English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Robusto

12:22 AM

@RegDwigнt I just listened really briefly on my phone, but I have family here since we're celebrating my Japanese mother-in-law's 100th birthday today, so I don't have access to my computer, but i did hear the first words are utsukushiku kikoeru, which means something like "listen beautifully" or "beautiful listening" but I would have to listen closely tio the widely spaced syllables (

it's a song, which causes problems) to figure out the word boundaries, and that won't happen till my kids go home tomorrow.

Cerberus

@Robusto Impressive!

Is she well?

SmokeDetector

3:23 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Blacklisted website in body (99): Excluded vs Exclusive by So rich I Imbricate the money on english.SE

user8718165

9:25 AM

Hello @RegDwigнt @Cerberus @Mitch could you please have a look at my question?

0

Q: Usage of "as" for comparison

Can we use "as" in this manner? It is very hot here in the summers. However it isn't as hot in the countryside. or It is very hot here in the summers. However in the countryside, it isn't as hot. I've searched the web but only found sources using as...as for comparison. I think my sentences j...

user8718165

10:08 AM

Please share your opinions with me on this question. It will be very useful for me :-)

M.A.R.

@user8718165 If you simply say "It isn't as hot in the countryside." without any context, it is implied that you're comparing the heat of the countryside to something else.

I'm not sure what else you're looking for in an answer

user8718165

@M.A.R. Thanks for your interest. Actually I wanted to know if as hot could be used in a standalone manner without using another as in the sentence

M.A.R.

If you just drop in somewhere and say "It isn't as hot in the countryside", it is implied that you're comparing it to the current location you're in, which is not the countryside

@user8718165 I guess it's just ellipsis. "It isn't as hot in the countryside [as it is hot in here]."

user8718165

10:28 AM

okay, thanks :-)
I was worried because I didn't have anybody to consult with and I was always taught **as** has to be followed by **as**. What added to my worries was that there weren't any reputable source on the web to support my views.

M.A.R.

@user8718165 It should add to your skepticism, not worries

2

user8718165

@M.A.R. I like that kind of teaching :-) Could you please tell me why is comparison with just a single as not widely used? Is it just a matter of choice? I doubt I've ever seen it in some book

M.A.R.

@user8718165 It's common enough, but I guess that you expect it to be more common and it's not is it's not usually easy to figure out what is being implied

And I'm no teacher, haha. I'm a nonnative speaker myself, and an ESL.

user8718165

@M.A.R. Well...It was a nice conversation. I agree with you. Thanks for making me informed :-)

@M.A.R. Same goes for me! I'm a learner too ;-)

Mitch

2:00 PM

@M.A.R. I worry about your skepticism

M.A.R.

4:30 PM

@Mitch I am skeptical of your worries

Cerberus

I'm worried about your scepticism.

M.A.R.

@Cerberus I'm skeptical of your scepticism

Cerberus

I'm of you.

M.A.R.

-3

Q: What could it mean if the night of my maternal grandmothers wake, paranormal events occurred?

So about 7 or 8 months ago my grandmother, who i was very close to, passed away. The night of her wake my little sister and I went home alone at about 10 pm. We stayed at our house alone, with the dog. I specifically remember walking through the kitchen and closing our basement door to keep m...

discussion

There. Nothing tops that. Not anything you'll find on ELU, Reg.

You can retract comment flags now, mortals.

36

A: Let us finally retract flags on comments

Happy to announce that ability to retract a comment flag is now live network-wide. If you can flag a comment, then you can retract that flag. It works in a similar way to post flag retractions - click on the activated flag, and confirm in the resulting modal that you would like to retract the fl...

marcellothearcane

Where does this habit of putting spaces in front of punctuation come from? Is it valid in some languages?

@RegDwigнt you sound like humpty dumpty (specifically from Through The Looking Glass)

Cerberus

4:55 PM

@marcellothearcane Yes, I believe it is common in some languages like French.

