English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Well, the answer is that the question is unclear... each word originates in several morphemes, and different phonological changes have occurred on top of that. I think an answer would have to describe the histories of the varies pronouns...

Kit

Sounds like a lot of work. Is it an interesting answer?

Cerberus

Not quite, because the development of the various morphemes isn't a systematic whole.

Robusto

Is anything involving development of language systematic?

Cerberus

7:14 PM

The origin of the h- in how v. the wh- part in where would be an OK question...

Kit

@Robusto Only in Lojban.

Cerberus

So would the origin of the pronominal stems h(e/i)- and th-.

How is Linguistics doing?

Is it near beta stage yet?

Kit

62% committed

Cerberus

Hm... will it go into beta at 100% committed?

Kit

I don't know how it works. I think private beta after the commitment phase?

@Robusto Do you know?

Robusto

7:18 PM

Do I know what?

Cerberus

I keep forgetting how it works.

Kit

@Robusto Private beta always preceeds public beta after the commitment phase in Area51?

Robusto

I've only been involved in one private beta, and it preceded the public beta by 7 days.

Kit

Thanks.

Robusto

7 days = one week.

Kit

7:20 PM

I think the duration of the private beta depends on how much activity the site has.

Robusto

one week = ~1/52 years

I wonder what that is in @Cerberus years ...

Kit

Is @Cerberus years x7 human or x21 human or x7/3 human years?

Robusto

I think pi has something to do with it. @Cerberus likes pi. He may be a pi-dog, for all I know.

Cerberus

I have no years. I have no age. I am dog eternal.

*PIE

In both senses!

Kit

Speaking of avatars, I don't know about this unicorn. It keeps staring at me while I'm trying to work.

Cerberus

7:22 PM

Hey, funny, it keeps staring at me too!

Kit

@Cerberus I'd thwack you, but that's actually pretty clever.

Maybe I'll find a new one tonight.

Cerberus

Heh, you are more lenient than Martha!

Kit

I think my geekiness quotient is higher.

Cerberus

You wanna know how fast I can add a screenshot to this chat?

Kit

Do it! Do it

Cerberus

7:24 PM

That fast.

Kit

Wow, faster than I can egg you on.

Cerberus

Faster than you could answer.

Hehe.

Kosmonaut

You fabricated that ahead of time, didn't you?

Cerberus

I just discovered this nifty program.

@Kosmonaut Nope!

Kit

But how--? Is that your superpower?

Cerberus

7:25 PM

I'd be too lazy to fabricate things ahead of time.

Kit

@Kosmonaut Can you give me some more linguistic-y phrases for my, ahem, notebook?

Cerberus

It's Zizorz:

appifyer.com/apps

Kosmonaut

@Kit What do you mean?

Kit

@Kosmonaut Hang on...

Jun 8 at 20:56, by Kit

I love Kosmonaut's answers. "Unvoiced uvular fricative." sigh I'll have to write that one down in the dirty talk notebook for my husband.

Kosmonaut

Did I write unvoiced?

Kit

7:28 PM

My chat search skillz leave something to be desired.

Kosmonaut

I should have written "voiceless"

Kit

@Kosmonaut No, I'm sure it was voiceless.

Bad transcription.

Cerberus

Oh...

Kit

Naughty, naughty transcriber.

Cerberus

What is unvoiced used for?

I know what voiceless means: f, s, t, k, p.

Kosmonaut

7:30 PM

With voicing there is either "voiced" or "voiceless"

Cerberus

Right. So no unvoiced at all in a different context?

Kosmonaut

Then there is "devoicing" where something becomes voiceless in a certain context.

Cerberus

Kept.

Kosmonaut

So, if I were to use "unvoiced", I would use it to talk about something that had undergone "devoicing"

Cerberus

Oh, I see. Resultative.

Kosmonaut

7:32 PM

But sometimes people accidentally use "unvoiced" for voiceless.

I mean sometimes linguists do. But not in papers or anything.

Cerberus

So an unvoiced consonant is necessarily voiceless, but not vice versa.

I'd prefer something like devoiced for the resultative if I had a choice...

Kosmonaut

"Devoiced" is the real term.

Cerberus

Is it?

Good.

It sounds better because it looks more verbal.

As in, verb-like.

Kosmonaut

"Unvoiced" sort of floats around; it's not the preferred, official term for anything, at least not these days.

Kit

@Kosmonaut How would you describe the p at the beginning of pneumatic?

Kosmonaut

7:35 PM

In English, I would describe it as "purely orthographic" :)

Cerberus

Silent?

