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December 11

Ambiguity?

As I am not a native speaker, I would like to seek clarification, whether the following statement is ambiguous:

Admin A. threatened to block user B. for removing links to XY to win a content dispute.

I think the underlined part could be understood in two different ways:

• User B. removed the links to win a content dispute.
• Admin A. used the threat to win a substantive argument.

Thank you for letting me know how you interpret this. Leyo 08:22, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

You are correct. The sentence is ambiguous. For the latter meaning the sentence should begin "In order to win a content dispute, admin A..." Shantavira|^{feed me} 09:10, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

@Leyo: Unambiguous wording for the two meanings you require:

1. Admin A. threatened to block user B., for removing links to XY to win a content dispute.
2. To win a content dispute, Admin A. threatened to block user B. for removing links to XY.

Bazza (talk) 13:45, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Leyo -- This is very similar to what linguists call "preposition attachment" ambiguity. For example, in the sentence "John saw the man with the telescope", did the man have a telescope, or did John use a telescope to see the man? Wikipedia doesn't seem to have much about this... AnonMoos (talk) 13:51, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Both John and the man may have had telescopes? Martinevans123 (talk) 14:00, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

In which case, John saw the man with the telescope with a telescope. Unless he saw him using the man's own telescope, which would mean that John saw the man with the telescope with the telescope. — Kpalion^(talk) 16:24, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

I guess that old joke about the rabbit and the rifle also exists in English as well, and not only Swedish... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 16:40, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

"One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know." -- Groucho Marx as Captain Spaulding in Animal Crackers--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:45, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

We have Syntactic ambiguity which includes among the examples yours with the telescope. 2.53.172.189 (talk) 10:27, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for turning that up (all I could find was a computational parsing article). Variations of the telescope sentence have likely been used by linguists for many years... AnonMoos (talk) 00:18, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your answers. I used your confirmation concerning the ambiguity there. --Leyo 01:10, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Which fruit, flies like apples?

Answer: None.

Which fruit flies, like apples?

Answer: All.

To sum up: All depends on where you place the comma. In your example, it depends on whether the punctuation is:

Admin A threatened to block user B for,

removing links to XY to win a content dispute.

or:

Admin A threatened,

to block user B for removing links to XY,

to win a content dispute.

If there are no commas, the first interpretation is a way more reasonable, the second one being very unlikely, because the last part to win a content dispute is attached - to the middle part removing links to XY - rather than to the first part Admin A threatened to block user B for.

HOTmag (talk) 11:39, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

There's always Lynne Truss. Bazza (talk) 16:53, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Sinitic rhotics

Is there any Sinitic language which has an alveolar trill /r/ or alveolar flap /ɾ/ as their rhotic? Most Sinitic languages I have seen do not have any rhotics at all, and Mandarin has retroflex approximant /ɻ/. --40bus (talk) 12:30, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Truly lackluster sourcing, but apparently the dialect of Mandarin in Dangyang, Hubei does? fun video for the citation, at least. Remsense留 12:39, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Wasn't expecting a Spanish language video, but at least that made me understand almost everything with my rusty school Spanish... It would be interesting to hear that promotional dialect song mentioned in the video. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:34, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

December 12

"momentary lapse in judgment" vs "momentary lapse of judgment"

"momentary lapse in judgment" vs "momentary lapse of judgment"

Which one of the two is better?

Both seems to be in active use, but I can't tell which one is more grammatical or which one sounds better. Or maybe there's no real difference. Liberté2 (talk) 02:22, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

I think which one sounds better likely depends a considerable amount on the phonotactics of the surrounding phrase.

To me, a lapse of judgement has hints of an isolated incident in an otherwise solid "block" of judgement, while a lapse in judgement sounds more like an emergent interruption in a "flow" that may be part of a greater interruptive pattern. But these connotations are exceedingly minor and likely rather specific to my particular idiolect. Remsense留 02:39, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

This will be one of those cases where it depends on local usage. Both are "correct". I feel more comfortable with the "in" version. But I'm far from the centre of global English usage, in Melbourne, Australia. HiLo48 (talk) 02:53, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Until late last century lapse of judgement was more popular, but it was overtaken by lapse in judgement in the 90s.^[1]  --Lambiam 09:50, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

In contrast, lapse of memory remains considerably more popular than lapse in memory.^[2] But lapse in coverage beats lapse of coverage.^[3]  --Lambiam 10:01, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

@Liberté2 Collins suggests "lapse" is a countable noun, and prefers "lapse of". (There are other meanings for "lapse".) As others have said above, context and location are considerations. See also wikt:Judgment: Spelling. Bazza (talk) 10:10, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

"Lapse in judgement" looks to me like a lapse of the pen, or sounds like a lapse of the tongue, or is a lapse of taste, perhaps indicative of a lapse of reason. DuncanHill (talk) 10:21, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Records indicate that as of 2018, roughly 22‰ of lapses are momentary, up from 9.5‰ in 2000. Folly Mox (talk) 14:08, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

And then there are the momentous lapses, without a discernible trend.  --Lambiam 20:28, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, everyone. Liberté2 (talk) 00:25, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Resolved

December 13

Is Erciyes a Turkish (or some other language spoken in Anatolia) word for shimmering?

