Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 October 12

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October 12

Nahuatl translation

So, this is not a difficult question, except for the rarity of Nahuatl speakers. All I want to know is how to say "Farmer's Branch" in Nahuatl. 4.226.72.90 02:43, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

If you mean the town of Farmer's Branch, Texas, I doubt if it has a distinct Nahuatl name. -- Visviva 03:42, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I do, but I'm not looking for a distinct Nahuatl name, just the translation meaning a "branch" belonging to a "farmer" --4.226.72.90 04:33, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Is that 'branch' as in, of a tree? Steewi 05:33, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it is. --4.226.72.60 05:57, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

It seems prima facie unlikely to me that a Texas town's name was intended to mean "tree branch belonging to a farmer"; maybe "branch of a river watering the farmer's fields"? Wareh 13:44, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

"Farmer's" could also be referring to a person whose surname is Farmer. —Angr 15:50, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Any way there is no way to adequately translate that particular phrase into nahuatl. Limbs of trees are generally in Nahuatl (classical at least) called "māitl" - "hand" there is no separate word for branches of trees that I know of. Amother way to say it would be to just say the word for tree/wood or stick "cuaitl". Or one could use a compund like cuauhmāitl "treehand". There is also not a separate word for "farmers" or agricultors, the closest translation might be "macehualli" which means something like "commoner" or "tequitqui" which means "worker". The closest translation of the phrase then would be "īcuauhmā in mācehualli" - which could equally well be understood to mean "the commoners treehand". In modern nahuatl spanish loanwords would probably be used, In Hueyapan Nahuatl it might be said as "īkoh den campesino" translateable as "the farmers stick of wood" ·Maunus· ·ƛ· 16:41, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I'd bet all the money in my pocket that "branch" refers to a stream and not a tree limb. --Milkbreath 16:50, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

This page explains why it's "Farmers" (it is indeed about agriculturists, not a person named Farmer) but is silent about the intended meaning of "branch". —Angr 19:23, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Why can't people just take my hunches as gospel? Topozone shows a "Farmer's Branch" in its list of Dallas County streams, and this map seems to show it. --Milkbreath 20:06, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Cutting back to the left here. It's probably true that branch means branch of a river, but I'll go with the "Farmers stick" translation above unless someone comes in and gives me "Farmer's River-branch" I'm just trying to get it to the point that, when read in context, someone with basic knowledge of Nuhuatl would recognize what i was talking about. --4.226.72.39 20:36, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to continue the negativity, but isn't it pretty obvious that most people with advanced knowledge of Nahuatl would be utterly mystified by a reference to "the commoner's treehand"? Maybe not if your Nahuatl speaker happens to do lots of cryptic crosswords for fun... Wareh 00:49, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Does this exist?

Does this exist:

a computer simulation that generates a made up list of words, then simulates language change according to the principles known to historical linguistics, and then presents a series of word lists for the fictional 'daughter languages'. A user then looks at these new word lists, and tries to recreate the original language, much like they've been doing for years with real langauges (eg P.I.E.).

--Duomillia 03:11, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I do recall that there is a program which will generate lists of words according to the phonotactics you specify, but I can't find it. This program will take a list of words and apply the sound changes you want. Strad 04:44, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/10/2250221 is this ?87.102.87.36 12:08, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

You're talking about two different programs, one to generate proto-words and one to mutate them; obviously the first can feed the second (at least in principle). For the first step, you'll probably find something at Langmaker. For the second, see Geoff's Sound Change Applier and Zounds. —Tamfang 21:27, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

'have to' and 'need to' as modal verbs

On the modal verb page says:

Modal verbs give additional information about the mood of the main verb that follows it. In other words, they help to incorporate or add the level of necessity: (must/need to/(have) got to/have to = obligation, requirement, no choice); (should/ought to = recommendation); (can/could = it is possible); and (may/might = option, choice).

and

In English, main verbs require the auxiliary verb do to form negations or questions. Modal verbs never use this auxiliary do...

(emphasis added)

These seem contradictory to me as "need to", "(have) got to" and "have to" all need "do" to form negations and questions. What is the consensus regarding these as modal verbs?

