English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

tchrist

16:01

Leather should be windproof. So hm, so maybe you were out long enough in conditions that you were needing mittens or heavier gloves. It happens.

Cerberus

@tchrist So how do you assess those gloves?

tchrist

@Cerberus By wearing them. :)

Cerberus

And I can't put hands in pockets while cycling.

Robusto

@tchrist I just bought a pair of winter gloves from Costco for $10, and they're amazingly warm. But if I wear them too long my hands will start sweating, so I always take a lighter pair as well. Winter, thy name is Inconvenience!

GratefulDisciple

@Robusto Yeah... it's hard to make it flowing in a fleeting way. Definitely a piece that needs a teacher to coach you for tips and tricks.

tchrist

16:01

Those are good enough for 30-50 degrees, 0 to 10 in new money. They aren't perfect.

Robusto

@GratefulDisciple But it sounds so wonderful, so worth it!

Cerberus

@tchrist That is a bit difficult online, and in a shop you don't know what they will be like in the cold.

tchrist

@Cerberus I 100% agree.

GratefulDisciple

@Robusto Of course. I should start by playing some easier pieces like from Debussy, that my audience can also appreciate more, to get used to that kind of sound.

tchrist

I had the same problem. Which is why I asked a close friend who's worked at REI for decades for suggestions first.

Those ones are good for a wider range of temps is why I like them.

Cerberus

16:03

@tchrist And this led you to those gloves on Amazon?

Robusto

@GratefulDisciple I did a recital about a year ago where I included Debussy's first Arabesque. I recommend it highly. A bit challenging in spots, but you shouldn't have any trouble.

tchrist

@Cerberus I bought mine at the Christmas sale at my local REI store when they were on sale for a third off.

Cerberus

I have not heard of REI, I don't think we have that here.

tchrist

But I have several other pairs of gloves for differing conditions, up to full snowmobiling gauntlets which you'll never need.

@Cerberus No, it's a co-op.

GratefulDisciple

@Robusto That's great! Yes, committing Arabesque to memory is a must have repertoire for a well-rounded pianist, but I have yet to play it.

tchrist

16:06

I just wanted to show you some examples of the class of gloves that work for certain conditions better than lightweight city ones. You don't need to spend a lot of money. Like Rob said, you can often get adequate gloves for not much money.

Robusto

@GratefulDisciple The thing is, it has to be light and delicate, as the name implies. If you find yourself hammering you need to take a step back and rethink.

Cerberus

@tchrist Ah, OK.

I think mine are fairly good, though.

I have also found that looser is better.

Tight is colder.

tchrist

> REVIEW: Best winter cycling gloves 2025: Keep your hands warm and dry this winter.

@Cerberus Exactly so!

You need an air gap.

Tight means no air gap.

Cerberus

Yes.

I think my father has heated gloves.

tchrist

Good for him. That's smart.

I do not, but I know people who do. Because I wear mittens and don't need tight gripping, I can get by with rechargable lithium-ion handwarmers.

The heated gloves are always at least 3 figures.

Cerberus

16:10

He is 84 with a heart condition that can make his blood circulate less in his hands.

@tchrist What are handwarmers?

tchrist

Always twice or thrice the normal price otherwise. But if you are elderly or have Raynaud's syndrome, you really HAVE to have them.

@Cerberus Yes, that's it.

GratefulDisciple

@Robusto Yes, I'm listening to it at the moment (this one). Wonderful harmonies and opportunities to communicate something impressionistic like in Impressionism paintings. I feel she plays it too choppy in trying out to bring out the melody; could have been emphasized in a more flowing and suggestive manner.

tchrist

@Cerberus They look like little computer mice.

jlliagre

@Robusto I didn't beat it but at least achieved it.

Connections
Puzzle #594
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟨🟨🟪🟨
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟪🟩🟩
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟩🟩🟩🟩

Robusto

@jlliagre Good work!

Cerberus

16:13

@tchrist Do you put them inside your mittens?

tchrist

@Cerberus Reviews and more reviews and still more reviews.

@Cerberus Yes.

But you have different constraints for biking. See the first set.

Cerberus

Sometimes I put a few fingers in my mouth while cycling. That really helps.

Robusto

@GratefulDisciple Yeah, I feel she's leaning toward the dramatic more than the sensual. Debussy must be sensual, except when he's being comical.

