English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

terdon

14:00

@snailboat Ah! Nice one!

Anonymous

And that tendency makes the nouns morphologically more like adjectives, since adjectives never bear plural marking.

Anonymous

So if you look at the language more historically, saying a noun in that position is "used as an adjective" actually makes a bit more sense than it does today.

Anonymous

But in the last, what is it, 70 years? It's been changing.

Anonymous

I don't have all the answers.

Lawrence

@terdon True. But first, we needed to establish that they are singular by default - that's what's (close to being) nailed. We can now ask why.

Anonymous

14:03

The plural attributive in contemporary English (1962) describes examples from the 40s.

terdon

@Lawrence Oh. I thought that was pretty clear. It was the premise I started with, anyway. It is certainly the case for things like lawn mowing or tree felling etc. Which seem slightly different from tree frogs and chicken soup. Still, different or not, we've only been able to come up with a few exceptions to the singular rule for either.

Anonymous

@terdon There are a bunch of different semantic relationships that N1 can bear to N2 in a N-N compound/phrase.

terdon

@snailboat And tree and frogs have one while chicken and soup have another?

Anonymous

But the semantic relationships don't necessarily line up with the grammar.

Anonymous

So you might find that two things seem different because they're different in meaning, but have the same grammar; or that they're different grammatically, but they have the same sort of semantic relationship.

terdon

14:08

Right.

Anonymous

But we never did decide that tree was actually an attributive noun in tree felling.

Anonymous

We just talked about if it was.

Anonymous

It could be a pre-head complement licensed by the head noun.

Matt E. Эллен

what's the difference?

terdon

@snailboat Could you explain that to the gramar illiterate?

Anonymous

14:15

Complements are licensed by their heads. In a flower seller, the deverbal noun seller licenses flower as a complement, just as in She sells flowers, sells licenses flowers as a complement (specifically a direct object).

Anonymous

And there's a correspondence between the two.

Anonymous

They have the same semantic relationship, but nouns don't take direct objects (or indeed objects of any kind), so they take them as pre-head complements instead.

Cerberus

@snailboat Isn't this only semantic?

Anonymous

You can call that a kind of attributive noun if you like, but it's different from the other sort.

Cerberus

In flower seller, the head is seller, so it is flower that is dependent, not seller.

Oh, wait, I mislooked.

That was exactly what you were saying.

I thought you were saying that seller was the complement, but you weren't.

Anonymous

14:18

Ah, I'm sorry, I might not be communicating very well :-)

Cerberus

No, it was my fault.

You were perfectly clear.

Matt E. Эллен

@snailboat what's the other sort?

Cerberus

@terdon Hmm what was this about Latin syntax?

Anonymous

I was trying to establish a distinction between complements (which are licensed by their heads) and modifiers (which are not).

Cerberus

I read parts of the transcript but it wasn't clear.

Anonymous

14:21

But maybe it would be better to characterize these both as specific types of attributive nouns.

Anonymous

They both have the same historical tendency to be unmarked for number.

Cerberus

Is that the same distinction as that between complements and satellites/adjuncts?

terdon

2 hours ago, by Lawrence

@MattE.Эллен That's what I was trying to get at with the Latin syntax reference - how does the Latin differ between a shop selling one kind of coffee and a shop selling many kinds of coffee?

Anonymous

@Cerberus Yes, that is what I meant.

Cerberus

OK, well, I've always found that distinction to be somewhat fluid and vague.

Matt E. Эллен

14:22

@snailboat are train robber and cat burglar of the other sort?

Anonymous

I have to admit it's sometimes blurry at best.

Cerberus

The idea is that the complement is required whereas the adjunct is not.

terdon

@MattE.Эллен The two are not of the same class. At least, they shouldn't be. A train robber robs trains but a cat burglar doesn't burgle cats.

Cerberus

By the way, I would say "modifier" doesn't mean it isn't a complement? It can be either a complement or not.

Lawrence

@terdon In my layman's understanding, in an "N1 N2" construct, N1 needs to describe the essence of the restriction on the nouns that could be instances of N2. The 'base case' for nouns is usually the singular, but in the exceptions, the plural form expresses the essence better, e.g. with less possibility of confusion. So by default, attributive nouns are singular.