211.2.159.2 06:34, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps we could say they're modal verbs in function but not in form? Or, to use linguistic jargon, semantically but not morphologically. —Angr 07:17, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Off the top of my head, this looks like a confusion between defective verbs and modal verbs. As I recall, all defective verbs in English (those without a "proper" infinitive form) are modal verbs, ie can, must, may, (could, should, might, etc), but some non-defective verbs may be used with modal function. One might speculate that these are colloquialisms that are in the process of becoming formal, and I offer the candidate "better" as one that may become formally accepted in time. (You better come home on time, young lady!) SaundersW 08:01, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Your

Picture this scenario: You're house hunting, and you're being shown over yet another potential purchase. The agent says: "Here there's your living room, and next door is your dining room, and your kitchen. Down the hall are your 13 bedrooms, your 9 bathrooms, and your 3 libraries". The word "your" is unstressed. This use of "your" is often a way of enumerating things, and is found in all sorts of circumstances that are not related to anybody owning anything. Shakespeare used it in Hamlet - "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy", not meaning Horatio's philosophy (whatever that may have been), but philosophy in general, and it was a bit of a put down, imo. Is there a term for this usage of the word "your"? -- JackofOz 07:48, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

i would call it the 'common' second person, but that's just me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.182.100.107 (talk) 08:34, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Genitive form of the generic you perhaps? -Elmer Clark 09:48, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that's quite it, Elmer. The example given is "You should always wash your hands", as an alternative to "one should always wash one's hands". You and your could refer to the person being spoken to, or to people in general. Whereas in my scenario above, the dining room does not belong to anyone, at least not yet. What the agent is really saying is "Here there's the living room, the dining room, etc.". He's not saying it's your dining room. -- JackofOz 10:04, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I know what Jack is talking about; you hear it a lot in Texas, where I grew up. I don't know any term for it, but it reminds me of the Hiberno-English phrase "your man" used where I would say "that guy", as in "Look at your man over there with the socks that don't match". —Angr 15:58, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh like this:

(Touring a cool company) "What you have here is your basic run-of-the-mill electro--hey don't touch that!"

"I thought you said it was mine?" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.0.126.201 (talk) 17:53, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

It's not a reply to your query, Jack, but Neil Gaiman quotes a lot of "your" in a "Julian and Sandy" conversation in his blog here. SaundersW 21:14, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I've been racking my brain over this question since it appeared here, and I've been getting nowhere. I finally gave up and looked in the OED. No wonder I was baffled. The OED calls it "corresponding to the ethical dative you". It's much older than I thought; Shakespeare used it in exactly the same sense: There is not a more fearefull wilde foule then your Lyon liuing. The earliest citation is from 1568.

What is the "ethical dative" you you ask? Well you might. "Used with no definite meaning as an indirect object" says the OED, which then provides several inscrutable archaic citations. It says to compare the ethical dative me, which I can approximate here: "Cry me a river" would be using the ethical dative me if it didn't mean "cry [for] me a river" but simply meant "cry a river". We just don't use anything like the ethical dative any longer except for the your we're talking about. --Milkbreath 00:20, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Now we seem to be onto something. You're saying this "your" is not the ethical dative itself, but a usage of the possessive pronoun that corresponds to the ethical dative? How interesting. Funny that there's no precise term for it. I'm sure this isn't the first time this question has ever been asked anywhere. Fowler and some other reference books in my library seem to be silent on the matter, which is odd because it's quite a common form of colloquial expression when you think about it. (I've never seen it in a written text - other than here, of course; and other than when a character's words appear.) Thanks for the replies so far. -- JackofOz 00:47, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

You're all missing something :) Real estate agents try to get the prospect to picture themselves in the home. The old saying is that when the prospect(s) start trying to decide where each piece of furniture will fit, the sale is "made". (A more subtle trick is to drape a negligee across the bed.) This doesn't answer the very valid general question of the editorial "your" (hey! I think I just answered it -- it's the "editorial" "your"), but it answers the actual scenario posited in the OP. Regards, Unimaginative Username 00:58, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

