English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

CowperKettle

00:01

> L'homme ainsi fait va s'unir; il a trente ans, se marie; il doute de tout, comme il a douté des mamelles de sa mère. Use marie par oisiveté, sans amour , par intérêt ; il produira des êtres encore plus faibles que lui !

> Man thus made will find a girl; he is thirty years old, gets married; he doubts everything, as he doubted his mother's breasts. She marries out of idleness, without love, out of interest; he will produce beings even weaker than himself!

Doubted his mother's breasts? Some wordplay probably.

Oh, I came across a new word in his book. Etiolated

> Etiolation /iːtiəˈleɪʃən/ is a process in flowering plants grown in partial or complete absence of light.

> Quel germe produira cette mère étiolée, qui tombera en convulsions aux premières douleurs de l'enfantement, et dont le flanc porte avec douleur, crainte et chagrin, le nouvel être que ses mamelles desséchées pourront à peine allaiter!

etiolated mother

> What germ will be produced by this etiolated mother, who will fall into convulsions at the first pains of childbirth, and whose side carries with pain, fear and sorrow, the new being that her dried out breasts will barely be able to nurse!

He proposed physical exercise as a method to prevent depression, in his final chapter.

M.A.R.

00:23

Nov 12, 2022 at 17:40, by M.A.R.

Yep. 60 mg of morphine can kill me, because I'm morphine-naive. A morphine addict could take 2000 mg and not feel a thing

@CowperKettle probably means that he's such a paranoid person that as a babe he didn't even trust his mother's teats.

jlliagre

@CowperKettle de nos enfants des puits de science He means that the children, instead of being what would be natural for them, already have a deep well of knowledge. He complains about it. Children should play outside and enjoy their life instead of only studying.

Robusto

@jlliagre Congrats! I see you finally found your affixes.

jlliagre

@CowperKettle No wordplay. He means even these babies weren't naive and already questioned everything.

Robusto

Hmm, I thought I I put up my blossom score from today. But I can't see it here.

jlliagre

Today, we wouldn't use mamelle for a woman, it's usually restricted to animals but I guess that wasn't yet the case in the 19th century.

Robusto

00:39

@jlliagre Turns out I hadn't done it yet. Here's mine:

Blossom Puzzle, December 23
Letters: C E I N P R S
My score: 397 points
My longest word: 12 letters
🌻 💮 💐 🏵 🌼 🌸 🌺 🌷 🌹 🌻 💮 💐

Also a new record for me.

jlliagre

Félicitations!

Robusto

Merci.

jlliagre

01:08

Napoléon's soldiers shoes were only provided in three sizes: small (20-23 cm), medium (23-27 cm) and large (27+ cm). There was only a single symmetric model available, i.e. no right and left shoes.

CowperKettle

@jlliagre And sometimes the noses of the shoes were especially flat, to forestall stealing by making them ugly

CowperKettle

01:30

ПУТИН ПОЗДРАВЛЯЕТ С НОВЫМ 2040 ГОДОМ

►

Putin congratulates Russians with the new 2040

Dannyu NDos

01:52

I have an English episode with my American cousin. I told her that I have a fanmade Grass/Fairy-typed Eeveelution, but she kept hearing "grass" as "wrath".

So I tried pronouncing it /gə.ras/ and then she understood.

Robusto

02:15

I just discovered some embarrassingly bad code that I wrote a few years ago. I only discovered it because I wanted to change something and I couldn't change it. Because of BAD CODE.

mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa

I don't even remember writing it, but it was a stopgap for a trivial problem that I should have fixed instead of stopgapping.

I hate when I find shit code in my stack for which I am the only coder.

Laziness. The cardinal sin of coders. But I don't code enough these days to get those great energy burns.

So ... lesson learned. Don't write shit code NO MATTER WHAT!

2

Laurel

@DannyuNDos Wrath and grass don't even sound similar, not to mention that's not a real type of Pokémon

@DannyuNDos Also I don't see why this would be a grass type. Fairy, sure, at least based on precedent

@Robusto All the shit code in my projects is my fault, because I'm the only coder

Robusto

@Laurel It sucks when you can't blame something on someone else, doesn't it? I hate that.

And if there was another coder on this stuff they'd be blaming me. Even worse.

Mitch

@Robusto never look back

You can't go home again

Dannyu NDos

@Laurel Well, wheat is a plant.

Mitch

Look back in anger

Goodbye to all that

So much code is WORN

Write Once Read Never

Did Digimon have an evolutionary path?

alphabet

02:33

@DannyuNDos From Wikipedia: "Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed"

Laurel

02:44

@DannyuNDos It's processed tho

Dannyu NDos

03:30

Why isn't "complectic" a word? I thought it was the adjective form of the noun "complex".

Math has a variety of notions of a complex, so

Proposed example sentence: "Every hypersphere admits a CW-complectic structure."

