English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

tchrist

00:00

> This kind of technical education required more than a passing acquaintance with addition and subtraction. —Shiva Naipaul • Black and White • 1980.

Robusto

Daily Octordle #636
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Score: 63

tchrist

And yet as an adverb it has become an intensifier like very, and cannot apply to verbs.

> a. a1382– In a surpassing degree; surpassingly, pre-eminently; exceedingly. Chiefly (in later use only) with adjectives or adverbs.

Robusto

@tchrist I find that passing strange.

tchrist

> 1999 It was passing strange to see the Dukes..as they were styled for the day. — Herald (Glasgow) 2 July 19/1

Robusto

Othello:
My story being done,
She gave me for my pains a world of sighs;
She swore, in faith 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange;
'Twas pitiful. 'twas wondrous pitiful,
She wish'd she had not heard it, yet she wish'd
That heaven had made her such a man,

tchrist

00:03

Yes, that's the famous one.

>
I'll write it straight;
The matter's in my head and in my heart;
I will be bitter with him and passing short.
Go with me, Silvius. Exeunt

As You Like It

> Nay, these are almost thoroughly persuaded;
For though abundantly they lack discretion,
Yet are they passing cowardly. But, I beseech you,
What says the other troop?

> Why,
'One fair daughter, and no more,
The which he loved passing well.'

Robusto

I thought there was an example in The Tempest, which I had cause to know very well, but now I can't think on't.

tchrist

> On a day—alack the day!—
Love, whose month is ever May,
Spied a blossom passing fair
Playing in the wanton air:
Through the velvet leaves the wind,
All unseen, can passage find;
That the lover, sick to death,
Wish himself the heaven's breath.

I don't think so.

He used passing 35 times in his plays.

For Oberon is passing fell and wrath.

> The king doth keep his revels here to-night:
Take heed the queen come not within his sight;
For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,
Because that she as her attendant hath
A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king;
She never had so sweet a changeling;
And jealous Oberon would have the child
Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild;
But she perforce withholds the loved boy,
Crowns him with flowers and makes him all her joy:
And now they never meet in grove or green,
By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen,

Robusto

@tchrist I saw that play acted at the Guthrie in Minneapolis. I had read it before, and seen the old film with James Cagney as Puck, but when I saw it acted it was sheer magic. And sides-splittingly funny to boot.

One can't really read Shakespeare. You have to see the plays acted, and in wonderful productions.

tchrist

I think I last saw it in Crested Butte with my sister some early July an age ago.

I've seen it live several times. I haven't watched any of the movies.

Dead Poet Society notwithstanding.

Oberon was King of Amber, Prince Corwin's dad who masqueraded as Ganelon.

tchrist

00:31

> stave 1. 1584– A length of wood cut in preparation for being made into a bow; (also) the flexible wooden part of a longbow or similar weapon. Cf. staff n.1 I.11. Recorded earliest in bowstave n.; cf. bowstaff n.

> 2007 Bow construction techniques included a single stave of wood (self-bow), a wood stave with sinew reinforcement (backed bow), and a combination of wood, horn or antler with sinew backing. —J. M. Volo & D. D. Volo, Family Life Native Amer. v. 102

There's a kind of stave that is a singular of staves.

> II.11.
> 1688– Music. A set of horizontal, parallel lines used in musical notation; = staff n.1 II.20.

In quot. 1688, with reference to a method of notating music for wind instruments by representing the fingering.

In North American English, staff is the more common term in this sense (see staff n.1 II.20).

Blech.

> 2013 She signs her own initials, rendered as notes on a musical stave. Transactions Inst. Brit. Geographers. vol. 38 426/1

> II.13. 1858– Each of the alliterating sounds or phonemes falling on stressed syllables in a line of alliterative verse. Cf. head stave n. See also stave rhyme n.

I give up. This is a silly word.

> 1858 This form of verse, in which rhyme, properly so called, was unknown, was called alliterative or stave rhyme, from the three staves on which the line rested.
F. Metcalfe, Hist. German Literature 15

2009 The word appears twice, here too as an alliterating stave, but this time in the b-verse and as the head stave. Journal Eng. & Germanic Philology vol. 208 200

> ETYMOLOGY
Summary
A variant or alteration of another lexical item.
Etymons: English staves, staff n.1
Inferred singular of staves, plural of staff n.1
Notes
Relationship with staff n.1

On the development of the inferred singular, and on the allocation of ambiguous instances of the plural form staves to the two entries, see discussion at staff n.1

Compare also earlier instances of inflected singular forms (chiefly in prepositional phrases; also as genitive staves) showing a voiced medial consonant:

I hate it when that happens.

