Language Overflow - 2015-08-29

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2:34 AM

7

A: ELL answers out of sync with ELU answers

I don't see a conflict between the answers on ELU and those on ELL. I do notice that the answers on ELU don't agree with each other, nor do the answers on ELL. This happens very frequently on both sites, particularly with questions respecting tense, aspect and modality. A few people give answe...

Lots of great points in there.

Also the intended meaning thing in:

I can understand why this OP posted an answer saying "It's been 6 hours since I was waiting for you" would not be uttered by a native speaker of English - but it's obviously not true (except in contexts where the intended meaning is "I have been waiting for you for 6 hours"). Excluding the two with currently negative vote totals, I can't offhand see anything conflicting between any other answers there. The ELU question is a bit of a shambles though (not exactly helped, imho, by this OP's contribution there). — FumbleFingers 9 hours ago

And this is probably more practical (and better than the answer the comment posted to itself) for the learners to understand why "I've been 6 hours since I was waiting for you" is possible:

Second phrase is very weird/unnatural, but I can imagine it being said by a native speaker in a somewhat contrived circumstance: Phone: [Ring Ring] B: Is that you, A? Where are you? A: I am going to be there really soon, Are you still waiting for me? B

No.  It has been six hours since I was "waiting for you."  Now I am pacing and fuming.  In a very short while I will be leaving without you.  Hurry up!"

— Adam 10 hours ago

@FumbleFingers The key thing, at least on this side of the Great Divide, is that we should explain very meticulously under what circumstances your Riviera sentence is acceptable and how it differs from the waiting sentence. That may not be necessary on the far side, where it may be presumed that readers recognize the difference without instruction. — StoneyB 8 hours ago

Oh, yes...

What's the difference between the two?

> It's been 6 hours since I was waiting for you.

> It's been a month since I was sunning myself on the Riviera.

One is only one block of instance of the activity (waiting), and the other is repetitive blocks of instances of sunning?

Come to think of it, our answer to that question (on ELL), though not wrong, it could be misleading.

It could be misleading the same way several grammar books are misleading.

3:02 AM

^I remember that I wrote a short chblog post on that, but couldn't find it.

It could be a good topic to discuss.

(Why can correct explanations in grammar books be misleading?)

A-ha! Found it!

A problem with grammar textbooks

Aug 1 at 7:00, 28 minutes total – 36 messages, 1 user, 0 stars

Bookmarked Aug 8 at 14:26 by Damkerng T.

3:16 AM

It's already hard enough for learners to grasp the grammar.

It's way harder to go beyond grammar.

Also, maybe that's how dialects are formed.

Given all possible grammatical choices in a language, the favored choice used by people in one region may drift away from the favored choice in another region as time passes.

@DamkerngT. Dialects are a curious thing. It's almost entirely a function of in-groups and other social constructs.

@jimsug They're very curious indeed!

For example, a certain dialect may contain idiomatic constructions designed to build solidarity within the group, while excluding outsiders.

Then again, a language is a dialect with an army and a navy

For instance, consider the Australian dialect/variant of English.

There's a whole host of vocabulary that you'd never hear outside of Australia.

@jimsug Yeah... if you're French... English has more of a militia... and all of the members have their own idea of how involved they are in protecting the language.

Rangas.

@Catija This is true. There's an image somewhere that describes English quite well, if only I can find it...

3:24 AM

@jimsug I haven't heard that word before!

user image

@Catija Not so much applicable to the people, but still.

@DamkerngT. I'm actually struggling to think of more, but it'll come. It's probably because I'm Australian, in fact, that I'm having trouble with it.

@jimsug I actually posted that image in one of these rooms a month or two ago.

What do people call soft drinks in other countries? I think the US uses a smattering of either pop or soda.

@Catija Ah, there we go then.

Also, the "have a verb" construction isn't available in all dialects.

@Catija I'm not sure if I've seen in. I think I may have, but only this time I can grasp its message well enough! (or so I think)

Is that a thing that you can say, @Catija? "Have a go at something", or "Have a read of a book"?

3:28 AM

@jimsug We use "pop", "soda", "cola", "coke"...

I use the last one.

@Catija Do these refer to all kinds of carbonated, non-alcoholic drinks? Even coke/cola?

@jimsug I've occasionally used "have a go at something"... but I lived in the UK for about 8 months, so I've picked up some of their phrasing.

@Catija I suspect it's not idiomatic in most American English variants, but is in BrE-influenced ones.

@jimsug "Cola" generally refers to the Coke/Pepsi style sodas...

3:30 AM

@Catija yeah, that makes sense.

