Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 September 17

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

September 17

Use of ¡ and ¿ in New World languages

Do indigenous languages spoken in Spanish American countries, like Nahuatl, Quechua, Aymará and Guaraní, use inverted exclamation and question marks as Spanish does? --Lazar Taxon (talk) 02:08, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

The Aymara language does and four varieties of the Quechua language do and the Nahuatl language (Northern Puebla) does, but the Guaraní language does not. Jehovah's Witnesses have published information online in these languages, and there is an index of languages at http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/li/r1/lp-e.

—Wavelength (talk) 03:33, 17 September 2013 (UTC) and 04:25, 17 September 2013 (UTC) and 19:33, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

The Yucatec Maya language (whose ISO language code "yua" those publications use in web addresses) and the Mixe language ("mco") and the Totonac language ("top") and the Tzotzil language ("tzo") use inverted question and exclamation marks. The Zapotec language (Isthmus) ("zap") uses the inverted exclamation mark, but not the inverted question mark. The Mazatec language (Huautla) ("mau") uses the inverted exclamation mark, but neither the opening (inverted) question mark nor the closing question mark.

—Wavelength (talk) 16:05, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

A variety of styles of punctuation for questions is shown at User:Wavelength/About science/Biology/Source of life. A variety of styles of punctuation for exclamations is shown at User:Wavelength/About society/End of false religion (archives).

—Wavelength (talk) 05:28, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Strange grammar in Bunyan

I'm currently reading The Pilgrim's Progress and am much enjoying its bounty of interesting words and expressions, some of which I plan to revive. There's one turn of phrase, however, that I won't be copying:

• So there came in three witnesses, to wit, Envy, Superstition and Pickthank. They was then asked if they knew the prisoner at the bar and what they had to say for their lord the King against him.

I did a double-take at the words I've highlighted. The book's a continuous narrative so I can't give a chapter ref. In my Penguin edition, it's on page 130 of a 373-page book, so roughly a third of the way through. But it's not a misprint.

Is it reasonable to interpret this apparently bad grammar as a way of saying each of the witnesses was asked the same question in turn? But then, why would such a distinction need to be made, given that in a court room there's only ever one witness being questioned at a time? Are there any other examples of this usage anywhere?

Yours in mystification. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 08:25, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Interesting. There are quite a few "they were"s in the book, but only that one "they was". Maybe John's bunion was acting up, and he just made a mistake. Clarityfiend (talk) 08:43, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Variation between was and were has been common in many varieties throughout the history of English, and Bunyan in particular seems to be using they was pretty often (other instances would be They was their bread, they was their water, they was their milk, they was their honey, or their voice was heard from where they was). It may well be a dialect thing with him, reflecting regional usage of his English Midlands provenance. That would match more recent dialectal evidence from that area, as documented for instance in the Survey of English Dialects from the mid-20th century. Otto Jespersen (in A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles) also noted Bunyan for using you was. A nice article related to the topic is Sali Tagliamonte, "There was universals, then there weren't: a comparative sociolinguistic perspective on 'default singulars'", in Filppula et al. (ed.) Vernacular Universals and Language Contacts, 2009. –Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:51, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The only thing that occurs to me is the possibility that this is correct syntax (for Bunyan's time) when an indirect object rather than a direct object that's passivized. In Modern English we can say "He was given two books", something that isn't possible in older stages of English or in German (or AFAIK in other Germanic languages). It derived from "Him were given two books" (i.e. "to him were given...), where the verb is in agreement with its syntactic subject ("two books") rather than the pronoun which precedes it, since the pronoun isn't actually the subject but just a stylistically fronted indirect object. But maybe there was a stage between "Him were given two books" and "He was given two books" where the correct thing to say was "He were given two books", where the pronoun has already been attracted into the nominative, but the verb still agrees with what follows. If that's the case, then original "It was asked (of) them if they knew" could be fronted to "Them was asked if they knew", which could then become the attested "They was asked if they knew" on the way to becoming modern "They were asked if they knew". But all this is speculation on my part. Aɴɢʀ (talk) 08:55, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

I was considering something like that too, but given the other examples I saw, I tend more towards the view that it's simply a dialectally different agreement paradigm. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:57, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

The Project Guttenberg version has "They were then asked ...", as does this one. Clarityfiend (talk) 09:46, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

However, the original had "They was": see facsimile of 1st edition. - Lindert (talk) 10:40, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Wikisource has "they were". It isn't clear where the text comes from, though, as there are no scans of an original it's been proofread against. I suspect it's just the Project Guttenberg text. Aɴɢʀ (talk) 13:12, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