(after edit conflict) Maybe that was a bad example, UU. Thinking a bit more about this while I was in the shower, maybe one of the reasons it's not much discussed in the literature is because it is so colloquial. People say it all the time, but they almost never write it, except, as I say, where a character in a play/film is made to say it. Or where some public figure makes a speech or gives an interview and the words are transcribed, e.g. "You've got your Labor Party and your Liberal Party, and you've got all your other minor parties, but whether any of them can actually do anything useful is a moot point". -- JackofOz 01:02, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, not the ideal example, the real estate thing, but I knew what you meant. But back to the ethical dative. The OED actually has it in single quotes, now I go back and look: 'ethical dative'. I take this and "corresponding" to mean simply that there is no such thing anymore. So, I think we can call your your that in the absence of a replacement label. By the way, they do define it as vaguely implying "that you know of" and comment that it often expresses contempt. --Milkbreath 01:23, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Further thought: Maybe one of the other reasons it's not often found, even in plays, is the stress ambiguity. I've often heard actors (even John Gielgud) declaiming the Hamlet speech as "... than are dreamt of in your philosophy", whereas I'm sure it ought to be "... than are dreamt of in y'r philosophy". It's hard to write this without the stress intention of the playwright being misinterpreted (and I doubt whether Shakespeare, whoever he was, knew IPA). -- JackofOz 01:11, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh, speaking of which: Will someone please tell all the Hamlets that it should be

...whether it is nobler [micro-pause] in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune...

rather than

...whether it is nobler in the mind ...

? Some fairly famous actors seem to make this mistake. Well, at least Patrick Stewart in the role of Jean-Luc Picard did. --Trovatore 02:26, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Not to mention the most notorious one of all: Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? ("wherefore" means "why", not "where"; and there's no comma or pause before the final Romeo). And as we're coming up to Christmas, please let's not have any merry gentlemen being rested by God, but lots of gentlemen being "rested merry" (= made happy) by God. -- JackofOz 03:58, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Further OT, but sense can be made of each version, placing a single comma at any point along the sentence, regardless of the original intent.Steewi 01:59, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Jack, while I'm not disputing the "Julian and Sandy" your exists, I disagree that Hamlet is an example. Why do you think Shakespeare meant "philosophy in general" rather than [Horatio's] "particular system of ideas or beliefs relating to the general scheme of existence and the universe", which is how I've always interpreted the passage? And what does (or did) "philosophy in general" mean? FiggyBee 19:20, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I used to believe as you did, FiggyBee, but I heard someone who sounded authoritative say this some years ago (can’t remember where or when), and it struck a chord with me. It made a lot more sense, and apparently others agree. Google reveals various schools of thought, but in support of mine I offer:

• footnote 1, page 114, this, this and this
• I need a sub to access this document, but searching for “Horatio’s philosophy” on Google tells me it includes " ... philosophy," which is almost universally quoted with an emphasis on "your", instead of on "philosophy". It is, of course, not...."
• same for this, which includes " ... It is, of course, not Horatio's philosophy that is meant, but "that philosophy that people talk of-the so-called 'ethical' use of 'your'. ...". Note the word "ethical" again.

Did Shakespeare actually intend this intepretation? We'll never know for sure. Re "philosophy in general", I mean that Hamlet was not saying that Horatio's personal philosophy was inadequate (because it's never mentioned again, and we have no idea what his personal philosophy was, so it would have been a pointless statement), but that the study of philosophy (which in those days included things like astronomy, religion, astrology etc) would never give one all the answers to all the questions of life, the universe and everything. He was having a go at "philosophy", not at Horatio -- JackofOz 09:07, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

I've got to go with Mr. Oz, here. I almost argued Ms Bee's point yesterday, but I've changed my mind. It seems to me that the only reason we didn't interpret your properly all along is that it would sound too colloquial for the Bard according to present usage. He used it in Midsummer Night's Dream, so why not here? And it makes more sense in situ, as it were. I think we can add this to the long list of everyday misquotations like "Play it again, Sam." --Milkbreath 13:29, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I wouldn't quite call it a misquotation. "Play it again, Sam" is one, because nobody in Casablanca uses that exact sequence of words. The Horatio quote has the right words in the right sequence, but suffers from the stress being placed, in the eyes of some people, on the wrong word. Is there a term for this? (I must say my original query has proved quite fecund). -- JackofOz 15:17, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Looking for source of translation

Hello,

I'm looking for the source of the English translation used for the Tamil poem Kuruntokai 234 in the wikipedia article on Sangam landscape (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sangam_landscape). Here is the translation, which appears about halfway down the page I linked to above:

The sun goes down and the sky reddens, pain grows sharp, light dwindles. Then is evening when jasmine flowers open, the deluded say. But evening is the great brightening dawn when crested cocks crow all through the tall city and evening is the whole day for those without their lovers.