Per this source that claims that "Erdschias-Dagh" means "shimmering" mountain. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:42, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

According to the article on Mount Erciyes, the name arises from the Turkish adoption of the Greek name Argaios (Ἀργαῖος), which may be from the name of Argaeus I of Macedon. wikt:Ἀργαῖος has further information on the name and its etymology, being from argós (wikt:ἀργός) meaning "bright, shining, white" and -aîos (wikt:-αῖος) meaning "of." GalacticShoe (talk) 17:01, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict)That name only appears in older German lamguage texts, it's known in English as Mount Erciyes or Turkish Erciyes Dağı. The Etymology section of our article says:

Erciyes is the adoption into Turkish of the Greek name Argaios (Greek: Ἀργαῖος). The latinized form is Argaeus (a rarely encountered alternative latinization was Argaeas mons, Argeas mons). The Greek name has the meaning of "bright" or "white"; as applied to the mountain, it may have been eponymous of Argaeus I (678 – 640 BC), king of Macedon and founder of the Argead dynasty. The Turkish name was historically spelled Erciyas, and it was changed to Erciyes to conform with vowel harmony in the 1940s-1960s.

Alansplodge (talk) 17:08, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Etymology and usage of "pop" in the context of art and design

I'm using Wiktionary as a reference example before asking my question:[4]

Something that stands out or is distinctive to the mind or senses

a white dress with a pop of red

a pop of vanilla flavour

2023 November 4, Kim Duong, Megan Uy, Tarah-Lynn Saint-Elien, “22 Best Shackets to Get You Through the Chilly Fall Weather”, in Cosmopolitan‎:

"Nothing screams fall like corduroy! I'm loving this deep seafoam green shacket—made of the thick, ribbed material—that'll give a fab pop of color to a muted ensemble."

For the last year or so, I've been seeing this use of color popping increasing in the popular vernacular, much more so than I've ever seen it before. About a year or two ago, practically everyone on the art, design, and engineering subs on Reddit just started using it out of the blue, very similar to how people went nuts using the word "adjacent" in regular conversations many years back (I still have no idea how that happened, but I'm sure everyone knows what I'm talking about, as it came out of nowhere and took over popular culture; see "Why Is Everything 'Adjacent' Now?").

Just today, I ran into the use of popping in an article I was reading here for the very first time.[5] "There was an effort to make the outlines pop and to use broad areas of colors". That example surprised me, because the content was about the motivations of artists from the 11th and 12th century, and the source, Medieval Art (2004) doesn't use that term. The source says: "The painters of the nave vault, therefore, intended that their painting would be intelligible from a distance. They worked on a large scale, emphasized outlines and broad color areas, and simplified internal modeling of figures." I completely understand that the editor was paraphrasing using the modern concept of digital color popping to summarize the text, but to my mind, this feels anachronistic, as the term "color pop" seems to have entered the popular lexicon in a large way due to the popularity of digital editing tools which highlight this feature, not from the practices of artists more than 800 years ago. Can anyone explain what is going on, how color "popping" came about (was it even popular before Photoshop?) and should we really be using hyper-modern terms to describe the practices of ancient artists? Viriditas (talk) 19:03, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Here is an example of usage of colors 'popping' in a November 1985 issue of Popular Mechanics. Since Photoshop wouldn't pop up for another 2 years, it's reasonable to assume that this usage was reasonably in vogue before then. GalacticShoe (talk) 19:27, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

And here is another example, in the December 1985 issue of Popular Photography. GalacticShoe (talk) 19:28, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Predating these both, a November 1966 issue of Billboard mentions colors popping out. GalacticShoe (talk) 19:29, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Is it reasonable to assume the term was in vogue? It looks like it was unique to advertising and marketing. I'm talking about how and when it crossed over from niche to popular culture. Viriditas (talk) 19:43, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Well, at the very least, it was in vogue with advertisers. I'll try to find examples in other media, but in general I'm not so sure that it was necessarily Photoshop specifically that led to the advent of colors "popping" becoming more popular GalacticShoe (talk) 03:02, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

@GalacticShoe: Can you find any usage in popular culture by writers, authors, journalists, or professors in newspapers and magazines? I'm talking about something other than advertising copy. However, if that's the best you can find, then is it reasonable to suggest the term was invented to sell products? Viriditas (talk) 19:50, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

