English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Johan Larsson

12:07 AM

so is cerb

user174558

@KitZ.Fox Have you had dinner? I just took my meds, going to sleep in an hour or so.

user174558

@MετάEd Yes, I agree. It's not useful for anything other than noise.

user174558

@MattE.Эллен Very handsome.

user174558

12:23 AM

@JohanLarsson Seems that Reg and Rob are gone from this chat. It's OK, we still have you around.

Johan Larsson

:)

user174558

@snailboat I am deciding between A student's introduction to English grammar by Huddleston and Pullum and Oxford modern English grammar by Aarts. How do they compare?

Anonymous

12:39 AM

@JasperLoy You should take a look through both on Google Books to get an idea of what they're like.

Mitch

@JasperLoy have you looked at a few pages of each?

@snailboat jinx!

Anonymous

I've read the former more thoroughly than the latter, but I think you'd be well served by either book if it's the sort of book you're looking for. I think the Aarts might seem a little more technical at times.

Mitch

@MετάEd in principle they're useful. anything that can be one boxed should be chatbottable.

hangman was fun but wastes space as everyone has mentioned.

user174558

@snailboat I saw from the contents page that neither does punctuation.

MετάEd

@Mitch "Chatbottable". That's a good word.

Mitch

12:42 AM

maybe there could be a 'notify mod' chatbot command

Anonymous

Right, punctuation is in a sense peripheral to grammar.

Mitch

@MετάEd makes me think of bin Laden's last address. Chatbottabad

Anonymous

Most grammar in English is syntax: how words fit together into larger units, and how those larger units fit together, and so on.

Mitch

@JasperLoy do you want a punctuation guide?

Anonymous

English has less morphology than syntax.

user174558

12:43 AM

@Mitch I have seen several and are unhappy with them all.

Anonymous

There are lots of other things you can read about that concern language, including orthography (how things are written), phonetics and phonology (pronunciation), and so on.

Mitch

@snailboat I'd rather syntax than morphology

unless the morphology was entirely syntactual

Anonymous

@Mitch Some languages have lots of morphology and very little syntax.

MετάEd

I pay my syntax religiously.

user174558

@snailboat You sound like a pro.

Mitch

12:44 AM

Latin and Russian can go suck it.

Anonymous

@JasperLoy I'm just a snailboat.

Anonymous

I was thinking of languages like Inuktitut.

Anonymous

> One famous example is the word qangatasuukkuvimmuuriaqalaaqtunga (ᖃᖓᑕᓲᒃᑯᕕᒻᒨᕆᐊᖃᓛᖅᑐᖓ) meaning I'll have to go to the airport

Mitch

@JasperLoy I'm no English teacher but I would think the best place to look for punctuation rules would be something like a style guide, like the Chicago Style guide or ... Some Other Place Style Guide

@snailboat thought jinx

@MετάEd I bet for you its a lot.

Anonymous

I think most people pick up the majority of their writing skills by interacting with the language naturally (for example, doing lots and lots of reading), and then they try to identify individual points that need work here and there, using references but rarely reading them cover-to-cover.

Anonymous

12:47 AM

Reading a linguistics textbook won't necessarily make you any better at writing.

MετάEd

@Mitch My life is not that exciting.

Mitch

@snailboat that's good syntax put into morphology.

Anonymous

So if you can take a step back and describe your actual goals, @JasperLoy, what you want to accomplish by reading one book or the other, people might be able to give opinions on whether reading those books is likely to help.

Mitch

@MετάEd I'm on synwelfare

@snailboat Is there a "The Little Prince' in Inuktitut? If not, then its not a language.

user174558

@snailboat OK. I am curious how many language books you have in total, 30?

Anonymous

12:49 AM

@JasperLoy Me? I dunno, a couple hundred . . . ?

Anonymous

A lot of them aren't very good :-)

Mitch

Uncountably many.

Anonymous

Some of them I've barely ever looked at.

user174558

Wow, that's a lot.

Anonymous

And I've lost some over the years.

Mitch

12:49 AM

Because I can't count that high

Anonymous

I think I have more books on Japanese than any other language-related topic.

Mitch

@snailboat I have doubles of books, where I bought it once, years later forgot that I had it, then bought it again.

