[HN Gopher] Initial Stress-Derived Noun
___________________________________________________________________
Initial Stress-Derived Noun
Author : richardw
Score : 165 points
Date : 2021-05-22 11:20 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| mikelward wrote:
| No wonder it irritates me when some Americans say "duhtail"
| rather than "deetail" as a noun. They're doing the stress
| backwards according to this rule.
| mikelward wrote:
| And on the other hand, now I understand why Americans say
| "address" rather than "uhdress" for the noun. I should probably
| do the same.
| stevula wrote:
| The British pronunciation could be influenced by the French
| word adresse.
| psyc wrote:
| American here. I feel like I've heard both ways about
| equally. I've lived all over, so maybe it's regional.
| 542458 wrote:
| One thing that is a bit amazing to me is that there are all sorts
| of absolutely bonkers rules to English that 99% of people can't
| describe, but do subconsciously anyways. Things like the order of
| adjectives ("big red ball" sounds right, "red big ball" sounds
| wrong) are surprisingly complicated [1], but we passively learn
| them at a young age.
|
| [1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-
| grammar/adj...
| Razengan wrote:
| > _there are all sorts of absolutely bonkers rules to English
| that 99% of people can't describe_
|
| It's especially annoying when English natives arrogantly deride
| other languages for being too complicated or ambiguous. Like,
| buddy, do you even know how many different ways are to just
| pronounce one letter in English?? (e.g. "Pacific Ocean" or
| "ghoti" = "fish")
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > Like, buddy, do you even know how many different ways are
| to just pronounce one letter in English?? (e.g. "Pacific
| Ocean" or "ghoti" = "fish")
|
| That's hardly unique to English. Heck, even in German, there
| are at least four ways to pronounce the letter "s".
| Razengan wrote:
| That's pretty much the point.
| loceng wrote:
| Well, evolutionary-hierarchy perspective wise colour would be
| the best/simplest identifier and ideal to be first.
| gumby wrote:
| This is true of every language.
| bakul wrote:
| Sanskrit has _free_ word order. For example, "krishnam
| naro'shvam prashyati sundaram" -- the man sees the beautiful
| black horse. Here Krishnam == black, sundaram == beautiful.
| naro'sham is the combined form (sandhi) of narah (man) +
| ashvam (horse) and prashyati == sees.
|
| Though Indian languages derived from Sanskrit have simpler
| rules and the adjectives are roughly in the same order as
| English (but the endings have to match the noun).
| foobiekr wrote:
| I took 4+ years of Japanese and was once nearly fluent; I
| never came across an equivalent there; the closest I can
| think of is an emphasis rule, which is not at all what's
| going on in English. Spanish (several years) seems very loose
| compared to english, but I agree it shows up there in a way
| that I never quite nailed (e.g., "el frio hielo").
|
| I am curious if you can point to some article about this
| being a universal.
| gumby wrote:
| I didn't mean the stress issue (stress in Japanese is a
| completely different matter anyway) but the general
| principle of complex-to-write-down "rules" that are not
| taught explicitly to native speakers but which people
| automatically adopt.
|
| Classifiers are a common example; words are often taught
| with classifiers (in most IE languages, gender) but you
| pick up words in reading or speech and automatically absorb
| the appropriate classifier even if not used, from other
| syntactic agreements. Japanese of course has a richer set
| than gender.
|
| In another case: German, how you compose compound words
| (and far more interesting to me, how you read unfamiliar
| ones at a glance rather than parsing them as a student
| would) uses rules that just "feel obvious" after a while.
|
| You a fast learner. It usually takes me several years of
| daily, primary use of a language before these kinds of
| things are intuitive.
| obloid wrote:
| I've recently been listening to the "History of English
| Podcast". It's a deep dive into the evolution of the English
| language starting from its PIE roots onward. He does a great
| job explaining how many of the the odd rules of English came
| about. Highly recommended if you're into that kind of thing.
| Tagbert wrote:
| "History of English Podcast" is fantastic look at both
| language and the historic and cultural events that impact the
| language.
|
| "Lexicon Valley" is another language focused podcast that
| looks at how our use of language has changed over time.
| eternauta3k wrote:
| Both are excellent podcasts. I personally prefer the early
| Lexicon Valley episodes with the original hosts, although I
| hear the new host has more credentials.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| Thats seems more like a arbitrary cultural distinction versus a
| rule. It sounds odd, but a half second of thought should make
| it obvious it makes perfect sense.
| canjobear wrote:
| "Rule" in this context means a regular distinction which
| speakers know and follow implicitly. Not a prescriptive rule
| that you learn in school, like "always put periods inside
| quotes."
