English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

kiamlaluno

17:05

@MrHen It is also a duplicate.

Martha

@kiamlaluno I was just gonna say that.

kiamlaluno

I am sure there is a question about "the route," but I cannot find it, right now.

Martha

Oh, wait, no it isn't: this is an old question.

There's a related question, but not a duplicate.

1

A: Differences between American dialects?

I can't tell apart the various accents, either, other than to know that I'm hearing one. My one story about dialect differences came shortly after I moved to the Philly area, and happened to mention the 202. The person I was speaking to got inexplicably amused, and brought her friend over and ha...

kiamlaluno

Oh, right. The duplicate I was talking of is the question itself.

I thought it was an older question.

Is it possible to close a question because it's a duplicate of itself? ;-)

MrHen

Haha, someone downvoted an answer of mine with "ass" in it. I wonder if it had to do with the swearing...

1

Q: Is there a literary term for the circular nature of a story?

Is there a literary term for the circular nature of a story, starting in place a, going on to b and c before returning to complete at a again?

literary-techniques

This should probably be moved to Writers.SE

See the comments in response to my answer.

Martha

17:16

So, going back to thwacking: a rolled-up newspaper is indeed a good thwacking tool for halfhearted or inadvertent puns. It's also a good reinforcement device for trainees who have learned the error of their ways, and just need the occasional reminder. Unfortunately, nobody on EL&U has yet reached this stage.

MrHen

It is vaguely on topic here but Writers would probably have a more appropriate set of experts

@Martha See, where you thwack I fling chalk and 3x5s.

Or just walk over and punch them, depending.

Martha

@MrHen Since it's asking for the name of the technique, I'd say it's on-topic. Could use better tagging, though.

MrHen

@Martha Yeah, but it would have been a much better question for the Writers. It isn't a question about a technical term for English; it is asking about a technical term for literature.

It is a minor point and I don't mind one way or the other.

But I don't mind throwing Writers a few bones.

kiamlaluno

@MrHen Which answer is it?

MrHen

1

A: Is there a literary term for the circular nature of a story?

Your question is a tad broad but you may be thinking of the "Hero's Journey" or "monomyth". The steps of the journey are: Departure Initiation Return The Wikipedia article has plenty of details for each step. For instance, the subgroups for Departure are: The Call to Adventure Refusal of th...

"sorry mr hen but im looking for the word for the linguistic device of ending a story in the same place it started – iminei 21 mins ago

almost like the first and last scene of the film Scandal...where John Hurt was surveying the same street scene, (albeit with subtle differences) – iminei 20 mins ago"

Martha

17:21

@MrHen: I think @kiamlaluno is wondering which ass -containing answer of yours was downvoted.

MrHen

@Martha oh

one sec

2

A: Is there a pejorative alternative to "improvise"?

The most common phrase I hear for this is "pulling something out of your ass." There are variations and the phrase is pretty flexible: Did you just pull that out of your ass? Stopping pulling things out of your ass. Tom likes to pull things out of his ass.

kiamlaluno

Yeah, what @Martha said.

MrHen

@Martha Holy wow, you can reply to a future comment.

2

You just have to do it before the edit timer is up.

kiamlaluno

Grat, grat.

MrHen

Heh, cool.

Martha

17:25

:D

kiamlaluno

Does that count as time machine?

Martha

Dunno, but it's definitely star-worthy.

MrHen

I wonder if I can get it to reply to itself...

kiamlaluno

@MrHen You cannot.

MrHen

@MrHen Testing recursion in three... two... one...

Well, okay.

That looks about right...

kiamlaluno

17:28

@kiamlaluno Can I?

Ahah!

Robusto

@MrHen — That's as good an explanation as any.

@Cerberus: What makes you think @Martha keeps me in check?

kiamlaluno

@MrHen: Hover the mouse over your question, and take note of the number you see; then write a new post with a colon followed by that number.

MrHen

@kiamlaluno Yeah, I got the recursion reply to work too.

Martha

@Robusto Ooh, does that mean I keep you in terror? 'Cause terror is better than check.