Matt E. Эллен

14:23

ah, so an Android phone is an adjunct, but an apple pie is a complement?

Anonymous

Well, some linguists do use modifier and complement exclusively. I was using H&P's terminology there.

Anonymous

They divide dependents (inside a noun phrase) into complements, modifiers, and determiners.

Cerberus

@terdon If you transform he robs trains → train robber, you lose some information: in the clause, it is clear that trains is the object of rob; but in the noun group train robber, the semantic relation between train and robber is not specified.

terdon

@Lawrence Agreed. Which brings us back to the original question: why are they singular even when referring to multiple items?

Cerberus

However, context tells us what the semantic relation must be.

Anonymous

14:25

Well, if you want to know why, you should look back to the history of the language, back before nouns like this were ever marked as plural.

Lawrence

@terdon Sorry, that was my best shot at explaining. The experts are here now (just saw that tank engine cartoon, but never mind), so let's hope they answer more precisely.

Cerberus

@terdon Suppose the evil-looking brownish train were headed for a train station where he was going to rob people. Would you call him a train robber?

Anonymous

TRomano suggested looking at treating them as noun-noun compounds. (I'm paraphrasing slightly, but you can see his messages if you scroll back.)

terdon

@Cerberus OK, but I still think that cat burglar is different.

Anonymous

And looking at the way compounding worked historically in Germanic.

terdon

14:27

@Cerberus I might, yes. Just as I would call a robber from Holland a Dutch robber.

But that is yet another form, isn't it?

Or, rather, the same form as cat burglar but not the same as chicken soup.

Anonymous

You might be able to distinguish a train robber (who robs trains) from a train robber (a robber that is a train) by stress / prosody in speech.

Anonymous

Although they look the same in writing.

Cerberus

@terdon The fact you might do so proves that the semantic relation is not specified in train robber: you fill it in based on context.

terdon

@Cerberus No argument there.

Cerberus

So my position is that this applies to all pairs of nouns: the relation between them is not specified.

Many different relations are possible.

Like agent-patient (a train robber as someone who robs trains), or ehh specification-person (a train robber as in the evil train).

Anonymous

14:30

That's true in general, but a lexicalized compound like ice cream might be distinguishable grammatically from a productive phrase made from ice + cream.

Cerberus

@snailboat Well, fixed compounds can acquire special meanings, that is true.

@terdon Don't you think a cat burglar is like a train robber as in the evil train?

The first noun explains what kind of robber/burglar it is.

Except that cat is used in a semantically different way, in that it is metaphoric, right?

@terdon How would you explain the semantic roles of chicken and soup in chicken soup?

Material-thing?

Part-whole?

terdon

@Cerberus Yes, but not the same as a train robber as in a person robbing trains.

@Cerberus I'll leave that to the experts.

Lawrence

@Cerberus Can it be called specific-generic? I.e. a specific type of the (generic) soup - chicken soup as opposed to tomato soup.

Cerberus

@terdon Agreed: there the semantic relation is patient-agent. Or theme-agent.

@Lawrence You could say that, but that is a rather general semantic relation. You could say a train robber specifies a type of robber, i.e. one that robs trains. As opposed to a bank robber.

Lawrence

@Cerberus Ok. What kind of semantic roles are more useful? Or take a step back - where is this headed? I'm a bit lost regarding the direction of this conversation.

tchrist

14:42

@Cerberus Apropos de nada, what would a phonological distinction from Latin shared by every one of her children tell us, and can you name such?

Lawrence

@Cerberus If it helps, the starting point was terdon's question about why tree is singular in tree felling.

Cerberus

@Lawrence I don't know! I jumped in.

@tchrist Her living children?

A lack of cases is one.

Or is that not phonological enough?

I think there is a loss of certain consonant clusters, like -ct?

tchrist

@Cerberus That one is probably due to the weakness of -m.

Cerberus

Partly.

tchrist

But the common trait is lack of pronunciation of aitch.

Cerberus

14:48

That's probably true...