GratefulDisciple

@Robusto I agree. Comical is for Golliwog's Cakewalk.

tchrist

Many of those displayed are too big for my tastes. There are slimmer ones.

Robusto

16:15

My teacher says Debussy is like a dream you're trying to remember having. An exploration of that.

Cerberus

@tchrist That looks interesting. Those devices must weigh quite a bit?

GratefulDisciple

@Robusto That's a good one. I'll remember that.

tchrist

@Cerberus Not necessarily. It depends.

Mine are superlight.

And only as long as my middle finger.

Cerberus

OK.

tchrist

And about two and half fingers wide.

Cerberus

16:17

I suppose you don't need the warming effect to last very long.

tchrist

verb?

I have these ones. They're only $12. They are not perfect but they are small and convenient. You have to remember to charge them.

Cerberus

Oops.

*need

> 2 pack hand warmers eliminates the need to cool your hands

That sounds convenient!

> PERFECT GIFT FOR WINTER - Beautifully packaged with a cozy hand warmers that warms her/his hands and her/his heart

GratefulDisciple

@Robusto This one by Menahem Pressler is more dreamy; it helps that his piano's hammer voicing is also softer, while the Steinway that Hélène Grimaud used has a lot brighter (not that typical of Steinway I think). I think I'll have Presller's performance as my starting point.

tchrist

You said your toes got too cold. That's kind of dangerous. I bet you had frostnip (not frostbite). You must not have been wearing adequate socks and shoes.

Cerberus

Dangerous?

tchrist

16:28

You need thicker, woollen socks in winter. And you need more serious footgear as well, boots not gym shoes or thin leather boat shoes. Sometimes you need to wear liners.

@Cerberus Yes because it's one step away from frostbite which kills tissue.

Cerberus

I have regular leather shoes, which help.

tchrist

Somewhat. Try wearing warmer socks.

jlliagre

@Robusto I hate when a word has some obscure extra meaning that I suspected so little that I didn't think it worth looking it up in a dictionary.

Cerberus

Maybe I could.

tchrist

But movement is an important component in all of this.

Cerberus

16:29

@jlliagre Oh, very good, only two tiny mistakes.

tchrist

Dressing for comfort in low movement situations is always going to be different from what you want to wear when you're "exercising".

Cerberus

Yeah, and Dutchmen like to site outside on a terrace even in winter...

tchrist

But that is as true in summer as in winter.

Cerberus

But there will be top heaters.

tchrist

Same here!!

People think we're insane.

Robusto

16:30

@GratefulDisciple I think mic placement is the difference. DG has historically set up stereo mics in the hall instead of right above the piano strings. This lets the sound mellow quite a bit. But yeah, I do like his performance better. I'm going to steal some of his ideas! ^_^

tchrist

It's very common in Colorado.

Robusto

@jlliagre That's why these puzzles are so hard for non-native speakers.

tchrist

But more often seen in coffee shops than in ice cream shops. :)

You might ask yourself how they made ice cream during the summer back before refrigeration.

And make it they certainly did.

You just have to get a block of ice from the icehouse that houses big chunks of ice they cut from the lakes during winter. That's what my great-uncle says that his family did growing up.

Cerberus

@tchrist Is that your town, specifically?

Yes, foreigners think we're insane.

And the top heaters may not work so well depending on where, exactly, you sit.

tchrist

@Cerberus Well, most of Colorado does this, whether a university town like mine or a ski town.

I don't know about the city. I avoid Denver save at need.

Cerberus

16:36

@tchrist Huge ships used to take Canadian ice to us all year long.

tchrist

@Cerberus Yes, that's right. Our ice was cut from Lake Geneva and shipped by train to Chicago and Milwaukee for their upper-end hotels.

Even before trucks. You'd have draft horses pulling them during the 19th century.

Cerberus

It's always interesting to think of the ice industry.

Oh, yes, I'm sure we had ice imported in the 17th century.

tchrist

@Cerberus Funny that Norway doesn't have enough freshwater lakes for that. Canada is so far away.

I bet yours will have come from the Great Lakes out the St Lawrence Seaway.

Cerberus

Maybe Canada was just cheaper.

In the 17th century, they come from Scandinavia and the Alps.

