English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Cerberus

2:00 AM

I can fit two oven tins into my combo.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus It's probably useful to you. I suppose if if had a combo unit I might use it, but I've never missed it.

Cerberus

Sure, if you already have a large oven, it will not be necessary.

Although it probably heats up faster than a large oven.

tchrist

I do not suggest cooking sheet-cakes in toaster-ovens.

Cerberus

@tchrist It is a convection combo.

It's a Samsung. It works like a television, except they always have the food channel on. Yum!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Anyway, Cerb, I read up on sous-vide and probably wouldn't call those machines "ovens", unless everyone else was already doing so.

Cerberus

2:05 AM

I don't think anybody would.

'Twas just an example to confuse you.

And the age of immersion sous-vide is dawning anyway.

My microwave-oven combo has 32 litres btw.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus well, at some point you have to draw a line between "ovens" and other "enclosed cooking spaces". Some people refer to a bread machine as an oven. In a sense, it is.

tchrist

@Cerberus So what, like a cubic foot? Nasty!

You’ll have to cook your turkey piece by piece.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 People don’t call pressure cookers or fondue machines ovens, either.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Ah, yes, that is a good example.

tchrist

Or popcorn poppers.

Or rice cookers.

Cerberus

@tchrist Yes, a turkey wouldn't fit.

@tchrist ...or microwaves?

tchrist

2:13 AM

@Cerberus A microwave oven is a microwave oven.

Cerberus

Hehe.

tchrist

It only microwaves. Welcome to English!

Anonymous

Yay! I made it to English.

Cerberus

I like how you started arguing my case.

@snailboat Where did you start, in Proto-Indo-European?

Anonymous

@Cerberus I was visiting Japanese.

Cerberus

2:13 AM

Oh!

I'm not sure English is closer to your purpose in life.

Anonymous

Well, English is my only native language. I like to speak it, I like to write it, and I like to study it. Really, I like English! But I've never really had a gift for language, and despite all my practice I tend to turn out rather clumsy sentences. It gets worse when I try to string more than one together

Anonymous

And despite studying Japanese for sixteen years, I'm not that good at it, either.

Cerberus

Haha.

How about the language of slime patches?

Can you produce a full sentence in slime that other snails can understand?

tchrist

How many watts is your microwave oven?

Anonymous

When you watch a snail crawl across the sidewalk, if you look down at ground level--or perhaps use a camera--you can see they tend to lift their foot off the ground every inch or so, so it looks like their foot is taking very very slow hops. They leave dotted line slime trails

Anonymous

2:18 AM

Slugs tend to leave solid lines.

tchrist

Damn it now I have to have popcorn.

Anonymous

My last two microwaves have both been 1200 watts, I think.

Cerberus

@tchrist 900

Anonymous

Why don't we capitalize Watt?

tchrist

waht?

what?

watt?

inches.

Cerberus

2:19 AM

@snailboat Hmm so why do you do that?

tchrist

My last one was 1300, but this one is only 1250.

Anonymous

@Cerberus Despite appearances, I am actually a human being.

Anonymous

I do have several pet snails, though.

Cerberus

@snailboat I think some people have those...but you can heat up anything in a few minutes on 900 W.

@snailboat Nay, I refuse to believe that!

Anonymous

To be honest, my decision making process was something like "Yep, that one looks nice"

Cerberus

2:20 AM

Heh.

Whenever I use 900 for more than a few minutes, the outside will get burned. Like with...frozen soup.

Anonymous

I didn't have a microwave for a long time.

Noah

What's the word for a horse riding?

Anonymous

But then I learned that they're useful for heating water. And for heating a couple other things, too!

tchrist

A horse riding what?

Noah

I mean the movement from one place to another using a horse.

Anonymous

2:21 AM

@Noah A horse riding is a horse riding.

tchrist

You mean a horsey ride?

Like a merry-go-round?

Well, unless it’s just a hobby horse.

