Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 February 27

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February 27

Tarawa pronunciation

Would 'Tarawa', as in 'Tarawa Atoll', be pronounced Tay-ruh-wAH, Tuh-rAH-wUh, or something else. I ask this because the page on Tarawa doesn't give a pronunciation. Danleugers (talk) 13:08, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

The Gilbertese language has enough information to work out the pronunciation of the word, but being a Pacific Islander language, like many other Polynesian and Micronesian languages, there's a simplified sound system, and a straight-forward 1-to-1 orthography. In this case, "t" is identical to English, "r" is the flap "r", "w" is a velarized Voiced bilabial fricative, which is like a "v" sound, but using both lips instead of the top teeth and in which you simultaneously raise your tongue like saying "ng" in English, and the "a" is the Open central unrounded vowel, which is similar to the sound of the "o" in "cot" for speakers who have NOT undergone the "cot-caught merger". Several of those sounds don't exist in English, so if you're trying to do your best with the closest English approximation, "taw-raw-vaw" or "taw-raw-waw" is probably the closest you're going to get; AFAIK, the Wikipedia article doesn't mention stress or vowel reduction, so you would pronounce each syllable with the same quality, without change stress or vowel sounds. --Jayron32 13:42, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

Jayron32 -- it's basically impossible for native English-speakers (unless they're skilled mid-sentence language switchers) to pronounce a multisyllabic name without putting main stress on one syllable or another. That's why there are two competing pronunciations of Hiroshima in English, hi-ROSH-i-ma and hi-ro-SHI-ma (for IPA see the Hiroshima article). Pronouncing all four syllables with equal stress is not really an option.

For Tarawa, the American Heritage Dictionary 5th edition gives alternative pronunciations with first-syllable main stress and second-syllable main stress (while vowels in completely unstressed syllables become [ə]).... AnonMoos (talk) 01:54, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Good point. --Jayron32 11:54, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Representing and being an example

I have found this sentence in a Wikipedia draft article about a building:

Its (...) style represents a significant example of [some architecture period].

Is this correct? I suspect it's a pleonasm. My feeling is “a style representing” a period is same as “a style being an example” of that period (period understood as a dominating style of some time in architecture history, not the historic time-span itself), but I'm not an English speaker and I'd like to read natives' opinion. --CiaPan (talk) 15:38, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

It does seem a bit redundant. "A style indicative of..." or "A style representative of..." would be a more efficient phrasing. --Jayron32 16:03, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

How about "...style is a significant example..."? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:35, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

@Dodger67: That's precisely what I was asking about: whether 'represents' equals 'is' in this context. :) CiaPan (talk) 16:53, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

Thank you, Jayron32, that's what I meant: a bit redundant. Or even a bit more than a bit. :) CiaPan (talk) 16:53, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

If Romans of 117-476 AD heard a 2010s Romance speaker

Would they think it's a different language or merely the strangest Vulgar Latin they ever heard? Or would it depend on things like what era Roman, what part of the Latinosphere, who heard it (i.e. linguist, peasant) and which Romance dialect? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 18:31, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

This will help you in your research. It depends a lot on which particular language and which particular variety of latin. Also, please be aware that 117-476 is a LONG stretch of history, even speakers of English in 2019 would find some difficulty understanding someone from 1660 also speaking English. One thing that I would recommend, based on the patterns of your many questions here, is that when thinking about these things, that you consider the huge spans of time and geography you are often conflating into thinking are much shorter and smaller than they are. I find it is always helpful to think of spans of history by relating them to today; the world in 476 would have been as different from the world in 117, at least from the point of view of linguistic change, as the world of today would be from 1660, and even moreso, given the lack of mass media by which modern language is homogenized. --Jayron32 00:32, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Sagittarian_Milky_Way -- Jayron32 has some good points, but it's quite safe to say that there would be zero mutual comprehensibility between an upper-class Roman of 117 A.D. and a speaker of modern standard Parisian French today. It might be a little different for an uneducated vulgar Latin speaker of 476 A.D. and a current-day speaker of the Sardinian language -- there would be limited mutual comprehensibility, but they would probably find it relatively easy to understand that they spoke somewhat similar languages.

