English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Mahnax

15:00

@WillHunting Happy Sushi Day!

user19161

@Mahnax Happy KFC day!

Mahnax

@WillHunting Blah. Today is the fifth day in a row that I have to go to work.

Jez

"Betty Botterblom läßt grüßen"

Is that more likely to mean "Betty Botterblom sends her regards" or "Betty Botterblom sends her love"?

user19161

Why not ask in the GLU chat?

Jez

it's dead

user19161

15:04

OK then you can wait.

Robusto

@Jez Sounds like greetings to me.

Jez

yeah

user19161

AmirHossein, Tehran, Iran

20 4

user19161

Clicking on his FB link takes us to an ad, be warned!

Jez

"Erinnerungen"

Reminiscing?

Mahnax

15:12

@WillHunting A survey.

user19161

@Mahnax Well, I was disappointed he "cheated" us. There are too many lies in this world already.

Mahnax

@WillHunting I suppose.

We got snow.

Well played, mother nature.

user19161

@Mahnax I will be going for a Good Friday play at my friend's church.

Gigili

@WillHunting Most of his links seems real.

Mahnax

@WillHunting Oh, have fun.

user19161

15:14

@Gigili Yes, but one fake one ruins it all.

user19161

@Mahnax I hope to be inspired. It is about the oppressed slaves I think.

Gigili

Better than a Justin Bieber avatar anyway.

user19161

@Gigili No way!

Mahnax

@WillHunting Maybe it will inspire you. Have you seen the movie Amazing Grace?

user19161

@Mahnax No, I need plenty of grace and miracles too.

Mahnax

15:18

@WillHunting The movie is about ending the slave trade in England. It was very good.

user19161

@Mahnax Hmm OK. In fact I have not even heard about it.

Mahnax

@WillHunting Not many people have heard of it.

user19161

@Mahnax Only a boy in Frozen Wasteland has.

Mahnax

@WillHunting Yesterday, there was no snow on the ground and it was dry.

For the first time in months.

Now, we've got snow again.

user19161

@Mahnax Good good. Time to make snowman soon.

Mahnax

15:21

@WillHunting No. It's not that kind of snow.

user19161

So I got a downvote because the OP edited the question to make my answer look stupid.

user19161

Well, such things do happen quite a lot.

Mahnax

Aww.

Gigili

What's the difference between "forex trading" and "trading forex"?

Jez

the former sounds passive, the latter sounds active

that's about it

user19161

15:27

@Gigili He is trading forex. He engages in forex trading.

user19161

"trading forex" is an action

user19161

"forex trading" is a thing

Gigili

@WillHunting Thank you.

Matt Эллен

forex is the foreign exchange market. Trading forex doesn't make sense, as that implies you are giving forex away to get something else. you can't trade the whole market for something. Forex trading is trading done on forex, i.e. the buying and selling of currencies.

Vitaly

@Robusto 7m left, they are getting dangerously close. If you can, spend about 40 stam.

Gigili

15:47

@MattЭллен Aha, is there any differences between "forex trading" and "currency trading"?

Matt Эллен

@Gigili forex, from what I gather, is where the trading takes place

Jez

@Matt not really, it can refer to the foreign exchange market, an abstract entity

Matt Эллен

@Jez so it is still different from "currency trading" in that it isn't the activity, but an entity

Jez

I'd say "trading" was an action

Gigili

Forex is the place?

Matt Эллен

15:52

@Gigili forex is a form of exchange

Foreign exchange market

The foreign exchange market (forex, FX, or currency market) is a form of exchange for the global decentralized trading of international currencies. Financial centers around the world function as anchors of trading between a wide range of different types of buyers and sellers around the clock, with the exception of weekends. The foreign exchange market determines the relative values of different currencies. The foreign exchange market assists international trade and investment by enabling currency conversion. For example, it permits a business in the United States to import goods from th...

@Gigili it's a place in the same sense that "The Internet" is a place

Gigili

That makes sense, thank you Matt.

Matt Эллен

no probs :)

Gigili

I'm confused, all of these have the same meaning. Ts.

Forex trading, currency trading, currency forex trading

Forex trading, trading forex, forex trade.