Cerberus

@tchrist Interesting.

I always wondered why we have both staf and staaf. They have different uses, but are very similar in meaning.

tchrist

I should at some instinctive level rather that the plural of staff didn't change its vowel from that of the singular. But I've always heard it go from /æ/ in the singular to /e/ in the staves plural.

Cerberus

A wizard has a staf, but things one melts or eats are a staaf.

tchrist

@Cerberus There are a ridiculous number of senses for this word, and spellings.

Cerberus

I suppose when it normally lies horizontal, it's a staaf, otherwise a staf?

jlliagre

00:45

Daily Octordle #636
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Score: 63

Cerberus

@tchrist Nice.

tchrist

Just the plural spellings over time.

@Cerberus Are those long and short respectively?

Abbreviated senses for staff noun 1:

> I. A rod or stick (esp. one cut or shaped to be used for a…
I.1. A sturdy rod or stick, typically made of wood, used as an…
Expand
I.2. A strong or robust post, rod, bar, or stake, esp. one which…
I.3. figurative and in figurative contexts. Something that…
Expand
I.4. A stick or pole used as a weapon or instrument of…
Expand
I.5. A rod or stick held in the hand, used as an instrument or…
Expand
I.6. † A stick or length of wood, without specific use or purpose…
Expand
I.7. An implement or component consisting of or resembling a rod…

So 24 main senses in 3 primary groupings.

Cerberus

@tchrist The vowels, yes. The objects, unclear. A staf is normally held. A staaf is not. So a staaf can be thicker.

I guess a wizard or king has a staf, otherwise it's probably not much used.

tchrist

A walking staff, no?

Cerberus

But a staaf can be any size and used for any purpose.

tchrist

00:51

The king's is the staff of office.

Cerberus

@tchrist Maybe, those are usually stokken.

Wandelstok.

tchrist

@Cerberus Oh that makes sense.

Cerberus

A staf has a certain élan.

It can't be grubby and worn down.

I would say a sceptre can be a kind of staf.

And any magical rod or wand.

But also a longer wizard's staff.

tchrist

> "Hoom! Gandalf!" said Treebeard. "I am glad you have come. Wood and water, stock and stone, I can master; but there is a Wizard to manage here."

Cerberus

Stocking as in stockade, a palisade?

tchrist

00:53

8

Q: Away they went over stock and stone - What is stock and stone?

That statement is from Grimm's fairy tales. What is the meaning of the phrase "stock and stone"? Where else can I use it?

Cerberus

Hmm what is it if not wood?

tchrist

@Cerberus I think so, yes.

+1 Do the Grimms actually use this phrase? "Stock and stone" is a fixed phrase in English, too, all the way back to Ælfric's translation of the Bible around the year 1000, in speaking of idols of wood and stone. Such memorable alliterative pairings are common in traditional poetry and storytelling—*sticks and stones, feast or famine, thick and thin*—and in the 19th century English writers with an archaicizing bent began to use stock and stone as a sort of topographical merism to mean "all sorts of terrain": woodlands and bare rock. — StoneyB on hiatus Dec 25, 2015 at 13:43

Cerberus

In Dutch, stok is any kind of stick, wooden by default.

tchrist

1

A: Away they went over stock and stone - What is stock and stone?

Q: What is the meaning of the phrase "stock and stone"? This stock seems to literally mean "tree trunk" or "stump". In my opinion, it's best to understand over stock and stone as a fixed phrase, a merism (a figure of speech) meaning "across country", "over hill and dale", "over rough and smooth"...

Cerberus

@tchrist Makes sense.

By the way, staaf is often diminished. A staafje is a very common word.

Not sure what you would call it in English, a little bar?

It could be a tiny part of a machine.

tchrist

00:57

A little bar, hm.

So it was the same as in Dutch, but is preserved mainly in the frozen phrase from Grimm and Tolkien.

Cerberus

Hmm.

tchrist

Reminds me of Lord Dunsany's writings.

Cerberus

We only use stok for stick, not for a dead/branchless tree trunk (called a stronk).