Robusto

@Martha — Actually he said you keep me under control. Which is obviously false, because I have never been under control, not even from myself, so what chance do you have?

Vitaly

17:33

Hello. Does anybody possibly know what this grammatical structure is called: “Those who don't read books, they usually don't have a wide vocabulary” (as opposed to “Those who don't read books usually don't have a wide vocabulary”)? I want to read about it in a reference grammar but don't know where to start.

Martha

Ok, so terror is better than control. Check.

Vitaly

Also, I suspect I have seen a question like that somewhere on English.StackExchange, but I have no clue how to find it.

Martha

@Vitaly, I'm vaguely remembering something, too, but I couldn't find it.

Robusto

@Vitaly Yeah. It's a construction you see a lot. "Me, I don't care what you do." or, from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, "Mistah Kurz, he dead." Some kind of noun-pronoun repetition subject repetition.

MrHen

I also see something similar in the form of a question: "Those guys? I don't know them."

JSBangs

17:41

@Robusto we linguists call that a topic-comment structure

some languages have that as their dominant clause structure (eg. Japanese)

Robusto

@JSBangs — I don't think that's quite the same thing. The Japanese wouldn't say Kamakura-san wa, kare wa takai. (Kamakura-san as-for, he as-for tall [is]). They'd just say Kamakura-san wa takai.

Vitaly

Thanks! The topic-comment structure concept seems a good launchpad for searching for the relevant sections in a grammar book.

JSBangs

right, because you would never mark the topic twice. you have two wa's

however, unless i'm mistaken you can use both a wa and the subject marker

that being ga

eg. ima wa kuruma ga atarashii desu.

Robusto

Yeah, "now as for car new is" ...

But the ga is usually used to imply more than a topical relationship. More of an operative relationship, or ownership relationship.

If I want to say "I like sushi" I would say Sushi ga suki or Sushi ga suki desu

JSBangs

correct: the topical focalization is given by wa, while ga gives the syntactic subject, if the topic and subject are not the same

the difference is that english requires that the topic be repeated with a pronoun subject if the topic is also the subject

Robusto

17:54

I would not say Sushi wa suki desu

JSBangs

because english is not a pro-drop language

are you native japanese?

Robusto

No.

JSBangs

i don't speak japanese at all, so i'm in no position to correct you. i merely repeat what i've learned in linguistics classes, where japanese is frequently trotted out as the example of topic-comment structure

Robusto

I think topic-comment may not be the same as topic repetition then. Or maybe it just means something different when applied by linguistics majors to the different languages.

JSBangs

my point is that the english and japanese topic-comment structures are not that different, though the syntactic details differ

Robusto

17:57

In your sentence Ima wa kuruma ga atarashii desu there is no repetition of the topic.

psmears

@MrHen Nice one

JSBangs

namely: english requires you to have an explicit subject, even if the subject is the same as the topic. japanese does not require an explicit subject if the subject and topic are the same. that is all.

english always requires an explicit subject

Robusto

In fact, Japanese doesn't even require a subject. :)

Cerberus

How does the French phenomenon compare? Ma mère, elle aime les oiseaux.

Robusto

If the subject is understood, they omit it.

psmears

17:58

Though that just makes me wonder... what happens if I try the following?

JSBangs

exactly

psmears

17 secs ago, by psmears

(placeholder)

JSBangs

@Cerberus the french example is also a topic-comment construct

Cerberus

Haha @PSM...

Robusto

Lol, I said admit when I meant omit.

psmears

17:59

bah, infinite recursion fail

JSBangs

@psmears did you just make a message quote itself?

Robusto

@psmears — Only @Kosmonaut can do infinite recursion in here.

Cerberus

@JSB: And Dutch, Anne, die komt ook niet.

psmears

@JSBangs Well, I tried to...

... I suppose it is quoting itself, but the result is not as spectacular as one might have hoped :)

Cerberus

The funny thing is that, in Dutch, we use the demonstartive pronoun "die", which would normally not be used as topical subject (hij or zij/ze, rather).