Anonymous

@Mitch Yeah! I've totally done that.

Mitch

It's really embarassing

Anonymous

Though more often, I end up re-buying a book because the first is worn out, or I lent it to someone permanently, or things like that.

Mitch

12:51 AM

thinking 'I should really read that book. Where is it? ... Oh...'

Anonymous

I treat books really badly. :-(

Anonymous

I don't really do it on purpose.

Kit Z. Fox

gasp

Mitch

I don't write in books.

Anonymous

But I buy books to use them, then eventually I end up surprised when they start falling apart.

Anonymous

12:51 AM

I write in books all the time :-)

Mitch

Some people do it religiously, making comments and notes.

Kit Z. Fox

You don't use books! You read them! Gently! And lovingly!

Anonymous

I'm sorry! :-)

Mitch

Oh. I was going to say something disparaging about 'book-writers'

Kit Z. Fox

Write in--WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!?

AUGH!

Mitch

12:53 AM

I think it came from when getting used books in college with highlighter all over them with totally random things highlighted. It was ugly and that former owner didn't have a clue.

Anonymous

@JasperLoy When I started learning Japanese in the late 90s and early 2000s, I bought lots of books on Japanese. A lot of them never did anything useful for me, but I couldn't resist.

Mitch

I didn't want to have someone have that same experience when they opened up a former book of mine.

Anonymous

These days I'm a little more choosy, but there are just so many interesting books to get!

Mitch

So I prevent that three ways: 1) never selling a used book back 2) never writing in a book or 3) never having an idea worthy of writing in a book.

Anonymous

But if you don't want to waste time and money, I'd try to figure out why you want to get a technical book and what you think it'll do for you.

tchrist

12:55 AM

I always write in spelling and grammar fixes to books. That way they don't annoy me quite so much the second time around.

waits to see whether the hook was correctly baited

Anonymous

I most often write in reference books. The way I see it, if a book is wrong about something, it needs fixing :-)

Kit Z. Fox

I guess I write in my cookbooks.

Anonymous

Or sometimes they're just missing stuff that needs adding.

Kit Z. Fox

Because I can't follow a recipe.

Anonymous

Or you can't figure out why the heck they marked something grammatical, so it needs a giant question mark.

Mitch

12:58 AM

You mean like sentences with a '*' or '?' next to them?

Anonymous

I don't usually write things in fictional books.

Anonymous

@Mitch Yeah! Or, y'know, sentences that should have one of those thingies but don't.

Kit Z. Fox

@Mitch hahaha

Anonymous

Then it's your duty to write them in!

Mitch

I know. Fiction is all made up so why not in that world what we think is wrong is perfectly natural.

Anonymous

12:59 AM

Or maybe a % or # or !, depending.

Anonymous

If I find something interesting in fiction, I'm more likely to copy it out of the book somewhere else.

Mitch

@snailboat I can't do that for anything but English. and when I see that in linguistics books I feel like even if I disagree, well it must be what the author is thinking of so just go with it.

Anonymous

It's pretty interesting how often people disagree. In day-to-day life, I think we all have the illusion that we all speak the same language, when really, each of us has our own personal copy of English, and it's not quite like anyone else's.

Mitch

@snailboat I'm getting to the point where when I read fiction a second time, I can't remember what was written, like I get something totally different out of it the second time.

Especially if they change both the author and the title too. That totally messes things up.

Anonymous

@Mitch Haha! I'm one of those people who tends to forget the ending and is surprised every time ;-)

Kit Z. Fox

1:03 AM

@snailboat No! Mine!

Mitch

@snailboat That's exactly (well not exactly, but pretty close) my argument (well not exactly an argument more like a feeling) against Wittgenstein's argument against private language.

tchrist

@Mitch Every grey hair is a forgotten memory.

Mitch

@snailboat I usually have a vague sense of foreboding such that I'm not totally surprised. Like I'm pretty sure that guy or that guy did it because of that time when they were kids and that thing happened. Or maybe it was the butler.

@KitZ.Fox Where did I hear that it is surprising that we can have dictionary meanings for some abstract words because we can have such different internal meanings and uses for them that we just give each other the benefit of the doubt 'oh they must have meant that metaphorically'

tchrist

I never used to be able to reread, because I remembered too well and so it bored me. Then early-onset-stupidity set in, and what gave me pleasure when it was new will soon enough do so again. The period just gets shorter.