Although I don't know about all dialects.

Nor about Romanian.

tchrist

The Latin Alive book makes the claim that it is so in all derivative tongues.

Cerberus

I believe it.

Lawrence

@Cerberus Ah, ok, I thought you were driving. :) Moving on now.

Cerberus

Haha.

No, I'm the evil train.

So what was caused this discussion?

tchrist

There was once a pronounced h in Castilian and Gascon, but that came from leading f- in Latin.

Not from Latin h-.

Cerberus

14:51

Ah, I see.

terdon

3 hours ago, by terdon

Oh, @snailboat you might know. How do you explain to a non-native that "tree felling" is correct but "trees felling" is wrong? I was trying to explain that to a French friend and, since in French they only have the "felling of trees" construction and not the "tree felling" one, I couldn't find a clear way of explaining it.

Which led to ell.stackexchange.com/q/85654/2547

Cerberus

@snailboat There isn't necessarily a conflict between verb and noun in a gerund? I believe a gerund is generally considered both noun-like and verb-like.

tchrist

A gerund phrase can take the place of a noun phrase.

But not of a noun.

Cf. a quick ringing of the bells vs. quickly ringing the bells.

Cerberus

@terdon Ahh OK.

tchrist

The first ringing is a noun, the second a verb.

Cerberus

14:56

@terdon I think Stoney's answer in the linked question is as good as it gets.

@tchrist Quickly ringing the bells should warn the people. This action should warn the people.

Noun phrase.

tchrist

No.

Read what I said first: a gerund phrase acts as a noun phrase, but a gerund itself must act as a verb. Your example proves not disproves this.

Cerberus

Ringing is the head of the phrase. The phrase can replace a noun. It is therefore a noun phrase.

terdon

@Cerberus Yes, but it starts with the premise that the singular is the default. I was hoping someone would give me a simple explanation that I could pass on to my French friend. Basically, I was laboring under the misapprehension that this was one of the few times that English rules were rational, but that I just couldn't figure out the relevant rule.

Cerberus

Ah OK.

Yes, we can only speculate about that.

terdon

Turns out I was wrong...

Cerberus

15:00

You could say the singular form of a noun is always the default.

Especially when you're using a noun in an abstract sense.

terdon

Yeah, I was hoping for something that would make that appear natural and obvious.

tchrist

So a gerund phrase can be a subject or object, just like a noun phrase. But the gerund does only verb things like having objects not prepositions, adverbs not adjectives.

terdon

It does to me, of course, but that's because I'm a native speaker. I was hoping there was a rational explanation, this time.

Cerberus

The problem is that English (and most other languages I know) are terribly inconsistent about both number and definiteness when a noun is used in an abstract sense.

I like trains.

The train is a great invention.

tchrist

@terdon Native speakers need not appeal to reason. :)

Cerberus

15:01

A train is a mighty machine.

terdon

@tchrist They do if they want to convince non-natives. Sadly.

I had a similar problem trying to explain why I refuse running is wrong.

Turns out the answer is "It just is. Suck it up. "

Cerberus

@tchrist I foresee a long and fruitless discussion unless we agree on definitions.

@terdon Yes, alas.

terdon

Huh, this might be a nice summary:

Cerberus

Like prepositions.

terdon

@terdon Well, this sort of compounding is 'designed' to simplify the surface structure: to move what would otherwise be expressed by morphological or prepositional case-marking into the hearer's inference; so I don't think we need to look any further than the fact that the sg form is morphologically the simplest and semantically the most generic. — StoneyB 1 min ago

tchrist

15:04

@Cerberus What do you mislike?

Cerberus

@terdon Yeah that's what I was saying. Except that in other cases the simplest form is not used; so why do we use the simplest form here but not elsewhere?

@tchrist Nothing in particular.

terdon

@Cerberus Um, because?

tchrist

Then let us not talk of nothing, for you mislike it in particular.

Cerberus

@terdon Exactly.

@tchrist It is void.

tchrist

You're inhumanly talking about nothing again.

Category:Spanish compound words

» All languages » Spanish language » Terms by etymology » Compound words Spanish words composed of two or more stems....

