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01:01
What is Jasper's name now? I need him to explain to somebody that they're dumb about dictionaries.
01:39
It's Jasper van Looij.
He hasn't been only for 12 days; perhaps that is too long?
 
1 hour later…
02:46
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive body detected (44): Double words in a sentence, what is this called? ✏️ by a deleted user on english.SE
 
9 hours later…
11:50
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive body detected (44): Double words in a sentence, what is this called? ✏️ by a deleted user on english.SE
12:33
@Mitch no you obviously don't live in a tent.
Modern tents have four storeys and twenty cooking places and a swimming pool and are not made of chewing gum and spit.
What you live in I don't know, but it sure doesn't deserve to be called a tent by modern standards.
So, in English, it's reasonably common to cast a sentence in OSV order instead of SVO.
It's so common that @RegDwigнt did it just now. :D
I'm wondering, is it at all common to use SOV order (outside of poetry)?
It seems like usually, if you see [noun] [noun] [verb], you can assume that it's OSV, not SOV.
13:09
how do you figure "it was him I saw" fits in the sov, osv, etc.?
@Cerberus Argh. Either gone or changed his name.
@TannerSwett "The egg Sandra ate" is OSV. OSV will often sound like it should serve as a subject with a relative clause in a larger sentence: "The egg Sandra ate was scrambled." SOV doesn't do this - "Sandra the egg ate." I make sense of that sentence by understanding that more people eat eggs than eggs eat people.
I just cleft your sentence
"It was" is merely a particle creating a cleft sentence, then "him" is the object, and "I saw" the subject and verb.
@TaliesinMerlin If I came across the sentence "Sandra the egg ate," I would probably understand it as SOV, but I can't really think of where you'd use such a sentence.
13:13
I don't know about 'reasonably common'. It's sometimes done and it sounds poetic, but people don't do it very often.
@TannerSwett oh! interesting
This is why we should all speak Polish. "Sandra jajko zjadła" - Sandra the egg ate (she ate it). "Sandrę jajko zjadło" - Sandra the egg ate (it ate her).
@TannerSwett But yes SOV in English just doesn't compute.
Sadly, "jajko" is the same in the nominative and accusative.
@TannerSwett As in Polish notation?
13:15
You know, it's really ironic that Polish has very free word order, while Polish notation is very strict.
I think I read that there's a hypothesis that in Proto-Indo-European, neuter nouns had no nominative form. Eventually people said "to hell with that" and used the accusative as the nominative.
And even nowadays, in Proto-Indo-European languages, the nominative form of a neuter noun is usually identical to the accusative.
I'm just glad that someone is at least privy to carnivorous eggs.
Dogs (psy) and eggs (jajka) are also the same in nominative and accusative, so if you say "Jajka lubią psy," it's technically ambiguous whether you're saying that eggs like dogs or vice versa.
"Oh! You mean Sandra the egg ate? Yeah, she got eaten. Sorry, I though you mean Sandra the chair sat on. Too many Sandras"
"Well, there were"
I'm not sure what a Pole would think of the sentence "Jajka lubią psy."
In particular, is it pretty much unambiguously "eggs like dogs," or does it depend on the context?
@Mitch His profile still exists when one clicks on his name in the chat log.
13:21
@MattE.Эллен Now there's just one Sandra that the space used to be stuck in.
@TannerSwett Yeah, that doesn't sound natural me. Only with very strong context would it even stand in extravagant poetry.
@Cerberus Which one, "Sandra the egg ate"?
@TannerSwett Yes.
35
A: Accusative equals nominative for neuter words – how universal is this and why?

CerberusI believe there are no exceptions to this rule. That's what I have always read, and I have never encountered any, neither in Greek nor in Latin, nor even in German. There is an hypothesis about the cause of this phenomenon. Neuter words were historically limited to inanimate objects or things th...