"Pop" has many uses, as noted in EO.[6] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:54, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Agreed, but I'm referring to only one usage. What's your take on the color pop? Have you noticed an increasing use of this term in popular culture? I was recently participating in a discussion about the colors of cars in another off-wiki forum, only to find many people talking about how "colors pop" in regard to their favorite car colors. It seems to be a very popular expression. Viriditas (talk) 19:59, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't follow fashion and such, but the usage of "eye-popping" seems to fit, i.e. it catches your attention. A similar idea was expressed in the old TV series Color Splash. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:59, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Sure, but this is used quite differently than "eye-popping". It's often phrased as "that color pops". Is that something you've heard before? My argument is that internet culture around digital imaging has made it mainstream. Background: "Color popping is a digital effect in which part of an image is shown in color while the rest part is in grey or dull monochrome. It’s a simple but effective way to make your subject pop to create an effect that is pleasing to the eye." While it's true that "eye-popping" has been around forever, I only began hearing and reading "that color pops" (and various permutations) in everyday usage within the last several years. Viriditas (talk) 21:19, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't think it's all that different. I saw one item in Newspapers.com where a designer equated "pop of color" to "accent color" - something that makes an item stand out or catch your eye. One thing to be cautious about is a type of confirmation bias, in that some object such as a word gets your attenton and then you start seeing it frequently, even if it was there all along. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:57, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm quite aware of confirmation bias. I think this situation is identical to the rise of the use of "adjacent" (see the NYT article linked above) and may have similar roots in the tech community. I've been reading and writing about design for a very long time and I haven't seen the kind of usage like we see in the 2023 Cosmopolitan article up above reach such a critical mass like this before. It has not always been with us on such a large scale, and aside from marketing and advertising, I don't see a single example of a writer, journalist, author, or professor using this kind of word in this context. This is a new phenomenon. Viriditas (talk) 23:39, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

I used the google ngram viewer on the phrase "color popped"... based on the "American" corpus, this start around the late 1980s and grew during the 1990s and grew somewhat faster over time until about 2008, when it started really "popping". In the "British" corpora, however, there seems to be no usage at all. Of course, this is limited to just one specific phrase. Fabrickator (talk) 00:23, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, that’s helpful. I’m curious about your reaction to this usage. If you went to buy a car in your local region, and the salesperson was showing you all the different colors and remarked, "Now take a look at this beauty, the white exterior really makes the red seats pop", how would you respond? That’s an example of how it is used here. And I find it incredibly odd. I am often reminded of when "my bad" came out of nowhere and it seemed like everyone was using it, as if a mind virus had taken over the country. It feels like that. Viriditas (talk) 00:49, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

I suspect this use arose as a shortening of pop out, as seen used in 1918, when someone reports that a big sign "popped out" at him, and in 1922, where a color "pops out". If so, the core meaning is "to command attention", originally with a connotation of abruptness, applied to something in one's visual field.  --Lambiam 16:15, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

That makes perfect sense. When did people start shortening it to just "X pops"? From where I stand, it was very recently, let's say, within the last decade. Viriditas (talk) 22:24, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Pronunciation of (Donald) Tusk

Our article gives the pronunciation (presumably in English) as /tʊsk/, but in Polish as [tusk].

If it's [tusk] in Polish, why in the world wouldn't it be /tuːsk/ in English? That seems much closer. The "long" marking is conventional anyway and doesn't mean much in modern (at least American) English. --Trovatore By the way, I consume news content almost exclusively in the form of text; I shun news videos (or worse yet, broadcast news) with extreme prejudice, so I can't say how the newsies pronounce it. (talk) 21:14, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Also compare English [mɪnˈkaʊski] with German [mɪŋˈkɔfski] (for the surname of Hermann Minkowski). And note that the name Chomsky in the original Ukrainian is Хомський, which I guess is pronounced more like [ˈxɔmsʲkei̯] and not as [ˈt͡ʃɔmski].  --Lambiam 22:59, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Those don't seem extremely relevant to the instant question. Changing a w to an /f/ is not very intuitive to Anglophones, but u pronounced /uː/ should not be a problem. I wouldn't be confused if Anglophones pronounced it /tʌsk/. --Trovatore (talk) 23:02, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

The audio file present on Donald Tusk's page registers to me as being closer to /ʊ/ than /u/, and since (based on the file's metadata) the creator of the audio is Polish, I'm fairly certain that this is how the name Tusk is supposed to be pronounced. So I think the question shouldn't be why the name is listed with an /ʊ/ sound, but rather why Tusk is pronounced like that in the first place despite Polish's nominal lack of an /ʊ/ sound. GalacticShoe (talk) 02:56, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Ah, I see. So maybe [u] and [ʊ] are allophones in Polish, and the represented English pronunciation was taken from someone who used [ʊ] for that phoneme? --Trovatore (talk) 06:24, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