Jez

I doubt any of them have much of a direct translation into Persian.

Gigili

It doesn't make sense as you said @Matt. It's something like Foreign exchange trading, both exchange and trading have the same meaning, right?

Yes, I guess it is so.

Matt Эллен

16:05

@Gigili it does seem that way, as Jez said

Jez

"Eine völlig gemischte 'Massen-Region', in der alles gerne gesehen wird."

heh, Massen-Region?

that takes some interpretation

RegDwight Ѭſ道

16:25

@WillHunting And now my answer is getting flagged!

It was so helpful and good.

Gigili

Huh, that's circular flagging. Flagging your answer for your own attention makes no sense.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Well the flagger got an increased flag weight out of that.

Vitaly

RegDwight Ѭſ道

16:44

Oh. I fell for it.

Vitaly

16:54

@RegDwightѬſ道 too bad it can't be done like this: http://i.imgur.com/SSG8F.png

Cerberus

@RegDwightѬſ道 Thanks!!! I knew you'd like it.

Gigili

What? No.

Cerberus

@RegDwightѬſ道 I also like the möglicherweise.

@Gigili Morning.

Gigili

Good morning Cerb.

Cerberus

17:10

@Robusto Thanks!!

Jez

17:20

what's the paperclip thing about, anyway?

AH it's april 1st

haha

Cerberus

Ding!

You're quick.

Gigili

Unnecessarily quick.

Vitaly

hey @Cerberus, did you know that people are 89% more likely to agree to take an experimental drug when it was named after a fictional drug (e.g. Ephemerol), according to Szalinski, W. 1989. Recollection of fictional medication. Journal of Cognitive Minification, 67: 173-186 (via LW)

Cerberus

@Vitaly Haha, very convincing journal.

I love the title.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

-1

Q: Is the last word in the past is ____ "past" or "passed"?

I've been running both through my head and they both seem plausible. Granted, "the past is passed" is grammatically incorrect, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Which is correct?

idioms

I can't even parse the question.

Jez

17:27

It is totally sucks ass.

Cerberus

I think it's great.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

You think wrong!

Oh I see you even give him 10 reps.

Jez

maps.google.com

Quest maps - awesome

they ought to keep them

Cerberus

@RegDwightѬſ道 Yeah he's cool.

And I like his name.

And his question.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Then you will have to deal with sending him private messages.

Gigili

17:30

Okay, I'll change my name to Timothy.

Is the last part also needed?

Cerberus

@RegDwightѬſ道 Why private?

I've posted an answer.

@Gigili Naahh.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Oh come on.

Not every question on April 1st is an April 1st question.

You will get mercilessly downvoted and flagged.

Cerberus

All the better!

Tim will appreciate it.

It is only to his benefit that I post.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

I can't handle this anymore. I'll go have a nap for four and a half hours, then delete all today's posts and resume business as usual.

Cerberus

@RegDwightѬſ道 Aww poor Reg.

Hint: there are several April-1 questions that you haven't deleted.

And one which hasn't even been closed or down-voted.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

17:34

Dear next person who thinks you must be funny on April 1st: you are not funny. Not today, not ever. Go get a life or something.

4

Cerberus

@RegDwightѬſ道 We had a blast last night.

I laughed so hard that my pants fell off.

And there's still many hours left in he day for the Murkens!

Gigili

@Cerberus No fell-off-pants in this chat.

Cerberus

Oops sorry.

But pants on a dog are decadent.

Gigili

How should I make it an adjective? Fell-off-pant? Fallen-down?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

1

A: Is the last word in "The past is ____." 'past' or 'passed'?

It's passed (passed by us, over, finished). It's entirely correct, although rather archaic to conjugate pass with be. The past is passed, the future is now is apparently a quote from Joe Dirt, but it's rather like Shakespeare's Tempest: Whereof what's past is prologue; what to come, In your...

Gigili

17:43

We have famous quote which says, "You don't have to say something when you don't know".

RegDwight Ѭſ道

How is the Shakespeare quote relevant?

Cerberus

It would be fallen-off pants, but it doesn't look nice for some reason.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Past is not a noun there.

It contradicts his entire point.

Cerberus

Well, spelling was probably not consistent in Shakespeare's time anyway.

