English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Cerberus

00:22

@Xanne De is part of the sentence that is the title; the preceding abbreviation is probably entirely separate from it.

Xanne

01:12

The book (actually a reproduction of it) is available on Amazon.

CowperKettle

01:29

Word of the day: milk receiving station

Cerberus

@Xanne I think my uncle has an (original) copy of the other one.

Old books are fairly cheap.

Xanne

02:57

books.google.com/…

Entire text.

Cerberus

03:47

Cool.

Færd

08:26

@FaheemMitha Good question!

I also find it interesting that Karl Marx did indeed engage in stock market speculation and took it seriously too. Maybe imagining a distinct enemy was a way to excuse this engagement.

Faheem Mitha

08:38

@Færd Stock markets are hard work if you want to consistently make money. Because if it was easy, everyone would be rich. Which is, of course, mathematically impossible. Supposedly Keynes had much success in such endeavours. But he did have the advantage of being an economist and also being very smart.

Apparently back in the day value investing wasn't as well understood as it is now.

See for example jstor.org/stable/41955552?seq=1

That would be an interesting article to read. But paywall. Sigh.

Færd

09:19

@FaheemMitha Even with a limited number of people in the stock market, it's almost a zero-sum game, as some economists maintain, since a security is sold and bought at the same time, and the profits and losses cancel each other out in aggregate.

@FaheemMitha Interesting. Maybe use Sci-Hub to relieve the enemy of its money? (am I breaking any rules saying that out loud?)

Faheem Mitha

@Færd In the short term it's zero sum, yes. The only way to make money reliably is to buy and hold. Unless you're one of those rare people who can make money consistently on speculation.

@Færd I was just thinking of that, actually. Though I can't remember if I had ever used it before.

Though I don't think JSTOR is the enemy.

I could perhaps get access to the article, with some difficulty. I probably know people who have access.

But life is short, and I'm not going to do that.

Færd

@FaheemMitha That part was a joke.

Faheem Mitha

@Færd Right.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in link text in body, potentially bad ns for domain in body, potentially bad keyword in body (71): written mistake in paragraph writting by user3347416 on english.SE

M.A.R.

12:26

@Færd Every once in a while, SciHub and piracy come up at Chem

CowperKettle

I love SciHub

I have installed Tor Browser specifically for SciHub, because Russia is blocking SciHub

But somewhy lately it seems that there more articles are published under the Creative Commons license

I don't know why

It is extremely warm today

> Electric car sales in Russia
2019: 353 cars
2020: 687 cars (+95%)

Færd

13:27

@M.A.R. It's a commonplace topic of discussion.

@CowperKettle You could also use Chrome extensions like UltraSurf and CyberGhost. They work in Iran, at least. Tor can take you to a whole nother level of anonymity, of course.

tchrist

13:54

We must confess in closing that our major findings all remain mysteries to us. We do not know why German has closing suffixes or why closing suffixes all take linking elements. We do not know why English has a monosuffix constraint.

3

Just as adjective ordering restrictions are secret grammatical rules of English that everyone learns as a child yet are never learned through instruction, so too is the monosuffix constraint a secret rule of English grammar which is never taught but always learned as a child, and always obeyed. Isn't that fascinating?

Matt E. Эллен

14:09

@tchrist dressingless

interestingly people are fine with dressingless salad

nothing for eveningless, but beginningless seems acceptable

Andrew Leach

@MattE.Эллен And beginninglessness seems OK too (browser spellcheck doesn't like it, though)

Matt E. Эллен

the article says ness can attach to anything, so perhaps that's to be expected :D

@AndrewLeach even an entry at definitions.net

meaningless should have been the first thing that came to mind

Andrew Leach

Perhaps I should add it to the browser word list. Meaningless and meaninglessness are both fine.

Robusto

14:47

Beginninglessness sounds like a word James Joyce might have used in Finnegans Wake.

paul23

I have a very minor question regarding a word - probably too specific for the site. But what are the words for someone who "enrolled for an event" and the corresponding "someone who handled the enrollment of that person"? Like "employee - employer" is there "enrollee - enroller" in english?

