I thought it was cool the other day when Bob puzzled out the rules for pluralizing words that end in y. It seems to me that many people don't care about all the nuances and rules and curiosities of the language. And that's fine. Not everybody is going to be fascinated with English and spend their free time looking up etymologies, browsing through style manuals, and studying Old English. Their interests lie elsewhere. But I figure there are still lots of people who occasionally wonder about something but don't know where to find the answer and maybe even feel silly for asking it.
Well, that's what I'm here for. While I can answer questions like "Should I put a comma here?" and "Should this word be capitalized?" I'd much rather answer questions like "What the heck is the Great Vowel Shift?" or "Where did this word come from?" or "Why do they call them 'long' and 'short' vowels?" or other stuff of that nature. So if there's any nagging question about English or language in general that's always bugged you, ask away. I'll do my best to provide you with an answer.
[ April 26, 2004, 11:29 PM: Message edited by: Jon Boy ]
Posted by Shigosei (Member # 3831) on :
What precisely are the rules for the subjunctive tense? I understand that "If I were..." rather than "If I was..." is correct, but what about "he," "she," or "them"?
Posted by kwsni (Member # 1831) on :
My stepmom and I have a running argument that phrases like "I have seen" and "I have done" are not as correct as "I saw" and "I did". I say they are, and the verb is just conjugated differently, but she says they're wrong. Who's right? How did the two ways of saying essentialy the same thing develop?
Ni!
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
The subjunctive is a bit complicated. It's not a tense, but rather a mood, and it has a present and a past tense. The answer to your second question is that the first, second, and third persons all use the subjunctive in the same way. The present tense of the subjunctive is the root form of the verb (like be or have or do), and the past tense is the plural past (like were or had or did—though this only makes a difference with the verb "to be").
The subjunctive mood is used to express doubt, hope, recommendation, requirement, and other concepts that aren't actually fact. Here are some basic rules. The subjunctive used to be more common, but it has been slowly dying over the past thousand years or more. In Return of the King, Pippin's oath of fealty to Denethor uses the subjunctive a couple times—"until my lord release me, or death take me"—but nowadays we'd use the regular indicative mood.
In present-day English, the subjunctive is almost exclusively used in subordinate clauses (usually beginning with if or that) that express an idea contrary to fact. But not every if-clause calls for the subjunctive; in statements like "I don't know if he was there," the clause "he was there" is not necessarily contrary to fact—it's not known if he was there, but it's also not known that he wasn't there, so it stays in the indicative mood.
Simple, right?
Posted by Telperion the Silver (Member # 6074) on :
ask the Federated Association of English Majors... Posted by Audeo (Member # 5130) on :
I have a question on irregular verb forms such as lit. Is there a preference of 'lighted' vs. 'lit?' Did they arise simultaneously or was one used before the other? Along the same lines, how did 'went' become the past tense of 'go' and how does it relate to 'gone?' (Where do the quotation marks go at the end of a sentence like that?) That's all the burning language questions I have for now. Thanks Posted by Suneun (Member # 3247) on :
Why do some verbs conjugate in the "sink, sank, sunk" manner, with the funky "drink, drank, drank," while many others do not ("bring, brang, brung" anyone?)? Is it from a common temporal or regional origin?
Posted by Da_Goat (Member # 5529) on :
"lay/lie"
I'm never going to get this one right, but you might as well try anyway.
[ April 26, 2004, 08:23 PM: Message edited by: Da_Goat ]
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
quote:My stepmom and I have a running argument that phrases like "I have seen" and "I have done" are not as correct as "I saw" and "I did". I say they are, and the verb is just conjugated differently, but she says they're wrong. Who's right? How did the two ways of saying essentialy the same thing develop?
They're both correct in different circumstances, though there's a great deal of overlap. The "have" forms make up the perfect tense (well, tenses, actually). In English, the perfect usually shows more of a relevance to the present situation. For example, "I waited in line for an hour" is different from "I have waited in line for an hour." The first says that you aren't in line anymore; the second says that you're still in line. In most instances, the distinction isn't noticeable or isn't important, but there are certain times when it makes a definite difference.
So where did it come from? Originally, English only had one past tense. In Old English, you could put have together with a past participle, but it didn't turn into a tense like it does today. Rather, it would mean something like "I have my homework in the state of being done." By Middle English times, it had fused into a verb phrase representing a different tense, and even though it meant pretty much the same thing as the regular past, it kept a notion of connecting to the present because of the present form of the verb have.
So essentially, a perfect tense connects to whatever tense have is in, but it shows that it happened before that tense. Does that make sense? When you say "I have seen," have is a present form, so it's the present perfect tense, but it shows a pastness that relates to now. Same thing for past and future (like "had seen" and "will have seen").
So the simple answer is that you're right. Posted by Sal (Member # 3758) on :
Oh, I think I can answer the "lay/lie" thing.
When you "lay", you always lay something (or somebody.) When you "lie", you're all by yourself. In German it's called a "transitive" verb (requires object) or "intransitive" verb (can't have object).
Right, Jon Boy?
Posted by Beren One Hand (Member # 3403) on :
mono no aware?
Posted by CaySedai (Member # 6459) on :
I try to remember lay as being like place. So if I place something on the table, I lay it there.
Posted by Sal (Member # 3758) on :
Well, now that the "lay/lie" mystery is solved, you may ask yourself, 'Could this be generalized?' Then, what about the verbs "pay/pie"?
Hmmm. "You will pay for this" is obviously intransitive. "Pay the price", however, is transitive. Darn! Luckily, "to pie" is much simpler. Every Hatracker knows that "to pie" means "to pie another Hatracker". Very transitive.
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
When do I use s' (Like "Jesus' sandels") at the end of pluralised words, and when is it okay to write s's (The Jones's)? This has confused me for ages...
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
quote:I have a question on irregular verb forms such as lit. Is there a preference of 'lighted' vs. 'lit?' Did they arise simultaneously or was one used before the other? Along the same lines, how did 'went' become the past tense of 'go' and how does it relate to 'gone?' (Where do the quotation marks go at the end of a sentence like that?) That's all the burning language questions I have for now. Thanks
If there is a preference between lighted and lit, it is merely a personal one. They are both standard and acceptable. Lit is the older form. In Old English, lots of verbs formed past tenses by changing the vowel (and sometimes other pronunciation changes occurred as a result, like dropping the gh). But there has been a tendency to make everything "regular" by simply adding -ed to form the past. Some "irregular" verbs have become totally regular, and some have kept both forms.
Went is somewhat of an oddball. Apparently, go simply did not have a past tense in Old English (or even in Indo-European). It still had the participle gone, but like I said above, past participle weren't used as verbs like they are today. So what do you do with a verb that's missing an entire tense? Use a different verb, of course. In Old and Middle English, éode and yode were used, respectively. Whatever verb this came from is now gone, and even the leftover yode form was eventually superseded with the past tense of wend (which used to be went but has now regularized to wended). So there you go. The mysteries of the second-strangest verb in English have been unraveled (be, of course, is the strangest).
And the quotation mark goes with the material that's being quoted. If you're quoting a word or phrase that doesn't have any punctuation, put the quotes next to the word. If the quotation includes its own punctuation, put the punctuation inside the quotes.
quote:Why do some verbs conjugate in the "sink, sank, sunk" manner, with the funky "drink, drank, drank," while many others do not ("bring, brang, brung" anyone?)? Is it from a common temporal or regional origin?
In Old English, verbs weren't really as simple as regular and irregular. Rather, there were verbs that changed the vowel and verbs that added a t or d on the end (and some verbs that did both). The ablaut (vowel-changing) system is the older system, and the -ed system was a new innovation in the early German languages that became more common because of its simplicity. Ablaut verbs followed different patterns depending on the vowel and the sounds around the vowel. That's why sink and drink follow the same pattern.
Bring and think, however, were of the third type, so they follow a different pattern. Changing the vowel and adding a t on the end made the g and k change to an h (which was originally pronounced as a fricative like the German and Scottish ch). In Old English, nasals before a fricative disappeared (compare the English five and the German fünf). Thus, in the past forms of bring, the n disappears, the g turns into a hard h (later spelled gh and then even later dropped from pronunciation), and the "regular" -ed becomes pronounced as a t. Presto change-o, you've got a weird verb that doesn't seem to fit the expected pattern.
