English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

12:01 AM

Q: O God, when shall the syntactic-analysis wars on ELU ever end?
A: When the music stops, any angel left without a pinhead to sit on will be forever banished to the abyss.

Robusto

12:27 AM

That's what they said last time.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

12:50 AM

Oh, but I hate the verb form of gift.

I wish I didn't.

Johan Larsson

1:35 AM

Why do you hate it?

Yooo people.

hej på dej

Hmm what's that?

hey (on) you

How are things?

Cerberus

1:51 AM

Cool.

I have just come back from a party.

Now I'm very tired.

How about you?

Still enjoying winter?

Johan Larsson

no winter here, been raining for two days

Cerberus

Oww.

It's been dry and 5 degrees here for two days.

Johan Larsson

And the snow was gone before that.

Cerberus

Or more.

Never had any snow here.

Johan Larsson

Never as in not this year?

Cerberus

1:55 AM

Not this winter.

Last winter, we had very little snow too.

The winter before that, we had a lot of snow.

Johan Larsson

I even bought a snowmobile :)

Cerberus

Or at least the ground was covered in snow where it wasn't cleaned up until April or so.

Haha wow.

How much does that kost?

Johan Larsson

€9k, two years old.

Cerberus

I see.

I wish I had that much money hehe.

Is it to your liking?

Johan Larsson

They say it is fun to ride.

I have not tried it yet but it look ok.

oh 03:00 we should sleep

Jasper Loy

2:00 AM

I have been sleeping intermittently. Sleep for a while, wake up for a while, and so on. Too many disturbing thoughts.

Cerberus

True.

My eyelids are dropping.

Sleep well!

Jasper Loy

You two go to sleep. I will go to think.

Cerberus

@JasperLoy I wake up after a few hours too, then no more sleep. No disturbing thoughts, though

Johan Larsson

sleep well and long

Jasper Loy

@Cerberus My thoughts now are extremely disturbing. I hope things get better for me soon.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

2:05 AM

@JohanLarsson There's almost always an easier if not better way to say it.

"I gave it to her."

Cerberus

Thank you! My new baby (phone) will be delivered on the morrow, so I can't sleep too long...

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

"I'm going to give it to him for Kwanzaa."

Cerberus

@JasperLoy I hope and believe that they shall.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

"She made this and gave it to me."

Cerberus

Bai!

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

2:05 AM

Bai!

Cerberus

Bai Corney.

Jasper Loy

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 When people say bye, I often find it hard to figure who has left and who is left.

Robusto

2:41 AM

0

Q: How to understand ' I am of big eye'?

'I am of big eye' means 'I am a person whose eye is big' ? Furthermore, how to understand the usage of 'somebody/thing is of something'?

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者!

I come and you go.

Anyway, I am of small patience.

If I were a flower I'd be impatiens!

room topic changed to English Language & Usage: Doolally on tap (no tags)

@Cerberus Did you make an appointment to get your tooth fixed yet?

Alan Munn

4:40 AM

Anyone here?

Cerberus

10:50 AM

@Robusto I did not, it didn't seem an issue.

The last time I saw my dentist was probably 8 years ago or so.

He has been dead for a while now.

And I have this fairly expensive dental insurance (€25/m), God knows why.

Is dental care included in regular health insurance in your country? Here, it is not. Only dental surgery is.

Robusto

We need special coverage. If your employer covers it, it's fine. Otherwise, you pay.

Johan Larsson

@Cerberus I don't buy phones :)

Cerberus

11:50 AM

@Robusto Ah okay.

@JohanLarsson I buy a new phone every 2.5 years!

And this one costs €13/month for two years.

Johan Larsson

I refuse to even be given a new phone.

Cerberus

I thought you were already using the Android?

Johan Larsson

Don't think you can go under that.

But that was gf giving me a used phone.

Cerberus

Maybe I can give away phones to people to go below you...

@JohanLarsson QED!

Johan Larsson

Is gf ok or is it a no-cos violation?

@Cerberus Sell them?

If you sell them with profit you are under.

Cerberus

12:06 PM

Oh, is it measured in money?

@JohanLarsson Haha. It is not nearly as bad, because it isn't slangy.

Cerberus

2:20 PM

@Robusto It has arrived! It is superb!

Jez

im weighing up which phone to get now

i have an HTC desire S at the moment

where's a good place to go to compare good new contractless phones?

Johan Larsson

@Jez If you want an Android you can use Cerb as iPhoneComparer

<- in the Sauna

Cerberus

Hehehe yes!

@JohanLarsson Are you naked?

Johan Larsson

2:40 PM

Back now, dressed.