Anonymous

An instance of riding a horse?

badass

On horseback

tchrist

It’s just a ride.

Noah

when you ride a horse it jumps up and down, what's that movement called?

tchrist

2:23 AM

Buck you.

Cerberus

@snailboat I used mine only as an oven for a long time, my previous one.

Anonymous

If I answer all the questions correctly, do I get a prize?

badass

Bucking

tchrist

Und Kraft.

Anonymous

@Cerberus Oh, then why did you get a microwave hyphen?

Cerberus

2:24 AM

It was an old one, discarded by my parents.

The display broke down, so they gave it to me.

Anonymous

Oh no!

Cerberus

I had a print-out from the manual stuck to it so I would know how many times I had to press the button to get the temperature I wanted.

tchrist

I hate the ones with big displays. Like, you’re supposed to play pong on them or something?

Cerberus

It wasn't big, just broken.

Those displays that have large "square" pixels always break down.

Anonymous

Oh no again! My microwave has square-looking pixels.

Cerberus

2:27 AM

Oh, dear...

Are they greenish?

Anonymous

I wish I had gotten one of those reliable non-square pixel display microwave hyphens.

Cerberus

No, wait. Is the background greenish-yellow?

Anonymous

Little bit, yeah!

Cerberus

And the pixels black?

Anonymous

Hold on, I have to investigate

Cerberus

2:28 AM

Perhaps your display is a completely different kind.

Noah

Can you stab a carpet? Or is there a better word?

Anonymous

Actually, I went to get more water. And I forgot to investigate while I was in the kitchen

Anonymous

@Noah You can stab a carpet...

Anonymous

I'm not sure why you would stab a carpet

Anonymous

Are you a carpet-murderer?

Anonymous

2:31 AM

Poke a hole in a carpet?

Anonymous

I don't know what action you're describing, so I can't pick out a better word for you

Cerberus

I understand water is very important for...your kind of people.

Anonymous

Haha

Anonymous

I have a water bottle by the cage my snailies live in. I mist them daily :-)

Noah

Sort of. But I am writing something and the character doesnt know what a carpet is so he takes out his sword and tries to stab it to check it.

Cerberus

2:32 AM

Yay!

@Noah Sounds good.

tchrist

The carpet dies. More--

Anonymous

Not knowing what something is sounds like a good reason to stab it.

Anonymous

That's how scientific knowledge advances

tchrist

@snailboat Any port in a storm.

Cerberus

If you don't know what it is, break it.

What is your favourite city name in the world?

Anonymous

2:37 AM

I'll have to think about that.

tchrist

@Cerberus “And he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.” —Mithrandir to Saruman

Anonymous

I don't have a favorite city name handy.

Noah

And can we use sheath as a verb?

tchrist

LGA!

Anonymous

Does the city have to still exist with that name for me to pick it?

Anonymous

2:37 AM

@Noah Yes.

tchrist

@snailboat Brigadoon?

Noah

The OED disagrees.

Anonymous

@Noah collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/sheath

tchrist

The verb is sheathe.

It ends in a voiced sound, not an unvoiced one.

Cerberus

@tchrist That's what I was thinking of, yes, but I did not remember the words.

Hmm you think something might be going on in Kiev?

tchrist

2:40 AM

@Cerberus Somebody forgot not to tilt their camera.

Cerberus

Is the horizon not horizontal?

tchrist

Keystoning can (and almost always should) be easily corrected though.

Cerberus

tchrist

The buildings are all falling down, falling down, falling down.

Cerberus

Oh, that.

I didn't even notice...

Looks like the Ukrainians are calling their revolution the "Cultural Revolution". Ouch.

tchrist

2:49 AM

Noah

People were seated in the circle shaped hall as he went in.

Here how can we change this to an active voice?

tchrist

It already is.

Cerberus

@tchrist Less, titled, but still somewhat tilted, and you had to cut off part of the picture.

tchrist

There is no passive here.