[ April 26, 2004, 10:34 PM: Message edited by: Jon Boy ]
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
Lay vs. lie:
Lay is a transitive verb. That means it has an object. Lie is intransitive. It does not have an object. Thus, you lie down to sleep, but you lay yourself down to sleep. The book lies on the table, but you lay the book on the table.
But it's not quite that simple. The conjugations of lay are lay / laid / (have) laid. The conjugations of lie are lie / lay / (have) lain. So you lay down yesterday, but you laid yourself down yesterday. The book has laid on the table, but you have lain the book on the table.
Don't feel bad if you have trouble with these verbs. They've been the source of confusion for well over a thousand years. The interesting thing is that the problem is almost always one-way: lay is used in place of lie, but lie is never used in place of lay (or it happens so rarely that it might as well be never). I wouldn't worry too much about it while you're speaking. It takes a lot of effort to get it right all the time, and chances are that nobody will notice unless you stop and think about it. For more formal writing, though, make sure to read over what you've written and ask yourself if there's an object or not, and then use the appropriate form.
Edited to preserve my guru status.
[ April 26, 2004, 11:07 PM: Message edited by: Jon Boy ]
Posted by Brinestone (Member # 5755) on :
If you ask Jon Boy an English-related question, you will get your answer. And then some.
Guru Jon
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
quote:When do I use s' (Like "Jesus' sandels") at the end of pluralised words, and when is it okay to write s's (The Jones's)? This has confused me for ages...
Practice varies quite a bit on this. Chicago and some other major style guides say you should always use 's—except for a couple of traditional exceptions like Jesus' and Moses'. Other style guides (like AP, I think) advise only adding the apostrophe to form possessives of names that end in s.
But make sure that you never, ever use 's to make a plural. This is the unforgivable sin. If you're talking about more than one Jones, the correct form is Joneses. If you're talking about the house owned by the Jones family, it's the Joneses' house. If you're talking about something belonging to one Jones, follow the above guidelines (Jones' car or Jones's car). Personally, I prefer Chicago's method. Most people say the extra s, so it should probably be spelled out.
Edit: It's been a while since anyone's called me Guru Jon. I miss that job sometimes.
[ April 26, 2004, 10:53 PM: Message edited by: Jon Boy ]
Posted by Sal (Member # 3758) on :
Here's another question: Is it correct that "hanged" is the past tense of the transitive form of "to hang", and "hung" is the intransitive form?
Or is the latter used exclusively as an adjective?
Edited to preserve Jon Boy's guru status.
[ April 26, 2004, 11:11 PM: Message edited by: Sal ]
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
Oops. I'll go fix my post so as not to misinform the public and thus cause them to lose faith in me.
Hung versus hanged is pretty simple. Hanged is correct for the sense of "hanging by the neck until dead." Hung is correct for everything else.
[ April 26, 2004, 11:08 PM: Message edited by: Jon Boy ]
Posted by Sal (Member # 3758) on :
I like this kind of distinction between "hanged" and "hung"! (It's different in German.)
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:And the quotation mark goes with the material that's being quoted. If you're quoting a word or phrase that doesn't have any punctuation, put the quotes next to the word. If the quotation includes its own punctuation, put the punctuation inside the quotes.
Really? I have been doing that for years, because it just makes sense, even though I was taught to always pu the punctuation inside the quotes. Is this perchance a recent change?
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote: Practice varies quite a bit on this. Chicago and some other major style guides say you should always use 's—except for a couple of traditional exceptions like Jesus' and Moses'. Other style guides (like AP, I think) advise only adding the apostrophe to form possessives of names that end in s.
But make sure that you never, ever use 's to make a plural. This is the unforgivable sin.
I am confused. When *are* we supposed to use 's then?
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
As far as I know, it's not recent. The rule "punctuation goes inside the quotes" is a gross oversimplification. Periods and commas always go inside. All other punctuation depends on whether it's part of the material being quoted or part of the sentence that the quoted material is being placed in. Here's an illustration:
Quotation 1:
"I don't care!"
Bob said, "I don't care!"
Quotation 2:
"I don't care."
Bob said, "I don't care"! (Here, the speaker is upset about Bob's indifference.)
So give yourself a big pat on the back for figuring it by yourself.
quote:I am confused. When *are* we supposed to use 's then?
When you're forming a possessive (which denotes ownership or a similar relationship). Not when you're forming a plural (which is simply more than one of something).
[ April 26, 2004, 11:27 PM: Message edited by: Jon Boy ]
Posted by Richard Berg (Member # 133) on :
Wow. An entire grammar thread where I don't have any corrections to offer. Bravo.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote: The rule "punctuation goes inside the quotes" is a gross oversimplification. Periods and commas always go inside.
Except in the UK (at least, so I've been informed repeatedly).
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
Well, yeah, but I'm not in the UK, nor are the majority of Hatrackers.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
Everybody else probably knows the answer to this, but how do you know all this stuff, Jon?
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
True, Jon. I mentioned it for completeness -- and because until 6 months ago, I had no idea they did it differently. I find that sort of difference fascinating.
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
I know this stuff because this is my major in college and one of my great passions in life. I've been fascinated with the English language for as long as I can remember. My wife will testify that I research stuff like this for fun.
Posted by jeniwren (Member # 2002) on :
Okay, I'm embarrassed to ask, but in truth, I think I've flubbed this one more than once. Let's go over affect and effect, the difference between the two words and when they should be used for what. My 4th grade teacher, God rest her soul, drummed it into my head, but it drummed itself back out in the meantime.
Posted by Beren One Hand (Member # 3403) on :
Jon, if I want to imrpove my grammar, what books or resources would you recommend? If possible, please list them in order of difficulty. Thanks! Posted by Richard Berg (Member # 133) on :
'Affect' is always a transitive verb. "Sleep deprivation affects brain chemistry." The past participle is somewhat common, meaning 'unnatural' or 'fake.' "Paying too close attention to grammar can lend your phrases an affected quality."
'Effect' is usually a noun. "The effect of sleep deprivation is tiredness."
'Effect' can also be a verb in a limited number of (nearly archaic) usages. It is almost always as the infinitive or gerund, and takes a select few nouns as objects. "In order to effect a change in your sleep schedule, go to bed consistently."
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
What about the emotional/psychological sense?
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
I am fascinated by what you say about Pippen's oath to Denethor. What other interesting uses of the English language do you note in Tolkien, and can you please explain their origins and grammatical functions as you did for these words in the oath?
Posted by jeniwren (Member # 2002) on :
Richard, could you please use affect and effect in the same sentence for me? Posted by Richard Berg (Member # 133) on :
The law of cause and effect affects everyone.
Not sure what you mean, rivka.
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
Jon Boy, is it also subjunctive mood when the giant says, "Be he live or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make my bread"?
Posted by jeniwren (Member # 2002) on :
Thank you, Richard. I may have to print that out so I really get it internalized.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Affect is also a noun. It's a synonym for mood or emotional state. Linky
[Edit: different pronunciation; same spelling]
[ April 27, 2004, 01:18 AM: Message edited by: rivka ]
Posted by Richard Berg (Member # 133) on :
AKA, yes. It's present subjunctive without the adverb ("whether") and with the order mixed up.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
Jon, what major is that?
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Jon Boy,
How long was Old English spoken? How about Middle English? How about Modern English?
How would you characterize the differences between the three? Why did the great verb shift happen?
Posted by celia60 (Member # 2039) on :
From celia's email:
quote: And I still have a question about the usage of a phrase" it occurred to somebody that-clause". I remember that, 'occur to', is 'think of something', right? Can it mean 'happen to'?
Because we all know that celia is the best person to ask about this sort of thing.
Posted by Farmgirl (Member # 5567) on :
quote: And that's fine.
incomplete sentence, started with a conjunction.
FG
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
Okay, this is one from, like, first grade:
Passed and past. I know that passed is a verb and past is a time, but my major problem concerns a sentence like this: "I'm past all that."
Is that right, or would it be passed?
------
What if it was "And, that's fine"?
