Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 July 21

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July 21

Latin help, school motto

Could anyone translate "nullae sine pulvere palmae" for me please? It was the St Austell County Grammar School motto. DuncanHill (talk) 01:40, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

You could find its meaning here. Omidinist (talk) 02:06, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

And see also Palm branch (symbol). Alansplodge (talk) 18:41, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Searching Wikipedia articles containing "sine pulvere" shows a number of institutions using a variety of this phrase. Our List of Latin phrases (P) has "palma non sine pulvere", but you'll also find "Nil sine pulvere", "Non Sine Pulvere Palma", "Non sine pulvere palmam" (as well as typos such as "Plama" and "Palman"). ---Sluzzelin talk 01:58, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

"Palmam" (accusative case) wouldn't make too much sense unless the word is understood as the object of an implicit verb (not sure which verb it would be). AnonMoos (talk) 13:39, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

• Thank you all. I suspect someone at the school was having a little fun with the motto, as St Austell's wealth was built on china clay, the production and transport of which is associated with a lot of dust. DuncanHill (talk) 11:08, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Appropriate comma use and terminology disambiguation

Recently, I came across writing a tricky sentence.

• The man who lives with his girlfriend unmarried has his girlfriend as his domestic partner.

Is it clear that unmarried is modifying girlfriend or man? Maybe I should write:

• The unmarried man who lives with his girlfriend has his girlfriend as his domestic partner.

Or this:

• The unmarried man, who lives with his girlfriend, has his girlfriend as his domestic partner.

Or this:

• The man, who lives with his girlfriend, unmarried has his girlfriend as his domestic partner.

Considering the situation, the "domestic partner" is used to describe the man's relationship to the female as informal and without legal marriage. I think that's different from cohabitation, because I don't think cohabitation has any legal status, unless the government records that as a domestic partnership for inheritance and insurance benefits. If the unmarried couple has a biological child together, the domestic partnership is indistinguishable from marriage. If the relationship terminates, then is that a divorce, or is divorce only for the termination of marriage? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 03:15, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Does your tricky sentence mean that if an unmarried man is in a romantic relationship with a woman, and they both live under the same roof, she is his girlfriend as well as his domestic partner? Marrakech (talk) 08:04, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes. In that situation, I think a domestic partner is one who lives with another in an informal, unmarried relationship like cohabitation, but it is legally recognized, and both partners may receive inheritance and insurance benefits from each other. Therefore, an unmarried couple is married without the legal process for marriage, and that domestic partnership and marriage mean the same thing, except marriage may require a marriage certificate. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 11:19, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

The proper uses of the comma would be:

• The unmarried man, who lives with his girlfriend, has his girlfriend as his domestic partner. (your second one)

and

• The man who lives with his girlfriend, unmarried, has his girlfriend as his domestic partner. (which is not any of your examples)

In the one immediately above, you missed the second comma. In that sentence, the word "unmarried" is an appositive and when such an appositive appears in the middle of a sentence, it is usually set off on both sides by commas. --Jayron32 12:15, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Also, the strict meaning of the two sentences is slightly different. In the first, the word "unmarried" applies only to the man (his girlfriend could be married to someone else, but he is definitely not married to anyone). In the second, the word "unmarried" apples to the entire phrase "The man who lives with his girlfriend", which means it is applying to the entire situation, and not just one person. That is, he is not married to her, but either or both could still be married (for example, to other people). People may, because of cultural context assume they are identical in meaning, but that requires more than a strict reading of the grammar, but that is not in the actual words themselves. --Jayron32 12:21, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm unsure if the question pertains only to that particular sentence, or more generally how to unambiguously express the concept? There are thousands of ways to recast the sentence to have clearer meaning and be more general, one of which is the lead sentence in our article domestic partnership: A domestic partnership is an interpersonal relationship between two individuals who live together and share a common domestic life but are not married. No such user (talk) 12:55, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

All language is inherently ambiguous. Few utterances can be expressed so it only means exactly one thing. As is credited to Franz Kafka "All language is but a poor translation". This article published by MIT even argues that such ambiguity is necessary. --Jayron32 13:26, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

50.4.236.254 -- presumably a domestic partnership in the usual sense only exists if they're both unmarried, so I don't really understand the importance of restricting the word "unmarried" to apply to only one of the two. AnonMoos (talk) 15:01, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

That's a bit of a narrow view of the world. There are plenty of what's being referred to as "domestic partnerships" where no, one or all members are married (or otherwise formally wedded in whichever legal jurisdiction they reside). And who says domestic relationships involved just two people: [1]? Bazza (talk) 15:19, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

See Domestic partnership, where the very first sentence of the article is "A domestic partnership is an interpersonal relationship between two individuals who live together and share a common domestic life but are not married (to each other or to anyone else)." Such restrictions would not apply to other terms, such as "cohabitation" mentioned by 50.4.236.254... AnonMoos (talk) 15:27, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

That, of course, depends on context. What is meant by any of those terms in a specific context may not be identical to other contexts. Legal frameworks vary by jurisdiction, common usage of a word differs from specific legal definitions, etc. --Jayron32 15:50, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

(EC) That definition seems to be jurisdiction-dependant, and the article mainly US-based; all very interesting nonetheless. I'm not aware of any formal or legal definition of "domestic partnership" where I live, and there are plenty of people here who are married to one person but in what might be referred to in everyday speech as a "domestic partnership" (although more commonly just as "living together"). There is for "marriage" and "civil partnership", both between two people; and there is the concept of a partnership in common law but it has limited formality. Bazza (talk) 16:00, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Jayron says that married people who are not married to each other could still "for example" be married to other people. That suggests a third alternative. What is it? 92.19.168.169 (talk) 16:57, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

To be more specific: Picture Bob and Alice, being legally married. Then picture Bob and Alice stop cohabitating, and then Bob begins cohabitating with Carol. Carol knows nothing of Alice, and in good faith, the two establish a legally binding cohabitation, (of whatever terminology exists in your jurisdiction, such as domestic partnership, civil union, common law marriage, etc.). That second relationship is still valid even though Bob is still currently in a legal marriage; legal obligations Bob incurs to the relationship and to Carol are not invalidated because Bob was married while in the relationship. Such situations come up in palimony and child support suits. See, for example, here which discusses the law in Colorado (other jurisdictions may vary, of course, but we only need one positive example to prove that the principle exists). To wit, Colorado law defines a "putative" partner as one who, while technically not part of a valid relationship (because a prior relationship was not legally terminated), is still owed the same rights as any other partner. Simply put: a partnership of this sort may be legally valid even if one of the partners were married ahead of time. It isn't universal, for example if the second partner knew about the first's standing relationship (in that case, it would not be a domestic partnership in good faith). But there are cases where the rights of a domestic partner have been upheld even in the case of the other partner still being married. --Jayron32 17:14, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

I would say "The man who lives unmarried with his girlfriend has his girlfriend as his domestic partner", with no commas. Of the four sentences provided, the first two are correct (with a slight difference in meaning), but the second two are punctuated incorrectly. —Stephen (talk) 20:16, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

The unmarried man lives with a domestic partner, his girlfriend. Akld guy (talk) 22:28, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

To the first question, I'd say that unmarried in the original sentence modifies lives. —Tamfang (talk) 08:14, 23 July 2017 (UTC)