Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 March 31

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March 31

Fred makes a stirling effort

"Fred makes a stirling effort". How do you spell stirling/sterling/sturling in this context? What does it actually mean in this context? I cannot find such an entry in the Consise OED or in Wiktionary or in the penguin reference dictionary. Help appreciated. -- SGBailey (talk) 13:34, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

"sterling" adj, definition 3 here, "high quality". Recury (talk) 13:58, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

And here I thought it was "sirloin". — kwami (talk) 20:58, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Definition

I need the definition for a word... I can't find anything pertaining to what my teacher wants me to find. I am in Desktop Publishing and there is something called a "pull." I have no idea what that is and can't find the definition of the word that puts it in DTP style. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.229.196.51 (talk) 15:46, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Try this Pull quote - X201 (talk) 16:02, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Heh, you guys are awesome. I couldn't find that for the life of me. =) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.229.196.51 (talk) 16:11, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Gerunds

"In 1997, the number of Americans declaring themselves bankrupt jumped by almost 20 percent."

Shouldn't it be "who declared themselves"? Thanks. Imagine Reason (talk) 16:56, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

No. I'm not sure anything can "jump by" an amount, though. I smell journalists (no offense). --Milkbreath (talk) 17:04, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Either one would be fine. But "declaring" isn't a gerund in this sentence, it's an active participle. --Lazar Taxon (talk) 21:16, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Correct punctuation

This sentence appears in the introduction of 2006 FIFA World Cup: The tournament was won by Italy, their fourth world championship title, who defeated France 5–3 in a penalty shootout, after the extra time finished in a 1–1 draw in the final. But I feel that the punctuation used there is somewhat awkward, because both "their fourth world championship title" and "who defeated France ..." refer to Italy, so I somewhat get the feeling that something else besides the commas should be used. Am I wrong? Or, if not, which of the followings would be a better way to punctuate that sentence?

• The tournament was won by Italy—their fourth world championship title—who defeated France 5–3 in a penalty shootout, after the extra time finished in a 1–1 draw in the final.
• The tournament was won by Italy—their fourth world championship title,—who defeated France 5–3 in a penalty shootout, after the extra time finished in a 1–1 draw in the final. (this seems reasonable to me, if my book hadn't said that dashes are never used next to commas)
• The tournament was won by Italy (their fourth world championship title), who defeated France 5–3 in a penalty shootout, after the extra time finished in a 1–1 draw in the final.

Or you may choose to submit another version :)  ARTYOM  18:06, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

You're right, the sentence as it currently stands is awful. Both your first and third options are fine - your book is right about the second being wrong. I don't much like the last clause though - I would say something like "...after the game ended in a 1-1 draw (after extra time)." --Richardrj ^{talk email} 18:55, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

(ec) I like to use as little punctuation as possible. How about "The tournament was won by Italy, who in the final defeated France 5–3 in a penalty shootout after extra time ended in a 1–1 draw, for their fourth world championship title"? Depending on the context (which I haven't looked at), "Italy won the tournament (their fourth world championship title) by defeating France 5–3 in a penalty shootout in the final, extra time having ended in a 1–1 draw" might also work. There are many ways of recasting the sentence to improve it. Deor (talk) 19:04, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

A note: If you choose any of the three above, be careful where you put the modifying phrase (their fourth world championship title). As is stands, it sounds like Italy herself is a championship title. --^LaPianísta! 04:58, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

You might even want to consider using "which". I realise that "Italy" is a metonymous way of saying "the Italian team", which consists of humans. But even then, I'd use "which" in relation to a team, and "who" in relation to individual members of the team. -- JackofOz (talk) 08:40, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Can't say I agree, Jack. Football teams are always referred to as 'they' rather than 'it' (e.g. "they defeated France"), and "which defeated France" would also sound mighty odd. How are Collingwood doing these days, by the way? :) --Richardrj ^{talk email} 09:00, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not hard-line on this, Richardrj, which is why I said "consider". I was going to say that your first point isn't really relevant here, on the basis that whether it's perceived as singular or plural has no bearing on whether it's perceived as animate or inanimate. But on reflection I think you've identified something quite interesting. There are four possibilities:

• 1. singular-inanimate: "Collingwood, which defeated all comers to claim the 2008 premiership, is considered the best team for 100 years"
• 2. singular-animate: "Collingwood, who defeated all comers to claim the 2008 premiership, is considered the best team for 100 years".
• 3. plural-inanimate: "Collingwood, which defeated all comers to claim the 2008 premiership, are considered the best team for 100 years"
• 4. plural-animate: "Collingwood, who defeated all comers to claim the 2008 premiership, are considered the best team for 100 years".