And they would also cut out ice from frozen sloten in winter, and store it till summer.

tchrist

Oh that's right, Holland used to have frozen winters.

Cerberus

16:42

Still quite a bit of freezing in some winters.

> IJshuizen bestonden in China en Iran al voor onze jaartelling.

Can you read this?

tchrist

16:55

Something about icehouses being used in China and Iran for yeartelling. :)

Cerberus

Ah, but tellen means count!

The rest is correct.

tchrist

Yes, I know.

Cerberus

And voor can be for or before.

tchrist

It's the tally sense.

yeartallying.

Cerberus

Yes, tally is no doubt related.

It is interesting how both tel and cont can each mean both narrating and enumerating.

I'm not sure whether Latin cont- could mean counting.

tchrist

17:01

Tolkien's chronology was called his Tale of Years. It's more about counting off the calendar than it is about yarns. Like a ledger or log book.

Cerberus

Right.

Why do you say yarns?

tchrist

Because I did not want to tautologize telling tales.

tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_Tale_of_Years_of_the_Second_Age

Cerberus

@tchrist For this construction, in classics, the odd term 'internal accusative' is used.

Vitam vivere.

tchrist

We still have armchair monoglot English speakers misanalysing intransitives with apparent objects like that: living the life, dying the death, talking the talk.

They cannot countenance a nominal phrase that occurs in the predicate without transitivity being involved. Small minds.

Same mistake when symptoms appear three years later.

Or when you oversleep two hours.

Waiting he waited. :)

Yet sing we not songs? We do.

Robusto

@GratefulDisciple BTW, you might be interested to know that "Golliwog's Cakewalk" is actually in the ragtime form, which makes sense. Try playing a rag sometime and you'll see what I'm talking about. For example, compare it with Scott Joplin's "Solace: A Mexican Serenade" and you'll see striking similarities in form if not mood ("Solace" is more langorous to "Golliwog's" perkiness, but it's still the same form).

tchrist

17:16

> Yo esperaba esperando que tal vez le permitiríais vivir aquí permanentemente.

Hoping I hoped that you-pl might let him(or also her in most dialects) live here permanently.

It's an interesting construction, and nothing new.

Cerberus

@tchrist Are you suggesting that these should not be analysed as objects?

tchrist

@Cerberus It's peculiar. Nothing else can you die but a death.

I can't remember what this scenario is called in modern linguibabble.

There's some general term that covers it.

Cerberus

I would say the verbs are just used with a predicate frame different from normal.

tchrist

Sure.

Cerberus

Normally, the object of live would be a duration.

Or actually...

Maybe it normally doesn't have an object?

And then it gets an object which is also of a weird semantic role.

tchrist

17:23

It might be tautological complements of intransitive verbs.

Sleeping he slept a good sleep.

Sheeping he shept a good sheep. :)

Cerberus

They are a bit tautological or pleonastic.

tchrist

Like. :)

alphabet

CamGEL does think that they're objects, specifically "cognate objects."

tchrist

The AIs think these are your internal objects from Latin.

alphabet

And that they are transitive verbs.

tchrist

17:30

At least in Latin you see the accusative case being used. But there are other uses for it than merely "direct objects", as demonstrated by the notorious romani ite domum because there's motion towards home there.

alphabet

Those verbs are just unusual in restricting what kind of object they allow.

Cerberus

@tchrist Yeah, cognate accusative is also used.

@tchrist Yes, each case has many uses.

tchrist

Old-school English analysis throws up its hands in abject desperation seeing to go home and punting home into the ever-nebulous adverbial trashbin. Locatives (deictic or otherwise) quite confuse those hamstrung by only admitting parts of speech in their word classes due to their inability to consider the grammatical relationships between syntactic constituents being able to stand on their own merit.

alphabet

Home is, of course, an intransitive preposition.

Cerberus

Yes, I wonder consider home adverbial there.

tchrist

17:38

@Cerberus I see nouns phrases in English also having many uses. But the lack of case inflections clouds the mind of what would otherwise be obvious.

Cerberus

Otherwise, go would be allowed to have a weird object?

@alphabet Yeah I think you know my opinion on that.

@tchrist In Latin, domum "to home" is not considered an object.

tchrist

You can't go homes or go own home, although I wonder whether go pretty much straight home might be allowed.