In any case, until about the time of Alcuin, Romance-language speakers generally pronounced written Latin texts in their local Romance vernacular, and were not aware that ancient Latin speakers spoke differently than they did... AnonMoos (talk) 02:15, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

"of which" vs. "which ... of"

Sorry, but after searching in vain for quite some time I've become all befuddled:

There is a house the roof of which is red. – This is tantamount to:

There is a house of which the roof is red. – Right? But I cannot write:

There is a house [which] the roof is red of. – However, why exactly can I say, as opposed to that,

This is the house [which / that] I have dreamt of.

(= This is the house of which I have dreamt.)?--Hildeoc (talk) 20:55, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

The simple answer is that red is an adjective whereas dreamt (alternative UK/Commonwealth past tense of dreamed for Americans) is a verb. Dreamed of or dreamt of puts the of at the end of the sentence, but is still an acceptable construction. Akld guy (talk) 21:18, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

Not exactly. Check: "It is the animal which I am afraid of". It's grammatical, even though the word "of", being at the end, follows an adjective. Check also the opposite case: "There is a house of which the roof frightens", along with its ungrammatical version: "There is a house which the roof frightens of": It's ungrammatical (the roof doesn't "frighten of" anything, does it?), even though the word "of" - being at the end - follows a verb. HOTmag (talk) 21:45, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

That works in informal English, but it's a bad construction otherwise. It's not encyclopedic and in Wikipedia should be rewritten if seen. Akld guy (talk) 01:37, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

What? Is a sentence that ends with "afraid of" (period), not encyclopedic? HOTmag (talk) 01:12, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

The phrases "to be afraid of" and "to dream of" function as verbs, so you can place them anywhere in a sentence where you could place a single-word verb. Replace them with "to fear" and "to desire", respectively, and you will see what I mean: It is the animal which I fear. This is the house which I have desired. You can't do this with "the roof of", because it doesn't function as a verb. — Kpalion^(talk) 11:30, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

I agree with you that the phrase "to be afraid" means "to fear" and consequently functions as a verb, but I still can't see your point. Could you please quote anything I wrote that you disagree with? I wrote "not exactly", referring to Akld guy's answer to the OP's question about why - the pseudo-sentence "There is a house which the roof is red of" - is ungrammatical; Akld guy answered: "The simple answer is that red is an adjective". so I gave the counterexample: "It is the animal which I am afraid of", which is grammatical, even though the word "of" follows "an adjective" (as I've claimed). Ok, it's an adjective functioning as a verb, but it's still an adjective, isn't it? Just as every man functioning as a king is still a man, isn't he? Are you trying to claim that the word "afraid" is not "an adjective"? Or that my comment "not exactly" was too moderate? Or what? Had Akld guy written "The simple answer is that red is an adjective not functioning as a verb", I wouldn't have responded: "not exactly". Anyway, once you quote anything I wrote that you disagree with, I'll try to explain myself better. HOTmag (talk) 12:17, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

I don't disagree with you, HOTmag, because you're not wrong; "afraid" is an adjective. I was just trying to add further explanation to what you and Akld guy wrote. — Kpalion^(talk) 16:30, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

Anyway, I think that the second part of Akld guy's answer: "The simple answer is that...dreamt...is a verb", can't be an exact answer, either. Check: "There is a house of which the roof frightens", along with its ungrammatical version: "There is a house which the roof frightens of": It's ungrammatical (the roof doesn't "frighten of" anything - does it?), even though the word "of" - being at the end - follows a verb. Indeed, something analogous to your previous claim - may be claimed (to the opposite direction) - also about this opposite case, i.e. one may claim that the verb "frighten" functions as an adjective (meaning "be scary"), but it's still a verb. HOTmag (talk) 19:46, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Here is a rule of thumb:

The word "of" - not appearing at the end of the original sentence, can always be moved to the end, unless:

1. Either, the phrase "of which" in the original sentence, is followed by a verb, including an auxiliary verb - e.g. "is", "has", "will", and likewise (Please notice, that the phrase "of which", in the OP's original sentence - "There is a house the roof of which is red", is followed by a verb - or rather an auxiliary verb, and that's why the word "of" - in that sentence - cannot be moved to the end);

2. Or, the phrase "of which the" in the original sentence, can be replaced by the word "whose" (Please notice, that the OP's original sentence : "There is a house of which the roof is red", means "There is a house whose roof is red", and that's why the word "of" - in the OP's original sentence - cannot be moved to the end; However, the sentence "There is a house of which the king dreamt", doesn't mean "There is a house whose king dreamt", and that's why the word "of" - in the original sentence about the king - can be moved to the end: "There is a house which the king dreamt of").

