Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 November 4

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November 4

Extra. Full. Stops.

In phrases such as "Best. Word. Ever", what do the extra full stops mean? jc iindyysgvxc (my contributions) 06:51, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

They signify small pauses between the words, thereby giving the whole phrase an emphatic tone. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 07:34, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Reminds me of Comic Book Guy. --Nricardo (talk) 11:47, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. To me the full stops look as if they give each word a falling sentence-concluding intonation, which sounds ridiculous rather than emphatic. Wouldn't it be more effective to write it with commas? — Emil J. 13:00, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

One man's ridiculous is another man's emphatic. Besides, when it comes to language usage, there's little use in arguing over what's "effective"; what people do, people do. All we can really do is describe, not prescribe. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 13:16, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

The idea of using short sentences for emphasis is well-attested[1][2][3]. The "Worst. Episode. Ever." style of emphasis might be seen as a reductio ad absurdam of this approach (using the shortest possible sentences). Emphasis (typography) mentions increasing spacing between letters for emphasis, which might also be an influence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lesleyhood (talk • contribs) 13:30, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

It's not "proper" written English but it conveys the intention... provided it's clear what the intention is, which it wasn't to the questioner. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:07, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Is this a US thing? I've never seen it in the UK.Alansplodge (talk) 18:56, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

That's 'U.K.'. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 01:09, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

KageTora; in modern usage the full stops are often dropped from abbreviations - see the UK Government's own website here[4].Alansplodge (talk) 15:58, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

L.O.L. DOR (HK) (talk) 08:56, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

It's more an online thing, from the generation who grew up with The Simpsons. It's a Snowclone from Comicbook Guy's catchphrase, "Worst. Episode. Ever." (or "Best. Episode. Ever.") 86.142.224.71 (talk) 19:08, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! I was thinking just the other day of asking a question about what it was that popularized this. --Anonymous, 22:44 UTC, November 4, 2009.

Doh! Obviously showing my age...Alansplodge (talk) 16:04, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

It's used in advertising and poetry too. Adds dramatic weight and a pause to each word.--Sonjaaa (talk) 07:29, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Standard English usage for "of"

Is there a grammatical term for the structures "method of teaching" and "teaching method" ? Both are correct, but only one uses of. I'm getting ESL students who say things like "the area conditions of environment are..." and am having trouble helping them recognize situations like that where using of is clumsy and the superior "the area environmental conditions are" would be immediately obvious to any native speaker.218.25.32.210 (talk) 07:16, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't know the answer I'm afraid, but if I was an ESL student and I was being taught to say "the area environmental conditions are...", I'd start looking around for another teacher. You can say "the environmental conditions of the area" or "the area's environmental conditions", but the way you're phrasing it is ugly. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 08:40, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Your examples are more or less genitive structures. "The area's environmental conditions" and "the environmental conditions of the area" are both genitive, just the first is marked with a possessive suffix -s and the second with a prepositional phrase. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 13:42, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

"of-genitive" seems a standard term for describing things like "method of teaching" e.g. [5][6]. The cases described show the difference between using a pre-modifier ("teaching method") and a post-modifier prepositional phrase ("method of teaching") in a noun phrase. See also English noun phrase. --Lesleyhood (talk) 13:55, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Being clear is the most important thing, and the one example, "the environmental conditions of the area" strikes me as the optimal, especially for ESL, as it breaks up the sentence a little bit. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:05, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not an ESL expert, but I think that there are really at least two issues here. One issue is understanding whether to use a genitive form ("method of teaching", "conditions of the environment") or a modifier before the main noun ("teaching method" or "environmental conditions"). Usually the latter method is clearer and more concise in English, though there are some cases, I'm sure, where it doesn't work. A second issue here is the use of the definite article ("the"). As you can see from my example above, "conditions of the environment" makes sense, even if it is more awkward than "environmental conditions", whereas "conditions of environment" really doesn't make sense, especially as part of a longer phrase. Students need to learn the very tricky English rules and idioms for the use of the article, one of which is that "environment" is one of those nouns that almost always requires an article (except for the indefinite plural, of course). Marco polo (talk) 16:09, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

A few years ago on the beachfront in Brighton there were some notice-boards intended to give recent details of the analysis of the seawater. These were called Sea Water Quality Information Boards. Five nouns in a row, each qualifying the next. In German a single word (?"Seewasserqualitätsinformationtafel"?) could have been used. In French it would have been prepositions ( perhaps "Tableaux d'information sur la qualité de l'eau de mer"?) Sussexonian (talk) 22:58, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Etymology of "Just So Stories"

