Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 June 3

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June 3

Simple present tense for constant actions?

Which one is more correct?

• She said I have to stay here.
• She said I had to stay here.
• She says I have to stay here.

• It was discovered that unobtainium reacts with idontknowium to form fancyschmancyium.
• It was discovered that ~ reacted with ~ to form ~.
• It is discovered that ~ reacts with ~ to form ~.

I use the ~ to denote a trivial word. I just want to understand the grammar. I don't care about the nouns in the sentence. Hopefully, the ~ will make the sentence less distracting. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 05:30, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

All six sentences are allowable, but the first three sentences all have different meanings. The fourth and fifth sentences have basically the same meaning. The sixth sentence has a flavor of "scientese" -- some people will dislike it, but parallel sentences occur all the time in scientific papers... See Sequence of tenses for the general linguistic phenomenon. AnonMoos (talk) 07:48, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, "is discovered" is quite unusual; it would intentionally be used only in a specific context or if the user were trying to emphasise something in particular, such as the recency of this discovery perhaps. In this scientific context, "reacted" gives a sense of the situation being temporary, and since obviously the chemical relationship between unobtainium and idontknowium doesn't change from moment to moment, it would probably be used, again, to emphasise some temporary situation. The most normal wording is the first one, because if you ran the experiment enough times to publish it somewhere, you're suggesting that this is always the case, so the statement is timeless. Nyttend (talk) 10:49, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Staying here: (1) That gives a sense of reporting the beginning of an ongoing situation. "Two years ago, she said I have to stay here, and I've not yet left." (2) That gives a sense of reporting the past. "Two years ago, she said I had to stay here, so I didn't leave until the following day." (3) That gives a sense of reporting something new. "Fred, I can't come home until tomorrow, because Angela's really unhappy, and she says I have to stay here with her tonight." Nyttend (talk) 10:52, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

• I would say that the fourth and fifth sentences have different meanings. It was discovered that unobtainium reacts with idontknowium to form fancyschmancyium. means that this is a timeless property. But It was discovered that ~ reacted with ~ to form ~. means that the reaction occurred on that specific occasion in the past. Loraof (talk) 14:12, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Sentences 4 and 5 could have different meanings in certain contexts, but if no such context is specified, then pragmatically they would be interpreted with basically the same meanings. AnonMoos (talk)

• May I mention in passing that it bugs me when fiction puts timeless truths in past tense? The universe was big, really really big. —Tamfang (talk) 11:27, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Arabic chemistry and physics

Why does the Arabic word كيمياء /kīmiyāʾ/ (a loanword, allegedly from Greek) have a final hamza (glottal stop)? Another loanword with a final hamza is فيزياء /fīziyāʾ/. I believe there may be some other loanwords which have a final hamza. Any explanations?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 11:09, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

I believe -- though I'm not sure -- it's because without that hamza, they would be read like /kimiya/ (کیمیَه) and /fiziya/ (فیزیَه) (not kimiyA and fiziyA). Omidinist (talk) 19:00, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

I agree, but I think, without the hamza, they would be read /kimyá/ and /fizyá/. To get closer to /kimíya/ and /fizíya/, the hamza is added. There are some interesting papers on Arabic transcription of loanwords, such as Morphophonemics of loanwords in Arabic and Morphophonemics of loanwords in Arabic. —Stephen (talk) 20:19, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

I know the stress in Arabic varies greatly across the varieties, but mustn't here the penultimate heavy syllable (or the ultimate if in a pausal form) be stressed, that is /-`yāʾ(un)/? Thanks for the links, though (I wonder why I have not found that myself, I must have used wrong keywords). And after some consideration I have got a possible explanation. How indeed are those words supposed to add the case endings if not having a consonant between? There is another loanword which has been adopted into the existing Arabic class of abstract feminine nouns, وقية /wiqiyya(tun)/ (from Latin uncia). But with "chemistry" and "physics" they have just added a hamza. P. S. I've just searched through a dictionary and found other loanwords that do not seem to require a final hamza: أنطولوجيا "ontology", أنتروبولوجيا "anthropology", أيديولوجيا "ideology", أوركسترا "orchestra", etc. I'm confused.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 15:09, 4 June 2017 (UTC)