Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 September 7

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September 7

Complexity in Proto-Indo-European

The Proto-Indo-European language, as reconstructed, shows certain kinds of complexity and regularities compared to languages descended from it. Comparing for example French, Latin, and Proto-Indo-European, there is an apparent trend (going backwards in time) to greater complexity in inflexions, but also greater regularity in word formation, so verb conjugation becomes more complicated but exceptions or irregular forms become less common, and words formed by compounding simpler forms become phonetically and semantically more like the simple composition of the individual elements.

Do linguists think that this an artificial quality resulting from the way that Proto-Indo-European was reconstructed, or do they think that Proto-Indo-European really had a high degree of regularity in word formation, and if so, does this suggest anything about the original speakers of the language or about any processes that contributed to the development of that language? Or is this perhaps an isolated phenomenon rather than a general trend in the Proto-Indo-European language family? Peter Grey (talk) 04:41, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

• PIE is not considered particularly complicated phonetically or grammatically compared to the NW or South Caucasian languages. The Ubykh language for example had about 80 phonemes and the grammar of the Georgian language verb is stunning. Much of the qualities of PIE can be explained as that of an Indo-Uralic language or Uralo-Siberian language speaking people invading the Caucasus from the Pontic -Caspian Steppe and having its vowel system reinterpreted by NW Caucasian language speakers, any of whose languages are interpreted as having a two vowel system comparable to PIE e-o-0 ablaut. See especially Kortlandt and Colarusso in the reference of the relevant articles. The existence of voiceless aspirates has been attributed to the influence of Sanskrit in reconstruction, it is almost universally rejected now. Whether there are two or three velar series is also an open question. Szemerenyi and Winfred Lehmann discussed that, and the evidence seems dubious, since no branch exhibits three veler series, and they existence of a contrast seems to be conditional. Gamkrelidze and Ivanov reanalyze the consonants along South Caucasian language lines.μηδείς (talk) 05:06, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Medeis, if you read more attentively the topic-starter was saying not about phonetics but rather about grammar and exactly said that PIE was (relatively to its descendants) quite simple and regular.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 05:51, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Medeis -- Winfred P. Lehmann semi-notoriously wrote a book in the early 1950s which reduced pre-Proto-Indo-European to having only one vowel (similar to some phonemic analyses of Kabardian), though I'm not entirely sure what this has to do with the original question... AnonMoos (talk) 13:21, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I may have read the question wrong, but if the assertion is that the protolanguage was simple or regular we know that is false. The traces of glottalics and laryngeals, doublets for fire and water, words like wolf and tongue, which don't have regular correspondences between the dialects and so forth belie any supposed simplicity.

In any case the articles and works cited are still helpful if one is interested in "the original speakers of the language or about any processes that contributed to the development of that language".

User:AnonMoos, any chance you can name the book? You're not talking about Pre-Proto-Indo-European, are you? μηδείς (talk) 18:11, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

I said "pre-Proto-Indo-European", didn't I? Look on pages 112-113 (section 15.6) of Proto-Indo-European Phonology for a summary (no ISBN because published in the 1950s). AnonMoos (talk) 22:16, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Yes, you did say that, which was what confused me, since Lehmann also wrote a book called Pre-Proto-Indo-European. But you have answered my question, thanks. μηδείς (talk) 17:02, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Oops, sorry it's just Pre-Indo-European. μηδείς (talk) 21:01, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm not an IEist (you'd better ask these people), but many languages went the way from isolational analytism to straightforward syntetism to obscure syntetism and backward to analytism and so on. It is some infinite living cycle of all languages. PIE is in the middle of this cycle, it's more agglutinative but less fusional than it's close descendants (like Latin), but many its grand-descendants are already analytic while some are on their way to analytism and others are still fusional syntetic.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 05:34, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

In a number of ways, reconstructed PIE is more quasi-agglutinative than the early attested "Classical" languages (Sanskrit, Greek, Latin), but it's always possible that PIE had other irregularities which have been completely smoothed out in attested daughter languages, and so now impossible to reconstruct... AnonMoos (talk) 13:38, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Yes, any attempt to reconstruct Classical Latin, with five or 7 cases, 6 declensions, 4 conjugations, a passive, four participles, and a huge lost vocabulary from the extant Romance languages would fail miserably. μηδείς (talk) 20:58, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

The Unfolding of Language by Guy Deutscher (linguist) is an interesting book about how languages develop and lose grammatical "complexity". AndrewWTaylor (talk) 10:43, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

