English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Cerberus

12:07 AM

It seems I defeated both of you on the 4th.

No Google.

So it is interesting that both of you picked 24 years earlier (I praesume).

Spoiler.

jlliagre

@Cerberus Oh, yes. I overlook them.

Cerberus

@jlliagre I have to admit my first idea was earlier.

Though not 24 years earlier.

I tried not to be influenced unduly by the quality of the photo.

And I admit that your suggestion that the maker chooses this city more often helped me.

I don't remember ever seeing the other country.

Meanwhile, the last one is hard!

Both location and year. Or decade, even.

jlliagre

1891 Daimler.

Cerberus

12:22 AM

Oh, that is very old for an automobile!

jlliagre

I played too fast on #5. I should have used my brain.

I mean the part that might think, not the part that is easily fooled.

Cerberus

Hehe.

The quay seems too high for where I want it to be.

@jlliagre I figured you played too fast.

Missed the obvious.

Still, @Robusto got within 2 years?? How?

Robusto

@Cerberus Film quality, mainly.

Cerberus

Even then!

And where the hell is it??

Robusto

@Cerberus I got closest on that one, but it was a wild guess.

Cerberus

12:33 AM

Even so!

Robusto

Spoiler

Cerberus

I'm not hovering over that.

Dannyu NDos

How do English speakers pronounce mojibake? It shouldn't rhyme with bake?

Robusto

@DannyuNDos I don't think most English speakers would pronounce it at all, but if they did the vast majority would pronounce it "moo-jee-bake."

Lambie

@Mitch Not at all. It cames from you.

Cerberus

12:49 AM

5.

So @jlliagre and I chose the same place.

I was in doubt between the year I picked and 10 years closer to the right year. Oh, well.

#WhenTaken #192 (06.09.2024)

I scored 842/1000 🎉

1️⃣ 📍 2644 km - 🗓️ 6 yrs - ⚡ 137 / 200
2️⃣ 📍 1766 km - 🗓️ 0 yrs - ⚡ 155 / 200
3️⃣ 📍 259 km - 🗓️ 0 yrs - ⚡ 191 / 200
4️⃣ 📍 2 km - 🗓️ 1 yrs - ⚡ 199 / 200
5️⃣ 📍 535 km - 🗓️ 13 yrs - ⚡ 160 / 200

https://whentaken.com

jlliagre

@Cerberus Yes. I knew the place was wrong (because of the quay as you noticed) but I had no better idea.

Cerberus

Same haha.

It also seemed a somewhat strategic location.

jlliagre

Yes, when in doubt, pick New York :)

Cerberus

@Robusto Ah, where did you choose? We guessed Spoiler.

@jlliagre Err exactly.

Robusto

@Cerberus Palermo, if I remember right.

Cerberus

12:58 AM

@Robusto Ah, makes sense.

Robusto

1:26 AM

Daily Octordle #956
🕛🕚
7️⃣8️⃣
5️⃣4️⃣
9️⃣6️⃣
Score: 62

GratefulDisciple

@jlliagre Do you watch the Poirot TV Series featuring Captain Hastings, his assistant, who is an automobile aficionado? I think the producer trying to be faithful to around 1930s era. I wonder whether the automobiles featured in that series (the ones that Captain Hastings were very excited about), were also made by Daimler or whether by then another British manufacturer was more famous?

I have a feeling a few minutes of googling would help me find an answer, but I'll leave it here.

@alphabet My computer-saturated brain immediately thought of ODBC the database driver 😊, short for "Open Data Base Connectivity" if you're wondering, to liberate programmers from the era of proprietary database drivers.

Cerberus

1:47 AM

The Animals - House of the Rising Sun (1964) HD + Lyrics

►

What can we say about the pronunciation of New Orleans here?

Mitch

We can say whatever we want it's a free country, right?

Cerberus

That's a lot.

But what do you want to say?

Mitch

There's more that I don't want to say.

But really...how do they say New Orleans and is that different from how they expect?

Cerberus

What would you expect from these people, and does it match how they pronounce it?

Mitch

2:03 AM

I don't know where they're from so I don't know what to expect.