Jez

anyone got any smartphone tips? what are the best ones right now?

Robusto

@Cerberus Glad you like it.

@Jez @Cerb and I are quite happy with the LG G2. But there's an LG G3 out now that has better specs and a removable battery. Still, performance and battery life are no problem at all on the G2.

Jez

and then some say Samsung are better, and some say HTC are better

Robusto

My son and I both did extensive comparisons and both of us chose the G2.

We looked at the Samsungs and the HTCs.

This was a year ago, though, so things might have changed since then. But at the time, the G2 was clearly better.

Also looked at Motorola, which was quickly eliminated from contention.

Jez

whats wrong with HTC?

my current HTC has great build quality; dropped a bunch of times and still working fine

(with a cracked screen lol)

Robusto

2:51 PM

I've dropped my G2 several times. No cracked screen.

Jez

hmm

the HTCs seem to have onscreen controls. bit shitty.

Robusto

I use an unobtrusive semi-hard case, though. Kind of a hard rubber feel to it. Still very slim, with enough grip to it when you want to grip it, and enough slide to it when you want it to slide (as in a pocket).

Jez

yeah i think i'll get a case this time. my brother also uses a film over the screen to protect it. however, his Samsung's sound has just buggered up :-)

i don't trust Samsung build quality since i bought a phone from them (this was years ago) and the buttons started breaking within literally days

havent bought from them since

this HTC i have now is much better so i may go HTC again

the HTC One M8 looks ok

Jeremy Miller

@MattЭллен The deletion of my answer on this post via your binding vote is quite scary. I will ponder returning to ELU when content is valued.

Jez

simplyelectronics.net/…

only £322

Three want me to pay £450 for it!

Robusto

3:03 PM

That's outrageous.

tchrist

@Rob Finish Gibson yet?

Jez

hmm

the Samsung Galaxy S5 has full water resistance

that's pretty impressive. maybe i'll go for that.

Robusto

@tchrist Not yet. Still working on it.

Had to put it down because we seem to be doing a lot of entertaining.

tchrist

I had to do the same thing at one point, and when I picked it back up again a couple days later, I realized that I had read what I’d read too quickly to retain enough context in longer-term memory, so was lost for a few chapters again.

Writers of lesser experience or targeting a different readership might have been tempted to include a dramatis personae cheat-sheet, and perhaps also a glossary of neologisms. Gibson doesn't; you have to work for that.

Robusto

@tchrist Yeah. There's a lot of hopping around.

I think if I had time to just sit and read it straight through those things would be easier.

tchrist

3:18 PM

Yes.

He also has the habit of starting each chapter with unbound pronouns, likes he or she. This isn’t so bad once you realize he's almost always switching between the two viewpoint characters, one male and the other female.

Also, it took me till my restart to realize what he was doing with chapter titles.

Robusto

He also tends to leave subjects completely out of a lot of sentences, leaving you to infer them.

tchrist

That’s why I was quoting him here and saying that the day pineapples try that book is the day ELU crumbles under their weight: he does a lot of the things you're told "not" to do.

But yes, there very much is a lot of important stuff that he intentionally does not write down. It's part of his style. He at one point actually said that he thinks it's better that way, leaving each reader to "fill in the spaces" in their own minds.

Robusto

@tchrist Yeah, I don't think we need to worry too much about that. Unless ESL teachers start assigning such books out of some sadistic impulse or other.

tchrist

Hey, I tried to read Name of the Rose in the original. :)

Too dense. But I do upon reread keep the Italian handy when I'm curious. It's incredible what a good job Eco’s English-language translator did with that.

Robusto

@tchrist I think you mean "in the original(s)."

tchrist

3:25 PM

?

Robusto

Eco always writes in multiple languages.

tchrist

s/English/Italian/g

And leave the rest alone. :)

Robusto

What about Latin in TNotR?

tchrist

Untouched.

It’s meant to do that to you.

The only place where the mix clashes badly is in Salvatore’s glossolalia.

Robusto

> Baudolino was translated into English in 2001 by William Weaver. The novel presented a number of particular difficulties in translation, not the least of which is that there are ten or so pages written in a made-up language that is a mixture of Latin, medieval Italian and other languages (intended to reconstruct how a barely-literate Italian peasant boy of the 12th Century would have tried to write in the vernacular).

tchrist

3:27 PM

Because when it's all in Romance, it all blends together, but when you pick out just the English and leave the rest, it doesn't work so well.

Yes exactly, that’s the parts I was talking about.

Robusto

Hyphens are just typographic conventions in any case; they attempt to represent a feature of the spoken language. — TRomano 10 mins ago

Huh?

tchrist

My friend Peter Salus was Eco’s roommate in college. Peter also met Tolkien and spent time with Tolkien in the latter's home in Oxford.

