Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 January 25

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January 25

Türkmenbaşy

Is "Türkmenbaşy" related to "pasha", etymologically speaking? The former term apparently means "Leader of Turkmen", and "pasha" is an anglicised version of a Turkish title for a kind of leader. Of course I know that Turkish and Turkmen aren't the same, but I know that they're both Turkic languages. Nyttend (talk) 04:51, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

It would appear so. The Wikipedia article pasha, in the linguistics section, notes spellings and variations that use "baş" in them in various Turkic languages, and that many such languages do not draw a distinction between the "b" and "p" sounds, so it seems quite likely that the "baş" part of "Türkmenbaşy" means leader. --Jayron32 05:23, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

In Turkish, baş (bash) means head, and başi (bashi) is an affix with the same meaning. But pasha is from Persian pādšāh (padshah) which means 'king'. I think their similarity is superficial. --Omidinist (talk) 08:34, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Not according to the Wikipedia article Pasha which has a referenced section that clearly states that Pasha derives from Old Turkish and not Persian roots; Persian is an Indo-Iranian (and thus Indo-European) language, while Turkish is from the Turkic family, an unrelated group of languages. It is possible that there was some vocabulary borrowing between Turkish and Persian (or between their ancestors) but neither the article Pasha nor the article Padishah indicates any connection; and given the roots of the word Padishah (padi- meaning master and shah meaning king) it seems unlikely that the word is connected to the Turkic one. At best, they may be False cognates. --Jayron32 13:50, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Jayron, please look at our Wiktionary and this Etymology Dictionary. --Omidinist (talk) 18:13, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

My, this seems quite complex.

• Wikipedia says it's from Turkish baş ağa ("head chief/master")
• the Online Etymology Dictionary is confusing to me; it seems to say it's from both baş and pādšāh (or that baş is from pādšāh?)
• the 2nd edition of the OED derives it from baş and says "The best Turkish scholars think there is no ground for connecting the word in any way with Pers. pādshah king or emperor, Turkish pādishah the Sultan"
• but the updated entry in the OED online does derive it from pādšāh, saying "The word seems to have been a title created by the Ottoman ruling family from the Persian, probably via children's language" and "In (especially early) English use the word was further confused with the etymologically unrelated but phonetically similar Turkish başı in-chief < baş head, chief + -ı , ending linking to the preceding word."
• the Nişanyan Turkish etymological dictionary derives it from Persian bačče, "child" and says there's no justification either for the pādšāh or the başağa derivations.

I'm inclined to trust either of the latter. Lesgles (talk) 22:04, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

I think at this point, based on Lesgles excellent legwork here, is to call it an "open question" as to the derivation. --Jayron32 22:45, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

I'll warn you vigorously not to accept any Turkish source as reliable, unless you have independent external evidence, given the pseudoscientific bent of Turkish nationalism. See Sun language. There was a nationalist push to create etymologies like bacce where they didn't exist. The PIE *potis > OldTurk bash > Iranian pasha etymology strikes me as the most plausible (no longer, see below). Unfortunately I put my reliable Turkish etymological dictionary in storage and have not been able to find it for well over a year. μηδείς (talk) 04:06, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

If he were motivated by a nationalist drive towards pure Turkish roots, why would a Turkish scholar want to posit an etymology from bačče, which is "foreign" (Persian), and reject the convenient purely Turkic alternative based on baş, as Nişanyan does? I have no idea how reliable he is, but this is certainly not Sun Language nonsense. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:55, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

• 1) baş is from Proto-Turkic *baš~ba:š, it exists in all the Turkic languages. Ramstedt also connected it with Korean mari "head", so it may be also an Altaic word.
  2) Türkmenbaşy itself seems to be a Turkic izafet: Türkmen "Turkmen(s)" + baş-y "head-its" (-y is the 3 p. sg. possesive suffix), that is "the head of the Turkmens".--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 04:32, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

I am sympathetic to Ramstedt because Nicholas Poppe, who is very reliable, is sympathetic to him. Unfortunately, Sergei Starostin, who agrees the term is Altaic, but who gives balch instead of bash as the proto-Turkic is not so reliable. See his Babylon site. In any case, the fact that all the Turkic languages including Chuvash have a form posh/bash implies the term was native, and hence not borrowed into Ottoman from Persian. μηδείς (talk) 04:52, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Medeis, I don't think anybody has proposed either that Turkish baş was a loan from Persian or anywhere else, or conversely that there was a chain of "PIE *potis > OldTurk bash > Iranian pasha". The three things that are not in doubt are that (a) pasha emerged in Ottoman Turkish; (b) baş is native Turkish; and (c) the first component of Iranian pādšāh comes from IE *poti-. The question is just whether pasha comes from the former or the latter (or something entirely different). – Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:41, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