Kit

This is not getting me what I need...

I like purely orthographic though.

It just doesn't rise to the level of sexy.

Kosmonaut

For a linguist, it's just not there, unless you are talking about orthography.

Cerberus

How about... Proto-Indo-European theme vowel?

aedia

@Kit Have you heard of the nasal-ingressive voiceless velar trill?

2

Cerberus

7:37 PM

That sounds obscene.

Kit

@aedia Ooooh, new sexy friend.

Cerberus

Ingressive, thrill...

aedia

What's really obscene is this thing in Comic Sans someone just sent me.

Kosmonaut

@aedia haha, great

Cerberus

Oh? Does it have ... unusual symbols?

aedia

7:40 PM

@Kosmonaut I was hoping that font had died a natural death and then I get Word documents from people who sputters purport to be professionals! Perplexing! Preposterous!

Robusto

@Kosmonaut — That's an example of a word that can only be written, never spoken aloud.

Well, you can say it aloud, but it destroys the magic.

Kit

@aedia Egads! I think I threw up a little in my mouth just then.

Cerberus

@aedia Hah, brilliant post! The symbol is beautiful.

Kit

@aedia And again.

Kosmonaut

There is also /ɧ/, whose very existence is disputed.

Well, its articulation is disputed.

Cerberus

7:43 PM

Hmm... does that sounds like ng but different?

aedia

@Kit Ingressive! Ingressive! You're not doing it properly.

Kosmonaut

No, it is the Swedish sje sound.

Cerberus

Oh, dear...

Kit

@aedia hahaha. So that's the problem.

Kosmonaut

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/…

Cerberus

7:45 PM

@aedia Do I need to wag my tail while I do it too?

@Kosmonaut Hmm... to my biased ears it sounds a bit like Dutch hw or something in between h and Dutch ch...

Kosmonaut

"The International Phonetic Association describes [ɧ] as "simultaneous ʃ and x", but this claim is disputed among phoneticians, including at least one former president of the IPA. Other descriptive labels include voiceless palatal-velar fricative, voiceless dorso-palatal velar fricative, voiceless postalveolar and velar fricative, or voiceless coarticulated velar and palatoalveolar fricative."

aedia

@Cerberus I suppose if you want to try for a... caudal nasal-ingressive voiceless velar trill?

Kit

@Kosmonaut (making notes)

Cerberus

@Kosmonaut Hmm I can't seem to perform both dental and palatal (if that's what it is) articulation at the same time...

Kit

So how would you describe a farting sound?

Cerberus

7:50 PM

@aedia performs it dashingly

Kosmonaut

@Cerberus My guess is that if you clench your teeth and then try to make a [x] without unclenching

This is the only way I can imagine simultaneous x and ʃ.

aedia

@Cerberus claps

Cerberus

@Kosmonaut Now you are making me do inappropriate sounds. I sound like an angry, choking dog.

Kosmonaut

@Kit That's easy. Anal fricative.

Cerberus

Ew.

Kit

7:52 PM

@Kosmonaut Fricative? Are you sure you're flatulating correctly?

Cerberus

A trill it must be! (Sorry.)

Kosmonaut

Haha.

In some dialects it might be a trill :)

Cerberus

(An aside: this is what my weird version of Pokorny says:
*so(s), sā
Deutsche Übersetzung: "ὁ, ἡ" )

Kit

Bloody hell. Forgot to take the bleeding training wheels off. I just spend a half hour debugging my own idiocy.

That's what I get for chatting at work.

Cerberus

Training wheels?

Kit

7:58 PM

I was writing a new query and subbed a fixed number in place of the input parameter. Forgot to set it back to a variable when I finished.

Martha

Cerberus, shouldn't you be outside ogling the moon?

wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/lunar-eclipse-webcast

youtube.com/google

Kit

He's not a werewolf.

Common misconception about tricephalic dogs, though.

Martha

No, but he's within the lunar-eclipse-viewing-area.

Kit

Ah. Right. blush

@Martha I have been derelict in my thwacking duties.

Martha

That's ok. It happens to the best of us. It takes practice to thwack someone while you're doubled over laughing, but it can be done.

Kit

8:06 PM

Worse yet, I encouraged them.

Martha

Lunar eclipse is almost total! I wish we could see it here - a live feed is nice and all, but it's not the same.

aedia

@Martha I concur!

Martha

Ooh, Google's home page has a time-lapse recording of the eclipse so far.

aedia

I quite like the Google doodle time-lapse effect.

Martha

Jinx!

aedia

8:08 PM

I swear I was typing that already!