And I think it was also used earlier in English.

M.A.R.

@Cerberus I doubt it's the reason though

@marcellothearcane In most Asian countries, like mine, people simply haven't paid attention to how they should punctuate things.

marcellothearcane

So does it not matter in Asian countries?

Cerberus

5:28 PM

@marcellothearcane Were you thinking of a specific text?

Mitch

5:43 PM

@M.A.R. I knew you would say that

But I also don't doubt it.

M.A.R.

6:10 PM

@marcellothearcane Well, lemme put it this way: Before learning English, I had no idea I should pay attention to where I put the space. There was some sort of inner drive for consistency, but I didn't even know where to look.

And English learner books teach you what "discombobulate" means but they don't tell you where the space should go.

For NNS that try to be neater, their choice of French punctuation would only be because they don't know where to put the space and they don't know where to look.

So. What does "discombobulate" mean.

Mitch

6:32 PM

@M.A.R. They do? Discombobulate is a classic 'not-a-word-but-people-use-anyway'.

Google says confused and disconcerted

'disconcerted is one of those words which I don't understand, nd adds nothing to that definitions. Confused is enough.

Rambunctious though is a word I've never seen in print

Except, goddamit, it is

M.A.R.

@Mitch When I hear 'disconcerted' I can't help but picture a broken violin

Tanner Swett

english.stackexchange.com/questions/96069/… - This question makes me think about how early you can put the word "either" in a sentence.

"You have to go over to the closet and get either a rag or a towel." - Sounds good.

"You have to go over to the closet and either get a rag or a towel." - Doesn't sound "strictly correct," but not too bad.

"Either you have to go over to the closet and get a rag or a towel." - Whoo boy.

M.A.R.

Either

.

. .

. . .

. . . .

you have to go over to the closet and get a rag or a towel.

Tanner Swett

6:47 PM

"You have to go over to either the closet and get a rag or a towel." - This one's even worse. :D

M.A.R.

You have to go either over to the closet and get a rag or a towel.

Tanner Swett

"You have to go over to the closet either and get a rag or a towel." - I think this is the worst position, out of all the positions that are earlier than the original position.

Or perhaps that would be "... to the either closet and get ..."

Conversely, how *late* can you put "either"?

"Either that's the hissing of air leaking out, or there are snakes in here."
"That's either the hissing of air leaking out, or there are snakes in here."
"That's the hissing of air either leaking out, or there are snakes in here."

Good, not-too-bad, awful.

Xanne

@TannerSwett The criterion is the parallelism of the sentence structure. Making sure it's parallel also makes it sound good.

Tanner Swett

Yup. I always try to keep it parallel.

Mitch

7:08 PM

@M.A.R. Old musicians never die, they just decompose.

Absolutely all of those work for me (though sounding a little inarticulate) except for:
You have to go either over to the either closet and get a rag or a towel.
You have to go either over to the closet and get a either rag or a towel.
You have to go either over to the closet and get a rag either or a towel.

and maybe some others

@M.A.R. Why do they call a viola in German 'ein Bratsche'?

Because that's the sound it makes when you sit on it.

haha multilingual music nerd joke

M.A.R.

Don't let anyone ever put your mind on a leash

Mitch

I know. It would choke.

kthkqxth

M.A.R.

Or just . . . OMG who put it on a leash

Mitch

like a broken popcorn kernel

Xanne

Your have to go either to the closet or to the garage.

M.A.R.

7:14 PM

I knew it. Trump.

Mitch

@Xanne I'm really having a hard time not taking this as a suggestion.

Am I looking for that hockey stick from eighth grade?

M.A.R.

@Mitch Get under either the attic or the balcony in case of an alien invasion

Mitch

@M.A.R. I don't think either is going to save you from death rays.

Xanne

Those aliens will get you every time.

Mitch

Aliens

They've come so far just to look me under the stairs?