Notice the pattern with compounds formed of verbs and their objects.

Most but certainly not all use a plural object.

You end up with singular nouns formed with VB-SG + N-PL.

These are just like the English compounds you're speaking of, but English the direct object puts first in the resulting compound.

blames the Dutch

Cerberus

15:15

@terdon It may be interesting to know that Dutch, which is much like English, has four options: singular genitive -s- (at least it looks like a genitive), plural -en- (at least it looks like plural), singular + -e- (no idea why, mostly but not exclusively used in compound adjectives), and plain singular.

terdon

Curiouser and curiouser.

tchrist

English has a record-player where Spanish has un tocadiscos.

Cerberus

> rechts-gebied (= field of law)

> recht-bank (court of law)

> recht-e-loos (lawless)

tchrist

Epenthesis?

Cerberus

But why?

tchrist

15:18

Dutch should not need an epenthetic -e-, I would think.

Cerberus

One problem is that the -n in -en is not pronounced, so it -en- sounds the same as -e-.

So we often don't know how to spell words.

The latest spelling reform says it should be -en- most of the time.

But not when the first noun cannot be pluralised.

tchrist

I did not know that Dutch was a nasal-shafting language.

Cerberus

So zonne-schijn = sunshine.

Because there is only one sun.

Of course you can say zonnen in astronomy, but the Taalunie decided that it looked to weird.

So the idea of the latest spelling reform is that plural is actually the default, as opposed to English.

tchrist

Cf. parasol sun-stopper with paraguas rain-stopper / umbrella and parabrisas wind-shield.

Cerberus

Funny.

tchrist

15:21

There is but one sun.

But many waters(?) and breezes.

@Cerberus Wait, you can have have spelling reforms in Dutch???

How does that work?

Cerberus

The Taalunie issues them.

tchrist

How well does that work?

Cerberus

It depends.

tchrist

I doubt ER2's edicts would have any positive effects.

Mitch

@Cerberus Romanian went -ct -> -pt

Cerberus

15:24

If the new rule is seen as reasonable, people will generally begin to use it, and it will become the norm eventually. If not, then it doesn't stick.

The rules are mainly about situations where you're not 100% how to spell a word.

Mitch

Noctem -> nopte

Cerberus

@Mitch Ah, interesting.

And children are taught the official rules in school.

Mitch

Official rules are made-up

tchrist

Here Microsoft tries to make the rules. Most sheeple even believe them.

Mitch

They could be anything

@tchrist don't ascribe to malice what can be explained by ... not even caring

tchrist

15:28

The lusophones are in the midst of orthographic reforms, butt not without some controvery and refuseniks,

@Mitch Caring is the source of all human misery.

@Mitch These artifices are matters of policy not of science, matters more political than linguistical.

Compared with the Anglosphere, the Iberians have constantly changed their orthography as their spoken languages have changed. This polcy stands in stark contrast with ours.

Cerberus

So have we.

And most languages, I think.

Of course we have to talk to our Flemish and Surinamese friends first.

The Taalunie is an international institute.

tchrist

15:46

That doesn't seem to have been an issue with Americans, Canadians, Britons, Irish, Australians, New Zealanders, or even South Afrikaans.

Er, Africans.

The Hindians, I dunno.

I don't think spelling reform would help in that case.

Five days from now, Stack Overflow will transform itself into:
    A. Shack Overflow
    B. Slack Overflow
    C. Smack Overflow
    D. Snack Overflow
    E. Schwag Overflow

Mitch

16:05

@tchrist Caning is a source of a very particular kind of misery

@tchrist OMG, it's like English moves backwards in time.

tchrist

@Mitch Thus runs Merlin's legacy.

Cerberus

@tchrist Then that language is the exception.

Mitch

On the other hand, if this were Irish, it would be 'Lhueighdhaci tMiearleiunh'

tchrist

But we write not as we speak; were we to do so, we would not understand one another’s writings.

Mitch

pronounced identical to the english

tchrist

16:11

Perhaps the Flemosphere is more unified.

The fossilized written form permits speakers of divergent accents to have a universal form of writing despite having disparate spoken forms. Ni hao.

