Language Overflow - 2016-01-11 (page 1 of 3)

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3:25 AM

17

Q: What does "resp." mean in these sentences?

The abbreviation resp. has been used a number of times in the following paragraph: For each of these problems (resp., tools), we start by presenting the natural concern underlying it (resp., its intuitive objective), then define the problem (resp., tool), and finally demonstrate that the ...

meaning-in-context

ELU mafia strikes again

2 hours later…

Anonymous

5:16 AM

I posted an answer to the question mistakenly labeled "intensifying a verb".

Verbs should get violent treatment at times.

They're always doing so many things to so many objects.

Why not intensify one of those bullies once in a while?

I liked your answer to "resp." You're being so answery lately.

Anonymous

That was 2013! :-)

Anonymous

It's now 2016.

Anonymous

So that's a prett expansive definition of lately :-)

Anonymous

Oops, can't fix that typo from my phone :-(

Anonymous

6:16 AM

@JimReynolds I'm not really very answery lately. Honestly, participating in ELL feels a bit like swimming upstream.

8:54 AM

@snailboat I'm not alone in thinking that?

@Nihilist_Frost Do is? LOL

Anonymous

9:09 AM

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. I want to see ELL succeed, but a lot of the time it's just a place to spread errors and misinformation. I think it can still be a valuable resource some of the time, and I don't expect any resource to be perfect – we all make errors, we're all always learning – but it really does get frustrating.

Anonymous

There is a fair amount of resistance to learning, I find.

Anonymous

Many people are comfortable with knowing whatever they already know, and they think that's sufficient. They resist learning, so they learn slower than everyone else.

Anonymous

That's really unfortunate given how bad grammar education is here and in the UK.

Anonymous

There's an atmosphere of intellectual laziness here. I get it – I'm lazy too. I don't work as hard to learn, to check my own facts, and so forth as I should. But again, it's frustrating to watch in others.

Anonymous

It's weird seeing so many posts that contain errors upvoted so much.

Anonymous

9:23 AM

Anyway, I'm mostly powerless to make the site work the way I want. I'm not in charge of anything, and people don't seem to find me particularly persuasive. Getting people to make changes is like pulling teeth, whether we're talking about correcting mistakes, asking questions properly, or using tags in ways that make sense.

Anonymous

I don't think there's much I can do to fix the things I'm frustrated about.

> "You cannot fight the shadow. Even now you fade. One light ... alone in the dark"
"I'm not alone."

> m.youtube.com/watch?v=diAkuwHtYEk

> "Are you in need of assistance, my lady?"

@snailboat Better not let the shadow win.

@DamkerngT. But this is really disheartening.

I think a bit of a problem here is that we don't have strict guidelines for answering anything.

And we have many views that tend to oppose each other.

Imagine I ask a technical question.

Someone will answer "instead I'd say blah blah blah". Someone else will answer with some prescriptive gibberish. In the end, the chances of someone like @Arau coming up and answering with something perfect is small.

9:41 AM

nods -- Because it's allowed to post anything as an answer. So, what's left is only the social nudge from our peers. I think the real problem is that posts with errors still get lots of upvoted.

@DamkerngT. And a subjective way to limit errors in answers is prohibiting some things in an answer.

Very true. (Hence, my meta post.) We each can do only so little, but I hope we don't give up.

Something from Cloud Atlas:

> "And for what? For what? No matter what you do it will never amount to anything more than a single drop in a limitless ocean."
"What is an ocean but a multitude of drops?"

When you quote something I get ready to kill a titan.

9:56 AM

Hi,You are all doing a great job, ladies and gentemen.Leaners need support . So do curious people or enthusiasts.I love this site. I learn something new every time I visit it.

@V.V. That's good to hear. Tell that to people who post guess-answers.

Do you mean just answering providing incorrect information?

Sometimes they end up posting wrong info, and they resist learning.

On the other hand, there are questions and questions. People are lazy to consult a dictionary.