M.A.R.

7:16 PM

With Bradley Cooper as Ripley

Mitch

Maybe I am more important than I thought

M.A.R.

Have you heard that rumor(?)?

Mitch

To Serve Man

M.A.R.

@Mitch Maybe you're the last bull that's not red but energetic

Xanne

I just got flagged for quoting Justice Antonin Scalia on the Second Amendment. The flagger was sufficiently upset that he/she left a misspelled comment. Must be the high blood pressure.

M.A.R.

7:17 PM

@Mitch Who's Man?

Mitch

It's a cookbook for the best breakfast buffet people have ever seen.

@M.A.R. You know, it's a boys club.

@Xanne flagged where? On SE?

M.A.R.

@Xanne Meh, I had a "f***ing" flagged a couple of days ago

Xanne

@Mitch Yes, EL&U.SE

Mitch

Aug 1 at 14:32, by Mitch

Jul 14 at 18:02, by Mitch

Dec 4 '17 at 21:05, by Mitch

Sep 2 '16 at 15:26, by Mitch

Aug 1 at 19:27, by Mitch

Jun 27 at 21:28, by Mitch

Dec 17 '15 at 15:36, by Mitch

people are idiots

M.A.R.

People are just NOT happy these days.

Or that

Xanne

7:20 PM

I wonder if flagging has increased--faster than q's and a's, e.g. Grumpier people.

Mitch

@M.A.R. On the one hand, profanity is easy to put on a deny list (easy to say 'This is always bad', but lots of nicely put thoughts are awful.

eg 'pineapple and ham on pizza'

sorry, went back and quoted it

M.A.R.

OMG I'm totally flagging that.

Even if you put it in quotes.

@Xanne Nah

Mitch

nja nja nja, it's quoted so it's a black box and in a court of law we're all just paying lawyers

Tanner Swett

Say, I have a friend who's a linguist. Sometimes he likes constructing sentences that look like they're example sentences in linguistics papers.

Xanne

I like pizza Hawaiian.

Mitch

7:22 PM

@Xanne In the US the news is constantly... just there to mess with you. THere's always death and misery, but nowadays it seems like there's also something to be incensed about. Constantly.

Tanner Swett

I once told him about two songs from the How to Train Your Dragon score that I liked, "Test Drive" and "Forbidden Friendship."

A few days later, he sent me a message asking: "Hey, what was that song that you said that you liked 'Test Drive' and?"

Mitch

@TannerSwett linguanerd

M.A.R.

@TannerSwett Has he embedded four levels of relative clauses within each other?

Mitch

@TannerSwett sigh... I remember my first linguistics class

Tanner Swett

Let's see, the offending relative clause is "that you said that you liked 'Test Drive' and"... that's the only relative clause in there, isn't it?

Anyway, it was both a sincere question, and a demonstration that you can't front the relative referent out of a conjunction, or whatever.

Mitch

7:24 PM

You start pronouncing things the way the original speakers pronounce it which means absolutely nobody (even the original speakers but mostly your friends) understands.

Also multiple levels of nesting

M.A.R.

@TannerSwett I forgot how to label things, but his sentence is probably a run-on sentence

Mitch

@TannerSwett Yeah he's just trying stuff out to see if it actually works or not. Eventually he'll get a job teaching English in Tibet.

M.A.R.

@TannerSwett What I meant is more like "The fish the cat the dog chased ate was rotten."

But add another level.

Where is Jerry?

Tanner Swett

Oh yeah.

Well, here's a shorter sentence that demonstrates the same problem.

"What did you eat rice and?"

(= "You ate rice and what?")

M.A.R.

@Mitch To E.T.

Mitch

7:28 PM

@M.A.R. Ad Astra Per Aspera

which is really how ET flew on that bicycle.

@Xanne I can't respond to that.

It's like you've ruined all three.

Unlike liver and onions and bacon. One of these does not belong and removing it solves all the problems.

