English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

kiamlaluno

20:00

1

Q: What is a good synonym for attribute?

I am looking for a good synonym for the word "attribute" that can be used in these sentences: The item's attributes are... Colour is a type of attribute. Weight is a type of attribute. The item's colour (attribute) is red. What are the items that have that attribute? I'd rather not use the wo...

The OP wrote the question, but then kept to edit it to exclude the answers already given.

I don't see any reason to edit the question for such reason; if he doesn't like a word, he should just comment on the answer, and not accept that.

Martha

@kiamlaluno Well, it is in the realm of improving the question for clarity. But yeah, commenting on the answers would be more in keeping with general SE practice.

Speaking of clarity, or lack thereof:

0

Q: framing a question requising I am third born in my family

would it be if i asked what is your relative position terms of birth order in your family

grammar

Can anyone make heads or tails of that query, and if so, can you please edit it so the rest of us can join the fun?

kiamlaluno

@Martha That is exactly what I thought. It seems somebody confuses a Q&A question with a chat, or a forum.

It seems he is asking to which question you would reply with "I am the third born in my family."

psmears

... i.e. a dupe of this:

1

Q: Framing a question to which the answer is an ordinal number

I am the third daughter of my parents. How to frame a question that is answered with the above sentence?

usage sentence-patterns questions

kiamlaluno

To me, it smells of... of... duplicate.

Martha

Heh. I wonder if there's a textbook out there with that question in it. Otherwise, why did both of them start their questions with the word "framing"?

@JSBangs, I thought you were done with The Great Retagging Spree?

psmears

20:10

@Martha Interestingly the original title of the earlier question in the pair was simply "framing a question"...

kiamlaluno

It's good they didn't ask how to bake a question.

Martha

@kiamlaluno Snerk!

kiamlaluno

I wonder if the right answer should have been "go in the shop where they sell frames."

Hey! I do bake questions, before to ask them.

It gives to the question such a taste.

Martha

@kiamlaluno But then you have to decide which color of matting works better with sentence-patterns, and whether that color clashes with fuchsia, which is clearly the best color for usage.

kiamlaluno

I like "red brick," and "blu night."

Martha

20:13

[psst: it's "...before asking them."]

psmears

In fairness "framing a question" is a perfectly acceptable idiom... but I agree the similarity between the two does make it feel like there's an echo going on

kiamlaluno

I keep to forget if in English you say blue, or blu.

psmears

It's spelt "blue"

(though I guess in the US it's spelled "blue" ;-)

kiamlaluno

[I am glad my tentatives to be noticed are noticed from somebody.]

I did again.

Would you not say "before to ask me, think twice"?

psmears

no, definitely "before asking me"...

or "before you ask me"

kiamlaluno

20:18

It must be an organization acting against the infinitives.

psmears

It's true...

First they split them in two, now they're suppressing them entirely

kiamlaluno

Still, my grammar book reports "I love to eat breakfast in the bed" as example of usage of infinitive.

Martha

[it's also "I keep forgetting if..."]

kiamlaluno

It doesn't use "I love eating breakfast in the bed."

psmears

@kiamlaluno That one's fine. The organisation hasn't caught up with it yet.

@kiamlaluno That would be fine too. (Though "in bed" would be even better :)

kiamlaluno

20:23

Should I hide my grammar book, then?

Martha

You can say "I love to [do stuff]". I love to eat breakfast in bed, I love to watch the sunset on the beach, I love to tease him about his hair, ...

kiamlaluno

Never copy something when there isn't enough light. (I know, you will correct me saying I mean to say "enough lightening.")

(Where is the webcam? How do they know about my hair?)

Martha

But that doesn't extend to all other verbs. So if in doubt, use the -ing form. (I love eating breakfast in bed, I love watching the sunset on the beach, I love teasing him about his hair, ...)

kiamlaluno

I just hope that nobody will tell me "why do you keep avoiding the infinitives?"