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| I'm curious to see how this goes for you because in my
| experience this site is HARDCORE prescriptivist almost like
| it's a religion it's a bit scary sometimes.
| canjobear wrote:
| Most people are. I'm used to it.
| lukeschlather wrote:
| All linguistic rules are arbitrary cultural distinction.
| They're used for error correction and conveying subtly
| different meanings.
|
| In the "big red ball" vs. "red big ball" case it can be
| deliberately used to change the way the term parses. The
| "normal" one means a ball that is both red and big. The
| abnormal one implies that "big ball" is lexically a single
| object, perhaps a proper noun, and that the "red" modifier is
| being applied to it.
| michael1999 wrote:
| Or distinguishing between two big-balls, one of which is
| red.
| simondw wrote:
| I'm not sure if you mean "big-ball" as a special object
| distinct from any "big ball." If not, I would still say
| "the big _red_ ball, not the big _green_ ball. "
| Izkata wrote:
| If we're already talking about a "big ball" and someone
| wanted clarification about "the red one or the blue one",
| it's been promoted to a special object and for that
| context "the red big ball" sounds more correct to me. To
| show the promotion of "big ball" in text, I'd type it
| like "the _red_ big ball " or "the red big-ball" (though
| the latter still looks odd), even though the emphasis of
| the former might be slight enough not to be obvious when
| spoken.
| Twisol wrote:
| As a very concrete example of this, in games like Diablo,
| you might have an item literally called "Big Ball" that
| can have a color attribute. You would (and I have)
| absolutely refer to a particular colored item as a "red
| Big Ball".
|
| This is the exception that proves the rule, though, as
| "big" is now in fact part of the ball's identity, rather
| than something merely describing the ball.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Um, no. We (British-English speakers) say "big _red_
| ball" just adding emphasis to the vocalisation of "red".
|
| You hear an example in Boris Johnson PM talking about
| "new _blue_ passport", people getting a "new passport" is
| a thing, but if you say a 'blue "new passport"' then
| people will find that a foreign turn off phrase and
| assume you're a non-native speaker or you're having a
| stroke (ie a medical problem with your brain).
|
| I mean, yeah, if it's a noun phrase it _might_ work, but
| even if we 're taking about a red zorb, it's not going to
| be "red big ball" unless Big Ball is a trade mark or
| brand name or whatever.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| I dont really think thats a valid distinction. Is there a
| false/different final "thing" that is being described?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| To make this more apparent, "that big yellow bird" just
| means any old ordinary bird, whereas people would
| probably take "that yellow big bird" to refer to Big Bird
| the Sesame Street character. So that can totally be a
| valid parsing of the sentence.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "false," but
| "different," definitely. Hyphens have fallen somewhat out
| of fashion in modern English but they can provide clarity
| in these cases.
|
| Let's change the noun. If a native speaker says, "big red
| hands," you can normally assume they're speaking of large
| hands which are colored red.
|
| However, if they say "red big hands," this parses to "red
| big-hands," meaning "big-hands" is treated as a title, or
| perhaps a brand. You might see this title capitalized:
| "red Big-Hands".
|
| Going back to the first example, if you mean "red hands"
| as a title, you could write "big Red Hands" or better
| yet, "big Red-Hands," meaning something big with the
| title Red-Hands. Since the adjective order is the same as
| grammatically conventional English, the hyphen helps
| distinguish the writer's meaning. But nowadays I find
| writers often leave it out when the adjective order
| implies the multi-word title.
| lupire wrote:
| big brown hairy foot.
|
| hairy brown bigfoot. :-)
| bobthepanda wrote:
| At least when I was growing up, it was taught to avoid
| hyphens because the standards at the time (or at least
| the teachers teaching them) strongly disliked hyphens
| because they were associated with mid-word line breaking.
| eru wrote:
| What's the difference between 'arbitrary cultural
| distinction' and 'rule of a language'?
