English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

CowperKettle

00:18

@Cerberus Probably some "average" temp

Minus 21 is in the "evening"

gismeteo.ru/weather-yekaterinburg-4517/3-days

Can this Plant /Actually/ See?

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Boquila trifoliolata is the only plant known to engage in mimetic polymorphism, meaning it can mimic the leaves of multiple host plants.[4][17] Other species of vines are capable of limited crypsis for one host species, but B. trifoliata is notable since it can mimic the leaves of multiple species, with one vine capable of simultaneously mimicking multiple hosts.

Cerberus

00:35

This is what I see for your city.

So -21 will be the minimum temperature per 24 hours, at night.

CowperKettle

This Creature Is Older Than The Concept of Blood

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They use sea water instead of blood

Wow.

@Cerberus Yes

alphabet

@Cerberus OK, I'll stop complaining about the weather here.

Cerberus

What is the weather for you?

I had a date last night where we walked around the city for two hours at -1 ('feels like' -5).

alphabet

A balmy 3C. There's an official Winter Storm Warning for tonight, but if it stays this warm it'll all be rain instead of snow.

Cerberus

Unpleasant.

Temperatures will rise from 1 to 9 here, over the coming week.

alphabet

00:50

Alternatively, rain that will all freeze into ice overnight.

But later this week the highs will be -7 to -5 C.

Cerberus

@alphabet Better stay inside.

alphabet

Hopefully I don't need to go into the office for anything.

Tomorrow is both MLK Jr day (so work's closed)--and Trump's inauguration. Wonderful.

CowperKettle

Michael Rybkin

youtube.com/watch?v=By-p6Av78eo#t=1m0s What exactly does he mean by "pack this thing around in my wallet"?

alphabet

Imagine if the King had lived to see this day. Sure is good we fixed that whole racism thing he was complaining about. /s

Aaand it's snowing now!

Cerberus

01:23

@MichaelRybkin Pack = to wrap something into something else, and carry it around as 'luggage'.

I praesume pack around is something like a combination of pack and walk around with.

alphabet

01:34

@Cerberus Yes, I think he mixed up "pack" and "carry around," either of which would've made sense there.

Cerberus

Yeah.

So I can understand why Michael found it a bit confusing.

Xanne

02:09

Pack around = carry. Nothing mixed up or confused here.

Cerberus

This phrasal verb is familiar to you?

It must be regional/colloquial?

Mitch

@Cerberus sounds Britishy to me

Cerberus

Oh, really?

Mitch

Emphasis on '-y'

Cerberus

Very y.

Mitch

02:13

Ie not strongly do, but just the slightest of whiffs

Cerberus

Noted.

Sealed in a bottle.

Mitch

A smell jar

Xanne

It is familiar to me as an (originally) midwestern American. “Been packing around” suggests carrying something regularly.

Mitch

For identification purposes

Cerberus

I know of pack to mean "carry (around)", as in, I packed a few more kg in those days.

Mitch

02:14

Yes

Cerberus

I would call that colloquial.

Xanne

@Cerberus It’s not so much a phrase as simply one of the many ways one can put words togeter.

Mitch

Any phrasal verb is colloquial leaning.

Cerberus

@Xanne What is the difference?

@Mitch I suppose, normally.

Mitch

Phrasal verb are the cause of admonition against ending a sentence with a preposition.

The phrasal verb makes it sound too informal.

That's why some ding dong said to never do it.

Xanne

02:30

Pack around, carry around, both fine; one may be more informal, but nothing here is regional, and I wouldn’t call either a phrasal verb, nor do I see any effort to avoid an ending preposition.

If Buffalo isn’t careful it’s going to lose to Baltimore.

Cerberus

Ummm.

Xanne

I do hate ti disagree with Mitch, though.

to

The Buffalo Bills have one. They are an American football team.

won

Cerberus

03:01

Disagreement is allowed in this room.

Xanne

@Cerberus The difference between carry around and pack around is that in certain contexts pack around suggests uselessness. This is the video use—there is no purpose to having this card in his wallet.

The reason is that packing something around implies a burden.

Cerberus

OK.

Right.

Mitch

03:17

@Xanne disagree in what way?

Cerberus

She is packing a huge bulk of disagreement.