Maximum in two minutes!

Kit

8:24 PM

Zoom, zoom. See you later, lunatics!

aedia

@Kit Bye!

Martha

Lunatics? Was that a reference to the lunar eclipse feed I'm watching? If so, THWACK.

Cerberus

Oh!

I didn't know about this eclipse!

Let's see, is the weather clear?

aedia

@Martha I missed the reference entirely! Auugh, that one's terrible.

'Spose I was too busy mooning over this feed. It momentarily eclipsed my desire to look for puns.

Cerberus

Haha nice.

Martha

8:46 PM

Now, now, @aedia, you know better than that: THWACK!

So, have you laid eyeballs on the eclipse, @Cerberus?

Cerberus

Not yet!

It's almost dark now.

Is the moon supposed to be this cool yellow hue now?

I will go outside to look in a minute...

Martha

Yes, the moon is quite reddish in the feed I'm watching.

Cerberus

The one from the Canaries?

I suppose dusk is earlier down south.

Martha

The bottom left is starting to get lighter and lighter, though.

Cerberus

Oh, dear...

Then I must hurry!

Martha

8:49 PM

It took at least 20 minutes to get from "all parts in at least partial shadow" to "total eclipse", so you have a little time...

aedia

@Martha My first thwack! I'll be good, Mistress Martha, I promise! ;)

@Cerberus Hurry! The whole left side's gonna get out!

Martha

...almost... there...

Cerberus

I saw it!

Martha

9:05 PM

Yay!

Cerberus

I had to walk a small distance to be able to see it. It was already very dark, while the sky was still quite light.

Martha

There's the tiniest sliver of white on the left side now.

Cerberus

White?

I saw it reddish-brown.

Martha

As in, that part is no longer eclipsed.

Cerberus

Oh!

You're far ahead, then?

Martha

9:06 PM

Not as far as I know! Unless whoever's doing the feed has invented a time machine, that is?

Cerberus

Hmm...

Martha

Definite white part on the left now. It's getting to the point where the feed will have to adjust its settings, leaving the eclipsed part too dark to see.

Cerberus

The time machine could be our different locations?

I saw no white part at all.

Martha

The white part probably appeared about 5 seconds after you came back inside.

Cerberus

Really? Hah. The bastard.

Should I go outside again?

Martha

9:09 PM

As far as I know, there's no time difference in viewing an eclipse - the distance to the moon is too much larger than the distance between any two parts of the Earth.

Cerberus

Really? Oh.

Martha

Yes, yes, go! Why chat about it when you can actually, like, watch it?

Cerberus

Then how come it isn't visible everywhere?

OK I'll go, then!

Martha

It's not visible here because (a) it's full daylight, and (b) moonrise hasn't occurred yet - the moon is on the other side of the Earth from us.

Cerberus

Aww.

Okey be right back...

Jez

9:41 PM

lol. unicorn pics galore

z7sg

lol.

Jez

any reason behind it or just randomness?

z7sg

218

Q: My God—it's full of unicorns!

Based on this comment, I have started building a unicorn avatar maker. It's still quite ugly, and the results aren't different enough yet, but this is what it looks like so far: Question list / Joel's profile (removed the images from here to make this thing a little shorter). Is this just way t...

it's my own special unicorn and nobody else's. that's awesome

Martha

0

Q: Why is shippable spelled with 2 p's

My mother "corrected" me and said "shouldn't shippable be spelled as shipable"? My gut feeling said two p's, but I couldn't think of a reason why. So I googled it and it is spelled with two p's, but I still don't know why. As far as I am concerned it could just as well be spelled with one 'p'.

spelling

There's an answer of sorts here:

5

Q: focussed or focused? The double consonant

Initially my question was if is it "focussed" or "focused", but since this applies to a lot of words there is supposed to be a rule when to double the consonant?

orthography

... but does that make it a duplicate?

Jez

nah.

6

Q: Can one "marry one's wife"?

I was vacantly reading the paper the other day when I came across a strange formation in the obituary: "he married his wife in 19XX". I was rather taken aback by this; surely he can't marry his own wife. He could attempt to marry someone else's wife, and that would be bigamy. But surely marrying ...

idioms semantics

have they heard of a second wedding?

z7sg

9:49 PM

Why is debatable not spelled debateable? This is an important question.

Martha

5

Q: Creating words with "-able" suffix

First off—this is my first post and English is not my mother tongue. What are general rules of thumb for creating adjectives with -able suffix? I wanted to denote an object as having an ability to be tiled, but "tileable" and "tilable" both yielded as incorrect words by spell check and standard ...

grammar adjectives suffix

z7sg

Everyone spells rateable ratable at work. Idiots.