Robusto

@paul23 You could use those and be understood, but most likely the person taking a person's enrollment would be an official.

Matt E. Эллен

@paul23 would registrant and registrar be any good to you?

tchrist

@MattE.Эллен It can't attach to -ly if it creates a manner adverb. Hence friendliness and kingliness are ok, but quickliness and carefullyness are impossible. And yet earliness is okay, and you can use it on other monomorphemic adverbs as well, such as nowness and seldomness. It’s really quite odd despite and perhaps because of the absence of realliness.

Andrew Leach

@paul23 Enroller could be a person on either end of the transaction.

Matt E. Эллен

14:57

@tchrist so I am interpreting table IX correctly! I think it's odd then that they chose dressingless when the table shows that -less can attach -ing. Or was the point that the word isn't recorded despite being possible?

tchrist

Matt E. Эллен

I think I'm having trouble with their use of base. are they saying dress is the base, or dressing?

tchrist

> In Table IX (Germanic bases), we count only bases that are themselves
truly suffixed. So, for example, we do not count every word ending in the
orthographic sequence -erdom, but only words where the base of -erdom
is a word (bakerdom but not butcherdom).

But they definitely don't think dressingless exists/is-allowed.

> In the English case at hand, both -ing and -less are class 2 suffixes (neither one affects the stress of its base). Since lexical phonology does not have anything to say about the combination of two suffixes belonging to the same class, the ungrammaticality of *dressingless cannot be explaine

You can have running water but never runningless water.

I think what's happening with dressingless salads is that it has been lexicalized.

You can have dressing rooms but I question having dressingless rooms.

Matt E. Эллен

but you can have meaningless rooms

tchrist

Salads can come with or without salad dressings.

@MattE.Эллен Yeah.

Matt E. Эллен

15:05

and isn't the base of meaningless mean?

tchrist

Yes.

paul23

@MattE.Эллен Isn't that very formal? "Registrants have to agree with the terms of service set by the registrars"? - In that sentences it's used. (Though it's used elsewhere as well, and I'd like to get a single term I can use everywhere so that the manual gets a consistent terminology).

tchrist

They said they found -less attaching to -ing in like 6 cases.

Matt E. Эллен

ah

I see. so it's otherwise restricted

@paul23 yes, it does sound formal

tchrist

> Table IX contains the word-forming suffixes that attach productively to Germanic bases.18 Most of these suffixes are of Germanic origin, the exceptions being -able, -ee, and -ess. -able is unique among English suffixes in that it attaches ...

18 We have excluded -ing. This suffix ambiguously forms either a participle or a gerund (both of which we take to be inflectional) or a derived nominal, which we take to be derivational. There is no way to distinguish the derived nominals in the OED except on a case-by-case basis (and each decision is a delicate task), and the OED lists 25,434 words…

Native speakers unconsciously follow completely different rules for Germanic suffixes as we do for Latinate suffixes.

That's a big take-away from that article.

Matt E. Эллен

15:09

aye

tchrist

Native speakers unconsciously follow rules for Germanic suffixes that are completely different from the ones we follow for Latinate suffixes.

Matt E. Эллен

mean and begin are both Germanic, while dress is Latinate, so perhaps that's relevant too

tchrist

I can never figure out how to phrase those sorts of comparisons. They seem to always come out of my mouth in an ugly way the first time through.

The problem is that these rules are learnt as children, and children have no access to history.

Matt E. Эллен

*this bottling factory is bottlingless

tchrist

> It does help to distinguish the Germanic from the
Latinate vocabulary and thus might be useful in acquisition, but this raises
the further question of why a language should partition its vocabulary
in this way. And how does a child learn the distinction between the vocabulary types? We have used etymology as a rough guide to the division,
but no child has access to history.

Matt E. Эллен

15:13

I would guess classism

tchrist

They earlier hypothesize that it's about stress.

Latinate suffixes are stress-shifting. Germanic ones are not.