MrHen

@Martha Yes; I was just putting things near each other for future reference.

kiamlaluno

20:30

(Why does Italian use the infinitives more frequently?)

psmears

@kiamlaluno Does Italian have a separate verbal noun and infinitive for each verb? English has "xxxing" and "to xxx", though some languages just have one form that works for both. (And I'm sure some languages do things in ways that can't even be expressed in these terms :)

kiamlaluno

@psmears No: mangiando, mangiare.

-are is one of the suffix for an infinitive.

The problem for me is that where in English you use the gerund, or the present participle, in Italian you use the infinitive.

For example, instead of "driving is fun," we say "to drive is fun."

psmears

@kiamlaluno Sure... I was just wondering whether Italian had both (because for instance, French just has the infinitive - in general French verbs don't have distinct gerund forms)

Cerberus

Dutch is in between: we can't use infinitives after prepositions without a marker (we say I asked you during the go, where go would be infinitive, not noun) as Italian apparently can, but we do always use infinitives as objects and subjects, where English would often use gerunds (we don't have gerunds).

kiamlaluno

We say "reading you learn," but that is a short for "while you are reading, you learn," in some way.

Cerberus

20:39

In fact, we do use infinitives with some prepositions... complicated. But know that gerund v. infinitive is a very difficult thing for a Dutchman to get a hang of.

@Kiam: Yes, you use the gerund the Latin way, where it would have been ablative.

Spanish does the same.

kiamlaluno

In Italian, instead of "I am eating," you say (literally) "I stay eating."

Cerberus

I think there has been some mingling of present participle and gerund/gerundive in the history of the Romance languages.

Sto, right?

In Dutch you say, "I am on the eat", where eat is infinitive.

kiamlaluno

Sto mangiando.

Cerberus

Right.

kiamlaluno

And I thought I didn't learn Latin.

Cum luna solem dignum.

I wonder if that is really the translation of "when the moon meets the sun."

@Cerberus Yes; you were right, indeed.

Cerberus

20:47

Not quite. It means "with the moon worthy sun [accusative]".

kiamlaluno

Google translate doesn't translate well, in Latin. :-)

Cerberus

In order to translate your sentence, I need to know what you mean by "meet".

kiamlaluno

I will try from Italian to Latin.

Cerberus

Does it mean they touch?

They collide?

They converse?

kiamlaluno

It's "meet," as in "John meet Larry."

I use the sentence to refer to a person I have met.

I keep to hit the "\" over the return key.

It's hard to get used to the American keyboard.

Cerberus

20:50

I'm not sure whether there is a Latin verb that has all the senses the English word has... perhaps convenire?

kiamlaluno

In that case, I am the moon, and the person I have met is the sun.

Occurrit luna cum sole.

This is the new translation, from quando la luna incontra il sole.

Cerberus

Ok. Cum luna solque conveniunt, or cum luna solem convenit.

psmears

@Cerberus Could it be "When the moon <missing>s a worthy sun"?

Ah, I'm guessing yes from those translations :)

Cerberus

Yes, @PSM.

The problem is that cum luna is bad style if cum is used as a conjunction, because one would first read it as a preposition here.

psmears

(with the obvious error in my version now fixed!)

Indeed

Cerberus

20:54

So my translation could be improved by changing it to cum sol lunaque conveniunt, or cum sol lunam convenit.

kiamlaluno

I know an architect who knew Latin; on ICQ, he chose vitruvius as nickname.

Cerberus

Very appropriate.

By the way, occurere would make me think of some sort of imminent collision between sun and moon.

kiamlaluno

Maybe Google translate confused incontra with scontra. :-)

Cerberus

What is scontra?

kiamlaluno

Strangely, it translates quando la luna incontra il sole with "when the moon meets the sun."

Scontro is "clash."

Scontro tra Titani. (Clash of Titans.)

Or "Titan's clash".

Billare

21:04

0

Q: Usage of "spark"

Hello. Where do we use the word spark? For example, can we write American Spark? What does it mean?

meaning

Vote to close as "not a real question".