Cerberus

"Were seated" is arguably passive.

tchrist

2:51 AM

@Cerberus Because they took it wrong. Not my fault.

I’ll argue that is not.

Noah

@Cerberus Exactly.

tchrist

It is not passive.

The people were standing up when he walked in.

Is that passive?

Mitch

@Cerberus that'd be a weird argument

tchrist

No, it is not.

Mitch

Nobody actively sat the people down.

Cerberus

2:52 AM

Even if there is no active variant, that doesn't mean it can't be passive.

tchrist

The opposite of standing up is seated.

Cerberus

@tchrist No passive participle.

tchrist

You might as well say that "He was gone" is a passive.

Cerberus

Yes.

tchrist

It’s stupid to say that.

Cerberus

2:53 AM

It's just a syntactic feature.

Not a semantic one.

A deponent is also passive.

People often confuse syntax with semantics, even many linguists, it would seem.

tchrist

My ideas are ordered.

They are in a state of order.

Cerberus

No, they're passive.

tchrist

Nope.

Your shirt is polka-dotted.

Cerberus

Would you call loquor passive?

tchrist

That doesn’t mean there is a passive there.

Cerberus

2:55 AM

@tchrist Or, even better, hawk-nosed.

tchrist

Eagle-eyed.

Mitch

seal eared

tchrist

Seated people and eagle-eyed people have something in common: they’re sessile, not passive.

Cerberus

I have to admit those examples that do not clearly come from a verb are borderline.

tchrist

Contented people are not passive.

Noah

2:56 AM

What is that place in a palace or chamber where a king sits called?

Throne?

Dais.

big chair

Or that.

Pedestal.

2:56 AM

Thanks.

Cerberus

Canopy.

tchrist

His butt.

Surely this cannot be denied.

Mitch

I deny it.

tchrist

Sit down!

Anonymous

@Cerberus Sure, there are lots of passive clauses without a corresponding active clause

Mitch

2:58 AM

Tchrist just seated me!

Cerberus

@tchrist So I will say that you might say an "ossified" participle that has more or less turned into an adjective is no longer verbal at all, but the opposite position is also defensible.

tchrist

Your mind is diseased.

There is no passive there.

Cerberus

@snailboat Indeed.

tchrist

Nor are bigoted people passive. Unfortunately.

Mitch

You can be passively bigoted.

Anonymous

2:59 AM

@Cerberus Some adjectives derived from participles are less verby than others.

Cerberus

I bigot, you bigot, we all bigot!

Mitch

I was bigoted by the ... passive racist.

tchrist

“He was summarily bigoted in his every action.” Pacify that one, o ye passivists!

Cerberus

@snailboat So-called "derived participles"?

Or participled derivatives?

tchrist

I prefer a man who is cultured.

That doesn’t mean I like yoghurt.

Mitch

3:00 AM

Like a good yogurt

!!jinx

tchrist

And it doesn’t mean he’s passive.

KitSox

@Mitch That didn't make much sense. Use the help command to learn more.

Cerberus

Do you mean culture as in the Cultural Revolution (were you primed by my line above?), or cultures of bacteria?

tchrist

Yes.

Mitch

Yes.

!!jinx!!!!

KitSox

3:01 AM

@Mitch That didn't make much sense. Use the help command to learn more.

Cerberus

Are you people jinxed?

Are you one person?

Anonymous

@Cerberus Well, think about uninhabited. *"Humans uninhabited the island."

Cerberus

Are you the two heads of my dear brother Orthrus?

Mitch

That might work.

tchrist

This lovely glen is most verdantly wooded.

Cerberus

3:02 AM

@snailboat That's not very nice. What did they use, mustard gas?

tchrist

Make that not be passive, I triple-dog dare you!

Noah

"We will start the war in three days if you don't accept our demands"

Cerberus

It is of course true that adjectival prefixes make a participle less verbal.