Accepted answer is a terrible cop-out there!

Martha

Well, yeah.

But the question has been asked.

Jez

ratable or bearable

maybe reg would have some insight there

Martha

10:12 PM

Aw. Eclipse is over.

And it looks like @PLL found a closer duplicate of the "shippable" question.

RegDwight

11:06 PM

@Cerberus Yeah, now it totally sucks. To say the least.

Cerberus

True!

Do people hate fighting our defensive decks just as much?

RegDwight

@Kosmonaut Hm. So I aimed for @Robusto's backyard and invaded your PC instead. Interesting.

Cerberus

Mine is triple II, triple Mind Controller (counter 3, mimic), and a couple of anti-air guys.

RegDwight

@Cerberus I have no idea, really. I even don't know if it's because we're above a certain threshold now, or whether it was just a general update of teh game mechanics.

Cerberus

All speed 1.

RegDwight

11:09 PM

BTW, I'm 50:180 behind right now.

Cerberus

(Surely you have seen that defense starts first now? That's why attacking is so much harder.)

@RegDwight Oh, I will see what I can do now...

RegDwight

@Cerberus Of course, that's what I'm talking about the whole time.

Cerberus

Okay... then why did you mention a threshold?

RegDwight

I have no idea if we play black instead of white now because we're over 200, say.

Cerberus

Oh, in that way.

But no mechanics got changed except the goes-first thing, right?

RegDwight

11:14 PM

I dunno, but there were a few other changes lately, such as which promo cards are available on the home tab, or the more detailed war stats (who won and lost how many rounds).

Cerberus

By the way, I think we might have a chance with this guy's deck: it's weaker than the ones we faced yesterday. I got his commie to 4 hp with Fear.

RegDwight

That's because now I only pick factions with low score.

I used to pick ones with a score slightly above ours.

Now no more.

Cerberus

Yeah, it's sad.

I think either wall block or many 0/1-speed cards are the strongest defense decks.

I'll try again, if you don't mind my sacrificing our points...

Oh, this time I almost got him with Mawcor (he refused to Flurry twice in a row, otherwise I'd have gotten his commie dead).

Okay, I got him with my main deck.

Tiamat and Predator worked great (both 1 speed and strike). II also worked well.

Let me try again.

2/0 with my main deck. This works. I don't think he has attacked us yet?

Gigili

@Cerberus What's the relationship between you and this ..?

Cerberus

11:30 PM

That is the website of the Society of Palaeography, whose secretary I am.

Gigili

Aha, going to be interesting, and who will check Emails?

Cerberus

@Reg: Okay I got 8/0 with my main deck, which sucks against most of yesterday's decks. So we can take this guy.

@Gigili I do mostly, but anyone on the board might check them as well. Why so?

If you live in Holland and you're interested in palaeography, you're welcome to hop by!

Gigili

@Cerberus I'd live in Holland if it was a 4-season country.

Nur so.

RegDwight

@Cerberus Okay, I'm about to try out a few things as well, before going to bed.

Cerberus

Huh? @Gigi

@RegDwight Use fast cards, those work well.

No siege needed.

RegDwight

11:35 PM

Yeah, that's what I'm going to try.

Rats, don't have that many points left. If only I could beat that main mission, I would level up...

Anyhow, I'm logging off here. CU tomorrow!

Gigili

@Cerberus Pfft, In other words, I thought it's your Email.

Cerberus

@Reg: Night! Which main mission? I've done all missions so I could test what works on it for me... or is it just that you don't have enough Energy now? Well, bye!

@Gigili That is not my personal e-mail address, obviously. Why do you need it?

Gigili

@Cerberus "obviously" here means you're too dumb to understand that? I had some questions, why? my CONSCIENCE told me you need it ..

I better go to bed now, night @Cerberus

Cerberus

Huh!?

I don't understand what you mean.

Gigili

Should I clarify?

Cerberus

11:46 PM

I said "obviously" because you knew that it wasn't my personal address; otherwise it would seem as though I were telling you the same thing twice, which would have been strange.

Be quick, because I will delete it again.

Gigili

Done, thanks.

Cerberus

What do you want to ask?

Why not ask in chat?

Oh, I see your message on palaeopgraphy.

Better not send personal e-mails there: that's not what it is meant for.

Gigili

I didn't know it's not personal, everything is in Dutch, sorry.

Cerberus

Okay no prob.