Cerberus

A string of adverbial phrases.

alphabet

The fact that you can modify "home" with "straight" is one of the reasons you know it's a preposition.

Cerberus

You can't passivise domum, which is normally used as a test of whether it is an object.

@alphabet *adverb

I feel what you are doing is just calling all normal adverbs prepositions.

I don't see how that helps.

tchrist

17:45

Yet you probably cannot call home a simple/generic/unsubclassified adverb there, either, given how many types of adverbial expressions there are which you could never swap in for home in the sentence He went straight home. Things like there and to his mother's house work but things like often and twice and instantly and tomorrow do not.

@Cerberus Passivization failure is certainly one of our strongest tests.

Cerberus

@tchrist Just and adverb of direction?

@tchrist In Latin, it is.

alphabet

@tchrist Yes, which is why home, there, and to his mother's house are all prepositional phrases, if you believe CamGEL. Twice and instantly are adverbs.

tchrist

@Cerberus In English as well, no?

Cerberus

I think, probably.

I'm just cautious in taking a test as definitive without a good motivation of why it should be so.

tchrist

@Cerberus Yes, so a locative adverbial, not a temporal one, for example.

Cerberus

17:49

I think some linguistic publication lack an explicit motivation for this, they just presuppose that the test is definitive or Very Important.

@tchrist Yes.

But I think dividing locative between place and direction is good.

tchrist

@Cerberus It has to do with how we define "transitivity", which involves the relationship of a transitive verb's (nominal) complement or complements with that verb.

Cerberus

Right, and then maybe the definition used requires motivation.

alphabet

Of course, English has plenty of verbs that (either in general or in specific senses) can't be passivized; those cognate objects are among them.

Cerberus

I don't remember ever seeing such publications motivate why they feel that test X is definitive.

alphabet

Compare: "Those shoes fit me" is fine; "I am fit by those shoes" is not.

tchrist

17:51

It helps you predict when passive alternation will be acceptable?

alphabet

But of course "me" is still the object in "Those shoes fit me," even though it can't be passivized.

tchrist

Like when Peter's given a hard time.

Not that that's "accusative".

alphabet

And plenty of things other than objects of verbs can be passivized. "Those beds haven't been slept in."

Cerberus

@alphabet Right, so that would be a good reason to not treat passivation as the complete definition of transitiveness.

tchrist

That chicken guy has a paper on this.

Cerberus

17:53

@tchrist Right, English and Greek can passivise non-objects.

alphabet

@Cerberus Yes, and it's why, in "He died a death," it makes perfect sense to call "death" an object.

Cerberus

@tchrist You cannot do that in Dutch or Latin.

tchrist

Sometimes.

Cerberus

@alphabet A life lived by many of his peers.

alphabet

@Cerberus That also.

Cerberus

17:55

@tchrist I would say, usually, when it suits them!

tchrist

@Cerberus I think Scandinavian tongues might be able to so as well, even with prepositional objects. I wonder if English can therefore blame the Norse for this.

alphabet

Then there are the weird cases:
1. He suggested that we call the police --> It was suggested that we call the police
2. He complained that they were busy -/-> \* It was complained that they were busy

tchrist

Snorri Sturluson being so renowned a scholar of Ancient Greek. :)

Cerberus

@alphabet In Dutch, you might see this, but it is considered a mistake.

@tchrist It might make sense.

@alphabet So what this means is that the impersonal passive is only used with some verbs.

@tchrist A Viking?

alphabet

@Cerberus There are a number of restrictions on it in English; notice that * "That river has been slept beside" is wrong.

tchrist

17:59

@Cerberus The Icelander who wrote the Younger Eddas, the Prose Eddas, around Y1K.

And yes, it's indeed Norwegian that can do even prepositional objects.

The Elder Eddas are from the oral tradition to us come.

Cerberus

@alphabet Hmm is it really wrong? Or is it that we do not like this construction unless the verb and the praeposition are strongly connected in our minds?

tchrist

Snorri used them in his younger eddas.

alphabet

@Cerberus To me it just sounds completely ungrammatical.

Cerberus

@tchrist Oh, I remember now.

alphabet

The basic rule is (more or less) that you can only passivize a locative adjunct if the action changes the state of the subject; sleeping in a bed alters the bed, but sleeping beside a river doesn't alter the river.