I guess it depends on whether the answer was posted before or after the "community edit".

What does that mean anyway?

Alan Munn

@Cerberus I thought I'd clarify the issue on the 'that' as relative pronoun. Do you have time to chat?

Cerberus

17:46

Is that Jeff or something?

@AlanMunn Oh hi! Sure.

Apart from tradition, it seems efficient to me to call two words by the same name that fulfil the same function.

Alan Munn

@Cerberus Ok. I'm going to post a series of arguments; they'll be split up due to the chat limits.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@Cerberus the meaning of the quote is completely orthogonal to the timestamp of the edit.

Alan Munn

Let's start with the following fact: in an object relative clause (or an embedded subject RC) the relative pronoun is optional:

The man I saw
The man I think saw me.

So we need a rule that is equivalent to "Delete a relative pronoun". Now, this rule must be able to delete "who", since either of the relative clauses above can have "who" as the relative pronoun.

2

Second: the complementizer "that" can be deleted in English as well:

John said he was sick.

So now we have two independently needed rules: one to delete relative pronouns and one to delete complementizers.

So in

The man that I saw
The man that I think saw me

we don't have any grounds not to think that the relative pronoun deletion rule has applied and the complementizer deletion rule hasn't applied. On the other hand, we expect complementizers to show up with tensed clauses generally.

Third: "that" doesn't behave like a relative pronoun in other relative clause contexts:

The man to whom I spoke
The library to which took the book
*The man to that I spoke
*The library to that I took the book

Cerberus

@AlanMunn Haha oh dear!

Alan Munn

Fourth:

In infinitival object relative clauses we get 'for', not 'that', which is what we would expect if 'that' is a complementizer; 'for' is the usual complementizer for non-finite clauses.

A book for you to read
*A book that you to read
I would like for you to read this book
*I would like that you to read this book

Fifth:

Both Middle English data and modern English examples show evidence that wh-relative prounous *and* 'that' can co-occur in the same relative clause.

Cerberus

17:48

@RegDwightѬſ道 Not to me...

Alan Munn

:-) I'm done!

Cerberus

> we don't have any grounds not to think that the relative pronoun deletion rule has applied and the complementizer deletion rule hasn't applied. On the other hand, we expect complementizers to show up with tensed clauses generally.

Not sure I understand this.

Alan Munn

@Cerberus If you take 'that' to be a complementizer, then in "the man that I saw" the relative pronoun deletion rule has applied, but the complementizer deletion rule hasn't applied. (You can think of this as "the man (who) that I saw")

Cerberus

@AlanMunn Okay, so if I understand you correctly, you are applying your model here, according to which "that" is a conjunction/complementizer always, and in this example you need to assume that a relative pronoun ("who") has been deleted?

That sounds more complicated than simply saying "that is a relative pronoun here (and there is no "who")".

Alan Munn

@Cerberus Yes, but that rule is independently needed since we can always have relative clauses without any relative pronoun.

Also, having two 'that's is more complicated in its own way.

Cerberus

17:59

@AlanMunn But in this case, I would say the rule does not apply, and there is no deletion. So isn't that a simpler description of this sentence?

@AlanMunn I can see that, but it is quite easy to distinguish the two thats.

Alan Munn

@Cerberus Yes and no. Yes, if you can find independent evidence of its pronominal status. No if you can't. The data that I gave above is obviously on the "no" side.

@Cerberus But why should you need to? That's the point. The supposed relative pronoun 'that' always appears in exactly the same place that you would expect the complementizer 'that' (i.e. first element of a tensed clause).

Cerberus

I think I should first go over your other arguments.

As to argument 4, you start by calling for + object + inf. a clause.

I wouldn't call that a clause.

A clause for me needs to have a finite verb.

I would consider I would like for you to read that book a variation of the structure I bought that book for you to read.

It is different, sure.

But to me it seems closer that that than to a finite clause.

Alan Munn

I think there's linguistic consensus that clauses can be both finite and non-finite:

I expect he will leave.
I expect there will be a party.
I expect him to leave.
I expect there to be a party.
I expected that he would have been playing the piano.
I expected him to have been playing the piano

Cerberus

*closer to that than to a finite clause

@AlanMunn How about I expected his departure?