Noah

Is the necessary in there?

Cerberus

@tchrist OK, if you say so I will agree that it is passive.

tchrist

3:04 AM

My friend is very talented. But he is not passive, and you cannot activate him.

Cerberus

@Noah Yes...

I mean, without the, I would expect a different verb, like declare.

Anonymous

When I said there were plenty of passives without corresponding active clauses, I was thinking of things like "Your car was damaged." → *"Damaged your car." or "Kim was said to be the culprit." → *"Said Kim to be the culprit."

tchrist

@Cerberus Just because something ends in -ed does not it a participle make!

Cerberus

@snailboat Oh...well, sure, if you mean an entire clause.

Anonymous

I consider voice to be a trait that clauses have (in English).

tchrist

3:05 AM

-ed, suffix[entry#2], OE. -ede = OS. -ôdi (not represented elsewhere in Teut., though ON. had adjs. similarly f. sbs., with ppl. form and i- umlaut, as eygðr eyed, hynrdr horned):-OTeut. type -ôd̶jo-, is appended to sbs. in order to form adjs. connoting the possession or the presence of the attribute or thing expressed by the sb. The function of the suffix is thus identical with that of the Lat. ppl. suffix -tus as used in caudātus tailed, aurītus eared, etc.; and it is possible that the Teut. -ôd̶jo- may originally have been f. -ôd̶o- (see -ed[entry#1]), the suffix of pa. pples. of vbs. in…

Cerberus

@tchrist That is a suffix.

tchrist

It is. And it does not make a participle.

Cerberus

@snailboat I do not...you wouldn't say being killed is passive in "I hate being killed"?

tchrist

“He is jaundiced” has no participle, nor is it a passive.

Because nobody can *jaundice another person.

Cerberus

@snailboat Or, wait, you use a different definition of clause, perhaps?

I'm not really a fan of changing the definition of a linguistic term for a specific language unless you have no choice.

tchrist

3:08 AM

> The suffix is now added without restriction to any sb. from which it is desired to form an adj. with the sense ‘possessing, provided with, characterized by’ (something); e.g. in toothed, booted, wooded, moneyed, cultured, diseased, jaundiced, etc., and in parasynthetic derivatives, as dark-eyed, seven-hilled, leather-aproned, etc. In bigoted, crabbed, dogged, the suffix has a vaguer meaning.

Those are not participles.

Those are nouns made adjectives.

Not verbs.

See the huge difference?

Nouns are not verbs.

This book is dog-eared! I insist you make that passive into an active. Wrong.

Speaking of the ear of the dog that bit you.

noun + -ed = adjective

You cannot remove the -ed and come up with a verb when you never started with one in the first place.

Therefore, it is not a participle. Q.E.D.

Mitch

@tchrist are there any words ending in -ed that are not verb derived?

Cerberus

Arg, thanks to you people I just wrote "exactly" instead of "exact" in Dutch.

@tchrist A gerund is both a noun and a verb. So is an infinitive, in some ways.

tchrist

@Cerberus OFFS

So what?

Cerberus

@Mitch Haha, you and the other head are very funny together.

tchrist

Let us start with tooth.

Cerberus

3:13 AM

> Nouns are not verbs.

tchrist

A toothed smile has no verb to fall back upon.

And thus is no participle.

Cerberus

I think I have given you a nuanced and complete answer.

tchrist

Where?

Cerberus

15 mins ago, by Cerberus

@tchrist So I will say that you might say an "ossified" participle that has more or less turned into an adjective is no longer verbal at all, but the opposite position is also defensible.

tchrist

The one about having no choice?

Cerberus

3:14 AM

That was to the mollusc.

@snailboat Hey, do snails make any sound at all?

Just a random question.

tchrist

The congregation will please be seated.

Cerberus

We're not your congregation, and you are not our god!!

tchrist

No, I am your minister.

@Mitch Are you seated yet?