Robusto

Interesting.

tchrist

Peter H. Salus

Peter H. Salus is a linguist, computer scientist, historian of technology, author in many fields, and an editor of books and journals. He has conducted research in germanistics, language acquisition, and computer languages. He has a 1963 PhD in Linguistics from New York University. After an intense academic career serving as professor and dean at several universities, he is now largely retired. He has also been Executive Director of both the USENIX Association and the Sun User Group, and Vice President of the Free Software Foundation; in addition, he has worked for several high tech startups. From...

He has published some interesting "Unix cultural history" books.

I believe some of his linguistics work was in Tocharian, which he may well have once upon a time taught; I'm forgetting.

He's the one who convinced me to read Dante untranslated.

Robusto

Perhaps you could help resolve some of the "issues" on his page.

tchrist

3:33 PM

I think they need third-party references.

It was Peter's early work with Auden that brought him into Tolkien's orbit.

Wow, I remember the epoch_time=1_000_000_000 event, exactly where I was, what I was doing, with whom, etc.

@Robusto More syntactic relationships I would think, though, not aspects of the spoken language. The spoken language has no punctuation whatsoever. There is no difference between a "bus driver", a "bus-driver", and a "busdriver".

2

Robusto

@tchrist Yeah, but read the comment chain. And TRomano's answer above it.

tchrist

I’m not always impressed by his answers.

Robusto

In this one he's simply wrong.

Typographic conventions help us read and avoid ambiguities like these, so I'm not sure I understand your dismissal of them. — Robusto 18 mins ago

Jez

@Robusto how about the LG G3?

Robusto

I mentioned it above.

Jez

3:47 PM

oh you mentioned that.

no splash protection annoyingly

Robusto

Faster processor, removable battery.

Jez

i think i'm leading towards that phone

how do you find having the power and volume buttons on the back? seems like it could be annoying

Robusto

It could well be my next, come fall.

Jez

Autumn, not fall

Robusto

Maybe where you come from.

> In American English, fall is the season between summer and winter.

Jez

3:53 PM

yeah

and it's a dumb name and you should say Autumn :-P

just like you should pronounce "herb" sensibly

Robusto

And you shouldn't call a truck a lorry.

Mitch

@Jez autumn doesn't mean anything. fall is when the leaves fall. done.

and spring is when they spring out.

words are logical

except in England

Jez

and winter is when...

and summer is when...

Robusto

And the time-change mnemonic doesn't work in England: spring forward, autumn back? I don't think so.

Spring forward, fall back. QED

Johan Larsson

@Robusto I think you lack resolution there.

Robusto

3:56 PM

@JohanLarsson I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

Johan Larsson

Sommar > höst > svartmörker > winter.

Robusto

I suppose höst and Ger. Herbst come from the same root.

Jez

@Robusto if you need a mnemonic to remember 4 seasons there's something wrong with you

Johan Larsson

Summer & autumn have a clear definition. Don't remember it. After the leaves fall and the nature is dead the svartmörker begins. It lasts until snow comes and makes everything beautiful again.

I've been spamming this many times.

Robusto

@Jez It's got nothing to do with remembering the seasons. It's about remembering which way to move the clock.

2

Jez

3:58 PM

well, as long as spring forward works, the other one is pretty obvious

anyway, i say we should stick with GMT all year round.

4

Mitch

I think we turn the clocks back an hour both in the fall and the spring. reduces confusion and you get an extra hour of life twice a year.

3

Robusto

@Jez You're such a chauvinist I'm surprised you're not French.

Jez

mais peut-être si, vous rosbif

Nivedita

How many of you have English as your second language?

Which one's your first?

Johan Larsson

Star wars.

I have no yellow star in the current list.

@Nivedita {Swedish, C#, English}

Nivedita

4:06 PM

c# lol :D @JohanLarsson

Jez

ok, i did it :-)

Items Ordered:
1xLG G3 D855 (Black) 32GB LTE SIM Free / Unlocked

price was about £290

Stack Exchange

Limerick Machine: Someone once made a mistake It did not lead to an earthquake Nor did it destroy One girl or one...

posted on January 03, 2015 by sgdi

Someone once made a mistake It did not lead to an earthquake Nor did it destroy One girl or one boy So what is this fuss that you make?

Robusto

4:25 PM

Nice. Especially the "unlocked" part.

@JohanLarsson What is the literal translation of svartmörker? Black ________?

Johan Larsson

4:44 PM

@Robusto blackdarkness, piled.