Actually, maybe a stronk need to be the remains of a cut-down tree.

tchrist

> Præterea si homines de Stanhal dicti Abbatis inventi fuerint in bosco prædicti W. cum forisfacto ad Stoc & ad Stovel,..malefactor pro delicto, qui taliter inventus est, reddet tres solidos.

We use it to mean stick, like root-stock.

That's not obsolete.

> I.2.a. 1340– The trunk or stem of a (living) tree, as distinguished from the root and branches. †(to sell wood) upon the stock: standing.

Cerberus

Ahh.

tchrist

01:02

> 1846 Like an oaken stock in winter woods. Lord Tennyson, Golden Year in Poems (ed. 4) vol. II. 91

1857 The Stock or caudex is an undivided woody trunk. A. Henfrey, Elementary Course of Botany §57

the Tennyson is here

> With that he struck his staff against the rocks
And broke it,–James,–you know him,–old, but full
Of force and choler, and firm upon his feet,
And like an oaken stock in winter woods,
O’erflourish’d with the hoary clematis:
Then added, all in heat:

‘What stuff is this!

Scots still use it this way:

> I.2.b. 1629– The hardened stalk or stem of a plant (Jamieson). Chiefly Scottish.

They may have confused stock and stalk though.

> I.3.c. 1382– A line of descent; the descendants of a common ancestor, a family, kindred.

That's normal.

> I.3.d. 1549– A race, ethnical kindred; also, a race or family (of animals or plants); a related group, ‘family’ (of languages). Also (cf. A.I.1a, A.I.1b), an ancestral type from which various races, species, etc. have diverged.

"He's of peasant stock."

> I.3.g. 1828– Feudalism. native (or villein) of stock, a modern rendering of medieval Latin nativus de stipite, a serf by inheritance.

> I.4. c1400– A stem in which a graft is inserted.

All these ancient Germanic words have a million senses.

Getting closer to the stockyard now.

> I.8.a. c1325– plural. An obsolete instrument of punishment, consisting of two planks set edgewise one over the other (usually framed between posts), the upper plank being capable of sliding up and down. The person to be punished was placed in a sitting posture, with the ankles confined between the two planks, the edges of which were furnished with holes to receive them. Sometimes there were added similar contrivances for securing the wrists.

> The synonymous medieval Latin cippi, French ceps, suggest that this use of stock is an application of sense A.I.6, the reference being to the two side-posts of the apparatus.

But not livestock.

The noun has 59 main senses arranged in 7 primary groupings.

> I. Trunk or stem.
I.1. A tree-trunk deprived of its branches; the lower part of a…
I.2. The trunk or stem of a (living) tree, as distinguished from…
I.3. Figurative uses developed from sense A.I.2.
I.4. A stem in which a graft is inserted.
I.5. † The ‘trunk’ of a human body. Obsolete.
I.6. † A post, stake. Obsolete.
I.7. The main upright part of anything; the vertical beam, stem…
I.8. plural. An obsolete instrument of punishment, consisting of…
I.9. A frame in which a horse is confined for shoeing.

The staff set also mentions Dutch.

Robusto

01:17

OK, maybe I'm having a brain cramp, but a friend who is in taking Spanish is asking me about possessive adjectives. Aren't those just possessive pronouns?

Cerberus

Yes.

Well, it depends.

My friend = possessive adjective.

But also called possessive pronoun.

Of mine = probably called possessive pronoun?

Robusto

It feels like a distinction without a difference.

Cerberus

There is a problem with the use of the word noun in English.

You are mine: definitely not a possessive adjective.

Robusto

OK. I still feel my brain cramping.

The pronoun my is first person possessive, no?

alphabet

@Robusto I answered a question about this a while back: english.stackexchange.com/a/612096/470858

Cerberus

01:23

@Robusto Yes. And it is adjectival.

Robusto

OK.

Cerberus

But also considered a pronoun in other languages, because nouns can be adjective or substantive originally.

Robusto

I think I would prefer determiner, actually.

alphabet

Here's the problem with *just* calling *my* an adjective:
1. I was reading my book.
2. I was reading good book.
Why is (1) grammatical but not (2), if *my* and *good* are both adjectives?

Robusto

Good question.

That gets at the root of my discomfort.

Cerberus

01:26

@alphabet Why would that be a decisive test?

alphabet

Indeed. My answer to that question covers this, but it seems to have been downvoted.

Cerberus

Demonstrative pronouns and articles are also really adjectives.