JSBangs

18:01

most languages have some degree of topic-comment structure to them. some languages, however, make that the primary sentence structure, while others don't. most european languages treat the examples we've been giving as non-standard in writing

Cerberus

Not in writing, exactly.

I have always wondered what the function of this kind of construction is. To mark the topic? But why is that necessary: the subject as first constituent is by default taken as topic, I should think?

Or is the construction used in sentences where it would be unclear what the topic would be? I doubt it...

MrHen

@psmears Hmm...

JSBangs

@Cerberus good question! it's true that the subject and the topic are often the same.

in subject-oriented languages (like most IE languages) there is a very strong preference to make subject and topic the same

Cerberus

Exactly.

JSBangs

this is why we have a passive voice: a special transformation that takes what would naturally be the object and promote it to subject in the cases in which it is the topic

Cerberus

18:05

I can imagine this might be less clear if the subject is not in first position...

Exactly.

JSBangs

But i can do the same thing w/o passive in a topic-oriented structure:

> Pickles, I hate em!

MrHen

Well, it didn't like that much

chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/838260#838260

Cerberus

True.

But then, is pickles topical?

Is it the hate or the pickles that has focus?

JSBangs

in my examples, i'd say that pickles is the topic. english can't topicalize verbs. there are hardcore topic-oriented languages, though, which can topicalize verbs

(though i can't remember one right off)

MrHen

1 min ago, by MrHen

http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/838260#838260

Cerberus

18:08

We can use stress.

MrHen

Yeah, it has recursion protection.

Cerberus

I don't hate you, I hate her!

Well it is mostly the opposition that takes away focus from the repeated element, not so much anything in the verb itself or the stress.

Vitaly

English, why doesn't it topicalise verbs?

psmears

@MrHen I think it just saves the state of the link at the time the comment is posted (or just before)...

MrHen

@JSBangs How about "Eat is what I do." What do I call that?

Cerberus

18:10

That is, the stress and the opposing words are naturally linked.

@MrHen: I rather think "eat" would have focus there.

MrHen

@psmears The quoted bit is just that; no editing

I don't know enough about the quote linking to try tricking it further than I did.

Cerberus

We could easily topicalise verbs if we turn them into gerunds, I should think.

JSBangs

@MrHen ungrammatical for me. you could say eating is what i do, but there you've nouned your verb

MrHen

@Cerberus Does it? Or does "I"?

Cerberus

Jinx!

Vitaly

18:11

I should have said verb phrases, I think

MrHen

@JSBangs Sure. It was the best I could do. :)

Cerberus

It sounds poetic or archaic, but not ungrammatical to me.

But I agree it is not a regular tool available in daily speech.

MrHen

"Sleep is what I did."

Cerberus

Same.

MrHen

"What did you do?" "Sleep."

Cerberus

18:13

Yes.

Then it has focus again, I'd say.

MrHen

Except the more proper way to say it is, "Slept."

As in, "I slept."

JSBangs

@MrHen Sleep is a noun there.

Cerberus

A noun? I call foul play!

MrHen

@JSBangs Mmk. Than it seems "Eat is what I do" would make "Eat" a noun?

Cerberus

I'd call that an infinitive.... or do you call that a noun too?

MrHen

18:14

(I don't know terms well.)

Cerberus

I think modern linguists call infinitives nouns.

JSBangs

@MrHen, but sleep is a noun in general: I need some sleep. I got four hours of sleep. Sleep doesn't come easy to me.

MrHen

@JSBangs Oh

Sure.

JSBangs

eat is not a noun in general, which is why i thought it was ungrammatical

MrHen

"What did you do?" "Eat."

"Eat is what I did."

Or any verb

Cerberus

18:15

Those are infinitives.

JSBangs

I still think eat is what i did is ungrammatical

Cerberus

I call infinitives both verbs and nouns.

MrHen

@JSBangs I think I agree. It does sound funny.

"Jump is what I did."

JSBangs

at least we all agree that it's unusual in a way that most of the others aren't

MrHen

"Attack is what I did."

Cerberus

18:15

@JSB: Agreed.

MrHen

"What did you do?" "Jump."

psmears

@MrHen I don't know... I think "Sleep" is a valid response ("What did you do? / Sleep! / Did you? / Yes, I did sleep!")

