Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 March 16

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March 16

Interesting ambiguity in "so happy that"

I'm wondering if there's a word for this distinction/ambiguity. It's a situation where you can only decipher the intended syntax (I think I'm using 'syntax' right) by knowing what the words mean and anticipating the most likely intention.

1. "I'm so happy that you're getting married."
2. "I'm so happy that I'm grinning ear to ear."

Obviously, in the first case, the impending marriage causes the happiness, while in the second, the happiness causes the grinning. But the actual phrasing is identical! What's going on here? Is there a word for the general phenomenon of the meaning being super-context-dependent like this (eg: "This town is safe" vs "This child is safe"), or for the specific phenomenon of this "so happy that" (or "so angry that", etc) thing? ± Lenoxus (" *** ") 01:07, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, I was so confused that I couldn't find the answer to this one. I think there's no word for the phenomenon, since I've studied several languages (to a very elementary degree) and read language puzzles and even a tiny bit of a linguistics textbook, and never heard of such a term. The grammar, logic and idiom of all languages fuse somewhere. I'll try and find some good examples to highlight it, but it is always just called "context" whenever I've read about it. IBE (talk) 07:41, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

My favorite example of that is "Fruit flies like an apple, whereas time flies like an arrow". (Admit it, that made you think of "time flies" being some kind of insect which passes in and out of various temporal dimensions.) StuRat (talk) 08:05, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Of course we have an article on that, with links to syntactic ambiguity and garden path sentence, which may be of interest. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 10:29, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you all! These links seem like the closest possibilities. ± Lenoxus (" *** ")

It's a question of subgrouping:

1. "I'm so (happy that you're getting married)."
2. "I'm (so happy) that I'm grinning ear to ear."

μηδείς (talk) 19:21, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

The ambiguity resides in the so, I believe. The adverb so can mean "to such an extent", in which case it has to be followed by an (expressed or implied) that (just as to such an extent does): "I'm happy to such an extent that I'm grinning ear to ear." This usage could be found with any adjective whose meaning is consistent with a wide range of degrees being degrees (so not "binary" adjectives like unique and pregnant): "The music is so loud (that) it hurts my ears." But so can also be used to mean "to a great extent" without any basis of comparison, in which case it doesn't need to be followed by a that-clause ("That music is so loud!"); however, certain adjectives can take a that-clause as a complement, including adjectives of emotion like happy, sad, angry, sorry etc.: "I'm happy that you're getting married"; "I'm sad that the Harry Potter series of movies is over"; "I'm angry that I failed the test"; "I'm sorry that your dog died"; etc. And these adjectives can of course be modified by the so meaning "to a great extent": "I'm so happy that you're getting married". And of course it's possible for the "to such an extent" so to be followed by two that-clauses, one that's a complement of the emotion adjective and one that's the complement of the so, as in "I'm so happy that you're getting married that I'm grinning ear to ear." Angr (talk) 19:37, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

This ambiguity may be why traditionalists would use a comma in the second of the OP's examples: "I'm so happy, that I'm grinning ear to ear". -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 21:43, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

They would? That looks to me like the kind of mistake Germans writing English often make. If I saw that in a text I was able to edit, I would remove the comma. Angr (talk) 22:13, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Maybe I'm getting this confused with the construction "He was such a happy person, that he was often found grinning from ear to ear". Would you be more accepting of the comma there? -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 22:59, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Not really, no. Maybe I'm just more commaphobic than you are. Angr (talk) 17:41, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Hmmm, an irrational fear of commas, eh. We don't give medical advice here. See a shrink, best thing I can tell you. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 00:24, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, be sure not to get do-do-down dooby-do-down-down comma-comma down-dooby-do-down-down. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:16, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Here is an ambiguous sentence.

• We were encouraged to have a long vacation.

