Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 November 16

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November 16

No one/Noone/No-one

Which of the following are correctly spelt (spelled?) and punctuated please?

a: No, one came to the party b: Noone came to the party c: No-one came to the party d: Spelt e: Spelled.

Advise me please.--85.211.134.39 (talk) 03:12, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Noone is always wrong, unless you mean an archaic spelling of noon. In general no-one is a Britishism. I think no one is acceptable on both sides of the Atlantic. Spelt is British (unless you mean the cereal grain), whereas spelled is American. --Trovatore (talk) 03:14, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Ah, but if Peter Noone came to the party, it would be right! --TammyMoet (talk) 08:24, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

I thought of mentioning that. No, really. --Trovatore (talk) 08:27, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Nobody is the safe alternative I use. And spelt. HiLo48 (talk) 03:24, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

I find nobody slightly more informal than no one; I would be reluctant to use it in very formal writing. --Trovatore (talk) 03:26, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

"No one" is proper and always correct. Many Americans do say both spelt as a past participle, as in "How is that spelt?" and spelled, as a preterite, as in "He spelled each word correctly". μηδείς (talk) 03:28, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

The past participle is used to form the passive as per your example "How is that spelt?", but an example that uses the present passive may not be the most useful here, as someone looking for a past tense verb won't find one, and that is potentially confusing, which detracts from the purpose of the example. Maybe "How was that spelt?" would be more efficacious? -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 03:46, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

I think you mean in Commonwealth English, though. I am not familiar with any use of spelt in American English, other than when it means spelt, a type of wheat. --Trovatore (talk) 03:52, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

You'll hear a lot of older past forms like leapt and crept and smelt and dreamt in free variation on the east coast (at least the Delaware Valley) that will often have been regularized further west. Certainly no one will think they're British! Although they might think they are incorrect, or substandard, ironically. μηδείς (talk) 04:06, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm a native Californian who has always used leapt and crept and dreamt and would find leaped and creeped and dreamed odd. Never used spelt, though, unless I'm referring to the grain. Which I never do. 216.93.234.239 (talk) 04:18, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Trovatore, funny you should say that. Before I became a regular here, I always spelt the past tense of "spell" as "spelled". But I was persuaded, mainly by Americans, that "spelt" was the standard now. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 06:09, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Those Americans probably had some ulterior motive. We're a wily lot, you know. --Trovatore (talk) 06:43, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

WoW, what fast results! Thanks85.211.134.39 (talk) 03:38, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't think anyone has mentioned that "No, one came to the party" is incorrectly punctuated (except in an unlikely interpretation that you clearly don't intend). There is no reason for that comma to be there. 86.171.42.231 (talk) 03:56, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Not necessarily.

We invited seventeen girls, and none of them showed up!

No, one came to the party.

--Trovatore (talk) 03:59, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that would be that "unlikely interpretation the OP clearly didn't intend" that 86.171 referred to. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 06:09, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

No one respondent has all the answers.

—Wavelength (talk) 06:28, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Accusative duplex Ancient Greek

I need to do a list of Accusative duplex, but I have maybe 5 verbs :διδάσκω, ἵστημι, λαβεῖν, νομίζω, λέγω. Can someone help me?--82.81.109.241 (talk) 14:13, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

This sounds like homework, so I am reluctant just to give answers. But the term "double accusative" is used, and a google search of "greek double accusative" returned several verbs in various articles you didn't name. I'd also try thinking of English verbs like "to name" that govern double accusatives and see if they also do so in Greek. μηδείς (talk) 18:24, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Even if it's homework, I don't think it hurts to point the OP to a source. (I don't believe I've ever heard the term "accusative duplex".) Deor (talk) 21:10, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Accusativus duplex or duplex accusativus seems to occur as the Latin name in some books.[1][2] Lesgles (talk) 21:24, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Can't help with the Greek, but it's a Latin term (accusativus duplex), since the concept also exists in Latin. (Usually with verbs with prefixes that, when otherwise separate pronouns, would take the accusative...if that helps here, I don't know.) Adam Bishop (talk) 21:25, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

I've just heard "double accusative". (Somewhat related are the cases in which a verb has two objects, one of which is a clause. I had a Latin teacher who called these lilies-of-the-field constructions, for obvious reasons.) Deor (talk) 21:50, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

This is not all that exotic, it occurs in English. "The king knighted him Sir Robert." "The president appointed her Ambassador to France." We just don't notice because except for the pronoun we don't decline the objects. μηδείς (talk) 03:56, 17 November 2012 (UTC)