According to the article Polish phonology, the Polish [u] is somewhat more open than the cardinal [u], thus bringing it close to [ʊ].  --Lambiam 15:37, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

/uː/ is a closing diphthong whose starting point is close to [ʊ] (i.e. [ʊw]) in many accents, so before a voiceless consonant, where vowels are shortened, it can be difficult to determine whether a vowel is /uː/ or /ʊ/. Nardog (talk) 03:15, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

December 14

Ancient Greek Translation Help

Hello, I'm making a fictional magic system and I'd like help with making sure I'm using the correct real-life procedure. Here's an example: M°nteu%w µe'sw to' Ske'ptoµenon µo¦ per' ¡ K ne'ous° at*s per' ho Metw%pou at¶n. I'd translate it literally as "I divine by means of the observation of mine of the kissing of her of the foreheads of them guys" meaning "I divine by means of my observation of her kissing of their foreheads."

Overall, I think I'm unclear on what agrees with what. For example, does the gender of the noun determine the gender of the article, or is it the gender of the possessive pronoun? Some specific questions:

1. Is the first person singular present active conjugated verb correct (M°nteu%w)?
2. Are the prepositions correct (µe'sw, per', and per')?
3. Given this is spoken in the first person by one non-binary diviner, are the first article (to'), the inflection on the participle (-enon), and the first possessive pronoun correct (µo¦)?
4. Given the kisser is one female, are the second article (¡), the inflection on the first descriptive genitive noun (-ous°), and the second possessive pronoun correct (at*s)?
5. Given the bearer of foreheads are more than two men, are the third article (ho), the inflection on the second descriptive genitive noun (-ou), and the third possessive pronoun correct (at¶n)?

So far, I've used the Wiktionary articles on these words, the Wikipedia article Ancient Greek nouns, as well as these sources:

1. https://www.lexilogos.com/english/greek_ancient_dictionary.htm#
2. https://dcc.dickinson.edu/grammar/latin/1st-declension-stem-paradigm-and-gender
3. https://ugg.readthedocs.io/en/latest/case_genitive.html
4. https://www.blueletterbible.org/resources/grammars/greek/simplified-greek/genitive-case.cfm
5. https://www.greekboston.com/learn-speak/five-cases/
6. https://daedalus.umkc.edu/FirstGreekBook/JWW_FGB3.html

I appreciate help answering my questions and if you have any other sources to share that I haven't already looked at, please do share. Thank you. Schyler (exquirito veritatem bonumque) 23:49, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

If you don't get the words right, you may always say that they are barbarous names as they did in Hellenistic magic.--Error (talk) 11:58, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

That's helpful. I do also want to learn more about gender agrees with inflections in verbs, nouns, and articles though. Schyler (exquirito veritatem bonumque) 15:01, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Well, there's this from the Ancient Greek grammar article :"The definite article agrees with its associated noun in number, gender and case." So that solves that question, but now I'm looking for an answer to what the noun inflection agrees with. Schyler (exquirito veritatem bonumque) 17:19, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Some remarks.

1. The smiley breve mark  '(  over vowels may be seen in dictionaries but is not used in actual texts, so for example per' should be peri'. But if the mark is arched the other way around, like a frown, it is a genuine Ancient Greek accent and should remain, as in µo¦.
2. Why do you write the first letters of nouns with capital letters? Usually we now use sentence case when rendering Ancient Greek texts. The ancient Greeks themselves used only one case; they wrote GNW*THI SEAUTON (without accents} or, later, gn¶thi seauto'n.
3. The word µe'sw is Modern Greek. You could use instead dia' + the genitive. Then you get, di° to¦ ske'ptoµenou µo¦.
4. But the form ske'ptoµenon is the passive participle of ske'ptoµai, "that is being watched". Using as a noun, like here, it means "that which is being watched", so to' ske'ptoµenon µo¦ means "that of mine which is being watched", which I think is not what you mean.
5. Also, the primary sense of ske'ptoµai is to "watch", to "examine", and seems a bit creepy in the context, something like a voyeur spying on kissing people. You need a noun here; instead of going for a verbal noun, why not simply use qi*s, meaning "sight", which can like in English refer to the act of seeing, or to what is seen. Then you don't need to specify the "of mine" bit because it will be understood in the context. Then you get, di° t*s qew*s.
6. The repeated use of peri', "concerning", makes this sound very stilted. You wouldn't say in English, "I divine through the sight concerning the kissing of her concerning the foreheads of them thar guys."
7. There are more issues, but for now I have to attend to issues in real life.

