Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 January 28

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January 28

Cardinal vowel

Now that this article contains:

The lip positions can be reversed with the lip position for the corresponding vowel on the opposite side of the front-back dimension, so that e.g. Cardinal 1 can be produced with the rounding for Cardinal 9, etc.; these are known as 'secondary cardinal vowels'.

I don't quite understand the italic text. What I get is: it means (according to the example that follows) when you change the lip position (e.g. from unrounded to rounded), then the vowel you pronounce will be another one. This sentence looks a bit clumsy for me...

Or are the vowels are numbered in pairs according to backness and height and roundedness? --Fitzwilliam 04:53, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

The unmarked (or default) system of vowels has unrounded vowels in front and central and rounded ones in the back. I think there is a physiological motivation for this pattern. In any case a typical case is that a five-vowel system like that of Spanish has /i/, /e/, and /a/ front and central as unrounded. It also has /o/ and /u/ which is back as rounded. Therefore, primary cardinal vowels are those that correspond to this unmarked system. In more complex systems, like English, German, and French, you are liable to get marked correlates of these vowels, a front rounded vowel like /y/ or a back unrounded one like /ɯ/. Those are the secondary cardinal. Remember that cardinal vowels are abstract constructs, and therefore they just indicate potentialities.mnewmanqc 23:09, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

PERFECT - - - What does it literally mean?

I am interested to know where the word "perfect" originated. I am talking about perfect tenses. what does it really mean when we say it is in the "perfect" tense? I know the meaning given to it is something like "an action happening before another action," but I am so curious what that word literally mean. I hope this question is not hard to understand. Thank you very much.. I am expecting a prompt reply. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 124.106.189.173 (talk) 09:28, 28 January 2007 (UTC).

Here's a link to Wiktionary's entry on the verb perficere. As you can see it's a Latin composite, consisting of the prefix per- (here: thoroughly) and the verb facere (to make). Perfectus means completed, and the perfect aspect signifies a completed action. ---Sluzzelin 09:46, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

ok, but let us not forget that present perfect progressive tense is used also to denote an action that has begun in the past and is still going on to the present, as in "I have been studying for 5 hours now." How is it now? The action doesn't seem to have been completed yet. Please elaborate. Thank you. Carlrichard 10:07, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Sluzzelin is only partly correct. The basic distinction of Grammatical aspect is between the perfective (completed) and imperfective (uncompleted) aspects: completed is an appropriate term for perfective aspect. Perfect aspect is different from either of these. The crucial thing about perfect aspect is a (presently) continuing state - usually from a completed action in the past, but not always (at least in English - many languages translate "I have been studying for 5 hours" as the equivalent of "I am studying for 5 hours").

Thus the original meaning of 'perfectum', while appropriate for 'perfective', does not quite fit for 'perfect'. --ColinFine 00:03, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I get you, but don't you think that saying "I am studying for 5 hours" to mean "I have been studying for 5 hours" sounds semantically erroneous? Carlrichard 14:26, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Only in English. Tesseran 06:22, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

tag question

what is the correct tag questions for the following sentences:

I have never given her my book, _____?

Nobody likes me, _____?

Thank you.. I'm just a little confused. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Carlrichard (talk • contribs) 10:12, 28 January 2007 (UTC).

I think it can depend on which dialect of English you speak. For me (American English), tag question for the first sentence is "have I?" and for the second one it's "do they?", but other people may disagree. —Angr 11:46, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

That sounds correct to me as well. Oddly, the grammatically correct tag for the second might be "does he", because "nobody" is a singular indefinite pronoun. In practice, "does he" will probably confuse people. — Paul D. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 220.29.16.127 (talk) 15:43, 28 January 2007 (UTC).

In Ontario, the proper tag for both would be "eh". Unfortunately, a lot of people confuse Ontario (and especially Toronto) with the entire country; if you used "eh" in Alberta or Newfoundland, people might assume you were from Ontario. --Charlene 14:46, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

surely nobody is neither singular nor plural, its zero. (i.e. if you put nobody in a room, there room would be empty). As 0 always takes the plural form (0 cups, 1 cup), do they is correct.87.194.21.177 17:49, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm..."Do they" is certainly correct, but I think "nobody" is singular in some ways at least. You'd say "nobody is going to read this" or "nobody cares" rather than "nobody are going to read this" or "nobody care..." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Elmer Clark (talk • contribs) 21:50, 28 January 2007 (UTC).

check out singular they.mnewmanqc 23:12, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't really think that's what's meant in this case, because replacing "they" with another singular pronoun sounds so unnatural. -Elmer Clark 06:19, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

You could evade the issue by saying simply "Nobody likes me, right?" —Angr 09:37, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, right, but if you were given that kind of a sentence, what would you answer?

