@tchrist: Thought of you when I saw this. ^

@Robusto I always think that you are Robert de Niro for some reason.

I said to my sister, "Let us go to the market tomorrow for shopping." (Begin : I suggested...) (I suggested my sister that we should go for shopping the following day.)

Good for you. Monday is a good day for shopping.

Now I know the importance of white spaces in the real life as opposed to the programming world.

@SingleFighter heh :)

@terdon :-)

@SingleFighter Spaces are important in programming too.

@Abcd Suggested to my sister.

@Abcd Consisted of ten singers | comprised ten singers.

Never comprised of.

Thanks @Cerberus

> The team was comprised of ten singers and a teacher.

I would call that a contamination.

It is composed of.

Why?

I'm not sure if it's substandard. I should check.

Anything else with the same meaning is usually a contamination, advised against by style books.

> Comprise primarily means ‘consist of’, as in the country comprises twenty states. It can also mean ‘constitute or make up a whole’, as in this single breed comprises 50 per cent of the Swiss cattle population.

@JasperLoy Nice!

From ODO.

> When this sense is used in the passive (as in the country is comprised of twenty states), it is more or less synonymous with the first sense (the country comprises twenty states). This usage is part of standard English, but the construction comprise of, as in the property comprises of bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen, is regarded as incorrect.

So perhaps there's dissension between the authorities.

Personal taste aside, with regard to correctness I tend to refer to the descriptive ones.

Interesting. I also find the use of comprises of to be jarring. I would never use it and, in my experience, it is most often used by bad writers or those with a limited command of the language who are trying to show off.

I hadn't considered the distinction between passive and active though.

@Færd "Constitute" is advised against by style books.

But that is still different from comprised of.

@Færd It is advised against by those who care about style.

I am surprised again and again when I hear people say they think a construction is OK because many other people use it.

What kind of a stylistic argument is that?

Either your own intuition or that of someone you respect should matter most.

I said correctness, not style.

I don't think "correct" is a meaningful term if it means something other than stylistically good, since constructions are not facts.

I don't have enough experience with the language to have a clear stylistic opinion about every matter, as I don't about this one. And as far as personal taste goes, I can't really respect anyone but myself. So I'll be silent about the aesthetic appeal of be comprised of.

You can write anything you want.

Since the form of a linguistic utterance is not a fact, but a form, it ultimately doesn't matter, and it cannot be "untrue".

And the word correct cannot mean "in accordance with the truth", but only "in accordance with whichever rules you choose".

And rules about the form of language are stylistic, as long as the utterance effectively delivered its intended message.

Correctness can be objectively defined, and then assessed and falsified.

Which does not apply to the form of language.

I am repeating myself.

Form is not a kind of fact.

It cannot be falsified per se.

Can be turned into it:

Correctness can gain statistical meaning through corpus research.

Not for rarely used terms/phrases.

Rarely used terms will have scant occurrence in corpora, therefore will be apt to be regarded as obscure, non-standard, etc.

Or simply rare.

@Færd I do not agree at all.

Those statistics answer the question "is it used?".

Not "should it be used?".

Completely different categories.

The pronoun I is commonly used without capitalisation. That answers the question "is it used?".

You can choose to disagree with the definition and discuss it.

But that does not give you an answer to the question "should I capitalise I?".

Why not?

Completely different matter.

It is an extreme example to show you how the two questions are entirely different.

One asks about is; the other about ought.

What is it that tells you about the aesthetic or stylistic appeal of language forms?

How much of it depends on your experience with the language and the categorized input that you received and analyzed?

How much of it depends on your personal taste and preferences?

How much on the physical and biological rules governing your mind and body?

Depends on the person.

All of those can be relevant.

But I have to go now.

The torture example is completely irrelevant.

On the contrary.

Is and ought.

Is used ≠ should be used.

That is a really basic notion that all of us share.

Ought is formed in your mind based on your experiences with is (internal and external).

Bye.

.

If someone came from the future and told you you'd be sick tomorrow, which of these would you say?

Any difference?

Hello, it is Monday morning here in Antarctica.