It's a somewhat interesting book, but I'm not sure why the cover and subtitle give the idea that it's about the evolutionary origins of language, when it's not. The most interesting part for me, was the outline of how a language with Semitic-style abstract consonantal roots could develop... AnonMoos (talk) 13:49, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

I think that's just you reading something into the title that's really not there. The book is about the evolution of language, not the evolution of humans. And that is exactly what the title (and subtitle) suggest to me (for reference, the subtitle of my copy is "The evolution of mankind's greatest invention" - maybe other markets have other subtitles). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:50, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Many people would understand the phrase "Evolution of language" (singular with no article, as opposed to "Evolution of a language" or "Evolution of languages") as referring most naturally to the early origins of language -- and the similar impression given by the subtitle "An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention" (with the words "evolutionary tour" highlighted in red) is reinforced by the fact that there's a version of the famous crouching ape to striding man illustration on the cover... AnonMoos (talk) 22:25, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Aha - difference between the US edition and the international edition. The international edition shows parrots, apparently playing Chinese whispers, and has the subtitle I wrote above. Maybe the publisher tried to cash in on the shock value of "evolution" in the US. Probably not something you can blame the author for. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 06:26, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Etymology of Préservatif

Why is the condom called "Préservatif" in French? A number of European languages also follow this pattern. What's the etymology here?WinterWall (talk) 04:58, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Because it preserves you from sexually-transmitted diseases. One slang term for an condom in English is a "safe"; same idea. --Orange Mike | Talk 05:22, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Saves you (and society) from children, too. Literally preserves the state in which they're small enough to flush without guilt. Indirectly preserves economic and natural resources from those growing mouths. Herpes may be continual through life, but at least it's not continuous. InedibleHulk (talk) 06:33, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Well, Hulk, not literally "literally". Sperm cells are not a state of children. --65.94.51.64 (talk) 08:44, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Well, they're a state of half-children. --Jayron32 17:08, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

I was expecting that link to go to Schrödinger's cat. --Trovatore (talk) 21:53, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

See also wiktionary:prophylactic, which can be used with a very similar meaning - i.e. preventative. Mikenorton (talk) 19:50, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Term for half-sleep state

What is the technical name for the state wherein a person is awake (able to move and see his/her surroundings, scratch his/her itches, etc.), but feels similar to being asleep because s/he is thinking nonsensical thoughts? For example, one night I knew I was awake (scratching my itches successfully and all) but I had these thoughts that wouldn't leave me alone -- feeling I had something due at 3:27 a.m. as if I were thinking the crazy and illogical way people think when they're asleep. A little while after each one, I realized it was just nonsense and there was nothing to be concerned about. What's the word for that? Khemehekis (talk) 06:53, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

It may just be intense drowsiness while your brain starts up for the day. That can cause irrational thoughts and microsleeps. Though, it may also be a brief false awakening, in which your dream self stays in bed. The difference between those familiar surroundings and the ones you see when you truly wake up may be too slight to notice.

If you snap out of it while out of bed, it's far less likely one of those. You'd need to also be sleepwalking, and dream the same path by coincidence. Probably then just a slight delusion. InedibleHulk (talk) 07:16, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Just went down the Wikilink rabbit hole a bit, starting at unihemispheric slow-wave sleep (which may be the answer). Lots of interesting (though rather jargony) articles about choline acetyltransferase and stuff. May also be a useful pursuit. InedibleHulk (talk) 07:28, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

See also hypnopompic, which is more-or-less the situation you describe, and hypnagogia, which is the transition between being awake and asleep, when you're dreaming but still know you're awake. Tevildo (talk) 08:47, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Not so much "see also" as "the answer is". --65.94.51.64 (talk) 08:52, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the word "hypnopompic". I knew it had to do with the state after sleep and before wakefulness, but I never knew before that that such nonsensical thoughts were exactly what the word referred to! Khemehekis (talk) 04:43, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, much more accurate than "drowsiness". Thanks for the words! I've added them to that article's "See Also". InedibleHulk (talk) 09:22, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

I call that a zombie state. (I can get into one by using caffeine to keep my eyes open, even though my brain is clearly asleep at that point.) StuRat (talk) 13:39, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Grammar

Is it possible to search Wikipedia to correct a grammatical error. It drives me crazy when I read "Jack graduated from Stanford", or the like. An individual cannot graduate. They must be graduated. Proper: Jack was graduated from Stanford. If articles are edited for accuracy, proper grammar must be included in the edit. -- 21:37, 7 September 2014 208.66.212.58