Robusto

And if you use a possessive such a "Jim's" is Jim then an adjective?

Jim's boots are in the hall.

Cerberus

It is not normally called that.

alphabet

@Cerberus Most modern grammars do not hold that demonstrative pronouns and articles are adjectives; usually they get called "determiners" or "determinatives" because of their unusual syntactic properties.

Cerberus

01:27

Also because adjective is a term used for a single word only, not a word plus other things.

@alphabet It is fine to use determiner as a specific term, instead of merely calling everything an adjective.

However, if you are then going to create a paraphylic term adjective that only applies to the other adjectives, I think that is unwise, because it is different from how most people use the word, so it will cause confusion.

Some modern, Anglo-Saxon schools of linguistics have a tendency of doing this...

rant rant

Robusto

Now, let's use an actual adjective: white. If we turn it into a noun it can become a possessive. In chess, the pieces can be white or black, and we can refer to "white's queen" or "black's biship" or whatever. Those adjectives can't be possessive until we turn them into nouns.

alphabet

@Cerberus It's not just me. Many dictionaries call articles "determiners," not adjectives.

Cerberus

@Robusto Yes.

tchrist

@Robusto Think of my versus mine: the former is a determiner and cannot function as a substantive in its own right, whereas the latter can do so.

Robusto

Yes.

Cerberus

01:31

@alphabet I know they are not typically called adjectives. But they do in fact display the main characteristic of adjectives, which is modifying a noun directly and not really occurring without modifying a noun.

Robusto

But why call those pronouns possessive adjectives then? This makes me uncomfortable.

Cerberus

Articles are a type of pronoun.

A nominal one.

tchrist

This is very obvious in Spanish, mi hijo (invariably pronounced mijo) versus hijo mío or el mío no está listo.

Cerberus

In Greek, they can be used substantively or adjectivally.

Robusto

Articles are more like determiners, to my way of thinking.

Cerberus

01:33

They are.

tchrist

@Cerberus That's Greek. I don't think we can say that of modern Romance or Germanic, but I haven't completely thought it through. The demonstratives may be a counterexample.

Cerberus

@tchrist You can use articles substantively in German.

Der kommt nicht.

alphabet

@Cerberus Adjectives can occur without modifying nouns all the time: "that food looks good."

Cerberus

And of course das, which shows you how articles and demonstrative pronouns have always been really the same thing, until they were partly split recently.

alphabet

And they aren't modifiers, because modifiers generally aren't mandatory, as determiners are before count singular nouns.

tchrist

01:34

@Cerberus I definitely think of those as th- words like the, this, that, these, those although that's not right.

Cerberus

@alphabet It modifies food.

That's what subject complements do.

Dannyu NDos

Related only slightly, but English "adjective" is translated to Korean as "형용사", yet Korean 형용사 are actually verbs.

Cerberus

@tchrist Indeed!

tchrist

@Cerberus Correct.

Tastes good, smells good, feels good.

Cerberus

@DannyuNDos It can be hard to translate grammatical terms to a language with a very different grammar.

alphabet

01:36

@Cerberus Semantically, yes, it's interpreted as describing "food." But it isn't a modifier syntactically, since "that food good" is not a single noun phrase with "food" as a head and "good" as a modifier.

Robusto

@Cerberus Yes. "Der? Er ist ein arschloch."

Cerberus

@alphabet Why would that be a decisive test?

At any rate, linguistics often devolves into terminology battles...

Ultimately, the terminology is only a tool.

tchrist

Complement vs modifier.

Cerberus

@Robusto Ist er ja!

alphabet

@Cerberus A modifier generally forms a syntactic constituent with the thing it modifies.

Cerberus

01:37

I don't know the term modifier.

It may well be.

And different terminologies are always possible.

And even analyses.

tchrist

A modifier is a grammatical role.

Cerberus

Perhaps what you mean is what is called more broadly, attributive?

tchrist

More like subject and object.

Cerberus

Adjectives can be used attributively or praedicatively.

Subject complements are praedicative.

tchrist

@Cerberus There are those that can be used only one way but not the other. In both cases.

Cerberus

01:39

If you say so!

At least there are some which cannot be used attributively.

Like worth.

Hmm or maybe that is doubtful.

alphabet

Yes, but predicative adjectives are not modifiers.

Cerberus

Yes.

So adjectives can be used attributively or praedicatively.