[ April 27, 2004, 10:08 AM: Message edited by: PSI Teleport ]
Posted by IdemosthenesI (Member # 862) on :
From curiosity, and this is more of an alphabet question than a grammar one, but when did the letter f become the letter s. I have been reading fome old newfpaperf for refearch and I am curiouf af to when exactly the change took place. I wonder if I can find the exact issue of the newfpaper that firft ufed the new character.
Yef, I know it wafn't exactly 'f' but itf the clofeft thing I have on thif keyboard.
Posted by IdemosthenesI (Member # 862) on :
I may be wrong, but neither would be correct. "I'm past all that" is a vernacular phrase, but not technically acceptable. The technically correct way of expressing that idea would be "I've passed all that." If you say it that way, though, people will think you're talking about last night's dinner. Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
quote:Okay, I'm embarrassed to ask, but in truth, I think I've flubbed this one more than once. Let's go over affect and effect, the difference between the two words and when they should be used for what. My 4th grade teacher, God rest her soul, drummed it into my head, but it drummed itself back out in the meantime.
Like Richard already said, affect is usually a verb, and effect is usually a noun. Easy mnemonic device: affect is an action. Effect can also be a verb meaning "to produce" or "to bring about." It's not used all that much. Affect is also a noun meaning "the conscious subjective aspect of an emotion." Unless you're in psychology, don't worry about that one.
quote:AKA, yes. It's present subjunctive without the adverb ("whether") and with the order mixed up.
Right, but whether is actually a conjunction.
quote:Jon, what major is that?
Why, English language, of course (with a minor in editing).
quote: How long was Old English spoken? How about Middle English? How about Modern English?
How would you characterize the differences between the three? Why did the great verb shift happen?
The borders between them is fuzzy, but it's generally divided into 450–1100, 1100–1500, and 1500 on (or 1500–1800 for early modern English, and then 1800 on for modern English). I'm at work right now, so I'll tackle the rest of the question later.
celia, I'm not even quite sure what the question is asking. If they want to know what "occur to" means, I suggest a dictionary. Occur does indeed mean both "to come to mind" and "to happen."
quote:incomplete sentence, started with a conjunction.
"Incomplete sentence" is an incomplete sentence. And no, mine wasn't incomplete. It had a subject, verb, and complement. Also, starting with a conjunction is perfectly grammatical, and anyone who says otherwise has fallen prey to linguistic superstition.
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
Why did all my teachers tell me that I could never start a sentence with "because", only to change their tunes around fifth or sixth grade? Can we hurt them?
Posted by HollowEarth (Member # 2586) on :
you sure it wasn't something like fractur (sp?) script (from older, pre WWII german)? Its s form for inside of a word looks a bit like an f. Though I don't know if it was ever used in english.
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
No, I know what that is. When you read really old newspapers, the s's are long and tall and look like an f with a matching curve at the bottom, like a very long s with a dash in the center.
Jon Boy, can't you pluralize a letter of the alphabet with 's ?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Pfff. Who needs English? I'm never goin' to England!
Posted by IdemosthenesI (Member # 862) on :
However, it doesn't always do this. So I guess my question is, why was the s distended (where it was) and when was this abandoned. In British newspapers from 1785, it is ALWAYS extended.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
quote:The borders between them is fuzzy, but it's generally divided into 450–1100, 1100–1500, and 1500 on (or 1500–1800 for early modern English, and then 1800 on for modern English).
It's interesting how short lived languages generally are. It's strange to think, isn't it, that at some point in the relatively near future, the language with which we're communicating right now will be a dead language. Of course, I'm sure that our media and our possession of a technologically sophisticated society slows down the evolution of our language, so barring some catastrophy I expect that what we speak right now will be understandable for an unusually long time, but still.
Posted by UofUlawguy (Member # 5492) on :
My own recollection of that "s looking like an f" thing is that the more modern-looking s was always used at the end of words, but the one that looked like an f was used for basically all other appearances of the letter.
I think it was not completely abandoned until relatively recently, perhaps around the middle of the nineteenth century, or even later?
Posted by celia60 (Member # 2039) on :
I think he meant it in more of a connotation sense. Like, if he used it to mean the second, would that be understood, or would the reader assume he meant the first.
My solution was to get rid of the phrase. Posted by Mike (Member # 55) on :
I've always been fascinated with consonant mutation. Well, not always, but ever since I've known about it. In Russian there are several standard mutations that occur in different forms of verbs: for example "d", "z", and "g" can become "zh"; "t" and "k" become "ch"; etc. In English there seem to be fewer mutations, but some are the same as the Russian ones: divide -> division is like videt' -> vizhu. Some, however, are different: submit -> submission, but pryatat' -> pryachu. Linky for more details.
So, my question is, how/when did these mutations come about in English, and why are they different from the Russian ones?
And what's the story about this great vowel shift?
Posted by Brinestone (Member # 5755) on :
One thing Jon Boy didn't say about apostrophes:
When making a plural noun possessive, only the apostrophe is needed. For example, "the horses' hooves" and "The Joneses' boat."
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
Are you SURE you don't use an apostrophe to pluralize a letter? I could have sworn you did. And if not, how do you plaralize them? As? Bs?
Posted by Mike (Member # 55) on :
quote:I may be wrong, but neither would be correct. "I'm past all that" is a vernacular phrase, but not technically acceptable. The technically correct way of expressing that idea would be "I've passed all that." If you say it that way, though, people will think you're talking about last night's dinner.
There is nothing technically wrong with "I'm past all that." Here, "past" is an adjective used in a metaphorical sense: grammatically speaking, in the same way that a runner is past (as in "on the far side of", or "beyond") the finish line at the end of a race, the speaker ("I") is past "that" on a time line. In fact, "I've passed all that" has somewhat different connotations, even leaving aside the variations in the meaning of "to pass" alluded to above.
OK, the runner analogy isn't perfect, but the fact remains that there's nothing wrong with the initial sentence.
Posted by Mike (Member # 55) on :
PSI: I think both forms are correct, though when there would be ambiguity the apostrophe is preferred: "Xs" or "X's", but not "Is" or "As". To keep things consistent, I would prefer to always use the apostrophe (or possibly spell out the letter instead).
-----
Oh, and apropos "prefer to always use", what's the history behind the injunction against splitting infinitives? Is it really just an attempt by English teachers to make the language more like Latin?
Posted by Brinestone (Member # 5755) on :
Mike is correct. Only use the apostrophe when it would be ambiguous not to.
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
quote:Passed and past. I know that passed is a verb and past is a time, but my major problem concerns a sentence like this: "I'm past all that."
Is that right, or would it be passed?
It would be past. Passed is the past tense and past participle of the verb pass. Past is everything else. Thus, since it describes what state you are in, you use the adjective past. Despite what other may say, it is not incorrect.
quote:From curiosity, and this is more of an alphabet question than a grammar one, but when did the letter f become the letter s.
The letter f has never been the letter s, though in some older scripts, they often look very similar. The elongated s was used everywhere except at the end of a word. Why, though? That's just how they wrote them. The shapes of letters have changed considerably over the last thousand years. I don't have exact dates for when the elongated s was used (I'll have to check when I get home), but I believe it was mostly an early modern English thing.
quote:Why did all my teachers tell me that I could never start a sentence with "because", only to change their tunes around fifth or sixth grade?
Because they're a bunch of fascist pigs. Technically, if you just add because onto the beginning of an otherwise complete sentence, it makes it incomplete because then all you have is a subordinate clause with nothing to subordinate to. This may have been what they were trying to teach you to avoid. It's still stupid advice, though, because it's absolutely normal in speech and common enough in writing.
quote: Can we hurt them?
For liability reasons, Guru Jon prefers not to advocate violence. However, if said teachers were to be hurt, Guru Jon would not necessarily object.
quote:Jon Boy, can't you pluralize a letter of the alphabet with 's ?
Okay, fine, I lied. Letters of the alphabet are the only things that should ever be pluralized with 's, but this is only because it's usually not recognizable as a plural otherwise.
quote:So, my question is, how/when did these mutations come about in English, and why are they different from the Russian ones?
And what's the story about this great vowel shift?
I'll tackle Old and Middle English, the Great Vowel Shift, and other sound changes when I get home from work. I hope the anticipation doesn't kill anyone.
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
Jon Boy, when is it appropriate to use "towards" instead of "toward," or vice versa (or is there no distinction)?