Mitch

@tchrist ooh I'm in worse trouble than that then.

@tchrist I remember rereading the chronicles of narnia a few times as a kid, and by #4 I think I had each book down to a day.

tchrist

1:10 AM

Many children tend to reread compulsively, just as they watch the same movie over and over and over again. I'm talking about something else here at the far side of life’s journey.

Mitch

And even then I think it wasn't that long ago when (spoiler alert) someone said 'it's such an obvious new testament allegory' and it took me a while to figure out which bible story it was analogizing (hint: not revelations) (hint II: Not Philipians II)

tchrist

How many times did you see Star Wars? How many times did you read the Lord of the Rings?

@Mitch Analogizing != allegorizing.

Mitch

@tchrist Once each. Two Towers bored me to tears. I spent a lot of time in the appendices at the end of Return of the King.

@tchrist an allegory is an analogy of analogy

tchrist

An analanalogy?

Mitch

A catalogy is an antonym of a sylloloquy

tchrist

1:13 AM

@Mitch Yes, he was pleasantly surprised by how interested people were in the appendices.

@Mitch I suppose this means you don’t remember where he tips his hat to Lord Dunsany?

Mitch

The silmarillion I totally blanked out on. It was a struggle to get through. And the map was so tantalizingly like middle earth but not. So I turned to my United Federation of Planets manual, with maps of Earths local star systems, the UFP constitution, and color schemes for the outfits. Now that was real.

@tchrist ?? some macbeth homage in one of those battles of helms deep or something? is the what the Ents were for, when burnham wood comes?

tchrist

@Mitch It was just the notes from his Annals. Very little was developed into the rich narrative he was capable of producing. There are snatches of that.

@Mitch Yes, that's right.

But Dunsany is here:

> It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.

Mitch

Are you trying to blow my mind? Like you're gonna say something crazy like Aslan was Jesus or that Jim Morrison was the Lizard King.

tchrist

Beyond the Fields We Know

Beyond the Fields We Know is a collection of fantasy short stories by Irish writer Lord Dunsany, and edited by Lin Carter. The title is derived from a description of the location of the border of Elfland used several times in Lord Dunsany's best-known novel, The King of Elfland's Daughter. It was first published in paperback by Ballantine Books as the forty-seventh volume of its celebrated Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in May, 1972. It was the series' fourth Dunsany volume, and the second collection of his shorter fantasies assembled by Carter. Dunsany is considered a major influence on the works...

Mitch

@tchrist The goddam wizards surely control the weather. Put them to work.

tchrist

1:21 AM

I suppose you have not read the Lays.

Mitch

@tchrist I don't think I've even seen an opera.

unless you count gilbert and sullivan

And I don't

You want me to read poetry too?

All those... words.

tchrist

Many fewer than prose.

Mitch

Touché

tchrist

Better than Pringles

Mitch

There was a young man of Tralee
Who ended his all on line three
When he got to the third.

tchrist

1:26 AM

> Thus Thingol in his dolven hall
amid the Thousand Cavers tall
of Menegroth as king abode: (65)
to him there led no mortal road.
Beside him sat his deathless queen,
fair Melian, and wove unseen
nets of enchantment round his throne,
and spells were laid on tree and stone: (70)
sharp was his sword and high his helm,
the king of beech and oak and elm.

It is somewhat uneven, but not at all bad and with some great moments.

This is one of the better parts:

> He [Thu/Sauron] chanted a song of wizardry,
of piercing, opening, of treachery,
revealing, uncovering, betraying. 2175
Then sudden Felagund there swaying
sang in answer a song of staying,
resisting, battling against power,
of secrets kept, strength like a tower,
and trust unbroken, freedom, escape; 2180
of changing and of shifting shape,
of snares eluded, broken traps,
the prison opening, the chain that snaps.

Backwards and forwards swayed their song.
Reeling and foundering, as ever more strong 2185

@Mitch And yes, those are indeed the line numbers that you dread.

Kit Z. Fox

1:52 AM

My eyes!

Such a wall of unbroken text.