So, by your definition, they are not modifiers when praedicative.

tchrist

Predicative adjectives like asleep and awake cannot be used attributively. Attributive adjectives like main cannot be used predicatively.

alphabet

Attributive (and postpositive) adjectives are modifiers. Predicative ones aren't, because they don't form a single syntactic unit with the things they (supposedly) modify.

Cerberus

Are you use the a- words aren't adverbs?

It can be hard to distinguish between praedicative adjectives and adverbs...

I agree about main and similar.

@alphabet Yes, I can follow that.

tchrist

01:42

This guy is my elder brother but not This brother is **elder.

Cerberus

But praedicative adjectives still modify their nouns.

tchrist

A person who is fond of ice cream is not a fond person.

But they may be a fond friend.

alphabet

@Cerberus Semantically yes. Syntactically no. In "that food is good," "food good" is not a syntactic constituent with "food" as head and "good" as modifier.

Cerberus

@alphabet You seem to have a specific definition of the word modifier. But I didn't use that term, I merely said modifies.

And it is not mainly about semantics: it is a syntactic conexion.

alphabet

@Cerberus Surely something modifies something else if and only if it is a modifier.

Cerberus

01:46

Although semantics may be used to show the syntactic conexion.

alphabet

@Cerberus What is the syntactic connection?

Dannyu NDos

I think y'all can agree with "determiners"?

tchrist

A lone wolf is not a wolf who is lone.

Cerberus

@alphabet Again, I do not use the latter term. So that's on you. All I said is modify, the verb.

tchrist

5

A: How to tell if an adjective is attributive or predicative [EFL context]?

I do understand how attributive and predicative adjectives work, yet I can't find an easier way for learners to differentiate between both types - especially if such differentiation doesn't exist in their mother tongues. I'd like to suggest that maybe a reference grammar might be able to hel...

alphabet

01:48

Regardless, in "that food looks good," "good" does not modify "food."

Cerberus

@alphabet Not sure I understand what kind of answer you expect? Subject complements are very common in all the Indo-European languages that I know: they belong to a subject, they agree with it morphologically (in so far as the language has morphology), and they could not occur in the sentence if you removed subject or copula.

tchrist

Your future husband is not some guy who is future.

Maybe that's a noun though.

alphabet

Here's a question: in "Be careful!" what does "careful" modify?

tchrist

A mere example is not an example which is mere.

@alphabet Thou.

Cerberus

@alphabet Hah! The zero subject.

You see? There is a solution for everything.

@tchrist Maybe.

alphabet

01:50

@Cerberus Ah, so we invent invisible words to make the theory work.

Cerberus

That's linguistics!

tchrist

Imperatives lack no subject.

Cerberus

Zero things are often invented where needed.

Zero anaphora?

Zero morphemes?

Zero grades?

tchrist

Gapping.

Dannyu NDos

Zero space. Zero map. ArrowZero.

Cerberus

01:52

In any case @alphabet, you can use a different terminology, if you like.

I'm just describing the normal way subject complements are analysed by most schools/disciplines, then.

tchrist

The sheer temerity of the peasants is appalling. Their temerity is not sheer.

Cerberus

But the cliff is.

tchrist

Exactly.

Or maybe their undergarments.

alphabet

Likewise, in "It is important to be careful," what does "careful" modify? Another invisible word?

Cerberus

Hah.

@alphabet Hah! Good example.

That is exactly why that construction is so hard to remember in Latin.

tchrist

01:54

Being careful isn't hard.

Cerberus

If there is no primary argument expressed for the verb, what gender and case should the adjective be?

alphabet

Likewise, in English there's no relevant sort of agreement either: In "We make a good team," "we" is plural but "a good team" is singular.

Cerberus

In Latin, it turns out the masculine accusative is used there, for a zero masculine primary argument.

alphabet

When discussing English grammar, it's irrelevant what languages with adjective gender and case do. Those languages are not English.

Cerberus

@alphabet With nouns, that is possible in all* Indo-European languages.

@alphabet Can you explain that? Why would comparative linguistics be irrelevant in understanding how the construction works?

alphabet

01:56

@Cerberus And since there is no number/gender agreement with adjectives, it doesn't make sense to say that subject complements "agree" with subjects in English.

tchrist

Your friends are these, aren't they?

Cerberus

Partly, but, yes, it makes less sense to speak of agreement when there is no morphology.

tchrist

I smell agreement.