Laurel

Complex is the adjective for the noun complex

Dannyu NDos

Oh?

Laurel

I can't comment on the math tho

Dannyu NDos

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CW_complex

Using the adjective "complex" in math is dedicated for complex numbers.

Laurel

Looking at it, it does seem like people use "CW complex structure" where it's basically an attributive noun

Much like "car" in "car door" or any number of other expressions

You won't usually find attributive nouns listed in dictionaries (except as normal nouns). But the noun complex in "CW complex" isn't even in my dictionary

Mitch

03:41

I wonder if the OED does though

I was going to comment that most.dictionaries avoid technical vocabulary. But sometimes the OED surprises

searching Google books for "complex complex" yields some mathematical.journals which are reasonable sources of reliable provenance.

Ie in "complex complex" the first one must be an attributive

"complectic complex" doesn't have any appearances in Google books

Dannyu NDos

Yeah, because the former "complex" refers to complex numbers, not complexes.

Mitch

'symplectic' is a word though...I've never really figured out exactly what it's supposed to mean (I mean the definition is what it is, it just doesn't connote anything for me)

@DannyuNDos is that what the references on Google books lead you to believe?

Dannyu NDos

Yes.

@Mitch You mean "simplectic"? That's the adjective form of a simplex.

Mitch

In any event 'complectic' just isn't used so we can complain all day about it but nobody is going to care

@DannyuNDos I often make typos, but this time I really meant 'symplectic' with a 'y'

Symplectic group

In mathematics, the name symplectic group can refer to two different, but closely related, collections of mathematical groups, denoted Sp(2n, F) and Sp(n) for positive integer n and field F (usually C or R). The latter is called the compact symplectic group and is also denoted by U S p ( n ) {\displaystyle \mathrm {USp} (n)} . Many authors prefer slightly different notations, usually differing by factors of 2. The notation used here is consistent with the size of the most common matrices which...

I think maybe simplicial is used more often than simplectic as the adjective form of simplex

Dannyu NDos

04:01

Nevermind. This level of math is possibly beyond graduate.

Michael Rybkin

09:07

Does this sound right to you guys?

Shareholder's rights to a company's assets are subordinate to the rights of the company's creditors.

CowperKettle

10:41

Being mad at yourself, only from a different point in time. For writing poor code. There must be a single word for that, or a single word request.

CowperKettle

10:59

Chronoresentment?

Dyschronoresentment?

I'm anachronovexed at myself?

I'm autoanachronovexed

auto - at myself
anachrono - at a point in time that's not the current one, but rather in the past or future
vexed - vexed

> "I'm autoanachronovexed for this coding mistake! I'm even more autoanachronovexed because I will fail to fix it by next month."

CowperKettle

13:09

@M.A.R. - is there the word särpänäk‎ in Persian, meaning, woman's garment to be worn over the head?

CowperKettle

14:21

What is 007 favourite Christmas song?
Bells, Jingle Bells

M.A.R.

14:45

@CowperKettle no, but 'sar' = 'head', 'panah' = 'cover, protection', thus 'sarpanah' = 'bunker, safehouse' also often is a metaphor for 'guardian angel'.

Not head covering though. 'Roo' = 'on', 'sar' = 'head' and '-i' = suffix denoting relation. 'Roosari' = 'something that tends to go on the head, head covering'

Robusto

@M.A.R. All that stuff went right over my head.

#Worldle #702 2/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨⬅️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
⭐⭐⭐🪙📐
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

Robusto

15:10

Daily Octordle #699
🕚7️⃣
3️⃣🕛
6️⃣5️⃣
8️⃣9️⃣
Score: 61

jlliagre

15:45

Blossom Puzzle, December 24
Letters: D I L E R S V
My score: 305 points
My longest word: 10 letters
🌺 🌸 💮 🌷 🌼 🏵 🌹 💐 🌻 🌺

Daily Octordle #699
7️⃣9️⃣
5️⃣🔟
🕚3️⃣
4️⃣8️⃣
Score: 57

jlliagre

16:19

Daily Sequence Octordle #699
6️⃣7️⃣
8️⃣9️⃣
🔟🕚
🕛🕐
Score: 76
Tough start

M.A.R.

@Robusto duck

jlliagre

Rootl game #206

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

⬛🟩⬛⬛🟩🟩⬛
⬛🟩🟩⬛🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

tchrist

16:53

Merry Christmas, Mr. Bean | Episode 7 | Mr. Bean Official

►

tchrist

17:11

0

Q: How to describe these grammatical errors as concisely as possible?

I'm trying to talk about several grammatical errors that a Negro makes when he's speaking: "us wants" and "I is." I'd like to give an example so that you'll know what I want. For “Thats” and “aint,” I may use "omission of apostrophe," and I want to know how I can describe the kind of errors given...

word-choice

alphabet

17:24

@tchrist I just...what do we do with this? In the asker's kind-of defense, from their post history they seem to be a non-native speaker trying to interpret a work on African-American history.

tchrist

You supply the correct answer: agreement error.