Disclaimer. I am not a native speaker of Ancient Greek. My most recent serious exposure was being taught the language over sixty years ago, and that was only to understand texts in Greek, not to create correct sentences. I can spot some obvious errors, but I can't know what a reasonably natural and grammatically correct translation would be.  --Lambiam 18:07, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

I asked ChatGPT to translate "I divine by the sight of her kissing their foreheads." This was the result:

g¼ µanteu%oµai hup¸ t*s qew*s at*s filo¦sa*s at¶n t°*s µetw%pou*s.

Ancient Greek is a pro-drop language (as is Modern Greek), so the subject g¼ may be omitted. The form µanteu%w appeared only after the Ancient Greek period in Koine Greek. The preposition hup¸ (+ genitive) also means "by, through", with a clear sense of "by means of".

I don't know whether file'w for the verb "kiss" is better here than kune'w. My impression is that neither is particularly amorous, but that file'w can also mean to touch tenderly. If you go with kune'w, the word becomes kune'ousa*s or, contracted, kuno¦sa*s. For the kiss of Judas, Matthew and Mark use katafile'w.

The genitive plural at¶n is the same for all three grammatical genders, so, as in English, you cannot tell that the kissees are blokes. But the genitive singular at*s is unambiguously feminine, so the kisser is definitely female.  --Lambiam 21:15, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

This is helpful and inspiring. In reply:

1. Noted, and this could be a device I use, like a paper town sub-plot.
2. It's just an artifact of the software I'm using.
3. I'll go with hup¸ since you've said it's clearly better and the AI supports your claim.
4. I think "that of mine which is being watched" is the sort of wordiness that makes sense for the story.
5. Certainly creepy, but not so much for the cultic story. I use this word because the fictional magic system has three 'types' of divination of increasing 'sincerity', so "sight" isn't quite right, I think, but maybe here I was just flat wrong on what a participle is and now I'm getting confused with the basic grammar, I guess. Here are the three types, so I'd welcome any pointers for using more a precise set of stems and a way to clear up my grammar confusion.

Stem: Ske'ptoµ- (Observation or Examination)

Inflections: -eno*s, -e'ny, -enon (m, f, n)

Stem: herµyneu%- (Interpretation or Explanation)

Inflections: -wn, -ous°, -on (m, f, n)

Stem: Gignw%sk- (Judgement or Determination)

Inflections: -wn, -ous°, -on (m, f, n)

1. Again, wordiness works.

Finally, can you speak to the the noun inflection agreement? Since the article agrees with the gender of the noun, does the noun inflection agree with the gender of the person? Schyler (exquirito veritatem bonumque) 23:26, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

In a given context, the inflected form of a given noun is only determined by its number (singular/dual/plural) and the grammatical case imposed by the context (nominative/genitive/...). Wiktionary gives inflection tables for most nouns. For example, for qi*s see wikt:qi*s#Inflection (click "show"). When an adjective or participle is nominalized, it inherits the gender and number of the entity/ies of which it is an attribute. The gender of abstract entities is normally taken to be neuter, e.g. faino'µenon.  --Lambiam 23:57, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm really grateful for your help. Nominalized participle was the grammar vocabulary word I was missing. I take it then that the translations I've listed are correctly nominalized participles, but should always be neuter (i.e., Ske'ptoµenon,herµyneu%on, Gignw%skon). Schyler (exquirito veritatem bonumque) 02:49, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

The words herµyne¦on and gign¶skon have circumflex accents.^[7][8] Whether the gender assignment is correct depends on the context.  --Lambiam 10:55, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

You said "when an adjective or participle is nominalized, it inherits the gender and number of the entity/ies of which it is an attribute". Does that mean in this context "it inherits the gender and number of the diviner"? Schyler (exquirito veritatem bonumque) 22:19, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

I would be slightly skeptical of the assumption that non-binary people would want to be referred to by the ancient Greek neuter gender. It would be basically the same thing as using the pronoun "it" in modern English. Are non-binary people now OK with being referred to as "it"? And in older Indo-European languages, the masculine and neuter were distinguished from each other at most in the nominative and accusative cases. All other case forms were the same. There used to be a relic of this in English, when the possessive of "it" was "his" until around 1600, so that "his" (a historical genitive case form) had both masculine and neuter meanings. The form "its" was then brought into existence by analogy to eliminate this ambiguity (but still today, "whose" can be considered to be the possessive of both "who" and "what" for some purposes)... AnonMoos (talk) 21:56, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Surely me being in group doesn't make my opinion mean anything special, but 1) I'm skeptical that there's a 1:1 correspondence between Ancient Greek neuter gender and English "it", 2) the neuter gender is rather novel in my experience, so it feels validating, and 3) your comment answers none of the questions and in fact reading it was the most useless experience I've had all month, maybe all year, so congratulations Schyler (exquirito veritatem bonumque) 22:16, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

And congratulations to you for ignoring the expertise of someone who knows quite a bit more about ancient Greek than you do. You use the neuter gender whenever you say the word "it", so I don't know what's so "novel" about it... AnonMoos (talk) 23:48, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

December 15

N followed by Consonant - Why stereotypically(?) Sub-Saharan Africa?

