Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 June 4

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June 4

Bantu noun classes

Bantu languages' noun classes are essentially their equivalent of grammatical genders. But when counting the number of classes, the plural of each class is itself counted as a separate class, as the tables at "Bantu languages#Noun class" and "Swahili language#Agreement" demonstrate.

If this were to be applied for Spanish, we would say that el libro rojo, los libros rojos, la casa roja and las casas rojas are four distinct genders. But we don't say that, and instead talk of the singular and the plural of the masculine and the feminine gender. Why this difference? --Theurgist (talk) 07:53, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

There are different ways of arranging Bantu noun classes. One way (actually, more than one way) names them Class I, Class II (plural), Class III, Class IV (plural), etc., while another way names them M-wa class (where m- = singular, and wa- = plural), M-mi class (singular and plural), Ma class (singular and plural), Ki-vi class (singular and plural), and so on. A number of Bantu noun classes have no plural, such as Ku class, Pa locative class, and Ku locative class. Also, some words belong to one set of classes in the singular and another set of classes in the plural. Sometimes adjectives agree with the noun's class, while the verb may agree with a different class. Besides the above complexities, Bantu noun classes affect more than just adjectives, they also require concord from numerals, determiners, and verbs. Some singular noun classes have the same prefixes as another singular noun class, many words in some noun classes have no prefixes, and animacy can also affect noun classes (a Ki-vi class animate noun may take the concords of the M-wa class), and various other irregularities. That's why linguists try to arrange the noun classes in different ways, always looking for a more logical way. Spanish genders are very simple and there is no reason to complicate them by count the plural genders as separate classes. —Stephen (talk) 08:25, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Simply different grammatical traditions. As another example: within Indo-European linguistics, different languages have different traditional orders for declining nouns. --ColinFine (talk) 21:20, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

IE languages have different sets of cases (mostly subsets of primordial eight, but I think there have been some splits). I've seen two sequences for Latin cases tho (NAGDA and NGDAA). —Tamfang (talk) 04:42, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

"Essentially the equivalent" is simply wrong, they are for the most part analogous to gender in European nouns, being to some part arbitrary (das Maedchen) and sometimes indicating things like shape, size, or collectivity, and not all noun classes have plural counterparts, such as the class 15 prefix which indicates infinitives and has no plural. μηδείς (talk) 00:39, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

How should I have phrased it so it wouldn't have been "simply wrong"? --Theurgist (talk) 05:08, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Theurgist -- I don't think you committed any actual mistake, but number in Spanish nouns and adjectives is morphologically agglutinative (since the plural is basically always the singular plus an -(e)s ending), while number in Bantu nouns and adjectives is most definitely not agglutinative. AnonMoos (talk) 07:24, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

That's correct, but what does it have to do with the original question? Instead of Spanish, I could have chosen to draw a parallel with some other language, such as Russian, where the number isn't agglutinative either. Let me say that I have formally studied a little Swahili and I understand what noun classes are. By "essentially the equivalent of genders" I meant that they're pretty much what genders are, but still, technically speaking, not genders (they wouldn't have been named with a different term if they were genders).

The lead of the Noun class article says: Some authors use the term "grammatical gender" as a synonym of "noun class", but others use different definitions for each., while the lead of the Grammatical gender article says: grammatical gender is a specific form of noun-class system. --Theurgist (talk) 12:31, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

The problem with "essentially" and "equivalent" is that they are too strong. "Generally analogous" is better, for the reasons I gave above. My criticism was not meant to be harsh, just helpful. The problem is that laymen hearing that statement would tend to believe that Bantu languages have separate noun classes for male and female, which they don't. Gender in isiZulu is indicated by the use of different word bases, usually in the same name class for single humans, like aunt and uncle, rather than different endings, like tia and tio as in Spanish. μηδείς (talk) 15:53, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

ܬܪܓܨܝ ܫܘܒܝܝܐ

What's written above the entrance to Monastery of Saint Mark, Jerusalem? The first three lines, ܕܝܪܐ ܕܡܪܝ ܡܪܩܘܣ ܕܣܘܪܝܝܐ, are obviously the monastery's name, Dayro d-Mor Marqos d-Suryoyo; but I cannot make sense of the last line, I'm not even sure if I transcribed it correctly. --212.235.66.73 (talk) 07:55, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

I suppose that would be the words written at the very top of this picture:

I tried looking the words up in an Aramaic dictionary, but did not find them. Transliterated into Hebrew letters, what you've written is תרגץ, שובייא. I could not find anything using Hebrew letters either. I'm don't read the Syriac script well, so I can't tell whether you've transcribed it correctly. —Stephen (talk) 20:43, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes Stephen, my photo is a close-up of the same plaque visible in File:Old Jerusalem St. Mark Church with flag.jpg. The Hebrew letters would however be תרגצי שובייא: you mistook a yodh for a comma. Not that it makes much difference as far as the online dictionaries are concerned, but anyway. --212.235.66.73 (talk) 13:23, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Never mind, I got it: the correct transcription is ܬܪ̈ܝܨܝ ܫܘܒܚܐ or תריצי שובחא, and it appears in [1] translated into Latin as gloria rectis. I suppose this was the Syriac term for orthodoxy. --212.235.66.73 (talk) 07:48, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Resolved

Is the following clumsy sentence grammatically correct?

