Google contains information
Skitt
sources." There's something wrong with that statement, I think.
Comments?
--
Skitt (AmE)
not Bun Mui
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
>I recently read that "Google contains a lot of information from many various
>sources." There's something wrong with that statement, I think.
>
>Comments?
COED online:
various
* adjective different from one another; of different kinds or sorts.
* determiner & pronoun more than one; individual and separate.
"many" can certainly be followed by an adjective, and "various" is an
adjective.
However I'd use "varied".
COED:
varied
* adjective incorporating a number of different types or elements.
That would givew:
information from many varied sources
I have the feeling that "various" to some extent incorporates the sense
of "many" thus making "many various" a touch tautologous.
--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)
Pablo
> I recently read that "Google contains a lot of information from many
> various sources." There's something wrong with that statement, I think.
>
> Comments?
Google contains a lot of *references* to stuff. Google points to stuff
located in many other locations.
--
Pablo
Mike Lyle
> I recently read that "Google contains a lot of information from many
> various sources." There's something wrong with that statement, I
> think.
> Comments?
You'd have preferred "...from sources many and various"?
--
Mike.
Mark Brader
>> I recently read that "Google contains a lot of information from many
>> various sources." There's something wrong with that statement, I think.
"Pablo":
> Google contains a lot of *references* to stuff. Google points to stuff
> located in many other locations.
But in many cases they also have a cached copy of the information,
and those copies add up to a lot of information.
"Many various" feels wrong to me in the same way that saying "a red big
book" instead of "a big red book" is wrong: it violates a grammatical
rule not usually taught to native English-speakers because we know
it instinctively and don't need to be taught it. In both cases the
rules are about multiple adjectives modifying the same noun.
In the "book" example, the rule is that an adjective of size comes
before an adjective of color. And with "many various", the rule
is that there can only be one adjective of quantity, *and "various"
counts as an adjective of quantity*.
As a native English-speaker, I never heard of this rule before.
But some non-native speakers here have been taught rules like the one
about size and color adjectives. Has any of *them* been taught what
I'm saying about "various"?
--
Mark Brader | "Strong typing isn't for weak minds; the argument
Toronto | 'strong typing is for weak minds' is for weak minds."
m...@vex.net | -- Guy Harris
My text in this article is in the public domain.
Skitt
> "Skitt" wrote:
>> I recently read that "Google contains a lot of information from many
>> various sources." There's something wrong with that statement, I
>> think.
>>
>> Comments?
>
> COED online:
>
> various
>
> * adjective different from one another; of different kinds or
> sorts.
>
> * determiner & pronoun more than one; individual and separate.
>
> "many" can certainly be followed by an adjective, and "various" is an
> adjective.
>
> However I'd use "varied".
>
> COED:
>
> varied
>
> * adjective incorporating a number of different types or elements.
>
> That would givew:
>
> information from many varied sources
>
> I have the feeling that "various" to some extent incorporates the
> sense of "many" thus making "many various" a touch tautologous.
Right. That bothered me little, but not nearly as much as the actual
thought expressed by the statement. Does Google really *contain*
information? Are links "information from many sources"? Is this "common
talk", or would different wording be better?
--
Skitt (AmE)
Skitt
See my real concern in my answer to Peter D.
--
Skitt (AmE)
Leslie Danks
> "Skitt":
>>> I recently read that "Google contains a lot of information from many
>>> various sources." There's something wrong with that statement, I
>>> think.
[...]
> In the "book" example, the rule is that an adjective of size comes
> before an adjective of color. And with "many various", the rule
> is that there can only be one adjective of quantity, *and "various"
> counts as an adjective of quantity*.
How do you feel about "many different sources"? In this case,
isn't "different" an adjective of quantity in the same way that "various"
is in the original sentence?
> As a native English-speaker, I never heard of this rule before.
Neither did I.
> But some non-native speakers here have been taught rules like the one
> about size and color adjectives. Has any of *them* been taught what
> I'm saying about "various"?
--
Les (BrE)
Mark Brader
>> And with "many various", the rule
>> is that there can only be one adjective of quantity, *and "various"
>> counts as an adjective of quantity*.
> How do you feel about "many different sources"? In this case,
> isn't "different" an adjective of quantity in the same way that "various"
> is in the original sentence?
No, it's something else -- call it an adjective of similarity, say.
They come after adjectives of quantity. These are all correct:
many different things
many similar things
many identical things
three different things
three similar things
three identical things
various different things
various similar things
various identical things
But any other combination of two of the six adjectives breaks the rules.
(In case anyone thinks "various identical" sounds nonsensical, consider:
"That building isn't unique. I've seen various identical ones in places
in Europe." And anyway, I'm talking about grammar, not sense.)
--
Mark Brader "Although I have not seen any mention of SoftQuad
Toronto or HoTMetaL in the magazine, it is certainly
m...@vex.net worth while reading." -- Selwyn Wener
Bertel Lund Hansen
> Right. That bothered me little, but not nearly as much as the actual
> thought expressed by the statement.
I thought as much.
> Does Google really *contain* information?
In fact it does. Search for "contain" and Google will inform you
about how many pages use the word. Also a link as an answer to a
search is information about where you can read about the subject.
But I wouldn't have chosen that wording. Google refers to
information.
--
Bertel, Denmark
John Dean
> Peter Duncanson (BrE) wrote:
>> "Skitt" wrote:
>
>>> I recently read that "Google contains a lot of information from many
>>> various sources." There's something wrong with that statement, I
>>> think.