Thanks! This has been bugging me since my fourth grade essay on owls.
Posted by Mike (Member # 55) on :
Mmmm, vowels. *drools*
-----
And what about "further" and "farther"? "Ironic" and "ironical"?
And why do I have such trouble spelling words that end in -ance/-ence or -ant/-ent and the like?
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
Compare type 0 conditional (statement of fact; cause and effect):
If you don't water flowers, they die.
And type 1 conditional (possibility)
If I win a loterry, I'll buy you a car.
Which type is this sentence:
If he doesn't like apples, I don't think he should eat them.
(I think I'm not changing the actual grammar structure of the original sentence here, correct me if I'm wrong)
[ April 27, 2004, 06:09 PM: Message edited by: Kama ]
Posted by Richard Berg (Member # 133) on :
quote:Because they're a bunch of fascist pigs. Technically, if you just add because onto the beginning of an otherwise complete sentence, it makes it incomplete because then all you have is a subordinate clause with nothing to subordinate to. This may have been what they were trying to teach you to avoid. It's still stupid advice, though, because it's absolutely normal in speech and common enough in writing.
Illustration: Right - "I am happy." Wrong - "Because I am happy." Right - "Because I am happy, I am going to sing."
Of course, even the middle example is extremely common in conversation.
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
Now to the question of the differences between Old, Middle, and Modern English.
Old English was a heavily inflected language, much like Latin. There were four cases (and the faint remnants of a fifth case) and a wider system of verb inflections. Even the word the declined for gender, number, and person. Case endings allowed for a freer sentence structure, so the order wasn't always subject-verb-object (though that was always the default). There were only two true tenses in Old English: present and past. Auxiliary verbs and modals didn't exist as such; rather, they were still complete verbs that conjugated just like anything else. Oh, and Old English had really cool alliterative poetry like Beowulf.
In Middle English, lots of stuff changed. French became the language of government and learning, so English lost its prestige and became unregulated. Gender became totally lost (except in the third person pronouns). Case endings reduced to a schwa, so they became useless. As a result, sentence order started to become more fixed. Auxiliaries and modals also became fixed, allowing for more tenses and diminishing the role of the subjunctive, respectively. Lots of words were borrowed from Norse and French. Some of the most common words in English today, including pronouns like she and they, are not native to English. But slowly, English became prestigious again and began to stabilize.
In Modern English, the decayed case endings from Middle English finally dropped away altogether (though they were still often spelled with a silent e). Many new words from Latin and Greek were added during this time. Sentence structure continued to settle down, and several new grammatical features were added, like using do for negative statements and questions. The pronoun thou dropped out of usage, and its was added, replacing the old genitive form his, which had became awkward and unfavorable because it sounded like it gave gender to objects.
One of the great distinguishing features of Modern English is the Great Vowel Shift. Old and Middle English distinguished between long and short vowels, but it's not the notions of long and short that you were taught in elementary school; here, "long" means that vowels were actually drawn out longer. In Middle English, they were still distinct, but some long vowels shortened, and some short vowels lengthened. Towards the end of Middle English, the distinction disappeared completely as all long vowels raised (meaning that they came to be pronounced closer to the roof of the mouth). The two highest (i and u) became the diphthongs (like in I and ow). The shift took several generations to complete (which is quite fast for such a huge change), and some argue that it never quite ended. Unfortunately, the cause of the shift is still one of the great mysteries of historical linguistics.
Posted by UofUlawguy (Member # 5492) on :
Is the A/O inversion related to the Great Vowel Shift?
(A/O inversion is the name I was taught for the way certain English dialects switch A and O sounds, like in Cache County, Utah, where my grandmother grew up. Thus, the famous "Were you barn in a born?" and "Garge ate the carn with a fark in the born." I had an English professor who claimed that it wasn't just hick pronunciation -- and that it might show what part of the British Isles the locals originally immigrated from.)
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
quote:My own recollection of that "s looking like an f" thing is that the more modern-looking s was always used at the end of words, but the one that looked like an f was used for basically all other appearances of the letter.
I think it was not completely abandoned until relatively recently, perhaps around the middle of the nineteenth century, or even later?
Okay, it looks like it started in Middle English (not quite sure on the exact date) and continued until sometime in the eighteenth century, though it was slowly giving way to the regular s before that.
quote:I've always been fascinated with consonant mutation. Well, not always, but ever since I've known about it. In Russian there are several standard mutations that occur in different forms of verbs: for example "d", "z", and "g" can become "zh"; "t" and "k" become "ch"; etc. In English there seem to be fewer mutations, but some are the same as the Russian ones: divide -> division is like videt' -> vizhu. Some, however, are different: submit -> submission, but pryatat' -> pryachu. Linky for more details.
So, my question is, how/when did these mutations come about in English, and why are they different from the Russian ones?
Palatalization occurs when certain vowels occur near certain consonants. The consonant gets pulled to a different part of the mouth and turned into either a fricative (like sh) or an affricate (like ch). For example, in Old English, a hard c in proximity to a high front vowel (like an i or e) would cause it to palatalize by pulling it forward from the vellum to the palate. Thus we have the word child in English but Kind in German. The same vowels pull a t back from the alveolar ridge to the palate and turn it into a sh sound. Your last example is a little flawed because the vowels are different, thus resulting in different sounds; in the word habitually, the t is often pronounced like a ch.
Unfortunately, there aren't any clear rules for what changes will happen (at least none that I know of). They're inconsistent from language to language. In Spanish and Old English, a hard g would palatalize to a y, but in French, it turned into a zh sound. So when did the changes take place? Well, it depends on the word. In the English words you used, the changes happened in Old French and were then borrowed into English. Other changes, like the Old English c -> ch, happened after Old English separated from other West Germanic languages. Sorry if that's not as clear an answer as you wanted.
quote:Oh, and apropos "prefer to always use", what's the history behind the injunction against splitting infinitives? Is it really just an attempt by English teachers to make the language more like Latin?
Concern about the "split infinitive" arose in the mid-eighteen hundreds, not too long after the construction began to become more common. And yes, it appears that one of the primary objections is based on the fact that Latin and Greek did not have splittable infinitives. However, the to is not really a part of the infinitive in English; it's simply a particle that often attaches to it. Splitting infinitives is 100 percent grammatically correct; if there's any reason to object, it's that sometimes it sounds better to put the adverb elsewhere. And interestingly enough, it's use is mostly confined to speakers of standard English, so you can't even claim that it's a vernacular or vulgar construction.
quote:Jon Boy, when is it appropriate to use "towards" instead of "toward," or vice versa (or is there no distinction)?
Thanks! This has been bugging me since my fourth grade essay on owls.
There is absolutely no difference in meaning. From what I've read, towards is strongly favored in Britain, while Americans tend to use toward. However, in my experience, towards is very common in America, so there's no reason to discount it as a Briticism. I suggest using whichever one you like best, but try to be consistent.
quote:And what about "further" and "farther"?
Farther refers to physical distances; further towards abstract distances. However, further is commonly used where farther "should" be used, and it appears to be gaining ground. At some point in the future, farther may disappear entirely.
But now it's dinner time. I'll get to the rest later.
Posted by Richard Berg (Member # 133) on :
Further can refer to physical things if it's question of degree instead of distance. It is also the only word of the pair that can be used as a verb.
Posted by littlelf (Member # 6145) on :
This site is great reading for the English nerds in all of us!
As far as I know, there is no difference, even though some pairs like this are used differently (like magic and magical). They mean the same thing, and if there's a usage preference, I don't know what it is. In my opinion, ironical sounds stupid, but unfortunately, that's all I can say about it.
quote:And why do I have such trouble spelling words that end in -ance/-ence or -ant/-ent and the like?
Because they sound alike. As I understand, one set came from Latin verbs ending with -ar, and one set came from Latin verbs ending in -er. Unfortunately, a lot of these words were borrowed from Old French, not Latin, and French often changed the spelling. And then even more of them changed once they had been adopted into English. So, sadly, there is no rule to tell you when to use a and when to use e. You pretty much just have to memorize them.
quote:Which type is this sentence:
If he doesn't like apples, I don't think he should eat them.
