English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2017-06-20

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9:09 AM

Hi Guys, can you please explain me why "Smiling" is adjective, this should be adverb, because smiling is the action a human can do

and "unconscious" should be Verb too, because according to the definition "a word or phrase that describes an action, condition or experience e.g. 'run', 'look' and 'feel'."
"unconscious" isn't a feeling ?

3 hours later…

12:27 PM

@Arjun Don't rely on purely semantic definitions of parts of speech. They are more accurately defined by their function in the sentence and how they group with other words to construct phrases and sentences. For example, smiling can come between an article and a noun (a smiling face) so you can argue that it could be considered an adjective there.

And while verbs take subjects and stuff, unconscious doesn't take those, so it's not a verb.

Another definition for verb:

> A category of lexemes whose most distinctive property is that they normally inflect for tense (She was ill vs She is ill; We liked it vs We like it).

From A Student's Introduction to English Grammar. Still more about form than meaning.

.

Anyway.

*tible:

> 1 SUSCEPTIBLE 3687
2 COMPATIBLE 3499
3 IRRESISTIBLE 2315
4 CONVERTIBLE 2299
5 INCOMPATIBLE 1794
6 DEDUCTIBLE 1379
7 IMPERCEPTIBLE 486
8 PERCEPTIBLE 486
9 INDESTRUCTIBLE 456
10 COLLECTIBLE 429
11 INEXHAUSTIBLE 422
12 COMBUSTIBLE 373
13 INCONTROVERTIBLE 274
14 TAX-DEDUCTIBLE 270
15 CONTEMPTIBLE 232
16 DIGESTIBLE 162
17 INCORRUPTIBLE 137
18 HIGH-DEDUCTIBLE 128
19 IBM-COMPATIBLE 116
20 INDIGESTIBLE 108
21 SUGGESTIBLE 60
22 NONDEDUCTIBLE 58
23 CORRUPTIBLE 57

*table:

> 1 TABLE 159365
2 COMFORTABLE 27820
3 STABLE 15051
4 ACCEPTABLE 11307
5 UNCOMFORTABLE 10277
6 INEVITABLE 9952
7 VEGETABLE 9674
8 SUITABLE 6786
9 NOTABLE 6201
10 PORTABLE 5605
11 ACCOUNTABLE 5504
12 PROFITABLE 5327
13 PREDICTABLE 4988
14 UNACCEPTABLE 4000
15 UNPREDICTABLE 3848
16 CHARITABLE 3830
17 UNSTABLE 3543
18 RESPECTABLE 3146
19 ROUNDTABLE 2130
20 ADJUSTABLE 2028
21 EQUITABLE 1993
22 TIMETABLE 1897
23 ATTRIBUTABLE 1894
24 UNFORGETTABLE 1309
25 VERITABLE 1091

From COCA, in an attempt to find a pattern for when it's -ible and when -able.

@Arjun It is both an adjective and a verb depending on how it is used. So, I saw a smiling child is an adjective (compare to I saw a happy child) but I saw a child smiling is a verb (compare to I saw a child running away).

True. But never an adverb.

@Arjun Yes, unconscious is a feeling (well, a "state" but close enough), but the definition you quote doesn't say that verbs describe feelings. It only mentions the verb to feel as an example.

He took off running.

Mmm.

12:38 PM

:)

@Mitch We do. goo.gl/images/B5Zias

@Mitch Trouble with Ngrams is that they don't pick up the text on product labels.

@Spagirl I had to squint real hard to find 'still spring water' there but at least the manufacturer uses it. It wasn't clear that that's a UK site but 'M&S' and 'Ltd' are good hints.

I guess if I were selling water I wouldn't want to say 'flat' because it is so ... boring. I feel like in the US it's more likely to be 'non-carbonated', but telegraphic marketingese (shorteing things to their utmost) might lead to 'still' being used more often in the US.

@Mitch You can be asked if you want "sparkly or still" in the UK.

Spa people must know something about spring water anyway.

@terdon 'sparkly' sounds like that bird in that movie who wants a ring. For that matter, 'fizzy' sounds like an inarticulate child.

12:48 PM

Effervescent?

@Arjun Give the sentences that you are concerned with, only then can we tell. many words in English can go in more than one position, so it depends on context.

@Færd that's not a wrong word to use, it's just that that word isn't the one used normally

Hmm.