In the US, up north people say /'new or 'lijnz/

tchrist

@Mitch NAYOO!?!?

nju

They're no E there, eh?

Mitch

In the South it's /nu 'or lenz/ or /'nor lenz/ or /'naw linz/

tchrist

Oh it's your IPA. Yes, in the North we say /ˌn(j)uwoɹˈlijnz/.

Mitch

@tchrist yes my poor IPA

tchrist

The Southies say /ˈnɔl(ə)nz/. Some of them at least. You might have a variability in the reduction degree of the unstressed vowel.

Mitch

2:12 AM

Oh wait that was autocorrect. I didn't say 'new'

tchrist

gnaw lnz

It's got the THOUGHT vowel for them.

alphabet

@GratefulDisciple Yes. I'm also a programmer btw; every time I see that acronym I fear I might be entering an enterpriseware hellscape.

tchrist

And not enough silbles.

Mitch

I say /'nor linz/

alphabet

New Orleans Vacation - SNL

►

I'd say /n(u)wˈoɹ.lənz/

Mitch

2:18 AM

Or maybe /'nwor linz/

alphabet

But the town of Orleans, MA, is always pronounced /oɹˈlinz/ for some reason

Mitch

/or 'lijnz/?

'long' I?

tchrist

Would you to buy an [ɪ]? Maybe an [ɨ]? I don't trust you pinny-penny peeps' vowels, let alone yer schwi-schwas.

KIT

Is stressed.

Mitch

I just learned that Quincy is pronounced /'kwin zij/ not /'kwin sij/

tchrist

So it cannot correctly describe this one.

Mitch

2:22 AM

@tchrist thank you. I can't find the shirt I anywhere.

tchrist

Why can't you type ɪ, kɪd?

Mitch

Where is it on my phone?

alphabet

@Mitch Depending on which set of symbols you use.

Mitch

(my android keyboard isn't offering it as an option)

tchrist

Lasciate ogni speranza voi che clamate.

Wait wrong clamare for Italian. You can the idea.

No that is right. I was wrong about being wrong.

alphabet

2:24 AM

@Mitch On iOS there's a custom keyboard app that lets you type IPA symbols easily

On laptops this site makes it fairly simple: cbbforum.com/xipa.html

tchrist

PL- goes to PI- but that didn't have to CL- here the way it did in Iberia.

Mitch

Chiamate?

tchrist

Right.

It's not that.

That's what I had thunk momentarily.

clamare

Verb: clamàre (first-person singular present clàmo, first-person singular past historic clamài, past participle clamàto, auxiliary avére)

(intransitive, transitive, obsolete) to invoke or implore
clāmāre
inflection of clāmō:
present active infinitive
second-person singular present passive imperative/indicative

(2 more not shown…)

Mitch

I think Italian allows cl, pl but only in more recent borrowings

tchrist

Think of PLOVERE becoming things in modern Romance.

alphabet

2:26 AM

@Mitch Yes. You may have noticed that the pronunciation of town names in this area has been chosen to be as non-obvious as possible, to ensure that outsiders can be detected more easily.

Cerberus

@tchrist Oh, I didn't expect that.

tchrist

Oh, the unassimilated one is the reborrowed fancier version meaning implore or beseech or call out. The other assimilated one means simple telephone or call.

Mitch

Woo burn

Cerberus

I was just wondering what their accent sounded like to you.

tchrist

@Cerberus It's because we say it like the word NEW then the word OR then the word LEANS, and we stress the last syllable.

Cerberus

2:28 AM

@alphabet I have an Autohotkey script for IPA.

tchrist

chiamare

Verb: chiamàre (first-person singular present chiàmo, first-person singular past historic chiamài, past participle chiamàto, auxiliary avére)

(transitive) to call
(transitive) to telephone
Synonym: telefonare
(transitive) to name
(transitive) to dub

Cerberus

@tchrist I expected you all to pronounce it the way they do it there.

alphabet

At least some of us in the North put the stress on Or-.

tchrist

@Cerberus That would be weird. We all have our own accents. We get to say things in our own language. We can't really fit some of theirs.