And "coke" (lowercase c) can generally refer to any type of soda but usually is equivalent to "cola"...

huh, wow. Yeah, I'd never call, say, Fanta coke

But I'm from Texas, where every cola is a "Coke" hence the genericization of the name.

But vocabulary differences aside... actual grammatical differences are a bit harder to identify.

@jimsug Ugh... Fanta is not popular here, that I'm aware of... I think it's more popular with the Hispanic crowd.

3:32 AM

Although I have to say, I've learnt a fair few of them by reading and answering ELL questions.

Even things as simple as math vs maths.

@Catija Ah, right. Well, my point is - we'd not call any other soft drink Coke or cola (in fact, even the generic brands of cola-flavoured beverages are still called Coke)

Calling something cola actually just sounds weird, in general :/

@jimsug They are called coke, even if not Coke brand? Just checking.

@Catija Correct.

I guess a quasi-grammatical process we have in Australia is the formation of nicknames.

@jimsug Interesting how Coke has become the Kleenex of the soda world.

I guess they won that battle.

3:34 AM

I don't think I've ever called a facial tissue Kleenex

@jimsug Yeah, but do you Aussies even have that brand?

I think that must be another Americanism. I've only ever called them, and heard them called, tissues

yeah, we do.

shop.coles.com.au/online/national/…

i.e. Can you pass me a tissue?

@jimsug Interesting. It's one of our generic terms. Xerox for copiers, Jell-o for gelatin desserts... um... Google...

Google is a thing here.

Windex for glass cleaner...

3:36 AM

maybe jello

@jimsug One would imagine it's a thing everywhere.

maybe windex

Xerox not so much, I don't think.

@jimsug Interesting... I thought Brits call gelatin "jelly"... is that not the same in Australia?

Band-aid is a surprising generic trademark

Xerox is less common now than it used to be. There's a lot of new competition in that market in the last decade or so.

3:37 AM

@Catija yeah. I kind of very anecdotally feel like I've heard "jell-o", though

whereas I don't think I've heard Xerox or Windex, I don't think.

I just learned last week that not every Thai knows what "band-aid" is. I'd thought that it was a generic enough name over here.

@jimsug Oh, it's not surprising here... it's the only term people use. You guys have... some word... elasti---something?

@Catija Not surprising that we use it - it's more that it was relatively recently that I learnt that it was one.

I'm pretty sure we overwhelmingly call them band-aids.

@jimsug Meh... maybe it's the British... I've seen a couple Brit-Coms that use a different term.

Saran wrap... that's another one.

I've heard that Australians tend to state facts as questions that can really have no answer.

3:40 AM

"bundt pan".... but that's so generic that most people don't realize it's a company name.

"How hot is it today?"

"How heavy is the rain?"

"How bad was the traffic?"

Although I don't know if that's something that other people do or not.

How are those statements? .... I guess I can imagine a emphasis that would make it a statement...

Well, more like ... they're really just statements about the fact that it is a hot day, the rain is heavy, the traffic was bad.

@jimsug One of my in-laws uses all that regularly in Thai! (She's Thai.)

Ofc the funniest thing about Australia is a single word in our national anthem

girt

I mean, I know what it means, but I would never, ever use it spontaneously.

girt

3:43 AM

@jimsug I think I've heard Americans do that.

@Catija Ah, okay, so maybe not an Australianism then.

"He girt up his pants"?

As in Our home is girt by sea

:/

I learned a new phrase!

I think Australians use mate like other dialects might use buddy

a term of endearment where there is solidarity, a term of ... the opposite of endearment? ... where there isn't.

i.e. calling a friend mate vs calling a subordinate at work mate has very different connotations.

3:50 AM

That makes me think of Jason Statham in some movies.

As an aside, it is quite frustrating switching between Word and markdown.

Formatting gets very confusing.

... although we may have inherited mate from BrE

Since I joined ELL, I've found myself typing stuff in Piggydb and my other wikis in markdown, which is of course not the right way, very often!

UQx WRITE101x 4.3.1.1 Pronoun problems

Hah! I can't tell her accent!

Is it possible that it's AusE?

Oh, right! University of Queensland. Definitely an Australian accent.

Yeah, definitely.

I haven't watched Masterchef Australian for a while.

Australian English tends to straddle AmE and BrE, as far as I can tell. I think I've said this before.

4:01 AM

nods -- That was exactly what I felt!

4:52 AM

Actually, this is a good exception!

When you've lost everything, the only thing left is laughter. — TRomano Aug 16 at 20:38

1 hour later…

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

6:11 AM

Oooh lots o' new stars today.