AGR

Agreement (linguistics)

In linguistics, agreement or concord (abbreviated agr) occurs when a word changes form depending on the other words to which it relates. It is an instance of inflection, and usually involves making the value of some grammatical category (such as gender or person) "agree" between varied words or parts of the sentence. For example, in Standard English, one may say I am or he is, but not "I is" or "he am". This is because English grammar requires that the verb and its subject agree in person. The pronouns I and he are first and third person respectively, as are the verb forms am and is. The verb form...

Don't mention politics or neotaboos.

When you get back copy from the proofreader that has a circled agr, that's what this means.

CowperKettle

@M.A.R. Then the etymology dictionary is wrong again, and the Ukrainian word serpanka is not derived from Persian. So I thought goroh.pp.ua/…

tchrist

Looks like a snakerchief to me.

Or maybe it's cute little snaky breadcrumbs for use in Japanese cooking.

CowperKettle

Ah. Still the mention that sar in serpanok (серпанок) means "head" so could be something close.

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle it sounds like it's derived from Persian but adopted a different meaning

CowperKettle

17:33

Yes

tchrist

Is there a PIE progenitor to that?

CowperKettle

Persian سر‎ (sar, “head; chief, leader”

ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱerh₂- (“head; top”))

sarpanch

Noun: sarpanch (plural sarpanches)

The elected head of a panchayat (village government) in Bangladesh, India, or Pakistan.

alphabet

@tchrist I will be avoiding that question and making it somebody else's problem.

tchrist

This morning I awoke to fresh-fallen snow, clean and bright and falling still, after two weeks of mild shirt-sleeve weather that were tricking spring bulbs and violets into thinking spring had come. It's too much like some Christmas-story fantasy, so I can only presume I'm still sleep and merely dreaming.

alphabet

I don't think it breaks any rules. But it is, as they say, peak cringe.

CowperKettle

17:38

سرپنك

Noun: سرپنك • (serpenek)

helmet, a hard, protective head covering used in battle
Synonym: باشلق‎ (başlık)

Serpenek - helmet in Turkic

tchrist

@alphabet It isn't a problem unless somebody makes one out of nothing. Which they should not do.

CowperKettle

@tchrist Cool!

This morning I awoke at 02:00 am and sat reading till 07:00

Lamotrigine's 50 mg dose probably started working.

I've been told on a forum that it "activates" some.

tchrist

I hate being unwillingly up for hours in the middle of the night.

alphabet

First confirmed image of Santa Claus

tchrist

@alphabet Negroes shouldn't make you cringe. If they do, you may need cultural reorientation therapy.

Next up: Why the United States won't have a white woman for their president in two or three years' time.

alphabet

17:55

@tchrist You mean the tragedy of Nikki Haley?

But you never know. Biden or Trump could both come out as trans.

tchrist

@alphabet Oh she may well be. But she'll be unwhited long before then.

alphabet

@tchrist Ah right.

Dec 19 at 4:59, by alphabet

I'm planning on voting for the guy with early-stage dementia currently raising funds for ethnic cleansing

Dec 19 at 4:59, by alphabet

Though I suppose that that applies to both of them

tchrist

Don't think Trump is early stage.

Biden just has normal octogenarian aging. Trump has something worse. Cognitively.

alphabet

I'm not sure Trump's cognitive faculties have declined much. Wasn't he always this way?

tchrist

No!

Listen to, or watch, older interviews with him from the 70s and 80s when he could speak in complete sentences. Something's gone off.

alphabet

18:01

To be honest, I didn't know much about him pre-2016, other than that he was some weirdly tacky guy who got rich for no discernible reason.

tchrist

citation

> He was not always so linguistically challenged.

STAT reviewed decades of Trump’s on-air interviews and compared them to Q&A sessions since his inauguration. The differences are striking and unmistakable.

> In interviews Trump gave in the 1980s and 1990s (with Tom Brokaw, David Letterman, Oprah Winfrey, Charlie Rose, and others), he spoke articulately, used sophisticated vocabulary, inserted dependent clauses into his sentences without losing his train of thought, and strung together sentences into a polished paragraph, which — and this is no mean feat — would have scanned just fine in print.

That never happens now.

alphabet

Since 2016, his speech seems to have been fairly stable. Bellicose, meandering, and incredibly repetitive, with fairly little variation.

tchrist

Yes, but he already had this then.

He has not always had it.

alphabet

Biden, though, seems to be declining quickly before our eyes.

tchrist

Try to hate less.

alphabet

18:05

I mean, he's better than the alternative. He just needs to step back and let the usual cast of reptilians run things.

tchrist

Trump gets very confused. He then doubles down and hollers about it as though he meant to do that.

alphabet

That speaking style--and the rallies where he used it--got him elected president. Confused and incoherent, but somehow still effective.

tchrist

He too well remembers that he tried to trick his father in his increasingly demented dotage, and fears he has become him, or shall soon enough.

