Linguistic pet peeves

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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by Reyzadren »

Trigger language linguistic terminologies are weird and confusing, especially since most of them contradict with common sense/intuition/terms.

...and this is why I use my own terminologies in my conlang.
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by Shemtov »

The French "language", if it can be called that. It's just a string of uvular trills and nasalized front round vowels:
Average French sentence in IPA: [ʀỹʀø̃ʀỹʀœ̃ỹʀʏ̃ʀœ̃]
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by Xonen »

Shemtov wrote: 14 Jan 2018 02:10 The French "language", if it can be called that. It's just a string of uvular trills and nasalized front round vowels:
Average French sentence in IPA: [ʀỹʀø̃ʀỹʀœ̃ỹʀʏ̃ʀœ̃]
Er, I'm not a huge fan of the way French sounds myself, but... standard French doesn't actually have any of those sounds. :wat: (Well, [œ̃] apparently occurs in conservative varieties, but anyway.)
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by Shemtov »

Xonen wrote: 14 Jan 2018 03:25
Shemtov wrote: 14 Jan 2018 02:10 The French "language", if it can be called that. It's just a string of uvular trills and nasalized front round vowels:
Average French sentence in IPA: [ʀỹʀø̃ʀỹʀœ̃ỹʀʏ̃ʀœ̃]
Er, I'm not a huge fan of the way French sounds myself, but... standard French doesn't actually have any of those sounds. :wat: (Well, [œ̃] apparently occurs in conservative varieties, but anyway.)
Sorry, I just watched a video about Quebec's linguistics policies, and I have OCD, and given that IMHO, Quebec is violating the UDHR and is only being protecting by three of the Big Five- UK because of the commonwealth, USA, because we're neighbors, and France, because they have the same policies, I posted this in a OCD moment over that. It's honestly restrained to what i posted to the YT vid and my PM to a FB friend in Quebec- I suggested that Quebec is planning to imitate the Holocaust, just with Anglophones instead of Jews/Gypsies/LGBTQs etc. and the Canadian Federal Government won't interfere, and that we need to "Nuke Ottawa" to send a warning about "linguistic apartheid"and the phrase "F*** Canada" [:$] . Such is the ranting of an OCD person under the control of the disorder. [:$] [:(]
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by Xonen »

Shemtov wrote: 14 Jan 2018 03:40
Xonen wrote: 14 Jan 2018 03:25
Shemtov wrote: 14 Jan 2018 02:10 The French "language", if it can be called that. It's just a string of uvular trills and nasalized front round vowels:
Average French sentence in IPA: [ʀỹʀø̃ʀỹʀœ̃ỹʀʏ̃ʀœ̃]
Er, I'm not a huge fan of the way French sounds myself, but... standard French doesn't actually have any of those sounds. :wat: (Well, [œ̃] apparently occurs in conservative varieties, but anyway.)
Sorry, I just watched a video about Quebec's linguistics policies, and I have OCD, and given that IMHO, Quebec is violating the UDHR and is only being protecting by three of the Big Five- UK because of the commonwealth, USA, because we're neighbors, and France, because they have the same policies, I posted this in a OCD moment over that. It's honestly restrained to what i posted to the YT vid and my PM to a FB friend in Quebec- I suggested that Quebec is planning to imitate the Holocaust, just with Anglophones instead of Jews/Gypsies/LGBTQs etc. and the Canadian Federal Government won't interfere, and that we need to "Nuke Ottawa" to send a warning about "linguistic apartheid"and the phrase "F*** Canada" [:$] . Such is the ranting of an OCD person under the control of the disorder. [:$] [:(]
I had to read this a couple of times, but... if I'm getting this right, you don't actually mean those things; you're just sharing a compulsive rant you posted elsewhere before calming down enough to think rationally again. At least I'm hoping that's the point here. For future reference, try to make sure your wording is extremely clear in such cases, lest someone get the wrong impression.
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by Shemtov »

