English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2015-09-22

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12:37 AM

LOL

12:56 AM

@skillpatrol That is funny indeed.

I only took mathematics in high school 14 years ago, and I'd have to look up how this was done again, but I do remember it required integration, and integrals were symbols vaguely resembling ʃ.

2 hours later…

2:53 AM

I wish we had an answer which people believed that put things this clearly:

1

A: Um terço das mulheres presentes pode estar grávida?

Versão correta: Um terço das mulheres estão grávidas. Porquê? Vejamos: 1: a concordância do verbo não pode ser com o quantificador (Quantificador?...) Um terço das mulheres está grávido? Os terços não engravidam... 2: O adjetivo só pode fazer concordância com um substantivo (Ou com um ...

And he's funny, too:

> Chego à conclusão que a concordância é feita com o sujeito.
Bom, com as sujeitas; que os homens não engravidam.

6 hours later…

Matt E. Эллен

8:59 AM

@Cerberus indeed, finding the area under a line is the very definition of integration.

9:39 AM

sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/…

Matt E. Эллен

10:12 AM

they look like sweets (candy)!

:D

10:50 AM

Main site seems to be down.

Matt E. Эллен

s'working for me

just a glitch in the matrix?

Hello everybody. An opinion which is based on emotions is called "sentiment". What do we have for the opinion that is based on facts and rationality?

Matt E. Эллен

a reason?

@MattE.Эллен reason?!!

@Infinity A conclusion.

Matt E. Эллен

10:56 AM

ah! that's a better word

@MattE.Эллен I only had to mention it in chat and now it is back up.

Matt E. Эллен

:D

@MattE.Эллен Could also be deduction or inference.

@Robusto No! let me ask it differently. According to OALD sentiment means feeling or an opinion, especially one based on emotions. Now what can I say if I mean feeling or an opinion, especially one based on facts and rationality?

Don't you dare scold me in chat for trying to help you.

2

11:05 AM

@Robusto I did not scold you!!! How did you get the impression?!

You should reexamine your use of exclamation points when communicating with people.

@Robusto Got it. But I did not mean to scold you.

We convey what we mean by how we write. It is incumbent on the writer to make sure the wrong impression is not conveyed.

11:24 AM

That's right. But you should also take it into consideration that it is a cosmopolitain place and people with different english proficiency leves enter it and not everyone comes from the heart of London. So mistakes can happen. I believe in such places we need more tolerance than other places where everybody is a native speaker.

@Infinity Hey, did you come here looking for information or pity?

If you're looking for a place more suited to your skills, try English Language Learners.

I've given dozens of non-native speakers information here in chat, and I don't judge them. But that is only when they are polite and respectful. If they are rude and demanding, I don't bother.

Matt E. Эллен

1

A: Community Promotion Ads - 2015

up vote the ad for ELL, today!

@Robusto I think I made myself clear and continuing this discussion is not productive anymore.

@Infinity The way to discontinue a discussion is to discontinue it. Which means not pinging people in chat to tell them you are doing so.

DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME: Looks like clicking on or hovering over the link url http://a/%%30%30 will crash Chrome browsers. You have been warned.

11:49 AM

Let's just relax and ponder the infinite :-)

Ooooohhhmmmm...

Now, doesn't that feel better?

:D

Miscommunication happens. Welcome to the real world.

It's how we handle it that shows our character imo.

@skillpatrol This will help you in your quest.

user116848

12:07 PM

I have a grammar question.

user116848

And hi.

Hi pal :-)

user116848

Hi!

Hullo.

user116848

Hullo :)

user116848

12:09 PM

Is this an example of Subject–verb inversion?: "Their first track I heard in this xyz video" and "I heard their first track in this xyz video". The first of sounds odd but is it ungrammatical?

None of the above.

It is neither inversion nor ungrammatical.

However, it is OSV not SVO.

user116848

I see. So both sound are grammatical?

Important things I place first in my utterance so everybody knows what I’m talking about.

16

A: Is this correct: "Aloof the hallow things shall always be"?

Yes, this is the poetic device known as hyperbaton. It is quite common. See also its treatment here, which discusses the devices of lyric poetry, including in Le Guin and Tolkien. Speaking of whom, in Letter #171, J.R.R. Tolkien, responding to criticism of his ‘archaic’ style, wrote the follow...

> ‘Helms too they chose’ is archaic. Some (wrongly) class it as an ‘inversion’, since normal order is ‘They also chose helmets’ or ‘they chose helmets too’.

The whole OSV amalgam is usually seen as a subject in itself. "The first thing I saw was a masked man with a gun."

“Inversion” is VSO or VOS, not OSV.