Cerberus

I see.

kiamlaluno

Muore in uno scontro tra auto.

I need to... meditate for a little.

Cerberus

@Billare: Voted to close.

As "off topic", but I agree it is a difficult choice!

psmears

... and it's gone!

Billare

21:29

@kiamlaluno You generally speak English quite well, but I've notice you tend drop the articles in your posts/questions/answers quite a bit: "a", "an", "the", etc. Might be something you want to work on.

Cerberus

Especially his dropping the other articles is quite remarkable, the ones besides "a", "an", and "the". I hardly see any other articles in his posts.

psmears

@Cerberus In Italy the internet is filtered - they can't see all the other articles we're using, so he doesn't use them either. Can you see them in the Netherlands?

Martha

@Cerberus Under some interpretations, "this" and "that" can be considered articles. Sorta.

Cerberus

@PSM: Rarely, rarely! Perhaps a whale gnawed at the great internet cable connected Billare with our side of the pond.

psmears

For example, can you see , , or ?

Cerberus

21:37

@Martha: Meh, then I'd rather consider articles a kind of pronoun!

I see boobies. Are those articles?

Martha

@psmears Ow, my eyes!

Cerberus

Perhaps the continent is being redirected through the Chinese Wall?

But hey @PSM you are in England: how come you see them and we don't?

kiamlaluno

@Cerberus Ahah! :-)

psmears

@Martha Sorry - I guess they must get amplified coming out of Egypt...

Cerberus

Oh you are still in Egypt of course.

psmears

21:40

@Cerberus I do come from there but I am not there at the moment

Indeed :)

Cerberus

I knew that!

kiamlaluno

I need a tylenol.

Martha

@psmears Please to stop routing things through Egypt, then.

Cerberus

Well then it must be the whales. I didn't know there were any in the Mediterranean.

kiamlaluno

You find whales, in the Mediterranean.

I think they found some whales on a beach on Sicily, but I could have dreamed it.

psmears

21:42

@Martha Unfortunately I am actually in Egypt, which would make that a bit tough :-/

kiamlaluno

(I should exercise with articles, then.)

Cerberus

I want tips as well!

kiamlaluno

@psmears Whoops, I thought you were British.

Cerberus

Now I feel neglected.

Martha

@psmears Details, details. Don't bug me with the details.

@kiamlaluno Do they look like this?

psmears

21:46

@kiamlaluno You're quite right, I am British... but I'm spending a year in over here at the moment :)

Martha

@Cerberus There, there, puppies, have some bones. No fighting, now!

Cerberus

@Martha: Puppies want some meat on the bones!

kiamlaluno

@Martha They have two legs more, but they are similar to that.

psmears

@Martha I'll get right on to it then.

kiamlaluno

Don't you say "put some meat on those bones" to somebody that is too thin?

Martha

21:48

@Cerberus Fine, you can have the whale, then. I've no more use for it.

kiamlaluno

I hate when I don't correctly write a word. I can put the blame on the keyboard, though.

Cerberus

@Martha: The whale will have to do then, for this week.

kiamlaluno

Wow... Another answer I converted in a comment.

I should write a book about the differences between Italian, and English.

Billare

4

Q: What words have different meanings in US and British English?

Similar to this question, but not quite the same. There are, I think, quite a few words which have totally different meanings in English and American and which are likely to cause confusion when heard by non-local speakers. What are they? Note: not looking for words which are different between...

vocabulary american-english british-english dialects list-request

Mgb's answer to this question...is just bad.

Don't you agree?

Is it really true to say that randy and fancy aren't used in their sexual and desiring senses, respectively, by AmE speakers?

kiamlaluno

randy |ˈrændi|
adjective ( randier , randiest )
1 informal sexually aroused or excited.
2 Scottish archaic (of a person) having a rude, aggressive manner.

