Language desk
< March 1	<< Feb \| March \| Apr >>	March 3 >

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 2

Expressing emotions in tonal languages

I am not a linguist, but how is emotion such as anger or sadness expressed in tonal languages such as (I think) Mandarin? In english the tone of voice would help express emotion, but is some different system used in tonal languages? Thanks 92.15.29.32 (talk) 01:51, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Tonal languages are not based on "absolute pitch", and still allow ample expression of emotion (though there may be certain minor complexities involved with singing, and such languages may tend not to have the strong "free" emphatic/contrastive pitch accent of English -- but French and many other non-tonal languages don't have the strong "free" emphatic/contrastive pitch accent of English either)... AnonMoos (talk) 03:08, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think the OP has a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of a tonal language, as least as Mandarin is concerned. Tone here does not refer to tone as in tone of voice. There is no less variation in Mandarin in tone of voice (contrasting pitch and volume and prosody) than in English. This is a large part because Chinese has contour tones, not register tones (sadly, those links lead to the same article). The difficulty the OP describes may be present in languages with register tones. 72.128.95.0 (talk) 03:50, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think there's too much of a misunderstanding on the part of the OP and his conjecture is natural; the layman's notion of "tone of voice" does include pitch (although it's not restricted to it). The fact is that the four lexical "tones" of Mandarin (high level, rise, fall-rise, fall) do resemble different intonational pitch accents in English or other intonation languages, and since those intonational pitch accents do indeed help express different things in intonation languages, we can't avoid the conclusion that Mandarin is forced to do without these particular means of expression. The difference between contour and register tone is not very relevant, I think; both pitch levels and pitch movements can be used expressively in intonation languages, and as soon as they are lexical, that tool becomes unavailable (also, even "contour tone languages" often have several level tones or distinctions based on "absolute" height, although Mandarin specifically is not a good example of that). However, as others have pointed out, there are so many other ways to express emotion and other pragmatic subtleties that in practice speakers of tonal languages have no problem doing it; even in intonation languages a pitch accent per se is not enough to express anything. It's not just that there are other ways than pitch; even with lexical pitch distinctions, you can still find plenty of workarounds and manage to preserve the distinctions while also manipulating your pitch expressively. For example, you can make the correct pitch movements (rise, fall) or use the correct pitch levels (high, low, middle) while increasing the size of the pitch excursion and exaggerating both the high and the low parts, or transposing them all upwards or downwards.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 12:51, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There are still other ways to express emotion, including other forms of prosody (loudness, speech rate), word choice ("fuck you!"), and body language. I've had Mandarin speakers angry at me before and they have no trouble getting it across! rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:31, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"The" in front of a person's name

Translating Jeffery Deaver's Edge, I found the sentence as following. "I am, of course, the Henry Loving of his life."

'Henry Loving' is the enemy of the speaker.

If not for 'the', I would have tried to find what 'am' represents. It seems 'the' has a special meaning here.

Please help. --Analphil (talk) 06:55, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If "Henry Loving" is the speaker's enemy, then it would seem he's using "Henry Loving" as a synonym for "enemy", which naturally requires "the" in front of it. Using someone's name this way is not unusual in English. Maurice Richard could have been called "the Babe Ruth of hockey", for example, as they were both highly prolific scorers in their respective sports. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:59, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's very common to use "the" with a personal name when the personal name is being used metaphorically like that. Examples: "The Elizabeth Taylor of the Jihad" (from www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2311797/posts, not directly linkable because freerepublic.com is blacklisted), "Being called the Brad Pitt of the blogosphere didn't hurt either", "Natalie is the Audrey Hepburn of our generation", and so on. —Angr (talk) 07:08, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

'Henry Loving'='speaker's enemy'. That seems right. Thank you.--Analphil (talk) 07:13, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Chinese translation

The following terms all mean have sex in Chinese, but what is the difference, if any, between them? What would be the best way to translate each term into English? 做愛做的事,嘿咻,炒飯,上,共赴巫山 AngelicVoices (talk) 09:47, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure how 做愛做的事 means having sex. Certainly 做愛 is a literal translation of the English "make love", but 做愛做的事 seems to me to mean "do what one loves", where "do" has no connotation of sex and "what" is a task rather than a person or inanimate object. Is it a clever way to disguise 做愛 in a longer phrase so as to beat the censors?