Mitch

Well, the lines are short, and it rhymes. Could be a lot worse.

> What clashes here of wills gen wonts, oystrygods gaggin fishygods!
Brékkek Kékkek Kékkek Kékkek! Kóax Kóax Kóax! Ualu Ualu Ualu!
Quaouauh! Where the Baddelaries partisans are still out to mathmaster
Malachus Micgranes and the Verdons catapelting the camibalistics out
of the Whoyteboyce of Hoodie Head. Assiegates and boomeringstroms.
Sod's brood, be me fear! Sanglorians, save! Arms apeal with larms,
appalling. Killykillkilly: a toll, a toll. What chance cuddleys, what
cashels aired and ventilated! What bidimetoloves sinduced by what

Argh! all those spellcheck errors!

Kit Z. Fox

wow

Mitch

I know! Take that Beowulf!

OK I don't get it. Why is the national epic of I'm so Great Britain about a guy who is Danish. Presumably everybody else in the story is too. Except for Grendel and his mom, they're obviously ... immigrants.

Aequitas

2:10 AM

hi quick question, i'm looking for a word, I thought it was strike but apparently not, "striked from history" like to mean it was removed. Does anyone know?

Anthony

Hello!

Can anyone here tell me what is meant specifically by case in linguistics?

I was reading the wiki article, but I'm a little confused- does it generally mean morphological case?

Cerberus

@Anthony It should, yes.

Or what did you have in mind?

I have heard people use "case" in a broader sense, one which is in my opinion incorrect, but that will be very rare.

Anthony

I'm just confused, because sites say English only has three cases, but you can come up with syntactic phrases to convey the meaning of any case...

Cerberus

Yes, but case is essentially morphological.

So those syntactic phrases are not true cases.

Anthony

Alright. Ugh. Wiki is so confusing...

Cerberus

2:19 AM

The fact that they mostly serve the same syntactic purpose doesn't mean they are cases.

Which part of the article is it that you found most confusing?

Anthony

Well I mean, a lot of it. But for instance, the second sentence says that "In some languages, nouns, pronouns, and their modifiers take different inflected forms depending on what case they are in."

Doesn't that imply that other languages don't inflect? And if it doesn't inflect, then isn't it similar to the situation in English? I mean I guess that might be a stretch, but I'm just confused...

Cerberus

Yes, other languages don't inflect their nouns under certain circumstances; those languages don't use cases, then, under those circumstances.

@Anthony Maybe there are languages that don't have inflexion at all; but all European languages that I know have some degree of inflexion.

English has inflexion, but very little of it. The same applies to Dutch.

German and Latin, on the other hand, have much more inflexion.

Anthony

Alright. But to be certain, if the definition of case extended to using syntax, rather than just morphology, then basically every language would have basically every case right?

Cerberus

Yes, I suppose you could say that.

Although you know that just isn't what case means.

There is a distinction between case and syntactic function.

Anthony

Sure, alright. Ugh I don't know why I got so confused.

Cerberus

2:27 AM

You can express the same syntactic function by means of inflexion, preposition, suffixion, position...

Do you want an example?

Anthony

Sure.

Cerberus

In English, on the table uses a preposition to express the syntactic function that could be describes as "location".

In Latin, you could translate that as mensa, which is the ablative case of the word for "table".

Anthony

Sure, that makes sense. But then here's something that confuses me. Wiki says "In German, grammatical case is largely preserved in the articles and adjectives, but nouns have lost many of their original endings. Below is an example of case inflection in German using the masculine definite article and one of the German words for "sailor"."

Cerberus

Or you could translate that as in mensa, where the preposition in means basically "on", so you're saying the same thing.

So Latin can use either way, preposition or case (or both at the same time), to express the same function.

Anthony

I see.

That makes sense. But in terms of the German thing above, it's suggesting that the case is contained in the articles and adjectives.

Cerberus

2:30 AM

@Anthony Yes, what they say is true. Case in e.g. Latin is marked in all nouns, adjectives, and pronouns. But in German, nouns often are not inflected for case, while the adjective that belongs with the noun is inflected.

Example:

> Der Mann ist alt. "The man is old."

> Ich sehe den alten Mann. "I see the old man."

Anthony

I see.