Mitch

@Cerberus most popular songs, US and UK, have this generic song accent.

tchrist

2:30 AM

Like we can't say "Louisville" their way, or even "Oregon". There are lots of those.

Mitch

Non rhotic, some monophthongization

Cerberus

@Mitch And what would seem their be their original accent?

tchrist

Heck we can't even say Hinton their way, because we rhyme it with how Bill Clinton says his last name and they don't.

Mitch

@Cerberus I couldn't say from the song

tchrist

It's like why we can't say Python like the comedy troupe says it.

Because they reduce the second syllable to a short schwa and we have an unreduced one there, just like in words like photon.

Mitch

2:32 AM

From just 'New Orleans' it would define the accent, just oh they pronounced it -that- way.

tchrist

Same with Oregon.

You can't make rhotic speakers pronounce a non-rhotic speaker's name the way that person does. Nor vice versa. It just isn't possible.

Different accents do different things with the same words, and it is simply unreasonable to expect somebody to talk NOT with their accent, and impossible to demand.

alphabet

Of course, a lot of American music is non-rhotic, even if the singers' native accents are rhotic

That said, there are plenty of places where local pronunciation differs from the ones typically used elsewhere (case in point: "Appalachia").

Cerberus

@Mitch So at first their accent seemed American, but then it sounded fake. And then I heard their pronunciation of New Orleans, which didn't seem to match the exaggerated American accent.

tchrist

@Cerberus The accent from down there is too completely different for us to ever attempt it. Those letters don't make those sounds for us.

Cerberus

And then I heard bits which sounded British.

tchrist

2:39 AM

They are often not rhotic.

Mitch

Both country -and- Western music are notoriously rhotic.

@Cerberus yeah I hear a number of those different things but it feels generic song accent to me.

Cerberus

It doesn't sound Mid-Atlantic to me.

More like an attempt at American.

alphabet

@Cerberus Google tells me the band is from England.

Cerberus

Yeah.

alphabet

The Surprising Reason Why British People Sing in American Accents

►

Always interesting to listen to (say) interviews with British artists; you usually learn that their native accent is completely different than the one they sing in.

Cerberus

2:43 AM

That is often the case for any singer.

Though not Dalida's fat Italian(-Egyptian?) accent.

alphabet

The resulting accent is usually kind of Americanish, but non-rhotic, and often with some characteristics of accents from the American South.

Cerberus

But that is not what the band I posted do.

Mitch

They say 'they call the rah zin sun' (not rising sun)

alphabet

@Cerberus That is how I heard their pronunciation of "New Orleans," as a Brit imperfectly imitating the American pronunciation.

Cerberus

Right.

The New already didn't sound American to me, if I remember correctly.

alphabet

2:54 AM

@Cerberus Exactly; the singer didn't drop the /j/, as most Americans would.

Cerberus

Yeah.

Though perhaps not Tchrist.

alphabet

So that part of the attempt didn't work out. But the singer did shift the pronunciation of the vowel in Or-.

I doubt, of course, that these singers are somehow trained to sing in a more American accent, so they end up singing in some odd accent that nobody uses in ordinary speech.

Cerberus

Just doing the accent to sound American to the people at home.

alphabet

Of course, if you're from the US you don't really notice it when someone's accent doesn't sound British, so this isn't as obvious as it (evidently) is to people in the UK.

Cerberus

It was obvious to me!

alphabet

3:08 AM

Recently I've been paying way more attention to unusual phonetic features in popular music. There seems to be this invented "Pop Song Accent" found on both sides of the Atlantic.

tchrist

3:27 AM

I don't know what you guys are talking about.

The classic House of the Rising Sun song?

alphabet

Other word of the day: spurious. Dictionaries will tell you that (in AmE) it's pronounced /spjuɹ-/, but a lot of people (possibly the majority, looking at YouGlish out of curiosity) pronounce it /spəɹ-/ (like the word spur) instead. Adding this to my list of "words where dictionaries get the pronunciation wrong for no obvious reason."