In Rudyard Kipling's phrase "just so story", what is the meaning of "just so"? I can see two meanings for the phrase:

1. the story provides an answer that fits "just so" (i.e., very pat and neat and ad hoc to the question at hand)
2. the questions these stories answer (e.g., "why do leopards have spots?") might often be answered (to a child, say) with "it's just so"

I'm interested in both Kipling's original coinage and whether his sense is still the one intended when people derisively call a scientific theory a Just so story. Thanks. --Sean 14:54, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

From hearing these first at the age of 5 or 6, I've taken "Just So" to mean "that's exactly the way it happened". Of course I knew that wasn't how it happened and Kipling knew that children would know that it wasn't how it really happened, but would be pleased to be included in the joke. Only my opinion though.[7]. It was published only a short time after the theory of evolution became accepted as science. The stories seem to me to be a satire on the theory, without implying any criticism of it.Alansplodge (talk) 16:16, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't know about that. Etiology myths are of course much older than Kipling's Just So Stories. +Angr 16:49, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Maybe, but not as a joke for children.Alansplodge (talk) 17:07, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Is there a name for this odd use of "local"?

I have noticed a disquieting trend of words being used in a manner unrelated to their real meaning. Let's take "local" as the first of these, with an example from a recent Newsweek article. The context isn't for the squeamish, apologies, but the piece offers a clear example of this bizarre use. A girl in Mali was subjected to female genital cutting; as an adult she moved to the US; decades later she decided to see if modern medicine could help:

The doctors wheeled her to the operating room, anesthetized her and got to work. [...] [The surgeon] then scraped away layers of a black, sooty material — the decades-old remnants of the ash poultice the local women had used to stop the bleeding.

"Local" in this usage does not mean "near the subject of the sentence"; it seems to be intended to imply uneducated or untrained. it's almost a scare-word.

This might be related to the extension of semantic range to the point of meaninglessness (e.g. "terrorist"). Or it might be more of a euphemism. I'm not sure what it represents, but it does seem to be spreading.

So a two-part question: Does anyone have similar examples to quote (with "local" or other words)? And is there a name for this phenomenon? in a way it might be construed as parallel to the eggcorn: a linguistic phenomenon that has been around for awhile and deserves some attention. BrainyBabe (talk) 16:03, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I think the word "local" in this context means the women who were in the place at the time the mutliation was done: nothing about scare-words or derogatory epithets as far as I can see.--TammyMoet (talk) 16:10, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

"Local" there carries the implication of non-cosmopolitan. The perspective of the reader is assumed to be the educated urban person, I think, and "local" is assigned the role, in this usage, of referring to the area to which modernity and education has not yet come. "Backwoods" is the implication of "local," I think, in this usage. It is unlikely that a publication produced in a small town would refer to the population in a great city as the "local" population, or the "local women." You point out an improper implication of a word in a particular use. It is a sort of code word, conveying more than what it ostensibly says, I think. But I don't think this is at all uncommon. Words are commonly assigned meanings that are not basic to their definition. Bus stop (talk) 16:30, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

(ec) I don't think it merely means "in the place at the time". I think 70 years ago the sentence would have read "the native women", and "local" is being used as the modern politically correct equivalent of "native". It doesn't directly denote "uneducated"/"untrained" but it does connote it because the reader will assume that the women who live in the village do not have Western-style medical training. +Angr 16:31, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I see no negative implications...It means what it always means. The women would have been local to the girl at the time the cutting occurred. Vimescarrot (talk) 18:12, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree. There are no negative connotations here. 'Local' is often used to refer to people who are native to an area, in this case, the area where the girl came from. If the word had been left out, it would have said, 'remnants of the ash poultice the women had used', which could be anyone. The writer has felt the need to specify which women were involved, and, with no other information available, has simply referred to them as 'local women' - as opposed to the women around the area where the girl lives now. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 18:21, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Angr. I quite often hear people talk about how "the locals" react to something, with a clear connotation that the speaker is cosmopolitan and thus not a "local", even if they are living in the area they grew up in. Something of this is being played with in the League of Gentlemen sketch about the "local shop for local people": there is the expectation that the "local" people will be closed-minded and intolerant of outsiders, as opposed to the cosmopolitan visitors. I can only assume that people who do not see a negative implication have not met or read people who do this: perfectly fine, as it gives some indication of how widespread this usage is or isn't. 86.142.224.71 (talk) 19:04, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

If it wasn't meant to imply that a lack of cosmopolitan sophistication, I don't see why the expression would be used here at all. I think the implication is clearly present. --Anonymous, 22:48 UTC, November 4, 2009.