I think I need to come online less often. Utilities bills in Antarctica are soaring. Time to migrate to Arctica.

@terdon What do mosquitos, churchurritos, and minigogues have in common?

@tchrist I don't know, what do they have in common?

@terdon They’re all very small places of worship.

Argh!

:)

Pace chichurritos smothered with Pace® Picante Sauce.

Which, being porcine in composition, are only apt to be found in churchurritos, not in mosquitos or minigogues.

@terdon But what do I know? Chichurrito is some Tex-Mex or perhaps Mexican term unrecognized by the DRAE. Chicharrón, in contrast, they do recognize as a word with various senses in (Latin) American Spanish, including pork rinds, adulterer, and somebody who got way too sunburnt. It’s related to (a)chicharrar, to deep fry something till burnt. That said, chichar is also a vulgar LatAm slang expression for joder, follar.

Which is not the same as chichear.

Chicha is a baby-word for a tidbit of edible meat; Italian has ciccia there.

And no ser (alguien o algo) ni chicha ni limonada means no valer para nada, so good-for-nothing.

Oh, dear! I log in and what do I find? Terrible jokes.

Paronomasia is an elevated form of humorous effect.

The best jokes are about sex and other bodily functions. ;-)

Ok, Bart.

Or is that Benny?

Zing!

Word play is the only form of humor that isn’t made at someone else’s expense.

That we still find it funny suggests a great deal about how the mind works.

Then again, so does the other.

So worth has some characteristics of both adjectives and prepositions.

OK. So no matter what category it belongs to (if any), in Joe's worth talking to, worth is the predicative complement (or whatever it's called).

But what about this one?:

> It's worth talking to Joe.

Supposing that it is a dummy subject, we're forced to accept talking to Joe as the real subject, which bares worth of the noun it requires:

> Talking to Joe is worth [???].

If we consider worth a preposition, then talking to to Joe can never be the real subject of It's worth talking to Joe.

And if it's an adjective that requires a noun phrase after itself, then, again, talking to Joe cannot be the real subject, because worth will lose the required complement.

I can't parse this sentence:

> It's worth talking to Joe.

@Abcd "I suggested to my sister that we should go ... shopping the following day."

@Abcd "The team is comprised of ten singers and a music teacher."

@Cerberus what if you respect many other people?

@JasperLoy There's no good place to stay in Arctica. It's all melting and there's nothing underneath.

@tchrist mmm..minigogues with wilk

@Cerberus but... correct vs common, whichever. 'the the' is wrong wrong wrong even though it appears often enough in corpora, and 'neologistically' is correct even though it never appears in any corpora. Wait... am I making you point for you?

@Mitch I have watched Maigret Sets A Trap and Maigret's Dead Mean, both are very good, starring Rowan Atkinson, highly recommended if you like inspectors speaking with British accents in Paris.

@Mitch It's not 'the the'; it's 'the ... the'. It just shows that the speaker is mulling over some thoughts and is trying to pick words (as you certainly know).

And it's not like you can say "Gotcha! You made a mistake!" whenever you hear someone say "the ... the".

I'm completely confused, but willing to ignore that.

@Færd No it's not that at all. I am referring to in actual typeset text, there are numerous examples of the co-occurrence 'the the'. 'the' followed directly by 'the'. do a google books search. it's easy to see in titles. Also do a search in COCA and you'll see the teeming maggoty underbelly of even the best curated corpora,

Of course you may consider writing not to be language and that error to be a non-language error. But still.

hm... never heard of that. I'll check it out.

@Færd anyway malaproprisms and eggcorns are mistakes right? until they're made often enough I suppose, but then that's ..ugh.. giving in

@Mitch Wow. I can't wrap my head round all those the thes.

@Mitch Like tow the line?

I'm so sleepy that everything that comes out of my mind sounds like a dumb joke. I should think about this later.

@Mitch It's up to you what you base your stylistic choices on. I'm just saying stylistic choice cannot be motivated by mere frequency.

@Mitch You are!

@Mitch People stutter and make other mistakes that they will readily admit to—nay, even correct of their own accord. That would be comparable to the the.