Yep.

Question quality is declining on ELL.

@Dam

10:09 AM

Yes?

Search in chat for "easter eggs".

Unfamiliar names in the results!

@DamkerngT. Now search for "easter" or repeat the search.

Huh? Where's "Eggs O'Chicken" gone!?

Haha! Santa Claus!

Anonymous

@V.V. I'm glad you find the site helpful :-) I hope you can get good answers to whatever questions you need to ask in the future.

10:14 AM

And she's glad with a smiley. That means she's really glad.

@snailboat, I am sincerely happy I have found this source.

> The manual for AMSTeX had been written by M. Spivak and was a delight to read: The Joy of TeX. The title is a joke based on the famous book The Joy of Sex and the book followed the same pattern: the chapter titles are almost the same.

LOL

10:39 AM

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ., MAR, what's the weather like in your place?

A bit cold.

Not too sunny.

I feel these days are warmer than December though.

It's always sunny where MAR is, because he's such a beautiful human being.

Just think of other people who has got -17-21°C and feel happy. MAR can't be beautiful, he is handsome. Or I think I missed some important rule again!

You missed two important rules:
1. @Jim is trying to be funny.
2. @Jim is trying to be funny.

10:55 AM

:D It is true that we generally use "handsome" with men, but we can use "beautiful" with men, also.

Besides that, "beautiful human being" usually means a good personality or spirit, not physical good looks. :-)

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Dammit! How did you hear my sarcastic tone? Is my laptop's microphone on??? O.O

You are a poet :sunny-funny @Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.,@JimReynolds, I am ready for another lesson. How come?

How come we can use "beautiful" with a man?

@JimReynolds I know many things . . .

The synonyms here are perhaps helpful: dictionary.reference.com/browse/beautiful

Thanks, I think I heard abut it. But when I start talking I sometimes forget everything I was taught.

"Radiant " is the word

11:25 AM

@V.V. The word for what?

Anonymous

11:37 AM

@JimReynolds Handsome is also sometimes used of women, though less commonly.

Ripley in Aliens was surely handsome. :-)

Good morning, @snailboat!

Anonymous

Good morning!

Anonymous

I'm at a computer now, so I can be grumpy faster.

Hehe!

Anonymous

Earlier was slo-mo grump.

11:40 AM

bracing himself for the upcoming blizzard. :P

Anonymous

Actually, I already finished being grumpy for the day.

Yay!

Anonymous

It was on my list. Item one: grump. Item two: breakfast!

Yesterday, I looked into the sequence /s(t)n/ a little.

Just one anchor. It's clear that her /stn/ and /sn/ aren't the same.

(The words I used were "last night" vs. "snow".)

Anonymous

You always have the option of pronouncing the /t/ in careful speech.

11:45 AM

nods -- I'm not sure if her speech should be considered careful, but I think she sounds like a typical anchor.

Anonymous

By the way, there are words like handsome where the poor alveolar stop has been squeezed out and can't even be optionally pronounced! Poor /d/!

lasT night?

Anonymous

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. That's the one.

PBS NewsHour full episode Jan. 6, 2016

Anonymous

I don't hear a /t/

11:47 AM

I had to slow it down and looked at the spectrogram.

I think it'd be too quick for listeners to judge whether there is a /t/ there in real time.

user image

Anonymous

This might be an example of one of those differences between the three types of phonetic analysis we discussed the other day :-)

Anonymous

I listened about twenty times, and I couldn't hear a /t/.

Her "snow" is a little different.

> youtube.com/…

user image

The difference is only about 15 msec long!

So I think, she pronounces them differently, but it perhaps doesn't make much difference on the listener's side.

12:37 PM

Ahh... just saw a deleted answer by snailboat.

12:51 PM

When I pronounce the /t/ in careful speech, I get cartful speech

A cart full of speeches.

snailboat! stop modifying ELL.se !!

I put spaces before exclamation marks sometimes, because snow gave me a chill!