Xonen wrote: 14 Jan 2018 18:34
Shemtov wrote: 14 Jan 2018 03:40
Xonen wrote: 14 Jan 2018 03:25
Shemtov wrote: 14 Jan 2018 02:10 The French "language", if it can be called that. It's just a string of uvular trills and nasalized front round vowels:
Average French sentence in IPA: [ʀỹʀø̃ʀỹʀœ̃ỹʀʏ̃ʀœ̃]
Er, I'm not a huge fan of the way French sounds myself, but... standard French doesn't actually have any of those sounds. :wat: (Well, [œ̃] apparently occurs in conservative varieties, but anyway.)
Sorry, I just watched a video about Quebec's linguistics policies, and I have OCD, and given that IMHO, Quebec is violating the UDHR and is only being protecting by three of the Big Five- UK because of the commonwealth, USA, because we're neighbors, and France, because they have the same policies, I posted this in a OCD moment over that. It's honestly restrained to what i posted to the YT vid and my PM to a FB friend in Quebec- I suggested that Quebec is planning to imitate the Holocaust, just with Anglophones instead of Jews/Gypsies/LGBTQs etc. and the Canadian Federal Government won't interfere, and that we need to "Nuke Ottawa" to send a warning about "linguistic apartheid"and the phrase "F*** Canada" [:$] . Such is the ranting of an OCD person under the control of the disorder. [:$] [:(]
I had to read this a couple of times, but... if I'm getting this right, you don't actually mean those things; you're just sharing a compulsive rant you posted elsewhere before calming down enough to think rationally again. At least I'm hoping that's the point here. For future reference, try to make sure your wording is extremely clear in such cases, lest someone get the wrong impression.
That's exactly right. My post about French was posted while I was beginning to calm down and thus did not use as strong language.
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by KaiTheHomoSapien »

One pet peeve of mine is when I get called a "Grammar Nazi". I've never been one to go around correcting other people's grammar, and it bothers me more that an interest in linguistics is reduced to simply being a stickler for grammar. It's true that I have a decent knowledge of grammatical standards, but they're so low on the list of linguistic topics that interest me. On a gaming forum I post on, there's a user who proudly refers to himself as a "Grammar Nazi", and he is intelligent and interesting to talk to, but he doesn't have much interest in linguistics proper, and yet people are always comparing me with him. Just a minor annoynace [xD]
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

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KaiTheHomoSapien wrote: 16 Jan 2018 07:14 One pet peeve of mine is when I get called a "Grammar Nazi". I've never been one to go around correcting other people's grammar, and it bothers me more that an interest in linguistics is reduced to simply being a stickler for grammar. It's true that I have a decent knowledge of grammatical standards, but they're so low on the list of linguistic topics that interest me. On a gaming forum I post on, there's a user who proudly refers to himself as a "Grammar Nazi", and he is intelligent and interesting to talk to, but he doesn't have much interest in linguistics proper, and yet people are always comparing me with him. Just a minor annoynace [xD]
What do you do that leads people to call you that?
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

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Probably invades and conquers European languages.
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by KaiTheHomoSapien »

:mrgreen:
GrandPiano wrote: 22 Jan 2018 00:19 What do you do that leads people to call you that?
Just revealing my knowledge of grammar has caused some to label me that (not maliciously, something like "Kai will know; he's a Grammar Nazi"). But I think of a Grammar Nazi as someone who feels the need to provide everyone with unsolicited corrections, and I'm not like that. I prefer the term "word nerd". [:)]
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by GrandPiano »

If that is the case, then that does sound pretty annoying.
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by Imralu »

When you're reading an academic article about TAM marking and you note that some of the author's disagreements with other cited author's analysis look like they're coming down to some people knowing the difference between perfect and perfective and some simply always using "perfective" because it obviously looks more fancy and grammary.
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

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Imralu wrote: 12 Feb 2018 06:46 When you're reading an academic article about TAM marking and you note that some of the author's disagreements with other cited author's analysis look like they're coming down to some people knowing the difference between perfect and perfective and some simply always using "perfective" because it obviously looks more fancy and grammary.
I have heard people who state that there is no perfect, only perfective. And if you call the German tense "Perfekt" instead of "Perfektiv", you are obviously a moron with little or no knowledge of linguistics. \s
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

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But the German 'Perfekt' is definitely more liek a past for most speakers in colloquial speech [:D]
Recently a discussion has started about Perfects in Typology again and it seems they are a mixed group, especially if you compare them to perfectives. Just think of universal perfect readings, experiential perfect readings and resultative perfect readings. English seems to group these together, but a lot of languages either make differences, or group some of these together with yet other forms (e.g. iamitives - google it).
Perfectives on the other hand are relatively easy to define and constant across languages, i.e. they can be marked or not, but along this scale there are not many other distinctions.
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

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Iyionaku wrote: 12 Feb 2018 08:02
Imralu wrote: 12 Feb 2018 06:46 When you're reading an academic article about TAM marking and you note that some of the author's disagreements with other cited author's analysis look like they're coming down to some people knowing the difference between perfect and perfective and some simply always using "perfective" because it obviously looks more fancy and grammary.
I have heard people who state that there is no perfect, only perfective. And if you call the German tense "Perfekt" instead of "Perfektiv", you are obviously a moron with little or no knowledge of linguistics. \s
Yeah, coincidentally, it's a German author I'm reading ... writing in English, about Swahili. She's mentioning that some are arguing that the -na- verb form (essentially present or occasionally continuous) are essentially "imperfective" and the -ki- verb form (essentially a subordinated verb form indicating simultaneity, equivalent to "if", adverbial participles and used in progressive forms other than present) is "perfective". I can't quite understand the arguments for why -ki- could be thought of as perfective because it seems pretty clearly imperfective to me ... and I think the author I'm reading refutes this pretty well (although I can't really be sure because I didn't quite understand the original argument) ... but it any case, the author seems to be using these correctly.