Mitch

03:30

@Cerberus Around what is she packing?

Cerberus

I hope not around undesirable regions.

alphabet

04:01

A phrasal verb is just a common verb/preposition combination, one where the verb determines the preposition's meaning in ways that aren't entirely predictable (it's a complement rather than a modifier).

But the verb and the preposition sometimes get fixed in place together, meaning you can't separate them, which is why "The wallet around which I was carrying" is wrong--you need "The wallet that I was carrying around"

Cerberus

> The city around which I was carrying the wallet

@alphabet So I would say in this case you connected the praeposition, if such it is, to the wrong object.

alphabet

@Cerberus Note: "I was carrying the wallet around the city" and "I was carrying around the wallet" are different in both meaning and structure.

Cerberus

But the latter is ultimately derived from the former.

alphabet

Your example corresponds to the former, mine to the latter.

Cerberus

So, if anything, the praeposition should be connected to city and not to wallet.

alphabet

04:07

Oh right--this is one of the cases where it isn't an ordinary preposition.

Note: "I was carrying it around" is fine, but "I was carrying around it" is more than a bit off.

In this case "around" is (per CamGEL) an intransitive preposition.

Cerberus

> I was carrying [something] around it

Then "it" would have to be the city or a totem pole.

@alphabet That does not sound correct.

I would say adverb if not particle.

alphabet

So "The wallet around which I was carrying" is wrong because, in "I was carrying around the wallet," "around the wallet" isn't a syntactic constituent.

Cerberus

I agree.

Around is a particle or adverb modifying carry.

Or you could say carry around is a separable verb there?

alphabet

@Cerberus According to CamGEL, English contains "intransitive prepositions" that don't take objects. "Around" can be either intransitive or transitive--"I was walking around" or "I was walking around the city," respectively.

Of course "carry around" isn't a verb, since it consists of two separate words and thus doesn't have a part of speech.

Cerberus

@alphabet Mistaken terminology.

alphabet

04:14

It is something of an abuse of terminology, given the etymology of "preposition." I don't much like it. But they are absolutely right that words like "around" behave like this--they can either have objects or lack them, and regardless of that they behave in more or less the same way with obviously related meanings.

So there's no real reason to treat them as having two separate parts of speech, other than tradition.

I propose we call such words "trashbags." They can be empty, or full of a wide variety of delicious complements.

(They also argue that the words "now," "then," and "there" are prepositions, just ones that are always intransitive, because...it's complicated.)

Cerberus

04:31

@alphabet I would say, they behave in similar ways only with respect to their meanings, not with respect to their syntactic functions.

@alphabet I don't understand why you say that. A part of speech is defined by its syntactic function. If a word has two different syntactic functions, then it can be two parts of speech.

Do you say I verbed this noun contains the noun verbed?

alphabet

@Cerberus If that's true, shouldn't we say that intransitive verbs and transitive verbs are also two different parts of speech, instead of applying the same term "verb" to both? After all, the difference between "I was reading" and "I was reading books" works the same way--one word (the verb read) has two different patterns of complementation.

Cerberus

05:19

@alphabet You might consider those different parts of speech. In a way, they are. But a verb has many properties, and several are more important thans transitiveness. For that reason, we call them all verbs instead of completely separate categories. However, praepositions and that class of adverbs are very, very different syntactically. I would say they have almost nothing in common syntactically, only semantically (and of course morphologically).

alphabet

05:36

@Cerberus How are they different syntactically? Surely they have quite a lot in common, e.g. they can serve as locative complements:

1. They brought it around.
2. They brought it around the curtain.

They can also both serve as modifiers/supplements in clauses or verb phrases:
1. He walked around.
2. He walked around the city.

Unlike most adverbs, most prepositions can (and usually do) have complements; only-intransitive prepositions are rather strange.

Unlike (say) nouns or verbs, prepositions don't inflect for (say) number or tense.

Unlike adverbs, most prepositions can be modified by words like right or straight -- "He turned right around" or "It was right around the corner." This doesn't work for adverbs: * "He looked for it right locally."

Cerberus

@alphabet These two are very different constructions, though.

And 3. they brought around some meat is yet another.

The true origin of all these uses is the adverb.

alphabet

@Cerberus Why? To me it seems obvious that they have the same structure.