How are your grandparents and great-grandparents coming along there?

Even if they're doing fine, there are many reasons to prefer your parents as president over their own.

alphabet

I've argued that the opening speech of his 2016 campaign--the "Mexican rapists" one--may end up being one of the most consequential political speeches of this century. Not because it was a good speech, but because it ended up making him (in)famous in a way that ultimately led him to the presidency.

tchrist

After George Bush the Younger, it was a relief to have a president who could speak extemporaneously in complete paragraphs once again. For two terms.

@alphabet The tricks of a scoundrel are older than mankind's emigration out of Africa.

Laurel

18:18

@alphabet He's always had a speech impediment tho. This recently came up on Skeptics SE

alphabet

@Laurel I don't mean the stutter; I mean his seeming inability to speak coherently. That's new.

Laurel

Meh. Maybe we could normalize having people who aren't 80yo white men be president and avoid this entirely

M.A.R.

18:32

@alphabet racism is 'based'. Juvenile self-pitying is 'cringe'. Get with the times.

@Laurel who's gonna un-normalize it?

Laurel

@M.A.R. I don't know, at this point maybe we can wait a few years and everyone who wants the elderly in office will be dead (you know, like the xkcd comic says)

God was like, "Let there be light," and there was light.

tchrist

18:52

Any 80yo gentleman from the northeast using the language of a middle-school Valley Girl from almost 3,000 miles to the southwest would come off as horribly inauthentic at best, if not downright creepy. You could get an AI to do it but the Uncanny Valley would freak people out.

Just like he would if he dressed up in their clothes. It wouldn't work.

It's common in sketch comedy for the rather young to portray the rather old with great comedic effect. But it doesn't work the other way. Discuss.

Laurel

@tchrist Isn't that what a drag show is? Tho I think usually the performers aren't that old

tchrist

I hadn't thought of it that way. I was thinking mostly about the age not the sex. I imagine there are Valley Guys and Surfer Dudes who do the same thing.

A young person who dresses up like an old person doesn't invoke the same feeling in viewers as an old person who dresses up like a young person.

A deep-city teenager wearing a cardigan&c instead of baggy skateboarding shorts that show his buttcrack would be odd but not scary. An elder statesman wearing baggy skateboarding shorts instead of a cardigan&c would not be able to pull it off.

I don't know why this is. I do know that Stephen Fry has discussed it, because back when he was doing Fry&Laurie sketches they often dressed up as old people and it was hilarious because of that. But it would not be so now, because they actually are the age of generals not boy scouts now.

Laurel

I know a trans woman who is positively ancient, but she at least dresses like an old lady so there's no dissonance there lol. She's also the fastest walker I've ever met in my life

tchrist

So did Monty Python, for that matter.

@Laurel Apparently she doesn't identify as a young person.

The longer and faster a walker walks the slower they'll need a walker themselves.

alphabet

19:29

@Laurel I don't think drag really involves "dressing like a woman." Your typical drag queen does not dress like a typical woman. It's more a genre of performance art with its own conventions.

tchrist

What is a religious song belonging to a folk tradition associated particularly with black Christians in the southern United States, and which originated among African slaves in the American South in the late 18th and 19th centuries?

Negro spiritual, for $200.

alphabet

19:44

Still hung up on a certain topic, are we?

tchrist

> VI. Senses relating to cross-dressing.

VI.35.a. slang (chiefly among gay men and in theatrical contexts) in early use.

VI.35.a.i.
1861–
Originally: women's clothing worn by a man; (later also more generally) clothing conventionally associated with one sex, worn by a person of the other sex (esp. an entertainer). Now often: spec. (typically glamorous or outrageous and stereotypically gendered) costumes, make-up, etc., worn by a performer who adopts a flamboyant, exaggerated, or parodic feminine or (less often) masculine persona (see sense VI.35a.ii, drag queen n. 2, drag king n. 2). Freq…

alphabet

How about instead we have some wholesome discourse about intersectional feminism.

tchrist

@alphabet I'm not the one with the damning taboo.

Damning people for violating Correct Language is destructive and wrong.

alphabet

@tchrist To be clear: I don't think the word Negro should be taboo, but I do think describing someone with the word now would generally be considered offensive. See John McWhorter's article on this).

I don't really blame the asker here; they're pretty clearly a non-American and/or non-native speaker reading a historical book from before the relatively recent time when the term fell out of favor.

But still, it is cringe.