Cerberus

21:58

He mentioned many words, notably the first couple, which answer the question, as they are words that have a different meaning in both dialects.

kiamlaluno

That is what the NOAD says.

Well, the note about cars is totally irrelevant.

"He saw a woman he fancied."

I would say he is wrong about those words.

@Billare I flagged that answer.

Billare

@kiamlaluno Under what reason?

psmears

The answer is community wiki... that means that anyone can edit it, right?

I agree it's not really in an appropriate form at the moment, and contains irrelevant stuff, but it seems like after some editing it could form the basis of a good list...

Billare

@psmears BTW, thanks for all your helpful answers on British English questions...

psmears

No problem, I hope they've been useful (or at lest interesting!)

BTW I have more edits to make to my "all bets are off" answer - I've found some more enlightening examples

and I think I can make the answer a bit clearer than it is at the moment :)

Billare

22:06

There are some useful items on that list...

Wish it weren't so free-wheeling though.

kiamlaluno

@Billare It is not an answer.

Billare

@kiamlaluno Agreed...at least not in the present state.

kiamlaluno

Just for the fact a car doesn't have a gear lever, it doesn't mean it stops to be a car.

I mean gearshift.

That is one of few British words I remember.

(This is a case where the article was not required.)

Are there adjectives you don't use together "more"?

Cerberus

I think "the few" would have been better.

You also used an infinitive again, "to be a car".

What do you mean by that last line?

kiamlaluno

Uhmmm... Do you use "more" with all the adjectives?

Billare

22:16

0

Q: framing a question requising I am third born in my family

would it be if i asked what is your relative position terms of birth order in your family

grammar

What is this guy trying to ask?

kiamlaluno

@Billare I have a vague idea, but the question is a duplicate.

psmears

@Billare See the discussion following this comment:

2 hours ago, by Martha

Can anyone make heads or tails of that query, and if so, can you please edit it so the rest of us can join the fun?

kiamlaluno

@Billare Read just the title, or you will get confused.

Well, if you are not already confused from how I write.

Billare

@psmears @kiamlaluno What's interesting is that after the question was edited to something nicer, he rolled it back as if he wanted to preserve some exact distinction.

Cerberus

@Kiam: You mean to form a comparative? No, many short adjectives just get -er: longer, taller, etc.; in most cases it is bad style or plain wrong to use "more long" if "long" can take -er. The same applies to "most" v. -est.

kiamlaluno

22:21

@Cerberus OK; I meant an adjective for which you don't form comparatives.

Cerberus

Eh... then I have no idea what you mean. Example?

kiamlaluno

I got one.

My.

You don't say, "the more my" but my is an adjective.

Cerberus

Oh. No, you can't say "more my", at least not in formal English.

My is generally and traditionally considered a pronoun.

psmears

Well... it is like an adjective in some ways (it qualifies a noun)

Cerberus

Sure.

psmears

22:23

And sometimes classified as one

But there are other differences from "normal" adjectives

kiamlaluno

Damn... The NOAD calls it a determiner.

Cerberus

You can't use comparatives with some adjectives/determiners/quantifiers that aren't pronouns at all either: all, every, each, only...

psmears

Such as you can say "the big house" and "the red house" but not "*the my house"

Cerberus

Right.

People shouldn't confuse themselves by clinging too much to lexical labels...

I mean, look at that "is an article an adjective" question.

You might say that it is, in a way, but not in others; which label you use is a matter of choice.

kiamlaluno

Uhmmm... That reminds me of a question I asked.

Cerberus

22:25

Heh was it you that asked it?

I'm not saying that is a bad question!

psmears

@Cerberus In Arabic grammar they classify words into "verbs", "nouns" and "others"

kiamlaluno

12

A: New Oxford American Dictionary describes "the" as an adjective

That is so wrong it makes my eyeballs bleed. Let's consider some syntactic tests, shall we? Adjectives can be compared with -er and -est (or more and most): A bigger house The biggest house ! More the house ! Most the house Adjectives can be placed in a predicate: The house is bi...