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| RADAR vs radar.
|
| Acronyms should be all upper case. But no one really cares
| for words that have entered common languge
| [deleted]
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The dictionaries we have (Oxford, Merriam-Webster etc.)
| are all descriptive rather than prescriptive.
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| I mean true but this is like pointing out that no one
| plays baseball with a golf club. One is ubiquitous
| because it's useful and the other isn't.
|
| Prescriptive dictionaries do exist but they're mostly
| used by specialists to understand specific usages within
| a time-limited context like "what did 'gay' mean in 1920s
| california" etc.
|
| Similarly there might possibly be some training reason to
| try to hit a baseball with a golf club. But if that
| applies to you you're probably aware of it.
| lupire wrote:
| > understand specific usages within a time-limited
| context
|
| That sounds descriptive to me.
| gumby wrote:
| This differs among languages, e.g. NATO vs Nato, and even
| dialects.
|
| Acronyms look weird to me when not written in all caps,
| yet when they turn into commonplace proper nouns (e.g.
| when people an acronym without even knowing the
| expansion) such spelling is essentially vestigial.
|
| Luckily English spelling has a fondness for vestigial
| forms, unlike languages like German that undergo periodic
| spelling "reform"
| function_seven wrote:
| One style guide I've seen (forget where) tells you to
| lowercase acronyms and capitalize initialisms. (But
| initial letter still uppercases when it's a proper noun)
|
| So Covid, Nasa, and radar/laser; but FBI, CIA, and UPS.
|
| I do this in my own writing, except for "NASA". Just
| feels wrong to lowercase that one.
|
| And of course, laser and radar are just words at this
| point. Their origins may be acronymic, but like you said:
| common language mints new words.
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| Honestly it's grim but the social power of the group that
| uses it.
|
| If you speak a prestige dialect your patterns are "rules"
| and if you don't your patterns are "errors." But in both
| cases it has nothing to do with the language per se, just
| social and political relationships.
| swayvil wrote:
| I'll bet a lot of them aren't even rules, just conventions. I
| mean, there might not be a governing intelligent abstraction
| there. Just inertia.
| singlow wrote:
| Every grammar rule is a convention by definition.
| swayvil wrote:
| Pedantically put.
| codeulike wrote:
| Its true though, language is "open-source", and the
| conventions/rules change over time
| eru wrote:
| About the 'red big ball': you can use that, but the weirdness
| itself suggests that you better mean something different than
| an ordinary big red ball with that phrase.
|
| Also interesting and surprisingly rule-bound:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expletive_infixation
| SilasX wrote:
| "Give me one of the big balls."
|
| <gives purple ball>
|
| "Wait, I actually need a _red_ big ball."
| msbarnett wrote:
| it works but even then, "no sorry, I decided I need the big
| _red_ ball" feels more natural to me.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Gave giant balls two pink to kids.
|
| One was slightly larger then the other. Life Lesson, either
| both must be identical, or don't get.
| jpxw wrote:
| > Although most speakers are not exposed to these formations
| until after childhood,[citation needed]
|
| Lol at "citation needed"
| [deleted]
| thechao wrote:
| Yeah; I first heard about this from a German speaker who was
| complaining about it. He said that you could mangle 99% of
| English Grammar -- no problem. But! you get the order-of-
| adjectives _slightly wrong_ , and a native English speaker will
| look at you like you're from Mars. His second complaint is that
| the rule is rarely taught to native English speakers, such that
| they (we) don't even know how hard of a rule it is.
| kleton wrote:
| All languages have either exactly the same adjective order as
| English, or exactly reversed.