(Of course you also see /spjəɹ-/, presumably just a result of that odd vowel merger affecting /juɹ-/ rather than something specific to this particular word.)

GratefulDisciple

@alphabet Glad we have that in common. Now that enterpriseware are moving to the cloud beware of wormholes that transport you there. BTW hellscape is a new word for me, when I look at the painting in Wikipedia, ugh, so gross, outdated and old fashioned.

@alphabet I've been pronouncing it /spjuɹ-/, so it's wrong? BTW New to YouGlish too. So many interesting places the Internet have!

alphabet

@GratefulDisciple Your pronunciation is fine. But dictionaries will falsely tell you that yours is the only correct one.

Cerberus

@alphabet Dictionaries don't necessarily wish to show what a certain group of people say, it is more complex.

alphabet

@Cerberus You might assume that the dictionaries are trying to only show "correct" pronunciations, but many of them will gladly list nonstandard or stigmatized or widely-disliked pronunciations of other words.

Cerberus

3:42 AM

It depends.

alphabet

So when a pronunciation is used by something like 40% of speakers, you'd expect to find it there, even if the editors have come up with some reason to dislike it.

The obvious answer is just that the people writing the dictionaries don't do a lot of extensive research regarding actual common pronunciations before publication--presumably because such research was nearly impossible in the pre-Internet age.

Cerberus

Perhaps marking it as incorrect they would always want to mention a pronunciation used by 40%, if that it is.

Dictionaries rarely update all entries upon a new edition.

That would probably be far too much work.

alphabet

The last time I went on this sort of rant was about the word prescription; I've noticed that even nearly all of my doctors and pharmacists use the "wrong" pronunciation--the one with /pəɹ/ instead of /pɹə/ or /pɹɪ/--that most dictionaries won't even admit exists.

GratefulDisciple

@alphabet Oh, now I get it.

Cerberus

@alphabet Quel horreur!

GratefulDisciple

3:56 AM

@alphabet Same with my experience as well; the power of pronunciation socialization, I guess.

alphabet

@Cerberus It irks me. I am irked.

Cerberus

Even thou!

Et tu!

Kai su!

alphabet

Anyway I intend to collect more examples of words like this, then compile them into vaguely menacing letters to various dictionary editors threatening to expose their foolish inaccuracies.

Cerberus

Have fun.

alphabet

4:15 AM

Portland raccoon unties rope and then ties it out of its pathway

►

And the humans still don't respect our intellect.

Cerberus

@alphabet I don't get why you did that.

The rope wasn't really in your way?

alphabet

@Cerberus Performance art. A demonstration of wit and wisdom.

Cerberus

Pah.

You are far too lazy for that, as would I be.

alphabet

@Cerberus Anyway, they cut out the end of the video, where I tied the end of the rope into a noose and left it hanging there as a warning to the humans.

Cerberus

Interesting.

alphabet

4:29 AM

I wonder where one learns knot-tying now that the Boy Scouts turned out to be a sex-abuse ring.

Cerberus

shrugs

Conrado

4:57 AM

@alphabet I don't think that's a safe perrsumption.

CowperKettle

> "Since we don't know of another (i.e., classical) way that anesthetic binding to microtubules would generally reduce brain activity and cause unconsciousness," Wiest says, "this finding supports the quantum model of consciousness." medicalxpress.com/news/…

This would place consciousness out of reach for me, because everything 'quantum' is way too complicated to grasp

Conrado

Since we don't know, it must be so?

CowperKettle

7:02 AM

Arabic of the day: jereed

> O, some must tug the galley’s oar, and some must tend the steed,—
This boy will bear a Scheik’s chibouk, and that a Bey’s jerreed.

The term itself is an Arabic word (جريد) that refers to a javelin or stick made from stripped palm fronds.

HippoSawrUs

9:27 AM

Because it's not dumby, d*mmit.

Sorry, had to.

jlliagre

9:41 AM

@GratefulDisciple No, I didn't. The reviews look good. I always find it funny when an actor has to pepper his dialogue with a few touches of French to “sound French” (or rather Belgian in this case). It's true for other languages. The role is that of a Spanish speaker, the actor has to say say “senorita, gracias”, an Italian “mamma mia”, a German “achtung”. In real life, it's unusual to do it. I wouldn't say, monsieur to someone if I spoke to him otherwise in English.