Which Tolkien of course knew.

12:13 PM

He knew everything.

So long as the subject precedes the verb, no inversion has occurred.

> Till death do us part.

SOV is somewhat weird, but not inversion.

> Your father am I.

That’s inversion.

Like that guy in Star Wars yoda

user116848

Yeah Yoda grammar.

user116848

I tend to make sentences like that sometimes. Still correcting myself.

user116848

Yoda grammar

user116848

12:19 PM

@tchrist Good question.

Well, they made a lot of money off of how wise Yoda sounds :-)

user116848

haha!

0

Q: what's the meaning of (I have a soul)?

What does it mean when someone says( I have a soul? http://www.subzin.com/quotes/S459418978/How+I+Met+Your+Mother/Mary+the+Paralegal/Look%2C+I...+Tell+Mary+thanks%2C+but+no+thanks.+I+have+a+soul. (Thank you so much beforehand)

Repugnant and probably too broad or POB.

user116848

12:47 PM

It seems like OSV is used in many languages. Here:

user116848

Object–subject–verb

In linguistic typology, object–subject–verb (OSV) or object–agent–verb (OAV) is a classification of languages according to whether this structure predominates in pragmatically neutral expressions. An example of OSV word order would be: Oranges Sam ate. == OSV as unmarked word orderEdit == This type of word order in unmarked sentences (i.e. sentences in which an unusual word order is not used for emphasis) is rare. Most languages that use OSV as their default word order come from the Amazon basin, such as Xavante, Jamamadi, Apurinã, Kayabí and Nadëb. An Apurinã example: British Sign Language (BSL...

user116848

I think I should always proofread before writing here. I wrote this above: "So both sound are grammatical?" which I can't even make sense of if I read again.

user116848

Also only 2 mins edit time in chat.

@Arrowfar Japanese is notorious for this. Except that the subject is often indicated by verb forms, so that it is frequently OV instead of OSV.

user116848

Hm interesting.

12:55 PM

"notorious" is a relative term

"Everything" is a relative term.

Like notorious B.I.G.

Romance normally use (S)OV for clitics.

For non-clitics, you may need a case marker.

Translated from Japanese, many utterances are simple OV: "Wine drank", "Food ate", "Park to went" etc.

@Arrowfar many is relative

Also, aunt is a relative

People sometimes forget

1:05 PM

Your pronouns are relative.

Unless they've been estranged :P

user116848

@Mitch You made a very good comment about poems:

user116848

Yes, it would sound very awkward in any speech other than possibly oratory (which tends towards the poetic). Grammar rules are messed with in poetry, not exactly anything goes, but whatever artistically 'works'. So 'grammatically correct for a poem' is pretty loose. — Mitch Aug 17 '12 at 21:52

Bat signal at 322.

1:21 PM

@Robusto Woohoo, it worked!

@Arrowfar I was right! Take that, Mr. Talbot, my 8th grade literature class teacher!

I already read about this Chrome link, and I tried it, but nothing happened.

Your link, however, works.

For full disclosure, my math teacher probably could have shaved off a point here or there.

@skillpatrol All relatives are strange.

user116848

They say all languages are relative when it comes to difficulty in learning them.

user116848

I can speak Urdu, and Arabic and Urdu have some similarities but I found out that I had more difficulty in learning Arabic than Engiish.

user116848

1:22 PM

Dunno why?

@Arrowfar different things are being learned. pronunciation, vocabulary, syntax.

i guess writing too.

user116848

Yeah.

Japanese and Chinese share (some) writing but pronunciation and syntax are almost literally complete opposites.

@Arrowfar how many languages do they teach in school there?

Arabic and Urdu have (mostly) the same writing, and maybe a lot of vocab, but mostly different syntax (Urdu and English probably have closer syntax)

1:26 PM

@Mitch Indeed.

But non-relatives are stranger

user116848

@skillpatrol In English schools here English is mandatory but in some schools they also teach other languages, but it is all optional. In my school they taught Arabic too.

user116848

And sometimes they teach regional languages too.

user116848

I studied a regional language too but just to clear the exams.

Punjabi? (is that regional for you?)

user116848

1:28 PM

Yeah Punjabi, Sindhi etc.

Tadjik?

or however they spell it.

user116848

No not Tajik.

user116848

It is for Persians I think.

user image

user116848

Funneh.

1:50 PM

@skillpatrol took me a few moments.

@MattE.Эллен I thought I just saw myself out of the corner of my eye. Proof!

Wait, do mirrors count?

Matt E. Эллен

mirrors have no way of counting, AFAIK

user image

It's interesting how countries like Uganda have a freer Internet than Holland, Sweden, etc.

