English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2012-05-09 (page 6 of 6)

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RegDwight ΒВBẞ8

10:04 PM

Actually, "there's no need to take a noun derived from a verb and then derive yet another verb from that noun" is flat out wrong. That stuff happens, and for solid linguistic reasons. (For starters, have a look at the LanguageLog post on "flied" vs. "flew".) Secondly, and most importantly, "please please please don't" and "I hate it" are not valid reasons for something not to be considered a word. I am tempted to downvote your answer for that. — RegDwight ΒВBẞ8 16 secs ago

@KitFox Yes.

RegDwight ΒВBẞ8

@Robusto I searched for a quote but gave up.

Figured you'd be faster.

Mein Knie ist kaputt.

RegDwight ΒВBẞ8

Autsch.

*waves at kit

/flies out

10:07 PM

@RegDwightΒВBẞ8 Damn, all these years I've been spelling that wrong? And I've like read it a zillion times, too. My brain is broken.

Speling is overated.

i no rite

RegDwight ΒВBẞ8

Apr 19 at 13:55, by Robusto

user image

Anyway, too much basketball and running on pavement. Cartilage shot, yadda yadda, they're gonna rip it out and make me a cyborg.

What a beautiful woman.

RegDwight ΒВBẞ8

10:10 PM

@Robusto Doppel-autsch.

@Cerberus She's pretty good at Speling.

RegDwight ΒВBẞ8

@Cerberus you misspelled "hideous man".

Hehe.

Who is they?

RegDwight ΒВBẞ8

Asimov, Inc.

(I'm assuming noöne will object to singular they.)

RegDwight ΒВBẞ8

10:11 PM

Feb 22 at 20:40, by RegDwight Ѭſ道

I, Robusto.

I predicted that.

So I'm gonna end my perfect attendance record in ELU after Monday. Not sure when I'll be back again, but if you don't hear from me after a couple of weeks then something went off the rails.

@Robusto OK, I'm glad it's not something dangerous.

@Cerberus Again with the litotes?

We will pray for you, Vitaly first.

RegDwight ΒВBẞ8

@Robusto you shouldn't have rails in your hospitals. Hovercrafts are way safer.

10:12 PM

@Robusto Wha?

@Cerberus I thought doggies were quick. Keep up!

@RegDwightΒВBẞ8 But how about bus stops in nursing homes?

RegDwight ΒВBẞ8

@Cerberus if a bus stops in a nursing home, something's gone wrong.

@Robusto tries to run along train rails

@RegDwightΒВBẞ8 Hospital beds have Rails. And they only let you program in Ruby.

10:13 PM

@RegDwightΒВBẞ8 Who's talking about buses?

Just a stop will do.

RegDwight ΒВBẞ8

@Robusto good thing you freshened up your knowledges in VB, then.

Who abuses buses?

You know what I'm talking about, si?

RegDwight ΒВBẞ8

@Cerberus you are talking?

You didn't notice?

RegDwight ΒВBẞ8

10:14 PM

I what?

I, Robusto.

RegDwight ΒВBẞ8

Ah!

See, he even admits it now.

frowns

Translation for @Cerb: Ego Robusto sum.

RegDwight ΒВBẞ8

That's all I wanted anyway. Copypasting my own shit was getting tiring. Now I can copypaste his own shit.

10:15 PM

*Robustus

RegDwight ΒВBẞ8

Coito ergo Robusto summa cum laude.

Sorry, I can'thelp it.

@Cerberus Hey, give me a little latitude with my own name, willya?

I'm sorry, but prescriptivism knows no boundaries.

RegDwight ΒВBẞ8

I prescribe that it do.

10:16 PM

Like Linnaeus.

@Cerberus You misspelled proscriptivism.

Who was called "von Linne" in Swedish/German, I believe.

RegDwight ΒВBẞ8

All his scriptivisms are pro.

Thanks.

No, just the tips.

Damn, I shouldna got started here. Me missus is to house and I must today evening supper eat.

10:17 PM

This Nexus Beacon grind is going to take forever…

Latahhhhhhhh.

CU.

RegDwight ΒВBẞ8

Have funneh.

0

Q: Musical term: 'quasihemidemisemiquaver'

Is 'quasihemidemisemiquaver' a word? (It describes a note that is equal to 128th of a semibreve.)