That's just weird. It seems more conditional (type 1) than statement-of-fact. It doesn't seem to be an accurate way of presenting the thought, though, because thinking that he shouldn't eat them isn't predicated upon whether or not he likes them. That is, A->B, not A | A or B. I think that more properly, it would be "I think that if he doesn't like apples, he shouldn't eat them."
quote:Is the A/O inversion related to the Great Vowel Shift?
(A/O inversion is the name I was taught for the way certain English dialects switch A and O sounds, like in Cache County, Utah, where my grandmother grew up. Thus, the famous "Were you barn in a born?" and "Garge ate the carn with a fark in the born." I had an English professor who claimed that it wasn't just hick pronunciation -- and that it might show what part of the British Isles the locals originally immigrated from.)
It's related in the sense that it's a vowel shift. The Great Vowel Shift was simply a shift in long vowels roughly between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Other vowel shifts have been occurring throughout the history of the language all the way back to Proto-Indo-European. English vowels (actually, all Germanic vowels) have historically been unstable, occasionally shifting, merging, forming diphthongs, or switching places.
Some accents definitely do show which part of Britain certain groups emigrated from, but I don't know if the rural Utah accent corresponds to anything in particular.
quote:Further can refer to physical things if it's question of degree instead of distance. It is also the only word of the pair that can be used as a verb.
Thanks for mentioning the verb bit. That one slipped my mind.
Posted by Richard Berg (Member # 133) on :
quote:It seems more conditional (type 1) than statement-of-fact.
I think it's definitely declarative, once you throw away the word order and remember that it's common to omit "that" in conversational English. I really hate that practice, by the way, since as we've seen here the alternative ways we have of flagging subordinate clauses often suck.
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
"Declarative" and "conditional" aren't mutually exclusive, and changing word order when you have a conditional clause can seriously change the meaning. But I'm going to bed now, so I'll have to think about it more tomorrow.
Posted by Richard Berg (Member # 133) on :
Ok, I have to admit I have no idea what "type 1" means.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Jon Boy, that was absolutely fascinating! I've read about this before, but it was long enough ago that I really didn't remember any of it. Could you illustrate the evolution of English by showing us some examples of words that have their roots in old English, and then showing us how they've developed throughout the history of the language?
Also, you mentioned that in Old English there was the faint remnant of a fifth case, which got me thinking--what language immediately proceeded Old English. Something Germanic, I'm sure, but what? Where was it spoken? Also, what exactly were the geographic regions in which Old English was spoken?
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
One of my professor's favorite words with Old English roots: fellowship. Fellow in Old English was féolaga (where the g was sort of soft, somewhat like in the Spanish diego). This in turn came from feoh, meaning money or property (whence the modern word fee) and lag, from lecgan, meaning "to lay." Thus, a fellow is someone who lays down his money in an undertaking with others, and a fellowship is the abstract entity created.
The word feoh traces back to the Proto-Germanic fehu, which in turn comes from the Proto-Indo-European peku, meaning cattle. The same word in Latin gives us words like pecuniary and peculiar. Every time he explained this etymology, he ended by saying that if he were to be disfellowshipped, he'd be deflocked. Ah, etymological puns.
Another interesting set is the words lord and lady. The Old English words were hlaford and hlafdig (pronounced roughly like "hlavord" and "hlavdy"). Hlaford came from hlaf ("loaf") plus weard ("ward"). Thus, a lord is a bread-guard, or someone who protects the people who eat his bread. Hlafdig comes from hlaf plus dig ("to knead"). Thus, the lady was the one making the bread (or in charge of those who made the bread). The initial h was dropped in early Middle English, followed later by the v.
quote:Also, you mentioned that in Old English there was the faint remnant of a fifth case, which got me thinking--what language immediately proceeded Old English. Something Germanic, I'm sure, but what? Where was it spoken? Also, what exactly were the geographic regions in which Old English was spoken?
The evolution was probably Proto-Indo-European -> Proto-Germanic -> West Germanic (which includes German, Swiss, Dutch, Frisian, and English) -> Low Germanic (which includes Dutch, Frisian, English, and modern Low German) -> Old English. There's no clear transition between Low Germanic and Old English (especially since there are no records), but Old English is considered to have started when the island was conquered by the Anglo-Saxons (and they pretty much had control by about 450 AD). The historical extent of Old English is pretty much what is considered England today: Great Britain excluding Wales, Scotland, and Cornwall.
[ April 28, 2004, 11:25 AM: Message edited by: Jon Boy ]
Posted by Mike (Member # 55) on :
Wow. Very cool. Thanks for posting this stuff, Jon Boy.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Again, Jon Boy, thanks! Great thread!
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
Thanks, guys. I'm glad to know someone else is enjoying all this.
Just for fun, here's a site that shows the progression of the Great Vowel Shift. There are example pronunciations from Middle English, early Modern English, and Present Day English so you can hear the change firsthand.
And this site has a chart showing the actual movement of the vowels. If you're not familiar with the International Phonetic Alphabet, there's a link that explains it. The chart is shown as a rough representation of a mouth as seen from the side, so that the i in the upper left is right behind where the upper teeth would be (I hope that makes sense).
_____
Have I missed any questions? I feel like I've probably inadvertently skipped over something.
[ April 28, 2004, 07:56 PM: Message edited by: Jon Boy ]
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
What's the etymology for the term 'saucy wench'?
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
Jon Boy, this really is fascinating, and thank you for the answer. I greatly appreciate it.
Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
Jon Boy,
You're probably sick of this type of question, but it wasn't on the common mistakes site. What's the difference between grey and gray? Why does my Word spell checker only hate one of them?
Thanks.
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
Unfortunately, Storm, I don't think there's any way of figuring out when the phrase "saucy wench" was first used. All I can tell you is that wench comes from the Middle or Old English wenchel (or wencel), which originally meant a child, a servant or slave, or a common woman. By the 1300s it had acquired the senses of a serving maid and of a wanton woman. Saucy was used in the sense of "impertinent, rude, or lascivious" by the 1500s. Interestingly enough, the word sauce is related to the word salad; both ultimately come from the Latin word for salt.
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
There is no real difference between gray and grey. The British definitely prefer grey, while Americans lean towards gray. Both spellings are correct. The only problem is that Microsoft Word's spell checker is an utter piece of crap.
Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
Thanks, Jon Boy. I thought there was some kind of subtle contextual difference I was missing.
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
Nope. Unless maybe grey connotes London fog or something. Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
Jon Boy, I asked if you'd seen anything else interesting in Tolkien's use of the English language, and if you'd give us the technical breakdown of it, as you did for Pippen's vow. Was that too broad a question? I'm reading Tolkien's letters right now and he totally rocks.
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
Aha! I knew I'd missed something. It is a pretty broad question, and I haven't really studied the feature of his writing, but here are a few things I noticed last time I read The Lord of the Rings:
He uses participial phrases a lot. Where other writers would say something like "They passed through the gate and came into the courtyard," Tolkien says things like "Passing through the gate they came into the courtyard." I don't know if this is a conscious choice or if he just liked the phrasing.
He loves old stuff. He throws in some pretty random old words just for the sheer joy of it. Fell seems to be one of his favorites (as an adjective meaning fierce, cruel, or terrible. Someone (Treebeard, I think) calls Saruman "dwimmercrafty," which is a modern spelling of an Old English word referring to illusion and sorcery. Similarly, Eowyn calls the Witch-King a "foul dwimmerlaik," meaning a practitioner of magic arts. One of the things I love most about Tolkien is that he knows his English inside and out, especially the cool old stuff. Many passages sound practically biblical. When he waxes archaic, he gets it right.
His word choice seems very careful at times. Some passages sound rather poetic, with lines like "and all the stems were green or grey with moss and slimy, shaggy growths" (from chapter 6 in Fellowship). This line seriously needs to be read out loud. It is often said that Tolkien is too verbose and that he spends too much time with long descriptions, but I feel that he's not just doing it to hear himself talk (or read himself write?), like so many modern fantasy authors seem to do; and when one understand his inspirations, it becomes clear that he was merely emulating an older style, where long sidetracks were often taken for the sheer joy of storytelling.
It would be fun to do a study of Tolkien's syntax and word choice, but alas, I have not done such a study.