| skrebbel wrote:
| > All languages
|
| This would amaze me. How sure you are about this? Or do you
| mean something like "all languages I speak"?
| kleton wrote:
| Stacked adjectival modification and the structure of
| nominal phrases
|
| Gary-John Scott (2002)
| sinkasapa wrote:
| Speaking as a linguist, Cartography, the theory espoused
| by this work, is a highly controversial approach. The
| claim needs to be taken with a grain of salt. It isn't a
| statement of fact but an argument for a hypothesis that
| has not been thoroughly tested using a rigorous empirical
| methodology.
|
| I am a linguist who works in the field, performing basic
| research on languages that have very little
| documentation. I am aware of how tentative initial
| grammars of many of the world's languages are because I
| am involved in writing them myself. These works are the
| primary data that most linguistic theorists tend to use
| when making broad typological claims, i.e. claims about
| all languages. Theoretical works like Gary-John Scott are
| essentially meta-studies, secondary reinterpretations of
| primary research. This is fine for generating hypotheses
| but it is not valid to claim that a grammar, itself, is
| truth. Grammars, themselves, are essentially theories.
| They may be very preliminary. My point is that there is a
| telephone game aspect to these types of works at any
| point in the chain from native speaker to typologist
| errors, biases and misrepresentations may have occurred.
|
| Additionally, it is important to realize that the methods
| used in primary linguistic research are underdeveloped.
| The following paper, which is still in press, outlines
| some of the empirical issues faced by linguists
| researching understudied languages:
|
| Empirical evidence in research on meaning, Tonhauser and
| Matthewson:
|
| http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.
| 730...
|
| One thing that someone with a science background may find
| surprising is that the methodological suggestions made by
| the authors are so modest. They include the notion that
| one should control the context in which a stimulus is
| provided, that one should have a clearly stated
| hypothesis when eliciting linguistic judgments and also
| clearly state what question was put to the speaker.
| Sadly, these are controversial in linguistic research,
| indicating just how underdeveloped many areas of our
| discipline are.
|
| Gary-John Scott might happen to be right (I doubt it) but
| if so, it is not because they have made their case
| scientifically. They have only provided sufficient
| evidence to motivate a hypothesis.
| erdevs wrote:
| Does the hypothesis in question seem to hold for, say,
| the world's top 10 languages (by, say, # of living fluent
| speakers globally)? Top 30?
|
| I'm genuinely curious. And also trying to discern whether
| your point is that many-- but not necessarily _all_--
| current languages seem to conform to this hypothesis, or
| that actually very few seem to.
| kleton wrote:
| This is known as Universal 20 of Greenberg 1963. Not so
| universal, but you have to get down to languages way out
| of the top 30 like Chechen to find one that don't obey
| the typical rule. Of 576 languages catalogued in Dryer
| 2018, 113 are English-like, 182 are English-reversed, and
| the rest somewhat varied.
| codeulike wrote:
| Thats fascinating
| seppel wrote:
| German has more as less exactly the same order in which
| adjectives are sorted (unless you want to put stress on any
| particular adjective).
| marcosdumay wrote:
| That's a problem itself already.
|
| On a lot of languages, the order of the words can change a
| lot depending on what you want to stress, but English gives
| you very little leeway. Thus if you try to apply your skill
| of ordering the words right to express yourself, you will
| fail almost every time.
| faichai wrote:
| If any non-British wonder why we Brits don't know the rules, well
| back when I was at school, studying GCSE English in the 90s
| (qualifications we get age 16), they explicitly didn't teach us
| grammar rules, at all, just made us write stories. It was a bit
| of an experiment that I think they have since reversed.
|
| This meant that I knew rules of French grammar more explicitly
| than English. Which is nuts.
| quxkgpdy wrote:
| Why is it nuts? Being fluent is all about implicit knowledge.
|
| > we Brits don't know the rules
|
| Every native speaker of English in Britain knows the rules -
| implicitly. Which should be good enough for non-linguists.
