Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 September 23

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September 23

"Just because ‹something› doesn't mean ‹something›"

This construction is very common, but is it technically a dangling modifier? --Theurgist (talk) 02:18, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Can a modifier be misinterpreted as associated with a word other than the one intended, or with no particular word at all? I'm not sure from that something something example.

If it were "Just because apples are red doesn't mean bulls charge them", I'd go with "That apples are red...". There's something not jibing between cause and meaning.

I'd use it like "Just because wearing a uniform doesn't make one above traffic law, a concerned citizen honked unnecessarily." Causes and effects go together nicely. InedibleHulk (talk) 03:44, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Hulk's last example uses the same words as the construction but is not an example of it. The expression is about what conclusions you can legitimately draw from a fact, not about what actions that fact gives you a reason to perform. A real example would be "Just because uniforms are pretty doesn't mean they give you authority". And what it really means is "Just because uniforms are pretty, you can't deduce that they give you authority." Or in more informal language, "Just because uniforms are pretty, that doesn't mean (that) they give you authority." In other words, the answer to the the question is no. The grammatical fault is not that a modifier is dangling with nothing to modify; it's that the subject of the verb "doesn't" is missing. --65.94.51.64 (talk) 06:44, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

It was an example of where I'd use "just because", rather than "that" (short for "the fact that"). That uniforms are pretty doesn't mean they give you authority. Just because some people think it does (not "they do"), others honk. InedibleHulk (talk) 02:26, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

How about "The fact that (something) doesn't mean that (something else)" Doesn't the whole "The fact that" phrase act as a subject for the predicate "does not mean"? I don't actually see anything strictly ungrammatical about the construction. My dictionary has the example sentence for the verb mean: "heavy rain meant that the ground was waterlogged" turn that around a bit to fit the OP's form, and you get "Just because there was heavy rain does not mean that there was also flooding" - again, seems fine to me SemanticMantis (talk) 17:04, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

I was thinking that "because" as a subordinating conjunction couldn't introduce a subordinate clause that serves as the subject of the main clause. --Theurgist (talk) 20:27, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

That's essentially agreement with what I said: the subject of "doesn't" is missing because the subordinate clause can't be it. --65.94.51.64 (talk) 09:00, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Question about tenses

Hi, Can you please read the following:

• God will redeem Israel from the captivity that began during the Babylonian Exile in a new Exodus

• God redeems Israel (i.e. the Jewish people) from the captivity that began during the Babylonian Exile, in a new Exodus.

Has it already occurred or will occur in the near future.

(Russell.mo (talk) 18:15, 23 September 2014 (UTC))

See Book of Isaiah#A new Exodus, Second Temple, Jewish eschatology, and Third Temple. Christian eschatological views also contains many useful links. It's safe to say that opinion is divided on the issue, and your question does not have a definitely correct answer. Tevildo (talk) 18:48, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

If your question is purely about the grammar of the sentences, see simple future for the first and simple present for the second. The first sentence refers to an event in the future (not necessarily the near future). The second sentence means something like "God is in the habit of redeeming Israel". To express the idea that He is redeeming Israel today, "God is redeeming Israel" (the continuous present) should be used. Tevildo (talk) 19:01, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Both answers were useful, thanks Tevildo -- (Russell.mo (talk) 19:27, 23 September 2014 (UTC))

The present indicative or simple present tense in English most often refers to habitual action, but that is not its only use, as our article explains. It also refers to unchanging situations, which I think is what is described in this passage. God's redemption is not a finite process that takes place in the present. Instead, God's redemption is unchanging and perpetual, for believers. For this reason, I think that the simple present, "God redeems..." is more appropriate here. Marco polo (talk) 19:56, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarity Marco polo, I inserted the information as "God will redeem/redeems..." in my article after acknowledgement prior to your message. -- (Russell.mo (talk) 01:04, 24 September 2014 (UTC))

Resolved

/ʌ/

Hello, in traditional English, the word cut is pronounced [kʰʌt], but it's pronounced [kʰɐt] in Modern English, why do speakers change their pronunciation ? Who ask to speakers to change their pronunciation ? Fort123 (talk) 22:46, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