Cerberus

18:02

Hmm.

What if you remove the perfect?

There is a connection between perfect and changed state.

tchrist

> There are some peculiar restrictions on prepositional passives in English. One is that there can be a difference in acceptability according to whether the subject denotes an entity that is tangibly altered in state: This bottom bunk has been slept in is dramatically more acceptable than ⁇The bottom bunk has been slept above, apparently because sleeping in a bunk bed alters its state (the sheets are wrinkled and so on), while sleeping in the top bunk above it doesn't alter its state at all.

Cerberus

> That bed is slept in by my son.

tchrist

jinx

Cerberus

Does this work?

tchrist

Certainly!

alphabet

18:03

"Those beds were slept in" is certainly correct, but there are few situations in which you'd use it.

tchrist

It's the classic example of this phenomenon, no less.

I would have used was to use that form. With is I would be unlikely to passivize it. I have no idea why. I could be hallucinating.

Cerberus

> How dare you enter that room, it is slept in by my son!

I would not write this, but it doesn't sound really wrong.

I feel that closer semantic connections between the words allow this construction more easily.

Sleeping in a bed has a very strong semantic connection.

tchrist

@Cerberus I would have trouble figuring out a plausible scenario in which I could, or at least would, say that.

Preposition stranding

Preposition stranding or p-stranding is the syntactic construction in which a so-called stranded, hanging, or dangling preposition occurs somewhere other than immediately before its corresponding object; for example, at the end of a sentence. The term preposition stranding was coined in 1964, predated by stranded preposition in 1949. Linguists had previously identified such a construction as a sentence-terminal preposition or as a preposition at the end. Preposition stranding is found in English and other Germanic languages, as well as in Vata and Gbadi (languages in the Niger–Congo family), and...

Cerberus

And referring to a bed which is in a state of having been slept in as well: we clearly imagine what this would we like, and why we would want to say it.

tchrist

> P-stranding occurs in various syntactic contexts, including passive voice,[9] wh-movement,[10][11] and sluicing.[10][11]

alphabet

18:09

Of course then there are times you can passivize a prepositional phrase itself:

> In the kitchen was considered an unsafe place to store it.

But that's just because prepositional phrases can, rarely, be direct objects.

Cerberus

@alphabet Yeah, I would consider that a kind of semi-quotation or isolated echo construction.

And I think the passive is not really important there, but rather the fact that it can be used for a substantive phrase.

> In the kitchen is a good place.

tchrist

> (17) a. It may surprise you to learn that this chair was once sat in by Sir Winston Churchill.

b. # It may surprise you to learn that Swindon has been walked in by Sir Winston Churchill.

alphabet

To be is kind of a weird verb, but of course you can do this with any verb: "In the kitchen seemed a good place."

tchrist

From chicken guy. He's a pretty mean and petty bitch at times but you have to learn to ignore that. I'm sorry.

alphabet

Then there are the verbs that can *only* be passive:
1. It is rumored that he cheated.
2. * Someone rumored that he cheated.

tchrist

18:15

Beds can be slept in, but not rooms.

Cerberus

@tchrist Why are linguists of this particular school always so mean and bitchy? I see that all the time, it is somehow normalised?

Always signalling how stupid and backward everyone else is—how immoral, even.

tchrist

@Cerberus Tolkien seems to have asked that same question when he alluded to it in a letter to his son.

Cerberus

@tchrist This palace was resided in by the great King Minos.

Does that work?

tchrist

Not really.

Cerberus

@tchrist Oh, really! You don't happen to have that text?

tchrist

18:19

Dec 27, 2024 at 2:23, by tchrist

> I am sure there is matter for a broadcast-talk on the subject which you mention, as long as you and anybody who talks remember the fact, pointed out by Bernard Shaw, that odium philologicum is more bitter than odium theologicum, and that a murderous spirit may well be aroused by any controversy about English grammar or usage. All the more fun.

Cerberus

> The Grand Council was presided over by King Minos himself.

And this?

tchrist

That one is perfectly fine.

Cerberus

It doesn't sound like sleeping in something.

tchrist

Alas that all our Norns have deserted this channel, or we should ask them about this matter!

