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

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May 3

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Tastes and flavors to describe personality

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A sweet person is someone agreeable and charming. A sour person is a spiteful person. A bitter person is a spiteful person. A bland or flavorless person is a boring person. A hot person is attractive, but there is no such thing as a spicy person. A warm person is enthusiastic and loving, but a lukewarm person is unenthusiastic. A bubbly person is lively. A cool person is an interesting person. A cold person is insensitive. For salty and umami tastes, are they ever used to describe people? How many tastes and flavors are there to describe people? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 02:12, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Salty is. See wikt:salty which gives two or three ways it is used to describe people. See also Salty dog (slang) for perhaps the most common of them.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 02:25, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
In the case of salty dog, sure. Someone with a choleric temperament would (if humoralism was true) be inclined toward salty speech. Ian.thomson (talk) 02:56, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Yes and no. Read what EO has to say about it.[1] ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:58, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) I can only assume that a lot of it has something to do with the Four temperaments of Humoralism (though some of the meanings, like "hot" have shifted slightly over time). It's not adequately covered in our articles and I'm rather frustrating myself in my inability to locate primary sources in my collection (then again, it was considered an elementary topic only somewhat tangentially related to the more bizarre fields that I study) -- but they believed that your diet affected the different magic fluids that determined your personality, and that the flavor of foods was a good indicator of how it would affect you. Some of the amusing squabbling between Giles and Sue on The Supersizers Eat... Medieval was because Giles wasn't supposed to eat some of his favorite flavors. This more or less qualifies as a reliable source. This site and this one are blogs that are overly credulous (and even WP:FRINGE at points), but the history of "people used to think that this flavor corresponds to this temperament" is reasonable enough for casual study. Ian.thomson (talk) 02:56, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I see. That explains why there is no umami personality. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 04:09, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe yes, maybe no. In olden times, a good-looking woman might be described as a "cute tomato". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 04:49, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Umami is sometimes considered to be a synonym for "savory", and here it is used as a personal trait meaning "morally wholesome or acceptable". --Jayron32 11:12, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
"...there is no such thing as a spicy person." -- To me, a spicy person is exotic, volatile, tempestuous and/or "hot" (sorry, can't find a source to corroborate). 107.15.152.93 (talk) 20:50, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
At least two definitions here could be reasonably applied to personality " of a slightly improper or risqué nature; somewhat sexy" and "full of spirit; lively." --Jayron32 13:21, 4 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Like that well-known Egyptian strumpet, "The Sauce of the Nile".  :) -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 23:09, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"Not unlike"

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I read a few article here, on Wikipedia, that contain phrases like "this novel is not unlike that novel" and other "not un[adjective]". Is it acceptable on this encyclopedia? George Orwell was totally against this way of writing (using Litotes). --إلياس الجزائري (talk) 08:52, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That's one writer's opinion. Presumably he would prefer "like" to "not unlike". But what if "like" isn't quite appropriate? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 10:59, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
"Not unlike" is not the same thing as "like" and when someone uses litotes in their writing, it is a deliberate style choice that conveys a certain shade of meaning. Orwell can say whatever he wants on the subject, but using litotes has a long tradition. --Jayron32 11:10, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
"This novel is similar to that novel", would be way better. --إلياس الجزائري (talk) 18:32, 4 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Orwell was a believer in this construction (minus the double negative). See Newspeak. 92.8.222.66 (talk) 12:22, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field. George Orwell — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.38.221.49 (talk) 15:27, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
He would have good reason to hate that example. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:19, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There's a semi-famous Douglas Adams quote: "...a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea."... AnonMoos (talk) 16:22, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, the point being that the writing there conveys different meaning and subtext (including humor and understatement and sarcasm) that would not be conveyed had Adams simply said "...a plastic cup filled with some bad tea" which describes the same thing, but isn't nearly as interesting for the reader. If they were identical, they would be interchangeable without losing any meaning; and they are NOT interchangeable, because much of Adams meaning is lost in the second example. Adams was a genius at this sort of litotes writing, he also famously described the Vogon ships as having "hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't"; which could be said any number of ways, but not to the same effect. --Jayron32 16:42, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I see two cases:
A) There's a true binary choice, like a road that splits between right and left. In that case going "not left" is the same as going right.
B) There are more than two choices, possibly including gradations. In the road example, there might also be the option to go straight. So, going "not left" could mean right or straight (or any other available option).
So then, the Q is whether "like" and "unlike" are two distinct binary choices with gradations between them. That is, is it possible for two novels to be neither alike nor unalike ? StuRat (talk) 16:50, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • This reminds me of the logical axioms of the law of the excluded middle and double negation. The former says that either A or not-A is true. The latter says that not-(not-A) is the same thing as A. Both are accepted in most logic systems but not in intuitionist logic. The double negation article says
Because of their constructive character, a statement such as It's not the case that it's not raining is weaker than It's raining. The latter requires a proof of rain, whereas the former merely requires a proof that rain would not be contradictory. This distinction also arises in natural language in the form of litotes.
Constructivists require that proofs avoid the axioms of the excluded middle and double negation, and so they reject proof by contradiction. Loraof (talk) 17:06, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Human language is not necessarily bound by the rules of math logic. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:16, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • A friend and I have this little routine where he asks me whether I've done a certain thing I've previously undertaken to do (but haven't quite got around to doing yet), and I reply, "Not as such. Not exactly. Not really". He asks, "Do you mean not at all?". I reply "Well, if you want to put it a crudely as that, I suppose ...", with associated gestures of resignation and acquiescence. Imagine how dull our conversations would be if I simply replied "No". Oh no, that would never do. I'm all for conciseness in communication, but there are times when constructing a message with as few words as possible consistent with exactitude of meaning is not the best option. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 23:07, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs

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Is there any natural language that lacks nouns, verbs, adjectives, or adverbs? Is it even possible to conceive a language that lacks any of these parts of speech? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:34, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What would be the purpose of such a language? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 10:19, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Lao has no adjectives, according to this. Section 2.2.4 seems most relevant to your query. DuncanHill (talk) 10:27, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Dodger67 -- In the 1950s, some "structural" linguists in the U.S. would have been willing to admit such possibilities (in 1957, Martin Joos infamously wrote that "languages could differ from each other without limit and in unpredictable ways"), but since the 1960s linguists have tended to be more skeptical. Noun and Verb are pretty fundamental categories, but Adjective is not quite so fundamental. In some languages (such as older Indo-European languages, including Greek and Latin), adjectives strongly resemble nouns in most ways, while in others (such as Japanese), they resemble verbs in many ways, and it can sometimes be rather difficult to tell apart an adjective from a stative verb. Of course, even in languages where adjectives are noun-like, there are usually participles, which have verb-like characteristics as well. I think that at one point, early generative linguists set up the binary features [±N] and [±V], where nouns are [+N, -V], verbs are [-N, +V], adjectives are [+N, +V] and "particles" (everything else) are [-N, -V]. As a part-of-speech classification system, it's a little crude, but I think it captures an aspect of truth... AnonMoos (talk) 13:49, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Animals (and possibly early man) communicate via what could be labeled Interjections. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 10:57, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
However, some animals have calls that I would not call interjections. For example, Prairie dog#Antipredator calls says that there is evidence that
prairie dog calls contain specific information as to what the predator is, how big it is and how fast it is approaching.
Loraof (talk) 17:14, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The most famous semi-elaborate animal communications system is the "dances" of bees on returning to the hive. For discussion of how human language and animal communication systems differ, see Charles F. Hockett... AnonMoos (talk) 17:33, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Our article, Inuit language morphology and syntax, implies that Inuit languages lack adverbs, using verb inflexes or suffixes instead. The article makes no mention of adjectives at all and the initial example shows a verb, pronouns, adverbs, etc. mashed into a single-word sentence. Rmhermen (talk) 18:16, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Loglan has none of those four classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives or adverbs). Instead, the predicate serves as any of those. So it is indeed possible to conceive of such a language. But your question is about natural languages, so this doesn't answer your first question. CodeTalker (talk) 19:41, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The article Kēlen begins thus: "Kēlen is a constructed language created by Sylvia Sotomayor. It is an attempt to create a truly alien language by violating a key linguistic universal—namely that all human languages have verbs." --Theurgist (talk) 22:44, 4 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Lots of languages do not have the same parts of speech that English has. In Navajo, verbs fill the role that adjectives have in English. In Ojibwe, they have preverbs instead of adjectives, which are prefixed to nouns. Navajo has only a few true nouns (these nouns have only one syllable, such as wikt:tó, water). Most Navajo nouns are derived from verbs or verb phrases by adding a nominalizing suffix, with the meaning of "the one that...": wikt:sání ("the one that has age", or old person).
Tamil has very few true adjectives, but terms that work as adjectives are formed by adding certain suffixes onto nouns or verbs. Thai has a few adjectives, but only a few (other parts of speech are usually used instead). Khmer is difficult, as it seems to have many more parts of speech than English has. It used to be thought that Khmer had no parts of speech, but later it was thought that Khmer has more than 24 parts of speech. —Stephen (talk) 02:22, 4 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
How about sign languages, do they also have parts of speech like spoken languages? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 18:10, 4 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, sign languages have parts of speech. In American Sign Language, adjectives follow nouns (because American Sign language evolved from French). Number (singular, plural) is often not important and not used, but may be expressed in various ways when necessary (handshape, movement, incorporation of numerals, reduplication). There are a lot more pronouns than English has, since a pronoun for 'he/she' can include more information, such as distance, direction, height, size, attitude, and so on. Some signs are both noun and verb simultaneously. Some signs can express a whole sentence or more, so those might make up a separate category. Basic signs certainly may be categorized according to part of speech. —Stephen (talk) 05:30, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • A central concept here is that of an open class (linguistics). Some languages, like English, allow a full range of nouns, verbs, and adjectives, all of which can be declined, conjugated or modified (strong, stronger, strongest) with some minor exceptions, such as the verb can which has no infinitive and no (regular) past.
Pronouns and prepositions, however, are closed classes. You can't just add a pronoun, the way you can point at an object and identify it to someone who hasn't seen it before. I don't know what zumba is, but I know it is an activity that can be performed in a pool, and that it has the forms we're zumbaing and zumba's benefits.
Other languages have different closed classes. isiZulu has at most a few dozen or so adjectives; Clement M. Doke lists at least 18 in his Text-Book of Zulu Grammar. These include the numbers two through five, big, small, new, old, good, bad, long, short, beautiful, ugly, etc. Note that these are obviously among the most common every-day descriptors.
These true adjectives take prefixes that correspond to the prefix the noun takes according to its class, very much like the gender endings of adjectives in German or Russian. The adjectival prefix may match the nominal prefix, or may differ slightly due to umlaut in the adjective or consonant loss in the noun.
All other "adjectives" act as defective verbs (they don't show the full range of forms of regular verbs). So "the English man died" would be (very roughly) "the man that-was-Englishing died". This is not quite accurate, but the two languages don't map very well on each-other typologically, so you get the general idea.
Basque verbs also form a closed class. You can read the article here, but again, only a limited set of verbs (say, come, go, etc.) get conjugated with 'normal' finite forms. All other verbs are basically participles that combine with a conjugated form of to be. It would be as if one could say "I am swimming, he was swimming" but not "he swims" or I swam". μηδείς (talk) 18:22, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
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