[ April 28, 2004, 09:41 PM: Message edited by: Jon Boy ]
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
And just in case anyone was wondering, this thread doesn't have to be limited to English. If you have more general questions about linguistics, I may be able to answer them (especially if they're questions about historical linguistics, since that's one of the things I'm especially interested in).
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
Just wanted to thank you for making this thread. It's fascinating!
Posted by Richard Berg (Member # 133) on :
What do you think will be considered the standard 3rd-person indeterminate-gender pronoun in 100 years?
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
First, great links Jon Boy! I can't wait to explore them in depth.
Second, I absolutely love the word "dwimmerlaik". My god I love Tolkein's use of language.
It's funny that he uses participial phrases so much--I use them a lot in my fiction too (much to the dismay of my college fiction writing teacher). I wonder if I was influenced in that by my love of Tolkein, or if part of the reason his writing appeals to me is that it uses kind of unusual patterns like that that I appreciate. Chicken and the egg, I suppose.
And now--my latest questions:
Am I right in thinking that the adjective forming suffix -en is something of a living fossil left over from Old English? There are only a few words that use it--golden, dwarven, elven, and a few others. If it isn't from Old English, what is is from?
Thai and Korean are completely different languages, of completely different linguistic heritage. They are not members of the same language family. And yet, the number 13 is pronounced identically in both of them. What's up with that?
The Greek lowercase lambda is quite similar in shape to the Thai letter that represents the "L" sound (in the link, it's in the third row of characters, sixth from the left).
The Thai script was developed from Mon and Khmer scripts, which were in turn developed from an Indic script called Brahmi. I'm nearly certain that Brahmi script is evolved from Sarasvati script, the script used for writing Sanscrit (I'm fairly sure).
The Greek script was developed from the Phoenician script in the 8th century BCE, which was in turn developed from Ugaritic script (or maybe not--it's possible that Ugaritic was a cousin of Phoenician, rather than a direct descendant, with both of them being descended from Proto-Canaanite script).
So my question is this: What is the relationship between the Proto-Canaanite alphabet and the Sarasvati alphabet? Also, are Sarasvati and Devanagari synonymous terms?
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
quote:What do you think will be considered the standard 3rd-person indeterminate-gender pronoun in 100 years?
Since this is a problem that has plagued English for hundreds of years, I don't see it changing anytime soon. The English language isn't in a position right now to adopt a new pronoun from somewhere else, and all the other options have problems. I think they will increasingly become more accepted, but I think there will be a stigma attached to it for quite some time. How long? I honestly have no idea.
quote:Am I right in thinking that the adjective forming suffix -en is something of a living fossil left over from Old English? There are only a few words that use it--golden, dwarven, elven, and a few others. If it isn't from Old English, what is is from?
It's definitely Old English, and it has parallels in other Germanic languages and in Latin and Greek. I'll just quote the entry from the Oxford English Dictionary, because it's rather interesting.
quote:(reduced to -n after r in unstressed syllables), corresponds to OS. -in, OHG. -în (Ger. -en), ON. -in, Goth. -eina-:OTeut -īno-, = Gr. -īno-, L. -īno- (see -INE), added to noun-stems to form adjs. with sense ‘pertaining to, of the nature of’. In Teut. the adjs. so formed chiefly indicate the material of which a thing is composed. Of the many words of this formation which existed in OE. scarcely any survive in mod. use; but the suffix was extensively applied in ME. to form new derivatives. Some of these took the place of OE. words, from which they formally differ only by the absence of umlaut; compare OE. gylden with mod.Eng. golden, OE. stǽnen (early ME. stenen) with ME. and dial. stonen, made of stone. From 16th c. onwards there has been in literary English a growing tendency to discard these adjs. for the attrib. use of the n., as in ‘a gold watch’; hence many of them have become wholly obs., and others (as golden, silvern) are seldom used except metaphorically, or with rhetorical emphasis. It is only in a few cases (e.g. wooden, woollen, earthen, wheaten) that these words are still familiarly used in their lit. sense. In s.w. dialects, however, the suffix is of common occurrence, being added without restriction to all ns. denoting the material of which anything is composed, as in glassen, steelen, tinnen, papern, etc.
I like papern.
And here's something else random and interesting. While searching for that suffix, I came across the diminutive -en suffix (as in kitten) and discovered that chicken is the diminutive of chick. Stew that one over for a while.
quote:Thai and Korean are completely different languages, of completely different linguistic heritage. They are not members of the same language family. And yet, the number 13 is pronounced identically in both of them. What's up with that?
Probably nothing more than mere coincidence. The numbers one, two, and three sound alike in most Indo-European languages. However, four and five often don't. Consider the differences between four, quatre, pedwar, and tetra, or between five, cinq, pump, and penta. No striking resemblances that link each set of words together, and yet they're related.
If Thai and Korean were originally related and later diverged, one would expect a greater difference between the words for thirteen (especially given the fact that the two languages don't appear related in the first place). Some would-be historical linguists will try to create lists of similar words in vastly different languages (like, say, Quechua and Hebrew) in an effort to show relation, but they ignore just about every rule of historical linguistics.
quote:So my question is this: What is the relationship between the Proto-Canaanite alphabet and the Sarasvati alphabet? Also, are Sarasvati and Devanagari synonymous terms?
I'm really not sure if Sarasvati and Devangari are synonymous, though it seems like they are from what little I've read. At any rate, the Devangari alphabet traces back to the Brahmi alphabet, which in turn comes from the eastern Aramaic alphabet (and thus back to Proto-Canaanite). It's mind-boggling to think that most of the writings systems of the world today (as dissimilar as they are) trace back to a common origin.
[ April 29, 2004, 11:23 PM: Message edited by: Jon Boy ]
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Jon Boy is officially my hero.
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
Posted by Mike (Member # 55) on :
OK, this has been bothering me for a while. In the last couple of years "ouster" has become a popular word in the news media. I originally assumed it meant "one who ousts", and when a notorious figure called for another notorious figure's ouster, the former was metaphorically calling for the person who would rise up and take the place of the latter to step forward. But I have since heard it used in ways that call that interpretation into question, so at one point I decided to look it up. Indeed, according to Webster, "ouster" means
1 a : a wrongful dispossession b : a judgment removing an officer or depriving a corporation of a franchise
2 : EXPULSION
My question is this: how did the word come to mean the act of dispossession itself, rather than the person who dispossesses? Why do "ouster" and "usurper" have such different (if somewhat related) meanings when they are formed in the same way from near-synonyms?
Plus, I think it's a silly word.
Posted by Richard Berg (Member # 133) on :
Well, it isn't unheard of for -er to mean "the event of." I agree that it would be better to make the synonym of expulsion be "oustage" or something.
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
Ouster comes from the Anglo-French word ouster, which is a verb infinitive. In French, infinitives are often used where we would use a present participle (like ousting). Apparently, it's an old law term (because French was used for the courts in Middle English times). I have no idea why it would be spreading now, though. It seems so much more common-sensical to say "ousting."
Anyway, words with similar endings include disclaimer, misnomer, user, dinner, and supper.
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
*bump for Nick*
quote:The regular ME. descendants of OE. wí¦an, -men, viz. wimman, wimmen (cf. OE. l鯦man, ME. lemman, LEMAN) continued in use until the 15th century. By c 1200 the rounding of wi- to wu- is clearly established, and is at that time characteristic of western ME. texts. The form womman appears in the late 13th century (first in western texts), and the corresponding pl. wommen in the late 14th. The simplification of mm in womman, -[i]en and wimman, -en, and the consequent conversion of the first syllable into an open syllable gave rise to forms with ō and ē, which, continuing to the early modern period, provided the occasion for punning analyses of wōman and wēmen (see 1k below). From c1400 woman and women became regular spellings for sing. and pl., and have been retained as a properly corresponding pair to man and men; but in the standard speech the pronunciation (wu-) was ultimately appropriated to the sing. and (wi-) to the pl., probably through the associative influence of pairs like foot and feet.
[ June 02, 2004, 10:28 PM: Message edited by: Jon Boy ]
Posted by Suneun (Member # 3247) on :
Okay. What's the usage difference between "may" and "might"?
What is "ought"? I think I looked it up once, but I'd be interested to read your answer. What other words are like "ought"?