@Cerberus You're assuming what you're trying to prove, namely that around can be an adverb.

Cerberus

1. They brought it around.
2. They brought it walking.

alphabet

What is "They brought it walking" supposed to mean?

Cerberus

@alphabet They don't: one is a praeposition so it has an object. The other one doesn't because it is an adverb.

@alphabet They brought it while walking.

alphabet

05:52

@Cerberus Again, you're assuming what you're trying to prove, namely that there is a part of speech that includes words like "around" when they have an object but excludes them when they don't.

@Cerberus "They brought it around" doesn't mean "They brought it while around."

Cerberus

I think having an object is an important property.

@alphabet So?

alphabet

@Cerberus But it isn't for verbs, as you stated earlier. Why is it important in this case?

Cerberus

I think I explained it for verbs.

alphabet

@Cerberus In "They brought it walking"--a pretty odd expression--"walking" is an adjective, a predicative adjunct describing "They." "They brought it around," by contrast, just means "They brought it around some space or other."

Cerberus

1. I brought it back.
2. I brought it inside.
I think these are clearly similarly constructed.

alphabet

05:55

@Cerberus You say that "a verb has many properties, and several are more important than transitiveness." I've just illustrated that a preposition has many properties, many of which seem more important--in terms of delineating a real category of words--than transitivity.

Cerberus

They do not seem more important.

alphabet

@Cerberus Yes, which is why back and inside are prepositions also. In fact, "inside" is just like "around"--it can also be transitive!

Cerberus

Compared to verbs.

I also said, you might consider transitive and intransitive verbs to be different parts of speech.

@alphabet Back is a praeposition, even though it cannot be praeposed?

alphabet

Likewise, "I brought it inside" and "I brought it inside the house" quite clearly have the same structure--it's just that the object isn't stated explicitly in the former case.

@Cerberus Yes--or at least it belongs to the same word class, which is why "preposition" is a somewhat awkward term for said class.

Cerberus

1.I brought it inside.
2. I brought it back.
3. I brought it again.
4. I brought it quickly.

@alphabet What is that word class, then?

alphabet

05:58

@Cerberus CamGEL just calls them all "prepositions," even the ones that never take objects.

Cerberus

And how about the words 1–4 above?

But it is 7 AM, I need sleep.

Push-ups and then sleep.

alphabet

Obviously those are quite different--note that you can have one locative complement but not multiple:
1. I brought it inside.
2. I brought it inside again.
3. * I brought it inside around.

Cerberus

Not obviously to me.

alphabet

Likewise, a prepositional phrase complement is more-or-less obligatory for words like *put*-- *around* is odd here for semantic reasons, but take *inside*:
1. I put it inside.
2. I put it inside the box.
3. (?) I put it again.

Also: prepositions like "inside"--whether or not they have an object--frequently modify nouns, but adverbs almost never can.

Cerberus

None of this would seem to touch upon the core properties of the parts of speech.

The words 1–4 above are adverbs in most languages.

alphabet

06:03

Yes, but not in English!

Cerberus

Also considered adverbs in English by normal people.

alphabet

And when were normal people right about everything?

Cerberus

@alphabet They have the same function in English as in other languages.

@alphabet They are often right about things that a certain school of Anglo-Saxon linguistics likes to bicker about just to kick against tradition and not for a good reason.

alphabet

@Cerberus ...so? That doesn't prove anything about their part of speech in English.

Cerberus

Why not?

alphabet

06:05

@Cerberus I just gave you some good reasons.

Cerberus

Similar languages function similarly in many ways.

alphabet

Yes, but the word with the same meaning doesn't need to have the same part of speech across languages.

Cerberus

It makes no sense to analyse the same mechanism in similar languages in a completely different way.

@alphabet But the sentences I gave above are the same in similar languages, syntactically.

Verb with adverb.

alphabet

Different languages work differently. In English there's a natural class of words that work this way--like in, inside, back, around--that sometimes take objects and sometimes don't.

In other languages, sure, (1)-(4) all end in an adverb. In English, however, they do not--as shown by the examples I gave above, like the fact that you can't combine them (because they're complements of the verb, not modifiers).

Cerberus

Not shown.

Marginal considerations, in my opinion.

You can of course use any word for any class.

