English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2012-11-15 (page 1 of 5)

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user19161

12:00 AM

@tchrist Yes, I can see who edited it. =)

Not to mention 2 ⁶⁄₇.

What the fellow wrote was tantamount to illegible and ununderstandable. I can see why @Reg closed it.

good evening everyone

i've been sick in bed all day, throwing up regularly, but i still managed to hit the rep cap today

i shall have to try this method more often

user19161

@JSBձոգչ Haha, well done bro, well done! Hope you get better soon.

@JSBձոգչ How far are you from Epic?

what's the threshold for Epic?

12:10 AM

It’s pretty easy to hit the rep cap if you poke at it all morning.

100 votes?

50 × 200⁺.

no, it's hitting the rep cap 50 times

jinx

i have no idea actually how far i am from that

Mine look purdier. :)

Just hit /reputation

It will tell you.

i note that on monday i was one (1) point short of the rep cap :)

12:12 AM

You should have rescinded an answer-downvote then.

Really, /reputation should tell you the answer.

i'm looking there. no regex search so i can't look for 2\d\d\b

** rep today: 0
** rep this week (2012-11-11 - 2012-11-17): 534
** rep this month (2012-11-01 - 2012-11-30): 1903
** rep this quarter (2012-10-01 - 2012-12-31): 5617
** rep this year (2012-01-01 - 2012-12-31): 20890
** rep from bonuses: 100
** total rep 21204 :)

days represented 272
rep cap was reached via rep from upvotes *only* on 31 days
earned at least 200 reputation on 34 days

user19161

@JSBձոգչ Scroll to the bottom dude.

26 days

so i got a ways to go, yet

but mostly i'm looking for another gold Great Answer badge if i hit 100 upvotes

user19161

@JSBձոգչ Haha, I wonder how that expression came into existence.

12:36 AM

Hello.

@JSBձոգչ Did you always have a rogue with you in Dragon Age, to pick locks?

I don't really want a rogue, but now I can't open any chests...

i didn't initially, but you'll want to keep Liliana with you for a lot of areas

Hmm for what?

She also annoys me a bit, to be honest.

oh, i really like liliana

if you don't want her in your party, you can just leave her in camp, and then do the area normally

Alistair is asking me what's up between Liliana and me...

later you can come back with her to pick the locks

user19161

12:40 AM

Who is Liliana? Is she pretty?

@Cerberus lol. is there anything up?

@JSBձոգչ Yeah you could do that, but it's such a chore.

or are you trying to get alistair?

honestly, i never found anything really great in chests, so i don't think you'll be losing too much by just ignoring them

I like Morrigan and Alistair, but I don't think Alistair is in my league, hehe.

you didn't install the gay alistair mod?

12:41 AM

@JSBձոգչ Yeah, I am considering that option.

@JSBձոգչ Umm no. Did you?

no, but as we discussed last time, i always play as a woman

Oh haha, yes.

Didn't you install some gay-Morrigan mod, then?

nope. i was with alistair

user19161

@JSBձոգչ Haha, play as woman!

So faithful.

12:43 AM

morrigan makes an interesting proposition re: alistair towards the end of the game

but no spoilers

user19161

I am waiting for new questions to answer but it seems the questions these few days are not my type.

Hmm.

Now I'm curious! But don't tell.

user19161

I only need about 300 more to reach my target of 24k...

I actually don't really care too much about the romancing: it is rather tacky.

anyway, i recommend you pursue morrigan

i wanted to do that on my second play-through, but honestly i found her a tough nut to crack

12:44 AM

But I am impressed with the dialogues, for the most part.

no matter what i said, she seemed to get mad at me

@JSBձոգչ Really? She easily warmed up to me.

maybe you have the touch

I like Alistair better, but I usually agree with Morrigan.

yes, the dialog is really good. some of the best game dialog i've seen, actually

12:45 AM

I mean, Alistair really is a nice guy. But he is a bit...simple.