@JimReynolds Is it snowing up there where you live? :D

No. I wonder if it's ever snowed in Taipei.

Oh! I thought it was common up there!

I'll blame my misconception on those TV dramas! :P

Hmm..

Yushan (Chinese: 玉山; pinyin: Yù Shān; literally: "Jade Mountain"), also Mount Yu is the highest mountain in Taiwan and the fourth highest mountain on an island.

It snows on Yushan.

1 hour later…

2:03 PM

-1

Q: A large vase (lays/ is laid) in the corner of our front hallway

Which is right sentence between lays and is laid please explain why that is right!!

Hmm... if someone says A large vase was laid in the corner, is the vase still there?

(In other words, can we use A large vase is laid there like we use That window is broken?)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Although That window is broken is technically ambiguous, we would normally understand broken as a predicate adjective. Since this adjective is derived from the past participle form of the verb break, it's called a participial adjective.

Anonymous

It's possible to understand That window is broken as a passive construction with broken as a verb form, not a derived adjective, but it seems unusual (perhaps outside of Dungeons and Dragons: You fire a magic missile at a window. That window is broken.)

Anonymous

So! The question is, is laid a derived adjective?

Anonymous

And I think the answer is probably no.

@snailboat That's precisely what I wondered!

Thanks for the clarification!

Anonymous

2:14 PM

If we want to talk about the resulting state, we might say A large vase lies in the corner.

nods -- I think that's a normal way to put it. The question made me wonder if we could use lay the same way.

(or laid)

Anonymous

itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000877.html

Anonymous

A handy chart :-)

I think I can conclude it to myself that lay is telic, and mostly non-durative.

Hmm... probably durative, though mostly not for long.

Anonymous

It depends on how we conceptualize it.

Anonymous

2:25 PM

It's possible for a verb to represent an action with a very short duration, so short we normally think of it as instantaneous.

Considering that an answer below has gotten three downvotes so far, I think maybe this lays or is laid is not a simple matter that just looking it up in dictionaries can solve the problem. Please do not close this question on that ground. — Damkerng T. 23 secs ago

Anonymous

But in a case like that, it might be possible for us to marginally interpret it as durative.

I wonder if my comment will work.

@snailboat Aktionsart is really tricky!

Anonymous

In Japanese: 木が倒れている ki=ga taorete iru 'A tree has fallen (and is lying on the ground)'

Anonymous

This verb, 倒れる taoreru, is usually conceptualized as taking place in an instant. Non-durative.

Anonymous

2:29 PM

That instant takes place when the tree hits the ground.

Anonymous

But a durative interpretation is also marginally possible: 'The tree is falling (very slowly).'

In Japanese as well?

Anonymous

I was only talking about Japanese.

I see!

Anonymous

In English, fall is durative.

Anonymous

2:31 PM

We think of it as spanning the time from when it begins to move downward until it hits the ground. During that time, it's falling. After that time, it's fallen.

Hmm... Someone fell (because he was tripped over) is almost instantaneous to me.

Anonymous

But in Japanese, verbs like 落ちる ochiru or 倒れる taoreru are typically viewed as non-durative.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. When you use the past tense and say fell, you're setting the entire event in the past, and you're not focusing on whether or not it was durative.

Anonymous

You're focusing on its location on the timeline.

Anonymous

We make different aspectual distinctions in different tenses.

Anonymous

2:35 PM

For example, English has the past habitual used to.

Anonymous

There is no present habitual version of used to.

nods -- I think we'd have to express it with adverbs like always, usually, for example.

Anonymous

Likewise, with non-stative verbs the English simple present tends to be restricted to habitual aspect, but this is not true in the past tense. I eat meat versus I ate meat

Anonymous

So we do have to take tense into account when discussing aspect, since the two systems interact.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Right! We definitely have ways to express that meaning :-)

Anonymous

2:39 PM

I think one of the tricky things in learning a language is learning how the different tenses are used, because it's never as simple as "we use one tense to express stuff in the past, and another tense to express stuff in the present or future".

