I come, unashamedly, to "earn" my ELU 2017 top hat (interesting word that) and say: Happy New Year ELUers. Please star the comment, as I have done with users before me.
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Cheeses it's quiet today... helloo..ooo..ooo.... nope nobody at home.
Funny thing I go the notification but I couldn't "log on" and reply. So I had to click on the chat button on the top toolbar. Does any of this make sense?
So who is asking the question? A barber? A friend? I don't quite understand.
Why not reply in the same manner with a friendly tone perhaps? I don't know how close you are to that person but if I were you I would say something like this perhaps: "On your fucking face or on your fucking head?" :)
It all depends on the real life tone. I am partly joking by the way, so you can ignore what I said.
@Centaurus Curious that French had a singular c’est there (not a plural ce sont) like English would while Italian had a plural sono there the way Portuguese or Spanish would. It does indeed feel like the predicative complement is the actual subject to me, but I cannot tell whether that’s because my instinct as an English speaker is that whatever governs the verb is its subject almost by sheer definition. I’d have no problem generating O nosso problema aqui és tu using és to agree with tu not with problema, but that is instinctive to me due to Spanish, not something I understand. — tchrist ♦14 hours ago
There are several instances of this construction in Portuguese, like "O inferno são os outros" a well-known quotation by Sartre. ("l'enfer, c'est les autres" in French and "L'inferno sono gli altri" in Italian) which to me doesn' t simply mean "Os outros são o inferno" but rather "Os outros é que são o inferno" — Centaurus14 hours ago
It seems that in Spanish, Portuguese, and perhaps Italian, it can.
When you stop to think about it, it's a strange construction though I can't tell why it's so. To use "Os estranhos são nós", however, sounds completely wrong. I believe it has something to do with inverted parts of the sentence. "Os estranhos (não são eles), somos nós." or "O inferno (não sou eu) são os outros." Let's wait and if someone comes up with a better explanation. — Centaurus14 hours ago
There are times in Spanish when a linking verb agrees in number not with its subject but with its predicate complement.
Lo mejor de la televisión son los avisos.
La mejor televisión son los avisos.
Mi mejor amigo eres tú.
Mis mejores amigas sois vosotras.
¡Esto son rebajas!
Eso son los amigos.
...
Consider this example:
Commercialese is an instrument of art,
designed to enrich and invigorate our
language—surely you will all agree
with this—, and we should encourage newcomers to learn it. However, a side-effect is the
spread of commercialese to other
domains. This we must obje...
There are times in Portuguese when a linking verb agrees in number not with its subject but with its predicate complement. What got me thinking about it was this comment by Jacinto that included:
isto são três (ou quatro) perguntas distintas
It seems to me this can occur in other scenarios...
Although not in the case of some mistakes are a fiasco / a fiasco were some mistakes: this is clearly of the kind a dog is an animal: static but with two different semantic roles.
@tchrist I'd have to think about it.
Maybe with pluralia tanta?
> castra Romana sunt ultima defensio contra barbaros
If you put the verb in between subject and complement, in prose, I think the verb must agree with the subject.
> ultima defensio contra barbaros sunt castra Romana
Probably because there is no reason to put the subject after its complement in this sentence, so that we must assume the first constituent to be the subject.
The order subject - secondary argument - finite verb is perhaps forcing here.
When you put the verb at the end.
I would be an interesting question to ask on Latin.SE!
I have an impression that must not and mustn't can mean different things. I'm not sure about it though. And it may not be true at all in BrE. Take these sentences for example:
@Færd ‘I cannot read the fiery letters,’ said Frodo in a quavering voice. ‘No,’ said Gandalf, ‘but I can. The letters are Elvish, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Mordor, which I will not utter here.
I read this sentence somewhere, it is informal English written by a native speaker and I don’t quite understand the sentence structure here. What is the implication here? And is this sentence grammatical? Any thoughts would be appreciated. Here:
> retooling their own self identity to include their descriptions as simply ways to describe their flavor of humanity rather than as their entirety.
> I agree with all of that, but the broad criticism is doing its work as more people embrace intersectionality and multi-vectored descriptions of selves, as well as retooling their own self identity to include their descriptions as simply ways to describe their flavor of humanity rather than as their entirety.
sorry, I didn't paste the whole thing eariler.
yeah seems like there are some typos.
Like "as simply ways" should be "in simple ways" I guess.
well anyway, ping me if anyone has something to say.
That's hardly enough context. You can't be too generous with context.
But let's give it a try.
So we have multi-vectored descriptions of self.
And there are people who change their perceptions of (them)selves to include those descriptions.
But they only do that because they have a particular flavor of humanity.
Ie, they are partial to/against some attributes that a human being as an entirety possesses.
Therefore they don't succeed in coming up with a full description of what they are. They only describe some parts of what makes a whole human being, and miss some others.
@Arrowfar Rather, that should be edited to "simply as ways", I think.
> No churchman am I for to rail and to write, No statesman nor soldier to plot or to fight, No sly man of business contriving a snare, For a big-belly’d bottle’s the whole of my care.
@Cerberus ^^^^^^
Did you know that the Spanish for "It’s me" is actually "Soy yo" with inversion like that?
Similaly in cases like Pues tal soy yo meaning well that’s how I am.
> El más oscuro de los hombres [...] ese soy yo.
> Este tipo aqui sou eu, é claro
> Tu rey soy yo.
These are surely all inversion.
> Los épicos, aquí el único mítico soy yo.
> Por una vez has acertado, el primer sorprendido en esto soy yo.
> The first one surprised in this "am I".
> Un náufrago de mi propia alma soy yo
> Me importa un comino, el jefe soy yo.
Much harder to find Portuguese examples like those.
> Cale a boca, quem decide isso somos nós.
> O ponto nevrálgico de todo o problema somos nós mesmos, que nos debatemos nas angústias da vida e nas inquietações da existência.
> Como a igreja somos nós...
I think that for Spanish at least, I didn't think of inversion because I'm used to OVS requiring a marker. But with CVS where there is no grammatical direct object just a predicate nominal, you don’t use an oblique marker.
> A sombra não somos nós, mas uma espécie de fotografia em branco e preto apenas em forma de silhueta.
These are all no different than inversion with non-nouns, like Assim somos nós for "That's how we are" or "Thus are we".
> membro de um grande corpo somos nós
> Devemos, portanto, enfatizar a ideia de que “nós” não somos o estado; o governo não somos “nós”.
> Pois fiquem sabendo que nisto somos nós os mais competentes, os mais imaginativos, os criadores, os inventores por excelência.
There are times in Spanish when a linking verb agrees in number not with its subject but with its predicate complement.
Lo mejor de la televisión son los avisos.
La mejor televisión son los avisos.
Mi mejor amigo eres tú.
Mis mejores amigas sois vosotras.
¡Esto son rebajas!
Eso son los amigos.
...
Consider this example:
Commercialese is an instrument of art,
designed to enrich and invigorate our
language—surely you will all agree
with this—, and we should encourage newcomers to learn it. However, a side-effect is the
spread of commercialese to other
domains. This we must obje...
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…