So as long as there is inflection on something, we still have case. We just can't be using word order, or phrases, for case.

Cerberus

So you see the noun stays the same, whether it is in the nominative or accusative case.

@Anthony That's right, mostly. But inflexion is much broader than just endings that express case; in many languages, inflexion also expresses number and gender.

Anthony

Sure, sure.

Why do you say mostly?

Cerberus

In English, inflexion is almost always used to distinguish between plural and singular.

One sheep, two sheep.

And inflexion is also about verbs: verbs are often inflected in English as well.

Anthony

Yeah, I know inflection has other uses.

What I meant was that without inflection, you don't normally have case.

Cerberus

2:34 AM

@Anthony Because you can have inflexion without case, if the inflexion marks other things.

Anthony

Yeah.

Thanks @Cerberus!

Cerberus

@Anthony Oh, that is true. But not the other way around, as you first said it.

Anthony

Yeah. I should be better at making logical statements, I study math lol.

Anyway. Thanks!

Cerberus

Hehe.

There exist fringe cases (hah!) where a certain feature might be called a case ending or something else.

But case is mostly defined quite neatly.

Anthony

Cool. Thank you!

Cerberus

2:36 AM

Were you studying any phaenomenon in particular, when you came to investigate the world of cases?

Anthony

Oh I fell into a hole in Wikipedia, and ended up there.

Cerberus

Hah, I know how that happens.

Anthony

Anyway, I should get back to filling out grad apps. Thanks again.

Cerberus

@Anthony Until next time! By the way, I would say morphological case is a pleonasm.

I have heard some people call "to Mary" in "I gave it to Mary" a dative, but I consider that an error.

Anthony

That makes sense. I was just wondering because on the Talk section of the wiki page someone mentions the distinction, and also the wiki page is called grammatical case.

Cerberus

2:40 AM

Ah, well, that is perhaps because of other meanings of the word case unrelated to language.

Anthony

Oh shoot

yeah I misread that. The page is on case

Anyway, thank you!

Cerberus

It was a pleasure!

Anonymous

4:22 AM

@Anthony Some linguists analyze certain languages as having analytic case marking.

Anonymous

Which is not to say that these same linguists would necessarily consider a preposition phrase like to Mary an example of dative case marking.

Anonymous

@Anthony books.google.com/…

Anonymous

People use case to mean lots of different things, unfortunately.

Cerberus

4:38 AM

@snailboat Yeah I've heard of that, but I consider it a mistake; what they mean seems to be syntactic function.

Or even semantic function, an even stranger deviation from accepted terminology, in my humble opinion.

Anonymous

4:48 AM

I find that use particularly confusing.

Cerberus

5:09 AM

Same here.

user174558

6:14 AM

@snailboat If you are a snail and I am an orange, you may eat me now.

Anonymous

@JasperLoy Snails don't like very acidic fruits very much.

Anonymous

I mean real, little snails and real, little citrus fruits :-)

Anonymous

If I try to give a slice of orange to a snail, they smell it a mile away, shrink back, and make a U-turn!

Anonymous

They also reject grapes.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector ] Offensive answer detected: "I came from Italy" or "I come from Italy" by hsheng on english.stackexchange.com

Anonymous

6:27 AM

Me, I like citrus. Actually, my favorite food in the world is the habanero, which has a citrus-like taste :-)

I'm mostly just an idiot

10:26 AM

in Mathematics, 2 mins ago, by I'm mostly just an idiot

@TobiasKildetoft You think it is correct English to say "Why is it true that to equal inputs correspond equal outputs?"

in Mathematics, 1 min ago, by Tobias Kildetoft

@I'mmostlyjustanidiot Yes, while replacing "to" with "two" would make it very incorrect

Thoughts?

Matt E. Эллен

I mean, it is technically grammatical, but it makes no sense to me. How does one "correspond equal outputs"?

I'm mostly just an idiot

Like $x=y \implies f(x)=f(y)$

Matt E. Эллен

try explaining it without notation

I'm mostly just an idiot

If two inputs are equal, then the corresponding outputs are equal.

Oh, you don't have latex on oops

Matt E. Эллен

so, to rephrase the question "why does one have to correspond equal outputs to equal inputs?"