Version 1 sounds ok to me, and that's what I'd naturally say without thinking about it; and completely believable, to boot.  :) Version 4 is what I assume you'd say (in a hypothetical world where Collingwood actually wins games). They're the only 2 idiomatic ways of saying it. Versions 2 and 3 both sound weird (sports journalists might employ them, for example). -- JackofOz (talk) 21:53, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Long sentences are generally considered bad, and there seems to be no reason to keep this as one sentence. How about:"The tournament was won by Italy, who defeated France 5–3 in a penalty shootout, after the extra time finished in a 1–1 draw in the final. It was their fourth world championship.". DJ Clayworth (talk) 15:52, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Generally considering the replies, I came up with this: "The tournament was won by Italy, who claimed their fourth world championship title, defeating France 5–3 in a penalty shootout in the final, after the extra time (had) finished in a 1–1 draw." Splitting the sentence into two sounds as a good idea, but it seems to me that the second ("It was their fourth world championship") would be kind of out-of-place if put into the article in place of the current sentence.  ARTYOM  11:49, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I think this is much better, but could be still be improved a little. The "fourth world championship" bit sticks out like a sore thumb, especially as the World Cup is never referred to as the world championship. I would go with "Italy won the tournament [active preferred to passive], their fourth World Cup title. They defeated France 5-3 in a penalty shootout in the final, after ['the' here is incorrect] extra time had finished in a 1–1 draw." --Richardrj ^{talk email} 11:59, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

"Was" or "were"?

I asked this question on IRC and didn't get a satisfactory answer, so here goes:

In the sentence "I threw the ball to you -- you, who were/was the catcher", which is correct, "were" or "was"? Sorry for the awkward example sentence, but it's all I could really think of.

If you give an answer, I would really like an understandable explanation of why. Thanks very much. 99.245.92.47 (talk) 21:13, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

"You" always takes "were", never "was". It comes from the conjugation of the past tense of the verb "to be": I am was, you (s.) were, he/she was, we were, you (p.) were, they were. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:21, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

And yet it's "you who were/was". What is the function of "who" in this sentence if it doesn't modify the verb? 99.245.92.47 (talk) 21:22, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

"...who were the catcher" is an (appositive) noun dependent clause. Who is the noun of such dependent clause. Its referent is you. Compare it with you were the catcher. I'd agree with Jack's statement. Maybe it's also correct to assign the 3rd person to the relative pronoun? I don't think so. But I may be wrong. Pallida  Mors 21:43, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) You are. Wrong, that is. About the last thing, not the first part, which is right. "Who" takes the number and person of its antecedent. So easy, we can hardly believe it's true. "Our Father, who art in heaven", never "who is in heaven". --Milkbreath (talk) 21:53, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, that's the kind of explanation I was looking for. 99.245.92.47 (talk) 21:50, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

And my answer would have been that because "threw" was in the past tense, and the speaker doesn't intend to change tense, we use were (past tense) instead of was (present tense). But JackOfOz's answer is that "You" takes "were" and never "was", which is actually correct - albeit never a rule I was taught in school, I was taught to keep tenses. Two different answers, both correct I believe. Rfwoolf (talk) 22:34, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi. I want to clarify the above. You should make a distinction between formal and informal usage. In formal usage, as mentioned above, who agrees in number with its antecedent. Examples: it is I who am crazy, it is he who is crazy, it is they who are crazy. In informal English, we get who analyzed as 3rd person: it's me who's crazy, it's him who's crazy, it's them who's crazy. (trying googling these for examples.)