I was watching the new Dr. Who and the first name of the New Doctor (Ncuti) brought to mind that in my head there are a lot of consonantal blends at the beginning of words that are N followed by a consonant that I associate with Africa, including Ng(even with the Vietnamese name Nguyen), Nj, Nc Ny and Nj. Is there a reason that this occurs?Naraht (talk) 04:01, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

I think this article might have some information on that sound: Voiced velar nasal. Schyler (exquirito veritatem bonumque) 05:31, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

That would only apply to the case where an "ng" spelling represents a single phonetic consonant, and can occur at the beginning of a word, as in Vietnamese. For cases where an apparent phonetic cluster of a nasal consonant plus another consonant occurs at the beginning of a word, syllabic nasal and prenasalized consonant would be more relevant. In some Bantu languages, when the vowel of a CV- class prefix disappears in a historical sound change, and the consionant is nasal, then it can become syllabic; that's basically the origin of word-initial syllabic nasals in Swahili. AnonMoos (talk) 12:05, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm not acquainted with Ngozi Fulani (not sure why she got such a bad press - the word fulani can indicate a made-up name) - but I know an Ibo lady named Mbezi. 2A02:C7B:103:7100:D984:512D:2947:50AE (talk) 12:26, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Might it be that initial N is a frequent case marker or root in some Bantu language you hear? Actually the root of Bantu is *ntʊ̀- --Error (talk) 11:55, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

In Bantu languages, a nominal stem can generally appear only with class prefixes, so the -nt- of Bantu wouldn't occur word-initially... AnonMoos (talk) 21:54, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Holger Czukay - "Czukay, an approximation of the Polish word for 'search' " according to his NYT obituary - what exact form? Case? Verb? Adjective?

Good whatever time it is in your location all,

I've looked through this article's history and talk page and and haven't seen this discussed.

As everyone every nerd fascinated by the intersection of C20 avant-garde and C20 pop music knows, Czukay is the Polish word for "searcher" (source: am nerd fascinated by the intersection of C20 avant-garde and C20 pop music).

This is somewhat obliquely addressed in his NYT obituary here - summary: Czukay took this as his artistic name as, when he was a student, Stockhausen often referred to him as a searcher.

According to en.wp Polish language, it has seven cases.

What would be the exact (if any) form that Czukay took on? And yes, I am fully aware that I am asking social media the reference desk to fact check the NYT. Shirt58 (talk) 🦘 09:52, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

I see there's nothing at Holger Czukay, perhaps unsurprisingly. I'd assume it was a verb case e.g. searches or searching. But am far too less of a Polish grammar nerd to really guess. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:02, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

The only thing I can find on Wiktionary that comes close is szukaj (with initial sz-, not cz-). This would be the imperative form ("search!") of the verb szukać. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:04, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

May I suggest an inquiry at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Poland? Alansplodge (talk) 10:46, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Here's an interview (in German) with Holger Czukay from 2010. According to this Czukay was the original name of the family, changed to Schüring bei Holger's grandfather to avoid problems with the Nazis. In the 60s he was told by two Polish singers that the name meant "search". He interprets it as the imperative, but maybe because he wants it to be the imperative and to convey that meaning rather than from a detailed linguistic understanding. My own name is not a million miles from Czukay's. While I'm not sure of its origins and meaning I'm fairly certain that it is not actually Polish but might come from one of the related languages that occur in the area, maybe Kashubian or Polabian or something. The interpretation as "search" may come from the similarity with the Polish word szukaj but need not necessarily be the actual meaning of the name. --Wrongfilter (talk) 11:30, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Many thanks for that info, Wrongfilter. I suspect that "two Polish singers in the 60s" may not be WP:RS. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:34, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Almost the only thing I knew about Holger Czukay was that he did some songs with Jah Wobble and Jaki Liebezeit. I just liked the three names together: Holger Czukay, Jaki Liebezeit, and Jah Wobble (make sure to pronounce the J's differently!). -- AnonMoos (talk) 12:15, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