Robusto

So mörk must come from the same root as English murk.

Johan Larsson

dunno

Robusto

Why wouldja?

Johan Larsson

Had a great session today. Only problem is that it was too short. GF required attendance for dinner.

Robusto

I think it's kinda funny when an HDMI cable manufacturer bills its product as "high speed HDMI cable."

Because electricity is slower in other cables?

Johan Larsson

4:48 PM

Maybe competition forces them to be creative.

Robusto

be creative === lie

In this case, anyway.

It's not lying, it's truth management.

Johan Larsson

I'm not sure but I think conductance is related to speed.

Robusto

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者: Whaddya think? High-speed cables or no?

Anyway, I don't think impedance has anything to do with speed. I could be wrong, however.

Johan Larsson

hmm, I meant resistance. Not sure conductance is 1/ resistance

Impedance is something else.

in Lounge<C++> on Stack Overflow Chat, 14 mins ago, by Lightness Races in Orbit

Jasper Loy

5:41 PM

Hi.

Ionică Bizău

Evening!

tepples

Apparently I screwed up.

Any idea how to improve this question about a slang term to "show any research effort" or make it no longer "unclear or not useful"?

Ionică Bizău

How is correct: "mobile support landed on our library" or "mobile support landed in our library"?

(or how can I formulate it to be correct?)

tepples

I'd use "landed in".

Ionică Bizău

Thanks, +30 from me on SO. :-)

tepples

5:46 PM

Hopefully it won't get reversed as serial voting.

Ionică Bizău

@tepples Is it correct "mobile support landed in <library name> library"?

Don't worry. :D

Or should it be "... in the <library name> library"?

tepples

The one with "the" sounds better.

Ionică Bizău

Ok, +10 :p

@tepples Tweeted it. :-)

tepples

But without "library", don't use "the".

"Mobile support landed in the Unicoin library" or "Mobile support landed in libunicoin".

Ionică Bizău

Yes, thanks! :-)

BTW, do you have GitHub account?

tepples

5:50 PM

not yet

Ionică Bizău

Create one, and you will not regret. :-)

tepples

So who can help me improve this question?

Mitch

6:20 PM

@tepples Maybe state that a dictionary/google search yielded nothing?

tepples

thanks Mitch

Mostly I was worried that that post was going to become my first strike of three toward a question ban.

Mitch

Well, it'll be controversial because of the taboo nature.

tepples

I see your point on Meta Stack Exchange and child metas, where disagreement downvotes are expected on controversial questions and answers. But main sites tend to apply automatic question bans, and the evidence I have is that one gets three strikes.

Robusto

6:52 PM

I don't see anything wrong with the question, esp. since the answer is clear and thorough.

RegDwigнt

7:15 PM

So last night I deleted all my comments from last year, and also everyone else's. That did get me the Resolution hat at last.

@Robusto is sucking wind with 17 hats. I think we all expected more from him.

2

In other news, The publishers HarperCollins is withdrawing from sale an atlas that omitted Israel from its maps after the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales said it was harmful to peace efforts in the Middle East.

Good thing there's a Bishops' Conference of England and Wales!

tchrist

Idiots.

RegDwigнt

Who now?

Of course I'll settle for "everybody".

tchrist

HC for even attempting such a thing.

RegDwigнt

"The publishers is". What are this grammer?

One thing I've only just realized, though. After looking at this map. That place is still the world's toilet bowl without Israel.

So for best results, we should still nuke it wholesale and turn it into a parking lot.

Jez

7:37 PM

toilet bowl?

@JohanLarsson hahaha love it

nyuszika7h

what is this "chat for hat" thing?

Jasper Loy

@Jez Are you still worried about your health?

Jez

a little... less so

Jasper Loy

If you worry too much about it, you should see a shrink.

Jez

and i really really wish the health stackexchange was up and running

tchrist

7:50 PM

*were

Jez

yes, were

Johan Larsson

I'm never going to learn that was/were thing

Jez

if it were = hypothetical/subjunctive

it was = indicative/actually happened

but yeah native speakers tend to forget it too

tchrist

Not if you’ve seriously studied a Romance language.

Or been whined at in school until you got it right.

The hard thing is remembering which conjunctions or verbs trigger it or not, depending on what language you're in. For example, in English, wish triggers it but hope does not.

Jez

@tchrist but not if you're this guy: theguardian.com/science/2013/sep/30/…

tchrist

8:01 PM

You seem to have accidentally linked to the Daily Fail.

Jez

erm, it's the guardian

tchrist

Hard to tell.