Did you think it was OK for Morrigan and Flemeth to kill Templars who were hunting them?

i'm pretty sure that i didn't

i kept wanting morrigan to be nice and moral and stuff

she didn't like that

Templars are said to have no mercy and kill without constraints.

hmmmm, maybe i'm remembering that part wrong

So they were killing their hunters. Kill or be killed.

Well, at first I didn't really get that impression: it wasn't clear that the Templars killed without mercy.

@JSBձոգչ She can be bitchy and stupid. Then I have to force myself not to disagree with her.

But Liliana is something else. I had to put up with her conversation on women's shoes!

And it wasn't just two or three lines!

OK, I have a few minutes: entertain me.

12:50 AM

jumps through burning hoop

Not bad. What else ya got?

runs around in circles chasing his own tail

Next!

user19161

@Robusto I like your answer on the 35 times question.

catches fly in mid air, with the typical clacking sound of jaws connecting

12:51 AM

@WillHunting How is that entertaining me?

user19161

@Cerberus Your tricks are nothing compared to my compliment.

@Cerberus OK, OK ... maybe don't try so hard.

@WillHunting Pah you know his soft spots.

user19161

@Robusto A compliment is a form of entertainment. QED.

@Robusto I'm out of ammo.

12:52 AM

@WillHunting Not as good as strippers, though, is it?

No, I'm not stripping.

I like my mottled fur very much, thank you.

I will not have handbags made out of it.

Nor shearing.

Geezis, who do you think I am? Cruella DeVille?

Well...

You've said it.

user19161

I am trying to imagine what Robusto looks like...

Good luck!

1:24 AM

@Matt Running out of stuff to write about? Are you on crack or something? You've got so much more to write!

@WillHunting I've seen his picture. He looks like a Bond-era Sean Connery.

1:36 AM

@WillHunting You stomped on my edit, which was identical.

Or might as well have been.

user19161

I just answered a question but I am not too sure.

user19161

1

Q: What does "nukulate" mean?

What does nukulate mean in the following sentence from a question on Cooking SE? Nukulate for 3 minutes on high.

See my comment.

Nuke is already informal.

Nuculate is jocular.

Kinda teasingly pseudo-formal.

user19161

Yes, I see it. Amazingly, nuculate appears many times and all related to food.

Or to W.

Nucular is an ad hoc spelling of a metathetic alternate pronunciation of the word nuclear, representing the pronunciation (Canada) or (United States) of that word instead of the standard pronunciation, . While most dictionaries do not list the pronunciation as correct, some recognize it because of its increased usage. Lexical notes In addition to the above-discussed role of the "word" as a mispronunciation, there is also a pre-existing though rarely used word in botany, "nucular" which is defined as "of or related to a nucule", which is a section of a compound (usually hard) fruit. M...

user19161

1:43 AM

Ah, I just wrote nuculate as nucular above.

It cites Arnold. Cool.

I wish Arnold were here. He is much more fun than our resident lingalots.

user19161

I have a feeling this question will become very hot soon.

Only if it gets more answers.

> Steven Pinker has proposed a phonotactic explanation for the conversion of nuclear to nucular: the unusual and disfavored sequence [kli.ər] is gradually transformed to a more acceptable configuration via metathesis. However, Arnold Zwicky notes that [kli.ər] presents no difficulty for English speakers in words such as pricklier. He also regards the proposition of metathesis as unnecessary.

> Zwicky suggests a morphological origin, combining the slang nuke with the common sequence -cular (molecular, particular, etc.). Supporting Zwicky's hypothesis, Geoffrey Nunberg quotes a government weapons specialist: "Oh, I only say 'nucular' when I'm talking about nukes."

> Nunberg argues that this pronunciation by weapons specialists and by politicians such as Bush – who are aware of the more accepted pronunciation – may be a "deliberate choice". He suggests that the reasons for this choice are to "assert authority" or to sound folksy.

@KitFox Now there's a compliment. Jasper, take a lesson.

I’ll side with Arnold on this one, not Pinker.

1:48 AM

@Robusto It has the added benefit of being the truth.

user19161

@Robusto I always think of you as Sean Connery too. Maybe you are Sean Connery, hahaha!

