Skip to main content ↑ ↓
Topic: Grammatical Mutterings (Read 41536 times)

Re: Neologically speaking

Reply #50 –
Some new words from across the world.

Words of the Year from Around the World. Can You Say Gubbploga?   [sure I can]

Quote from: Slate
You've heard about selfie, science, and because. But we aren't the only ones who like to try to capture the spirit of the year in a word. Here are some Words of the Year chosen by 13 other countries.

1. SAKTE-TV, NORWAY
The Language Council in Norway chose sakte-tv (slow-TV), reflecting the popularity of shows like "National Wood Fire Night," a four-hour discussion of firewood followed by an eight-hour broadcast of a crackling fire. Some of the good competitors were rekkeviddeangst (range anxiety)—the fear that the battery of your electric car will run out before you can get to a charging station—and revelyd (fox sound) because, of course, Ylvis.

2. GUBBPLOGA, SWEDEN
The Swedish Language Council takes an egalitarian, Swedish approach to the word of the year, releasing a list of the year's new Swedish words without declaring a winner. I like the sound of gubbploga (old man plowing), which refers to criticism of snow plowing priorities that put male-dominated workplace routes over bus and bike lanes and schools. Another good one was nagelprotest (nail protest) for the practice of painting your nails in the name of a cause—for instance, getting a rainbow manicure as a statement against Russian anti-gay laws.

3. UNDSKYLD, DENMARK
A member of the Danish Language Council, along with the hosts of the "Language Laboratory" radio show, chose undskyld (sorry) as Word of the Year, making specific reference to the apology a politician had to make after his luxury travel expenses were revealed. It won out over some familiar choices like twerk, selfie, and lårhul (thigh gap), but also gastroseksuel (gastrosexual, for food lovers) and kønskrans ("gender wreath"), a proposed substitute for jomfruhinde (hymen, or "virgin barrier").

4. GROKO, GERMANY
GroKo is short for [...]

Re: Grammatical Mutterings

Reply #51 –
Quote from: ersi on

The answer to this is simple - everybody needs language, but hardly anyone is engineer. People come up with different terms for the same thing, and this must be allowed. A computer language may be precise according to your definition, but it would also be too limited, whereas natural languages handle with ease all the imaginable and even unimaginable complexities of real life. So, endless ways of expressing the same thing are not redundant after all, but rather necessary and inevitable.

Speaking of language and engineers, I am told that engineers the world over, in a hundred languages, all describe a very small distance using the same phrase. Unfortunately it is not used in polite conversation so I can't tell you what it is.

Re: Grammatical Mutterings

Reply #52 –
Ersi, if something is covered by a language, then it OBVIOUSLY has been IMAGINED by the natives who formed the lexicon. There CAN'T be WORDS for anything that hasn't been imagined at least once; if "a word" has no concept which caused its birth, it does not exist, nor can it exist in principle. Language - human language - does not handle, never has, anything that hadn't first come up as a thought - or perception. Generally, it is called idea.

Re: Grammatical Mutterings

Reply #53 –
Josh, language and mind are coexistent, coeval, and coextensive. They are perfect analogies of each other. Language is imagination, by analogy.

Re: Grammatical Mutterings

Reply #56 –
Quote from: Josh on

Language is a system.
Language is a system on one hand, but the system covers everything perceived plus everything conceivable. Thus language is also all-pervasive continuum. Just like the mind: structured on one hand, all-pervasive and omnipresent on the other.

Quote from: jax on

Linked, not embedded.

I have that cool little tool on Linux, so I can check the titles and captions of Youtube videos without having to visit the site with a webbrowser. The tool also lists available download formats, if the video turns out to be something interesting.

Nice try, Jax. Fair attempt.

Re: Grammatical Mutterings

Reply #57 –
 Not bad. Anyway, thanks to new technology, here is to embedded, not linked.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bhldlJ0Aus[/video]

Re: Grammatical Mutterings

Reply #58 –
Quote from: tt92 on

Speaking of language and engineers, I am told that engineers the world over, in a hundred languages, all describe a very small distance using the same phrase. Unfortunately it is not used in polite conversation so I can't tell you what it is.



Re: Grammatical Mutterings

Reply #61 –
And yet the sign would've been just fine had it read

Quote
Road closed
due to
structural instability

Re: Grammatical Mutterings

Reply #63 –
Given the amount of wet weather in the British islands, you would have thought that they would have some grammatical emergency service to handle situations like these.