Think of these, guys:

Nobody is actually in the negative form of everybody as in "Everybody loves Raymond" (affirmative) while "Nobody loves Raymond" is negative. So, can we use the word everybody in the tag question, since we are looking for the affirmative of the main clause? Example, nobody likes me, does everybody? Carlrichard 14:03, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, you can say that, but it's utterly unidiomatic. The pronoun in the tag question must refer to the subject of the main clause. You wouldn't say "Peter doesn't love me, does she", because "she" can never refer to a male. Same with nobody and everybody. Nobody means no people, whereas everybody means many people (at least). Many people can't refer to no people, so "everybody" has no place in the tag question. A pedant might frown on "Nobody loves me, do they", however everyone including the pedants would understand it immediately, so it works. A pedant might prefer "Nobody loves me, does he/she", but that would never be spoken by a native English speaker. JackofOz 00:27, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

• Zat so? works pretty well for most cases.hotclaws**== 02:36, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

apostrophes

does anyone know what the rule is for pluralising acronyms? the common practise seems to been with apostrophes (e.g. DVD'S, VCR'S, NGO'S etc) but this doesnt seem very grammatically sound (whats wrong with DVDs?). so is this rule breaking on a massive scale or have i just got the rule wrong. maybe the language is evolving and i'm being a traditionalist..87.194.21.177 17:45, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

According to the American English page and what I do, is that it'd be DVDs, VCRs, NGOs, etc. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 18:01, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

The apostrophe should not be used to form plurals, and this applies to initialisms (like "DVDs") and acronyms (like "lasers") as much as to anything else. The change of case makes the meaning sufficiently clear.--Shantavira 20:50, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Many people today feel that way, but this is a new development within my lifetime. Single characters are normally pluralized with an apostrophe, presumably a practice developed to avoid confusion (if you don't write "a's", it looks like "as"), and it was formerly considered standard to extend this to style to acronyms -- particularly, as the article suggests, when it was more common to write them with periods. So if your boss insists on "DVD's" go along, it's not really wrong; but if you have the choice, go with "DVDs" and reserve "DVD's" for the possessive. --Anonymous, January 29, 04:01 (UTC).

Consistency is the key. How often do we see signage advertising, eg. "CD's and DVDs" (one with the apostrophe, one without). In the same context, apostrophise either all of them or none of them. Never mix and match. JackofOz 06:18, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Many reputable publications, editors, and stylebooks have gone with the style CD's, DVD's (also 1970's, 420's B.C.). There's nothing wrong about it, though perhaps the ever-swelling numbers of apostrophes making ordinary nouns plural makes them look wrong to some eyes. Wareh 18:54, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Consistency isn't enough; otherwise it would be acceptable for signs to indicate that "CD's and record's" are available for sale. —Angr 10:11, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I took it for granted that apostrophisation is never OK when pluralising nouns that aren't acronyms or abbreviations. I was talking about acronym-specific consistency (or ASC for the uninitiated).  :) JackofOz 00:18, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Hot fuss

Does the phrase "hot fuss" mean anything? I can't find it in any dictionary, but it appears in several places, including the Killers album Hot Fuss and the movie Hot Fuzz. Laïka 19:09, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Most of the Google searches seem to show the Killers album. The movie is a police movie, and the word here probably is derived from the word "fuzz", a 60s slang word for the police. 惑乱 分からん 19:21, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, presumably Hot Fuzz is meant as a pun on Hot Fuss, but naming your movie after a moderately sucessful album seems odd to me, unless both are puns on another phrase. Laïka 11:40, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, Urban Dictionary had an idea... 惑乱 分からん 12:03, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I can't get urban dictionary from my computer; what does it say? Laïka 12:16, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

A hot, noisy, long lasting female orgasm.

She was making a hot fuss and I had to cover her mouth so the neighbors wouldn't hear. 惑乱 分からん 12:53, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Et passim

I've searched high and low on WP and elsewhere, and I can't seem to find a definition, though I have seen et passim used in texts. Can anyone help? --Oreo Priest 22:05, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

et simply means and or also. Meanings of passim are explained under List_of_Latin_phrases_(P–Z)#P. Et passim can refer to a word or phrase occuring frequently, here and there, in a given text. ---Sluzzelin 22:23, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

et passim generally occurs in an index, where the entry will first give one or a few principal references to the item (e.g. where it is introduced or defined) and then add the phrase to indicate that the entry occurs throughout the work. --ColinFine 00:05, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I feel silly for not checking under P but only under E. --Oreo Priest 00:41, 29 January 2007 (UTC)