Cerberus

Yes, there is still some agreement in English.

alphabet

@Cerberus Different languages admit different syntactic constructions; the syntactic structure of a sentence in one language doesn't imply anything about the structure of its translation in another language.

tchrist

01:58

My sister kept herself above the fray.

alphabet

Likewise, in "To be honest, he's not very bright," what does "honest" modify?

Dannyu NDos

"me"

Cerberus

@alphabet Would you then say it is not at all the same construction, between English, German, French, Latin, Greek? Each is entirely its own thing, and they should be called by the same name, and shouldn't be analysed as variations of one thing?

alphabet

Yes, but you can't posit an "zero 'me'" there because you can't add an explicit "me" there.

Dannyu NDos

"For me to be honest..."

Cerberus

02:03

@alphabet That is several layers of idiom and ellipsis on top of each other.

@DannyuNDos Yeah that shows some of the possible ellipsis.

Dannyu NDos

And this is how being multilingual helps understanding linguistics.

alphabet

@Cerberus We may use the same terms for similar constructions across multiple languages. That doesn't mean those constructions are actually identical, and that facts about the syntactic structure of some particular structure in one language allow you to infer things about those in another.

@DannyuNDos "For me to be honest, he's not very bright" sounds ungrammatical to me, or at least extremely unidiomatic.

Cerberus

@alphabet They don't always allow you to do this, but studying them together usually helps to understand each better.

alphabet

@Cerberus Regardless, the constituent structure of each language must, ultimately, be analyzed independently.

tchrist

Honestly, he's not very bright.

Cerberus

02:07

So @alphabet I have seen some recent schools of Anglo-Saxon linguistics do the following: they say each variant of a language can be considered entirely its own system, and we will create terminology and analysis to only explain this exact variant. That is a form of efficiency or minimalism: we make everything as tight as possible.

tchrist

Hopefully.

Dannyu NDos

I'd like to suggest anyone here to learn Mandarin Chinese. I'm learning it, and I'm amazed about its grammatical plasticity.

Cerberus

@alphabet I would say, independently, and together, and independently again, in a hermeneutic circle.

alphabet

The other path leads to madness. You end up positing that English has an inflectional tense/aspect system, and that "will go" is a form of "go," purely because Latin has that kind of system.

tchrist

"form"?

alphabet

02:11

There are still English teachers who claim that "will go" is an inflectional form of "go," in the same way that "went" is.

Cerberus

It is ultimately a matter of terminology.

tchrist

I don't understand that use of "inflectional" either.

Reflexes of go are go, goes, going, went. That's all. There are just four inflections.

Dannyu NDos

And gone?

Cerberus

@alphabet But it must be a ton of work, if you must create an entirely independent terminology and analysis for 16th-century English, 17th, and modern. And for Wessex English, Essex, etc.

tchrist

Yes, and gone.

alphabet

02:13

Certain teachers will insist that "will go" is also an inflection, just one that happens to consist of two separate words. Madness!

Cerberus

We had this question ten years ago on ELU.

The nuanced answer is clear.

tchrist

There are a million verbs you can put there.

@Cerberus He'll have been able to read those by now. I hope.

Cerberus

Has he finished going through all questions ever posted yet?

tchrist

I don't know. He seems to be acquainted with all the teachers in England!

Cerberus

Hah.

Dannyu NDos

02:26

This is a silly question, but why doesn't the UK have something like "Royal Institute of English Language" when South Korea has National Institute of Korean Language?

Apparently South Korea is the only country having such an institute so

tchrist

6

Q: Does the English language have an official Academy?

For some languages, there are academies that decide topics such as grammar and spelling of things, for example, for the Spanish language, there are 22 academies in 22 different countries, all making decisions on spanish grammar in their country. I would like to know if there is something that ser...

grammar american-english british-english australian-english spanish

This is the way it's controlled in all cultures, for all real languages. Academies are just kidding themselves. You might as well have a Royal Academy of Physicians to decide on which diseases people may have. — John Lawler Mar 25, 2014 at 23:22

> The language is governed by a combination of consensus and reputation, and no one person or group can change the rules by fiat. Any change requires some critical mass of other English speakers to agree with and adopt it before it will be considered proper English.

47

A: Regulatory bodies and authoritative dictionaries for English

In the minds of most people, dictionaries and usage guides are a cipher to some presumed existing canonical, regulated definition of what is correct in the English language. Of course, no such canonical definition exists—grammaticality of English is governed only by the bulk of actual usage. Mos...