Re: Grammatical Mutterings

Reply #67 –
Quote from: Josh on

For an especial consideration of ***abbr=SmileyFaze & Belfrager in particular]some posters here[/abbr***:
Quote from: BBC Berkshire
Drivers going past Sonning Bridge, near Reading, have expressed annoyance at a closed road sign which uses an incorrect apostrophe.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-26351494
:)


Quote from: Josh on
O'k


Always the hypocrite. I've seen far worse from you. Regularly... And if you have something to say to Smiley and Belfrager don't be such a coward. Both are likely to respond with better grammar than anything you've posted here. :left:

Re: Grammatical Mutterings

Reply #69 –
In light of this post, I wish to draw attention to some helpful tools.

I already linked to phpSyntaxTree, which allows you to easily draw diagrams using a syntax like this:
Code: [Select]
[S [NP This graphic][VP [V summarizes][NP [N data][that-clause [Subord that] [VP [V refutes] [NP a related myth[that-clause [Subord that] [NP publications now supporting the scientific consensus [that-clause [Subord that] [NP the world][VP is warming due to increased carbon dioxide]]] [VP were predicting in the 1970s [that-clause that the world would cool.]]]]]]]]]




You might be able to jump start your trees using the <a href="http://nlp.stanford.edu:8080/parser/">Stanford parser[/url] or the <a href="http://tomato.banatao.berkeley.edu:8080/parser/parser.html">Berkeley parser[/url]. However, you'll have to perform a quick conversion of parentheses to square brackets first.

I haven't looked at it in much detail, but the Stanford parser's parse of the sentence above appears to be essentially correct:
Code: [Select]
[ROOT
  [S
    [NP [DT This] [NN graphic]]
    [VP [VBZ summarizes]
      [NP
        [NP [NNS data]]
        [SBAR
          [WHNP [WDT that]]
          [S
            [VP [VBZ refutes]
              [NP [DT a] [JJ related] [NN myth]]
              [SBAR [IN that]
                [S
                  [NP
                    [NP [NNS publications]]
                    [VP
                      [ADVP [RB now]]
                      [VBG supporting]
                      [NP
                        [NP [DT the] [JJ scientific] [NN consensus]]
                        [SBAR [IN that]
                          [S
                            [NP [DT the] [NN world]]
                            [VP [VBZ is]
                              [VP [VBG warming]
                                [ADJP [JJ due]
                                  [PP [TO to]
                                    [NP [VBN increased] [NN carbon] [NN dioxide]]]]]]]]]]]
                  [VP [VBD were]
                    [VP [VBG predicting]
                      [PP [IN in]
                        [NP [DT the] [NNS 1970s]]]
                      [SBAR [IN that]
                        [S
                          [NP [DT the] [NN world]]
                          [VP [MD would]
                            [VP [VB cool]]]]]]]]]]]]]]
    [. .]]]

.

Re: Grammatical Mutterings

Reply #70 –
Hell!
It was much easier doing on paper. And I didn't parse English sentences that way actually. Maybe I'd be more happy with block-schemes? I don't know.
When I "parse" - or worse;) - it's easier for me to do that just mentally - in my mind. I'm not sure I'd be able to show such parsing properly, though;) (Although I've been trying so far using language for the purpose. Yes, Ersi, the English language is very nice for that too!:P)

Re: Grammatical Mutterings

Reply #71 –
Okay, it allows you to easily draw electronic diagrams. Ones that — by pasting the source — you can easily adapt to your own alternative parses.

Just think of this example:

Code: [Select]
[S
  [NP [PRP I]]
  [VP [VBD ordered]
    [NP
      [NP [DT a] [NN pizza]]
      [PP [IN with]
        [NP [NNS anchovies]]]]]
]


Code: [Select]
[S
  [NP [PRP I]]
  [VP [VBD ordered]
    [NP
      [NP [DT a] [NN pizza]]]
    [PP [IN with]
      [NP [NNS anchovies]]]]
]


Edit: fixed it up so it can be pasted straight into the generator.

Re: Grammatical Mutterings

Reply #72 –
All that looks more like programming writings -- at which I've always been not good. (Once I even attempted to invent my own easy language - with the commands simply put by a single letter, followed by the command's value.:))

Re: Grammatical Mutterings

Reply #73 –
There might be something out there to generate your block schemes as opposed to trees. Do you have any examples?

Here are some more links about (generating) syntax trees and here are some alternative sentence diagramming systems.

I'm glad I checked, because now I learned about http://yohasebe.com/rsyntaxtree/ and http://www.ling.upenn.edu/advice/latex/qtree/, both of which might come in useful.