M.A.R.

9:57 AM

> "Since we don't know of another (i.e., classical) way that anesthetic binding to microtubules would generally reduce brain activity and cause unconsciousness," Wiest says, "this finding supports the quantum model of consciousness."

This is 18-karat horseshit.

4

Even for Medical Xpress this is too nonsensical to have been published

"Oh I wonder why apples fall downwards. It must be quantum."

CowperKettle

10:37 AM

@M.A.R. LOL

@M.A.R. You and your quaint Farsi expressions

CowperKettle

11:39 AM

jlliagre

12:34 PM

Araucaria - Him

1:20 PM

Good question on Linguistics SE:

4

Q: Are most sentences said or written only once?

I have many times heard it claimed that the great majority of natural-language sentences that are ever said or written are said or written only once. For example, Steven Pinker, in The Language Instinct, summarizing a famous argument by Noam Chomsky, says, "[V]irtually every sentence that a perso...

Robusto

1:33 PM

@Araucaria-Him Are we counting common phatic expressions like "Pleased to meet you"?

What I mean is, are such sentences counted individually or as one instance of a particular expression?

Wordle 1,176 3/6

🟩🟨⬛🟩⬛
⬛⬛🟨⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Daily Octordle #957
3️⃣🕚
🔟4️⃣
🕛9️⃣
7️⃣8️⃣
Score: 64

Daily Sequence Octordle #957
4️⃣8️⃣
9️⃣🔟
🕚🕛
🕐⓮
Score: 81

#WhenTaken #193 (07.09.2024)

I scored 700/1000 🎉

1️⃣ 📍 28 km - 🗓️ 12 yrs - ⚡ 178 / 200
2️⃣ 📍 772 km - 🗓️ 3 yrs - ⚡ 174 / 200
3️⃣ 📍 582 km - 🗓️ 16 yrs - ⚡ 150 / 200
4️⃣ 📍 2947 km - 🗓️ 1 yrs - ⚡ 140 / 200
5️⃣ 📍 10362 km - 🗓️ 19 yrs - ⚡ 58 / 200

https://whentaken.com

Not my day.

Sep. 7, 2024

T I G H T R O P E
✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ 🎉

My Score: 2150

alphabet

2:00 PM

Sep. 7, 2024

T I G H T R O P E
✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ 💔 ✅ ✅ 🎉

My Score: 2090

jlliagre

2:35 PM

#WhenTaken #193 (07.09.2024)

I scored 924/1000 🎉

1️⃣ 📍 344.9 metres - 🗓️ 0 yrs - ⚡ 200 / 200
2️⃣ 📍 456 km - 🗓️ 0 yrs - ⚡ 186 / 200
3️⃣ 📍 581 km - 🗓️ 4 yrs - ⚡ 179 / 200
4️⃣ 📍 759 km - 🗓️ 3 yrs - ⚡ 174 / 200
5️⃣ 📍 12.9 metres - 🗓️ 10 yrs - ⚡ 185 / 200

https://whentaken.com

Sep. 7, 2024

T I G H T R O P E
✅ 💔 ✅ 💔 ✅ 💔 ⎵ ⎵ ⎵ 🤕

My Score: 630

Robusto

2:50 PM

Strands #188
“Know your material”
🔵🔵🔵🔵
🟡🔵🔵🔵

Cerberus

3:49 PM

Strands #188
“Know your material”
🔵🔵🟡🔵
🔵🔵🔵🔵

What is the point of this game?

It is easy?

Vikas

@M.A.R. If I take 1/2 H2O in mouth, will it taste like water?

CowperKettle

- Mom, if I cut this worm in two, will the two halves become friends?
- Yes, but not with you.