—Wavelength (talk) 17:59, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

1. 1 is implying "to hear" or "to know" after happy so I think its not a proper usage. Otherwise #2 could mean that the grinning caused the happiness. Maybe he/she was unable to do it for some reason (temporary paralysis).165.212.189.187 (talk) 13:34, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Accent

Can anyone comment on the accent of the woman on the left in the orange dress in the clip at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsoN-JNVRu8? I believe she is from Montreal. She has a way of saying certain words that sounds quite unfamiliar to me (I am from the UK), and sometimes quite hard to understand. I wondered if her English pronunciation might be French-influenced, but actually it sounds nothing like a French accent to me, so I am a bit stumped. 81.159.104.4 (talk) 03:48, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

She sounds like an American from the Deep South or Appalachia who's had some voice training and is trying so hard to overcome her normal accent that she doesn't quite sound like she's from anywhere. Her /o/'s are very fronted as you get in a Southern or Midland American acccent. μηδείς (talk) 04:08, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

I thought I picked up a trace of New York. But as you say, she's apparently had voice training. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:10, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

I think the long o sound of words rhyming with home and so as "eh-oo" ([ɛʊ]) is strongly diagnostic as US Southern or Midlands. (North American English regional phonology) New Yorkers and Canadians have a nice normal back [oʊ] for that vowel. I was mocked in NYC enough for saying that vowel myself in the Southern way that I developed code switching. μηδείς (talk) 04:29, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Early on, where the lady in red says "...this is home fuh me..." sounded New York-ish. I see what you mean about the o's, though. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:47, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, it seems the Montreal connection is a red herring then? Her biog refers to her as a "renowned Montreal fashion designer". Of course, I guess she could have adopted Montreal as her home and been brought up somewhere else entirely. 86.128.6.0 (talk) 12:27, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

I am not going to say that she doesn't have a Montreal accent, although I don't recognize that. There's nothing that stands out to me as indicating anything to do with French. It just doesn't sound "pure" anything and there are little bits that pop out and say "American South"--and that could include the "fuh" that Bugs points out. Montreal obviously has a bit more marketing cachet than, say, Mobile. μηδείς (talk) 16:34, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

I can't listen to this at the moment, but she could be a native English speaker from Montreal without any trace of a French accent. (I can't imagine that an Anglophone Montreal accent would ever be confused with the accents mentioned above, though.) Adam Bishop (talk) 18:32, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

I get the video fine, but there's no sound. I'm encountering this problem quite a bit lately: videos that have sound, but which doesn't come through on my speakers. I can access some videos where the sound is fine, so it's not a general problem. I've checked all the settings I can think of and nothing seems to be amiss. Can anyone suggest what I'm doing wrong? -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 21:38, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

She's native Montreal See the cached bio from 2008 here. I don't see why she can't be a Quebecoise who just developed a strange English pronunciation through practice. With a name Mendelson, think perhaps Yiddish or Hebrew: these are learned as first-languages to some extent in Côte Saint-Luc and Hampstead. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 21:57, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

That's interesting, but none of it says anything about her having any connection with Canada before 1995, and Torontoans (where she went to school according to that source) don't have fronted /o/ vowels. So, no. μηδείς (talk) 22:12, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

It says she attended LaSalle College and graduated in 1982, and further down on the same page it calls her a "Montreal native". Angr (talk) 22:19, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, well, I'm a NY native and have a SJ accent. If only Fete were here he could tell us if she had an actual Montreal accent. I'd love a link to another Montrealer talking like she does. μηδείς (talk) 02:51, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm an anglophone Montrealer, and she does sound a bit strange to me. While she doesn't speak English in a way that would be typical for Montreal English-speakers of British descent, her English is too good for it not to be at least a quasi-native language for her. She absolutely doesn't sound French Canadian - I think that can be ruled out. The few French Quebecers who speak English as well as she does don't sound like that. It's likely she's from Montreal and her English is influenced by a native language other than English or French. She may have been born in Montreal or arrived there and learned her English starting in later childhood, which would explain why it's a bit odd. Her lack of r's might simply be explained by her having learned English late, rather than having a weakly rhotic native variety. Alternatively, [edited].