Is that also a clause?

Alan Munn

@Cerberus No, that's not a clause. That's just an NP.

Cerberus

18:12

@AlanMunn Why not?

By the way, I am not a linguist, so be warned, hehe.

Alan Munn

@Cerberus Because a clause has to have some auxiliary verb structure (minimally 'to') but as in my last 'expect' example, it can have all of the other usual Aux verb suspects (perfect, progressive).

Cerberus

@AlanMunn What do you mean exactly? A clause must have an auxiliary verb? I don't think that's what you mean.

Alan Munn

@Cerberus At the right level of abstraction, yes. In finite clauses like "John walked", the 'auxiliary verb' appears as the verbal morphology (in this case -ed) rather than an independent word. But it will show up again if you e.g. negate the sentence (John didn't walk) or ask a question (Did John walk) or make it emphatic: (John DID walk.) Notice that 'do' is in complementary distribution with -ed in all of these examples.

Cerberus

@AlanMunn I think you agree that any terminology and description of structures depends on which definitions you pick to start with, right? And I have a feeling we are using different definitions from the bottom up.

I mean, the way you are using it, the word auxiliary means something totally different from the way I would use it.

Which is fine in itself.

Alan Munn

@Cerberus Yes, unfortunately that may well be true. In the case of Auxiliary verb, I deliberately put it in scare quotes, because I'm not really claiming that -ed is an Aux, just that the defining quality of a clause is to have one element that is plays the role of tense: either a tense morpheme or a modal or 'to'.

Cerberus

18:24

Haha, and now you're probably using a definition of "tense" that I am unfamiliar with. How does "to" constitute a tense?

And how about -ing, would you consider that a tense morpheme too?

Alan Munn

When we look at how 'to' behaves, it has exactly the same distribution as a modal auxiliary: it is first in the string of elements that follow the subject but precede the verb, and causes the verb adjacent to it to have no inflection:

John will leave.
I expect John to leave.

@Cerberus -ing in the progressive is an aspect morpheme, not Tense.

Carlo_R.

@RegDwightѬſ道 I cannot to troll in chat because I do not write English fastly! You would say: "What look!". But, if I were able to do that (i.e. write English fastly), I would not do it at all.

Cerberus

@AlanMunn And in gerunds (you know what I mean, though you would probably not use that term)?

Alan Munn

And Modal auxiliaries are syntactically equivalent to tense.

Cerberus

I meant in gerunds.

@Carlo_R Hi, welcome!

Alan Munn

18:28

@Cerberus Ok, that's a very perceptive question. The answer is probably yes, at least in verbal gerunds, i.e. ones whose verbs can have auxiliaries and which take objects directly as opposed to requiring 'of'.

Cerberus

@AlanMunn So what if they can take both of and a direct object, just not at the same time?

Alan Munn

E.g.
I remember John having ordered a coffee. (verbal gerund)
I remember the ordering of the coffee. (nominal gerund)

Cerberus

Suppose such a verb. Then, if it used without either, is it a noun or a tensed verb?

I am trying to go along with your definitions.

Jez

@AlanMunn Shouldn't that be "I remember John's having ordered a coffee"?

Cerberus

@Jez There are two schools: one recommends the genitive, the other the accusative.

Alan Munn

18:32

@Jez It can be, but for most speakers doesn't have to be.

@Cerberus Unless there's an independent cue to the category, it's hard to tell them apart.

Cerberus

@AlanMunn So then you can't always tell whether a gerund is a clause or a noun?

Carlo_R.

@Cerberus Thx for your welcome.

Cerberus

And how about this?: what he does is terrorise people in order to extort money.

Jez

@AlanMunn Don't have to worry in the case of her :-)

Alan Munn

@Cerberus No, not always. Gerunds on the outside always have the distribution of NPs, but internally they may be clauses (and therefore verbal) or nouns. If they are just a single word though, it's hard to tell.

Cerberus

18:35

Is terrorise... a clause to you?

Jez

terrorise isn't even a word

Cerberus

I felt s was appropriate today.

Alan Munn

@Cerberus That's probably just a VP, not a full clause.