@M.A.R. the space got lucky, getting out while it could
In other words, I think you're right.
13:27
I wonder if accusative is identical to nominative for neuter words in literally every Indo-European language.
English is no exception to the rule... but mainly because English nouns don't have gender or case in the first place.
@TannerSwett Modern Dutch doesn't have many case endings either, but, in older Dutch, it was the same way.
So if all of Western Germanic, Latin, Greek, and Polish have this, I'd say that is a strong clue.
But who knows?
We should ask @Færd. Does Persian have neuter nouns? And does it have cases? If so, are nominative and accusative case endings identical for neuter nouns? And in old/ancient Persian?
@Cerberus Persian has nominative and accusative AFAIK
No markers.
There is را but it's considered a separate word, not a suffix (for accusative)
@M.A.R. Hmm how does it have cases but no markers?
I guess they just called them those . . . never really looked deep into that one
Oh, you mean there are no case endings, but the cases are marked by particles?
13:37
Yep, but just the accusative.
Nothing for the nominative
@M.A.R. Thanks!
And do you have neuter words?
Is there a name for a spelling mistake that is still a word?
@Cerberus Persian doesn't have any noun genders AFAIK
F'rinstance:
Those curios about the structure and the role of the info object are left in the dark.
@M.A.R. OK. You don't happen to about older Persian?
13:44
@Cerberus Nope, sorry
@marcellothearcane Hmm maybe contamination? Though not when it is a mere typo.
@M.A.R. OK!
@marcellothearcane Ah, a "spelling air."
(I just made that up.)
@marcellothearcane Like malapropism?
@JaspervanLooij Jasper, where are you?
But also...
You know about dictionaries.
And there's this guy
who doesn't
and I can't convince him
of anything
because he read something somewhere once
and now he knows everything
What do you think?
(which may be different from me but you seem to know more than I do)
Thanks. Visiting that link all the way to the end says ["Page not found
We're sorry, we couldn't find the page you requested."](https://english.stackexchange.com/users/358641/jasper-van-looij)
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at end of answer, potentially bad asn for hostname in answer, potentially bad ns for domain in answer, username similar to website in answer (120): 'never peg the needle on your spending meter' by foreign exchange on english.SE
what you need to do to convince him is create an enemy for him to focus on and say that the enemy stands against your (Mitch's) point of view. He'll agree with you in no time
You're playing 4-dimensional chess and I'm playing tictactoe
and this guy is playing 'kick the can'
I miss the ole hoop n stick
14:08
@MattE.Эллен but goddamit I'm going to tattoo that on... well, not my face
. On everybody elses face.
yes, otherwise how would you remember?
@MattE.Эллен somebody's gotta make that hoop.
throwing rocks works
@MattE.Эллен Remember what?
4 mins ago, by Matt E. Эллен
what you need to do to convince him is create an enemy for him to focus on and say that the enemy stands against your (Mitch's) point of view. He'll agree with you in no time
I keep seeing TV specials about people with brain lesions or some kind of weird unknown sickness where they start to lose memory...
@Mitch Well... now I think I've got brain lesions
(not really)
14:12
and all I can think sullenly is "Hey, I'm like that"
, and then immediately brighten up because if my memory were so bad I wouldn't even realize that.
Then I get pessimistic because I know that there are different kinds of memory and the memory that remembers that you saw a TV show about memory recently may not be the same kind of memory as forgetting all those other things (which I can't remember because otherwise I'd tell you!)
But we weren't talking about memory, it was something else.
@MattE.Эллен Ah.
Thanks.
@Mitch I find the comments difficult to follow. Was the other poster saying that Merriam-Webster cannot be trusted because it's not associated with a university?
@MattE.Эллен Lesion sounds so... well, it could be -anything- really. Not particularly troublesome. Maybe troublesome, but not particularly so. But then it could be an alien mold spore eating out half your brain. Or maybe not.
@TaliesinMerlin Yeah mostly. Sort of. But particularly, MW isn't -as- trustworthy because it doesn't have the weight of a larger institution behind it.
@Mitch I get them confused with legions
which I confuse with leg irons
My rejoinder was that MW has -only its definitions for maintaining its reputation, so (by the same 'reputation' idea) should be -more- trustworthy.
@TannerSwett I'll have none of your hairs and graces thank you.
14:17
I'm not convinced by either (because so much else is going on), even though -I- went through the motions of a rebuttal. Both arguments are just as strong.
@Mitch like how Yahoo Answers is more trustworthy than Stack Exchange
@MattE.Эллен uh...
yeah. sure.
yeah.
@Mitch not knowing that you saw the self same commercial yesterday and went through the same barometric phase.
@marcellothearcane Oh. I totally remember the sequence.
I can't remember the name of the medication they recommended.
14:21
@Mitch That username makes me uneasy but I can't recall a previous encounter with them
Excelon, an excellent name for a memory drug, is the name of a med I remember but not the name of the med recommended by the TV advertisement.
Premagen?
Something that starts with a 'P'
and it's easier to type a bunch of crap here than wiki it.
Like pneumonia
@MattE.Эллен I'd point out the fallacy. Fallacy of authority? He sounds like someone who fancies himself a logical expert, so pointing out the disconnect - authority doesn't mean quality - with a fancy fallacy name might help.
@Mitch *Exelon
Also, "where do lexicographers come from?"
14:23
Excelon sounds lame
@marcellothearcane I'd put bird flu much lower. It sounds not great for the bird, but for me, what do I care if a bird gets a fever?
Now if you make it an executable
when a daddy lexicographer and a mummy lexicographer....
@M.A.R. Your face sounds lame.
NO U
14:24
Besides don't those two sound identical?
maybe not
@Mitch It was a hilarious joke. You said beginning with 'p', and pneumonia doesn't (phonetically)
@MattE.Эллен When Noah Webster emerged from the flesh vats ...
@MattE.Эллен the birds and the spelling bees
14:25
@TaliesinMerlin Well, I was actually trying to get him to consider myself an authority of actual use. Which I suppose is not as authoritative as something printed (on a screen). But he -did- come here to ask.
@M.A.R. ...
Dude.
You're the dude
The dude abides.
that changes their name slightly so I ca...
wait...
rebooting bot
@Mitch such fealty
It's skullpatrol, skillpatrol, sailpetrel, etc.
but not snailboat.
No that was a very educated bot.
14:28
snailboat pretty consistently likes snails.
But can't decide on transportation.
@Mitch I just think of him as Nicholas Cage in Ghost Rider
@M.A.R. haha all I got were images of pokemon.
but yeah, Prevagen.
@M.A.R. definitely snail mail
Really, isn't caffeine the wonder memory attention drug with only minor side affects?
nicotine could also work (and weight loss) but has worse side affects.
"dietary supplement" screw that.
14:31
@M.A.R. Look man if I had to watch all Nicholas Cage movies, I'd be wasting a lot of time.
@TaliesinMerlin that got dark pretty quick
Well, just watch skollpitrol chat
@marcellothearcane Bird pflu? Either way, the bird needs to go get a vaccine, not me.
That's German.
Yeah, German Measles. As intimidating as German Chocolate Cake.
Aequorin is a calcium-activated photoprotein isolated from the hydrozoan Aequorea victoria. Though the bioluminescence was studied decades before, the protein was originally isolated from the animal by Osamu Shimomura. In the animals, the protein occurs together with the green fluorescent protein to produce green light by resonant energy transfer, while aequorin by itself generates blue light. Discussions of "jellyfish DNA" to make "glowing" animals often refer to transgenic animals which express the green fluorescent protein, not aequorin, although both originally derived from the same animal...
...it takes the article quite a while to get to the memory thing.
ugh
final got to the part about memory
for which it basically says, yeah it totally helps memory if you tel some one that it helps memory while you give them a sugar pill.
but you'll really have a glow about you.
haha
it's a pun
well, not really.
it's a reference to
oh forget it.
14:49
@Mitch Lol, giving that lightbulb metaphor a whole new meaning
now -that's- a pun.
haha,
hm.. maybe still not a pun
more of a bon mot.
@M.A.R. ya know...
I wonder if that's what they were going for.
product development by marketing.
it's just the same identical laundry detergent as everyone else.
48
A: How do I politely hint customers to leave my store, without pretending to need leave store myself?