Is there a comparative rogue’s gallery of all the Bonds somewhere?

user19161

I dislike all the Bonds I have seen. Daniel Craig is an exception.

You prefer blonds?

I always knew you were a gentleman.

user19161

Yes, I like blonds more than Bonds. But what if it is a blond Bond?

1:52 AM

’Tis the source of some conTROversy.

There is an untested hypothesis out there (from AmericanDialect.org) that people who nuculate also reletate. How to put it to the test?

> When I noted his 'relator' he said he was aware that he said 'nucular' (and maybe 'nuculus') but he'd never noticed 'relator'. He also says 'jewlery'. One needs larger samples, of course, to make heavy claims. We tend to use the term "metathesis" for these forms as if we are somehow subconcsiously aware of the form in which these forms exist out there in the ether, alongside phlogyston, and then screw them up when we speak.

Ætherial phlogyston, no less.

user19161

Ethereal happens to be a difficult word I know.

@tchrist i have all three of those (nucular, relator, jewlery) in casual speech

You have jewlery? Really?

Isn’t that a store that sells jewels?

Like a jewlería.

ethereal, etherial /iːˈθɪərɪəl/, a. and sb. Also 6-9 æthereal(l.
Etymology: f. L. ætheri-us or æthere-us (ad. Gr. αἱθέρι-ος) + -al1. The uncertainty of the spelling began in Latin, the orig. ætherius from the Gr. being often written -eus after the ordinary Latin adj. ending, as in ciner-eus, lign-eus, etc.; this spelling is however generally rejected by mod. scholars. The spelling -eal is now perhaps the more common in Eng. Cf. aereal, aerial.

@WillHunting So what, you don’t like the Æ- if I’m going to use the -i- spelling? Really?

> Three basic kinds of fruits can be distinguished: 1) those whose dispersal involves being carried by wind, water, or other means not Involving consumption of fruit by animals; 2) nut-like or nuculate fruits, which have the seed as the only attract ...

> Their verruculose branches (except in C. cordifolius) the small, often emarginate leaves and always two-nuculate pomes are characters of specialization. These high specialized species may have originated from C. nitidus Jacques.

verruculose . . . cordifolius . . . emarginate . . . nuculate . . . pomes . . . nitidus

> The second part of that was the effort to go into the correspondent bank business with that same group, on the theory that you could nuculate the technology across those lines. Now, when we started it up it was clear after a year or so that that ...

Is it OCD to not how miserable their OCR is?

Byblia in vulgar ultimamente impressa, ornata intorno de moral ...

books.google.com/books?id=R7hIAAAAcAAJ
1517 - Read
... dritto nelli occbii menpche hauetepredicatolalibetta daschunoa lamicosuo:ftur roasti el pacte nel mio'conspecto nella cala nella quai e inuocato el nóemiosopra qlla &/cteui ntornati & haue te nuculate el nome mio & reducesb ciascú o el suo ...

user19161

@tchrist You mean it looks terrible?

Yes.

Those are the wrong letters.

user19161

2:07 AM

Ah, so terrible that it translated wrongly.

Huh?

user image

Where is @Cerberus when you need him?

user19161

@tchrist You love such obscure texts don't you? I think I have never touched such books in my life.

The OCR is pure crap on that one.

user19161

I think the most ancient books I have touched are those a few decades old in the library.

Like reduceſti scanned as reducesb, and ciaſcũo as ciascú o.

Clearly they know no Italian. Or old books.

If they are going to bother to scan in old books, they should bloody well learn the letterforms!

But just imagine the captchas!

Look at all the tildes for missing nasals! Just like the scribes used to do it.

That’s from here.

So tempo gets written tẽpo.

And non becomes nõ.

user19161

2:15 AM

Gee, now I have got 4 comments on the answer...

And hanno becomes hãno.

@tchrist Hmm what?

What do you need me for?

@Cerberus I don’t need you. I simply enjoy your perspective.

Ehm ah.

user19161

@tchrist No flirting in this chat!