Milkbreath's data: Our Father which art in Heaven. Here art (and wert in the past tense) is an archaic 2nd person inflection of be equal to modern are. The reason that Our Father is triggering 2nd person agreement is because it is a vocative: Our Father, thou which art in heaven. In modern English, this is analyzed differently becoming Our Father, who is heaven (= Our Father, he who is in heaven; pace Milkbreath, this is the translation in modern versions of the Bible).

was and were are both past tense. – ishwar  (speak) 22:48, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Prescriptivism and more prescriptivism. Have a look sometime please. — Zerida ☥ 01:32, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Whether the variation in these forms originated because of prescriptivism is besides the point. It is descriptively accurate to say that there are choices available to many speakers that reflect a formal vs informal (or a written vs spoken) distinction. This distinction is made even when prescriptive rules are broken as in between you and I (formal) vs between you and me (informal). Linguistic registers and styles (whatever their origin) are also a part of language. – ishwar  (speak) 04:04, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Except that the above presumes that 3rd person agreement in these constructions is exclusive to informal writing or speech, neither of which is true. — Zerida ☥ 04:33, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I see. So, I'm just stating in very general terms what the big picture is (actually I'm just repeating what other descriptive grammars say, like, e.g. Huddleston 1984). But, you are right to suggest that the real picture is considerably more complicated, and I didnt mean to suggest that it was not. It is probably better to think of an formal-informal cline than a binary opposition of formal/informal, and thousands of pages of sociolinguistic research show that given a certain variation there are numerous parameters that influence a person's choice when speaking. For example, in AAVE, the deletion of be as in you are playing vs 'you're playing vs you playing can vary in a single person's speech even with the same interlocutors within the same conversation. – ishwar  (speak) 23:29, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what point you (ishwar) are trying to make about 'between you and I/me'. In this case what you call the 'formal' version is (prescriptively) incorrect hypercorrection, and the 'informal' version is correct (and what I would use even in formal writing). AndrewWTaylor (talk) 18:51, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

My point was that there are constructions that are considered formal that happen to be prescriptively "correct" and there are other constructions that are considered formal that happen to be prescriptively "incorrect". (and vice versa.) So, the formal-informal parameter is not necessarily in a one-to-one correspondence with the "correct"-"incorrect" parameter of prescriptive grammar. Although prescriptive grammar ideas may influence formal/informal distinctions, there is much more to it than that (e.g. see politeness theory, Paul Grice's work in pragmatics, etc.).

Many people use the so-called subjective and objective pronouns forms in coordinate phrases to indicate either formal or informal. And they do so in subject position, in object position, and in prepositional complement position. In other words, the inflected pronoun forms are signaling more that just grammatical case in a nicely symmetrical pattern:

Subject:

• he and I are going to the store (formal)
• me and him are going to the store (informal)

Object:

• Stop kicking he and I (formal)
• Stop kicking me and him (informal)

Prepositional Complement:

• You put the ball between he and I (formal)
• You put the ball between me and him (informal)

As for the ordering of the above, you typically get the first person last in formal English due a politeness tendency and the first person first in informal English (because you dont need to be polite). So, although these sentences break the prescriptive rules (either by normal rule breaking or hypercorrect rule breaking), that is how many speakers are actually using the pronoun forms. And you can confirm this by consulting a descriptive grammar of English or just by googling. – ishwar  (speak) 20:12, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I did look at The Lord's Prayer before posting, but I didn't see the rendition you mention, ishwar, much to my surprise, I might add. I fully expected them to blow it. Where did you see "who is [in] heaven"? (I guess there was supposed to be a "in" in there.) --Milkbreath (talk) 22:54, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Try New American Standard Bible for this phrasing. (you can also google this). I corrected the missing in above. – ishwar  (speak) 23:22, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

@Rwoolf: The distinction ishwar and I think you were trying to make was between "you were" (past tense) and "you are" (present tense). You could change the sentence to "I threw the ball to you -- you, who are the catcher", but not to "I threw the ball to you -- you, who was the catcher". -- JackofOz (talk) 23:01, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Indeed I feel sheepish - must be the sleep deprivation. What made me think was was present tense??? Please excuse me ! It was er, an April Fool's joke! Rfwoolf (talk) 23:43, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Sheep deprivation makes the Woolf feel sleepish? A Grimm tail, indeed, for those whose grammar has sharp teeth :) --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 11:12, 1 April 2008 (UTC)