Cerberus

My minister is Ms Bussemaker, I think.

badass

Haliloya

Anonymous

3:18 AM

@Cerberus Sure. "being killed" looks like a (gerund-participial) clause to me.

Cerberus

That's a badass spelling!

Anonymous

@Cerberus "Participial adjective", perhaps?

Cerberus

@snailboat Right, I wouldn't call that a clause.

Anonymous

@Cerberus Yes!

Anonymous

Snails don't make very much sound.

Cerberus

3:18 AM

@snailboat Sure, why not?

tchrist

@snailboat That’s what the OED calls it.

Anonymous

They can't vocalize.

Anonymous

@tchrist That's what I'm used to calling it too. Yay, me!

Cerberus

Aww.

Anonymous

They make little popping sounds sometimes. I don't know how they make them.

Cerberus

3:19 AM

Ah, nice.

tchrist

Many are the mechanisms of sound-production in the invertebrates that require no laryngeal apparatus.

Anonymous

And you can hear them eat, as they rasp their chitinous radulae across various foodstuffs, tearing away bits and swallowing them.

Cerberus

Like...fingers?

tchrist

Like stridulation.

Anonymous

I have a baby snail. It's mostly translucent, especially its foot

Cerberus

3:20 AM

@snailboat Ohh they have chitinous radulae, lovely. Can they bite people?

tchrist

You now how to stridulate, don’t you?

Anonymous

When it eats lettuce, a green tube appears to form as the food slowly makes its way back from the mouth into the interior of the snail's body

Cerberus

@tchrist Pah, I have a backbone.

Anonymous

@Cerberus They can rasp at people! They will, too, just to see how they taste. That's how snails figure out whether or not you're food.

Anonymous

A cone snail might try to eat you, but you'd probably end up too big. It'd kill you anyway, though.

tchrist

3:21 AM

@Cerberus Then why are you so often stridulous?

Cerberus

@snailboat I had a (shell of a) conus marmoreus.

tchrist

Stridor is a terrible thing to waste.

Anonymous

@Cerberus Ooh.

Cerberus

I knew a living conus had a poisonous...stinger?

Anonymous

I've never seen a cone snail shell in person.

tchrist

3:22 AM

Especially when the Nazgûl are chasing you.

Cerberus

Fang?

@tchrist NOU

You see the stinger?

I didn't know it was striped.

Anonymous

@Cerberus The radula in a garden snail has thousands of tiny chitinous teeth, used to rasp at things like lettuce. A cone snail has a very different radula, one which can shoot out like a dart and deliver a powerful venom

tchrist

@Cerberus Wo ist dein Stachel?

Cerberus

Wait, it has both radulae and a stinger?

Anonymous

The striped thing up at the top looks to me like it's a siphon.

Cerberus

3:24 AM

@tchrist Tsk.

@snailboat As a child, I learned that that was its stinger.

Perhaps I was misinformed.

Anonymous

Well, maybe it is.

Cerberus

I used to collect sea shells.

tchrist

@Cerberus It’s Brahms.

Cerberus

I even remember drawings showing how you had to hold a living conus so as not to be stung.

I even practised it.

I think.

@tchrist Was he obscene like Mozart?

Anonymous

molluscs.at/gastropoda/sea/conotoxin.html

tchrist

3:26 AM

@Cerberus Not that kind of Stachel, silly!

Dann wird erfüllet werden das Wort,
 das geschrieben steht.
 Der Tod ist verschlungen in den Sieg.
 Tod, wo ist dein Stachel?
 Hölle, wo ist dein Sieg?

Anonymous

@Cerberus I think that whether I practiced or not, I'd be too afraid to handle a live cone snail

tchrist

Vivace, in C minor.

Cerberus

Turns out the stinger comes out of the same hole as the siphon.

Unlike man, coni don't understand multifunctionality.

tchrist

Sounds almost cloacal.

Cerberus

Well...

@tchrist Better.

