Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 September 25

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September 25

And he smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter ...

There are various commentaries listed here as to what the expression "he smote them hip and thigh" means.

What I want to know, though, is what grammatical function does "hip and thigh" serve here? It seems to be an adverbial phrase answering the question "Where did he smite them?". But the absence of any prepositions (e.g. "on the hip and thigh") makes it less certain in my mind.

Thanks. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 18:52, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

This seems quite a common construction:

When the truth surfaced, he would need all of the Lord's blessings to convince Michelle that he loved her, heart and soul!

- Heart and soul by Jillian Hart, Steeple Hill Books, 2004

and also [1]. 92.31.140.53 (talk) 19:41, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

The OED simply calls it a “phrase”. P2. hip and thigh: unsparingly, ruthlessly; completely, utterly. Originally and chiefly in to smite hip and thigh: to attack without mercy or restraint. Also occasionally attributive: thoroughgoing, uncompromising. With allusion to Judges 15:8 (see quot. 1560).

However, when they list examples for similar phrases, the construction you have here, Jack, is marked as an adverb. (Adv.) 70.67.193.176 (talk) 20:31, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

1920 Amer. Woman Aug. 8/2 I wish I could remember the words the professor used, they would destroy Bob root and branch.

1888 J. W. Burgon Lives Twelve Good Men II. xi. 329 He threw himself, heart and soul, into every requirement of the time.

Thanks for that. However, our adverb article defines an adverb as "one word ...", and says "When the function of an adverb is performed by an expression consisting of more than one word, it is called an adverbial phrase or adverbial clause, or simply an adverbial." This brings us back to my original hunch, adverbial phrase. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:46, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia's articles about English grammar are, on average, dreadful. Gods know what "adverbial clause" means. As for "adverbial", it's a respectable term, but it doesn't mean what most non-linguists think, and its closeness to "adverb" makes it a confusing term. Let's just say that in terms of function this is an adjunct: simply, it adds meaning to the clause, but it's entirely optional. (In terms of category, it's a noun phrase. One noun [with no determiner] is linked with another via a coordinator in a way that's pretty much fossilized [e.g. switching the order around brings an odd result]: this is a commonly occurring phenomenon, called a binomial). (References: The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, passim.) -- Hoary (talk) 00:28, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

"Adverbial phrase" is a term straight from X-bar theory or similar. AnonMoos (talk) 05:13, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

The far commoner term for this is "adverb phrase". (It's a category. "Adverbial" is a term used for function.) -- Hoary (talk) 13:20, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

I guess I missed part of your point in your previous message. However, "The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language" appears to use a rather eclectic terminology... AnonMoos (talk) 16:01, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

It sounds like He should be penalized 15 yards for clipping. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:34, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

The terminology is eclectic, in that it doesn't come from a single theoretical background (and of course somebody who is well-informed is free to take issue with some of the book's premisses and arguments). But it would be odd if the terminology weren't eclectic: after all, this is a descriptive grammar. My only terminological beefs with the book are (i) that it uses both determinative (for category) and determiner (for function). (It does so without any contradiction, but the closeness of the two terms is unfortunate and unnecessary when it could instead have used specifier.) And (ii) it uses a particularly cumbersome pair of terms (which I can't remember offhand) instead of the common "negative/positive polarity item" -- but these cumbersome terms luckily also abbreviate to "NPI" and "PPI", so that's OK. (In the subsequent Student's Introduction, the authors make a beneficial switch to "non-affirmative item" for NPI.) Minor annoyances, in view of the scale and clarity of the book. -- Hoary (talk) 22:38, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, Hoary, you've been very helpful. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:35, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

Resolved

Sombrero Pronunciation (Question for Native Spanish Speakers)

The pronunciation of sombrero is given as sohmbrehro in a book which teaches Spanish to English people. Why is there an h after the o? Is the book saying that there is an h sound in the word? མཀུཏ (talk) 21:59, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

I suppose you mean native English speakers rather than native Spanish speakers? In most accents of English, there is really no such thing as an "h sound" at the end of a vowel (though there could be between two vowels). Probably the writer means to indicate that it's a "short e" (/ɛ/) rather than a "long e" (/iː/). --Trovatore (talk) 23:08, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