| jessedhillon wrote:
| This is true for native speakers of most languages, in my
| experience. I remember many years ago traveling Spanish-
| speaking countries and trying to talk to locals about some
| grammatical point, like use of the subjunctive mood, and
| getting very puzzled looks. This despite the fact that even
| three-year old children correctly navigate verb moods without
| knowing the rules.
|
| This and other experiences convinced me that learning the
| formal rules of a language is perhaps not the best way to
| approach learning. Especially not if your intention is to speak
| to locals, rather than say, become a TV news announcer. I think
| the most critical skill of language learning is to get the
| "muscle memory" of the language, the reflex of subconsciously
| mapping concepts to words in your internal lookup table. This
| skill is even precedes IMO listening comprehension: naturally,
| when you're listening to someone speak, you'll miss words. But
| if your mastery of the language is sufficient to allow you to
| quickly guess what you would have said in the gap if you were
| speaking, then the error is survivable. I find that this seems
| to be how the brain works when listening to speech in your
| native language.
|
| To correlate with Dan Ariely's "Thinking, Fast and Slow" it's
| the fast mode that's needed, whereas as a grammatical approach
| tends to emphasize and develop slow mode skills. Sometimes you
| need to go slow before you go fast, but given that children
| jump I without knowing the rules, I don't think it's necessary
| for language. (I also think too much is made about the supposed
| inelasticity of the adult brain re languages) I hope/expect
| with AI, there is a really interesting possibility around the
| corner for learning language in a simulated immersion
| environment. The Google and Amazon translation APIs seem, on
| paper, to provide at least 50% of what that would take.
| ammar_x wrote:
| First time I hear of this as a non-native speaker. I'll pay more
| attention to notice it in real life.
| pithon wrote:
| It sounds strange when my colleagues refer to a class in Python
| having an a-TRIB-ute rather than an ATT-tri-bute. I'm familiar
| with the verb form stressing the middle syllable and the noun
| form stressing the first.
| mikelward wrote:
| Yes. They're doing it wrong according to this rule.
| tomerv wrote:
| Speaking of python, how do you pronounce "import"? I pronounce
| it as IM-port. According to the rule that makes it a noun, but
| shouldn't it be a verb? I wonder if I'm pronouncing it
| correctly.
| montecarl wrote:
| The outro on MC Frontalot's Charisma Potion covers this!
| https://open.spotify.com/track/21HeW6fxCl02b3gcvf1TIC?si=9fb...
| stevula wrote:
| I hear this pronunciation every now and then from gamers too. I
| suspect this happens when people learn the word from reading
| instead of from listening to the speech of their peers. If it
| becomes common enough then it spreads via speech patterns too.
| barney54 wrote:
| As a native English speaker, I had no idea about this rule. It's
| good to learn something new about the language I speak everyday.
| kevin_b_er wrote:
| I recognized this was a thing, but didn't have a name for it.
| So putting a name to it is neat.
| mrec wrote:
| If you find this sort of thing interesting, I can highly
| recommend Steven Pinker's _Words and Rules_.
| wincy wrote:
| I don't know if this is related but my in-laws put a different
| stress on the store name "Best Buy" than I do. They say BEST buy,
| having more stress on Best. Whereas my family says "best BUY".
| What's really weird is that I even notice it at all, it's really
| subtle and I'm not sure why it even bothers me.
| kashyapc wrote:
| Speaking of words ... here's a fun one: "founder" vs. "flounder".
| Both words can be nouns _and_ verbs:
|
| * founder [noun] - one who establishes
|
| * founder [verb] - to sink / to collapse / to fail
|
| * flounder [noun] - flatfish
|
| * flounder [verb] - to struggle to move / to proceed clumsily
|
| Apparently[1], you cannot say "a ship flounders", but that "a
| ship _founders_ ", as jarring as it sounds. The Merriam-Webster
| has an excellent article on it here[1]. It begins this way:
|
| _" The English language does not care if you are happy or sad.
| It is oblivious to your shrill entreaties for an orderly and
| sensible vocabulary. As proof of this supreme indifference we
| need look no further than the words 'founder' and 'flounder', for
| no language that cares about its speakers would ever allow this
| kind of semantic cruelty to exist."_
|
| [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/can-a-ship-
| flo... -- "Can a Ship 'Flounder'?"