@Robusto Bye! Take care.

I was wrong about Linnaeus, by the way: he made up his own surname as Linnaeus, then switched to von Linné as he was ennobled.

RegDwight ΒВBẞ8

Yeah. Kind of like Lewis Carroll. This guy is really pushing the envelope.

10:22 PM

Odd.

What does he want?

RegDwight ΒВBẞ8

The Attila Commemoration Medal?

On his very first day, no less.

The original Attila took his time.

Heh.

Could he want the reps? The attention?

He seems to think it is a game of sorts.

RegDwight ΒВBẞ8

I don't know. We'll see.

Could be a genuine effort at asking some original questions.

Everyone tries to be witty on their first trip.

Yeah.

He seems benign.

If he goes one despite closures, that will be a sign.

@RegDwightΒВBẞ8 The Wikipedia article gives no citation for the word.

RegDwight ΒВBẞ8

10:31 PM

@MetaEd it's a wiki. You can edit it. Linking to the ELU question.

user image

Aww.

Sniff, sniff.

@RegDwightΒВBẞ8 I'm a Wikipedia editor. If I were to edit that entry I would flag it "citation needed". I am curious whether the word appears in any dictionaries. There are no hits on Google Ngram Viewer, and web hits appear to be hearsay.

But I like your idea better.

RegDwight ΒВBẞ8

Well I was joking in case you can't tell.

You want me to reopen it? I am kind of skeptical with this particular OP.

If there were a good answer, I'd say yes. But I think there's virtually nothing to craft a good answer from.

The word doesn't even show up in music books, for crissake.

So the question is equivalent to is "dekvisblvi" a word.

@RegDwightΒВBẞ8 So I gave in and edited the Wikipedia article.

RegDwight ΒВBẞ8

10:47 PM

0

Q: Why do British pronunce their names in ways that bear almost no resemblance to their spelling?

Often the British pronunce their names in ways that bear almost no resemblance to their spelling: Zuill is yull, Menzies is mingiss. I could go on and on. Viscount Althorp pronunce his name awltrop, while the people of Althorp say all-thorp. Why?

Someone's jumping the shark.

Note the pronunce. From someone who breaks no sweat spelling quasihemidemisemiquaver.

@MetaEd haha you do have to explain to me why you meticulously write down all your contributions on your user page.

You are aware you have a very personal, auto-generated contributions page?

11:13 PM

@Robusto If it's any consolation, I think cyborgs are supersexy.

@Cerberus Like grammar girl. Who implies that people use this form because they are 'confused'. They are not confused or wrong, they are just speaking naturally and invalidating that particular notional grammar rule.

@MetaEd Really? I've heard it before.

But I can't remember if it was a joke or not.

RegDwight ΒВBẞ8

Heard, huh.

You know some quasisuperduperbooperpeople.

Anywayae's, I'm calling it a day.

@z7sgѪ Is anyone every "confused" or wrong?

RegDwight ΒВBẞ8

Night all, have fun.

11:18 PM

Bai!

@RegDwightΒВBẞ8 blows kisses

@Cerberus I expect so

@RegDwightΒВBẞ8 The contributions page is long and detailed: lists every edit by the clock. My user page is short and simple: lists accomplishments. Trees ... forest you might say.

@z7sgѪ Then when are people "confused", and when aren't they?

@Cerberus What? This grammatical form appears in Shakespeare and is still in everyday usage. Now it's wrong because Grammar Girl says so?

11:29 PM

@KitFox My favorite technical terms along the lines of quasihemidemisemiquaver are snap, crackle, and pop: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jounce

@z7sgѪ Are you attributing some position to me? I was trying to get to a more precise definition of the distinction you referred to.

@Cerberus I am attributing your comments to you. That it isn't modern, that it's funny language used only by politicians.

I didn't say that.

@MetaEd I like strange and charmed myself.

@KitFox yes!

11:33 PM

I meant that a politician's choice of words should not carry much weight as stylistic advice.

Because someone (I don't remember who: you?) appeared to be adducing a politician's use of the word as a recommendation of sorts.

But perhaps it was not intended like that.