2:19 AM

I think the typeface in the picture displayed above is very very easy to read, and I am disappointed at how bad a job Google has done with it.

I think someone developed a search function/engine that could search incorrectly captacha'd scans.

Really?

You simply convert all f's to s's and add that as an extra query.

is disappoint

You do get more false positives, but not that many, because I don't think there are many minimal pairs.

2:21 AM

Here they have misread the diacritics, too. And merged some letters.

user19161

Can someone explain briefly why spam is sometimes written as SPAM?

@tchrist You can take those into account too, to some degree.

@WillHunting Someone probably can, but I can rarely briefly explain anything at all.

user19161

@tchrist The use of italics and bold there I consider as over-formatting.

@tchrist And printers...

2:25 AM

@Cerberus The 16th-century printers took it from the scribes, but it seems to go away pretty quickly by the 17th century.

Yes.

user19161

OVER-FORMATTING

Well, actually, you can still find it in 18th-century books, sometimes.

Usually on title pages or something?

I can’t figure out the strategy of when to use a tilde for a nasal. They vary it too much for me to see the pattern. Was it for justification?

user19161

Your name is very interesting @tchrist, because t is a cross and Christ is on the cross.

2:28 AM

†☧ᶥﬅ

I'm looking at this book from 1645, and I see the occasional nasal diacritic.

Yes, I found them in the 17th century, less though than in the 16th.

AHAH!

I found another trick. Wait, watch this.

user image

Third line from the bottom, second word from the end.

Diaeresis over the q.

That looks more like an open a, I would say.

@WillHunting I trust that you are thinking that we probably shouldn’t “ever” have bold, let alone bold italic?

If it could be quale.

Open a's were often used to mark ua.

user19161

2:33 AM

@tchrist I think bold for titles is good.

What is the colon for?

Or any abbreviation where an a was left out amongst other things.

The colon is probably a punctuation mark.

Oh. Just a regular colon then. In "le reliquie de iuda:" but then what is the next word?

Well, as I said, I think lequale.

@WillHunting Titles are to be set in italic.

2:35 AM

If that is a proper word.

Hm.

@tchrist Yes, a regular colon, except that marks of punctuation were used differently.

We're getting off track here. We were talking about how I look like the young Sean Connery ...

Maybe with an article.

Like French laquelle.

2:36 AM

@Robusto Centerfold, or it never happened.

@Cerberus OH! I was thinking il equale.

Ask @KitFox.

If I ask her for her centerfold, she’s just kick me.

@tchrist But I see no i?

...

I see none either. That is why I didn’t know what it was. Maybe l’equale?

2:37 AM

A relative pronoun makes more sense in context, I think.

What do you mean they used punctuation differently?

All my relatives have pronouns.

@tchrist Well, we would use a comma there.

Not a colon.

Pronouns are much better than amateur nouns. More experience.

"...all the remains of Juda, which I..."

2:38 AM

I agree that "which" makes sense.

I would read it like that, but we only have part of the sentence, and my Middle Italian is...rusty.

Are reliquie just general remains, or is it a fancier word?

I don't know.

In Latin, it's just "the rest", I would say.

I have to figure out how to dump people from Facebook so I don't keep getting stupid notices that "Lawrence MacD— updated his status: 'Joyous Diwali'" ...

Who gives a flying fuck in a rolling doughnut?

user image

user19161

2:40 AM

@Robusto I never saw the young SC, I was thinking of the old SC.

user image

@Robusto Just delete them? Or don't use FB? Or make it so that their stuff doesn't trigger notifications?

user image

And I don't believe that you are actually interested in my centerfold, @tchrist.

There, they do it again: "& che ritorni nella terra de iuda:laq̈le lor leuana le ſue mane"

Gosh those are hard to type.

@KitFox Actually, it was Rob's, which he said you had in your keeping. :)

@KitFox Which is Rob?

2:44 AM

The one on the left.

Whitey then, not blacky? Yeah, I can see the resemblance.

I just didn’t know he was around in the 40s.

I think it is God speaking, telling us how he will take revenge upon the people of Juda?