This edition [1] appears to indicate that even in the 17th century, subsequent editions sometimes regularised original was to standard were. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:38, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

"They was", "we was" and "you was" are all common in colloquial British English to this day, not just in passives. Itsmejudith (talk) 14:18, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

From the OED, s.v. be: "As the distinction of two stems for the past tense in strong verbs was otherwise lost in the course of the Middle English period, structural pressure to abandon the distinction between was (θ forms) and were (ι forms) in the modern English period is strong. Levelling of was to the plural is chiefly a northern feature in Middle English and the 16th cent., but from the 17th cent. onwards it is attested widely as a minority variant. General levelling of was to the plural must be distinguished from semantically motivated early modern English you was (singular, contrasted with you were, plural), which is widespread and even preferred in the late 17th and early 18th centuries (despite you being historically plural), but which subsequently comes under attack from the grammarians." Lesgles (talk) 20:30, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Such a wealth of meaty replies. Thanks all. If I have any further queries, I'll ask. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 09:41, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Are these nouns?

In English, is the word "gallon" or "gallons" as in "ten gallons of water" a noun, a measure word, both, or neither? What about "dollar(s)" as in "it costs ten dollars"? W. P. Uzer (talk) 15:12, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Both "gallon" and "dollar" are nouns, as well as measure words. I believe that measure word is a subclass of count nouns. If someone is feeling bold they could add a link to count nouns at the measure word page. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:09, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

There do seem to be a few exceptions, like ten head of cattle. --Trovatore (talk) 02:12, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Trovatore: what is this an "exception" to? Head is a well-known example of an English classifier (it's probably the most widely-used example), but its status is not really relevant to the original question, which is whether e.g. "dollar" in the phrase "ten dollars" is functioning as a noun or a measure word.

Keep in mind that the same word can have multiple functions in different contexts, but the question is specifically what it is in this context. For example, "dollar" is clearly a noun in "The dollar is getting weaker these days" or something like that, but that is a totally different context and meaning. From my perspective, in "ten dollars" it is a measure and not a noun, because if you say "I have ten dollars" you're not saying you have ten unique things (like you are when you say "I have ten cats"), you are rather specifying an amount of a mass noun (money). You might not actually have ten unique things (for example, you could have one $10 bill, two $5 bills, 40 quarters, etc.); whereas if you say you have ten cats, you must have [at least] ten unique cats (except in some weird marked/figurative context, for instance if your cat shedded so much you swept up all the fur and said "There's ten cats here!"). (For any semanticists out there: what I am saying is that "cat" is quantized.) It's hard to think of it that way in English because we don't actually say "I have ten dollars' worth of money", but in some languages that can be said. rʨanaɢ (talk) 03:49, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

An "exception" to treating a measure word as a count noun. --Trovatore (talk) 22:56, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

rʨanaɢ,I take your point about the semantics, but is not "dollars" unequivocally a noun, from a purely grammatical perspective? Maybe I'm missing something... "10 cups of water" has similar interpretation issues: it might mean 10 specific cups, or a jar with a volume equal to 10 cups. But isn't "cups" grammatically a noun, no matter what the semantic intent of the writer, or interpretation of the reader? SemanticMantis (talk) 20:24, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

I suppose it's fair to fill everyone in on the reason for asking this question - see Talk:Chinese classifier#Section on exceptions. Rjanag has convincingly argued that in Chinese, words meaning things like dollar and gallon are classifiers rather than nouns (because of their grammatical behavior - you don't need another classifier between the word for "ten" and the word for "gallon" in the phrase for "ten gallons", as you would in a phrase like "ten cats"). I nonetheless contend that this is not obvious and ought to be mentioned in the article, whereas Rjanag has claimed that it is obvious and not worthy of mention since the target audience would not regard words like "dollar" and "gallon" as nouns in the first place. I respectfully contend (assuming the target audience to consist of typical English speakers who have an idea of what nouns are) that he is mistaken in this. W. P. Uzer (talk) 07:09, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation W. P. Uzer. I know a bit about English, Latin, and Greek grammar, nothing about Chinese. I certainly regard "dollar" and "gallon" to be grammatical nouns in English, and measure words to just be a special subclass of nouns. What other Parts_of_speech#English could they be? I understand that professional linguists may go on about other classification schemes, but assuming a general high school (or even college) level of grammar, I'd say that more explanation at Chinese classifier exceptions would be useful. On a project like WP, it is dangerous to assume too much reader knowledge (see e.g. any math article. but that's another story ;) SemanticMantis (talk) 15:16, 19 September 2013 (UTC)