I though one of the sources (not an editor) referenced above made the claim bash as head was borrowed from an IE source. Since we agree the etymology would be false, forgive me if I don't search for it among all the links above. μηδείς (talk) 02:37, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

It was the Online Etymology Dictionary: "Turk. pasha, earlier basha, from bash "head, chief" (no clear distinction between -b- and -p- in Turkish), from Old Persian pati- "master," from PIE *poti- (see potent) + root of shah." I think the author probably saw the two etymologies and mistakenly linked them up. Lesgles (talk) 03:27, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I was lazy to provide the source for the first time. My info is from Севортян Э. В. Этимологический словарь тюркских языков: Общетюркские и межтюркские основы на букву «Б», 1978, с. 85-88. *Bal'č is from Räsänen. --Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 04:34, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Lesgles: thanks for digging up those references; I've tried to fix our article on pasha accordingly [1]. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:33, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Great! I was thinking about doing that but was too lazy. Lesgles (talk) 03:29, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Use of "then".

From the Wiktionary article for "then", an example of the use of "then" is

If it’s locked, then we’ll need the key.

Is it appropriate to omit "then" in this context?

If it’s locked, we’ll need the key.

? ? Widener (talk) 08:24, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Not only appropriate, but usual in idiomatic speech and writing. -- Elphion (talk) 08:35, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Would it be wrong to include "then", then? Widener (talk) 09:46, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

No - either is correct. Omitting 'then' is more colloquial, but you should discard the idea that one is going to be right and the other one wrong. AlexTiefling (talk) 09:50, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Would one or the other be correct or better in writing an essay? Widener (talk) 11:39, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Whichever leads to more flowing prose would be better, in my opinion, unless the intention is to break up such a flow, in which case do the opposite. (My gut feeling is that omitting 'then' unless the sentence is unclear without it is the more flowing, but the specific sentence you have in mind may not sound that way in practice.) AlexTiefling (talk) 11:41, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

(ec) It's not inappropriate. In this case the word is optional. The "if ... then" construction is widely found, but the "then" is often left out, being understood. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 08:39, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

In informal speech, we often leave out bits that are understood. Example: "Goin' to the store. Wanna come with?" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:00, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

As discussed previously on this desk, that particular construction may be a calque from German or Norwegian rather than a simple omission: [2]. AlexTiefling (talk) 13:32, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

In mathematics "then" would usually be included, because it usually serves to break up a statement in mathematical language after "if" from another mathematical statement after "then", so the two math expressions don't run into each other. That situation probably seldom arises in an essay, though.

One rule of good writing that some people believe in is to go through what you've written and eliminate any superfluous words; "then" would be a good candidate to eliminate since it makes no difference for the meaning. Here's one exception: If the "if" clause is so lengthy that someone might forget that we are in an "if...then" logical construction, then (sic) you should include "then". Duoduoduo (talk) 16:26, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

The only time I'd include the "then" is if it represents a change. For example:

PERSON A: "We'll need the key."

PERSON B: "If it's locked, then we'll need the key."

However, it could be omitted, even in this case, by moving the emphasis from "then" to "locked". StuRat (talk) 16:50, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Is there an English equivalent to the Chinese proverb 好汉不吃眼前亏?

The Chinese have a saying 好汉不吃眼前亏. It means "a good man avoids a confrontation when the circumstances of the immediate situation are manifestly unfavorable to him" (my loose translation.) In a common usage, it's given as an advice to someone to exercise restrain or to retreat from a situation, because it's plainly obvious that things will end badly for him if he does otherwise.