Posted by Richard Berg (Member # 133) on :
Quick answer until Jon arrives:
May = permission Might = probability Ought = obligation
Posted by Suneun (Member # 3247) on :
right but ought is sort of a funny part of speech, isn't it?
Posted by Suneun (Member # 3247) on :
So what you're saying is, if someone uses "may" like, "This person may have so-and-so disease" they're really using it incorrectly?
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
May and might are modal auxiliary verbs. They come from different forms of the same verb (may being the present and might being the past). They mean essentially the same thing: possibility. It's the same pattern as will/would and can/could. Use might where the past tense is required. So if someone says, "So-and-so may have cancer," it's actually correct, but if someone says, "We thought so-and-so may have cancer [but it turns out he really didn't]," it's incorrect. If you're not sure, try substituting can or could and see which makes the most sense, or try using a different construction like "to be possible" and see which form (is or was) works.
Ought is usually considered a semimodal (though different grammarians sometimes label it as different things like "marginal modal" and call other things like "have to" a semimodal). To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what the difference is, and my grammar books don't say. Ought doesn't have different present and past forms like regular modals, and it requires the to infinitive instead of the bare infinite ("He may go" versus "He ought to go").
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
Hmm. As far as I can tell, ought is a bit of an oddball. There doesn't seem to be any definitive categorization of modals, which doesn't help. But it seems that typically, the regular modals don't have infinitive or participial forms, and they are always followed by a bare infinitive, while the semi-modals still have non-finite forms and usually take the to infinitive. Ought requires the to, but doesn't have non-finite forms.
So what is it? An auxiliary verb, I guess. Past that, it just depends on what grammatical school of thought you subscribe to.
Posted by Suneun (Member # 3247) on :
Thanks. I'm really quite fond of "ought," but it's such a different creature. "Ought not" is an acceptable coupling, yes? Like, "I ought not to eat the last piece."?
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
Yes, "ought not" is perfectly acceptable, and you can even leave off the to if you want (like "I ought not eat the last piece").
[ May 12, 2004, 11:16 PM: Message edited by: Jon Boy ]
Posted by Suneun (Member # 3247) on :
Mmmm. Ought not + verb is terribly fun.
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
I love it when people find language fun.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Yeah, I love that too!
I came across something last night that I'd never thought of, but is obvious in retrospect. Check out the etymology of the verb "to insulate"--it basically means "to make an island of", which is exactly what you do when you insulate something. Like I said, fairly obvious--we even have related words like "insular" in common usage--but I hadn't thought of it.
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
Cool. I even knew that the Latin word for "island" was insula, but I never put it together. It's funny how the history of a word can be staring you in the face like that.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Isn't it?
Hey, Jon Boy, my parents and I were talking about the etymology of "she" and "her" last weekend. The two words are different enough from each other that we were guessing that they had different origins, and had been kind of fused together into different forms of the same word, the way "go" and "went" were. Looking up both words on dictionary.com, though, I got the following for both of them:
quote:Middle English, from Old English hire. See ko- in Indo-European Roots
So, it looks like our guesses were wrong. I'm still puzzled as to how "she" could have evolved from "hire" though. Any chance you could illustrate it for me?
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
She and her are almost certainly from different roots, though there's still some conjecture and disagreement about exactly where she came from (though there is a pretty solid argument for one particular source). Dictionary.com has issues, though. When you look up she, it actually brings up the entry for her. That's why it's saying they both come from the Indo-European *ko- via the Old English hire.
So here's the explanation according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the best source I know. In Old English, the feminine singular nominative pronoun was heo (pronounced something like "HAY-uh"). The masculine was he (pronounced "HAY"). The plural pronoun was hie (pronounced "HEE-uh"). Towards late Old English, the plural and feminine forms began to collapse together with the masculine form. Because they sounded so similar, the demonstrative pronoun (roughly equivalent to the modern this and that) was often used.
The same thing had already happened in Old Norse, and they had already replaced the plural personal pronouns with plural forms of the demonstrative pronoun, so when they began settling England, it was that much easier to adopt the demonstrative pronoun (namely the Norse forms) as a substitute for the plural personal pronoun.
But she is a bit more mysterious. The best guess is that it came from the Old English feminine singular nominative form of the demonstrative pronoun, which was seo. (The demonstrative itself was a combination of two different stems: the th- forms [which won out] and the s- forms [which were only used for the masculine and feminine singular nominative forms, and which eventually disappeared].) It was originally pronounced "SAY-uh," but it seems that the diphthong shifted from falling to rising, giving something like "SYAY" or "SYO." The sy combination is not natural in English, so it could have easily palatalized to sh. Though the vowel seems to have varied, it probably regularized to e because of the influence of the pronoun he.
Generally, pronouns are very hard to come by. When they are lost or when a new one is needed, it's quite difficult to add a new one. It took a few hundred years after the loss of grammatical gender before English finally developed a new possessive form of it, replacing his) with its. Luckily, Old English still had a full demonstrative pronoun to borrow from, and the influence from Old Norse helped. Too bad we're not in a similar situation today. It'd be nice to coin a new gender-neutral personal pronoun.
(Yeah, I know that was more than you asked for, but you know me once I get going.)
[ May 19, 2004, 08:05 PM: Message edited by: Jon Boy ]
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
For a non-gender-specific singular pronoun, I have long agreed with the suggestion made by others that we should borrow one from another language. Swahili has such a word, "yeye" -- and it sounds just enough like he and she to work, IMO. Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
But the problem is that you can't just say, "Okay, let's all start using this new pronoun," no matter how good it is. People have come up with numerous suggestions, and all of them have failed. Pronouns are some of the most-used words there are, and a new pronoun would have to be comparable to others in terms of frequency of use and meaning. It was easy to borrow demonstratives to fill in the gaps because they were just as common and were used in similar ways. In order to borrow pronouns from another language, English would have to have very intimate contact with that language, with lots of bilingual speakers. English will probably never have such opportunities again, especially considering the very conservative forces of literacy and education. Nowadays, it takes far longer than it used to for changes—especially big ones like a new personal pronoun—to be accepted into the language. I think we'll just have to stick it out until they becomes accepted as a gender-neutral pronoun.
And anyway, yeye sounds silly.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
It became common usage on a forum about this size 10 years back. Sadly, said forum is no more.
Hey, if Hatrack can spread the "It doesn't do anything, that's the beauty of it" meme all over the Net, surely we can manage to add a four-letter word to the English language. Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
It's relatively easy for a small community to adopt a new word. It's incredibly difficult for the rest of the speakers of the language do adopt the same word.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Agreed. But if we started it, who knows where it might spread?
While we're at it, I think we should dub the current decade the Noughties.
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
Maybe you should send around a chain e-mail, like the one I just got yesterday exhorting everyone in the world to stop buying gas for just one day and thus bring OPEC to their knees. If that doesn't work, nothing will.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
quote:Yeah, I know that was more than you asked for, but you know me once I get going
Actually, that was pretty much exactly the level of depth I was hoping for. Once again, Jon Boy demonstrates his incredible coolness!
I've always assumed that eventually "they" would become English's gender neutral 3rd person pronoun, simply because it seems fairly common already in spoken English. You don't think that'll happen?
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
The problem with using "they" is it removes one more connection between grammar and the logical distinctions represented by it.
Would you use "they talks" if you intend "they" to be singular? Or, would we lose all sense of number in the pronoun as we did with "you"?
Dagonee
Posted by saxon75 (Member # 4589) on :
quote:Of course, I'm sure that our media and our possession of a technologically sophisticated society slows down the evolution of our language
I'm reasonably certain that the main technology that retards linguistic evolution is literacy. Actually, literacy as a technology is pretty fascinating. According to Walter Ong, literacy actually restructures consciousness. That is, literate people think in completely different ways from non-literate people. For an interesting comparison of primary oral, secondary oral, and literate cultures, check out his book Orality and Literacy. A warning: Ong loves the parenthetical in-text citation and you will be hard pressed to find a paragraph without at least one. In my opinion this is distracting and makes it hard to read.
quote:The letter f has never been the letter s, though in some older scripts, they often look very similar. The elongated s was used everywhere except at the end of a word. Why, though? That's just how they wrote them. The shapes of letters have changed considerably over the last thousand years. I don't have exact dates for when the elongated s was used (I'll have to check when I get home), but I believe it was mostly an early modern English thing.