Jez

vocalization should be indicated with a z

s is just for air sound

Cerberus

@AlanMunn So what is the difference?

Matt Эллен

18:37

s is for feeling superior to Americans

Alan Munn

@Jez It's a perfectly good British spelling. And no, orthographic 's' doesn't always sound like phonetic [s].

Cerberus

@Jez So you would write analyze?

Jez

@AlanMunn I'm British and I use 'z'

@Cerberus yes

Cerberus

My point was that -ise and -ize are so annoyingly inconsistent that it is only right to ridicule them.

@Jez I don't think even Oxford spelling has z in analyze.

Jez

or standardiZe on 'z' which is more logical :-)

dictionary.reference.com/browse/analyze

Vitaly

18:39

would you write cars as carz?

Matt Эллен

logical

ha!

disonz Jez

Jez

@Vitaly should do :-)

Alan Munn

@Cerberus In the example "What he does is ___" the space has the same distribution as a deleted VP in cases like "John drinks beer and Fred does ___ too.".

Cerberus

@AlanMunn I understand what you mean by deletion, not what your definition of a verb phrase is.

Jez

Am I the only one for whom the chat icons in the top right keep flashing black?

(avatars)

Cerberus

18:42

And I don't understand what you mean by distribution here. Their being in a similar position? I don't see this similar position, mainly because the first space in your example needs to be filled up.

@Jez Hah nice try, like we're falling for that!

Jez

?

Alan Munn

Lets say a verb phrase is the main verb plus all of its dependents excluding the Aux verbs. So

John will eat. (eat is a VP)
John will eat an apple. (eat an apple is a VP)
John will eat an apple on Tuesday. (both eat an apple and eat an apple on Tuesday) are VPs)

@Cerberus What I mean is that the element that must fill the gap in the first sentence is exactly the same sort of thing as the element that would fill the gap in the second sentence.

Cerberus

@AlanMunn So now you are using "auxiliary" in the conventional sense, and "main verb" to mean the verb governed by the innermost auxiliary?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@Cerberus that quote is 400 years old. Shakespeare decided on its meaning long before this site came into existence.

Cerberus

@AlanMunn Okay, clear; so what does that show us?

Alan Munn

18:47

@Cerberus Yes. Sorry, I'm not trying to be difficult with the terms, honest. :)

Cerberus

@AlanMunn I know. It is difficult to have a discussion with someone who speaks another language, hehe.

I mean, our definitions are so far apart.

Alan Munn

@Cerberus I don't know. You asked the question. :) I think what you wanted to know was the limits to what I would want to call a clause, and I think I've stuck to the idea that a clause needs some kind tense/aux element; it can't just be a main verb and its dependents.

Cerberus

@AlanMunn Oh, I see. But I think you would consider to + inf. a clause?

So how about he has to go v. he must go?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Oh crap, Clippy again.

Cerberus

@RegDwightѬſ道 That's not crap, it's yay!

RegDwight Ѭſ道

18:51

Cerberus

Hahaha brilliant.

I like paperclorn.

@RegDwightѬſ道 He should just have decided on all of English to save us all this trouble, like some kind of Bible.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

You make no sense.

Cerberus

And you never noticed this before?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Certainly he wrote what he wrote with a certain meaning in mind.

That meaning has not changed, and will not change, just because someone edits something on a site somewhere four hundred years later.

Cerberus

Exactly. It is just for interpreters to extract the orthodox meaning.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

18:54

Muh.

1 hour ago, by RegDwight Ѭſ道

I can't handle this anymore. I'll go have a nap for four and a half hours, then delete all today's posts and resume business as usual.

Cerberus

@RegDwightѬſ道 Awwww.

You know, it is like with cats.

The person who dislikes cats the most is what they find most attractive.

Alan Munn

@Cerberus Yes, definitely.

Cerberus

@AlanMunn So he has to go v. he must go?

Alan Munn

@Cerberus Another good question. I would say that has two clauses, the whole thing and the 'to go'. has is just a regular main verb 'have' here, as evidenced by VP ellipsis or questions: Does he have to go? vs. *Has he to go? / John has to go and Bill does too. vs. *John has to go and Bill has too.