So "remains" or "rest" would make (some) sense.

@tchrist He wasn't.

user19161

@KitFox I am. =)))

@tchrist And also liquali.

2:45 AM

That one is (perhaps) a "laquale", which makes perfect sense for a feminine singular antecedent: Spanish uses "la cual", or can, there.

Yeah.

@WillHunting Playboy Girls of the ACC. I'm not telling which year or which school though.

Remember the open a and you'll be fine.

I found a weird questo.

Hmm?

2:46 AM

q̈ﬅo

Where?

That looks like crap to me; I hope it looks better for you.

Isn't that rather a horizontal line in the real text?

user image

This is what I see.

Good.

user image

5 lines up from the bottom and 3 words in from the right.

That's just a horizontal line.

Questo.

2:49 AM

So the diaeresis over the q was for u + "the obvious" vowel, which varied?

Oh, not a double-dot then.

Q or p + horizontal line = qu(a)e, pr(a)e.

I knew it was questo, just didn’t know which convention it was. Hard to see.

Yeah.

@tchrist No, a horizontal line over a q is always qu(a)e, I would say.

There is a double-dotted q on the fourth word from the left on the third line from the bottom.

It should be a line, but who knows what this printer did...lemme see.

You mean liqual?

2:51 AM

Yes.

That is an open a.

I’m trying to sort out the "macrons" from the diaereses.

What do you mean, open a?

Q + open a = qua.

Yes, but where is the "open a" part of it? The dots?

A minuscle a that is flattened and pulled apart, so that the top of the little "circle" is opened. Not the a in my line, though, but a cursive a.

2:53 AM

Oh. Is there an underbar on a p?

I can’t tell if it is a smudge or if it means someting. Look at the pctõ up a bit.

There looks like a cross on the p stem, down low.

hauete pctõ al ſignor.

user image

Is there a diacritic that might represent the vowel there?

This is another common version of the open a: "marc".

Is that an insular r??

P with a strike = per/par/por.

@tchrist Eh I'm not sure what style that is, but let's just call it an ugly r.

2:58 AM

Heh.

P with curl = pro.

P with macron = pr(a)e.

So they kept all their little scribe tricks, in print.

Or at least, many of them.

I guess it makes sense.

‭ Ꞃ  A782       LATIN CAPITAL LETTER INSULAR R
‭ ꞃ  A783       LATIN SMALL LETTER INSULAR R
‭ Ꞅ  A784       LATIN CAPITAL LETTER INSULAR S
‭ ꞅ  A785       LATIN SMALL LETTER INSULAR S

What century is your pic from?

Eh I don't know.

user image

Here you see impero.

If the picture will load at all.

I would, if imgur didn’t time out.

Damn.

Won't load for me either.

Sixth line, after "&".

Ah, there it is.

So i + macron, p + strike, o.

3:03 AM

I see it now.

Definitely stuff to get used to, so you don’t think these are ink gobs. :)

Yup.

Gag, I have to go figure out how to tune the Linux buffer cache. Again.

As to your other word, I'm not sure what the correct Italian form is, but it must be something like parcto(n?)-something, and it should mean pray, I think? A past participle.

Um, I get prego something, but the ct surprises me.

Past participles should be -ato type things.

But I think it must be an n at the end, like 3p?

Oh well, no big deal. Thank you for looking at its curiosities.

Perhaps the horizontal line is just a general mark of abbreviation, as it is often used.

And perhaps that isn't a strike through the p: I think I saw that "decorative element" on other p's where it wasn't per/par/por, but just nothing.

So it could be precato.

That would make sense.

Or possibly peccato?

You have sinned for the Lord?

You have prayed to the Lord?

Sinned makes more sense if you look at their sacrificing to idols.

3:13 AM

Oh, I thought the line was an n.

Or m.

It's either a nasal, or just a general mark. It is frequently used with both functions in the same document.

You would think there would be just one SE place to find something about the Linux buffer cache. In fact, there are like 5 of them. That is stupid.

You might ask a Queshun...

user image

Look here.