According to the professor who taught the various print/book history classes I took, one speculation about the reason for two different letters "S" is that internal and leading S's and ending S's often have different sounds. Internal and leading S's sound like the "S" in "sound." Ending S's often make a sound like the letter "Z." Hence, two different letters.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote: Or, would we lose all sense of number in the pronoun as we did with "you"?
What are you talking about? "you" is singular. The plural is "y'all". Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Yeah Dagonee, I think it'll lose all sense of number.
You know, Mike, I've been thinking about the way that literacy effects people lately. From what I've read about it (and I haven't read Ong's book, but I'm adding it to my list), people in non-literate cultures typically have better memories than people in literate cultures. I'd be interested in reading a study that looked at memory in illiterate people versus literate people within a literate culture, but you'd have to control for all sorts of things in order to have the results be worthwhile. But that's another topic entirely.
Anyway, the thinking is that in a literate society, people don't need to rely on memory so heavily, since information can be easily stored and accessed through other means. As a result, people don't hone their memory skills to the same edge as do people in non-literate societies.
Remeber the article I posted a link to a few weeks ago about personal head-up displays? Right now they're being used by some surgeons and mechanics, but I'm sure that something like them will become more widespread. In addition, I expect that the devices will be hooked up to the internet, and that it'll be possible to use them to access information virtually anywhere, and eventually to be able to "right click", so to speak, on things in the material world to get more information on them. Even now they have a primitive version of this that is being demoed on the elderly--a pair of glasses that prompts them with peoples' names, helping them to continue functioning in society even with (very) mild dimentia.
If internet connected personal head up display technology were to become ubiquitous, what impact would it have on the way the minds of people who grew up with it? The value of the brain's memory storage capacity would likely be further eroded, wouldn't it? What else?
[ May 20, 2004, 12:47 PM: Message edited by: Noemon ]
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
You can look at it another way. In literate society, our memory is *better*. It's just that we keep much of our memory in the form of books.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
My memory is always at my fingertips; I keep everything in my Palm.
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
quote:The problem with using "they" is it removes one more connection between grammar and the logical distinctions represented by it.
*shrug*
Innumerable distinctions have already been lost. Compared to the loss of cases, tenses, moods, numbers, and voices, this is pretty darn trivial.
quote:Would you use "they talks" if you intend "they" to be singular? Or, would we lose all sense of number in the pronoun as we did with "you"?
People already use they as a singular, and they conjugate it like a plural, just like the singular you. However, they will probably never lose all sense of number because its use as a singular is very limited. It's never going to supersede he, she, and it as the regular singular personal pronouns. They has been functioning as an indefinite or gender-neutral pronoun since at least Chaucer's time. The only reason it's not accepted today is that eighteenth-century grammarians screwed it up.
Dang. My lunch is over. I'll have to finish later.
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
Okay, where was I?
Eighteenth-century grammarians. Yeah. They pretty much screwed lots of stuff up. English had a long history of treating indefinite pronouns as plurals. Historically, it wasn't a violation of English grammar to use a subject of indefinite number with plural pronouns and verbs. The gender- and number-indefinite they was used for centuries by such masters of the language as Chaucer and Shakespeare.
So why can't we bring it back? Because of educators and editors. Everyone's been taught that it's wrong, and because it's so stigmatized now, it's edited out of everything. It's still thriving colloquially, but it'll probably be a long time before it's accepted in educated prose again.
quote:According to the professor who taught the various print/book history classes I took, one speculation about the reason for two different letters "S" is that internal and leading S's and ending S's often have different sounds. Internal and leading S's sound like the "S" in "sound." Ending S's often make a sound like the letter "Z." Hence, two different letters.
Um, no. There's no speculation. It simply entered the printing world from a handwriting style that began in Italy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. And it definitely wasn't used to represent the z sound. S's were typically only voiced (that is, pronounced like z's) between vowels or when joined with a voiced consonant. Double s's were always unvoiced, though they were usually written Å¿s (which, coincidentaly, is the origin of the German eszet character). In some southern British dialects (and in German), initial s's were voiced, but the spelling didn't change.
Jon Boy, I need a grammar question answered for my wedding site. (See this thread.)
Kayla posted this suggestion for change:
quote:quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Eve went to Knoxville for Random's and John's wedding. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Did Random and John have two separate weddings, or did they marry each other? If they married each other, and y'all only attended one wedding, I think I'd change that to "Eve went to Knoxville for Random and John's wedding." But that's just me and I could be wrong. (Where's Jon Boy when you need him?)
I don't know what's correct, and I couldn't find anything (my style guides are down at school).
Help, please.
Dagonee
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
If one thing belongs to multiple people, just add the 's on the last name. If multiple things belong to multiple people, respectively, then make each name into a possessive. Thus, if Random and John married each other, it should be "Random and John's," not "Random's and John's."
Hmm. Now I'm curious about when that became the convention. I'm sure that in Old English, each name would decline to the genitive case. Maybe I'll look into that (for my own sake if for no one else's).
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
Whoa. What's up with the ghost bump?
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote: Also, starting with a conjunction is perfectly grammatical, and anyone who says otherwise has fallen prey to linguistic superstition.
Would you elaborate, please? I have always thought that it was incorrecto to do so. But that hasn't stopped me from doing it when I am writing informally, like on hatrack. But I do avoid it whenever I am writing a report or the like.
So, where does this superstition come from? Have the rules changed? When?
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
quote:Everybody agrees that it's all right to begin a sentence with and, and nearly everybody admits to having been taught at some past time that hte practice was wrong. Most of us think the prohibition goes back to our early school days. Bailey 1984 points out that the prohibition is probably meant to correct the tendency of children to string together independent declarative clauses or simple declarative sentences with ands: "We got in the car and we went to the movie and I bought some popcorn and. . . ." As children grow older and master the more sophisticated technique of subordinating clauses, the prohibition of and becomes unnecessary. But apparently our teachers fail to tell us when we may forget about the prohibition. Consequently, many of us go through life thinking it wrong to begin a sentence with and. (Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, [Springfield, MA: 1989] s.v. "and")
In formal writing, you don't need to completely avoid sentence-starting conjunctions, but you should probably use them sparingly. Otherwise, they become annoying and lose their effect. The rules haven't changed. People just grew up and realized that there was never a real rule to begin with.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
OK, I need a quick primer on when to use "that" v. when to use "which."
The sentence I'm working with now is, "The detectives found a bag of green weedlike substance that tested positive for THC."
If you can give a little background or point me to some rules, it would be very helpful.
Thanks,
Dagonee
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
The formal, traditional rule in American English is that which is used for non-restrictive clauses and that is used for restrictive clauses. If you need to set off the clause with a comma, it's non-restrictive. Compare the following:
Children who have active imaginations like to draw.
Children, who have active imaginations, like to draw.
The first example excludes children who don't have active imaginations. The second example says that all children have active imaginations. Since your sentence says that this particular weedlike substance tested positive (but not every weedlike substance does), it's restrictive and should use that. The truth is that which is sometimes used for restrictive clauses, but not very often, and it sometimes leads to ambiguity or misreading. Safer to stick with that in this case.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
Does the English word "gift" have germanic roots or does it come from some other source? If it is germanic in origin, how did it come to have such a different meaning from the german "Gift" which means "poison".
What about the history of the word "become"?
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Thanks!
Posted by Brinestone (Member # 5755) on :
Ooh! He was just telling me the other day that the German and English versions of "Gift" are in fact related, but I don't remember the details as well as he will, so you'll just have to wait.
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
All I know is that the modern English word gift is ultimately of Scandinavian origin, but that it is in fact related to the modern German Gift. Apparently, the German word used to mean "gift," but now it just means "poison." I suspect it may have been a euphemism that superseded the original meaning of the word. I emailed one of my professors about it, and I hope he can shed some more light on it.
But lunch break's over now, so I'll have to do become later.
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Hail]](graemlins/hail.gif)
Guru Jon
![[Monkeys]](graemlins/monkeys.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
And no, mine wasn't incomplete. It had a subject, verb, and complement. Also, starting with a conjunction is perfectly grammatical, and anyone who says otherwise has fallen prey to linguistic superstition.
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![[Dont Know]](graemlins/dontknow.gif)