'bubbly' would also be not wrong

Bubbly drinks. Makes me think of stirred high-fat milk. Or stirred egg whites.

What do they call beer with bubbles in English? I know that the next morning when all the bubble are gone the beer has gone 'flat'

12:51 PM

@Mitch That's likely to be understood to mean "champagne" though.

@Færd In the US at least, milk with bubbles is milk that has gone bad. (but I am aware that there are milk based drinks in the ME that are fermented and have bubbles/carbonation. Also Japan probably.

@Mitch So you guys in the states don't have milk shakes?

@terdon it has that association. but I would think that 'sparkling' would too because of 'sparkling cider' as a champagne stand-in for non-alcoholic New Year's celebrating

Yeah, but the Brits, at least, call champagne bubbly.

@Mitch They are never called milk here. Their nearest relatives in the dairy family are yogurts.

12:54 PM

So it's not so much an association as the word for the thing.

@terdon Sure The US is all about milkshakes. What do you think spurred the exercise craze?

But carbonated milkshakes? No, that just is not a thing here.

Well yes, precisely. And they tend to have bubbles :P

You said "bubbles" not "carbonation".

If McD's had a fizzy milkshake, it would be shutdown for health violations.

@terdon That's not pretty much the same thing for the drinker (I'm no chemist)

Also sparkly drinks sound like they make a sizzly feeling in your mouth. I don't know if bubbly drinks do that.

According to terdon they do, I guess.

@Færd I wouldn't distinguish. They're all of the same kind to me. the sizzly feeling from 'finer' bubbles?

but that's me.

12:58 PM

Yeah.

As opposed to milkshake bubbles.

Important question: Do periods in chat seem too formal or do they seem to aggressive? (or both or what)

what if you have two sentences. I feel like you have to have the first period no matter what. But out of laziness (and efficiency) I feel like dropping the last one

or not.

even though dropping it is 'wrong'

A cultural thing perhaps. I use them when I chat in Farsi. Many don't.

a quick scan of this recent chat shows that I am the only one with the 'problem'.

also, I am in free variation. sometimes I do it, sometimes not

This is not your average regular chat.

It's a haunt for those who care more than others about language and correctness etc.

IMing or phone message, it's kinda nice to be able to not worry about that last period.

But here... it seems like sentences are a 'should have'. Not necessary, but why not do it since there's room for it.

@Færd do you mean just ELU chat or do you think it happens on most of SE chats?

1:05 PM

It seems deliberate to me. Like you want to hint that you're being informal.

@Mitch ELU.

I suspect younger generations have less trouble dropping these shackles of formality.

So to some of them periods mean something else, probably.

@Færd OK. But the few times I've seen other chats on SE, they tend not to be lolspeak or highly abbreviated. Is ELU, though it is not terribly formal or academic, is it that much more formal than others?

@Færd kids these days

@Færd I've read that a final period is very abrupt, and can change the intention of a sentence from a statement to a demand.

@Mitch Many of them still sound academic, but not in a linguistically hyper-correct way.

@Mitch Never thought about it that way.

@Færd me neither until I recently read something about it.

.

Looks harmless enough to me.

@Færd How dare you

:)

1:10 PM

...

ت

What is 'lol' translated to Farsi?

خخخخخخخ

or 'haha'

@Færd hahahahha

@Mitch We have haha, or hehe.

@Mitch That one's /xxxxxxx.../.

As I think you get it.

But you have to laugh through it so the strength varies. /XxXxXxxXxXX..../.

@Færd I have a hard time keeping straight the characters for jim cheh heh kheh. Are you saying the laugh sound is kheh?

1:12 PM

Yeah. Among other things.

@Færd what does that mean? 'yeh'? did you make a bilingual pun?

It's a horizontally pitched smiley. :)

!!

nice

The letter for /t/.

The Farsi font that I see it in is terrible. Probably yours is too.

again, I mix all those up. beh peh teh and nun

1:15 PM

It'd look better in other fonts.

@Færd It's looks like a very comical smiley.

@Mitch I don't blame you.

But like any emoticon, they're usually not obvious without someone saying 'hey look that's a smiley' and you have to look many times.

@Færd Thanks. I blame the British

Me too. For how different their alphabet is from the Arabic/Farsi alphabet.

I know!

1:18 PM

I kinda envy the simplicity of yours though.

Wait... it's probably for a whole bunch of other things, but let's throw that in there anyway.

Doesn't intimidate learners.