The closest Polish word is szukaj, which, as Future Perfect has already mentioned above, is the second-person singular imperative form of szukać, 'to search'. The word is commonly found on search buttons on Polish-language websites. Czukay or czukaj doesn't mean anything in Polish or in any other Slavic language as far as I know. I notice in the article that Czukay pronounced his name with a "sh" sound rather than a "ch" sound, which I suppose may have been influenced by someone telling him it sounded similar to szukaj. The name itself sounds to me like it could be of Turkic (Polish Tatar, perhaps) origin, but I've got no source for that. — Kpalion^(talk) 14:32, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

December 16

Name of a name

What is the terminology for "Hyatt" in A. Hyatt Smith? Is this considered a given name or a middle name? Clarityfiend (talk) 00:26, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

According to Given name, they are both given names. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:17, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Aye, people can have multiple given names: for example, I thought Joko Widodo, the current president of Indonesia, was not mononymous like many other Indonesian people are, but it turns out he is! He just has two given names. (Or, if you like, a given name consisting of two words.) Remsense留 01:20, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

It is a given middle name.^[9][10][11]  --Lambiam 10:11, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

What if someone has three or more given names, as in John James Joseph Doe? Is the second given name still referred to as a middle name? Or is it a second name? — Kpalion^(talk) 14:14, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

I've always informally heard it described as people having n middle names. Remsense留 14:15, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Middle implies after first name and before surname. Hence it would be multiple "middle" names. As in Charles Philip Arthur George (Mountbatten-Windsor), who has 3 of them. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:11, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

What the frog?

The etymology section of our frog articles says: How Old English frosc gave rise to frogga is, however, uncertain, as the development does not involve a regular sound-change. Instead, it seems that there was a trend in Old English to coin nicknames for animals ending in -g, with examples—themselves all of uncertain etymology—including dog, hog, pig, stag, and (ear)wig. Frog appears to have been adapted from frosc as part of this trend. This statement is supported by a ref to the OED which is behind a paywall. Where could I learn more about this trend? Matt Deres (talk) 01:34, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

EO is free, and here's their take on it.[12] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:26, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

This is what the OED says about the etymology of "frog":

Ultimately related to Old English frosc frosh n.1 and its cognates in other Germanic languages (see below), although the nature of the relationship is uncertain; the present word was probably originally an alteration of frosc as a result of association with docga dog n.1 and other words denoting animals which are listed at that entry, in which the geminate consonant perhaps originally had a hypocoristic motivation; however, other explanations are perhaps possible. Connection with a number of other words in fr- denoting a frog in English and other Germanic languages is much less certain (see (3) and (4) below). 
The stem-final geminated consonant in Old English frogga, frocga is unusual and difficult to explain; it is probably related to the similar geminate shown by docga dog n.1 and other words denoting animals which are listed at that entry. As noted above, it is possible that frogga shows an alteration of Old English frosc (also frox, forsc: see frosh n.1) by association with this group of words, perhaps originally as a hypocoristic derivative, although it is perhaps also possible that frogga shows an isolated reflex of a Germanic base ultimately cognate with that of frosc(see further below). 
Words for a frog with initial fr- in Old English and other Germanic languages can be divided into four groups: 
(1) Old English frosc (also frox, forsc: see frosh n.1), cognate with Middle Dutch vorsch, versch, vorsche (Dutch vors, now chiefly in kikvors), Middle Low German vrosch, vorsch, vors, Old High German frosc (Middle High German vorsch, vors, German Frosch), Old Icelandic froskr, Swedish (regional) frosk, further etymology uncertain, perhaps ultimately a derivative < an extended form of an Indo-European verbal base with the meaning ‘to hop’, reflected by Sanskrit pru- to leap (probably further related to plu- to swim (see flow v.; perhaps compare plavaga, plavaṅga monkey, frog); the same extended form is perhaps reflected also by Russianpryt′ speed, quickness, liveliness (late 18th cent., although earlier currency is perhaps implied by the adverb adjective prytkij ‘quick, lively’ (17th cent. in Old Russian) and the adverb prytko‘quickly, nimbly, in a lively manner’ (1562 in Old Russian); now chiefly in fixed phrases, e.g. vo vsju pryt′ ‘as fast as one's legs can carry one’), and (with added velar suffix) prygat′ to leap, to jump, to hop (late 18th cent.); perhaps compare also Lithuanian sprugti ‘to escape’, which may be < the same Indo-European base with movable s-, although the evidence to support such a reconstruction is very limited. 
(2) frog n.1, which, as suggested above, could show an alteration or variant within Old Englishof frosc, probably by association with the group of words denoting animals discussed at dogn.1, or which could perhaps (less probably) show the only attested reflex of a different formation < the same Germanic verbal base as frosc and its cognates. 
(3) Middle English frūde froud n., which (although also beginning with fr-) is probably unrelated; this is perhaps ultimately (with operation of Verner's Law) < an ablaut variant (showing also sound-symbolic lengthening of the vowel) of the same Germanic base as Old Icelandic frauðr, Old Swedish fördh, frödher (Swedish frö), Old Danish frødh (Danish frø); perhaps ultimately < the same base as froth n., hence referring to the slimy skin of a frog. (It is also possible that Middle English frode at froud n. Forms may show another distinct word in this same group.) 
(4) Old Icelandic frauke, which probably shows a derivative of the forms under (3). It is possible that froke at Forms could instead show a borrowing of this word. 
Many scholars have attempted to link all four groups of forms, assuming a variety of different starting points, but none of these attempts has been wholly successful. CodeTalker (talk) 05:02, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