| Karunamon wrote:
| That reminds me of my favorite auto-antonym - a word where the
| noun and verb forms have completely opposite meanings.
|
| _The lawmaker sanctioned(v) the sanction(n)_
|
| Where the verb form is to permit, and the noun form is to
| restrict!
|
| English is weird.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| Some of the examples in the list seem dubious to me. Absent?
| Cushion? Recap? I don't think I've ever heard the stress on the
| latter syllable even when used as a verb.
| ppod wrote:
| Not for cushion, but I've heard the other two.
| asplake wrote:
| I absent myself from this discussion
| GavinMcG wrote:
| Yes, that is indeed the verb, but I hear it as "I _ab_ sent
| myself" and I can't remember ever hearing it otherwise. Maybe
| in the USA it's already entered this category and then gone
| even further and influenced the pronunciation of the verb.
| Epenthesis wrote:
| American English speaker here, born and raised in Dallas,
| Tx. The stress goes on the second syllable for the verb for
| me ("I ab _sent_ myself ").
| asplake wrote:
| I'm UK-based (English, specifically) and definitely hear it
| on the second syllable in that usage
| spzb wrote:
| I've certainly heard "abSENT" in British English. The other
| two, not so much.
| obloid wrote:
| I was going to comment the same thing. While many on the list
| follow the rule many other words listed I've heard only one
| pronunciation regardless noun and verb form. Maybe it's a
| regional thing. I speak American English, maybe these
| pronunciations are different elsewhere.
| dqv wrote:
| The stress difference on cushion is there, but it's very faint.
| Absent and recap aren't really ever used as direct verbs that
| I've heard.
|
| E.g. "I am going to be absent" and "I am going to recap you on
| this" (or really the more natural "I'll give you a recap" where
| it is not used as a verb at all) is the most common form I hear
| in the US
| [deleted]
| jeremysalwen wrote:
| "After this commercial break, we will recap the games from
| today, and discuss what we can expect going into tomorrow"
|
| You can find more examples on ludwig.guru, for example.
| richardw wrote:
| "Let's recap"?
| dqv wrote:
| It honestly sounds weird because it's not a word I use. I
| can't tell if 'rihcap' would sound right or not. "Review"
| is more in my purview.
| mc32 wrote:
| Invalid though two distinct nouns and not noun verb, isn't
| listed here. I know there are others, just don't recall at the
| moment.
| notatoad wrote:
| _re_ cap vs re _cap_ is definitely a distinction that shows up
| in my western canadian speech patterns. Absent is a pretty
| subtle difference.
|
| I suspect a lot of these vary with regional accents.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| The number of things we take for granted in languages, without
| really noticing them as a native or familiar speaker, is
| astounding.
|
| I remember being asked by someone who was speaking my native
| language as his second language. I believe the words he chose
| were correct, maybe even in the correct form and all, but I
| simply couldn't understand him due to slight differences in
| pronunciation and intonation.
|
| Now, I sometimes get asked to explain concepts of my native
| language (e.g. which endings to choose for a word) and more often
| than not, my response is "wow, thanks for making me realize what
| an impossible mess that is - even understanding the grammatical
| concepts behind this, I have no idea how to reasonably explain
| this. This is a mess, and nobody should have to learn that
| language, ever."
| mistermann wrote:
| > The number of things we take for granted in languages,
| without really noticing them as a native or familiar speaker,
| is astounding.
|
| And this is just the parsing and cognition of language, now
| imagine what goes on in the perception of reality itself (of
| which language processing is but one component), which is far
| more complex and less understood than language. And yet, we
| literally run our world upon this flawed (to a degree which we
| haven't the slightest idea) system, and seem to think nothing
| of it, if not worse.
| spidersouris wrote:
| > And yet, we literally run our world upon this flawed (to a
| degree which we haven't the slightest idea) system, and seem
| to think nothing of it, if not worse.