Sorry, but that sounds like one of those ultra-pedantic theoretical language distinctions which is almost completely divorced from actual language usage. Some 18th or 19th century grammarians insisted that only men could "marry" (active voice) while women could only "be married", but that's not the way that actual spoken or written English ever worked. Anyway, if someone told me that they were "graduated", I might ask them whether they were a 500 milli-liter beaker! -- AnonMoos (talk) 22:09, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

I second AnonMoos. Language doesn't work that way. —Nelson Ricardo (talk) 23:16, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Similarly, to insist that "evacuation" means the expelling of faeces from one's bowels, and only that, would give the expression "evacuate the building" a new and challenging meaning, causing millions of police and emergency service workers quite a degree of consternation. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:40, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

One has to, in this context: no question mark after "error", and either "It drives me crazy to read" or "I go crazy when I read". In addition, the answer to the question is an unambiguous "No"; no amount of searching Wikipedia will correct any errors, grammatical or otherwise. One has to edit to correct errors (or add them). Tevildo (talk) 00:09, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

It is "Jack was graduated from Stanford" that sounds wrong to me, not the other way round. According to the graph here, the "was graduated" form had wide currency in the first half of the twentieth century, but has since been on a downward trend towards extinction. 109.147.185.178 (talk) 01:32, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

It's good to consult a dictionary with usage notes when such questions come up. The New Oxford American Dictionary says "The traditional use is “be graduated from”: she will be graduated from medical school in June. However, it is now more common to say “graduate from”: she will graduate from medical school in June. The use of graduate as a transitive verb, as in he graduated high school last week, is increasingly common, especially in speech, but is considered incorrect by most traditionalists." The American Heritage Dictionary says "Usage Note: Traditionally, the verb graduate denotes the action of conferring an academic degree or diploma, and this sense has often been conveyed in the passive voice, as in They were graduated from Yale in 2010. This usage still exists, though it is somewhat old-fashioned and may be slipping away. In our 1988 survey, 78 percent of the Usage Panel accepted this sentence, but almost half the Panel found it unacceptable in our 2006 survey. Nonetheless, this older use of the verb is both acceptable and widespread when the verb is expressed in the active voice and the institution is the subject: The university graduated more computer science majors in 2010 than in the entire previous decade. Another transitive use, in which the student is the subject and the institution is the object, as in She graduated Yale in 2010, does not find favor with the Panel. Some 77 percent objected to this usage in 1988 and again in 2006. The intransitive, and most frequent, use of the verb, as in They graduated from Yale in 2010, was ruled acceptable by 97 percent of the Panel in 2006." - Nunh-huh 05:09, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

... and the British OED says of this transitive usage "now rare except in the U.S." Their earliest cite for the modern intransitive usage is from Robert Southey: " Four years are then to be passed at college before the student can graduate." (1807). This is the standard usage in British English. Dbfirs 07:11, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

• Cylinders from school are graduated. People graduate from school. μηδείς (talk) 16:57, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

"Bad grammar" in early song lyrics

After hearing it for years and never noticing, it just struck me that the Scottish song "Loch Lomond" contains the line:

• But me and my true love will never meet again on the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond,

and not

• But my true love and I will never meet again on the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.

That sort of construction is unexceptionable in songs these days, but this song goes back quite a way (it was first published in 1841), to a time when grammar was generally somewhat more inflexible.

Would it be true that "bad grammar" has always had a place in song lyrics and poems, particularly where the demands of metre are paramount? What would be some very early examples? Why would the pedants among us be OK with these usages, while having a much sterner attitude when they occur in non-poetic contexts? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:18, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Poetic licence? (Someone had to say it.) HiLo48 (talk) 23:43, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

It's not bad grammar, it's dialect. "By yon bonnie banks an' by yon bonnie braes / Whaur the sun shines bright on Loch Lomond / Whaur me an' my true love will ne'er meet again / On the bonnie, bonnie banks o' Loch Lomon'" To ram "my true love and I" into there would sound dreadful. DuncanHill (talk) 01:23, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