It was meant to emphasize the more rural treatment for the bleeding. It was kind of a traditional technique or recipe for making the poultice. The implication is a culturally unique practice specific to this locale. That's just my take on it. —Akrabbim^talk 22:54, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

The complete expression, which you're not likely to hear nowadays, is "local yokels". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:51, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

On further consideration I'm going to back down part way and say that in another context "local" could refer to people with valuable local knowledge ("the locals know that Smith St. will get you there faster"); it's not necessarily short for "local yokel" as Bugs says. But in the genital mutilation example, I don't see it at all that way. I do agree with the mildly negative implication there. --Anonymous, 22:56 UTC, November 4, 2009.

To clarify, it doesn't always mean local yokels, it depends on the situation. I think that saying "the locals" is just a way of restating the city (or other "locality") being referenced in a given situation. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:14, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Is not interpreting the word "local" in some kind of derogeratory way a uniquely British trait? Vimescarrot (talk) 23:57, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

In any case, I don't see a problem with the use of the word, whether it refers to locale, local customs, or local yokels, because as the article on female genital cutting points out, the practice is now illegal (not when the event in question took place - but in any case it has been made illegal for a reason), so why should the article Newsweek not refer to the women who performed the cutting as 'locals', whether meaning 'women living around the girl at the time' or 'women lacking in knowledge [as to what this practise can cause]'. Maybe it is in there to deliberately make the reader decide for him/herself and possibly provoke discussions like the one we are having right now. However, I shall state as I did earlier on that I had no problem with the word - it can be used with derogatory connotations, sure enough, but it can also be neutral, and in as many cases as it is used in a derogative sense it can be used in a very positive sense, as pointed out by Anonymous upstairs. It just so happens that the Newsweek article is talking about a practise that is considered wrong, and this may help to give the reader a negative feeling about the word 'local' used here. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 00:10, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I largely agree with TammyMoet; there's nothing derogatory about this at all. It was some local women who applied the poultice - as opposed to the man who mutilated her, or nurses at a clinic, or she herself, or her parents. Matt Deres (talk) 03:23, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Indirect Speech; and a second question which is about the Use of If and When

I have a question about the exact meaning of sentences like

Mary thinks that Tom is a good singer.

I am not sure because in standard German, there are three possibilities of indirect speech:

• If I say: "Mary denkt, dass Tom ein guter Sänger ist",
  that means in standard German that Mary thinks so, and that I agree.
• If I say: "Mary denkt, dass Tom ein guter Sänger wäre",
  that means in standard German that Mary thinks so, and that I disagree.
• If I say: "Mary denkt, dass Tom ein guter Sänger sei",
  that means in standard German that I just say that Mary thinks so, and that I don't comment on whether I agree or disagree.

Is it true that the English sentence Mary thinks that Tom is a good singer has the third meaning?

My second question:
In my text above I used the word if. Was that correct? Or should I rather have used the word when?
And, if the correct word is if, did I use the correct grammatical forms when I used the present tense indicative mood of to say and to mean? -- Irene1949 (talk) 17:44, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

As for your first question: yes.

As for your second question: both "if" and "when" are grammatically correct, although "if" is (in my opinion) slightly more accurate.

As for your third question: yes.

HOOTmag (talk) 18:19, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Or as my German colleagues would say, Sehr gut. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:24, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Just a little addition: the English sentence has the third meaning, but can be given the second meaning in spoken English with intonation and facial expression. It's harder to give it the first meaning, and I think most native speakers would say something different instead. 86.142.224.71 (talk) 18:54, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your answers. :-) -- Irene1949 (talk) 20:25, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

@86.142.224.71 : actually, it's very easy to give it the first meaning, in the right context. Imagine, for example, that you're arguing with Jim about whether or not Tom is a good singer; Jim thinks Tom is a terrible singer, and you're doing everything you can to prove that Tom is a great singer. You can say, "Mary thinks Tom is a good singer"; putting stress on "Mary" like that, in this context (and probably also having a bit of a rising intonation at the end of the sentence), gives it the first meaning. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 20:32, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