(Nor has anyone, to my knowledge, objected to use of the term in phrases like "Negro spiritual" that originated long before, again, the term came to be widely disliked.)

tchrist

20:04

> What purpose does it serve to generate this new lexical grievance? I’m not saying we should revert to everyday use of “Negro” — it is indeed out of date. But does Black America need yet another word to take umbrage at and police the usage of? Do we, in Black America, need fellow travelers — sorry, allies — to join us in this new quest, eager to assist in the surveillance out of some misguided sense that this is “doing the work”?

Dolichovespula maculata

Dolichovespula maculata is a species of wasp in the genus Dolichovespula and a member of the eusocial, cosmopolitan family Vespidae. It is known by many colloquial names, primarily bald-faced hornet, but also including bald-faced aerial yellowjacket, bald-faced wasp, bald hornet, white-faced hornet, blackjacket, white-tailed hornet, spruce wasp, and bull wasp. Technically a species of yellowjacket wasp, it is not one of the true hornets, which are in the genus Vespa. Colonies contain 400 to 700 workers, the largest recorded colony size in its genus, Dolichovespula. It builds a characteristic large...

Most of those names are offensive. We already know that wasp means white.

And the entire white hornet thing is beyond the pale. You just don't talk that way without getting punched out.

alphabet

Incidentally: looking at attestations of "Santa Claus" in AmE on YouGlish:

I found 25 instances of Sanna to only 15 of Santa.

So I think Sanna is the more common GenAm pronunciation.

tchrist

There were only 2 or 3 of the first 30 when I listened to it.

Projection of personal habits to the entire populace is far too commonplace.

So too is failure to recognize inherent differences in register and context affecting all this.

alphabet

I mean, the very first instance is of Sanna (you may need to slow it down to hear it)

tchrist

People speak differently when they're standing up at a podium than they do when they're nine sheets to the wind.

alphabet

Likewise here and here, both from large public speeches

Another TED Talk Sanna Claus

And another TED talk

tchrist

20:14

You can't help hearing what you think you yourself are saying in others.

Whether they're saying it or not.

That's the way this works.

alphabet

And a speech at Harvard

I think you're the one mishearing these.

tchrist

Of course you do.

alphabet

Again, try reducing the playback speed to 0.5x or 0.25x. Your brain is just inserting a voiceless sound where none exists.

tchrist

10

A: How to pronounce "twenty" correctly?

Lexico on BrE: Pronunciation /ˈtwɛnti/ Lexico on AmE: Pronunciation /ˈtwɛn(t)i/ Speakers of English may get lazy and not articulate the second t sound clearly, or at all. However it is non-standard. There are some dialects (for example, London and the Thames Estuary) where it is reasonably common...

alphabet

There's no period of voicelessness in the /ntə/ there; it's just [ɾ̃ə] in all the examples I cited.

That last TED talk makes it particularly obvious

tchrist

20:27

santa

alphabet

@tchrist Indeed. As I said, I counted 25 Sannas and 15 Santas; both are common, with Sanna being slightly more common.

(I was only looking at examples in the "US" category, of course; in other dialects Santa would certainly be the winner.)

Mitch

@tchrist datum

@alphabet thank goodness they're finally finishing that up

tchrist

1

Q: Should we pronounce "T" in Won't?

I have noticed that some native English speakers do not pronounce the "T" in "won't" in the middle of a sentence. For example: I won't make you happy sounds like: I wo make you happy Is this correct ?

pronunciation speech

Mitch

@alphabet haven't you heard the latest about Harvard?

No one's going there anymore

It's too crowded

alphabet

@tchrist Of course, in that case won't is followed by a consonant, so if the /t/ is elided it's a separate phenomenon.

tchrist

20:33

Telling pineapples of furriness that they "should" pronounce won’t as [wõʔ] may not be half so helpful as you might wish it were.

alphabet

I'm not discussing what to teach pineapples, only in describing pronunciation by native speakers.

Mitch

All the language schools teach 'wanna' and 'gonna'

tchrist

@Mitch Which is just fucked up.

Mitch

@alphabet oh

Nvm

alphabet

Nor am I discussing what constitutes "proper elocution," though if this many conference speakers and TED talk givers use this pronunciation I don't think it can be considered an abnormal /t/-deficiency.

Mitch

20:35

@tchrist they all seem to use it well (despite whatever accent their native language comes with)

tchrist

Promoting eye-dialect in written English outside dialectal dialogue iz hily counnerproduttif.

alphabet

I don't think they teach students to write "wanna" and "gonna," only to use them in conversational speech.

tchrist

Then why do they write it?

Mitch

Who says they use it in writing?

tchrist

@Mitch EVERY SINGLE ELU POST FROM THEM!

alphabet

20:39

If you want to teach someone to say "wanna," you'll probably want some way of writing that pronunciation down for pedagogical purposes. I suppose you could use IPA [wɑɾ̃ə] instead.

But if you teach someone to say [wɑnt tʰə] they won't sound like a native speaker, if that's the goal.

tchrist

It happens in careful speech.