Anonymous

Take a look at this paper on -(r)u and -ta, the so-called present and past tense morphemes in Japanese: conium.org/~hasegawa/Papers/Hasegawa99.pdf

Ah, so it's not straightforward in Japanese either, I suppose!

Anonymous

On the first two pages, there's a list of 9 ways to use -ta and 12 ways to use -(r)u!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Well, I have more experience as a learner of Japanese than English, so sometimes it's easier for me to use Japanese as an example when talking about language learning.

Anonymous

For the durative/non-durative example above, I used Japanese because that was the only example I knew off the top of my head. But I think you can do the same thing in English.

Anonymous

2:45 PM

Say, what's it called when you take a film with a very high frame rate, like 2000 frames per second?

Anonymous

When you play it back at a normal frame rate, you end up with a very slow motion video. I can't remember the term for that kind of thing.

Anonymous

But anyway, imagine taking a pin and popping a balloon! Pop! It's all over in an instant.

Anonymous

Now imagine filming it with one of those fancy cameras with a zillion frames per second and watching the balloon very slowly pop.

I know they have a cool word for it, but I can't recall it either!

Anonymous

And in the background of the film, you see a very fast insect flying along. Of course, it appears to be very slow due to the way it was filmed, but in real life it was very fast.

Anonymous

2:48 PM

And while the balloon is popping, you see that insect fly from the left side of the frame to the right side.

Anonymous

Or at least part of the way there :-)

Anonymous

I think we could construe pop as durative!

Anonymous

The semantics of the verb reflect how we conceptualize it, and under unusual circumstances we may conceptualize it differently from how we usually do.

As they say, time is relative!

Anonymous

Oh, they do say that! :-)

Anonymous

2:50 PM

I made up that example because I don't think The tree is falling is very exceptional in English. We consider fall durative more or less by default.

BTW, there is a mod-related issue going on in the main room. It's in fact about an ELL account (or two!), but I thought you might be able to help.

(Like, giving some information, or something like that.)

@snailboat It takes a while before a big tree falls all its way to the ground.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. In Japanese, if something is in the process of falling, you say ochiru or taoreru, which are given a future interpretation. Since the verb typically expresses the instant it hits the ground, when you use one of those verbs you're saying that instant is in the (usually immediate) future.

Anonymous

Once it's finished its descent, you can say ochite iru or taorete iru, which mean that whatever has fallen is in the resulting state of being on the ground.

Ah, with -te.

Anonymous

Whereas in English, we focus on the ongoing process: it is falling, and then once it's on the ground: it has fallen.

Anonymous

2:58 PM

So both languages are capable of expressing both things, but they're conceptualized differently.

In Thai, fall can be used in both senses, both ongoing and the final states.

(It's hard to say anything really wrong in Thai. :P)

Reopen votes needed: ell.stackexchange.com/q/78475/3281

Oops, misread it.

Anonymous

Wow, Disney made an animated Chicken Little. I had no idea.

Neither had I! I will avoid it: Disney ruins everything I love.

@snailboat The soundtrack (or theme song) was fun!

Anonymous

3:08 PM

It's at 36% on Rotten Tomatoes!

Anonymous

I will admit to liking Frozen a lot. :-)

Someone just ruined my impression on Frozen last week. -- looking...

> youtube.com/watch?v=MsukwbeR7Jk

Anonymous

Is this going to ruin Frozen for me?

:P

Could be! :D

Full dance: youtube.com/watch?v=GYtfXjAINN8

Rule of Thumb: See a Disney movie only if you don't love the source.

3:13 PM

I was just kidding, though. It was a hilarious parody.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Haha!

Anonymous

That's great.

I might like Frozen, cos I don't know the Andersen story.

Anonymous

@StoneyB I don't actually like many adaptations into film. I think they're rarely as good as the source material even if I do enjoy them. But there are some exceptions.