Is there a proverb in English that has a similar meaning? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.185.179.17 (talk) 18:48, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

It's not really a proverb, but what about "run away to fight another day"? — SMUconlaw (talk) 19:08, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

The proverb form is "he who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day". Looie496 (talk) 19:16, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Not necessarily the closest match of the sentiment of the OP's proverb though, in that the use of this expression typically assumes that the confrontation was initially not avoided and that it turned out so unfavorably for one party that retreating is advisable. I think Medeis has hit on the closest phrase that is common in English below. Snow (talk) 20:56, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Discretion is the better part of valor. μηδείς (talk) 19:50, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Not specific to confrontations, really but "Look before you leap" shares the same note of caution, albeit without the context of one bidding their time implied by the Chinese proverb; that is, "look before you leap" doesn't suggest that the course of action being referenced is ever going to be a good idea, but is rather a general advisement not to act impulsively, as opposed to being an advisement on patience and timing. It's also arguably more of a general idiomatic expression than a proverb per say. Snow (talk) 21:08, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

• Can we get a transliteration and an interlinear (literal word for word) translation of the Chinese proverb? μηδείς (talk) 21:19, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

The pinyin transliteration of 好汉不吃眼前亏 is "Hǎo hàn bù chī yǎn qián kuī". Literal translations of Chinese expressions are often not very helpful because most characters have multiple meanings. Since characters form meaningful compounds, you might transliterate the phrase "Hǎohàn bù chī yǎnqián kuī". Translating each term, Hǎohàn = hero, brave person, true man; bù = not; chī (in this case) = accept, suffer, incur; yǎnqián = before one's own eyes; immediate; kuī = lose, or "Hero not accept before his own eyes lose". A more idiomatic translation might be "A true man does not accept an immediate loss." My dictionary offers these two translations: 1) "A wise man doesn't fight against impossible odds." 2) "A wise man knows when to retreat." Marco polo (talk) 22:06, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

[Edit conflict] Yes, I was going to say that a clearer translation that is fairly literal might be "A hero does not accept a loss that is before his eyes". — SMUconlaw (talk) 22:15, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Then Medeis has it right: the traditional English maxim with the same meaning is "Discretion is the better part of valour". (English proverbs, except biblical ones, tend not to lay the same emphasis on the 'true man' figure commonly found in east Asian sayings.) AlexTiefling (talk) 23:46, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the translation, Marco! μηδείς (talk) 03:57, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Not as close as "discretion...", but a couple related phrases are "pick your battles" and "know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em."--Wikimedes (talk) 04:29, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

A military maxim is "Never reinforce failure".[3] Alansplodge (talk) 14:48, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Dependent and independent clauses

It's said that independent clauses can stand as sentences by themselves, but dependent clauses cannot. At Independent clause the example "I am a doctor, and my wife is a lawyer" is given, which is said to consist of two independent clauses: "I am a doctor" and "my wife is a lawyer", both of which can be independent sentences. At [4] the example "The poor woman had no money because she had lost her job" is given, with "because she had lost her job" highlighted as a dependent clause. However, "She had lost her job" can also stand as an independent sentence, which contradicts the original claim. It's true that "Because she had lost her job" cannot be an independent sentence, but this is not comparing like with like as we are now including the conjunction. One might as well say that "And my wife is a lawyer" cannot be an independent sentence (in the proper sense relevant here), and therefore the second part of the first example is also a dependent clause. What is the explanation? 86.160.212.30 (talk) 20:32, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Omitting the conjunction seems to be implied here. If we omt "because" the remainder seems to be a cromulent, if vague sentence. Am I missing something else in the question? μηδείς (talk) 21:22, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

(ec)Interesting question. (1) In "The poor woman had no money because she had lost her job", the part "because she had lost her job" is not intended as a separate and equal piece of information; it is only stated as supplementary information to the main clause. Subordinating conjunctions like "because" indicate that supplementary status. But in "I am a doctor, and my wife is a lawyer", the two clauses are intended as separate and equal pieces of information; this relationship is indicated by the use of the coordinating conjunction "and", and this equal relationship means that both clauses are independent. (2) "Because she had lost her job" indeed cannot stand as an independent sentence, so it is not an independent clause; but "And my wife is a lawyer" can stand alone. (Despite occasionally heard advice that coordinating conjunctions should not start a sentence, in fact it is a widely accepted practice to do so, even by authoritative publishers and authors.) Duoduoduo (talk) 21:26, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

In my opinion, if one is allowing sentences starting with conjunctions, "Because she had lost her job" is just as acceptable as "And my wife is a lawyer". ("Why did she have no money?" / "Because she had lost her job.") 86.160.212.30 (talk) 21:53, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