But it is silly to throw out words that make sense for established categories and change everything just for the hell of it.

Similarly, it is silly to break the links between languages.

It is counterproductive, makes it harder to analyse language.

alphabet

06:11

But it surely makes it harder to analyze English itself, if you decide to impose terminology on it purely because that terminology works better for other languages.

Cerberus

Not really.

@alphabet Straw man.

But I am in no mood for this.

Anyone outside this specific school of Anglo-Saxon linguistics will call adverbs adverbs.

I don't really care for the endless angry politics of the Change Everythingers.

alphabet

Likewise:
I brought it quickly and I brought it efficiently --> I brought it quickly and I did so efficiently.
But *not:*
I brought it inside and I brought it upstairs --> I brought it inside and I did so upstairs.

Cerberus

The only thing that is lacking is a reason why this would be important.

alphabet

@Cerberus Sure, they will continue using their hard-to-justify terminology because it's an ossified tradition. Experts needn't follow them.

Xanne

So the same word is sometimes an adverb and sometimes a preposition.

Why is that so hard?

Cerberus

06:14

That's also typical of this school. They will say, hah! As you can see, x can do A and y cannot do A; therefore, x and y must be indicated by using different words. But they fail to prove why A would be essential.

alphabet

@Xanne I've just explained why it doesn't make much sense, in most cases, to posit that e.g. around has a different part of speech depending on whether it has an object, whereas the verb read doesn't.

@Cerberus Surely one needs to justify the categories one is using, rather than appealing to tradition.

Cerberus

@Xanne Exactly this.

@alphabet I will do so.

alphabet

In fact, "preposition" is the only word class in English traditionally defined this way, by the set of complements it takes rather than by its overall structure and syntactic functions.

(The only exception is "subordinating conjunction"--because most of those are just misclassified prepositions.)

Cerberus

A praeposition praeposes a nominal element. That is its essence. An adverb does not do this. That is why we say that the word is sometimes an adverb and at other times a praeposition.

It is just a matter of terminology.

Which terms to use doesn't change how the language actually works.

alphabet

@Cerberus Yes, but that traditional definition does not actually denote a natural class of words in English. Parts of speech should reflect the genuine structure of the language.

Cerberus

06:18

@alphabet That is because its connection to an object is so extraordinarily strong.

alphabet

@Cerberus ...yes, because it's defined that way.

Cerberus

@alphabet We are running in circles here. Object is important.

alphabet

Obviously a preposition isn't somehow connected more to its object than a verb is.

Cerberus

@alphabet Yes, it is in the name.

Xanne

It seems obvious that quickly is an adverb (very quickly) and around is sometimes one and sometimes the other. Your arguments didn’t convince me, as my view is that all this categorization is based on analyzing patterns; you make boxes, but you cannot then put things that don’t fit into those boxes as though they were real.

Cerberus

06:19

It makes no sense to use a term in a misleading way, contrary to what everybody knows it means, which is about the essence of the word.

alphabet

@Cerberus As stated above: if you define "preposition" this way, it doesn't denote an actual class of English words in a sensible way; it's not a part of speech in the way that "noun" or "verb" is.

Cerberus

@alphabet If you really must group praepositions and adverbs together, then it would be much better to call the combination adverbs.

alphabet

So you either (a) extend the term "preposition" to include the word around when used without an object, or (b) invent some new term for this word class.

Xanne

The word has no essence beyond its use. There is no thing like a Platonic category.

Cerberus

Also because that is what they were originally.

alphabet

06:21

@Cerberus The problem is that prototypical adverbs don't behave like prepositions in the ways I've mentioned above.

Cerberus

The importance of those ways I do not recognise.

alphabet

So you still need a separate class for "normal" adverbs, one that doesn't include around (whether or not around has an object).

Cerberus

Those ways seem or marginal importance.

7 mins ago, by Cerberus

That's also typical of this school. They will say, hah! As you can see, x can do A and y cannot do A; therefore, x and y must be indicated by using different words. But they fail to prove why A would be essential.

I will end with this.

alphabet

@Cerberus I mean, I can't decide what you consider important, but it seems like you're picking your parts of speech based on tradition and the etymology of terms, not based on how English works.

I will end with that.

Cerberus

On the essence of the class.

Xanne