Cerberus

> The Grand Council was eavesdropped on by Daedalus.

tchrist

18:21

Nope.

That one is on far shakier ground.

It might be possible.

Not at all so easily as presided over, though.

Cerberus

My suspicion would be that strong idiomatic or semantic connection helps legitimise any iffy construction, including this one.

tchrist

Rooms cannot be walked in by anybody.

Notice that's miserable.

Cerberus

Sleeping in a bed is strongly connected.

tchrist

But dirt can be tracked in by anybody.

Cerberus

Presiding over a council is strongly connected.

@tchrist Oh, really.

alphabet

18:24

Though I'm not sure why "A virgin hasn't been slept with" sounds wrong.

tchrist

@Cerberus Yes. Check with other Indies.

And preferably ones who are also Ingens to this topic.

Cerberus

Indies?

@alphabet Maybe the non-literal meaning of sleep with makes the idiomatic connection weaker?

tchrist

Your sister was never slept with by me?

Cerberus

@tchrist Is this about Indigenous people?

alphabet

@Cerberus Maybe.

tchrist

18:26

@Cerberus Native speakers, yes.

alphabet

"I've never been broken up with" sounds...odd, but not quite ungrammatical.

tchrist

We aren't allowed to say "native" any longer. :)

Cerberus

@alphabet I wouldn't bat an eyelid.

@tchrist Why not?

tchrist

Went out the door with all the steamy old Injuns.

alphabet

@Cerberus If you search google for "never been broken up with" you do find plenty of attestations.

tchrist

18:28

> In Canada, the term “Aboriginal” or “Indigenous” is generally preferred to “Native.” Some may feel that “native” has a negative connotation and is outdated. This term can also be problematic in certain contexts, as some non-Aboriginal peoples born in a settler state may argue that they, too, are “native.”

Abos.

alphabet

‘Our Beloved Gaza Is Gone’

I'm sure Trump will fix things, right?

Cerberus

> The Spanish monarch waited in great anticipation. But the defeat of the Spanish Armada was not reported on until the first survivors reached land.

@alphabet Exactly.

tchrist

That's irremarkable.

Cerberus

@tchrist That's hilarious.

tchrist

Also Stop Fucking Capitalizing All the Things.

Cerberus

18:30

How can people not realise the absurdity of the treadmill of euphemism?

tchrist

@Cerberus Hitler youth.

Cerberus

@tchrist Well, the Spanish Armada is normally capitalised?

2 mins ago, by Cerberus

> The Spanish monarch waited in great anticipation. But the defeat of the Spanish Armada was not reported on until the first survivors reached land.

alphabet

@Cerberus Eh, terminology changes all the time for all sorts of reasons.

Cerberus

So in this case the verb does not change the state of the secondary argument, does it?

And yet passivation is allowed.

@alphabet But it doesn't just "change": it is changed.

tchrist

@Cerberus I was bitching about the Natives, the indigènes, the Indigenous, the Aboriginals, and the Disingenuous, not about what you said.

Cerberus

18:33

Ahh OK.

In Dutch, we use English Aboriginal, but only for Australians.

tchrist

Not aborigenes?

Cerberus

Nope!

Or maybe you might read that occasionally, not sure.

Normally, I would place those in Italy.

tchrist

Urmen.

Cerberus

And pronounce them the Latin way.

Ur- and or- might be related?

alphabet

@Cerberus People propose new terms for various reasons, some justified, others not; sometimes they catch on, sometimes they don't.

tchrist

18:36

I have déjà vu maybe even lu or dit.

alphabet

As with opinions on pretty much any other subject.

Cerberus

@alphabet And rain falls from the sky.

tchrist

> of which Old English had ‘out, completely, to an end’, as in orþanc ‘thinking out, contrivance, skill, intelligence’; ‘out and out’, ‘extreme’, ....