1 hour later…

7:29 AM

World map with countries in size of their stock market: http://wef.ch/1h8Sm2M ht @ValaAfshar http://t.co/WBS4zxKqwe

Tweeted by dinapomeranz on August 27, 2015 at 1:37 AM

A picture is worth a thousand words.

user image

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. Then Iran must be the size of my sofa.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M lol

Also note World map with countries in size of their stock market.

That helps me not to worry when I want to write a similar expression, whether I have to write: World map with countries in size of their stock market or markets.

@DamkerngT. Yeah... it's really poorly phrased :P

@Catija Ouch! :P

I don't know how I'd rephrase it... but "in size of their stock market" is... not good.

That being said, I read it so quickly that I didn't even notice there was an error until you pointed out the sentence.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

7:37 AM

@Cat I was replying to another hopeless "why they downvote" person in meta; and I wanted to write a simile with flashlights; then I mixed the two comments up.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Ah, I see.

7:53 AM

Hah!

Word of the Day: acknowledgment

(I didn't know it can be spelled that way.)

8:43 AM

It looks like Google Translate can do its job very well on Spanish and French texts.

I wonder if it's because they just have more data or the problem (mathematically) is less complex.

Anonymous

9:13 AM

@DamkerngT. corpus.byu.edu/glowbe/?c=glowbe&q=41131020

Interesting!

Anonymous

Judging by these results, people include the 'e' more often than not, but in some regions the difference is slight (as in the US) and in others it's more pronounced (as in the UK)

Anonymous

books.google.com/ngrams/…

Hah!

Anonymous

But these results show that including the 'e' is less common.

Anonymous

9:15 AM

Of course, the corpus makeup is very different in each case.

Anonymous

@jimsug Yeah, it's only part of the US where that happens. Where I grew up, coke isn't generic, but kleenex is.

Anonymous

11:08 AM

@jimsug A James Nicoll classic!

Anonymous

The original quote:

Anonymous

> The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle [sic] their pockets for new vocabulary.

Anonymous

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Hello, H₃⁺!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Hullo @Snail!

Anonymous

11:39 AM

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=20968

Welcome back! @snailboat

Anonymous

@StoneyB Oh, I bet this would interest you: languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=20968 (the same link I just pasted above)

Anonymous

Hello!

Anonymous

Poor which that. Never popular.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

They used to burn whiches. Or was it witches? ;)

Anonymous

11:41 AM

In the graph, w- stands for 'overt wh-element', and -c stands for 'overt complementizer' (meaning that)

Anonymous

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Yes, that pun is the source of the term which-hunting

I speculate that that will follow which soon.

I mean on the way out.

Anonymous

Oh! I thought you were saying double marking would be on the rise :-)

It was ambiguous, right? Right?! :-)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I think it's reasonable to predict the decline of that.

Anonymous

11:46 AM

Which-hunting: arrantpedantry.com/2011/12/23/which-hunting

12:17 PM

@snailboat That's terrific! thank you. ... Note that the Brothers Fowler (who really kicked off the movement for excluding wh from restrictives) found exactly the opposite trend in 1906: "There was formerly a tendency to use 'that' for everything: the tendency now is to use 'who' and 'which' for everything. 'That', from disuse, has begun to acquire an archaic flavour, which with some authors is a recommendation."

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Interesting.

@Stoney what are you going to buy for us when you get to 100k?

If you pushed backward from that graph you wouldn't find which that - but you would find a whole bunch of þe + se/seo/þæt, where þe is the subordinator and se, &c is the demonstrative/article.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M The best dinner that 100k of rep can buy!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

What if what you call dinner is our breakfast? ;)

Breakfast at Tiffany's, then

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Yippee! Hear that @Dam @Snail?

12:28 PM

I love that movie!

I haven't seen it in, gosh, 50+ years?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Dam

1

Q: Sudden voting increase in 2015

As part of a research, I study StackExchange voting along time. Looking at the data - http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/356895/votes-in-2015, There is a sudden increase of(~15%) in the number of votes in mid April 2015. I examined the changes blog and found no policy , feature or ...

discussion voting policy

(I know you love stats, all robots do)

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M mid-April? That was Thai New Year. ;-)

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Odd. ... You know what I'd like to see? Stats/trends on who votes at ELL, and how that stacks up against other sites. I'd particularly like to know whether (as I suspect) ELL casts fewer votes/Q in proportion to the user base.