嘿咻 is an onomatopoeia representing physical effort, poronounced "hei-xiu" - a bit like "hey-yo" or "heave-ho" or "heigh-ho". wikt:嘿咻 seems to explain its usage as a euphemism quite well, although 嘿咻 appears to be a Taiwanese regionalism

炒飯 is another Taiwanese regionalism, literally "frying rice". Google 嘿咻vs炒飯 and there are quite a few blog posts discussing the difference between these two expressions.

上 literally means "mount" in this context, and has largely the same sexual connotations of the latter in English.

共赴巫山 is a much more literary euphemism. Literally "go together to Mount Wushan". There doesn't seem to be a Wikipedia article on Mount Wushan, but it translates literally as "Shaman/Witch/Warlock Mountain", and is the subject of much folklore. The particular literary reference here is to the poetry of the Chu kingdom, the Chu Ci (see, specifically, 高唐赋 and 神女赋), which recounts a story told by Song Yu to the King Qingxiang of Chu - that the previous King Huai of Chu once dreamed of a beautiful woman, who said she was the daughter of Mount Wushan. She told the king that she was willing to give the king her bed and pillow. The king made love to her, and when they parted, she said that he could find her on the south side of Wushan, and that she was a cloud in the morning and rain in the evening. The Goddess Peak of Mount Wushan, which is visible from Wu Gorge, one of the Three Gorges of the Yangtze, is identified with her. A number of customary phrases which serve as euphemisms for sex in Chinese derive from this story, including 共赴巫山 as mentioned, but also 朝云暮雨 ("cloud by day and rain by night"), 巫山云雨 ("the clouds and rain of Wushan"), and simply 云雨 ("clouds and rain"). --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 11:20, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Escape to Witch Mountain, eh? Puts a whole new light on what Tia and Tony were up to... —Angr (talk) 22:50, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yikes, they'd need to be careful with translations if this is ever marketed into China. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 16:29, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Elvedin (given name)

Recently, I stumbled over the given name Elvedin and wonder abut the meaning of this name. It occurs from Slowenia to Serbia as a name for boys. On unreliable baby name sites I found the following explanations: 1 El-ve-Din (turkish/arabic) Hand-and-Faith 2 Ilvudin (arabic) Gift. I don't think that either of these two explanations holds, because I could not locate the name for turkish or arabic people and the pattern used in (1) is not productive for turkish names. Has someone an explanation? Is there a natural slavonic derivation of the name? Elbowin (talk) 10:24, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It is a Bosniak (Muslim) name; there is some information at Bosniaks#Surnames and names. While I'm from the area and know a lot of names, I'm not too familiar with onomastics. However I would say that there are certain names among Bosniaks which are absent from modern Turkish and Arabic namestock; they were possibly retained from the time of Ottoman rule, or maybe have always been local inventions (but I'm speculating). One more familiar to me is Elmedin: this site says (and Google search confirms) that it is mainly Bosnian and Albanian; they also have an entry for Elvedin, giving the origin from Arabic "Hand des Glaubens" (Hand of Faith?).
What I can say with certainty that it does not contain any Slavic influence. As our article explains, some Bosniak common names do have Slavic origin or influence (Zlatan, Avdo, Mujo), but not this one. No such user (talk) 10:42, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I live in Slovenia and I must say I've never heard that particular name before, but the Slovene statistics office confirms it exists in Slovenia - there's not too many of them, but they certainly exist. It appears it was particularly popular from the 70s to the end of the 80s, not so much lately. Oh yeah, and I can confirm everything No such user says, it would be Bosniak, and it doesn't sound like it has Slavic influences, but it could be a name with a particular history that binds it to this region of the Balkans. TomorrowTime (talk) 12:47, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure it isn't a borrowing from English? Elveden (pron. el-VEE-den) is a village in Suffolk known best for being the country seat of the Earls of Iveagh, who are the Guinness family (known for beer, world records, etc.). --NellieBlyMobile (talk) 23:40, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure of anything. Thanks to No Such User and TomorrowTime for excluding a slavonic explanation. So it is borrowed from somewhere, but we don't know from where. I considered the similarity to Elmedina, but how can an 'm' mutate to a 'v'? Is Elveden used as an english first name? Sometimes english first names reappear in quite unusual spellings in a slavonic context, e.g., Ivelina (from Evelyn). Another possibility: Is there a literary figure (or a folk tale figure) named Elvedin? Elbowin (talk) 12:49, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Stuttering and Slurring