I'm mostly just an idiot

10:36 AM

@MattE.Эллен I guess that sounds right. The thing that sounded right to me in the end was:

in Mathematics, 9 mins ago, by Overflowh

I think "Two equal inputs correspond to two equal outputs" would sound correct too. But as @TobiasKildetoft said, you need a "to" somewhere.

Matt E. Эллен

the use of correspond I use in the rephrasing, and the one in your first example is foreign to me. the use in Overflowh's example makes sense

in my idolect correspond cannot be transitive

but maybe it's fine in maths

i.e. I don't correspond things, I correspond with people, or is see that things correspond with each other.

I'm mostly just an idiot

Is correspond symmetric? If A corresponds with B, does B correspond to A?

Matt E. Эллен

11:00 AM

correspond is like signify, so I guess it's not symmetric by default, by symmetry isn't ruled out.

"The way the cupboard looks now corresponds with where I think I am in the instructions"

I help, I halp, I have hulp

terdon

11:23 AM

I think that's correct if unclear. Why is it true that to each corresponds his own.

So, Why is it true that to equal inputs correspond equal outputs? == Why is it true that equal outputs correspond to equal inputs?

Not that I'd ever actually use such a thing.

Matt E. Эллен

11:44 AM

@terdon I would never use correspond like that

terdon

Neither would I, I just used it to illustrate the meaning.

Matt E. Эллен

ah :D

terdon

Grammatical != good English :)

Matt E. Эллен

I would say, in normal English, it's ungrammatical, but in mathematical English it might be grammatical (and apparently is)

terdon

Ungrammatical because of corresponds or the construction in general?

It's the same basic idea as to the victor go the spoils.

Matt E. Эллен

11:54 AM

because of corresponds, because it's not transitive

although I bet if look in a dictionary there'll be a transitive definition...

terdon

Ah, OK, I thought your problem was the clumsy construct.

Matt E. Эллен

oh, no :D

terdon

Yeah, it did seem rather strange :)

Oh, wow:

0

Q: How to use the relative pronoun "which"

Is the use of the relative pronoun "of which" in the following quote from the ABC news correct? Shouldn't it be "of whom?" Five people were taken to the nearby Loma Linda University Medical Center, two of which were critical but stable, two of which were fair and the one who was still being a...

grammar

Does nobody read these things before publishing them?

duckduckgo.com/…

Loads of hits for that horrible sentence.

Apparently, two of the patients were pretty but another is still being assessed. By the hospital board of aesthetics, presumably.

Matt E. Эллен

:D

or blond(e)

or white

or good for a horse to run on

or even handed

I could go on

terdon

:)

The damn thing was picked up and repeated by hundreds of news outlets, none of which apparently hire editors. Or even native speakers FFS!

Boris_yo

11:59 AM

Hello.

Assortment and bundle are synonymous?

terdon

Pretty much, yes. But assortment suggests a heterogeneous collection.

To me anyway.

Matt E. Эллен

and assortment of wires and a bundle of wires would not be the same thing

terdon

Yeah. For an assortment of wires, I'd expect a collection of various types of wires while a bundle brings to mind a group of wires held together and more likely similar.

Matt E. Эллен

also, bundle is also a verb

terdon

It depends on context. In some cases the two can be synonymous, yes, but not in all.

You wouldn't call your baby an assortment of joy for example.

Matt E. Эллен

12:02 PM

I disagree. I can't really interchange them in most places.

they have a similar meaning, i.e. collected together

terdon

In some you can, but not in most. You're right.

Matt E. Эллен

but the way the collection exists is usually quite different

a bundle is more haphazard

a box of chocolates could be an assortment, but not a bundle

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector ] URL in title: English Languaghttps://english.stackexchange.com/questions/242118/the-english-language-t‌eachere U by Wening on english.stackexchange.com

terdon

@MattE.Эллен What if you dumped it into a kerchief? ;)

Matt E. Эллен

@terdon yes, then the assortment would be in a bundle, but that wouldn't make them synonyms :D

@SmokeDetector yes. that is quite strange. can't say I've seen that sort of thing before. Could be a spam probe

Interesting word facts

terdon

12:12 PM

Huh, the day's eye -> daisy is cool. I had no idea.

Matt E. Эллен

nor me!