If Arabic Farsi would only add vowels (er... all vowels) then it'd be OK.

They do, in the kids' books.

And Arabic religious texts.

Also, I don't know what insanity caused this, but Arabic/Farsi fonts, at the same fontsize as Roman, are really tiny. So the subtle differences between letters are just harder to see.

1:21 PM

Letters in the same size have features of different sizes.

S and س take up almost the same amount of space but the curves are more delicate in the latter.

by delicate that means to me 'much harder to see'

Gets even better when you add the dots: ش.

just because of the font size

Nonetheless my reading speed in Farsi is lightning compared to English, even if they're the same font. Proof that you can get used to it.

Gotta run.

@Færd The Spa water my handle references is, unfortunately, sulphurous. uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Strathpeffer

@Mitch Fizzy's good enough for The Times, Wodehouse and Kipling, I'll have you know! oed.com/view/Entry/70851?redirectedFrom=fizzy#eid

@Mitch : 'What do they call beer with bubbles in English? ' Lager.

1:35 PM

Are any mods in here?

@ahorn Chat mods or English Language & Usage mods?

ELL mods. I didn't know there was such a thing as chat mods.

I'm wondering where my closed questions are.

@ahorn ELL or ELU?

@ahorn Any mod on any site of the Stack Exchange network is also a moderator on chat.

ELU. Sorry.

So I'm a mod on Unix & Linux and Ask Ubuntu but I also have access to moderation tools for chat in general.

1:37 PM

@ahorn How may I help you?

@ahorn What do you mean? Have they been deleted?

So that I can learn how I have been asking incorrectly, also with the intention of starting a meta post.

Ah, there we go. The locals are here.

@Mitch Of course, while cider does come in still and sparkling (as does wine, now I think of it), over here both varieties are alcoholic. Though weaker than 'Bubbly/Champers', it is frequently in the 7-8% range.

@terdon I'm not sure. Did any of my questions ever get closed?

1:38 PM

You have two closed questions on ELU.

english.stackexchange.com/questions/377210/… and english.stackexchange.com/questions/355481/…

@tchrist Ah! Where do I usually find them?

@Færd 'Sparkling' in general parlance rather than 'sparkly'. You migth use sparkly if you were commenting on a particularly clear and twinkly fizzy wine, but not as a general term.

You usually find them here but you may have to select the little red link at the bottom to show deleted recent questions.

@tchrist It said "no deleted recent questions." Thank you!

One was from March 7th, but the one from October 28th is likely too old to show up there. The two links I gave you should still work, however.

You also have six deleted answers, but those you'd likely need links to look at.

1:58 PM

@Arjun It's not strictly an adjective or a verb: It's a participle, which has the qualities of both, to smile does mean to curl up your lips in a way that expresses joy but sometimes we describe a person as performing the act of smiling, and that descriptor falls under the definition of an adjective, which is a word that is used to describe nouns. The overlap described has been used by grammarians and they use the word participle to describe words that act a verb and an adjective or noun.

@Cerberus Oh my. I think I have a Latin question. What happens to the syllable count when you have the “same” vowel twice in a row, as in radius > radiī? And what happens if these are at the end of one word and the beginning of the next like illa aquila? Are the long vowels in the ablative like aquilā the result of an older fusion? Shall I ask on Latin Language?

@tchrist I think you have three different questions, and your questions would be a treasure for the people on Latin!

Okay, thanks.

As to syllable count, only digraphs form a single syllable, and there are no digraphs consisting of two of the same vowel letters in Latin.

So I had always believed, but I don't understand how this works in poetic metrics.

2:02 PM

But there is synizesis, which occasionally contracts two vowels into one, both in Greek and in Latin. It depends on the context, less on the word.

None of Latin's daughters use a glottal stop between adjacent vowels: they always fuse.

Exactly.

I'm not sure whether it would be a glottal stop.

More like a glide, as in English.

Although I'm not sure about what it would sound like in e.g. ee.

I've always counted the syllables of radiī as short-short-long.

That is correct.

@Cerberus I went looking for that exact case in the declensions and conjugations.

2:03 PM

But in poetry strange things might happen.

As to word boundaries, then you get elision in poetry.

Ah that's what I was hoping.

In prose, I'm actually not sure what that would have sounded like, illa aquila.

I feel like I was taught this about poetry once long ago.

Elision can be forward or backward depending on the words.

Latin would love to receive a couple of questions like these from you!