Hope this helps. HOTmag (talk) 21:45, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

HOTmag -- to me, "whose" sounds a lot more natural than "of which" in Hildeoc's second sentence... AnonMoos (talk) 02:19, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

To me too (or rather tomato), but I wonder if we dispute about anything. HOTmag (talk) 01:12, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

Arlanda

Does the word "Arlanda", the name for the Stockholm Airport, have an accute or a grave accent in standard Swedish? Is there an online dictionary to check this in general? I know it's not really phonemically distinctive for three-syllable words, but I would still like to know since there seems to be a difference in tone. Wikipedia indicates accent 2/grave accent for the pronunciation of "Uppsala" and it seems to be different from Forvo pronunciations of "Arlanda". Moreover, which syllable would you put the graphic accent on if you had to mark it? It seems to be on the first one for two-syllable words ("ánden", "ànden"). --94.134.89.21 (talk) 21:24, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

The grave accent (A2) never occurs in the last syllable, therefore a word pair cannot have an accent contrast on the last syllable and there is no reason to put any accent on the second syllable in 'anden'. Otherwise both tones can occur anywhere. There's no 'standard' for stresses. It depends on the dialect (notably Finlnad-Swedish dialects lack tone entirely), and where a word is used in a sentence. The verb 'slå' is A1, but in the phrase 'Ska jag slå in 'an?' in northern Swedish it becomes A2. The Swedish Academy Dictionary (saob.se) is the only one that notes stresses (for words, not names) for the same reason that it's the only one that records dialectal variants. The superscript numbers in the pronunciation give tone and stress where 4 and 3 are primary stressed syllables with A1 and A2 respectively and the numbers 1 and 2 are corresponding secondary streses. 0 is an unstressed syllable. The superscript 'follows the long sound', i.e. if it is after a vowel the vowel is long but if it's after a consonant then the consonant sound is long and the preceding vowel is thus short. an⁴d is 'duck', an³de² is 'spirit'. For the entry "allsamman" it lists the stress patterns 4-3-2, 4-4-0, 0-3-2 and 0-4-4 without preference. (in some cases patterns are noted to be used 'occasionally' or 'rarely') Another example of the context though is "stor mans dräkt" (4-4-4, a large man's suit) vs "stor mansdräkt" (4-3-0, a large suit for men) vs "stormansdräkt" (3-2-0, a suit of a magnate) vs "stormans dräkt" (3-2-4, a suit belonging to a magnate). Here you four distinct uses of the same three words, with four different tone and intonation patterns. Anyway, 'Arlanda' typically has a 3-2-0 pattern. 85.24.253.41 (talk) 02:22, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

Disambiguating through intonation or other phonetic means

In spoken English, can you use intonation (pauses or any phonetic means) to disambiguate phrases like 'black cab driver' in a way that would indicate whether you're talking about a ' black cab driver' or a ' black cab driver'? That is, can intonation convey syntactic information like these cases? --Doroletho (talk) 22:52, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

One obvious way is to run the two words together that you're grouping together. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:15, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

Interesting question. As a mere speaker of L1 English, I'd be inclined to say that if you want to express the blackness of the cab, "black" needs to be stressed and "cab" needn't be; whereas if you want to express the blackness of the driver, it's the other way around. However, I'm unsure about this and would want to see evidence. Reliable evidence might be harder to elicit than it might first seem, because attempts to elicit expressions of the one meaning and not the other might trigger conscious self-monitoring and somewhat artificial intonation. I hope that somebody who, unlike me, is a phonologist answers this. -- Hoary (talk) 23:53, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

There's a famous educational phrase used to teach intonation in English, "I didn't say he stole the money". Depending on how it is intonated, there can be as many as seven different meanings of that sentence. this google search shows its prevalence as a teaching aid; there's some good videos and websites in there that demonstrate it. --Jayron32 00:24, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

So the answer is yes. I'll just note that in written English you can make the same distinction using hyphens: a "black-cab driver" or a "black cab-driver". People tend to see hyphenation as optional these days, but it has its purposes, and I probably would hyphenate in the first example, though probably not in the second. (However, you can't hyphenate just any group of words.) --76.69.46.228 (talk) 00:38, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Yes, the hyphenation is the written approximation of the ways you could say it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:09, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

This particular example might be more realistic as "black-cab driver" or a "black cab-driver". Bazza (talk) 11:04, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Oops! --76.69.46.228 (talk) 21:37, 28 February 2019 (UTC)