Mitch

@tchrist oh

tchrist

The amount of reduction to weak forms varies. It doesn't happen in emphatic positions.

alphabet

Indeed. You also need to teach people the rules for when to use those forms.

Certainly all competent AmE teachers tell students to flap /t/ and /d/. I'm not sure about /n/ and /nt/.

tchrist

Trying to erase the accent from one's mother tongue so that you can impersonate a native speaker credibly seems like it would be far more work than most people would need.

alphabet

20:43

But, as far as Santa Claus is concerned, a (slight) majority of speakers appear to use Sanna, even in formal contexts.

tchrist

And next to possible for postpupertal learners.

alphabet

@tchrist It's such a central part of standard AmE phonology that I'm not sure how you'd avoid teaching it.

Mitch

Aug 15, 2018 at 19:54, by Mitch

Anyway, I realized that I'm speaking future English because the way I pronounce the capital of Georgia (USA) is...

tchrist

@alphabet Why in the world are you talking about AMERICAN English here?

Mitch

Aug 15, 2018 at 19:56, by Mitch

I say 'lanna'

tchrist

20:45

More false American exceptionalism again?

alphabet

@tchrist I'm talking about EFL teachers trying to teach something (close to) American English. This is, of course, rather uncommon for EFL teachers outside of America itself; most teachers in most countries teach something closer to BrE.

tchrist

Having weak forms is not peculiar to American dialects. It is universal across all native speakers.

alphabet

Forms like wanna and gonna aren't normal weak forms; they're a specific feature that's more common in AmE than other dialects.

[wɑnt tʰə] already includes a weak form; the strong form would be [wɑnt tʰuw].

Note that wanna includes [ɾ̃], a sound that simply doesn't exist for many non-American speakers.

I'm sure you could pronounce wanna with an [n], but (at least when I do that) it sounds quite odd.

tchrist

@alphabet Disagree.

alphabet

@tchrist I have heard that they're more common in AmE but that may be outdated/wrong.

Dannyu NDos

20:52

Unsure about "gonna", but "wanna" and "gotta" are definitely aux-verbs.

alphabet

They aren't real auxiliary verbs, since you can't invert them. If you turn "They wanna leave" into a question, you get "Do they wanna leave?", not "Wanna they leave?"

Mitch

@DannyuNDos all three are probably 'auxiliary' verbs, whatever that is.

@alphabet oh

Wait

tchrist

@alphabet They're both commonly heard in England. You'd have to check clips of ER2's casual conversations to see whether she didn't have it, but certainly Harry and all the rest of the folks of his generation do so.

Mitch

What's an auxiliary verb?

Also why are we so on topic? It feels weird

tchrist

He might go. Might he go?

He is gone. Is he gone?

alphabet

20:56

The term has a few different definitions; I'd follow H&P and say that inversion is an important criterion.

Dannyu NDos

@Mitch must, will, shall, may, can, would, should, might, and could.

Of course, not exhaustive.

Mitch

My copy of H&P is currently serving a utilitarian purpose

tchrist

I oughta do something. *Oughta I do something?

Mitch

Keeping the house warm

alphabet

They also claim that, e.g., in "He is happy," is is an auxiliary verb on the same grounds. This, of course, makes the term "auxiliary" somewhat misleading, since is isn't "helping" some other verb in that sentence. But I think this abuse of terminology makes sense because it clearly resembles other aux verbs in terms of things like inversion.

tchrist

20:57

@Mitch Yule log.

I don't think so. Don't I think so?

Mitch

Haha no shredded and blown into wall spaces for insulation

Dannyu NDos

English negative questions are so confusing.

Mitch

Which poses a fire hazard yes

tchrist

I shoudna said anything. *Shouldna I said anything?

alphabet

@DannyuNDos Indeed. Huddleston & Pullum's discussion of them made my head hurt.

Dannyu NDos

20:58

C'mon, why should everything be "yes" or "no" when French has "oui", "non", and "si"?

Mitch

@alphabet stop doing that then

Haha a doctor joke

alphabet

Sometimes I wonder whether cocaine and/or meth were involved in the production of that book.

Mitch

@DannyuNDos English used to have yes no yea nay all four

Dannyu NDos

Sounds like a pirate.

Mitch

@alphabet for the glue holding the binding together?

Dannyu NDos

21:00

"Yarr!" "Nay..."

alphabet

@Mitch You know what I mean.

Mitch

Huddleston and Penzance?

tchrist

> Several languages have a three-form system, with two affirmative
words and one negative. In a three-form system, the affirmative
response to a positively phrased question is the unmarked affirmative,
the affirmative response to a negatively phrased question is the
marked affirmative, and the negative response to both forms of
question is the (single) negative. For example, in Norwegian the
affirmative answer to "Snakker du norsk?" ("Do you speak Norwegian?")
is "Ja", and the affirmative answer to "Snakker du ikke norsk?"