I wonder what a Royal Academy could hope to do for English.

Or a Republican Academy of English, or whatnot.

Cerberus

The fact that it never had one explains the current state of its spelling, as compared with French.

tchrist

French spelling isn't all it's cracked up to be.

So it would be the job of an Academy to judge right and wrong?

It could do that, but nobody would care. They wouldn't agree.

Cerberus

You need a bit of a tradition.

tchrist

02:43

That would mean there is only one English, but this is not true. Can you imagine someone with a fine Eton and Oxbridge education telling a Brummie how to talk? Or a Glaswegian? Or an Aussie? Or a Texan? They'd be laughed at.

Or pick any of those and try having that person be the decider. It would never fly.

alphabet

@Cerberus You'd need to decide which country to put it in.

Some BrE speakers on this site seem awfully possessive about their language and concerned about the intrusion of Americanisms.

Cerberus

Of course it would have have been in England.

But it is far too late now.

tchrist

But what about Scotland and Ireland and Wales and the Cornish and the Manx?

alphabet

To ensure that the academy is properly funded, I propose putting it in whichever country has the highest GDP.

Dannyu NDos

That said... Is Canadian English no separate from AmE? Likewise, is New Zealander English no separate from AusE?

Cerberus

02:47

The Dutch Taalunie has people from across the Batavophere, including Flanders, Suriname, the Antilles.

alphabet

@DannyuNDos Canadian English is just watered down AmE.

Cerberus

It is not a dictate from Amsterdam.

tchrist

@DannyuNDos Every one of those you've mentioned contains multitudes within itself, a legion of unnumbered variations.

Cerberus

@alphabet How very American, it's all about money.

tchrist

Every single person speaks their own language.

Cerberus

02:48

What is more, he speaks a different language in different circumstances and at different hours.

alphabet

Wikipedia has an interesting pie chart of the % of native speakers who live in each country.

tchrist

The world is too vast.

alphabet

Of course, in many Commonwealth countries non-native speakers learn BrE due to the legacy of British imperialism. They should learn to accept the much more benevolent American imperialism.

tchrist

Only if they sound like Gone With the Wind.

The English of Vancouver is just as old as the English of New York, which is just as old as the English of London, which is just as old as the English of Sydney.

Think of the Big Bang. There is no center of the universe.

alphabet

US GDP surpassed that of the UK at around the same time when southern BrE became consistently non-rhotic.

tchrist

02:56

It all started at the same point.

alphabet

Clearly rhoticity causes economic growth.

tchrist

We could outlaw the slovenly txtskrz.

alphabet

Time to start a charity donating extra /ɹ/s to countries in need.

tchrist

> When people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.

Dannyu NDos

Replacing Korean /ɾ~l/ to an [ɹ] won't go well.

NVZ

03:01

Pink Floyd, the singer Roger Waters, Free Palestine, free Gaza 🇵🇸

►

It's not fair to label someone antisemitic purely for speaking out against the atrocities committed by the state of Israel. Let's not falsely equate that to be hate against Jews.

tchrist

Así NACE una LENGUA

►

The cats, the cats, the cats.

alphabet

@NVZ To be clear, that is not why people think he's antisemitic: rollingstone.com/culture/culture-commentary/…

> The documentary [...] includes screenshots of a 2010 email Waters wrote to his team that suggested emblazoning his famous inflatable pig with a Star of David and insults like “dirty k***.”

independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/…

> In May this year, Waters caused uproar in Germany after dressing in an outfit resembling a Nazi SS office during his live shows, while also projecting the name of Anne Frank on a giant screen.

usatoday.com/story/entertainment/music/2023/09/27/…

> Also released were interviews with former music associates who contend Waters mocked his former band member's grandmother who died in the Holocaust and demanded that vegetarian food, which he called "Jew food," be taken away.

Nobody--at least nobody with an ounce of sense--is claiming he's antisemitic purely because of his views about Israeli war crimes or Zionism. People are claiming he's antisemitic because of all the antisemitic stuff he's done.

NVZ

@alphabet thanks for that, I was not aware.

alphabet

It is absolutely true that some people will make bad-faith accusations of antisemitism against anyone who opposes Israel or Zionism. This is not one of those cases.