Robusto

5 hours ago, by Robusto

Clippy has died and been resurrected as a unicorn! No fair! Do all Microsoft mistakes get to be unicorns after they die?

Cerberus

19:00

@AlanMunn But isn't it a bit odd to analyse these two sentence so very differently?

I understand your reasoning, don't get me wrong.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Apr 19 '11 at 14:33, by Kosmonaut

Robusto

That's no unicorn.

Cerberus

Do you think the uniclip is Kosmo's reincarnation come to watch over us?

Robusto

Apr 19 '11 at 14:37, by Robusto

Remember, if you become Clippy, people may write blog posts about the best ways of killing you. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1068552/posts

RegDwight Ѭſ道

20 hours ago, by RegDwight Ѭſ道

Robusto

19:02

A post-ironic Clippy. "Post" meaning "sans" in this case. As in Cosmic Sans.

Alan Munn

@Cerberus No, I don't think it's odd at all. The analysis is based on their syntax, not on their meaning. Now it is interesting to figure out how the combination of 'have+inf' gives you what looks like the meaning of 'must', but that's not the same thing as saying they should have the same syntax (since they clearly don't.)

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Apr 17 '11 at 12:45, by Robusto

It's called "Chalkboard" ...

Robusto

Apr 17 '11 at 13:11, by Robusto

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@Robusto it's funny how the rest of them images have disappeared.

Robusto

And obviously you chose not to acknowledge the "s" in Cosmic.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

19:05

Stupid Imgur has no bytes left.

Robusto

Byte me, Imgur.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@Robusto I don't care about asses not preceded by apostrophe's.

Cerberus

@AlanMunn Well, a theoretical question: would you have syntax be completely independent of meaning?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Not that again.

Robusto

@RegDwightѬſ道 Is that what you're calling your courting tackle now? An apostrophe? Well, I guess.

But you might consider that a catastrophe.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

19:07

Guess on, samba boy.

I'm out for a nap.

Robusto

Samba boy?

Welcome to the randome. Which is currently in progress.

Cerberus

Bye elephant.

Alan Munn

@Cerberus Basically, yes. (Not that they don't connect, but that you can't derive one from the other.)

In fact not recognizing that fact is one of the biggest problems with traditional grammar.

Here's a simple example of their independence. The prepositions "before" and "after" semantically relate two events. So *X before Y* means (roughly) the time that X happened precedes the time that Y happened. Now syntactically, Y can either be a noun phrase or a clause:

John left before the party.
John left before Bill left.

(Let's exclude cases like "John left before Bill (left)" which arguably involve ellipsis.)

Cerberus

@AlanMunn I don't know. Somehow it strikes me as an illusion to think that you could...

@AlanMunn Okay, so?

Alan Munn

Now the prepositions "while" and "during" also relate two events, and mean the same thing: X during Y or X while Y mean that the time of X overlaps with the time of Y. But they split on the syntactic category:

John left while the party was going on.
*John left while the party.
*John left during the party was going on.
John left during the party.

This is a purely syntactic fact.

@Cerberus I would agree it's illusory, but that doesn't seem to stop people thinking that way. :)

Cerberus

19:22

@AlanMunn No, I meant that I suspect that it is an illusion to think that syntax could be entirely separated from meaning.

@AlanMunn Okay, so...what are you trying to show me? That syntax is not identical to meaning? I don't think anyone would claim that.

Alan Munn

@Cerberus I guess it depends what you mean by completely separated. Chomsky's famous "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously" was supposed to show that pretty meaningless sentences could still be syntactically well formed.

Jez

If somebody regularly uses the glottal stop, do they sound, well, dumber to you?

Alan Munn

@Cerberus That you can't reduce syntactic facts to semantic facts. (Which was kind of underlying your suggestion that it was odd that the have to construction would be treated differently to the must construction.)

Cerberus

@AlanMunn Okay, but that only proves that syntax and meaning are not identical.

@Jez Lower class, but not necessarily dumber.

Alan Munn

@Jez Maybe if they use it in places where you don't. We all use the glottal stop in some places.