The term stuttering and slurring have different meanings, however, it is noticed that "stuttering or slurring of speech" is used commonly, which also means that stuttering and slurring have same meaning. So when it comes to description of speech, do stuttering and slurring i.e. two different words, do they have the same meaning, do they have same sound and effect. Is stuttering and slurring one and the same thing?

aniketnik (talk) 13:06, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No. People who are drunk may slur. Kings may stutter. Kittybrewster ☎ 13:17, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As above. Also, I'm curious why you think stuttering and slurring must have the same meaning just because they're often used in conjunction like that. If anything, their use together should indicate that they're distinct yet related in some way (as they are, as both involve speech difficulties). Matt Deres (talk) 13:51, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ditto. "Stuttering or slurring of speech", in context, means "either stuttering or slurring", not that the two words have identical meanings. Ghmyrtle (talk) 14:01, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Linguistics

Hey all. I am a first year linguistics student and I'm working on some homework consisting of a reading and then comprehension questions (I know, it's juvenile but it's to make sure we actually do the reading). One of the questions is: What is the Lenneberg hypothesis of language acquisition and how is it frequently cited incorrectly? I got the first part (it is the theory that there is a critical period from age ~3 to puberty when language learning occurs, after which language learning becomes very quickly more difficult), but there is nothing in the reading about the second. These questions are separate from the reading, prepared by the professor. Can anyone guide me to how the hypothesis is cited incorrectly? Thanks. 72.128.95.0 (talk) 22:34, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure whether our article Critical period hypothesis has the answer to your question, but it may be worth reading anyway. —Angr (talk) 22:48, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Have you checked your professor's lecture notes? In my experience, most professors will not give questions with answers that you can't figure out from the class materials, without explicitly saying so. rʨanaɢ (talk) 09:02, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

And many professors will give questions that you have to have been present in class and taking notes to answer correctly, rather than just doing the readings after either skipping class or spending the entire class period on Facebook. —Angr (talk) 15:38, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Lenneberg (1967) a highly cited work, and your professor probably does not intend that you sift through all works that cite it looking for errors. I agree with Rjanag, there are probably some hints/ leads in the class materials. You may already be aware of "Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax" [1]. A lesson in both cases is that just because a paper is cited doesn't mean that it is cited appropriately, and this mis-citation can propagate quickly through the literature, leading to 'well-known facts' that are completely unfounded. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:22, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Critical period hypothesis#Second language acquisition suggests a possible answer. Gandalf61 (talk) 15:30, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, it's not juvenile to ask questions about the reading. If you just read and then move on with life, you tend not to remember too much since the activity was too passive. One of the best ways to remember something you've read is to make it a bit more active of a process, pondering the implications of the ideas and all that. You probably should be doing something similar even if the professor doesn't give any questions to answer. Just my $/50, but still, it's valid.

Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 March 2

Contents