I had guessed that the -sk-ending in Proto-Germanic *fruskaz was related to the Proto-Germanic reflexive pronoun *sek, i.e. a creature that "jumps oneself", although Wiktionary seems to prefer the explanation "*prewgʰ- (“to leap”) +‎ *-ḱós (animal suffix)". 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:06, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Thank you all very kindly. A lot of the material is technical and over my head, but the answer to my question appears to be here: "The word belongs to a set of words of uncertain or phonologically problematic etymology with a stem-final geminated g in Old English which is not due to West Germanic consonant gemination and therefore does not undergo assibilation. These words form both a morphological and a semantic group, as they are usually Old English weak masculine nouns and denote animals; compare frog n.1, hog n.1, pig n.1, stag n.1, Old English sugga (see haysugge n.), Old English wicga (see earwig n.), and perhaps teg n.1 It has been suggested that these words show expressive gemination, perhaps due to their being originally hypocoristic forms." Matt Deres (talk) 16:46, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Courses or books on pragmatics for enthusiasts

I looked at the references on Pragmatics and didn't really see any works presented as obvious further reading for enthusiasts. "Enthusiasts" meaning people like me, who would like to learn jargon and drill deeper into the subject, perhaps having more familiarity with other areas of linguistics and lexicography, but are nonetheless not academics. Any recommendations would be much-appreciated! Remsense留 07:18, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Some results of a GBS on the term "Pragmatics" are:

1. Pragmatics. Stephen C. Levinson · 1983
   An integrative and lucid analysis of central topics in the field of linguistic pragmatics deixis, implicature, presupposition, speed acts, and conversational structure.
2. Pragmatics. Siobhan Chapman · 2011
   Comprehensive and highly readable, this is an essential text for undergraduates or postgraduates enrolled on specialist modules in pragmatics or on more general linguistics courses.
3. Principles of Pragmatics. Geoffrey N. Leech · 2016
   This book presents a rhetorical model of pragmatics: that is, a model which studies linguistic communication in terms of communicative goals and principles of 'good communicative behaviour'.
4. Introduction to Pragmatics. Betty J. Birner · 2012
   Throughout the book the relationship between semantics and pragmatics is continually addressed and reassessed.
5. Pragmatics: A slim guide. Betty J. Birner · 2021

This book offers a concise but comprehensive entry-level guide to the study of meaning in context.

The sentences in small print are probably blurbs supplied by the publishers, but should give an impression. The last book of this list also has a Kindle edition. Amazon.com may have editorial and customer reviews for some of these books.  --Lambiam 09:57, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Lambiam, I appreciate it! I don't want to give the impression that I didn't want to search for titles, I just figured someone might have some personal recommendation, but your collation is very much appreciated! Remsense留 09:58, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Was or were?

I'm having a conversation with User:Snowflake91 here. We can't agree on one thing - which version is correct: "division was two tournaments" or "division were two tournaments"? I claim that the first one is correct, Snowflake91 the second one. So I would like to ask someone more experienced to comment. Thanks, Maiō T. (talk) 17:58, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

How many tournaments? One or two? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:06, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Doesn't matter if it's not the subject... Nardog (talk) 18:14, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

The number of tournaments is irrelevant, it's the number of divisions that matters. "The division was..." would be correct. That said, why not recast the sentence? "The division comprised two tournaments" or "the division consisted of two tournaments" for example. DuncanHill (talk) 18:14, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, that's a way around it. Reminds me of the gentle argument as to do I feel "well" or do I feel "good"? One alternative is, "I feel fine!" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:29, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

I Feel Free. Cullen328 (talk) 05:32, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

The example article (one of the many) is 2019 IIHF World U18 Championship Division II – "was/were two international under-18 tournaments" in the lead section right at the start. The "Division" here is the proper name of the competition, it doesn't necessarily mean that there is only one division – it is actually divided into "Division II A" and "Division II B", so two divisions/tournaments. Snowflake91 (talk) 18:42, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

December 17

Cantonese transliteration

How would 陳仁昌 and 陳仁傑 be transliterated in Cantonese today? KAVEBEAR (talk) 05:14, 17 December 2023 (UTC)