This should tell us something.

vexen.co.uk/countries/best.html

2:08 PM

@Mitch You are a stranger, too... IIRC

2:18 PM

@skillpatrol Is that you?

Everything people reference in here is 100% original with the poster, and crafted by them.

0

Q: Compound possessives and yours

which is correct: Thank you for your and your team's time or Thank you for yours and your team's time and should (or does it make a difference if) I place commas before and after "and your team's" ... thanks!!

This is a dupe, but I can't find a good canonical. They all seem to address a more constrained aspect of this.

But I'm pretty sure there must be one.

9

Q: "Nikki's and Alice's X" vs. "Nikki and Alice's X"

Which option is grammatical? There will be readings from Nikki Giovanni’s and Alice Walker’s writings. There will be readings from Nikki Giovanni and Alice Walker's writings. Saying it out loud the latter sounds right, but looking at it the former looks better.

word-choice grammaticality possessive apostrophe parallelism

I went with

82

Q: "My wife and I's seafood collaboration dinner"

I just stumbled upon a Reddit post titled: My wife and I's seafood collaboration dinner. How does it look? Sure enough, the top comment immediately points out that it should be "my wife's and my". However, a cross-post to the Grammar subreddit produced the following comment: It's fine a...

possessive personal-pronouns apostrophe noun-phrases

Which feels closer and is more of an Ur-question on this site.

2:55 PM

@MattE.Эллен Place one mirror in front of another. Way way way back in the repeated images, really faded and really small, just barely behind next to your eye, is a little calculator that it uses. Which proves that it can't count and needs a machine. Stupid mirrors.

@Robusto The canonical question is "Did you hear about the crab that went to the seafood dance?" "He pulled a mussel".

@Gigili Stranger than that.

@Cerberus I question a lot of that. who is making up that data? Sure the people who made the list think "Iran bad" "US good" But what are the quantitative facts? Uganda is probably free because they have absolutely no funds to implement any government control. Also, define freedom.

@Mitch Yes, it will have something to do with that. But you can see which data he used on the page.

at that link?

Yes. Hover over "data source" in the table of your interest.

Weird. I got logged out of SE and couldn't get back in because it kept thinking I was someone else. I had to clear cookies and restart the browser.

They used data from Freedom House for the "Internet Freedom" data.

3:07 PM

Houses aren't free. They cost lots of money.

@Robusto Weird.

I'm sure Freedom House is far from perfect.

And all of those data are to some degree interpretations.

But they're not all nonsense.

@Cerberus You almost had me there. Yes it looks quantitative, but in the tables they don't say how the columns are calculated.

> "Violations of User Rights: measures legal protections and restrictions on online
activity; surveillance; privacy; and repercussions for online activity, such as legal
prosecution, imprisonment, physical attacks, or other forms of harassment. "

How are those counted? What is the source for that (also for the other 2 columns which are vaguer)

I want truth now! Before lunch! OK, after lunch is fine, too.

@Mitch Those are just the data sources. He also has sections on methodology.

@Cerberus both are important.

one without the other makes the data doubtable.

Of course.

I think in the case of Internet Freedom he just copied the scores from Freedom House?

3:18 PM

In fact I'd have to disagree anecdotally. I bet the privacy in a lot of the developing countries is way more than in developed because of the justification I gave, little resource or institutional knwledge available to do such things.

@Cerberus OK. so then Freedom house has a link to where the scores came from?

Hover over the table to get to the PDF from Freedom House.

I'm sure they explain some of their methodology.

@Mitch I don't see how that is disagreement. If the Internet is free in country X because the country has no government to speak of, then it is free.

Oh. I went to that link to the PDF and that's what I'm now concerned about.

I'm concerned that it is very believable given that it looks quantitative (it's actually very nicely done analysis, and comparison graphs), but I don't see the support for the individual numbers in the tables.

I haven't read the PDF.

Of course freedom is never really quantitative, so they must have put some intuitive numbers on certain factors.

@Cerberus right. but from the links and data given, we can't judge such a hypothesis. If humans just educatedly guess at a number (for a given feature for a given country) that is too much of a bias.

@Cerberus intuition is all bias!

You'd need to define those things order for me to agree or disagree.

I'm sure you could make a different table based on another reasonable assessment of available data on those countries, but I'm guessing Random House's table is not entirely unreasonable.

3:37 PM

@Cerberus sure they are plausible but I could come up with lots of other plausible orderings. And it hides a lot of 'size' problems. They don't say if things are per capita or absolute.

More importantly:

0

Q: WTH is up with the 'beyond 300' review queue?