This is an attempt at phonetic spelling. Think of the interjections "oh" and "eh" when you read this presentation. Of course, if you are not a native English speaker, that might not help. --Khajidha (talk) 23:45, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

I am not a native Spanish speaker. Monoglot English speakers are incapable of saying the consonant cluster /hr/ (or can only say it with great difficulty), and therefore the writer (if using his/her brain) can hardly have expected the sound /h/. This is not phonemic spelling, and it's definitely not phonetic spelling; it's instead some kind of what Wikipedia calls "pronunciation respelling". Yes, perhaps the writer hoped that readers would think of the sound of the English interjection "eh" (which is normally not /ɛ/ but instead a diphthong /eɪ/). ¶ Vowel-final "h" occurs rather often in attempts to have people who are accustomed to English lengthen vowels. An example: although this doesn't seem to be mentioned in Romanization of Japanese, some Japanese people with (for example) the surname [that in Hepburn romanization is] Ōkura may write it "Ohkura", though I think that use of this nonstandard convention has declined a lot in the last couple of decades. -- Hoary (talk) 00:11, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Breaking it into syllables might have helped: sohm-BREH-roh. Anglicized would more like sahm-BRE'R-oh. And by the way, although the question says "for native Spanish speakers", I think this is more for native English speakers trying to approximate Spanish pronounciation. A native Spanish speaker would probably do better than "sohmbrehro". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:31, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

By the way, did any Romance linguists help change IPA? Spanish, Portuguese, Ladino, ect? མཀུཏ (talk) 04:08, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Rather confusingly, the OP talks of the h after the o and Trovatore then suggests the writer is distinguishing a short e from a long e. I think Hoary is right - I suspect that this word sombrero is pronounced the same way as Portuguese sombreiro, and if it is the penultimate syllable rhymes with "may". Bugs probably knows more Spanish than I do, but if you look at the Portuguese equivalent, the English do not do very well - Madeira comes out as "mad-ear-a" and Rio de Janeiro ("River of January", discovered 1 January 1502, cf Natal, founded 25 December 1599) as "Rio de Jan-air-o". José Mourinho comes out as "José Mourino". 86.131.233.235 (talk) 11:06, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

No, I don't think that's correct. The first e in sombrero should be rendered as [e], not as a diphthong [eɪ] (the vowel in "may"). Now, English doesn't have a bare /e/ phoneme, so anglophones sometimes hear [e] as /eɪ/, but that doesn't make it good advice in a pronunciation guide. --Trovatore (talk) 21:30, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Um....first e? Where's the second? Or did you mean first o? --Khajidha (talk) 22:59, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

No, I meant the first e. It's still the first, even if there's no second one. Admittedly I got confused as to how many there were. --Trovatore (talk) 23:13, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

English is a very democratic language. We will take in any word that we think fits a given situation. And then we typically butcher the pronunciation. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:35, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

The usual English pronunciation has the "som" rhyming with "some" or "sum" and the "bre" being pronounced as in "bread" or "bred" with the "r" being in the same syllable as the "o" so that "ro" rhymes with "row" (as in what you do with an oar, and not as when used to mean "fight"). --Khajidha (talk) 11:44, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

I've more often heard that first syllable in English said as "sahm", to rhyme with Mom, Tom, etc. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:02, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

I only hear that when the speaker is trying (whether they succeed or not) to reproduce the Spanish pronunciation. Maybe it's more regional? For comparison, I'm from NC. --Khajidha (talk) 12:10, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Australians pronounce the first syllable to rhyme with "bomb". But Spanish is not a common language in Australia. HiLo48 (talk) 12:17, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

I've NEVER understood the complaint that "English speakers don't pronounce this the same way {insert original language here} speakers do". I mean, they ARE different languages, you know? --Khajidha (talk) 13:02, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Yes. And I expect the other languages do the same thing with English words. Still, it seems like English speakers don't try very hard. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:42, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

I'll have you guys know that I was asking this question for my mother. I already know there the pronunciation, and Spanish actually easier than English, even though English is my 1st language. མཀུཏ (talk) 20:22, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Context helps. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:05, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

There appears to be a school of thought that it's easier to spell the vowels as ah eh ee oh oo than to get English-speakers to learn a new way of pronouncing the single letters. —Tamfang (talk) 05:02, 1 October 2018 (UTC)