Mitch

haha like chinese

even japanese

Cerberus

Yeah look how far that took Chinese...

tchrist

I shan't pretend I do not sometimes long for subtitles when Glaswegians speak.

Mitch

@Cerberus haha poor chinese

tchrist

Though merely knowing which words they’ve said is only half the battle.

Mitch

16:14

they'll give that all up for pin yin in ... 10 years.

lay down your money

Cerberus

@tchrist Besides, all Dutch speakers have a universal form of writing.

And all English speakers do not.

And Dutch accents vary wildly.

Mitch

@tchrist oh scotland. just imagine it's pig latin.

haha poor scotland

@Cerberus Wait.. are the flems on the other side of the border from you?

@Cerberus how wide? mutually unintelligible?

tchrist

@Cerberus The lusophones feared that the growing gulf of the Atlantic would render each other's writings unfathomable. They submitted themselves, well, some of them, to ten spelling reforms in the 20th century alone.

Cerberus

@Mitch Yes. Why?

@Mitch I would say yes, although they are usually called dialects by definition, if we can't understand them at all.

tchrist

> Contrary to neighboring languages such as Spanish or French, whose orthographies were set by language academies in the 17th century, Portuguese had no official spelling until the early 20th century; authors wrote as they pleased.

Cerberus

16:21

Ah OK.

tchrist

They've been trying to catch up, but it has been messy.

Cerberus

I believe there are some official differences between Brazil and Portugal now, though few.

tchrist

That's right.

You're still supposed to spell things as you say them, and because there are legitimate differences between speakers, spelling differences remain.

It wasn't intended to efface all differences in writing, as many misunderstand.

Just regularize things.

I think Spanish would crack though if they did that.

That one should spell things "as they are said" is not a sentiment shared by the Anglosphere, nor by the Francosphere.

Mitch

@Cerberus just checking terminology. I had forgotten (thought flemish was a weird synonym for dutch)

tchrist

Flanders and Holland are different counties.

Mitch

16:27

and friesland too

tchrist

Or were, back when those things counted.

Mitch

you count marches but number counties

tchrist

@Mitch Have I ever told you how much adore their fragrance?

Mitch

if a march is a border land, what is the non-border land? Just 'land'?

@tchrist Chanel? I hardly knew her!

tchrist

After Friedrich Heinrich Theodor Freese.

A Frisian in name only.

Half a million native Frisian speakers, but are there any writers?

> the Frisian for cheese and church is tsiis and tsjerke, whereas in Dutch it is kaas and kerk.

> This committee recommended that the Frisian language would receive a legal basis as minority language.

That must have been written by a Dutch speaker; I can't make any senses of it.

Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law

In historical linguistics, the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law (also called the Anglo-Frisian or North Sea Germanic nasal spirant law) is a description of a phonological development that occurred in the Ingvaeonic dialects of the West Germanic languages. This includes Old English, Old Frisian, and Old Saxon, and to a small degree Old Dutch (Old Low Franconian). == Overview == The sound change affected sequences of vowel + nasal consonant + fricative consonant. ("Spirant" is an older term for "fricative".) The sequences in question are -ns-, -mf-, and -nþ-, preceded by any vowel. The nasal consonant...

That's fun to say.

> The /n/ has disappeared in English, Frisian, Low German, and dialectal Dutch with compensatory lengthening of the /u/. This phenomenon is therefore observable throughout the "Ingvaeonic" languages. It does not affect High German, East Germanic or North Germanic.

I wonder whether fighting to write an unsaid n can really win out.

> In 1990, an orthographic agreement was reached between the Portuguese-language countries with the intent of creating a single common orthography for Portuguese. This spelling reform went into effect in Brazil on January 1, 2009. In Portugal, the reform was signed into law by the President on July 21, 2008, allowing for a six-year adaptation period, during which both orthographies will co-exist. The legality of this decision is questioned, . . .

Look, spelling is subject to legislation!