Dannyu NDos

03:18

Is there an English minimal pair that concerns whether a stop releases? I'm suspecting "step" and "steppe" are such a pair.

alphabet

@DannyuNDos Those are homophones.

Dannyu NDos

Really? Not [stɛp̚] and [stɛpʰ]?

alphabet

No, word-final stops aren't aspirated. They may have no audible release, be glotally reinforced, or get turned into ejectives, but those aren't phonemic.

Dannyu NDos

I'm unsure I should be happy or be sad about that.

alphabet

In particular, when it doesn't come before a vowel, that [p] will often be preceded by a glottal stop which makes the release inaudible.

CowperKettle

03:24

I had a dream in which I tried to desert from the Special Military Operation. After my barracks were hit by a rocket, and almost all died.

Dannyu NDos

Yeah... up any [əp ʔanɪ] and a penny [ə pɛnɪ].

CowperKettle

@NVZ I heard he is also kind of "uncertain" on the Special Operation, so he is somewhat out of his rocker

alphabet

@DannyuNDos The difference is that in "a penny" the /p/ is aspirated.

Dannyu NDos

Yeah

alphabet

There's an odd effect here: if you don't aspirate the /p/ at the start of "penny," many English speakers will hear it as "Benny," since people hear unaspirated word-initial /p/ as a devoiced /b/.

Incidentally: this glottal reinforcement is why some English speakers have started to turn certain word-final sounds into ejectives: you're already making a glottal stop at the same time as the consonant.

Dannyu NDos

03:35

And I, a speaker of Korean, take an advantage over the notoriety of the three-way distinction of Korean occlusive, and just laugh.

/b/ /p/ /pʰ/ babe

alphabet

Of course, except after fricatives:

Speech is really SBEECH!

►

Dannyu NDos

/pʰ/ → /f/, /tʰ/ → /θ/, /kʰ/ → /x/, I mean.

Sorry, mis-clicked.

Can anyone un-delete it?

alphabet

I don't think so

Dannyu NDos

> I hope Korean aspirated stops will assimilate to fricatives just like Greek did.

There I go

Laurel

I'm so mad

alphabet

03:45

To be fair, words spelled "ph" and "th" were pronounced as [pʰ] and [tʰ] in Latin but ended up becoming /f/ and /θ/ in the derived English words.

Meanwhile, words spelled "ch" derived from ancient Greek [kʰ] turned into English /k/ which (as usual) is either aspirated or unaspirated depending on context.

So the "ch" in echo is unaspirated [k], but the "ch" in the derived adjectives echoic and anechoic are [kʰ], matching the ancient Greek.

Oh wait, I just said exactly what you were talking about.

I'm confused.

Ignore me.

CowperKettle

We have the year's first snowcover, although it will melt by noon.

alphabet

Then there are loanwords. Some people pronounce chutzpah with something like [x] or [χ], others nativize it to [h].

Based on YouGlish, it seems like about 70% of people pronounce it with an [h].

CowperKettle

@NVZ But I agree that the state of Israel does horrible things.

alphabet

One of those fun marginal phonemes, like the phonemic glottal stop in uh-oh.

I wonder if BrE will eventually end up spelling "uh-oh" as "utoh."

CowperKettle

The unexamined life is not worth living. The unexamined stops are not worth glotting.

Dannyu NDos

04:04

Regarding [ʔ]... I'd argue that Korean has it as a full phoneme, not marginal. An example minimal pair is 일 [il] work and 일(一) [ʔil] one.

There used to be a dedicated letter for it, namely ㆆ. Too sadge it was dropped in the 16c.

M.A.R.

04:21

@DannyuNDos is that a bunch of silly old people deciding what word is and isn't appropriate to use in the language and trying to come up with Korean equivalents of English words?

If so, then quite a few countries have something similar

@NVZ I don't care who is and isn't antisemitic. He piqued my interest because our TV used one of his songs as montage music to show how evil Netanyahu is, shaking hands with people and stuff. So evil.

So after this hypocrisy I wanted to find out if he's another Chomsky whose words are being twisted, or if he's just an antisemite. I looked up the sorts of things he says and yep.

Dannyu NDos

@M.A.R. I don't think medieval Koreans were aware of the English language? After all, the US invaded Korea in 1871.

Wait, you were referring to a different comment.

The answer to that question is yes, mostly.

Cerberus

05:09

@alphabet Aren't those jokes?

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…