Nay.

Cerberus

@PSM: Possible; but both "verbs" and "nouns" are to me wildly ambiguous without more context!

kiamlaluno

8

Q: New Oxford American Dictionary describes "the" as an adjective

When I look at the definition given from the Mac OS X Dictionary (I have set American English as interface language, and the dictionary used is then the New Oxford American Dictionary), I read: the /ði/ /ð(ə)/ /ði/ [called the definite article] adjective 1. denoting one or more people or ...

meaning articles

Cerberus

@PSM: Not saying those categories are bad; just saying that each model has its benefits.

A great many people would profit from reading Kant: if you consider a lexical category a human label rather than a Ding an sich, it all becomes so much easier!

psmears

22:29

@Cerberus Sure - the distinction is clear enough when applied to Arabic; I wasn't suggesting adopting it for anything else! Just giving an example of minimising the set of lexical labels as a possible strategy to avoid getting hung up on them :)

Cerberus

@PSM: Hah do you think fewer labels attract less hung-upness? Could be... I'm not sure.

Are pro-nouns nouns in Arabic? Adjectives? Are participles verbs (if they have any)? Infinitives?

kiamlaluno

When it's too much is too much; when is too few is too few. :-)

Cerberus

A broad category "nouns" becomes easier if you have clear nominal declensions, as in Greek and Latin. But even there, participles and other verbals would be difficult.

psmears

Well... if we just called them all "words" then we could stop agonising over the labels... at the cost of having a lot more difficulty in explaining usage ;-)

@Cerberus Nouns, all nouns...

Cerberus

Hey! How dare you suggest such a controversial categorisation! Is "huh" a word, or merely a sound? And the sound a monkey makes when it says "ooooh"?

psmears

22:35

@Cerberus This is basically the distinction... there is nominal declension (and words that take it are therefore nouns), and verbal conjugation (giving you verbs)

kiamlaluno

It must be a oh-monkey.

Cerberus

@PSM: That is quite clear indeed. Even there I bet there are lots of words that are difficult to categorise...

kiamlaluno

(I should start adding sub-titles when I write anything in English; for Italian, I have no problems.)

psmears

Adverbs are nouns too, as are most (of what we would call) prepositions

@Cerberus Well... having an "other" category helps here :)

(It's not called that, but that's what it amounts to)

So... classifying the words is not too hard

But it doesn't help

Because the same sorts of issue you get in some PIE languages with participles being verbal or not still arises (and affects the grammar...)

Cerberus

@PSm: Ah, that is more or less what I expected...

psmears

22:45

@Cerberus So the classification is one that errs on the simpler side... (though to be fair the intention is to describe "which sorts of endings do you need for which sorts of words", for which the classification is certainly fit for purpose)

Anyway it is late and I am tired...

Good night (substitute appropriate time of day according to location) all!

Cerberus

@PSM: Okay thanks for explaining, night!

kiamlaluno

Should I get knife and fork?

@psmears Good night.

I know, I am always the last one; it has been always so, even when I was born.

The nurse asked me what I was waiting for.

I replied "an invitation," and she went away.

Oh... invitare is Latin.

How do they dare?

Cerberus

Who?

Anything's Latin, and that is how it should be.

kiamlaluno

Since when does Latin have words ending in are, ere, and ire?

It's a plot, I tell you!

Cerberus

Latin has come to eat up Italian.

kiamlaluno

22:58

And we will give it grispedde to eat!

So I spoke, so I did.

Cerberus

Brb.

kiamlaluno

23:33

0

Q: Pronunciation of the English alphabet

Why are there inconsistency in the pronunciation of the consonants of the alphabet? For example: 'b' is pronounced like 'bee' but 'm' is pronounced as 'em' rather than 'me'. The pronunciation of 'h' matches nothing and 'j' and 'k' are orphaned twins. In Turkish (the only other language is have a...

pronunciation

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…