Robusto

4:46 PM

I'm reading The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux, and it's fantastic — equal parts Jamestown, The Lord of the Flies, Heart of Darkness, even Paradise Lost — all blended together in a compelling narrative by a great prose stylist. I should have read it decades ago, but I had enjoyed his non-fiction books so much I didn't trust him, I guess, to venture outside that domain. More fool me.

Araucaria - Him

4:58 PM

@Robusto I don't know. Depends on whether diary drop is considered grammatical and so on, I suppose. But how would we know what percentage of a person's utterances are of that type. That kind of language doesn't really turn up in corpora so much. "Excuse me" is definitely a fully grammatical complete sentence ... (shrugs)

Robusto

@Cerberus What's the point of any game? Sometimes you just want to move your mind a bit. I do these puzzles—Worldle, Wordle, Octordle, WhenTaken, etc.—mainly to get my brain working in the morning. If it's too easy, don't play it

@Araucaria-Him "Pleased to meet you" is also grammatical.

Just because a portion is elided [but understood] doesn't mean a sentence is ungrammatical.

Cerberus

@Robusto OK maybe I meant, what is the point of posting one's result when everyone's results are the same.

M.A.R.

@Vikas what do you mean by "1/2 H2O"?

Robusto

@Cerberus Well, we sometimes try out new games in here. If they don't last they go away.

I mean if they draw no interest they go away.

Cerberus

Right.

Robusto

5:09 PM

@M.A.R. I was wondering that myself.

M.A.R.

Evening

Cerberus

Yes.

M.A.R.

A deadline is looming threateningly and I'm once again tired and stressed out

Cerberus

What is it about?

Deadlines suck.

M.A.R.

I think someone should invent a way to slack off without these side effects

@Cerberus research. Well, excruciatingly boring data gathering

Cerberus

5:12 PM

@M.A.R. A pill?

How many hours do you think you will need for the remaining work?

M.A.R.

A pill to slack off sounds great but people would be too lazy to buy it the second time around

@Cerberus I dunno, 20?

Cerberus

Oh, that is a lot.

Ask someone else to do part of the work?

Program something to automate part of the task?

M.A.R.

@Cerberus wish I knew how

One program I'm working with is written in Java in 2002

Araucaria - Him

@Robusto No subject! (hence diary-drop stipulation)

Or auxiliary verb.

Cerberus

@M.A.R. Ouch.

When is the deadline?

@Araucaria-Him Right, one needs subjects.

M.A.R.

5:16 PM

If "How are you?" counts as one instance it sounds self-evident that most sentences would ever be said once.

Robusto

@Araucaria-Him What? [A complete sentence, understandable and grammatical.]

Cerberus

Otherwise the title of King is rather empty.

M.A.R.

I mean, maybe 1 or 5 or 10 percent of the sentences ever said or written have been said more than once. "Most" would still apply

Cerberus

Impossible to know, I should think.

M.A.R.

So asking for evidence sounds like asking for evidence that the results of a coin toss are 50/50.

Cerberus

5:19 PM

@Cerberus Though, when I Google this, I don't find any results.

Robusto

5:31 PM

@M.A.R. Isn't it more like asking why each 50/50 coin toss doesn't repeat heads/tails/heads/tails into infinity?

jlliagre

@Robusto I wonder what location you chose for #5.

Robusto

@jlliagre Isn't it obvious? ^_^

Spoiler

jlliagre

Ah, okay.

@Robusto spoiler

Araucaria - Him

5:50 PM

@Robusto Yes, one would need to sort out all of that ellipsis stuff and preforms and so on. But I assume that few of your 16,000 sentences a day are actually "Pleased to meet you" ;-)

Robusto

@Araucaria-Him On the other hand, how many times is that particular sentence uttered among English speakers every day?

Araucaria - Him

@Robusto Yes, quite. But it's all about percentages!

Robusto

Percentages per individual or speakers of a particular tongue en masse?

alphabet

6:10 PM

@Araucaria-Him Wasn't there some linguist who claimed that gestures have grammatical properties? Is flipping someone off considered a sentence?

My unanswerable question of the day: what percentage of people write/type more words than they speak out loud on an average day?

Araucaria - Him

6:28 PM

@Robusto Sorry, was just finishing off an answer to that Q. I think the two should correlate, shouldn't they?