Mitch

@alphabet you haven't sniffed book bindings a little too long?

tchrist

@DannyuNDos Yet you don't find three-form systems in the other mainstream Romance languages outside French. Curious, that.

Mitch

21:02

Doch

alphabet

Then there are the rules for what "no" means.
"Have you been there before?"
"No."
"Have you never been there before?"
"No."
Why do both "no"s mean the same thing?

tchrist

> Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, Hungarian, German,
Dutch, French, and Malayalam all have three-form systems. Swedish
and Danish have ja, jo, and nej. Norwegian has ja, jo/jau, and nei.
Icelandic has já, jú, and nei. Faroese has ja, jú, and nei. Hungarian
has igen, de, and nem. German has ja, doch, and nein. Dutch has ja,
jawel and nee (and also ja hoor and nee hoor).[38] French has oui,
si, and non. Malayalam has അതേ, ഉവ്വ് and ഇല്ല. Though, technically
Malayalam is a multi-form system of Yes and No as can be seen from

Mitch

@alphabet 'have you never...' is confusing to me

tchrist

@Mitch It means something different.

Mitch

Doesn't it mean mostly the same thing as 'si' in French?

alphabet

21:04

The trick is that "no" indicates, not whether the statement in the question is true or false, but whether your answer is a negative or positive sentence. So in both cases it means "No, I haven't."

tchrist

This is an ever/never distinction.

Have you ever swum in the sea?
Have you never swum in the sea?

alphabet

But "yes" is different:
"Have you been there before?"
"Yes."
"Have you never been there before?"
* "Yes."
"Yes" is rarely used on its own in answers to negative questions.

Though it does again indicate the polarity of the answer.

tchrist

Haven't you ever swum in the sea?

Dannyu NDos

Classically, negation is an involution. But intuitively, then...

tchrist

I'm not convinced one-word answers are optimal in all such cases.

> Like Early Modern English, the Romanian language has a four-form
system. The affirmative and negative responses to positively phrased
questions are da and nu, respectively. But in responses to negatively
phrased questions they are prefixed with ba (i.e. ba da and ba nu).
nu is also used as a negation adverb, infixed between subject and
verb. Thus, for example, the affirmative response to the negatively
phrased question "N-ai plătit?" ("Didn't you pay?") is "Ba da."
("Yes."—i.e. "I did pay."), and the negative response to a positively

Dannyu NDos

21:08

This difference of nuance might be a quirk of intuitionistic logic, I mean.

alphabet

English semantics does not follow logic.

Dannyu NDos

Being unable to disprove something doesn't count as a proof, the quirk is.

tchrist

> While Modern English has a two-form system of yes and no for affirmatives and negatives, earlier forms of English had a four-form system, comprising the words yea, nay, yes, and no. Yes contradicts a negatively formulated question, No affirms it; Yea affirms a positively formulated question, Nay contradicts it.

Will they not go? — Yes, they will.
Will they not go? — No, they will not.
Will they go? — Yea, they will.
Will they go? — Nay, they will not.
This is illustrated by the following passage from Much Ado about Nothing:[16]

Funny how yea and nay rhyme, innit?

Dannyu NDos

And as for counterfactual statements, they hint that natlangs are paraconsistent as well.

A contradiction is a bomb only when it is proven.

tchrist

Yes and no

Yes and no, or similar word pairs, are expressions of the affirmative and the negative, respectively, in several languages, including English. Some languages make a distinction between answers to affirmative versus negative questions and may have three-form or four-form systems. English originally used a four-form system up to and including Early Middle English and Modern English has reduced to a two-form system consisting of yes and no. It exists in many facets of communication, such as: eye blink communication, head movements, Morse code, and sign language. Some languages, such as Latin, do...

Which of these are positives and which are negatives?

1. Yeah.
2. No.
3. Yeah no.
4. No yeah.
5. Yeah yeah.
6. No no.

Dannyu NDos

21:15

1, 4, 5 are positive, and the rest are negative.

tchrist

That's correct.

Well, maybe.

Dannyu NDos

Funny that "not" is an involution but "no" isn't.

tchrist

You could probably find someone who disagrees.

Dannyu NDos

2

Q: Is there a modal modification of the law of excluded middle that may render constructive?

Intuitionistic logic rejects the law of excluded middle, and paraconsistent logic rejects the law of non-contradiction. I wondered whether the rejected laws can still be incorporated, if they're modified with modal aspects. I see an easy modification of the law of non-contradiction that is compat...

logic modal-logic intuitionistic-logic

tchrist

@DannyuNDos Because not fits better into the model of general negation than no does. Not ever is never but no ever isn't anything.

You can be not hungry and so have no meals planned.

There they work more like an adverb and an adjective respectively, but only if you don't look at them too closely.