Jez

> Guardian Style Guide author David Marsh set out to master perfect grammatical English – but discovered that 'correct' isn't always best. Here are the 10 grammar laws you no longer need to check

David Marsh spitoon

what a waste of space

then again, The Guardian is the rag that regularly publishes anything Jessica Valenti feels like ejaculating in her daily feminazi scrawl column

Mitch

What's with all the Tunbridge Wells hatin'?

Robusto

@RegDwigнt You should have expected less.

Mitch

8:10 PM

Milton Keynes ain't no hollaback girl.

Jasper Loy

I am glad hats end soon. Hats are stupid.

Mitch

Like people.

Or is that idiots?

Jez

@JasperLoy i've had this darn chameleon on my head for days now

Jasper Loy

@Jez Maybe it's making you feel sick.

Robusto

@Mitch Neither is John Maynard Keynes. Nor Milton Friedman.

Jasper Loy

8:16 PM

Yesterday I felt so bad I did not eat anything for a whole day. I just had two bananas.

Johan Larsson

Keynes is probably not very happy with how things turned out. He has been used as alibi for gigantic administrations around the planet.

Mitch

@Robusto Nor Orson Wells. Nor ... Tunbridge ... um... Jones. All economists of the highest rank.

Robusto

@JohanLarsson If it hadn't been for Keynes, we'd be in a depression right now. You too.

Mitch

@JohanLarsson Keynes was an idiot. Viva la Revolucion!

Jasper Loy

Keynes did not save me from my depression.

Johan Larsson

8:19 PM

@Robusto I'm not saying Keynes was wrong.

Mitch

See? Keynes was a loser.

And lame.

Literally. He had to use a cane.

Robusto

@JasperLoy Well, did you try getting your government to increase liquidity and pump money into the economy? No? Then you have no grounds to complain.

Mitch

But still you can judge him on that.

@Robusto What if he did try? By saying out loud 'please, government, do that liquidity thing with the pump and stuff'.

Robusto

@Mitch He can't just say it into a pillow. It has to go through channels.

Jasper Loy

I don't know if you realise I am talking about another kind of depression. Whoosh.

Robusto

8:21 PM

Of course we do. You'll pardon us if we can't resist making jokes about anything and everything.

Mitch

No I think you can allow the pillow if you scream it as much as you can.

@JasperLoy There are kinds of depression?

Jasper Loy

So I am always the one being whooshed?

Mitch

So recession doesn't mean a manic economy?

Robusto

If the whoosh fits, wear it.

Mitch

That whoosh fits me like a velvet glove. Almost feels too good.

@Robusto Everything is fair game. But not just anything.

@JasperLoy We got it. It was funny. But then we kept going. We've gone so far that we can almost see my house from here.

Robusto

8:25 PM

I can't see my house from here because I'm inside it.

Mitch

Or a monic academy.

@Robusto You can't see the forest for the walls.

"It's a Wonderful Life" and "Inception" follow the same plot structure. Discuss.

Yes, that's vary astute of you. I agree.

Discussion done.

Every time you say "I don't believe in faeries", a faery dies. With a teeny-tiny scream.

Robusto

What if you say you don't believe in unicorns? Do those die too?

Jasper Loy

I believe in miracles.

Mitch

@Jez I just read everything she's ever written. The sentiment isn't bad, it's just she's just like every other Guardian editorialist: she just assumes she knows better than everybody else.

@Robusto How insensitive. Those last forever. I mean they have unicorn blood. Pretty obviously a cure for death.

"Confusion between the verbs lay and lie arises because the present tense of the former is the past tense of the latter. The easy way not to mix them up is to remember that lay is a transitive verb (it takes an object); lie is intransitive. If you lay a table or an egg, or you lay something down, the past tense is laid. If you lie down, the past tense is lay. "

I know that's boring but wait for it...

"You will note that strictly – as Bob Dylan was inviting the lady in question to lie down across his big brass bed, rather than reporting that she had done so in the past – he should have sung "Lie Lady Lie" rather than "Lay Lady Lay". If you try singing it like that, however, it sounds Australian"

Matt Эллен

9:40 PM

@JeremyMiller I'll be honest, I didn't understand what you wrote. Now I've seen medica's comment (comments aren't available in the flag queue) I can sort of see where you're coming from, but it's not exactly helpful to have an answer that is less clear than the metaphor it is trying to make sense of. I didn't mean to scare you.

Johan Larsson

10:16 PM

Matt are you still on VS1998?

Jez

10:46 PM

ah, it's good being back in better health. i can actually concentrate on other stuff

though i still have a dentist's and doctor's appointment on Tuesday

hope none of these lumps turn out to be cancerous

Johan Larsson

yeah

Jez

i still have a significant lump in my groin