MrHen

IMO, it doesn't work.

Cerberus

Are we also agreed that those infinitives are not at all topical?

MrHen

@psmears Hmm... good point.

psmears

18:17

@JSBangs I might parse it as: "Eat" is what I did

Cerberus

@PSM: Agreed, as an answer it is quite current still.

MrHen

Anyhoo, you guys figure it out. I am going to drink coffee.

Cerberus

Bye Mr!

> Oh, to dwell on my old home, how sad it makes me!

Eat that!

psmears

46 secs ago, by Cerberus

Eat that!

I'd say "eat" was the topic of that?

Cerberus

@PSM: Then "that" would have focus... I'm not sure: can we separate finite verb and pronoun-object like that for purposes of assigning topic and focus? Perhaps.

Vitaly

18:21

Fun fact: topicalization in Irish English is more prominent than in British English. Still reading about it. Also, thanks again, @JSBangs, for bringing that term up.

psmears

@Cerberus I'm by no means sure either, hence the question mark!

Cerberus

@psmears OK that's what I thought!

Robusto

@JSBangs — Word.

psmears

@JSBangs: Would you say "What he does is eat", or "What he does is eats"?

Cerberus

"Eats" would definitely be wrong to my ears.

Only infinitives can be subject complements.

psmears

18:25

@Cerberus And to mine (I think... this discussion is rapidly degrading my ability to tell...)

Cerberus

You are suffering from semantic ehhh... something with an s....

Satiation.

Robusto

All I do is try to cope.

Cerberus

With life?

psmears

I gtg... catch you all later!

MrHen

on-topic poll:

0

Q: What is the definition and origin of "imba"?

I often hear the phrase, "That is imba" in the video gaming community. It seems to refer to something powerful or unskillful: Hunters are so imba. Grenade launchers are imba! But I have also noticed that it is often used tongue-in-cheek or sarcastically to mock people complaining about...

meaning etymology slang

Cerberus

18:26

Adios!

MrHen

Obviously I think it is on-topic since I asked the question

But it is another fringe case.

psmears

(@JSBangs: just clarifying before I go: would you say that "What he does is eat" is to "Eat is what he does" as "What he eats is food" is to "Food is what he eats"?)

Cerberus

@PSM: I'd say, yes, that is the same.

@MrHen: You got two answers within 5 minutes. You must be popular!

MrHen

@Cerberus :P

Vitaly

“‘Conuay’, the wise it call!” (Shakespeare Merry Wives of Windsor I.iii) — what is topicalised here?

the… object?

Cerberus

19:00

@Vitaly: I don't think that is being topicalised; focalised, rather. But topicality and focality are often impossible to make out without context.

Vitaly

Ok, thanks. @Cerberus

Cerberus

And that is the object complement being placed in first position.

Vitaly

Another fun fact: phonemic diversity in human languages fits a serial founder–effect model of expansion from inferred origin in Africa, just like human genetic and phenotypic diversity declines with distance from Africa (Science 332, 15 April 2011)

Cerberus

Interesting! Does that mean that the indigenous languages of South America are/were the least diverse?

Vitaly

Actually, that's what the data is saying: the smallest phoneme inventories are in South America and Oceania

Cerberus

19:06

@Vitaly: Hmm that theory would seem to have something of a hard time explaining the huge number of wildly differing languages on New Guinea...

Their existing in countless small communities isolated by geographical features might explain it.

Vitaly

it's about phonemes, i.e. the diversity of sounds found in a language

vowels, consonants, tones, etc

Cerberus

Yeah ok... so the different language families on N.G. should be quite close as regards phonemes?

Usually different language families develop different phonemes, I should expect?

Vitaly

Seems so, but I have no idea what they actually are like

Here is the report, aaas.org/news/releases/2011/0414sp_language.shtml

Cerberus

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TNG_map.svg

Vitaly

For the original Science paper, you'd need an AAAS subscription, unfortunately

Cerberus

19:12

Interesting!

It mentions S-E Asia as another place with great phonemic variety.