It's not bad grammar, it's perfectly normal English that almost everybody speaks until educators get at them and start teaching them zombie rules. Joseph Emonds describes phrases like "my true love and I" as grammatically deviant prestige constructions, meaning that they deviate from any possible natural grammar of English. --ColinFine (talk) 21:05, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Really? Well, maybe we could debate the order of the first and third person subjects (My love and I vs. I and my love), but since when is using the accusative form of I ("me") where the nominative is required, "normal"? OK, it occurs in things like: "Who's there?" -- Me, etc. But if the Queen got up to make a speech and said "Me and my husband were delighted by ....", that would spell the end of the Empire, and the same would apply to any other public figure, or any context other than reporting the speech of bogans. People have great fun in objecting to the misuse of the nominative in "Between you and I ..."-type phrases, but they then defend the misuse of the accusative in "Me and my true love ...". Where's the consistency? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:22, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

ColinFine is right. The theory that "I" and "me" are nominative and accusative, and that the case distributes over "and", is evidently wrong since it doesn't match real-world usage. The actual rule seems to be that "I" is used in a few special situations, and "me" is the default used the rest of the time. Linguists don't like prescriptive grammarians, so they make fun of phrases that can be blamed on prescriptive grammarians, like "between you and I", but not those that can't, like "me and my true love".

This comment from Language Log has several examples of the use of "me" (and "him" and "them") in English where the Latin equivalent would be in the nominative. -- BenRG (talk) 07:11, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict)The difference between prescriptive grammar and descriptive grammar really boils down to whether you want the determination of "correctness" to come from consensus among the users of the language or if you want it to come from arbitrary rules justified on some contrived ideal of logic. In English you "can't" say "Me and Jack are going to the beach," using the accusative form of I. In French, you can't say "Jacques et je, nous allons à la plage", using the nominative form of "je". This sentence would be corrected by using the accusative, "moi". In fact, "Jacques et je" just sounds plain bizarre... While these are two different languages (obviously), it seems clear that in these examples the difference comes not from a logical mandate (either that only nominative pronounces can be part of the subject to form a coherent sentence or else that only accusative pronouns can be used in conjunction with another subject), but from something else. The reason that the Queen's use of "Me and my husband" would cause a stir would not be that she committed the linguistic equivalent of dividing by zero, but that social convention bars her, as the queen, from doing so. Nevertheless, if you are part of a community that is accustomed to using pronouns in this way, you will have no problem, and your use of that pronoun (within that community) will in no way negatively impact you or the meaning that you are trying to convey. On the contrary, if you use overly presciptive constructions in communities that don't expect them, you might end up shooting yourself in the foot as you come across as being overly elite and silly-sounding. The reason in French, I think, that you can't use the nominative "je" would be that people are not accustomed to hearing it said that way (no native speaker would use "je" in that case), so it is wrong based on usage patterns. It is all a matter of what you are used to and what you expect. Now, in the scope of this song, people tend to be accepting of this use of the pronoun, even when they normally wouldn't use it that way. I really can't see an argument for calling it "bad" in this case, especially if it took you years to even notice it. Falconus^{p t c} 07:26, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Minor point regarding the argument on the topic (where I'm with the descriptivists), but the distinctions of "je", "me", and "moi", are normally a bit different, and "moi" needn't be seen as an accusative form, certainly not in "Jacques et moi", see also disjunctive pronoun, French personal pronouns, or morphologie du pronom personnel en français on fr. wp. ---Sluzzelin talk 23:20, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Ben, I really don't see how one can possibly blame "Between you and I" on prescriptive grammarians. No such grammarian worth his salt would ever advocate or recommend such an atrocity. If people get confused between "You and I are good friends" (where "you and I" is the subject), and "Between you and me, ..." (where it's the object of the preposition "between"), that's a matter between them and their teachers. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 07:41, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

"Between you and I" is what linguists call a hypercorrection... AnonMoos (talk) 10:21, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

I knew that, and I also know that prescriptive grammarians, whatever else one may say about them, are not in the business of promoting hypercorrection. Very much the opposite. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:07, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

However, to always speak "correctly" according to prescriptivists' decrees, one would have to fully internalize rules of Latin grammar, or master semi-artificial distinctions, or learn and flawlessly make use of lists of individual words which begin with [h] vs. those that begin with a vowel sound, etc. Many people can't accomplish that, so they instead stick to cruder rules of thumb, such as "never conjoin the pronoun me with and", or "always add an [h] sound to the beginning of a word if it would otherwise begin with a stressed vowel", etc. This is what leads to prescriptivist-induced hypercorrections... AnonMoos (talk) 10:55, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Jack, this pairt frae a Scots grammar buik can be uissfu for thee. The uissage thoo mentionit is quite normal in Scots.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 07:21, 10 September 2014 (UTC)