This is a man, looking at a picture, easily noticed through a window, located just in front of a woman, eating a tomato. 185.46.77.43 (talk) 14:58, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

It's grammatically correct, but stylistically there are two many commas. I would get rid of the second and fourth commas, and possibly get rid of the first and third commas as well. Loraof (talk) 16:02, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

It's ambiguous as well: what is located just in front of a woman? The man, the picture, or the window? Bazza (talk) 16:21, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

To me, this is the window that is located just in front of a woman, because the window is the last object mentioned before mentioning the location (just in front of etc.). Here is another example: "I see a man and a boy who is angry". The person who is angry is the boy, because he is the last person mentioned before it's mentioned that he is angry. BTW, that's true in Logic as well: "For every x there exists x such that x is greater than zero ", is a true sentence. However, "There exists x such that for every x, x is greater than zero ", is a false sentence. HOTmag (talk) 17:10, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

It would be nice if English followed logical rules like that, but unfortunately it doesn't. Consider "The man was eating an apple, looking out the window." By your logic, the apple was the one looking out the window, but no English speaker would interpret the sentence that way. CodeTalker (talk) 17:02, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

If I'd said: "The man was eating an apple, looking out the window.", then that would have meant that the apple was the one looking out the window. However, since I mean that the man was the one looking out the window, then I will surely say: "The man was, eating an apple, and looking out the window.". I will never give up the "and", whenever it's necessary to make sure that I say what I mean and mean what I say. HOTmag (talk) 17:48, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

I agree with Bazza_7 -- the real problem is not whether the sentence is theoretically grammatical, but whether it is likely to convey its originally-intended meaning to listeners/readers... AnonMoos (talk) 17:02, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Agree also. And who is eating the tomato? The man or the woman? It's a clumsy, ambiguous sentence. Akld guy (talk) 19:33, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

The man is eating the tomato. But we can make the woman eat the tomato if we want.

As written, all of the modifiers apply to the man. We can change this by selectively removing commas:

This is a man, looking at a picture easily noticed through a window, located just in front of a woman, eating a tomato. This makes the picture the thing that is easily noticed through a window.

This is a man, looking at a picture, easily noticed through a window located just in front of a woman, eating a tomato. Now the window is located just in front of a woman.

This is a man, looking at a picture, easily noticed through a window, located just in front of a woman eating a tomato. In this case it is the woman eating the tomato, not the man.

Etc., and so on, turtles all the way down. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 20:08, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Elena Shalneva, writing in City A. M. on 6 December, calls this the "Oxford Comma":

When I pitched this story to the features editor of City A.M., he gave me a beautiful example of how just one punctuation mark - in this case, the Oxford comma, his favourite - can change the entire meaning of a sentence. A tweet which said "The US President, a racist, and a misogynist" was followed by a picture of Donald Trump, a KKK member, and the guy from Mad Men. Another tweet, which said "The US President, a racist and a misogynist", was followed by just one picture of Donald Trump.

If in the UK the Indian and Pakistanis are Asian

Why not call them southern Asian?How do they call the Chinese, Korean and Japanese? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.4.150.99 (talk) 15:44, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Chinese, Korean and Japanese. Bazza (talk) 16:20, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

31.4.150.99 -- Chinese, Koreans and Japanese can be grouped together as "East Asians", if there's felt to be any need to do so. Subcontinentals (usually also including at least Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans) have been called simply "Asians" in the U.K. because they were by far the most numerous Asian immigrant group there. In any case, some non-Muslims of South Asian origin are now objecting to being lumped together indiscriminately with British Muslims as "Asians"... AnonMoos (talk) 16:56, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Agreed, our British Asian article has more details. Alansplodge (talk) 22:12, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

The term Oriental can be applied (def 4: "...now especially relating to East Asia."). StuRat (talk) 22:55, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Although it's considered offensive by some, especially in the USA. Alansplodge (talk) 00:12, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

But not, generally, in the UK, which the OP asked about.

OP, the use of "Asians" in the wider sense, i.e. covering East Asians, is also becoming less rare, especially in areas with a more significant population of them. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 10:07, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Oxford dictionaries says about Oriental that it "has an out-of-date feel". This is very true, it isn't used widely to refer to people these days. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 10:24, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps there are regional differences, it's neither rare nor common in London. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 12:47, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

I think it's worth pointing out "Asian" usually meaning "South Asian" is purely statistical. No-one would deny that Chinese or Japanese are Asian (or "correct" one who described themselves as such) - it's just that most Asians in the UK are South Asian, so that is how the word is most often used. It's also worth mentioning that this only applies to people. When talking about food, completely different rules seem to apply. A restaurant serving Southern Asian food will usually be described as an "Indian" restaurant, even if it is actually Pakistani or Bangladeshi. In my experience at least, an "Asian" restaurant generally means one serving food from multiple East or Southeast Asian nations. Iapetus (talk) 11:19, 5 June 2017 (UTC)