Sáruman!

ur-

== English == === Etymology === From German ur-, originally from Old High German ir-, ur- (“thoroughly”), from Proto-Germanic *uz- (“out”), from Proto-Indo-European *uds- (“up, out”), from Proto-Indo-European *úd (same meaning). Cognate with Dutch oer- and Dutch oor-, English or-. === Pronunciation === (UK) IPA(key): /ʊə/, /ɜː/ (US) IPA(key): /ɝ/ === Prefix === ur- Forming words with the sense of “proto-, primitive, original”. 2003, John Adcox, 'Can Fantasy be Myth? Mythopoeia and The Lord of the Rings', The Newsletter of the Mythic Imagination Institute[1]: Some stories reach deepe...

orior

Verb: orior (present infinitive orīrī, perfect active ortus sum); third conjugation iō-variant, deponent

to rise, get up
Synonyms: coorior, exorior, oborior, surgō, ēmergō, assurgō
Antonyms: cadō, concēdō, decēdō, cēdō, intereō, discēdō, excēdō, occidō, pereō
to appear, arise, become visible
Synonyms: appāreō, pāreō
to be born, come to exist, originate

lost the etyma damn it

> From Proto-Italic *orjōr, from Proto-Indo-European *h₃er- (“to stir, rise”). Cognate with Ancient Greek ὄρνῡμι (órnūmi), Sanskrit ऋणोति (ṛṇóti).

Cerberus

OK so unrelated.

tchrist

18:51

@Cerberus The actual reason that you cannot passivize objects in many English predicate frames is because these were in Old English inflected as datives not accusatives. Just because the dress suits her doesn't mean she is suited by that dress. Only diachronic scholarship explains this. All these synchronic children of a lesser god have no access to the actual reason.

Cerberus

I agree with your comment on diachronicity.

I would add comparison with different languages to that.

tchrist

Dispensing with any understanding of monotransitivity taking erstwhile datives has stripped them of their ability to explain this.

Cerberus

In this case, though—most datives can be passivised in English?

tchrist

@Cerberus Yes, especially those with a shared common ancestry here.

Cerberus

@tchrist Agreed.

tchrist

18:54

@Cerberus Not unless they have an accusative.

Cerberus

@tchrist The closer the languages, the more easily they be compared.

@tchrist OK but they are still datives.

> Yes, so I was told.

tchrist

@Cerberus You wish! Unstudied synchronic analysts of English have by fiat declared that if a verb takes a single object complement, that it can only be an accusative by definition. By their definition, of course, which they've made up and which doesn't suit our model well. Which is insane but there you have it.

Cerberus

Typical.

That school again.

tchrist

Old English verbs whose predicate frames took only dative complements and never also accusative ones cannot be passivized. The children cannot explain this.

Cerberus

They probably don't care.

tchrist

18:59

They hallucinate things trying to justify it. These post facto explications fail to predict anything.

Cerberus

They want to study modern educated English in complete isolation from other varieties or times.

They only care about what they perceive as the minimalist aesthetic of their own models, and about 'debunking' the stupidity of everyone else, including authors, classicists, laymen.

tchrist

@Cerberus Which is patently impossible. There are too many restrictions and requirements that differ between things borrowed from Latin often via French versus those genuinely inherited from Proto-Germanic.

Cerberus

They have set this goal for themselves without questioning why.

tchrist

Such things have never been behooven by them. :)

Speaking of datives.

Because to beho(o)ve someone required a dative someone.

Robusto

@tchrist Nor were they beethoven to them.

tchrist

19:05

Sugar beets
Nice and sweets

> Object originally dative.

GratefulDisciple

20:36

@Robusto I play Scott Joplin's The Entertainer from time to time, but only until you mentioned it that I see the connection to Golliwog's Cakewalk. Just listened to Solace played by Phillip Dyson. BTW, interesting choice of location shooting; does it make sense? I thought the setting is more like in a saloon or a Jazz club.

As to how Debussy became familiar with ragtime, this article says:

> A French affair

> The first moves were being made as the ink was still drying on Joplin’s ragtime compositions. But not in the US — in France. Debussy heard ragtime at the 1900 Paris Exhibition and was blown away. He immediately started bringing the style into his own compositions. So did Eric Satie. His Le Piccadilly is ragtime, French style.

Golliwogg's Cake-walk was written between 1906-1908, see a short write-up of its background.

alphabet

@Cerberus Why would authors, classicists, or laymen be experts in linguistics? That seems like expecting chefs who cook with vegetables to be experts in botany.

alphabet

20:52

@Cerberus Indeed. A description of the phenomena of modern English needn't give historical explanations for the language's present structure.

jlliagre

@tchrist Hoping I hoped sounds odd. I would understand that sentence as using two different meanings of esperar. Something like: (Me) I was waiting with the hope that maybe [...]

alphabet

Unless you're interested in English's history, it's sufficient to describe the results of those historical processes; describing the processes themselves usually complicates things by positing that the language contains invisible ghosts of features it obviously lacks.