You are correct, at least insofar as we are talking about dependent and independent clauses as technical terms. Duoduoduo seems to be conflating elements of prescriptive and descriptive grammar. Neither sentence beginning with a conjunction is technically an independent clause, but there are plenty of contexts in which we still accept these uses as grammatically sound because, even for those who lack formal training to explicitly describe what is going on here, we all have an innate understanding of assumed context that allows us to mentally abstract and fill in the missing elements (see my post bellow). It's just that not all phrases are created equal in this regard and some are going to sound more jarring than others because the assumptions that have to be made in this manner can vary in their complexity. There's also a good deal of social pressure which goes into which uses are considered "acceptable" and which aren't. While, as Duo says, "And" and "But" are increasingly viewed as acceptable, even in some formal contexts, there are plenty of purists who will still make an issue of them, often in the most obtusely pedantic manner. But what is accepted as a "proper" form and what constitutes an independent syntactical unit are two separate issues, even if they are deeply entangled. Snow (talk) 22:15, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

You're allowed to start a one-clause sentence with a coordinating conjunction like "and", but not with a subordinating conjunction, since the latter by definition subordinates what follows to something else in the same sentence. Duoduoduo (talk) 22:27, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Says who? In my earlier example – "Why did she have no money?" / "Because she had lost her job." – I did just that, and I maintain that said sentence is just as valid as one beginning with "And". 86.160.212.30 (talk) 02:27, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Actually your example establishes his stance more so, once you factor in another consideration which I obliviously looked right over earlier, despite having just alluded to it in my own response bellow. "Because she had lost her job." is absolutely an acceptable response to that question for pretty much any native English speaker. But if we're going to pull it apart into its composite structures grammatically, you have to recognize that it is an answer to a question that is known in this context, and as such, the only reason it is accepted is because the speaker(s) already know the first part of the phrase and don't typically do not require it to be repeated. So there is a nul structure in that sentence which is there cognitively but not necessarily spoken aloud. The full sentence which is represented by "She had lost her job." in this situation is actually "She had no money because she lost her job." If you walked up to a random person and said "Because she lost her job." it would be incomplete and more or less nonsensical as they have no context to supply for what relationship "because" refers to, context which can be mentally (if not verbally) supplied to fill out the entire statement being made by all speakers involved. By contrast, if you walked up to someone out of the blue and asked "She had no money." or even "Why did she have no money?" those would be fully formed and completely intelligible statements, even if the person asked had no idea as to who you were talking about and what the answer could possibly be. Notice that this kind of unspoken but grammatically present phrase is so ubiquitous in spoken language that we take it completely for granted and many times consider responses to questions which don't use this format (that is, responses which explicitly repeat the first part of the statement) as the "marked form" (the more aberrant one that seems to be suggesting extra information). For example, if one person asks "Why didn't she have any money?" and the response is "She didn't have any money because she had lost her job." (as opposed to just "Because she lost her job" or "She lost her job") we often tend to perceive this as emphasis. However, while Duo is ultimately right on the larger point, his statements about what are "allowed" confuse the issue a little bit in that this is not about rules in the sense of an agreed upon and enforced standard but rather what naturally occurring utterances qualify as examples of particular grammatical structures and where they become unintelligible if used in a way inconsistent with their context. Snow (talk) 05:31, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't see any difference. If you walked up to a random person and said "Because she lost her job." it would be incomplete. If you walked up to a random person and said "And my wife is a lawyer" it would be incomplete. 86.160.212.30 (talk) 22:43, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

You've hit upon some ambiguous wording in our Independent clause article which should probably be clarified; technically it is correct to say that both "I am a doctor" and "my wife is a lawyer" could serve as independent clauses, specifically if they were there own self-contained sentences. But when dividing statements into clauses, one cannot leave orphaned elements; every morpheme must be assigned a role somewhere and in this case "and" has been ignored. In the case of English syntax, the conjunction clearly belongs with the second of the clauses and therefore "and my wife is a lawyer" is the dependent clause. Note that this rule is absolute, even when analyzing complex or informal speech, though things have to be contextually approached a little differently. So, for example, imagine the following exchange:

Person A - "Well, you can afford it - you're a doctor, right?"

Person B - "And my wife is a lawyer."

Even in this case, having no overt independent clause to attach to, B's statement is still a dependent clause; it just happens to be one attached to a nul statement, an unspoken independent clause assumed by the speaker from context.

Person B - "(Yes, I am in fact a doctor) and my wife is a lawyer."