> The contents and the legal value of the treaty have not achieved a consensus among linguists, philologists, scholars, journalists, writers, translators and figures of the arts, politics and business of the Brazilian and Portuguese societies. Therefore, its application has been the object of disagreements for linguistic, political, economic and legal reasons. There are even some who claim the unconstitutionality of the treaty.

Well, they're trying.

Cerberus

16:59

@tchrist A status as an official language entails certain benefits, such as financial ones.

Mitch

@tchrist what the heck are those names? Ingvae, Istvae, Irmin?

@Cerberus also no spitting.

Lawrence

@Cerberus :) . Back from the gym. I see terdon has filled you in on that thread.

tchrist

17:17

Did you know there's a language with just two vowels and four consonants?

Well, or maybe eight or ten consonants, but they are not always distinguished.

Still just four main ones.

Mitch

i can do it with one vowel and one consonant

tchrist

"no"?

Mitch

and no consonant clusters

screw it, I can do it with just one vowel.

tchrist

ew

Mitch

haha

tchrist

17:24

Actually, it has to be /a/. All else is variation.

A bivocallic system contrasts /a/ and /i/.

Mitch

but seriously. hm... I'll still need 'start and end of utterance' characters, but all the other languages do too.

tchrist

They do?

Mitch

sure. it looks invisible, but when you pare down to necessities, you realize they still need it.

or word boundaries.

or something.

tchrist

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Silbo.ogg

Mitch

maybe whistling too

tchrist

17:26

@Mitch See above; or rather, hear.

Mitch

why isn't there OPA?

Ornithological Phonetic Alphabet

tchrist

That's supposedly a dialogue, although I hear only one speaker and I do not know what it purports to say.

Oh wait, dialogue is just a mistranslation. It's simply an example.

> The whistled language of the island of La Gomera, the Silbo Gomero, is a communication system that emulates spoken language by means of articulated whistling. It is a substitute language that is reductive, spontaneous, unconventional, and capable of sending and exchanging an unlimited range of messages over a distance of up to five kilometres by emulating the characteristics of spoken language. Spanish is now the first language of the Canary Islands. In the past, however, the Silbo Gomero was used as a substitute for the language spoken by the earlier inhabitants of the archipelago.

Today's Silbo Gomero is a mapping of Spanish to a whistling system. It was formerly a mapping of a largely unknown language probably closely related to Berber.

> Enseigné dans les écoles depuis 1999, le Silbo Gomero est connu par la quasi-totalité des habitants et pratiqué par une forte majorité, notamment les personnes âgées et les jeunes.

Strange bedfellows.

> Transmis pendant des siècles de maître à élève, il est le seul langage sifflé au monde pleinement développé et pratiqué par une communauté importante (plus de 22 000 habitants).

The only whistled language the world around.

I think I've just postpositioned around.

Cerberus

Ah, I have seen a documentary about that.

Very nice.

Mitch

@tchrist don't encourage the teenagers with a secret language!

tchrist

@Mitch kthxbai

Mitch

17:40

wut?

Cerberus

> The group claim Bob to be their inspiration.

Mitch

Bob is not a good choice.

Shafizadeh

Is this question correct?

Which name is more proper as the name of column name which stores money: "value" or "amount" or "deal" or "count" ?

Cerberus

18:05

> Which is more appropriate as the name of a column which stores money (example: €50): "value" or "amount" or "deal" or "count" ?

You had the word name thrice.

crl

18:16

@Shafizadeh be more precise

is it an account balance, a price, ... a transaction (value/amount), a discount

guys question, what's a caret for you? (in a developer sense, for browsers)

I need a name for a visual bar, horizontal or vertical, that shows where an element will be dropped

a bit like the one you see when typing in the chat input, but at a bigger level

Mitch

19:07

A likely story

Shafizadeh

@crl ok tnx :-)

@Cerberus I see, tnx

crl

19:28

@Mitch Am I really hard to understand? that's what everyone tells me:(

will end believing I'm really autistic

Mitch

20:01

@crl sorry you got hit by a drive by trolling from me. I intentionally pop in randomly sometimes without reading the transcript and say something and see what happens.

@crl everybody is autistic nowadays because of the Internet

crl

20:49

hehe, ok

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…