I'm imagining that illa actio or magna actio might well fuse: look at what happens in French l’action.

2:06 PM

As to the long vowels in the ablative, my guess would be compensatory lengthening because there was often a -d in the older ablative forms, but I'm not sure.

@tchrist In fact, -Vm V- even leads to elision.

Probably because -Vm was some sort of nasal sound.

Oh I hadn't realized that there had been one there. That accords with what I was explaining to Rob the other day about the -d disappearing in Italian words like oscurità compared with Spanish oscuridad but how the Andalusians also pronounce it without the final -d: oscuridá and that the missing letter explains the stress.

I suppose Mediterraneans really don't like final occlusives.

Greek is even worse.

@Cerberus That's something you can see still in modern Romance if you have an eye for it. Portuguese -am and -ão have identical pronunciations: there is no actual /m/ there. The first is how they spell it unstressed and the second stressed.

Only a select few undeclensible words, like prepositions, have final occlusives.

@Cerberus Yes, I was explaining that too.

2:10 PM

@tchrist Yes, exactly.

Although I have to say não does sort of sound like nãong.

Terminal nasals are prone to velarization.

My Brazilian friend finds my pronunciation somewhat better when I imagine it to be nãong in my heads.

latin.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/synizesis

Questions about synizesis.

So PT pão and ES pan sound the same, and this often feels like a final /ᵑ/ there.

But in Spanish you get French-like elision there where the /n/ reappears to link to a following word that starts with a vowel.

@Cerberus Oh maybe some of this is answered there already.

Monoglot Spaniards always pronounced my name Tom in a way that sounded much more like Dong to an English speaker.

@tchrist Exactly!

@tchrist Really, that's interesting, because there is a similarity with the Latin.

@tchrist Or maybe not!

By the way, rather basic questions are also fine.

We try to be liberal and welcoming.

If I were posting on Linguistics, I would feel the need to put a good bit of research into the question.

Are any of the Latin defective verbs’ defects ever given phonologic explanations?

The new meta question is not an unreasonable one.

Drat, time for $job.

2:35 PM

What is a building's license plate called?

Number plate?

You mean its street number?

Ah, yes, that. Isn't it normally written on a plate or plaque on the wall?

Ours are. Whence 'plate' came to my mind.

House numbering

House numbering is the system of giving a unique number to each building in a street or area, with the intention of making it easier to locate a particular building. The house number is often part of a postal address. The term describes the number of any building (residential or not) with a mailbox, or even a vacant lot. House numbering schemes vary by location, and in many cases even within cities. In some areas of the world, including many remote areas, houses are named but are not assigned numbers. == History == A house numbering scheme was present in Pont Notre-Dame in Paris in 1512. However...

@RegDwigнt: Russian ingenuity:

user image

Nice hack, IMO.

@Spagirl Heh, OK, that gave me some idea about your hometown.

@Spagirl And thanks for catching that.

2:52 PM

@tchrist I don't think you need to put in much research.

Just explain the question properly.

And don't make it super broad.

But I'm sure any question you could conceivably ask would be perfectly fine on Latin.

@Robusto That's interesting, so how do you know how to shift the panels on which month?

And I see a few double numbers.

Hello

3:09 PM

@Cerberus I've always doubted the existence of the glottal stop in (std) english (at least word initial)

@Mitch glottal stop?

3:32 PM

@Robusto yes, but all the dates are always 13 days behind. Useless piece of crap.

@Mitch Really? Can't you 'ear it?

@RegDwigнt Julie! Is that you?

4:02 PM

@RegDwigнt Well, it's Russian ...

@Cerberus can I ear it? It's more of a y. or not even that. Like tchrist said for Romance

@Cerberus Easy. Last day of current month becomes the day before the first day of next month.

@Cerberus I totally hear it (but don't do it) for intermedial 't' (kids these days say for 'button' /bu?n/

@Robusto I have one of those. well, not that brand

@Spagirl it's what I use, and feels natural to me, and I have no doubt people will understand, but I always wonder if that's the term that other people tend to use.

@Cerberus vacuum?

three syllables?

@Mitch Would suck to bump it with a broom or something.

@Robusto It seems clever idea, but there are a few impractical things about it. It seems to me like you would have to reference another calendar to be sure how many days are in the month, and if you forget which month it is, it surely won't remind you of that either. That's to say nothing of the fact that you can't actually mark down which of the dates are important for you to remember, so this woodworker's children are probably going to have some missed birthdays at the very least.