0

A: Are most sentences said or written only once?

While I can't give an answer, here are some things that we might want to think about and which it should be easier to find literature on: All languages? Firstly, are we talking about all natural languages? The languages concerned may have a dramatic effect on average sentence length and types of ...

Hasn't been proofread yet ...

@alphabet Yes, in fact I bumped into one of their papers recently somewhere ...

Mitch

@alphabet Sign language, like ASL, BSL, FSL (American British French resp) etc etc are all full languages just like spoken ones with full on complicated morphology and grammar and accents and composition and embedding etc etc

Gestures on the other hand don't have a grammar (you can't compose the gesture for I''m bored' and 'you and I both know what others dont'

ASL et al. use the same brain areas as spoken language. Gestures.... I don't know.

Gestures may very well be processed like vocabulary, but, counterintuitively, they are not processed like vocab in a sign language as used natively.

I'm not entirely sure of a source for any of this but you can take them as hypotheses that could be confirmed or denied by scholarly writing.

@Cerberus it seems to be easier than the others.

alphabet

6:54 PM

@Araucaria-Him Also came up in this question: english.stackexchange.com/questions/625458/…

I find it a bit odd because I'm pretty sure that, if I said any of the four example sentences cited (e.g. "There goes the gong"), I would point forward, not up.

But there definitely are people who do that pointing-upwards gesture in the same context.

jlliagre

@Araucaria-Him Now Are most chess games played only once?

Vikas

7:17 PM

@M.A.R. CaSO4 🔪 1/2H2O (Basically you cut Plaster of Paris from middle).

Araucaria - Him

@jlliagre That depends on whether most chess games played are played by beginners who never play again because they get mated after 5 moves!

In which case: no!

jlliagre

7:32 PM

@Araucaria-Him Are most chess games played by experienced players against beginners who will never play again because they lost in a few moves? I suspect not. My guess is most games are played by players of similar levels so the average number of moves must be higher.

Robusto

@alphabet Those who spend lots of time on the computer, no doubt.

@jlliagre But every move sees an exponential increase in the number of possible moves, so it is unlikely that after move 25 (2^50 possibilities) an identical game is exceedingly unlikely. Note that 25 moves means 50 2-ply moves.

jlliagre

7:53 PM

@Robusto Not sure to parse correctly the end of your first sentence but my guess is that most played games are different.

Araucaria - Him

@jlliagre Yes, I was only joking really. I think that as Robusto says pretty much all chess games are unique

jlliagre

8:08 PM

Ahh, joking! Sorry, I'm not used to that practice ;)

Robusto

8:28 PM

@jlliagre Yes.

jlliagre

@Robusto Too many unlikelies in your sentence then :)

Wordle 1,176 4/6

⬛🟨⬛🟨⬛
⬛🟨🟨⬛⬛
🟨⬛⬛🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Robusto

@jlliagre Ah, sorry. I'm hitting my afternoon slump. I should take a nap probably.

Mitch

@Araucaria-Him do you remember the author? Or the link? Surely there's more to gestures than simple one-offs, but I can't imagine it has much additional complexity (and surely it's not compositional)

jlliagre

8:44 PM

@Robusto ¡Va por la siesta! :-)

Ecos del Rocio - Va por la siesta

►

Robusto

@jlliagre Estoy de acuerdo con eso.

jlliagre

Daily Octordle #957
7️⃣5️⃣
8️⃣9️⃣
🕚6️⃣
🔟4️⃣
Score: 60

Daily Sequence Octordle #957
5️⃣6️⃣
7️⃣8️⃣
9️⃣🔟
🕚🕛
Score: 68

Araucaria - Him

9:45 PM

@Mitch I can't work out how I'd find it right now, but here's something fairly closely related: Iconic gestures: the grammatical categories of lexical affiliates

Mitch

10:16 PM

@Araucaria-Him is one of the authors in the link the author you were referring to before?

CowperKettle

10:40 PM

> "Though fortune's malice overthrow my state,
My mind exceeds the compass of her wheel."

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…