Generally, descendants of immigrants in Montreal retain their heritage languages more frequently than in the rest of Canada. (For example, it's quite common for Italian to be continued over three generations or more.) And while those born in Montreal always speak at least one of English or French well, they frequently speak it in a way that differs from the established British-descent (or French-Canadian) community. In the case of English, this is mostly due to geographic segregation and a situation in which French predominates, reducing the ability of the British-descent community to set the standard, so to speak, as happens in the rest of North America. Boberg has written about the persistent differences between Italian, Jewish and British/Irish Montreal English. (See the abstract of this talk to get an overview of some of his findings: http://neon.niederlandistik.fu-berlin.de/ss19/paper/622 )

Despite this woman having the name Mendelson, I don't think her English can be considered typical of anglophone (Ashkenazi) Jews in Montreal, based on my experience. So my best guess is that her parents are immigrants and she grew up speaking one language at home and within her ethnic group but English at school and in the wider community. I can't identify the language. If she does speak French, it's more likely to be because of Sephardic Jewish roots (despite the Ashkenazi last name) than any connection with French Canadians. At one time, it was common for francophone Sephardic Jews to attend Protestant-run English-language schools (when our school system was still denominational), and this would be one way to explain a near-perfect mastery of English but with some peculiarities. 64.140.122.180 (talk) 09:42, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

None of that explains why she has certain diagnostic features of American Midlands or American South dialects like the [ɛʊ] pronunciation of the /o/ vowel. You don't get that from a "foreign" accent (some Brits like Maggie Smith have it--but it's not typical of any other European language). You get it from having lived where it is typical of English accents. μηδείς (talk) 18:06, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Look at this: Grew up in Hampstead: [1] Not a bad guess, I guess. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 21:01, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

I take it that means Hampstead, Quebec? μηδείς (talk) 21:38, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Reading the article on that town, it's apparently a Jewish enclave (84%) which would certainly explain the untypical accent, if not the fronted /o/'s as such. μηδείς (talk) 21:43, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, Hampstead, Quebec. Look at Jewish Montreal English fronting on /ow/: [2] --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 22:09, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Wow! Can't get more definitive than that.... μηδείς (talk) 23:16, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

The way she speaks is quite different from most Montreal Jews. Click on the recordings of Brenda Fayerman and Brenda Kastner on this map to hear what a typical Jewish Montreal accent sounds like. [3] I don't think either of them is comparable to Kim Mendelson's accent.

Medeis, what I wrote above was not to give an entire explanation of why her accent sounds the way it does. Just that her accent is different enough from most anglophone Montrealers' that there has to be a non-native element to it, or [edited]. You say that this was likely picked up in another English-speaking locality. Some aspects of her speech do suggest that, but honestly, there is a slight lack of fluency in her articulation of words that can't be explained if that's the only factor involved.96.46.200.216 (talk) 02:39, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Obviously there are all sorts of possibilities, and I will grant the way she speaks strikes me as odd accentwise, but while identifying specific observable traits like her r-dropping and fronted /o/'s and relating them to traits of certain dialects is fine, I think our speculating on organic causes would fall on the wrong side of OR and, especially, BLP. μηδείς (talk) 02:54, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

PS, Fayerman's remark on how she pronounces "embarrassed" is interesting, and her speech sounds much more US midlands/NYC to me than it does Canadian or Northern. Kastner's 'eye' vowel is very distinctive. If our subject self-consciously tries to get rid of such vowels it could lead to he sounding the way British actors do when they fake an American accent and come out sounding half Brooklyn, half Texas. μηδείς (talk) 03:04, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

In article space, you're right that this would be OR, and certainly a problem from the point of view of BLP. Out of caution, I've removed what I wrote. However, it's also clearly not defamatory, because I'm not claiming to be basing this suggestion on anything other than my own interpretation of what we all hear in that clip, or implying that I have any special knowledge of her, quite the contrary.