So the simplest way of describing the modern language is just to say that behoove belongs to a class of verbs that can't be passivized, without worrying about the historical explanation behind it.

Robusto

@GratefulDisciple It's not the location, but how he plays the piece, which is excellent. Very nuanced, very soulful. Myself, I always think of a hot afternoon in a border bar, where it's just me nursing a drink, the bartender wiping down the glassware, and the old piano player at the old upright in the corner, playing music like its the only friend he has left—and perhaps it is.

Cerberus

21:17

@alphabet Experts?

@alphabet That is exactly the minimalism I mentioned and which can prevent certain insights.

Tchrist gave an example, which I cannot judge.

CowperKettle

> “I’m not saying a word without my lawyer present.”
“You ARE the lawyer.”
“So where’s my present?”

GratefulDisciple

21:35

@Robusto In case there's misunderstanding, I like his playing, the piano, the recording acoustics, etc. But then you'll not be able to get that sound from a piano in a border bar :-) which is how I would also imagine when I hear Maple Leaf Rag and The Entertainer.

tchrist

@jlliagre Yes, the translation I gave was meant to evoke the language of the Psalms, as in Psalms 39:2 whose Hebrew was in the Vulgate translated expectans expectavi Dominum et intendit mihi. It's a thing that Hebrew does but which is NOT "natural" in Romance or Germanic. Plus that's a perfect verb, not an imperfect. A more natural translation might be better as I had been hoping...

English aspect+tense combos are notoriously hard to translate into Romance or Germanic. I don't know that I would have thought to grab for Yo esperaba esperando had I actually started with I'd been hoping though. The goal though is to convey something more than merely Yo esperaba = I was hoping, so the narrative past with both perfect and continuous seems to do that for me. It's kinda weird.

It's snowing a buttload out there, although not a fuckton and probably won't. Call it a foot.

That's here in my so-called yard.

You'd need three feet fresh before I'd start to think of grabbing for fuckton.

I know, I know, all yards have three feet in them. That's not what I meant.

So for now, it's just a boatload.

Every culture reinvents its own song of songs....

Cantiga de amigo

Cantiga de amigo (Portuguese: [kɐ̃ˈtiɣɐ ð(j) ɐˈmiɣu], Galician: [kanˈtiɣɐ ðɪ aˈmiɣʊ]) or cantiga d'amigo (Galician-Portuguese spelling), literally "friend song", is a genre of medieval lyric poetry, more specifically the Galician-Portuguese lyric, apparently rooted in a female-voiced song tradition native to the northwest quadrant of the Iberian Peninsula. According to Rip Cohen, “In 98% of the poems, the speaker is a girl, her mother, the girl’s girlfriend, or a boy (who is given a voice only in dialogues with the girl—which she begins). The girl can speak to any of the other three personae,...

> Eu atendendo o meu amigo

Mendinho

Sedia-m'eu na ermida de Sam Simion
e cercarom-mi as ondas, que grandes som!
    Eu atendendo meu amig', eu a[tendendo].

Estando na ermida ant'o altar
[e] cercarom-mi as ondas grandes do mar.
    Eu atendendo meu amig', eu a[tendendo].

E cercarom-mi as ondas, que grandes som!
Nom hei [eu i] barqueiro nem remador.
    Eu atendendo meu amig', eu a[tendendo].

E cercarom-mi [as] ondas do alto mar;
nom hei [eu i] barqueiro nem sei remar.
    Eu atendendo meu amig', eu a[tendendo].

Nom hei [eu] i barqueiro nem remador

Waiting for and hoping are so intertwined.

GratefulDisciple

21:56

@tchrist Just realized how close the Hebrew is to the Vulgate Latin (word for word), which is somewhat lost in JPS translation ("I waited patiently for the LORD; and He inclined unto me ...") or in John Goldingay's own literal translation in his Baker commentary ("I looked keenly for Yhwh; he bent down to me ...").

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…