As of Sept 22, 11:24am UTC-4, the review queue is at 306: This seems outrageous. 209 close items, 37 first posts, a smattering of others (which don't add to near 306) That's just a lot of work. Going through the Low Quality queue tends to reduce the total one-to-one (nice!). Going through th...

@Mitch Nor entirely sure what your point is here.

room topic changed to English Language & Usage: Now with two scoops of raisins [elu-the-sequel]

4:00 PM

@Cerberus Andorra is a tiny country with small population. One email router probably serves the entire country, and that server may even be outside that country! So if the metric is government controlled servers, that value is chaotic depending on total vs per capita, and if it has to be within the country. (i.e. numbers are more reliable the bigger the population)

@Mitch Umm I'm not sure about this particular issue, but I'm sure different verdicts are possible.

4:30 PM

We average two days to close things here.

Over Closed Asked Percent
 1d     12     65 18.46 %
 2d     51    129 39.52 %
 7d    174    435 40.00 %
14d    363    915 39.67 %
30d    769   2036 37.77 %
90d   2455   6284 39.07 %

> I think we need to ask the CMs to raise our close-vote count from 24 to 50 the way it is on the bigger sites. Otherwise the close vote queue will just keep growing. At 1,500% of any one person’s quotidian quota of close votes, it is really really hard to keep up.

Math has a CVRQ of ~60, and they have 50 per day.

@tchrist Eventually the close votes on unclosed questions decay, right? I wonder what is the formula for that.

@Robusto YES!

75

Q: Age close votes after 14 days, regardless of views, allowing recasting

I've been putting this off for a long time... Close vote aging - the deactivation of votes that haven't resulted in a question being closed - is a critical part of the vote-to-close system, but has something of a troubled history: all too often, it has been more annoying than useful, capricious...

feature-request status-completed vote-to-close

> 1. Start aging votes after 14 days, regardless of view count. That is, if the newest vote on the question is 14 days old, aging will begin even if the view threshold has not been exceeded. If the view threshold is exceeded sooner, then the existing time threshold (4 days since newest vote) will be used instead.

This should be site-configurable on the off-chance that we need it to be greater somewhere (or decide that even this is too long to wait), but realistically this should be sufficient - the vast, vast majority of questions that do get closed are closed in under half this time. We s…

I don't know how many die.

> 2. Allow re-casting votes that've aged away after 14 days. That is, 14 days (use the same site-configurable value used in #1 here) after your vote has aged away, you're free to cast the same vote again.

4:50 PM

what happens at 14 days? The close vote disappears? Or is that the start of some half-life decay?

They age and eventually evaporate.

5:06 PM

that's relative @Mitch

5:45 PM

@tchrist but is aging a strict cutoff, or some continuously decaying weight?

@Gigili "strange (adj.) ... Sense of "queer, surprising" is attested from late 14c. In nuclear physics, from 1956."

Some words just pop out of thin air in quantum physics.

2 hours later…

7:32 PM

@JohanLarsson: Ever heard Huddie Ledbetter?

LeadBelly - Midnight Special

a/k/a Leadbelly.

nope, don't think so

puts on headphones

You've heard of Robert Johnson, surely?

Sweet Home Chicago

yeah

where ~~it all~~ blues started right?

Yup.

how is work?

Robert > Leadbelly I think

7:37 PM

@JohanLarsson Listen to more

ok

This day winding down now
At God speeded summer's end
In the torrent salmon sun,
In my seashaken house
On a breakneck of rocks
Tangled with chirrup and fruit,
Froth, flute, fin, and quill
At a wood's dancing hoof,
By scummed, starfish sands
With their fishwife cross
Gulls, pipers, cockles, and snails,
Out there, crow black, men
Tackled with clouds, who kneel
To the sunset nets,
Geese nearly in heaven, boys
Stabbing, and herons, and shells
That speak seven seas,
Eternal waters away
From the cities of nine

@JohanLarsson That's how work is.

Dylan?

@Rob I linked this right? They are pretty slick imo.

Sometimes easy listening is right.

8:11 PM

this is somewhat interesting.

8:49 PM

ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_renewables

1 hour later…

9:56 PM

@JohanLarsson Dylan Thomas.

My guess was the other Dylan. Never read Thomas.

@JohanLarsson The poem itself.

Interesting note: the poem rhymes in reverse at the break.

1 hour later…

11:26 PM

How long does it take to grow a bird from a seed if you give it enough water and air and sunshine?

Because they prey on other birds or animals. — rogermue 3 hours ago

11:47 PM

Wut?

Apparently in Grande Germania, birds are not animals.

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