I should've stuck with physics.

sighs

pokes codez

It may be indicative of the status of this style of speech but none of that can be explored if it is dismissed as incorrect grammar.

hits codes with shoe

Hey!

tries to seduce codes

11:36 PM

A shoe makes a great debugger.

We gets us some big bugs in Texas.

@z7sgѪ I don't know, if this is about some fundamental point, "grammar" needs definition. Because many people use it with different meanings.

Boring as it sounds.

@MetaEd Hmm so you shoo off buggers in Texas.

I certainly didn't say anything about "grammar".

shudders at the thought of Texas

What's new @MetaEd? How's your little folks?

Folk? I can't remember how many you have.

Can't folk be plural?

@Cerberus Sho do.

Heh.

I see.

11:40 PM

@Cerberus Why would you think it couldn't?

@KitFox I have one, and that one is a handful just on its own!

@KitFox I suggested that it could.

@Cerberus And I had used it that way.

@MetaEd What shape or form is it?

@KitFox By "Folk?" you didn't mean one object?

@MetaEd As I recall, you were just broaching the year mark.

11:41 PM

@Cerberus It doesn't matter about the definition of grammar. Whatever the justification, here something has been deemed incorrect. I can't reconcile that with stylistic advice about which form should be preferred over the other.

@Cerberus Human female

@KitFox This one's 14

@Cerberus Yes, I did. Little folks. Or folk. Plural or singular.

@MetaEd Huh. Memory's a bit rusty.

Her mom has adult kids and we are hinting broadly at grandchildren.

Hang on, I'll fix it.

takes memory out back and shoots it

Actually we are not hinting broadly at grandchildren so much as hitting boardly over the head about grandchildren.

11:43 PM

@z7sgѪ I don't see "incorrect" and "stylistically inadvisable" as qualitatively different things, though one is a bit stronger than the other. You could try and find my discussion about this with Kosmonaut, in which we came to agreement, though it was a bit lengthy.

Oh! Right. It's Ed Guinness who has the infant.

@KitFox Autch.

Wrong Ed. Sorry.

:-)

@MetaEd Ah, that may not be the easiest age...

11:44 PM

It's not bad actually. She's a nerd.

All right, time for me to make like a baby.

@KitFox I'm not trying to be obnoxious or anything, I seriously wondered whether you meant the change from "folks" to "Folk?" as in "or do you have only one child?", or was it just a random exploration of the word "folk"?

@MetaEd Good luck making babby!

@Cerberus This is not even stylistically inadvisable. It's just a matter of register. You can disagree about that but I have seen no evidence given against it.

How is that different to you?

@Cerberus I mean something along the lines of "kids" or "kid." Nothing so deep as all that.

Ok, noted.

11:53 PM

BTW, are you in the States right now?

I could swear I drove past you today.

Meee?

Because I'd never say it's wrong. Just that if a friend spoke to me in that way I'd consider it a bit odd.

@Cerberus Yes, you.

I thought I saw a pretty vixen drive by...but, alas, no.

What were you wearing today?

11:55 PM

@z7sgѪ I don't see any huge, clear difference between all these things, "wrong", "inadvisable", "incorrect", "ungrammatical", "unacceptable", "nonstandard"...

@KitFox Nothing, of course.

Hurm.

Hehe.

@Cerberus Well it's none of those, it's social register.

A dark-grey pullover, camel trousers.

Are you sure it wasn't a red pullover?

11:56 PM

@z7sgѪ That too overlaps with all those things for me.

@KitFox Hmm...perhaps I didn't look at the colour long enough.

It really looked like you.

@Cerberus Seriously?

I should have stopped him and taken his picture.

@z7sgѪ There are just various reason for various people why they feel like or dislike towards certain linguistic utterances.

You don't speak to everyone in the same way do you?

11:58 PM

Very hard to separate and/or categorize those things.

It's not so hard

@z7sgѪ Well, I sort of do. I try to avoid terms that children probably don't know?

@KitFox You should have!

When was the last time you saw a picture of me anyway? And did you see more than that one picture (my FB picture) that I always post?

Quite clearly if you use a certain form with more socially distant people than those close to you and I call this a social register, just a very basic thing, you are saying you can't agree on those terms and make a distinction between that and me saying something is incorrect?

@Cerberus You posted one or two different ones.

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