Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 March 5

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

March 5

There's something wrong with this sentence, but I can't put my finger on it

Here's a sentence from the Michael Jordan article: "He was named to the All-NBA First Team 10 times, All-Defense First Team nine times, and led the league in steals three times." I don't think you can grammatically justify the structure of that item series. "All-Defense First Team nine times" seems like it's just plopped into the middle of the sentence. However, I'm not sure how to articulate this problem to other editors. Can someone help me out? Zagalejo 05:05, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps add "to the" before "All-Defense First Team nine times"? —Angr 05:12, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it's a question of what words you're willing to leave implied. The full sentence would be, "He was named to the A and to the B, and he led the C." The problem is that it's hard to tell where the list stops - it looks like it's saying, "He was named to the A, to the B, and to the C," with an odd few words tossed in. Leaving out the rest of the list, it sounds like it's saying, "He was named to the led the C," which is confusing at best. It's an area of grammar that nobody much bothers with, though, because the context indicates what the author's intention was. If it makes you uncomfortable, replacing the first comma with "and to the" or "and the" would fix it. Black Carrot 05:46, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Your instincts are right. The problem is that you punctuate the sentence as if you have a series of three teams Jordan was named to, but in fact you only have two. The steals part is separate from the other part. This would be grammatically correct: "He was named to the All-NBA First Team 10 times and All-Defense First team nine times, and he led the league in steals three times." -- Mwalcoff 06:12, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Editors refer to the problem you have identified as a problem of parallel construction. Mwalcoff's solution is correct, but I would add to the before "All-Defense First team" to signal to the reader that this is a parallel prepositional phrase rather than a new clause. ("He was named to the All-NBA First Team 10 times and to the All-Defense First team nine times, and he led . . .") This isn't necessary, but it makes the sentence easier to read. Marco polo 13:42, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone! I appreciate the help. Zagalejo 19:10, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Note incidentally that a few items back, the wording describing the slogan "for Tippecanoe and Tyler too" has exactly the same problem. To be grammatical it needs another "and". Of course this sort of construction is common in informal speech and writing. --Anonymous, March 7, 2007, 22:13 (UTC).

One More Time - Pronunciation of Celtic Mythology-Related Words in Irish.

Okay. I'm just going to try and get all of the rest of my Irish pronunciation requests out of the way and done with. Could some native Irish speaker be kind enough to tell me how to pronounce the following words? 1) Nóralltach. 2) Begallta. 3) Dubán. (All from this page). 4) Nemain or Nemhain. Thank you in advance for your help. I'm really very sorry for the trouble. --Brasswatchman 23:09, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

we have the wonderful Irish orthography, why not take a look at it? It really helps...Cheers.--K.C. Tang 01:27, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, you're right. However, I'm not just very good with linguistics. Even if I do manage to figure things out on my own, I just don't know whether or not to trust my own work. I apologize for coming back to this. I really do appreciate the help I have recieved here. Thank you. --Brasswatchman 05:25, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Judging from that page, my guesses are: (1) [nˠoːɾˠəɫ̪t̪ˠəx], (2) [bʲɛɟəɫ̪t̪ˠə], (3) [d̪ˠʊbˠaːn], and (4) [nʲɛmʲənʲ] or [nʲɛvʲənʲ]. But these are my guesses, I'm not positive. I'm afraid to even try to render those in English...something like (1) NOH-ruhl-tuhkh, (2) BYE-dyuhl-tuh, (3) DOO-bahn, and (4) NYEM-yuhn or NYEV-yuhn. Reeally approximately. Plus I might be wrong about the pronunciation anyway. --Miskwito 06:48, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Asking Ali-oops couldn't hurt - she speaks Gaelic. z ε n .ıl 07:25, 6 March 2007 (UTC)