What exactly do you mean by "Modern English"? Whatever variety you happen to speak or be immersed in is not what most others use, because no variety of English is used by a majority of English speakers. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:09, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Fort123 -- A few centuries ago, it was pronounced with [ʊ]! I don't know in which dialects it would be pronounced with [ɐ] -- certainly not in my speech. The "why" question is the same as why almost any sound change occurs, something which in general has not been fully satisfactorily answered... AnonMoos (talk) 23:14, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

P.S. It seems that Fort123 may be a recurrence of the person who has the long-running semi-pathological obsession with diphthongal pronunciations in Quebecois French... AnonMoos (talk) 23:27, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

I don't understand why British English's vowels have changed naturally. Fort123 (talk) 00:39, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Language is a social and cultural phenomenon, so vowels don't change naturally, but as the result of a social and cultural process. (That said, many changes in pronunciation involve patterns of change involving interference between adjacent sounds or the effects of changes in stress that have occurred the same way historically in unrelated languages and that result from patterns in the physiology of the human mouth.) Probably many language changes begin as the idiolect of an influential individual. The individual need not be widely known but merely influential within a local social sphere. (Slightly) divergent pronunciations can spread quickly from one locality to another. They can be a way for a social group (defined geographically by a region, socially by class or generation, or some combination of these) to assert solidarity and distinctiveness. In cases where that social group has prestige, the pronunciation may become the preferred, standard form for the social elite. Language change, including changes in pronunciation, is often a generational phenomenon, though it can also reflect a shift in prestige from one social group to another with distinctive linguistic patterns. Marco polo (talk) 01:54, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

It is not just British English's vowels, but the vowels of every single language in the world, given a bit of time. --Lgriot (talk) 08:38, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

The vowel in question has had a tendency of lowering and centralizing ever since it split off from the former short /ʊ/ phoneme in the foot-strut split in southern British English in the 17th century or so. The use of the phonetic symbols "ʌ" and "ɐ" actually illustrates part of this story. When the IPA transcription was defined, in the late 19th century, the symbol "ʌ" was defined as standing for an "open-mid back unrounded vowel, and apparently that was what words in the strut class were then pronounced like in RP English, so it became common to use that symbol in IPA transcriptions for English. Since then, in RP and most other mainstream varieties, the pronunciation has in fact changed further and is now mostly an open-mid or near-open central unrounded vowel. For this kind of sound, in correct narrow IPA transcription, the phonetic symbol "ɐ" would actually be more appropriate, but by force of convention the old "ʌ" symbol is still mostly found in dictionaries and pronunciation keys. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:04, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

I believe that the vowel is still [ʌ] in General American, which is the most mainstream variety in the United States. This vowel also prevails in most other American varieties. I think that the lowering is mainly a southern British phenomenon. (I don't know enough about Antipodean varieties to know whether they also have that lowering, but they are essentially southern British in origin, so it would not be surprising.) Marco polo (talk) 14:17, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

It's not so much the opening I'm talking about, but the centralizing. This [1] vowel chart for Midwestern/GA vowels, which we are quoting in our GA article, has a clearly central, not back, vowel, and a bit more open than the cardinal-vowel [ɛ-ɔ] reference level, so that would definitely be "ɐ"-like territory, very much the same as in the RP graphs I've seen in various places. There may of course be varieties where it's even more open, verging on [ä], but in either case, it's really no longer a [ʌ] in the strict sense of the IPA definition, which would have to be back. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:31, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

I have heard the tendency towards ɞ, ɐ and ä in some British regions, but the vowel is still ʌ in "BBC English", and still ʊ in my native (northern English) dialect. Dbfirs 22:02, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

All the descriptions of RP I've seen have a central, slightly-more-open-than-cardinal-ɛ/ɔ type of sound too (see for example the chart we are quoting from the relevant IPA article in our Received_Pronunciation#Vowels). Yes, that is "still ʌ", in the sense that it's the vowel quality that has conventionally been associated with the symbol "ʌ" in English phonology for a few decades, but it's still not the "ʌ" as actually defined in IPA. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:54, 27 September 2014 (UTC)