Anonymous

I think The Princess Bride is as good a film as it is a book.

3:30 PM

@snailboat Yes! In some respects it's better than the book: the acting is so good and concrete without defying the "mythicity".

4:00 PM

I liked Frozen, but I was distracted by the exaggerated stereotypes of teeny-tiny heroine and huge, hulking heroes. This is a good performance, I think: youtube.com/watch?v=80njuNDlTR0

He's very skillful!

My primary social group here are musical theater people, as you may recall.

So I get exposed to some good stuff I wouldn't otherwise have appreciated.

I think "we'd" (we the Chosen Ones) would normally say skilled instead of skillful, but I dunno why. This is him even more mature as a performer, I think. He's extremely likable: youtube.com/watch?v=TppJMa8apkc

Some people were born to sign.

It's a bit unfair that I can't express my feelings in music the way he can sing. :-)

4:15 PM

You still have your sophisticated charm chips.

Sings: Oh, they can't, oh no they can't, I say they caaaaaaaaaan't take that awaaaay.

Haha!

ell.stackexchange.com/questions/62725/…

On principle, I think this should be re-opened. But what is the chance that doing so would have any practical value?

The OP hasn't visited the site for months, too.

Or did the OP re-emerge as one ... dun, dun, dun duuuun ....

Park

as in vase lays or vase is laid, or whatever

2

Q: A large vase (lays / is laid) in the corner of our front hallway

A large vase lays in the corner of our front hallway. A large vase is laid in the corner of our front hallway. Which is the right sentence? Should I use lays or is laid?

verb-forms word-difference

The dupe question looks good. So perhaps it isn't worth the effort.

@JimReynolds Hah!

4:22 PM

OK. Agreed. :)

I have my Sherlock Holmes hat on.

A hat is the best way to cover my pinhead.

2.
informal
a stupid or foolish person.

:D

Anonymous

@JimReynolds I edited this question.

Pardon me?

Anonymous

Try saying edited it ten times fast.

The it disappearseses.

Anonymous

@JimReynolds I'm guessing you're glottalizing the final /t/.

Anonymous

4:25 PM

[ɛɾɪɾɪɾɪʔ]!

How dare you speculate about my private life?

I helped undelete it.

Anonymous

Maybe [ɛɾɪɾɪɾɪʔt̚].

I undeleted it, which also seems impossible to say even five or six times.

It looks like you are speaking Thai.

Anything curvy is Thai, if you ask me.

LOL

4:27 PM

Then . . . no one ever does.

Anonymous

Say, Jim, what would you say anything curvy is?

Thai!!!!

Has coronary due to sheer pleasure.

Yay! (For the answer, not the after effect!)

BTW, Tooth Palace looks Thai to me.

(If you've seen Rise of the Guardians)

Anonymous

@JimReynolds Your glottis is your vocal folds. You can prevent air from passing through your vocal folds, which stops any sound you're making.

Anonymous

That's what happens when you say "Uh-oh!"

Anonymous

4:32 PM

You temporarily stop the sound in your vocal folds in the middle of the word.

I haven't seen Rise of the Guardians, but I'm putting it on a list.

Anonymous

Some English speakers do this when pronouncing /t/ in certain positions, like in the word Batman.

Between the Uh and the oh, eh? I've seen/heard glottal stop forever, without knowing what it is, exactly.

Anonymous

They might cut the sound off in their glottis and use their tongue to make the normal [t] articulation at around the same time. You won't hear much (or any!) [t], though, if the air is cut off ahead of time.

Hello @Wanda

Anonymous

4:34 PM

@JimReynolds Yes, the thingy between the uh and the oh is a glottal stop.

Anonymous

A stop is a sound that stops the air flow, like [t] or [d], for example.

Anonymous

You stop the flow of air with your glottis in a glottal stop.

I lost my glottis in a piano playing accident.

I only oh, now.