In fact, you'd somewhat expect B to nod or otherwise give a non-verbal queue in acknowledgement of the omitted element. That's a little more complicated than is strictly speaking necessary to answer your question, but I wanted to emphasize that no single element of a spoken statement can be excluded when breaking said statement down into clauses and conjunctions at the head of a clause typically (universally? I'm wracking my mind for contrary comparable examples in other languages) mark it as dependent. Snow (talk) 21:51, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Saying that a clause beginning with "and" and no other conjunction could be construed as dependent is very non-standard -- do you have a reference for that? As I said above, the clause "and my wife is a lawyer" is considered to be an independent clause, whether in a sentence by itself or otherwise. Dependent or independent is determined by the type of conjunction, since that's what determines whether clauses (explicit or implied) are equal or not. Duoduoduo (talk) 22:27, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

In the interest of clarity for the OP, I have to admit that a number of resources I've consulted since the issue was raised today agree with your position, including several of our own articles (though a lot of our articles on this subject are honestly underwhelming). I was absolutely certain that in cases where the second clause is formed of a conjunctive phrase and a noun phrase which combine to form a head noun phrase that said clause was collectively referred to as dependent even if the noun phrase would, minus the conjunctive phrase, have stood as an independent clause. But it seems I'm mistaken (that or a good number of online grammar resources are oversimplifying the matter, which is possible, if admittedly less likely). Just to clarify on another point raised though, the relative difference between a dependent and independent clause is not so much a matter of them being "equal" in abstract status but rather (non-)interchangeability owing to relative "conditioning" of the clauses. Snow (talk) 05:02, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

The idea that "I am a doctor, and my wife is a lawyer" contains a dependent clause is contrary to everything I have read elsewhere. 86.160.212.30 (talk) 02:24, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

The descriptive and prescriptive aspects of this discussion can be disentangled as follows. As Snow says, independent clauses are not conditioned (or as I put it, not subordinated, or equal in the sense of neither being conditioned on the other) to another clause, while dependent clauses are -- that's descriptive. In English, the coordinating conjunctions, which link independent clauses, are for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so and various others -- that's descriptive of English. On the other hand, to say that "And my wife is a lawyer" is or is not an acceptable sentence, or to say that "Because she had lost her job" is or is not an acceptable sentence, is prescriptive and hence at least somewhat arbitrary. Duoduoduo (talk) 13:18, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

It is also descriptive to say that a sentence or independent clause represents a complete thought and a dependent clause does not. Sometimes "and" may suggest a complete thought because it maybe used to mean, in addition to something else. However, "because" suggests an incomplete thought, where it is used to mean there is a cause to be explicated, but the clause does not explicate it. On the other hand, sometimes "and" does not precede a complete thought, but are there any sentence constructions where "because" is not be used in a dependent clause? -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:33, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

In English I'm only aware of the following constructions in which a dependent clause has no explicit subordinating conjunction (like "because", "if", etc.): "Were he to come, I would be happy" (= "If he were to come, I would be happy"; subjunctive mood in dependent clause, more common in US English than in UK English); "Had he come, I would have been happy" (= "If he had come, I would have been happy"); "Should he come, I will be happy" (= "If he comes, I will be happy"; more common in UK than in US). Duoduoduo (talk) 15:50, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Note that the above dependent clauses indisputably cannot stand alone (I mean this descriptively for how English is spoken, but it may give a clue as to why there's a like prescriptive rule for English dependent clauses in general: "Were he to come."; "Had he come."; "Should he come." Duoduoduo (talk) 16:18, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Here's a natural-sounding sentence from my post in another section on this desk: "So there are reasons to do it either way". It starts with a coordinating conjunction, and I kind of doubt that even an uptight style editor would object to it. Yet some editors are uptight about "And...". (Notice that that last sentence also sounds unobjectionable despite starting with the coordinating conjunction "yet". Duoduoduo (talk) 16:18, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks very much for all the replies. It seems to me that when people say that "I am a doctor, and my wife is a lawyer" contains two independent clauses, they are thinking of "I am a doctor" and "My wife is a lawyer", and not "I am a doctor" and "And my wife is a lawyer". Since numerous dependent clauses can form grammatical sentences when the conjunction is lost ("I had a cup of tea when I arrived home" -> "I arrived home"), it seems to me that the theory "independent clauses can stand as sentences by themselves while dependent clauses cannot" must take into acount meaning, not just grammatical correctness. When "My wife is a lawyer" is extracted from "I am a doctor, and my wife is a lawyer", none of the meaning of that clause is lost. On the contrary, when "I arrived home" is extracted from "I had a cup of tea when I arrived home", the whole purpose of the clause is destroyed. Sorry if someone has already said something similar in a different way! 86.160.212.30 (talk) 22:59, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Sounds good and it also gets to the difference between a word (meant to be) used as a subordinating conjunction and a word used as a coordinating conjunction. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:01, 27 January 2013 (UTC)