Fayerman's comment about embarrassed would be applicable to all anglophone Montrealers, not just Jewish ones. We all distinguish marry and merry, unlike most Canadians. Some Jewish Montrealers do have a pronunciation of the eye vowel that tends towards what most North Americans would hear as oy.96.46.200.216 (talk) 03:19, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Arabic help

Hi! Is "تتقدم شركة الخطوط الوطنية الكويتية (ش.م.ك)" meaning "Kuwait Wataniya Airways (K.S.C.)" in Arabic? Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 16:04, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

You have added a random word in there: تتقدم. This is a verb that means 'presents' hence the phrase translates into "Kuwait Wataniya Airways (K.S.C.) presents ..." _{Hia10 (talk) 17:39, 16 March 2013 (UTC)}

The position of the brackets ")" in the Arabic text is very odd. Is it how you bracketize in standard Arabic? Just really curious. --Lgriot (talk) 09:07, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Actually it's problems with the Unicode bidirectional algorithm. They were very proud of it in the early 1990s, and I'm sure it was a great advance over what was in use at the time, but experience in open-editing environments on the Internet over the last ten years or so has revealed some definite idiosyncrasies and peculiarities. There was a recent proposal to revise the "Bidi" algorithm to fix URLs with RTL characters, but I'm not sure it will address the range of unexpected behaviors seen on Wikipedia... AnonMoos (talk) 17:43, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! WhisperToMe (talk) 07:40, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Chilton pronunciation

Is there any place in the UK where the first syllable of the name "Chilton" would be pronounced like "shell" rather than "chill?" 99.140.253.109 (talk) 20:21, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

The pronunciation of names is not decided by geographical location or dialect. It is decided by the preference of the bearer of the name. The two pronunciations, however, appear to have been interchangeable in older times. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 23:53, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

I disagree, at least at the level of automatic accent differences. If an Englishman tells me his names is [tʃɑːlz ˈrɒbət ˈnjuːmən], it is still perfectly correct for me as an American to refer to him as [tʃɑrlz ˈrɑbɚt ˈnuːmən]. No one expects people to suddenly use a different accent from their own just to pronounce a person's name. Angr (talk) 22:06, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

I can agree with little changes in pronunciation like that, but I believe in the case of the OP's question, it is referring to the difference between variants, such as 'Chilton', 'Shelton', 'Shilton', 'Sheldon', and not mere differences in vowel quality, presence or absence of rhoticism, and the like. This is why a particular name was specified (and 'Robert' is /'rɔbət/ in BE). KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 23:23, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Is there any Brit location where "chill" and "shell" are pronounced interchangeably? 99.140.242.23 (talk) 19:15, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Nonsensical Arabic sentence

Hi. Recently, I created a phrase in Arabic by typing in syllables using the marhaban transliteration on Google Translate. The phrase apparently makes no sense grammatically (as with almost all foreign language phrases created using this method), but translated metaphorically and with help from native Arabic speakers, it resembles something like: "Fight me once, and you have two choices. Choose peace, and peace will be upon you a thousandfold." Can anyone decipher it?
شدنى فعلكم محاربة جواد عليكم بوخارين ألف سلام

Thanks,

~AH1 ^(discuss!) 21:10, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

I've noticed quite a few Twitters, forum posts, etc., beginning with I've created a phrase in Arabic ... شدنى فعلكم محاربة جواد عليكم بوخارين ألف سلام

I'm guessing that's you?     Anyway, the best that I can do is try Google translate, which is:   Attracted me your reaction to the fight against Jawad you Bukharin thousand peace

...uhm, I like your translation better. If you're looking for a similar idiom in English, nothing immediately comes to mind, but I'm sure others will have suggestions. ~:74.60.29.141 (talk) 03:29, 17 March 2013 (UTC):~