M.A.R.

@Mitch "and"

RegDwigнt

@marcellothearcane of course I do. I learned literally everything from those two books.

2

Mitch

@M.A.R. you monster

I thought the sequel wasn't as good.

I mean an actual chess novel where it's the pawn that just moves forward one step every turn until it gets queened? What kind of stupid boring game is that.

How about one where the king is hemmed in by the rook knight and queen, but in two moves has captured the queen and all the remaining pawns have been queened.

It's the greatest story of all time.

The bible.

Checkmate, atheists.

Literally.

Tanner Swett

7:48 PM

I don't remember that part of the Bible.

Mitch

Acts 3:16

Xanne

Neither do I. I remember the Song of Solomon: "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for thy love is better than wine." Let Huddleston et.al. parse that.

Mitch

That sounds like Rumi

Or what I imagine Rumi would sound like if I ever read him.

Xanne

My favorite read in linguistics (besides Lawler) is Birner and Ward:[T]here is a restricted class of uses of N[oun]P[hrases] containing the definite article that do not require uniqueness to guarantee felicity...In each of the above cases, the definite NP - the hospital, the bank, and the grocery store, respectively - refers to some non-unique and not necessarily familiar entity, yet the use of the definite is felicitous.

I think felicity is a splendid criterion. Birner is, not so incidentally, one of the co-authors of Huddleston et.al. CGEL.

Mitch

If you say 'felicitous' enough times it sorta sounds funny.

Also, I thought CGEL was HUddleston and Pullum, full stop. plus maybe a period.

Xanne

8:20 PM

If you look at the chapter titles CGEL, you find a lot of co-authors, including Beth Birner.

They were quite swift in relegating co-authors to secondary status. Even on the copyright page.

Thing-um-a-jig

Hey, anyone know of a word like "guesthouse" but instead of guests living in it, employees live there? Like servants, groundskeepers, etc. working at "main house"

marcellothearcane

9:22 PM

@Mitch do you play any instruments?

@RegDwigнt how much can you quote? 😛

Robusto

9:39 PM

@RegDwigнt OK, I looked at this a little more closely. I'm still not hearing words in some of her non-connected syllables. So the starting phrase is 美しく聞こえるのは (utsukushiku kikoeru no wa) and it's different from my first glance yesterday,

closer to "I can listen beautifully" because -ku makes utsukushii an adverbial and kikoeru is "listen/hear" plus the -eru ending, which turns an ordinary verb into an expression of ability. And the no wa is one way to express reason (because)

After that, though, she pops out syllables more or less one at a time—in time to the song, not to a standard speaking diction. And her western accent doesn't help. I'm going to assume she's saying 愛ちっていくから which I'm going to say is "because I love (you/it)" ...

Note that her last syllable definitely sounds like la to me, which phoneme is not available in Japanese (I transliterated it as ra so that it would make some sense ... kara is "from" and can be used to mean because as well)

Hope that helps. I never feel 100% when trying to interpret singing ... :\

Mitch

@marcellothearcane kazoo, triangle, and I'm learning castanets.

Robusto

@Cerberus Well enough for being 100. A bit wandered and frail, but she can still laugh, which I guess is half the battle.

Mitch

@Thing-um-a-jig Servants' hall? Staff lodgings? Sounds either a bit upstairs downstairs or worse Django Unchained. I can't think of the obvious word (if there is one)

Cerberus

9:56 PM

@Robusto Wandered?

Robusto

10:24 PM

@Cerberus Her mind has wandered a bit.

Cerberus

Ah.

Is that a common expression?

Thing-um-a-jig

10:52 PM

thanks @Mitch, that got me looking in the right direction... first definition for "lodge" from Oxford is "a small house at the gates of a park or in the grounds of a large house, occupied by a gatekeeper, gardener, or other employee" -- not what I'd usually think of a "lodge" as, but it works

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…