Anonymous

Most commonly, when people glottalize their /t/ sounds at the end of syllables, they also move their tongue to make a [t] sound. But since that tongue movement often doesn't produce any sound, some folks don't bother.

Well, consider "I got it."

Which doesn't mean I got it yet.

The /t/ after it often disappears, right?

But we'll hear something ending "got", though likely more of a /d/ sound?

Anonymous

4:41 PM

The /t/ at the end doesn't actually "disappear", but it can be glottalized.

Anonymous

In American English, both /t/ and /d/ can be "flapped", and when they are, the distinction between the two is usually neutralized.

Anonymous

There's something called "Canadian raising" (not exclusive to Canada, despite the name) which makes people pronounce writer and rider distinctly from one another, but in that case it's a matter of the first vowel rather than the /t/ or /d/ sound itself.

Anonymous

Native speakers tend to think that a flapped /t/ sounds more like a /d/, so in ad hoc transcriptions they'll write water as wadder or the like.

Anonymous

But really, the flapped /t/ sound is neither a [t] nor a [d].

Anonymous

In the IPA, which you have decided not to learn, there is a separate symbol for this reason: [ɾ]

4:45 PM

I'm back up to "batman" ...

I thought I understood a glottal stop for a second, but I really don't.

I can't locate my glottis!

I think I make the "t" sound (to phrase it loosely) with my tongue.

In Batman.

Anonymous

It's quite likely that you do use your tongue.

Help me feel my glottis.

Sorry if that sounds forward.

Anonymous

Do you have a prominent Adam's apple?

I suppose so.

Anonymous

That's your laryngeal prominence, formed by cartilage around the larynx.

4:49 PM

aka voicebox, and home of the vocal chords.

cords

Anonymous

Your glottis is inside the larynx, yes.

that's a funny confusion

Anonymous

Place two fingers on your Adam's apple.

Anonymous

Say [vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv]

ok

Anonymous

4:50 PM

Just make a [v] sound and really draw it out.

Anonymous

You should be able to feel the vibration.

y

Anonymous

Next, make an [f] sound and do the same.

Anonymous

The vibration should go away.

Oh. So if I suddenly stop the vvvvv

I've glottissed stopped.

Anonymous

4:51 PM

If you cut off the flow of air in your glottis, then yes.

Anonymous

You should be able to feel a slight movement with your fingers when you stop the flow of air.

I'm pretty sure I did get it, and it all makes sense.

Anonymous

You'll also notice that the sound doesn't quite stop instantly. Your vocal folds are physical things, and so of course they take a little bit of time to move into position to stop the sound, and in that short span of time you can hear the transition.

Yes. There's certainly a transition.

Anonymous

Now, if you stop your [v] sound by leaving the glottis open, but no longer expelling air from your lungs, it'll end a little more gradually.

4:53 PM

vvvvvvhhhht

Anonymous

The glottal stop is quicker, more abrupt.

right. it can just fade

Anonymous

In words like Batman, a lot of American English speakers articulate the final [t], moving their tongue partially or completely into position (touching the ridge behind the upper teeth), but they also cut off the flow of air in the glottis around the same time.

@Dam ... why did you ask me if it was snowing here?

Anonymous

As a result, the actual [t] sound may or may not be heard at all.

4:56 PM

Right. I think I can approximate that by trying to keep my tongue immobile while saying it.

Did you watch any of Breaking Bad?

Anonymous

And if the [t] is inaudible, it's only natural that some speakers won't move their tongue into position at all, or will move it only incompletely.

Anonymous

But I believe most speakers do make some sort of gesture with their tongue.

Anonymous

I did watch all of Breaking Bad.

Yes.

@JimReynolds Ah, you mentioned snow and chilling, iirc.

4:58 PM

OK. The son character has a particular way of speaking.

When I tried to say Batman without moving my tongue, I heard myself sounding like him!

Anonymous

The actor actually has cerebral palsy, just like the character.

I started looking around to see if Walter was here.

So his speech is affected by motor abnormalities.

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