A child will perceive that difference without knowing Latin or German.

I was also intrigued by their musings that "adverb" may not be a word class in its own right, only a subtype of adjectives.

Or that -ly may be inflectional not derivational.

Matt E. Эллен

You speak French if you're (Norman) royalty or aspiring middle class. You speak Anglo-Saxon otherwise.

tchrist

Many of these are just possibilities they throw out there for further consideration, not assertions.

Also, words like wisdom and witness are now perceived as monomorphemic, even though they really didn't start out that way, and have recoverable bases.

A witnessless trial may not be a sign of witlessness, only of of wisdomlessness. :)

Matt E. Эллен

:D

tchrist

I find secret grammar rules incredibly intriguing. Even Horn says we still don't know diddly about how negatives work, and he should know.

And yes, he really did say "diddly" there. It was part of his point.

Matt E. Эллен

15:22

disnonunshouldn't he

tchrist

I can tell you're a frontend man.

Matt E. Эллен

I would have thought, from that display, you can tell I'm not :D

tchrist

heh

user489849

Hello, I hope I'm not intruding. I'm wondering why [definite-article] isn't the main tag instead of [definite-articles]. Since there is only one, shouldn't we drop the *s*? I've had to use the tag and it always gets converted to the more inaccurate main tag.

From a practical standpoint, does it matter which is the main tag? Is changing this mapping worth proposing on meta or even workable?

tchrist

@niamulbengali No. We use plurals in tags.

Matt E. Эллен

15:26

ah, but it's the before a consonant sound and the before a vowel sound ;)

tchrist

Tags that are nouns should almost always be in the plural.

Pick a tag: uniquity, uniquities.

Sometimes it's weird. How many ubiquities can there be?

As many as there are happies, I suppose.

So you need to have definiteness not definitenesses.

But as article is a count noun, it works better as a plural in the tag.

We should not be thinking of math here.

user489849

@tchrist My main argument is that there's only one. Also, are common misspellings good tag synonyms?

tchrist

The 1.0 definite articles that English possesses are sometimes trickily justified.

The tag discusses definite articles.

We have no the-queen you know.

user489849

What about [antedecents] which is a synonym of [antecedents]? Is it useful?

tchrist

And yes, common mispellings make lovely tag sinonims.

user489849

15:33

@tchrist Okay, thanks.

tchrist

@niamulbengali Clearly. People were typing them.

Robusto

I wonder if people looking for uniquity ever get iniquity instead.

tchrist

Speaking of sinonyms.

Robusto

They must be sinners qua non.

CowperKettle

Robusto

15:40

I wish headhunters would stop hounding me to get a job. I quit Linked In over a year ago, but I'm still getting emails. Lately one employer emails me every couple of days saying I'm highly recommended and my CV is perfect for their startup. I don't reply.

CowperKettle

@Robusto Just add them to "Spam"

Robusto

Yeah. I do that eventually. But new ones keep springing up.

I wonder where they get my résumé.

CowperKettle

> Where do you want to work when you grow up?

> I want to work???

Robusto

Haha. I understood ya khochu rabotats? (or words to that effect).

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle That's a good thing, no?

CowperKettle

16:00

@M.A.R. Yes, it is great, I translated some into Russian

Robusto

Here's How Humans Have Evolved In the Last 100 Years

►

This is interesting ^

CowperKettle

Starship might soon hop to 10 km

Robusto

If what he's saying is true, some of the tenets of natural selection could need to be reexamined.

CowperKettle

16:50

Word of the evening: resistance artery

Andrew Leach

17:01

@CowperKettle Otherwise known as the M11

Faheem Mitha

17:51

@AndrewLeach I thought that was the M25.

Andrew Leach

@FaheemMitha Ah, but that's not an artery, however sclerotic it might be.

Faheem Mitha

@AndrewLeach Ah.

@AndrewLeach Supposedly living hell to drive on.

Andrew Leach

@FaheemMitha Can be. The top-down run I did at midnight one February with a load of other MG-owners was quite enjoyable. (The temperature drop when the street-lights stopped was really noticeable!)

