm not entirely sure what I meant myself. Something along the lines that "Enemies list" could be written as a title on top of the enemy list?
 
tchrist
tchrist
@snailboat Yes.
 
terdon
terdon
Probably being silly.
 
tchrist
tchrist
@MattE.Эллен And inaudible.
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
1:42 PM
@snailboat This is supportive of the idea that you use the plural for the attributive noun (as an exception to the norm) when the singular produces an awkward sense. After all, you wouldn't want a list of enemies to be considered/called an enemy.
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
@tchrist good point
@Lawrence I think it's more indicative of the difference between "art" and "the arts"
 
TRomano
TRomano
Did Nixon have a wishes list?
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
@MattE.Эллен How did you know I was going to ask what an art degree is?
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
@Lawrence mods are granted clairvoyance ;)
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
@snailboat What's an art degree?
 
Mitch
Mitch
1:45 PM
@TRomano they didn't have Amazon back then
 
TRomano
TRomano
Nixon was on my shits list.
 
Anonymous
@Lawrence an Arts degree (a degree in the humanities) vs. an art degree (a degree in fine art)
 
terdon
terdon
@MattE.Эллен What? Damn, is there a form we need to fill out?
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
@MattE.Эллен Ok, I deserved that :) . I really was going to ask before you posted.
@snailboat Ah, of course. Thanks.
That reinforces the exception for weird singulars.
 
tchrist
tchrist
singular exception ≠ singulars exception
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
1:49 PM
Exactly.
 
Anonymous
Pluralia tantum make interesting examples (or potentially non-examples): a goods train
 
Anonymous
(I'm an AmE speaker and have never in my life talked about "a goods train".)
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
Ok, so we have snailboat's general rule with the weird-singulars exception and the genitive-noun exception. Any other exceptions?
 
TRomano
TRomano
What's the opposite of pluralia tantum, where the plural is never used? peace(s)train
 
tchrist
tchrist
mass nouns
 
TRomano
TRomano
1:52 PM
We need a better word than "mass" for the massless
 
Anonymous
I don't think I've seen much discussion of singularia tantum before.
 
Lawrence
Lawrence
@snailboat It would be odd if they occurred singly :) .
But seriously, any other exceptions to snailboat's general rule? We're close to nailing this one.
 
tchrist
tchrist
Category:English singularia tantum
» All languages » English language » Lemmas » Nouns » Singularia tantum English nouns that are mostly or exclusively used in the singular form. Category:English uncountable nouns: English nouns that indicate qualities, ideas, unbounded mass or other abstract concepts that cannot be quantified directly by numerals....
 
terdon
terdon
@snailboat I don't think that's a very good example since you could argue that goods is more than the plural of good. Or, rather, that it is the plural but only of the noun form.
@Lawrence How so? As far as I can tell, all we've come up with is that attributive nouns are singular by default because they're singular by default.
 
Anonymous
@terdon Well, it's interesting. Pluralia tantum are words that (at least usually) appear only in the plural. So how do these words behave in attributive position?
 
Anonymous
1:58 PM
On the one hand, goods seems to stay in the plural-marked form goods. People don't say a good train (with the meaning 'a goods train').
 
Anonymous
But on the other hand, a trouser press is more usual than a trousers press, isn't it?
 
TRomano
TRomano
 
Anonymous
So there's some variation.
 
Anonymous
scissor kick
 
Anonymous
The tendency to leave plural marking off of attributive nouns is so strong that we do so with some words that normally appear only in the plural!
 
terdon
terdon
1:59 PM
@snailboat Yes, but that's the general case. Goods is the exception and I would argue that since good doesn't really exist as a singular form of goods, goods train is the only possible choice.
 
02:00 - 14:0014:00 - 21:00

« first day (1962 days earlier)      last day (2977 days later) »