And then she discusses the -li- verb form (essentially just past) and the -me- verb form (essentially perfect, or resultative or recent past ... some disagreement) and some of the authors are calling these "imperfect(ive)" and "perfect(ive)" respectively and I'm like "AAAAAAAAH!" As far as I know, imperfect works for descriptions of a particular Latin tense (and in its descendants) because it is essentially a past tense with imperfective aspect, and this has led to simple past tenses being called "imperfect" in various European languages, whether these tenses have any imperfective aspect with them or not.

The thing that annoys me most about this is that the simple past -li- tense is, if my understanding is correct, pretty clearly perfective: blah happened. Calling it imperfective is just plain wrong and clearly just a case of adding -ive to be extra-profesh grammary. You could call it imperfect if you want to mindlessly follow the tradition of calling non-perfect past forms "imperfect" ... but, like, why? Just call it "past"! You can create a compound tense combining -li- with the -ki- (or sometimes the -na- tense) to make it imperfective - -li- on its own is quite clearly perfective. The perfect form -me- seems kind of ambiguous to me as to whether it's perfective or imperfective ... it's kind of like the English perfect, indicating a past action but focusing more on its present effects, so I don't know how that fits into the perfective/imperfective discussion as I'm still learning the difference between those meanings. (Reading stuff by people who are themselves confusing two different things doesn't help me!) On the one hand, the -me- form generally indicates an action which may or may not be finished ... but the effects of that action are explicitly relevant to the present (or another time when used in a compound tense). For example -lewa means "get drunk". Using it in the perfect it means "be drunk", such as nimelewa "I am drunk" (or "I have become drunk"). The transition from not-drunk to drunk is explicitly complete ... although I think it's ambiguous as to whether the process is continuing or finished (i.e. as to whether I'm still drinking or whether I've stopped). So, I don't know whether that would count as perfective or imperfective ... but I have a feeling it fits better with the label "imperfective" because continuing effect could easily be seen as an internal perspective on time. So, basically, when it comes to -li- and -me- there seem to be quite a few people calling a clearly perfective verb form "imperfective" and a quite probably imperfective verb form "perfective" ... *sigh*

I mean, I'm still learning, so maybe I've got a whole bunch of stuff wrong, but I certainly feel like I've spotted authors mixing things up pretty terribly just because of some -ives added inappropriatively.
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by Imralu »

Creyeditor wrote: 12 Feb 2018 16:20
Recently a discussion has started about Perfects in Typology again and it seems they are a mixed group, especially if you compare them to perfectives. Just think of universal perfect readings, experiential perfect readings and resultative perfect readings. English seems to group these together, but a lot of languages either make differences, or group some of these together with yet other forms (e.g. iamitives - google it).
Yeah, it is complex. These various perfect uses all combine at least two concepts (something happening in the past - relevance to present) and languages tend to conflate or not conflate (or cornflake) the various types in different ways. The discussion about perfects certainly won't be helped by people mixing them up with perfectives. Thanks for the terminology. I'm not quite sure what universal perfect could mean as opposed to the others.

Swahili seems to like to use an auxiliary verb -wahi for experiential perfect, and there's an extra marker for iamitive (if I've understood it correctly from cursory reading through google results).

Umemwona mamba? = Have you seen the crocodile. (Resultative?)
Umewahi kumwona mamba? = Have you ever seen a crocodile? (Experiential?)
Nimeshamwona mamba? = I have already seen the crocodile? (Iamitive?)
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

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Imralu wrote: 12 Feb 2018 18:35
Iyionaku wrote: 12 Feb 2018 08:02
Imralu wrote: 12 Feb 2018 06:46 When you're reading an academic article about TAM marking and you note that some of the author's disagreements with other cited author's analysis look like they're coming down to some people knowing the difference between perfect and perfective and some simply always using "perfective" because it obviously looks more fancy and grammary.
I have heard people who state that there is no perfect, only perfective. And if you call the German tense "Perfekt" instead of "Perfektiv", you are obviously a moron with little or no knowledge of linguistics. \s
Yeah, coincidentally, it's a German author I'm reading ... writing in English, about Swahili. She's mentioning that some are arguing that the -na- verb form (essentially present or occasionally continuous) are essentially "imperfective" and the -ki- verb form (essentially a subordinated verb form indicating simultaneity, equivalent to "if", adverbial participles and used in progressive forms other than present) is "perfective". I can't quite understand the arguments for why -ki- could be thought of as perfective because it seems pretty clearly imperfective to me ... and I think the author I'm reading refutes this pretty well (although I can't really be sure because I didn't quite understand the original argument) ... but it any case, the author seems to be using these correctly.

