Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2020 April 10

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April 10

(Sometimes serial) unstressed your

Wiktionary (def. 3) calls it "A determiner that conveys familiarity and mutual knowledge of the modified noun", and gives as one example:

• Not your average Tom, Dick and Harry.

Serially, it's like:

• Autumn is the time for planting your green vegetables, your lettuces, your radishes, your beans and your zucchini.

I like how some actors use it in the line from Hamlet:

• There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

This unstressed your is a dig at unimaginative scientific pronouncements about the universe, and it always makes much more sense to me this way than making it about Horatio's personal philosophy, where it would be stressed.

Anyway, have lexicostrophists given this usage of your a name, and does it occur in other languages? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 00:06, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

See Generic you. Jmar67 (talk) 01:09, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks but I don't think that's it. If 'your' didn't appear in the first example, what would it be instead? Not one's average Tom, Dick and Harry? Not an average Tom, Dick and Harry? Not the average Tom, Dick and Harry?

In the serial example, the yours could be eliminated entirely without any loss of meaning. This doesn't fit the generic you, imo. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 01:17, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't understand your point. Jmar67 (talk) 01:41, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

It'd be No one's average Tom, Dick and Harry. It can change the nuance of the sentence a little; like the Wiktionary article, it can convey a familiar, or in some cases, instructive tone. --Tenryuu ² ( ¬  o  Contributions/Tenryuu) 01:50, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Another Australian here, with further elaboration of this usage via another example. While the names won't mean anything to people unfamiliar with Australian rules football, it would be no surprise to hear a commentator discussing the game say "...your Bontompellis, your Dangerfields, your Cotchins..." There's only one player with each of those surnames in the game, but everyone listening knows what is being said. It means something along the lines "players of a particular style and high calibre, who are not common in the game." HiLo48 (talk) 02:05, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Pretty common usage in America also. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 02:39, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Jack_of_Oz -- Plain old possessive "your" is also unstressed in many cases (in fact, most of the time when it does not have any contrastive or emphatic function), so I don't think that being unstressed is at all distinctive to meaning number 3...

Anyway, the Latin language had a special demonstrative word iste which could mean by implication "that one of yours" (sometimes with contemptuous connotations). This was a completely different word from the standard 2nd-person possessives tuus ("your(s)" of a single person) and vester ("your(s) of more than one person). Note that iste, tuus, and vester are the masculine nominative singular forms of words which are inflected for gender, number, and case... AnonMoos (talk) 05:20, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

As a related question, what is the etymology and meaning of the expression "This is not your father's (something)"? JIP | Talk 16:15, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

According to Wiktionary it's 'From an advertising slogan for the Oldsmobile car, "this is not your father's Oldsmobile".' AndrewWTaylor (talk) 18:16, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

And the meaning is obvious: It's something new and improved over whatever your father or mother had. (Or so the advertisers want you to believe.) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:18, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks to you both. JIP | Talk 18:20, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

To build on what AnonMoos said, you have your 'iste' and your 'istic' in Latin, which don't have a flattering flavor. You have your 'ille,' which has a positive connotation. You have your 'ipse,' which is nonjudgmental. (Not a directly corollary word, but used similarly.) And in American English, people use "your" in all three ways. It just depends on how you say it. (Now I'm not a Latin professor, so if I've gotten any of that wrong please do correct me.) Temerarius (talk) 22:40, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

• Thanks, all. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:42, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Italian dialect pronunciation

Is there an Italian, Romansh or Occitan dialect where the digraph gl is pronounced /gʎ(ʎ)/ instead of /ʎʎ/? Or respectively for gn? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.142.68.223 (talk) 10:40, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

If there is, it would probably be because a "g" was placed next to an "l" or "n" by compounding or suffixation -- and not because there was an actual "g" sound in the same cases where standard Italian has a palatal lateral or palatal nasal. (Historically, there was rarely an earlier "g" sound in the sequences which became the Italian palatal nasal, and never a "g" sound in the sequences which became the Latin palatal lateral, as far as I know)... AnonMoos (talk) 10:59, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

"The" before monarchical titles with names

Why do I often see expressions such as "the Empress Theodora", "the Emperor Henry", etc, but never "the Queen Elizabeth", "the King Louis"? Surtsicna (talk) 11:21, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

As no-one else has yet replied, I'm going to answer to the best of my limited understanding in the hope that someone more qualified will come along to correct my mistakes and provide a more correct analysis. (I'm making a bet with myself as to who it will be.)

The cultures that spoke English or its forerunners have always had kings and [queen]s, and both words are as old as English itself (and have older Indo-European roots), although the meaning of "queen" has changed a little since Anglo-Saxon times, and the form "King X" or "Queen Y" (without any "the") has always been the established idiom.

Before the 19th century, however, English speakers rarely had an "Emperor" (or Empress, a rare exception being Empress Matilda), a word that was introduced into English from Latin only in the 13th century (according to John Ayto's Dictionary of Word Origins, Bloomsbury 1990). Before the 11th century anyone discussing the concept would usually have been doing so in Latin, that being the international language of scholars, diplomats and the educated upper classes.

Then the Norman Invasion happened, after which a form of French became the official language of the English legal system as well as the everyday language of the upper (ruling) classes for several centuries. (Later on, French proper became the international language of diplomacy.)

The (uneducated lower class) majority of the population of course continued to speak English, and as the upper classes gradually switched to it over several generations, they naturally introduced French words and idioms where English ones did not exist, and sometimes when they did.

In French the grammatical idiom was and is to refer to "L'Empereur Z", so the usage "the Emperor Z" transferred into English, but did not replace the established "King X" (sans "the"). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.27.39 (talk) 21:59, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Oedipus the King. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:07, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

Njörvasund

I read in an English translation of The Long Ships that the Vikings referred to the Strait of Gibraltar as "Njörva Sound". What is the etymology of that? Apparently there is a Njörvasund in Iceland. Talk:Njörun quotes:

Roughly translated as: "draumnjörum in Alvíssmál, stanza 30, was apparently originally meant as "she who ties together dreams", cf. modern Icelandic njörva, Old Norse Njörvasund, Anglo-Saxon nearu, genyrwan. But later the skalds have understood Njörun as a name of an ásynja, and then used this in a woman's kenning."

is:Gíbraltarsund says:

Gíbraltarsund (sem á íslensku hefur verið nefnt Stólpasund eða Njörvasund)

--Error (talk) 12:39, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Wiktionary seems to say it’s a cognate of narrow, which would certainly make sense. Cheers ⌘ _hugarheimur 13:14, 10 April 2020 (UTC)