|
| Can you elaborate? Do you think there should be another
| "system" replacing it? A uniformization? In what ways?
| mistermann wrote:
| I believe there should, or at the very least that it is an
| idea worth spending some "collective compute" upon.
|
| Have you ever noticed this pattern in reality where the
| same ideas get discussed (here and elsewhere) repeatedly,
| and each iteration of the discussion of a topic has large
| similarities across many dimensions? For example, many of
| the same facts, ideas, perspectives (with all their
| historic imperfections) can be found within each iteration
| of a discussion, perhaps with some new variations here and
| there depending on some event that has occurred. Some of
| these conversations have been going on for decades, if not
| centuries!
|
| As a thought experiment, imagine the existence of a system
| where there is only one "thread" per topic, and a "critical
| mass" of sufficiently intelligent, knowledgeable, and
| diverse (etc, etc) users exist who discuss the topic _on an
| ongoing basis_ within this thread, such that knowledge
| _accumulates over time_ , and repetition/etc is largely
| eliminated. Also imagine that when and where you identify
| architectural flaws in this general idea, the system is
| such that it recognizes these shortcomings, and addresses
| them (to an acceptable degree), an example of which might
| be that distinct threads are in some way merged with, or
| _inherit from_ other threads (overriding certain aspects of
| them where it is optimal, etc), and improvements over time
| in one thread are automatically realized by other threads.
|
| Expanding this thought experiment to some obvious(?) end
| state design nearing "perfection", including similar
| ~cultural/behavioural design and enforcement aspects, as
| well as fundamental changes to things like the very
| structure of how we communicate with each other (and
| therefore contemplate) about ideas....if such a system was
| to physically exist within reality, _is it possible that_
| it may have a noteworthy effect on the future state of
| reality? (Another angle to think of it from is: did the
| development and widespread adoption of the scientific
| method and other advancements within humanity have an
| affect on the future state of reality?)
|
| Hopefully this gets the general idea across...despite being
| a fairly simple idea, it can be difficult to communicate it
| accurately (within the communication mediums we currently
| have access to).
|
| A very rudimentary example (but the best I've been able to
| find) of such a system is this: https://www.kialo.com, but
| there are 5 to 10 different approaches I know of that are
| out there that come at the same general problem in unique
| ways. Kialo is currently far from perfect, but I think it
| brings a genuinely new form of thinking to the table in the
| way it structures and visualizes discussions...and think
| about how hilariously simplistic initial iterations of
| today's highly sophisticated products were when they were
| first introduced, and how back then very few of us could
| imagine with any sort of accuracy what would be achieved a
| few decades hence. Man's capabilities for imagination are
| hilariously flawed and inconsistent, and we seem to accept
| this shortcoming (and many others) as if it is immutable,
| without any concern for whether this belief (or, _absence
| of belief_ ) is actually true.
| ScottBurson wrote:
| Reminds me of the time a native French speaker asked me if I
| had ever tried ... and here he said a word that I'll transcribe
| as "balling"; the first syllable was quite short and the vowel
| only slightly rounded. Anyway, I didn't recognize it. After a
| little back-and-forth I finally got what he was talking about,
| and said, "Oh, BOWLing."
| robocat wrote:
| If you sampled a population of English speakers, I wonder how
| many would know that vowel length is really important to
| sound correct? Loose, lose Rack, rag
| Can't, cunt Safe, save Ride, write
|
| Have a go a shortening the vowel when it is long in the
| examples above and feel how wrong it sounds.
|
| I like this discussion because it shows how regional the
| problem is: https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/4h7
| w4o/phonemi...
|
| I also like that vowel length is actually variable:
| see 317ms seed 252 seen 199 seat 124
| seating 87 leave 300, live 186 lead 285, lid
| 147 lean 195, limb 110 leaf 130, tiff 83
| leap 123, lip 75
| tombh wrote:
| I'm British and only learnt this after studying Japanese
| which encodes vowel length in its writing system, eg,
| uncle: ozisan, grandfather: oziisan. I refused to believe
| that English had vowel length, and was shocked to learn
| that my ears are actually very capable of hearing it. The
| other classic example in English is "merry" versus "Mary",
| but I couldn't find a whole sentence that is distinguished
| merely by a vowel length, so I made one (at least for my
| non-rhotic British accent): Look how many
| clothes he shared! Look how many clothes he shed!