And then she discusses the -li- verb form (essentially just past) and the -me- verb form (essentially perfect, or resultative or recent past ... some disagreement) and some of the authors are calling these "imperfect(ive)" and "perfect(ive)" respectively and I'm like "AAAAAAAAH!" As far as I know, imperfect works for descriptions of a particular Latin tense (and in its descendants) because it is essentially a past tense with imperfective aspect, and this has led to simple past tenses being called "imperfect" in various European languages, whether these tenses have any imperfective aspect with them or not.

The thing that annoys me most about this is that the simple past -li- tense is, if my understanding is correct, pretty clearly perfective: blah happened. Calling it imperfective is just plain wrong and clearly just a case of adding -ive to be extra-profesh grammary. You could call it imperfect if you want to mindlessly follow the tradition of calling non-perfect past forms "imperfect" ... but, like, why? Just call it "past"! You can create a compound tense combining -li- with the -ki- (or sometimes the -na- tense) to make it imperfective - -li- on its own is quite clearly perfective. The perfect form -me- seems kind of ambiguous to me as to whether it's perfective or imperfective ... it's kind of like the English perfect, indicating a past action but focusing more on its present effects, so I don't know how that fits into the perfective/imperfective discussion as I'm still learning the difference between those meanings. (Reading stuff by people who are themselves confusing two different things doesn't help me!) On the one hand, the -me- form generally indicates an action which may or may not be finished ... but the effects of that action are explicitly relevant to the present (or another time when used in a compound tense). For example -lewa means "get drunk". Using it in the perfect it means "be drunk", such as nimelewa "I am drunk" (or "I have become drunk"). The transition from not-drunk to drunk is explicitly complete ... although I think it's ambiguous as to whether the process is continuing or finished (i.e. as to whether I'm still drinking or whether I've stopped). So, I don't know whether that would count as perfective or imperfective ... but I have a feeling it fits better with the label "imperfective" because continuing effect could easily be seen as an internal perspective on time. So, basically, when it comes to -li- and -me- there seem to be quite a few people calling a clearly perfective verb form "imperfective" and a quite probably imperfective verb form "perfective" ... *sigh*

I mean, I'm still learning, so maybe I've got a whole bunch of stuff wrong, but I certainly feel like I've spotted authors mixing things up pretty terribly just because of some -ives added inappropriatively.
The test for imperfectivity is if you can say 'while x, y happened-Z' and what interpretation it gets. Z=Imperfective forms should yield an interpretation, where y happens for a longer time than x. Z=perfective should yield an interpretation where x happened for a longer time than y. Don't know if that helps, I often get confused about it myself.
Maybe the author is influenced by French 'imparfait' somehow misunderstanding it as a term for past?
Imralu wrote: 12 Feb 2018 18:47 Thanks for the terminology. I'm not quite sure what universal perfect could mean as opposed to the others.
Universal perfect refers to sentences like 'He’s lived alone since his father died.' or 'He has been sick since 2002.' So they are states that start at some point in the past but still hold at the present time.
These are tricky for most descriptions, because there is no clear event in the relative past.

Also, interesting data from Swahili [:)]
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by KaiTheHomoSapien »

A guy on another site I frequent said "Arabic is so hard that even people born to it don't speak it correctly all the time". Then he made a baffling statement suggesting that the Romans were not native to Latium and they "adopted" the Latin language for themselves.

[:|]

[>:|]

[>:(]

Someone's been taking the Aeneid too literally. Don't let other people talk linguistics, that's what I've learned. :D
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by Iyionaku »

KaiTheHomoSapien wrote: 09 Apr 2018 05:27 "Arabic is so hard that even people born to it don't speak it correctly all the time".
He is not totally wrong tho, if he means Standard Arabic. The native language of most (if not all?) Arabs is not Standard Arabic, but one of the various Arabic dialects. Those are so different from the Standard language that one could say that Standard Arabic is a foreign language to them (as different as Italian and Latin I suppose, although I'm not an expert on Semitic languages).

By the way, nobody speaks "correctly all the time". Whenever you speak, you are prone to do grammatical errors. It just happens.
KaiTheHomoSapien wrote: 09 Apr 2018 05:27Then he made a baffling statement suggesting that the Romans were not native to Latium and they "adopted" the Latin language for themselves.
Also not entirely wrong; He could have meant that most "Romans" (inhabitants of the Roman Empire) eventually gave up their native language in favor of Latin. Before the rise of the Roman Empire there were dozens of different Italic languages in Italia, and also other languages like Etruscan. So depending on the original statement, he might have a point there.
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