BuddPester them with service Continuously come up to them and ask them if they need anything else. You'll either make more sales (good!) or (hopefully) they'll get the hint that your space and tables are for active customers. You will also come off as friendly and a good host if you do this well. ...

but if we call it "Pfft" people will think all the grime will be washed away in a disimissive lip movement.
49 mins ago, by Matt E. Эллен
what you need to do to convince him is create an enemy for him to focus on and say that the enemy stands against your (Mitch's) point of view. He'll agree with you in no time
and make sure that supposed enemy is outside your store and they need to go there to battle.
uh oh. The enemy just came in to look around for a new shirt.
15:06
Not-phrases... What are they? Adjectival, or adverbial? And are they a type of shortened non-finite phrase, or something different?
"It was me, not him, who did it."
"Bob stole it, not me."
 
1 hour later…
16:36
@TannerSwett careful, I am not any kind of standard for any kind of English.
If my writing were the standard, the Internet would be a nice place. But the Internet is a cesspool of spunk and garbage. QED.
What I do is really everything but common.
And it's not because I'm awesome. It's because everyone else is not.
 
2 hours later…
18:35
@Cerberus If you click into "Parent User" you get the error screen I quoted above.
Does that mean he has chat availability without any kind of regular SE account?
 
2 hours later…
20:08
@Mitch Apoaequorin, a unit of aequorin, is an ingredient in the dietary supplement Prevagen. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has charged the maker with false advertising for its memory improvement claims.
I see this ad frequently on channels with certain demographics.
P.S. I don’t think you dictionary guy wants to know anything, he just wants to argue.
He is protesting closure of his question on meta.
20:35
If you’re curios, check out the following article
CurioUs, dammit!
This article is very distracting.
 
2 hours later…
22:20
@Mitch Ah, I see.
I have no idea!
I could in theory try to change his parent account, but I'm not supposed to do that unasked.

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