In the article, all the English translations are unattributed. I've been unable to track them down -- the English translation above is quite a bit different from Ramanujan's translation of that Tamil poem in _Poems of Love and War_. Could someone help me identify the source of the translation above? I need it urgently in order to seek copyright permission to quote this translation in my novel, _Evening is the Whole Day_, forthcoming in May 2008.

Thank you very much.

Best, Preeta Samarasan —Preceding unsigned comment added by Preetabird (talk • contribs) 16:06, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I suggest that you contact the author of the article, who supplied these translations. The author, Venu62, should be able to tell you his or her source. You can leave a message on the author's talk page. Marco polo 01:03, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

English Grammar - Parallel Comparision

Can someone pls let me know the website to improve parallel comparison setences. I need some help.

Like Byron at Missolonghi, Jack London was slowly killed by the mistakes of the medical men who treated him.

1. Like Byron
2. Like Byron's death
3. Just as Byron died
4. Similar to Byron
5. As did Byron

—

Dunno where you'd go for such advice in general, but:

• I'd go with "Like Byron": it's simple, clear, unambiguous; it says that Byron and London were in similar positions, which is all you want to say.
• If you begin with "Like Byron's death," then London's death, not London himself, ought to be the subject of the main clause.
• "Just as Byron died": comparing "Byron died" to "London was killed" smacks of what Fowler calls elegant variation, i.e. superstitious avoidance of repetition even when repeating a word is the clearest way to say it.
• "Similar to Byron" seems to be trying too hard to avoid using "Like", and what's wrong with "Like"?
• "As did Byron" wrecks the parallel because in the main clause London didn't do something.

—Tamfang 21:17, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

On further thought, I'd drop Missolonghi entirely (not that this is what you asked). The point of the sentence is not (I assume) to show that you know where Byron died: it is that both men died of quackery. Where it happened is irrelevant, unless Byron had more than one death, or Beauty Ranch parallels Missolonghi in some other way. A more allusive sentence, that does not come out and mention mis-medicine, could legitimately begin "Like Byron at Missolonghi" – if you can count on your audience to know what happened to Byron at Missolonghi. —Tamfang 21:49, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I took the sample sentence to be an actual quiz question, where the wording outside the quotes is fixed. Yes, "at Missolonghi" is not strictly necessary, but there is nothing wrong with it, either, and it adds cachet.

"Like Byron" is the only possible phrasing. The other choices are wrong, as Tamfang shows. This is a rarity in ESL questions. Usually there is more than one right answer to a native speaker's ear. --Milkbreath 22:36, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

You could also say "As Byron was, Jack London was killed ...", or "Just as Byron was, Jack London was killed ...", but they're longer than "Like Byron", which conveys exactly the same concept in fewer words. The only real justification for using a longer phrase, when a shorter one would do, is style. -- JackofOz 00:35, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

If you the phrasing is not fixed, it would be clearer if you put your primary point first, secondary point second - thus "Jack London was slowly killed by the mistakes of the medical men who treated him, as was Byron". Gandalf61 17:06, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

subspecies of the possessive

One of Larry Niven's "Draco Tavern" stories mentions that the chirpsithra have three kinds of possessive pronoun, which can be illustrated by my body, my possessions and my neighbor. Do any human languages have such a feature? —Tamfang 22:12, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

"My body" is inalienable possession (i.e. the body that is a part of me), "my possessions" is alienable possession (i.e. those things that I own), and "my neighbor" is less possessive than relative (i.e. that which is a neighbor with respect to me). There are certainly languages that distinguish between alienable and inalienable possession. Our article Possession (linguistics) might provide some help. Bhumiya (said/done) 23:10, 12 October 2007 (UTC)