1 hour later…

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

2:06 PM

Hullo @barznjy! Please visit the ELL's Cabin for discussion: chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/22937/ells-cabin

@StoneyB That has been our (me and @Dam's, mostly his) hunch for a long time. Let me see if I can write such a query.

Anonymous

People say whom is dead. But!

Anonymous

People say whom.

Anonymous

Who's people? Well, me, for one. Probably other people, too.

2:22 PM

@snailboat Me too. But my use is not so comprehensive as traditional grammar demands.

3:07 PM

I wonder, what if I said whom to whomever who says whom is dead...

3:23 PM

You'd prolly get whomped.

:P

On a slightly-related note, I was curious as to the number of answers that used corpora

It seems like a good way to... well, to qualify native speaker intuition.

Although it's not necessary, I find it fun

data.stackexchange.com/ell/query/356917/…

Not nearly as many as I expected.

> 65 rows returned in 285 ms

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Two of them are mine!

Indeed.

Unsurprisingly, snailboat has the most, it seems.

3:54 PM

I'm a lot less enthusiastic about corpus studies than I used to be, particularly as a guide to synchronic phenomena.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Oh! I missed Meatie's suspension.

@Stoney have you seen ell.stackexchange.com/revisions/65032/5?

@jimsug Oh, those results bring back some bad memories.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. Oh?

But I think I'd given up fighting for the ideal that ELL should try its best to have the best possible answer in all questions for quite some time.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

What bad memories?

4:10 PM

That I had to force myself to read some not-so-great answers.

Because, basically, I used to read every post on ELL.

For a while, I think.

4:31 PM

0

A: Sudden voting increase in 2015

I did some simple SEDE queries to check different SE activities as I saw a burst around that time in all the different activities which came after a slow year. See the image. The x bar is months from launch. So, the question changed from what is the sudden change in voting? to what caused the sud...

Interesting... people love to comment everywhere. ;-)

The comment-to-question ratio is about 4:1.

More interestingly... the answer-to-question ratio looks like it's only about 1.5:1

Anonymous

@jimsug I actually think that's funny because I'm so lazy about researching my answers. I should really put more effort in :-)

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I noticed that meatie had wiped one question and reposted its contents to another; I didn't follow up because, well, because it was meatie! He had pulled the same thing (only without the wipe) just three weeks earlier; I guess this was one too many for J.R.'s not-quite-infinite patience.

@DamkerngT. I think that 'while' ended for me about the time our Q/day passed 12.

4:49 PM

@StoneyB Hehe! I guess that was back in 2013 or maybe early 2014. :-)

Note that cinematics, cinematology, and cinematography all seem to mean the same thing. Also note some curious pairs such as physics, physiology, phonetics, phonology, etc. — Damkerng T. 1 min ago

I think it's an interesting observation (by the OP), though I'm not very into this kind of thing.

I should've said "seem to mean roughly the same", because I'm not really sure about the nuances.

@DamkerngT. About then, yeah.

@DamkerngT. I've never run across cinematics. Cinematology is occasionally used for the academic discipline (usually film studies), but cinematography is the professional discipline: it's what the director of photography on a film is concerned (and credited) with.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

5:12 PM

@Stoney cinematics is a branch of physics.

IIRC it was something along the lines of "studying motion without considerations about what causes it."

That's kinematics!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Kinematics brings back some good memories of mine.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

And some funny memories of mine.

My last year's physics teacher was . . . HAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHA

:D

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

5:19 PM

He was one of the weirdest people I've met, or ever gonna meet.

I take it that you meant in a good way.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

In a funny way.

Hullo @AlexandreanaConstantinescu; please visit the ELL's Cabin for discussion: chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/22937/ells-cabin

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

5:59 PM

11

Q: Have there been other cinematic crossovers like the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

I know this has been covered very similarly in this question, but as opposed to just cross-overs, have there been other attempts at creating a cinematic universe? Freddy vs Jason, Aliens vs Predator, Abbot & Costello meeting The Universal Monsters were all "after the fact" ploys at getting more m...

marvel-cinematic-universe movie-franchise

@Dam ^

It seems just to be an adjective of cinema.

nods -- That's cinematic, meaning "relating to cinema".

Cinematics: the art or principles of making motion pictures

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

BTW @Dam have you noticed my rep?

Cute!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

6:42 PM

@Cat I made an account on M&TV.

I'd be active in your meta, prolly.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M That's fine. You're welcome in whatever community.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Well your culture wasn't hard to grasp. You didn't have a code or something, and you're friendly.

But unfortunately, you lack users that will engage in meta activity.

I wanna help fill that gap.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M That's appreciated... we do certainly need that.

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