Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2021 April 10

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April 10

Are these two Brazilian death records both genuinely for men who claimed to be 113 years old at the time of their deaths?

Are these two Brazilian death records both genuinely for men who claimed to be 113 years old at the time of their deaths? :

https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-89L1-99CV-M?cc=2001150&personaUrl=%2Fark%3A%2F61903%2F1%3A1%3AQG6F-HJMB

https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-89L1-HQ66?cc=2001150&personaUrl=%2Fark%3A%2F61903%2F1%3A1%3AQG6F-8F17

I myself can't read Portuguese and thus I can't be sure that the FamilySearch.org summary of these documents is actually accurate. Futurist110 (talk) 05:57, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

These two records are internally inconsistent. In the first entry, the birth date is given as 25 Jun 1988, the death date as 3 Nov 2012, rather far from the given age of 113 years. The second entry gives the birth date as 25 Jan 1953, death date as 23 Nov 2012. Looking at some other entries in the source, the age given seems to be consistent with the DOB/DOD, so what has happened in these two entries is anobody's guess. --T*U (talk) 07:10, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

A signon is required. What are the names? Have you looked in Findagrave? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:30, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

The first record is of Luciano de Sousa Chagas, born in José de Freitas. The second is of José de Sousa Leal, born in Teresina.  --Lambiam 12:33, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

According to this, Luciano de Sousa Chagas died in a traffic accident. Name checks, place of residence checks (José de Freitas), time of death checks (Nov 2012), age checks with the DOB/DOD dates in the record (24 years), but not the 113 years. The other name is too common to find out about easily. --T*U (talk) 13:10, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. So, it looks like FamilySearch.org had an error in regards to their ages. Futurist110 (talk) 20:25, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

This error, however, faithfully reflects the data of the death record in the registry of the local civil registry office. There it is written, black on white, that these individuals died "com cento e treze (113) ANOS de idade".  --Lambiam 13:53, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Yes, the errors are not made by FamilySearch, they are in the original Brazilian records. Rather strange that the same absurd error was made twice within a rather short period of time. Those two persons died less than three weeks apart, and the death certificates of both were actually signed by the same person, Dr. Jose Luiz Castelo Branco de Siqueira. And why on earth exactly 113 in both cases? Weird! --T*U (talk) 14:50, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Pronouns and placeholders

The article placeholder name mentions that placeholder names like "thingy" are similar to pronouns, but does not offer a citation. I'm having trouble tracking down linguistic research on this topic ("placeholder name" doesn't seem to be that widely used in the same way the article uses it). I would appreciate any citations, or other search terms to use, on the similarity between pronouns and placeholder words. I'm especially interested in any research on how semantic vagueness affects language processing and comprehension (e.g. are complex sentences easier to read if the noun "thingy" is used instead of something specific?) 24.43.123.68 (talk) 17:48, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

It can be vagueness resulting from either not knowing what the real name of something is, or not wanting to bother saying it. Like with "thingamajig",[1] with variants going back several centuries. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:59, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

In traditional grammar, the term pronoun is reserved for a relatively small and fairly stable category of words. In contrast, the term "placeholder name" is not in common use among grammarians; it does not occur in the 1778-page Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. It does not have a sharply delined and commonly understood meaning; instead, it is used rather loosely for a varied category of terms. Depending on the meaning given to "name", it can range from phrases, not necessarily noun phrases, containing proper names, such as "Bob's your uncle",^[2] to only noun phrases, not necessarily containing a proper name, such as "thingamabob" or "whatshisface". Used in the latter sense, a placeholder name is grammatically always a third-person term; used as a grammatical subject, the corresponding finite verb has to agree by taking a third-person form. Furthermore, placeholder names have an indefinite or undetermined referent, but most third-person pronouns have, in the context in which they are used, a specific referent, based on an understanding shared between the speaker and their audience. For example, in a sentence like, "when they go low, we go high", the receiver of this message is supposed to understand perfectly well who the word "they" refers to. But in the saying, "when the man in the street starts offering stock market tips, it’s time to exit the market", it is meaningless to ask to be more specific about who "the man in the street" is.  --Lambiam 13:42, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Here's one source that offers an array of terms used by linguists for the phenomenon, including "dummy noun", and with a list of citations to follow up on. [3]. It's also an interesting read! Apparently variants on whatshername are common cross-culturally. No one can remember names! 70.67.193.176 (talk) 15:53, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

What does this Japanese newspaper article say?

What does this Japanese newspaper article say? :

https://i.imgur.com/ptLMm5f.png

Based on what I was told on another forum, this is a death notice for 110-year-old Japanese man Tokio Watanabe, either stating or implying that he died on February 6, 2010. Is this correct/accurate? I was told on that other forum that this text comes from page 5 of the February 9, 2010 edition of Ehime Shimbun, which is apparently some kind of Japanese newspaper or something like that. Futurist110 (talk) 20:28, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Here's the source for this, BTW: https://the110club.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=20260&p=40087890&hilit=tokio+watanabe#p40087890 Futurist110 (talk) 20:28, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

It states that he died at 20:50 of the 6th; unsurprisingly, it doesn't specify the month, let alone the year. There's no indication of which newspaper it is; all we can infer is that it's a newspaper published in a prefecture (which would exclude a number of areas of Japan, Tokyo being among them). Ehime shinbun (or shimbun) is indeed a newspaper, published in/for Ehime: here's its website. I know that it's published in a prefecture (which could well be Ehime), because it says that Watanabe was 県内男性最高齢者, i.e. oldest man in the prefecture. -- Hoary (talk) 07:31, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

The Japanese Wikipedia has an article about Tokio Watanabe: ja:渡部時雄 (12 December 1899 – 6 February 2010), stating that (at the time of death) he was the second longest-living Japanese man. He was born and died in Kumakōgen, Ehime. Tokio Watanabe also has an article on the Simple-English Wikipedia. He was survived by Jiroemon Kimura, who was then already older.  --Lambiam 22:45, 12 April 2021 (UTC)