Boris_yo

@MattE.Эллен How about 3 robots made each in different color?

If they are all sold separately and I take and sell them together?

Matt E. Эллен

@Boris_yo that would be an assortment, not a bundle

Boris_yo

Assortment - robots from different brands
Bundle - robots from same brand?

Matt E. Эллен

no

Boris_yo

12:20 PM

Maybe assortment is for gourmet food only?

Matt E. Эллен

:D

Boris_yo

Usually bundle is something that provides balue for money with better experience ...

Assortment? Sounds like better experience but not exactly value for money...

Matt E. Эллен

@Boris_yo not usually, but that is a term that is in use in commerce, yes

Boris_yo

@MattE.Эллен I think assortment may confuse people. Bundle is more commercial and accepted.

Matt E. Эллен

a bundle deal is a deal where different things that would be sold at a particular price individually are sold discounted when bought together

but that is most definitely not a synonym for assortment

so you would say "I'm getting the Activision bundle"

and that would be an assortment of Activision games

Or, of course, the humble bundle

and, while the contents of the bundles could be called an assortment, that's only part of what makes it a bundle

Boris_yo

12:27 PM

@MattE.Эллен That's a nice explanation.

Do you know if "mayhem" only refers to living organisms or can refer to non-living organisms?

Can robots do mayhem to each other?

"Mayhem is a criminal offense consisting of the intentional maiming of another person."

From Wikipedia

"Robot Wars: Metal Mayhem is the first video game based on the British game show Robot Wars"

Hmmm...

terdon

@Boris_yo Sure. A sudden storm caused mayhem in the town center yesterday, for example.

Matt E. Эллен

I agree with terdon

terdon

Don't use wikipedia to look words up, that's what dictionaries are for:

> n. Law The offense of willfully maiming or crippling a person.
n. Infliction of violent injury on a person or thing; wanton destruction: children committing mayhem in the flower beds.
n. A state of violent disorder or riotous confusion; havoc.

Though committing mayhem sounds odd. I'd have said causing.

Mitch

Mayhem is just general confusion by a swirl of objects. There's no assumption of those objects being animate.

Also, worse, don't use wiktionary as your dictionary.

Boris_yo

"Ready to fight at your command"

Does "command" here imply verbal order or it can be something else? Like controlled with remote radio?

Actually "Ready to fight at your will" makes sense here too?

Matt E. Эллен

12:56 PM

one last thing re: bundle vs assortment: bundle describes how things are are contained, assortment describes the things that are being contained.

Boris_yo

1:13 PM

Thanks

tchrist

0

A: How old is the word "prolly"?

Probably isn't a word. The correct word is probably. Those who use the word probably sound extremely ignorant and uneducated. Most likely they graduated from a Public School .

That's an answer?

terdon

heh:

"Public School" is not a proper noun, and it should not be capitalized. This message was brought to you by someone who graduated from a public school. — trident 17 mins ago

tchrist

Who puts spaces before there final punctation ?

terdon

The French.

tchrist

Not for a period though, right?

terdon

1:30 PM

I don't really know.

Nope:

> Jamais d'espace avant la virgule et le point, toujours un espace après.

grammaire.reverso.net/…

tchrist

Somehow that reminded me of this:

Virgule flottante

La virgule flottante est une méthode d'écriture de nombres réels fréquemment utilisée dans les ordinateurs. Elle consiste à représenter un nombre par un signe s (égal à -1 ou 1), une mantisse m (aussi appelée significande) et un exposant e (entier relatif, généralement borné). Un tel triplet représente un réel s.m.be où b est la base de représentation (généralement 2 sur ordinateur, mais aussi 8 ou 16 sur certaines anciennes machines, 10 sur de nombreuses calculatrices, ou éventuellement toute autre valeur). En faisant varier e, on fait « flotter » la virgule. La mantisse m est représentée par...

Mitch

@tchrist floating comma sounds like vestigial angel wings

@tchrist Probably. ducks and runs

Kit Z. Fox

3:14 PM

I hold my head up just enough to see the sky

And when we go, we won't go slow. We'll put up such a fight.

This is from Kiss the Sky performed by Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra.

And there is a line in it that I always hear as: Strunk and White and you are love.