4:16 PM

@Tonepoet Well, it's a DIY calendar. One supposes the actual month would not be hard to remember, nor the number of days in it.

@Robusto How does the mnemonic go again? Thirty days hath september, april, june and november...

@Robusto I don't actually use it. It's decorative. Too much pressure to have to update every month. I know what day of the week it is always. If I need to know the date (which is almost always), I look at my phone.

@Tonepoet "... all the rest have thirty-one, except in leap year, that's the time, when February's days are 29." Or something like that.

@Mitch Well, yeah. I have a widget on my PC as well, but for the most part I only use that to do a quick visual of how many weeks till some date, etc.

@Robusto That's not quite right since it misses the usual case for February but it's close enough I suppose.

@Tonepoet As I said, "or something like that."

4:21 PM

@Robusto I'm just affirming that's the case that applies. =)

@Tonepoet So, really, you didn't need the mingle mnemonic after all ...

And you thought Japanese fashion was weird ....

@Robusto If it was only February, that would be true, but it's just such an exceptional case that it's hard to forget.

@Robusto Also, keeping up with the news with a dress that never grows old.

Well, until it becomes yesterday's news of course.

But ... the melonhead!

Can't wait to play Cuphead!.

@Robusto Hmm, that is somewhat strange but I hadn't noticed until you mentioned it. I blame Touhou Project enthusiasts for that.

@Tonepoet Well, it's not anime. The style is a pastiche of early '30s cartoons.

4:36 PM

@Robusto Did they wear watermelons in 1930s animation?

Oh, I thought you were referring to my other comment.

Never mind ...

As for cuphead, yeah, that looks like quite a good bit of fun and I've also been interested in it. I forgot about it for the longest time, but I vaguely recollect it being announced as one of the Xbox Play Anywhere games.

I've been wanting video games to have the appearance of hand drawn animation for quite a while now, and it seems like we've finally reached that point.

It's also the graphic characteristics of the '30s animations that is so cool.

4:58 PM

Guys, hello, I can never figure this out, in terms of UI, when a list is 'collapsed' it means it's expanded or shrunk?

@caub It would be shrunken.

shrunk* sorry

Ah ok

@caub Yup, shrunken.

oh, learned another irregular verb, ok

Cf. the CSS style rule for tables, border-collapse: collapse.

And collapse is a regular verb. ^_^

2 hours later…

user288256

6:57 PM

What's the shortest duration I can use "a while back" for? For example, if someone got injured three days ago can I say "How is your injury from a while back?"

How does one recommend that comments, like those at english.stackexchange.com/questions/394796/… be moved to chat?

@Ghalib - there's no real limit. I was in the Army a while back (20 years ago).

Oops, 30 years ago.

@Ghalib 3 days ago is too soon for 'a while back'. 3 days ago is 'just the other day', from two days to vaguely in the past couple weeks/months.

@SBM yes. glottal stop

user288256

I see, thanks @Mitch and @Davo

7:18 PM

@Davo sometimes I see a link right after the last of a string of comments (mine being the last) that says something like 'Long comment threads are often not productive. Please consider taking this to chat' (which is a link that presumably moves the entire chat thread to a room of ones own). But you have to be lucky enough to get that link and I don't think it comes every time.

or you can flag a comment (probably one of your own making, but I'm sure it works for any of them). That will send a message of your writing to a mod who may do the moving to chat for you.

Thanks.

8:10 PM

How would you call the action to move something (a shape, a point, ...) to the origin (0, 0), I mean is there a shorter word/term for it? like "center" is for moving something at the middle is a space

'unoffset' :), well it's not important

8:26 PM

@tchrist Re Words derived from various languages, the online OED allows search for text in entries. Does your offline copy have -all- the OED text (etymologies, pronunciations, citations, etc)?

@Mitch yes

@caub 'move to origin' or 'center on origin' isn't short enough?

@tchrist I was asking for them, but now asking for myself, how did you get that 'full OED text'?

I don't recall, senator.

haha

wait...does that mean you're covering up a constitutional crime?

I mean I'm sure nobody was murdered.

I think

maybe

You're not protesting vehemently, so I suspect you're not covering up much of anything.

8:53 PM

@Mitch Does this mean I have to put pants on now?

1 hour later…

10:22 PM

yes good enough, thanks

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