| robocat wrote:
| It really depends on your dialect (idiolect?). If you are
| ocker*, kiwi, or yarpie then vowel length may matter
| because there can be words with the same vowel sound
| where only the vowel length changes the meaning. English
| in Northern England also has vowel length rules (although
| presumably not often confusing since most speakers are
| very familiar with English as spoken in the rest of the
| country).
|
| In New Zealand, can't and cunt have the same vowel sound,
| and foreigners can make embarrassing or hilarious errors!
|
| Shed and shared have different vowel sounds in my accent
| (shared rhymes with ear or air - a diphthong?).
| sudosteph wrote:
| Huh, most of the words pairs you listed have extremely
| distinct consonant differences, but not very distinct vowel
| length to my ear (which is pretty influenced by southern
| appalachian english). Ie, "loose" is a "s" sound, and
| "lose" is a "z" sound, "ck" is much harder than "g", same
| with "f" vs "v" and "d" vs "t". None of those words sound
| awkward when shortened to me, they just sounded like they
| were being spoken faster for some reason (for emphasis or
| pacing reasons). So I wouldn't consider those different due
| to simple vowel length differences, but due to core phoneme
| differences. I do see that the people in that thread who
| combine "muck" and "mug" are from New England, so maybe
| those are specific to that accent.
|
| There are words which I do pronounce the "same" as each
| other - but do actually vary them on on length alone. These
| are mostly for "merged" words.
|
| Ie:
|
| "Mary" - longer sound on the "a" vowel than the "ry" sound
|
| "Merry" - longer sound is the "ry" sound
|
| "Marry" - is said like "Mary" except the "a" sound is even
| longer. "ry" sound is same length.
|
| Part of me also wonders if the southern "drawl", where
| vowel sounds are extended, is actually a weird way of
| standardizing vowel length times across distinct phonemes.
| Though I wouldn't be surprised if there's still variation
| there too, but it would certainly be interesting to
| compare.
| kps wrote:
| Do pronounce 'riding' and 'writing' the same, or is the
| first longer?
| knubie wrote:
| A non-native speaker once asked me why we say "Going overseas"
| instead of "Going to overseas". I couldn't give them an answer
| at the time(even though I'm a native speaker).
|
| Later I asked a very smart friend of mine who studied english
| as a second language (and was quite proficient at that point)
| and he was immediately able to recognize that it was because
| "overseas" is an adverb. It seems obvious in retrospect, but
| you just don't think about those things as a native speaker.
| pimlottc wrote:
| When I was in Australia I enjoyed the difference in how they
| used "overseas" there. It was used in a general sense to mean
| outside the country --- naturally since Australia is an
| island. In the US, there's a slight distinction, since there
| are certain countries you can get to via land borders, so
| "overseas" tends to imply places that are farther away.
| kashyapc wrote:
| Today I learnt: "Overseas" is also apparently an _adjective_!
| As in, "overseas trips"
| younohoo wrote:
| Going underground or underneath would other examples.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| Stress is very hard for me as a native Hungarian speaker. In
| Hungarian stress can never fall in the middle or end of a word,
| if a word is stressed, it's always on the first syllable.
| Conversely, many English speakers learning Hungarian struggle
| with the vowel lengths (which can create differences in meaning)
| as this works very differently in the "stress-timed" English.
| tacon wrote:
| I was doing research in a huge Texas oil company, amazed at some
| pronunciations. Schlumberger -> Slumber-jay, etc. There was a
| cute young female petroleum engineer (very rare back then), and I
| asked her to pronounce "c-e-m-e-n-t". She fired right back: "As a
| noun or a verb?" And that was my day as one in 10,000 to learn
| this rule... I wanted to ask her to have my baby.
| [deleted]
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