Yes, We Have No Bananas

►

> There's a fruit store on our street
It's run by a Greek.
And he keeps good things to eat
But you should hear him speak!
When you ask him anything, he never answers "no".
He just "yes"es you to death, and as he takes your dough
He tells you
"Yes, we have no bananas
We have-a no bananas today.
We've string beans, and onions
Cabbageses, and scallions,
And all sorts of fruit and say
We have an old fashioned to-mah-to
A Long Island po-tah-to
But yes, we have no bananas.
We have no bananas today."
Business got so good for him that he wrote home today,

> Others simply do not have designated yes and no words, like Welsh, Irish, Latin, Thai, and Chinese.

Robusto

21:25

@Laurel What an ugly thing to say. I could respond with "I hope you die before you get old." But I won't.

tchrist

Hence, Go not to the Elves for counsel for they will answer both no and yes. Because much like the Gaelic languages of the United Kingdom and Ireland, Sindarin does not have single words for the concepts of 'yes' and 'no'.

Welsh didn't have it, so Tolkien deliberately withheld it from Sindarin, the Welsh-sounding conlang he made.

Mitch

21:40

@DannyuNDos 5 is a classic negative like in the joke

@Robusto I feel like similar thoughts have been aired here before

Robusto

22:01

@Mitch Have they?

alphabet

@Robusto Ageism is indeed no way to choose a candidate. Unless someone is losing their cognitive faculties, which can happen at any age.

Nor is "wait for old people to die" a particularly good strategy for achieving political change.

Robusto

@alphabet On top of it being all kinds of ugly.

Blossom Puzzle, December 24
Letters: D I L E R S V
My score: 335 points
My longest word: 9 letters
🏵 🌸 💐 💮 🌹 🌻 🌼 🌺 🌷

alphabet

@Robusto It is generally bad to look forward to people dying.

Laurel

@alphabet True, nobody would wear any of that on the street. But it is dressing up as a woman (since they adopt a female persona). But it's getting more and more normalized for anyone AMAB to wear "women's" clothes outside of that too

alphabet

@Laurel Would that I could pull off a dress as well as Harry Styles.

Robusto

22:16

Apr 16, 2011 at 14:13, by Robusto

@Cerberus — Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur.

Change the name and the story is told about yourself.

Racism, sexism, and ageism. Birds of a feather. I never thought I'd see mods put any of them into practice, though.

alphabet

Dec 7 at 3:12, by alphabet

And (ideally) someday I too will be old. I plan to become bitter and resentful.

(Not accusing you of that, of course.)

Robusto

I didn't think you were.

Laurel

@Robusto Maybe it's an ugly way to say it, but it was intended as a comment on the fact that there are too many people who have their mind set in stone and won't ever change it, even to the detriment of a country

There are also people my age who are guilty of all the same things tho, and I don't know what we're going to do about that

@alphabet You won't if you don't try

Robusto

@Laurel Oh, so let all your enemies die, is that it?

Laurel

I'm not wishing for anyone's death

Robusto

22:27

You've said similar things in here in the past and I've ignored them. I didn't realize you were serious about your ageism.

@Laurel You know who you saw assaulting the Capitol on January 6, 2021? People your age, that's who.

Laurel

I think it's just that I see certain beliefs being more popular among the older crowd, beliefs that I think are indefensible. And yeah, there are plenty of people my age that also espouse these beliefs, but pointing that out is likely to make me just lament again about it but with a different target

And to be clear, I know that even among the older demographic not everyone has these beliefs

Robusto

@Laurel But you wish them dead anyway. I get it.

Laurel

No I don't

Robusto

Well, apparently that's your hoped-for outcome. You haven't taken back anything you've said.

Perhaps you're not old enough to have learned manners yet.

Laurel

I'm actually feeling really upset rn

I'm finding it hard to talk

Robusto

22:34

I see. Now you're the victim here. Nicely done.

I've a good mind to report your blatant ageism to the authorities here.

Laurel

It was a poorly thought out comment and I regret saying it

@Robusto That was supposed to be an explanation of why I wasn't talking faster

alphabet

There's a difference between observing that "Old people dying will make the population more progressive" and looking forward to (or hoping for) it

Laurel

I'll apologize for everything else but I'm not going to apologize for feeling upset. I'm extremely physically exhausted and it's not like I want to feel upset like this

Robusto

3 mins ago, by Robusto

I see. Now you're the victim here. Nicely done.

Merry Christmas, all.

Laurel

@Robusto You have no idea why I'm upset and I don't think I have it in me to explain it, because I see it making me more upset. You're acting like I've never been hurt by losing someone old. I just want the chat to go back to normal

alphabet

22:54

I think all three of us are in agreement that Laurel should not have said that.

Let us settle this dispute by hugging.

[ˈmɛɹ̈.i ˈkɹ̈ɪs.mɪs]

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