You see the horizontal line on vri to mean "vestri" or something like that: a general sign of abbreviation.

That sure makes it hard.

It can: you just need to learn lots of specific abbreviations by heart.

The letters VR + ending + mark of abbreviation is always some form of "your", you need to memorize that.

Nri = nostri.

Pri = patri.

Fri..

Mri...

3:18 AM

Night all.

Night!

Where do they put the mark? Over the r? Varies?

Varies: usually something in the middle, but often a long line stretching out over all three letters.

And the mark can be something other than a straight line.

It can be a curl.

But the nasal abbreviation will normally always look the same as the general mark, within the same document.

That's pretty low resolution. From here that could be "un".

Naah.

The upper right corner on ri looks too sharp for an n.

And there is even a dot on the i!

3:25 AM

If you say so. Or there's dirt.

Focus, focus!

But it's Tchrist's resolution.

I merely cut out a part.

The dots looks clearly like dots to me, not dirt.

"We here highly resolve". That is the utterance of someone who cares about focus.

Wait, is that from that weird question?

Or comment?

Italian palaeography is easier.

There was a weird question?

Never on this site.

0

A: How to identify adjectives

As to articles, they are conventionally considered a class of their own; but you could say they are much like demonstrative pronouns (this/that/these/those), so they are an unusual kind of pronoun; or you could say they are an unusual kind of adjective, because they do modify nouns and cannot nor...

@MετάEd I do hope you didn't vote to close this one?

The title is a bit vague, but the question itself is good, because of the examples.

3:48 AM

@Cerberus I don’t think that’s quite right. The demonstrative pronoun thing is off. You mean the demonstrative adjectives, which are a kind of definite determiner.

Articles are determiners. So are demonstrative adjectives and personal adjectives. And nouns in the possessive case.

In linguistics, demonstratives are deictic words (they depend on an external frame of reference) that indicate which entities a speaker refers to and distinguishes those entities from others. Demonstratives are employed for spatial deixis (using the context of the physical surroundings of the speaker and sometimes the listener) and for discourse deixis (including abstract concepts) where the meaning is dependent on something other than the relative physical location of the speaker, for example whether something is currently being said or was said earlier. The demonstratives in English are...

It is relatively common for a language to distinguish between demonstrative determiners (or demonstrative adjectives, determinative demonstratives) and demonstrative pronouns (or independent demonstratives).
A demonstrative determiner modifies a noun: This apple is good. I like those houses.
A demonstrative pronoun stands on its own, replacing rather than modifying a noun: This is good. I like those.

Gosh those all have a lot of syllables.

8 = demonstrative determiners; 7 = demonstrative adjectives; 9 = determinative demonstratives;

@Cerberus I think I voted to close. Reviewing the question again yes I did vote to close. The question just seems to be much too fanciful. "I imagined 'adjective' could mean all kinds of things ... how clever am I really?"

And not a lot of real work in evidence to try to answer their own question.

Troll?

@tchrist Ack, that's weird English terminology again, yes, adjectives. In every other language in the world, those are called pronouns.

@MετάEd Well, he divulged the details of his speculations, and he explained why several examples seemed problematic to him.

No, that is absolutely not true. Spanish uses the terms in the same way as English does.

I found it easy to address his question, it wasn't too vague.

3:55 AM

There is a big difference between a demonstrative adjective and a demonstrative pronoun.

Does a demonstrative pronoun even exist in your system?

A demonstrative determiner modifies a noun: This apple is good. I like those houses.
A demonstrative pronoun stands on its own, replacing rather than modifying a noun: This is good. I like those.

@Cerberus It's easy to address questions which are too basic for the site. You're making my argument for me.

In "This apple is good", you have a demonstrative adjective/determiner. In "This is good", you do not have an adjective/determiner; you have a pronoun.

Very different.

They are spelled the same, but they function completely differently.

@MετάEd I think many people would have the same questions, and I think the boundaries between parts of speech are quite interesting. But suit yourself.

@tchrist I do not see it that way. I just see the latter as a substantivised adjectives, as any other adjective can be.

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