Vitaly

Makes sense, at least to me (I am used to thinking that humans migrated in waves, and one of those waves had settled in that area 10,000-something years before the next one)

I could be wrong, though.

Cerberus

True.

@Vitaly: Do you want the article?

Vitaly

I have read it.

Cerberus

Ah ok.

Vitaly

But thanks.

Cerberus

19:19

You said "unfortunately" hehe...

Vitaly

Information wants to be free. XP

Cerberus

I should have divined that you were commiserating what you perceived as my misfortune of lacking access to this treasure.

JSBangs

20:50

@Vitaly, that article was just up at Language Log, who had a pretty negative review of it

i have to say that i agree with their complaints: the authors make a whole bunch of unfounded assumptions about phonetics and language change in their analysis

see: cslu.ogi.edu/~sproatr/newindex/atkinson.html

(correction: i should have said Language Hat not Language Log)

Kosmonaut

21:20

@JSBangs Actually the article is at Richard Sproat's website. Language Hat just links to that.

JSBangs

@Kosmonaut true

Kosmonaut

Sproat is a smart guy, and very skeptical.

kiamlaluno

Did I miss anything?

Wow... I get messages about flagged posts.

Kosmonaut

That is strange.

kiamlaluno

I mean chat posts.

@Kosmonaut Didn't you see any blue badges, to the left of where you write your posts?

Kosmonaut

21:29

I did.

But I'm a mod, so I would expect it :)

kiamlaluno

@Kosmonaut So am I.

That is why my username is shown in blue.

Moderators in a SE site are moderators in all the chat rooms.

Kosmonaut

Ahhhhh!

Got it!

kiamlaluno

:-)

Actually, I saw the blue badge also before becoming moderator, but when I clicked on that badge nothing happened.

Sigh! Nobody else understood my "wait, I will scratch my armpit." That means I will not go to Zelig. Sigh!

Cerberus

*before becoming

(I thought you said you wanted to pointed out infinitive-gerund problems: but if you've had enough just say so and I will stop commenting.)

kiamlaluno

22:02

@Cerberus Where? When? Why? ;-)

Cerberus

Okay, okay, I'll stop...

kiamlaluno

@Cerberus It will be enough when I stop making such mistakes.

Cerberus

Haha...

You see what you are doing there?

I assume that was on purpose (...)

kiamlaluno

As they say on LIRR trains: "See something? Say something."

Cerberus

*stop making

Arg I did it again.

If you "stop to do x", you stop doing something, in order to start doing x.

Ding!

kiamlaluno

22:05

Eheh!

Well, basing on what I am doing, I can say I stop to do such mistakes. :-)

Cerberus

Hehe. Fair enough.

kiamlaluno

Is saying "LIRR trains" as saying "ATM machine"?

Cerberus

Eh that depends on what you are referring to. Probably not, unless it contains a word close enough to "train" in meaning.

kiamlaluno

LIRR is "Long Island Rail Road."

I hate when the computer gets so slow that I cannot see what I am writing.

Cerberus

Hah, you have that too? I thought I was alone.

kiamlaluno

22:12

Add that to the "attention syndrome" I have, and you get a good picture.

Cerberus

I don't have it so much on this PC, only a little bit; but it is unworkable on my 2GHz single-core Windows 7 PC.

Meh I wish there were a way to disable some advanced (and CPU-consuming, no doubt) features of this website.

kiamlaluno

I have that problem all times when Safari starts, or when Time Machine starts backing up files.

When Safari starts, Firefox still has problems when I quit Safari.

Actually, I had more problems when I installed Mac Os X Lion.

Since then, I have to reset my Mac once per day.

(This time the gerund/present participle is not necessary.)

Cerberus

Correct!

kiamlaluno

(This shows mine is mainly an attention problem.)

Cerberus

Possibly so.

kiamlaluno

22:19

I notice that; I cannot keep doing something for too long, or I lose interest.

Cerberus

trying to resist the urge to bash Apple... must not bash Apple...

kiamlaluno

bash> ls Apple

Cerberus

I make mistakes in chat all the time that I have actually condemned in some of my Answers. That's just the way the world works, no problem.