That was the only way I could think of too, and it's really saying "Mary agrees with me", so I wasn't sure whether to count it. Outside that context, I couldn't think of one. 86.142.224.71 (talk) 22:52, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

The original German example actually reminds me of yet another Finnish expression I can't directly translate to English: the verb luulla, roughly meaning to believe something to be true when it's really not (at least the speaker thinks it's not). For example, Maryn mielestä Tom on hyvä laulaja means "According to Mary, Tom is a good singer" but Mary luulee että Tom on hyvä laulaja usually means "Mary thinks Tom is a good singer, but he's not". The "according to" construction is the most direct way to translate "Mary thinks" to Finnish, as Finnish has no single verb directly corresponding to "think" in this sense. The closest approximation would be Mary uskoo että Tom on hyvä laulaja, meaning "Mary believes Tom is a good singer". Mary tietää että Tom on hyvä laulaja means "Mary knows that Tom is a good singer", where the speaker asserts that Tom being a good singer is a universal fact. The weird thing about luulla is that depending on context, it can also mean "suspect", usually when the speaker is talking about him/herself. For example, luulen että Tom on hyvä laulaja means "I suspect Tom is a good singer, but I can't be sure", not "I falsely believe Tom to be a good singer, when I should know he's not". Also, mitä luulet? is a very popular question in Finnish, meaning "what do you think (about this)?", not "what do you falsely believe to be true?". On the other hand, it's entirely possible to say, for example, lapsena luulin että keijuja on olemassa, meaning "as a child, I thought faeries existed (now when I'm an adult, I have realised they don't)". JIP | Talk 19:08, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Parents

I was sitting in French the other day and it occured to me that pere (father in French) was similar to the word parent in English. Furthur French deduction led me to think that -ent was similar to the -ent ending in plural verbs (ils parlent). Just out of curiousity, is there any proof that "parents" literally means "father plus others"??EVAUNIT^{神の人間の殺害者} 18:58, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

None whatsoever. Here is the etymology. French 'pére' comes from Latin 'pater'. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 19:13, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

-ent in French has nothing to do with -ent in English (in French it's a grammatical inflection, in English it has no meaning whatsoever, it's just a sequence of letters). As for your last question... a more common thing to see is languages that don't have a word for parents but just say "father+mother". For example, Chinese uses 爸爸妈妈 or 父母 (both literally mean "father mother"), and Uyghur uses ata-ana (same thing). I imagine editors with more language background can name other languages that do this. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 20:37, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Chinese actually has '家长' ('head(s) of household') and '双亲' used to mean 'parents'. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 22:06, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

True, but AFAIK 家长 has some extra meaning (for example, if I were a kid, my schoolteacher might want to send a note to my 家长, meaning my dad--I've never seen it used to refer to just parents in general and in an unmarked way). Never heard 双亲 before but it makes sense...not sure how often it's used in informal speech, though? (But since I'm not a native speaker, you can take all of the above with a grain of salt ;) ) rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:43, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that is why I added the clarification that it actually means 'head of household', after all, some people unfortunately don't have dads or are otherwise living with other relatives.'双亲' is used, though it's not an extremely common word in normal speech - your examples would be more common, but that doesn't mean that words for 'parents' do not exist in Chinese, as you were stating - they are just not very commonly used. --KageTora - SPQW - (影虎) (talk) 12:48, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Are you sure that parere, "to bring forth", "to beget" (i.e. "to father") is not derived from the same root as pater? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:13, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes. [8], [9]. To Rjanag's point, 100 years ago Irish had no word for "parents", but one just said "father and mother". But since Irish has started to be used in schools and official documents and the like, they revived a long-obsolete Old Irish word to serve as the word for "parents". +Angr 21:29, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm still not totally convinced. But one thing I found interesting is that in the link given by KageTora, it said that "parents" replaced "elders" in common usage. The old saying, "respect your elders", presumably then referred specifically to parents, more so than just those in one's parents' generation in general. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:42, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

-ent in the French word parlent is a grammatical inflection that is usually needed for the third person plural of a verb, the way -s in English is usually needed for the third person singular of a verb.

Whereas -ents in the English word parents is supposed to be corresponding to -entes in the Latin word parentes, where it is the grammatical inflection that is needed for the present participle of parere in the plural of the nominative case (the way -ing is needed in English). -- Irene1949 (talk) 22:17, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

And likewise in the French word parent, but not (for example) vent ('wind'). —Tamfang (talk) 00:24, 23 November 2009 (UTC)