Jez

19:25

@Cerberus there's a guy on Youtube whose vids I like but his continuous use of the glottal stop makes me wince

Alan Munn

@Cerberus But isn't that enough to say that there can be phenomena that require syntactic explanations and not semantic explanations, and vice versa?

Cerberus

@AlanMunn I didn't mean that it could be reduced, but that...uhh well I think we'd need to have a discussion about some of the fundamental processes of how our definitions and structures of languages come to be, why we choose the one we choose.

@Jez And you never use it in the Estuary way?

Jez

what do you mean by that?

Alan Munn

@Cerberus I don't know if that's a practical question to ask. The particular structures that a particular language allows or disallows is partially based on historical accident.

@Jez The use of the glottal stop in a wider range of contexts is a feature of so-called Estuary English. See phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/estuary/home.htm for more info.

Cerberus

@AlanMunn It is enough to say that some phenomena require more than just semantic explanations, and others require more than just semantic explanations. But I am suspicious of the claim that it would be possible to use only structure to explain phenomena. The main reason for me is that I think syntacticians (?) use meaning as a criterion for picking syntactic definitions. In other words, I think the structure of a sentence is part of its meaning, and v.v.

But this is a bit vague without concrete examples.

@Jez Do you never say "tha' one" for "that one"?

Or doesn't that count?

Jez

19:31

i do say that but it's barely even a glottal stop, it's more like "tha won"

Alan Munn

@Cerberus No, I understand the worry. But I think that's an empirical question: the degree to which purely syntactic explanations for things stand up to scrutiny can be evaluated. But I think it's a methodological mistake not to try to separate the two as much as possible.

Cerberus

I have to buy food before the shops close, so I'll be gone for 15 minutes or so.

Alan Munn

@Cerberus I really should go too. It's been fun chatting with you. You have very good linguistic intuitions.

Cerberus

@AlanMunn I am in doubt. On the one hand, I think we should be very much aware of the distinction, and trying to separate them is often a very useful thing to do. On the other, meaning is sometimes far more efficient in explaining phenomena.

@AlanMunn Thank! One last thing:

Alan Munn

@Cerberus Yes?

@Cerberus No, meaning is only efficient if the phenomena require a semantic explanation. If the phenomenon is syntactic, then trying to explain it semantically is doomed. (And vice versa.) Of course some phenomena may involve both syntax and semantics.

Cerberus

19:36

I generally understand and appreciate the purely syntactic methods and their terminology. But there are two disadvantages to certain definitions that many modern linguists of English choose: 1. they cut off links with the past, as their definitions mainly work in modern English; 2. the same for foreign languages (each language would have to have its own set of definitions for the same word, i.e. "relative pronoun" might have to mean something different in French).

And another thing: modern linguists often use traditional terms with a very different meaning. That is in itself OK, but it is a bit hard on non-linguists, and they will often be confused.

For example, "deep cases".

Alan Munn

@Cerberus This is a big question, and I think that it depends a lot on your goals. But bear in mind that 'tradition' is a pretty lousy justification for many things. Linguists are trying to do science, so terminology should reflect the science not the traditions (just like we don't talk about phlogiston any more.)

Cerberus

@AlanMunn Well, you could just pick another word entirely, instead of using the same "traditional" word with a different meaning.

Alan Munn

@Cerberus Yeah, that's also true, but in that respect I think we're stuck with things.

Also, don't think that "traditional" definitions are well-defined anyway.

Cerberus

No?

Perhaps not. Like which?

Alan Munn

@Cerberus "Subject" and "Object"?

Cerberus

19:43

@AlanMunn Hmm those seem pretty straightforward, especially subject?

That which determines the ending of the finite verb.

(Direct) object is a bit less clear, but I think it is equally problematic in modern ling?

Alan Munn

@Cerberus Every year when I teach intro syntax, I give a little quiz on what a subject is. The task is to underline the subjects of a bunch of sentences. Most people get it wrong.

Cerberus

@AlanMunn Oh! Oh! I want to take that quiz!

But I really have to go this instant, lest no food.

Alan Munn

Ok. Go. I'll quiz you later.

Cerberus

I will be back in about 10 minutes if you will still be here. But of course you should go if you need to do something else.

It was great talking to a flexibly-minded linguist!

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…