MrHen

-1

Q: Word that is a "negative" version of in, but not "out"

So, I'm a programmer, and I have a function that has the name of "in?". It basically asks the question, "Is A in the set of A, B, C". I would like a function that can be expressed as one word, that is the opposite of that. For various reasons, "not_in" won't suite that purpose. Does anyone have...

synonyms antonyms negation

kiamlaluno

Well, at least you know it's an error.

MrHen

22:20

It is probably time to start dealing with this question

The OP needs something far too specific

kiamlaluno

I think it would better suit programmers.stackexchange.com.

If it would be there, I would reply with !in().

MrHen

@kiamlaluno Yeah; this sort of very narrowly specific question really isn't going to help anyone else in the future with regards to English

And he just rejects all of the answers as "nah, this was thrown out"

And all seems reminiscent of

kiamlaluno

@MrHen Don't you hate when they do so?

MrHen

3

Q: The opposite of "contains"

I was just wondering if anyone could think of a single word meaning the opposite of contains. E.g. This bottle of beer contains alcohol whereas this one doesn't. This bottle of beer doesn't contain alcohol whereas this one does. Basically, I'm looking for a single word which means doesn't c...

single-word-requests antonyms

@kiamlaluno I don't mind it when an answer doesn't work but rejecting a perfectly fine answer for a non-English reason seems to flag the question as suspect

kiamlaluno

First they ask a question, then they comment with "it's not what I meant." They should write the question better, then.

MrHen

22:25

"What is this?" "This." "Nah, that doesn't work well in programming."

kiamlaluno

@MrHen I agree.

MrHen

@kiamlaluno Agreed.

kiamlaluno

Sometimes I am tempted to reply "OK, tell me what you want to read, and I will write an answer with that."

MrHen

@kiamlaluno Haha, brilliant.

kiamlaluno

As alternative, I could reply "I am sorry: my crystal ball is being repaired." ;-)

Cerberus

22:28

Nice.

kiamlaluno

It's nicer if they say "I didn't ask about a crystal ball; what is a crystal ball?" :-)

MrHen

Do upvotes on questions get pruned by the rep cap?

kiamlaluno

For who gets the up votes, they are.

MrHen

Mmk. That's what I thought.

kiamlaluno

The only way to get over the rep cap is having accepted answers, or accepting answers.

MrHen

22:31

And bounties

kiamlaluno

I have never had the lucky to get a bounty. ;-)

MrHen

Are questions about symbolism on-topic?

As in, "Why is black considered an evil color?"

(Not that it still is; just the first example I thought of)

kiamlaluno

It is not about English; therefore, it's off-topic.

MrHen

@kiamlaluno It is about literature, then?

What is the subject?

kiamlaluno

@MrHen It's symbolism. :-)

MrHen

22:38

@kiamlaluno :P Symbolism in what?

Obviously not "math"

Not "English"

kiamlaluno

It is like asking why somebody thinks that putting salt close to a door keeps the daemons away.

MrHen

@kiamlaluno Not really.

kiamlaluno

It's symbolism, as in to attribute a meaning to objects or facts.

MrHen

There is certainly a broader application of symbolism that effects literature

There scores of idioms birthed from symbolism

Cerberus

*like asking

MrHen

22:42

@kiamlaluno Hmm... maybe I am using the wrong word

kiamlaluno

There is surely literature about symbolism, but not all literature is about symbolism.

Cerberus

I'd say it was on topic. But I suck at voting to close or not.

kiamlaluno

("Looks around, and checks if somebody noted that.")

MrHen

@kiamlaluno Bah. That isn't what I am aiming for, though.

Anyhoo, I am off

Good weekend to everyone. :)

kiamlaluno

@MrHen Have a good one.

kiamlaluno

23:13

0

Q: "when spring arrives"

I often told you we'd go there when spring arrives. That sentence seems funny to me. It means that in the past the speaker would often promise the listener that when spring arrives they would go to a certain place together. Is it grammatically correct? What about these alternatives? I...

grammaticality tense

The answer from C_P seems a little confused.

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…