My, you have an awfully long stinger, Sir Snail.

Anonymous

3:34 AM

What a good snail

tchrist

No flirting in this chat!

Anonymous

Oh, I assumed he was talking to the snail in the picture. I'm not a sir! :-)

tchrist

@Mitch said "In vertebrates, if the front appendages are not used primarily for walking, they will be called 'arms' instead of the usual legs." Oh yeah? Tell that to a bird! Or a bat! Or a manatee!

Or a sea turtle.

Anonymous

Sea turtles have to crawl on all fours at least a little bit after they first hatch

Anonymous

Or is "crawl" the best word? I'm not sure

Anonymous

3:37 AM

Anonymous

Baby sea turtles, making their way to the water :-)

tchrist

But are those arms and legs, or are they flippers?

Anonymous

I don't think I'd ever call them arms.

tchrist

Fish also have front appendages that are not arms nor legs.

And they are vertebrates.

Anonymous

Well, maybe. But only if I were unreasonably anthropomorphizing them

tchrist

3:39 AM

I guess a T. rex has wee little arms.

But he’s a bird, which I already mentioned.

Anonymous

Is it still thought that their arms were vestigial? That's what I learned when I was little

tchrist

Unclear.

Anonymous

("Still" is probably making an assumption--lots of things I learned when I was little were known to be wrong when they were taught to me)

Cerberus

I learned they may have been used to hold carcasses. But later research indicates that they may also have been used to claw at living animals.

Or that is what I remember reading more recently.

@snailboat I'm still not sure whether what I'm seeing in those photo's is the proboscis or an eye stalk.

The c. m. has three appendages.

Anonymous

@Cerberus Three? Isn't it four?

tchrist

3:43 AM

►

Anonymous

Proboscis, two eye stalks, siphon

Anonymous

The siphon is the stripey one.

Anonymous

Here is a link with a picture showing labels for the stripey part and the non-stripey thing: theconesnail.com/explore-cone-snails/body-anatomy

Anonymous

I learned to pronounce proboscis wrong when I was little. To this day, I still want to both pronounce and spell it wrong.

tchrist

Unless you prefer the Ravel version. . . .

►

Cerberus

3:46 AM

@snailboat Right, right, two eye stalks.

@snailboat I want to pronounce the c as a k...

tchrist

@Cerberus That only occurs in one related word alone, and no other: proboscoid.

Cerberus

@snailboat Ah, yes, much clearer.

One more thing: is the proboscis also the mouth?

I think it is?

Yes, it seems to be.

Anonymous

The mouth is actually much bigger.

Anonymous

Look at the picture on the left

Cerberus

@tchrist Alas! My mouth wants to pronounce proboscis the Latin way...

Anonymous

3:50 AM

Or here, watch this National Geographic video of a cone snail: youtube.com/watch?v=JjHMGSI_h0Q

Anonymous

You can see the proboscis comes out of its mouth

Cerberus

Wait, what I meant was that the proboscis comes out of its mouth.

Anonymous

As I said before, it evolved from the radula, the "tongue" that other snails use to rasp their food

Anonymous

Oh, I see!

Anonymous

I misunderstood, then

tchrist

3:52 AM

Hm, you know, those Slovenians are quite fetching. And the music is grand.

I almost ended up going to Slovenia once, but didn’t quite make it. Looked across the border though.

Cerberus

@snailboat No, I totally misspoke.

But it is clear now. So many tubes!

I love how it can swallow a huge fish!

@tchrist It is the most civilised place in (on?) the Balkan, I think.

tchrist

yes

Cerberus

@snailboat It looks as though the harpoon were attached to a thread that came out of the proboscis (which comes out of the mouth), is that right?

Anonymous

Is the Balkan (singular) the same thing as the Balkans (plural)?

Cerberus

I wouldn't use the plural, but I think people mean "Balkan states" by that.

Countries on the Balkan.

►

Insect-hunting caterpillar.

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…