Faheem Mitha

@AndrewLeach Actually, I have no idea where the M25 is, but I did read "Good Omens" once. Or tried to. I don't think I got that far.

tchrist

@FaheemMitha Think of the M25 is the world's biggest roundabout qua racetrack qua parking lot encircling the London Eye.

Faheem Mitha

18:02

@tchrist It sounds like fun. Do they race motor cars on it, then?

tchrist

Oh yes, but if they catch you going over a hundred you have to walk home.

Faheem Mitha

@tchrist Spoilsports.

That reminds me, I should check out the "Good Omens" TV series. Apparently Gaiman adapted it himself.

Assuming it's still on Amazon Prime, that is.

CowperKettle

18:17

i just need butter – internet drama part 3

►

Robusto

18:53

@FaheemMitha Amazon Prime wants me to pay extra for the new season of Gaiman's American Gods. So far I'm resisting.

Faheem Mitha

@Robusto Extra? They don't seem to have a mechanism for that here.

Robusto

My wife and I watched Good Omens. It was good, but not as good as Gods.

@FaheemMitha Can you get the new season of AG for free then?

Faheem Mitha

@Robusto I don't know. Which season is that?

Robusto

Season 3

Faheem Mitha

@Robusto Ah. I checked, and it looks like it's just Season 1 available here. Is Season 1 only 6 episodes?

Is American Gods good?

Robusto

19:02

@FaheemMitha Yeah, it's pretty fine. The book is better, but that's always true.

@FaheemMitha Looks like 8 episodes: imdb.com/title/tt1898069/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Faheem Mitha

@Robusto Ok. I don't think I've read either book properly.

@Robusto Sorry, I was confused. I was looking at "Good Omens".

The third season of "American Gods" is showing up here as available for viewing. But there are only 3 episodes listed.

Robusto

American Gods was that rare book that I literally had to read it in one sitting. Which sitting included the couch, the dinner table, and even the toilet.

CowperKettle

Medieval German story about gay sex with a good ending

Faheem Mitha

@Robusto I used to read books like that as a child. These days they don't quite cast the same spell.

Robusto

@FaheemMitha As I said, rare.

I too used to read just about every book like that when I was a child.

Faheem Mitha

19:12

@Robusto Right, rare.

CowperKettle

19:31

Robusto

My brother, who's younger than me, got vaccinated already because there were leftover doses from no-show appointments.

I'm going to try that trick today. Wish me luck.

CowperKettle

@Robusto I used to read books nonstop as a child. Once we were at an airport, and I was reading a book while we walked on the pavement near the airport. I did not notice a crack in the pavement and fell. So I had to stop reading the book at least until we went inside and sat on the benches in the airport.

Robusto

@CowperKettle Haha, the hazards of being a bookworm. ^_^

I used to read under the covers with a flashlight so my parents couldn't tell I was violating bedtime.

CowperKettle

@Robusto Is there an electronic queue in the US? I got into an electronic queue, and the clinic just called me on the phone on Saturday and said that my number was nearing.

Robusto

@CowperKettle There is. But my number probably won't come up for at least another month or two.

CowperKettle

19:35

In Russia, the antagonism towards vaccination is so high that one can even go and get a shot without a queue in Yekaterinburg, in some clinics.

Robusto

People are stupid.

2

As the saying goes in this country, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."

CowperKettle

I have a friend, a girl, who said she would never get vaccinated against tick borne encephalitis, even after I got into an emergency unit with TBE, and my vaccination saved me. She says: "if God wills so, I will die".

She goes to hiking trips to tick-infested areas every summer.

She says that vaccination is unnatural, and dying from encephalitis must be natural.

shrugs

Robusto

@CowperKettle I rest my case.

3 mins ago, by Robusto

People are stupid.

@CowperKettle Yeah, and drowning is the natural result of being over your head in water for several minutes. Those who intend to reproduce offspring will surface and breathe.

Something is weird with the badge system. I just received two new gold badges for reviewing, but I already have those badges.