>>>
>>> Comments?
>>
>>
>> sense of "many" thus making "many various" a touch tautologous.
>
> Right. That bothered me little, but not nearly as much as the actual
> thought expressed by the statement. Does Google really *contain*
> information? Are links "information from many sources"? Is this
> "common talk", or would different wording be better?
Google, like Yahoo, caches most pages it indexes so you can follow the link
to the page currently at the given URL or go to the cache of the page as it
was when it was indexed. The search engineers presumably keep the caches on
their own servers and in that sense I think it's reasonable to say that
Google 'contains' the information therein.
--
John Dean
Oxford
Garrett Wollman
>Right. That bothered me little, but not nearly as much as the actual
>thought expressed by the statement. Does Google really *contain*
>information? Are links "information from many sources"? Is this "common
>talk", or would different wording be better?
I would say that Google's servers contain lots of information (not all
of which is copies of Web pages -- they also contain many people's
email, private company documents, recorded telephone conversations,
cartography from many different commercial and public sources, Jabber
rosters and presence information, logs of all the Web searches done
and typos made by most of the Internet users in the world, every post
ever made to a text-only Usenet group almost from day one, and much
more).
I don't think of Google, the company, or Google, the service, as a
container, so the clause in the subject header is definitely marked
for me. Google *posesses* information.
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wol...@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
Steve Hayes
>I recently read that "Google contains a lot of information from many various
>sources." There's something wrong with that statement, I think.
>
>Comments?
I would say "many and various".
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk
Peter Moylan
> I recently read that "Google contains a lot of information from many
> various sources." There's something wrong with that statement, I
> think.
Some sources are more various than others.
This isn't the first time I've seen a statement that Google somehow
contains the web pages to which it points. Some public statements from
Google have given me the uncomfortable feeling that it's about to claim
copyright on my web pages. They remind me of the attitude of my
University at the time when I lost the right to modify my own lecture notes.
--
Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org
For an e-mail address, see my web page.
Roland Hutchinson
> In article <hehdte$d0l$1...@news.albasani.net>, Skitt <ski...@comcast.net>
> wrote:
>
>>Right. That bothered me little, but not nearly as much as the actual
>>thought expressed by the statement. Does Google really *contain*
>>information? Are links "information from many sources"? Is this
>>"common talk", or would different wording be better?
>
> I would say that Google's servers contain lots of information (not all
> of which is copies of Web pages -- they also contain many people's
> email, private company documents, recorded telephone conversations,
> cartography from many different commercial and public sources, Jabber
> rosters and presence information, logs of all the Web searches done and
> typos made by most of the Internet users in the world, every post ever
> made to a text-only Usenet group almost from day one, and much more).
The indexes that Google create to all of the above may also be said to
contain information in their own right, e.g., information about where the
information they index can be found.
Let's also go out on a limb and add that the algorithms they use to
create and search their indexes also contain information. In fact, that
information -- the details of "how they do it" -- may be the most
valuable information that Google possesses; they certainly treat it as a
valuable trade secret.
> I don't think of Google, the company, or Google, the service, as a
> container, so the clause in the subject header is definitely marked for
> me. Google *posesses* information.
How are you on "the Web contains information"?
--
Roland Hutchinson
He calls himself "the Garden State's leading violist da gamba,"
... comparable to being ruler of an exceptionally small duchy.
--Newark (NJ) Star Ledger ( http://tinyurl.com/RolandIsNJ )
Eric Walker
> I recently read that "Google contains a lot of information from many
> various sources." There's something wrong with that statement, I think.
>
> Comments?
The crux is one's conception of what the term "Google" can stand for.
Obviously, Google the company is in possession of large amounts of
information. Whether "Google" has become sufficiently commoditized (or
whatever) to be thought capable of holding or containing is, I think, a
subjective judgement.
Just offhand, it seems to my poor memory that when such commoditization
occurs, the subject usually acquires a definite article: the Brittanica
contains a lot of information; the dictionary holds many definitions. I
don't myself feel that Google has arrived at that status yet, but the
usage suggests that the process may be under way.
--
Cordially,
Eric Walker, Owlcroft House
http://owlcroft.com/english/
Chuck Riggs
wrote:
Using "varied" fixes the sentence, in my book.
--
Regards,
Chuck Riggs,
An American who lives near Dublin, Ireland and usually spells in BrE
Maria Conlon
When I read your initial post in this thread, "contains" caused me to
stumble a bit. It's sort of like saying that you (or I) *contain*
information. What we actually contain, besides blood, organs, etc, is a
brain (one hopes). Our brains may contain information from various
sources, but "we" don't -- not idiomatically (or even automatically,
depending on what "automatically" means when it comes to learning and
retaining information).
As for "many various sources": As suggested by others, "varied"
sounds -- and is, I think -- better than "various" in the phrase.
Summing up: To me, Google is not a box, a can (BrE "tin"), a package, a
file cabinet, or any other sort of container. It's more like a door --
or, rather, a doorway. "Open" the Google "door," and you will find
access (or ways to access) the information found in various reference
works such as books, papers, films, and people. You'll also find links
to other sites, other doorways.
Related: Does "Google Books" actually contain books? What about in the
kindle sense? (I'd say no, because there is no book "feel" or "smell"
involved. Yet.)
Also related: How does YouTube fit into all this? As a container? A
doorway? A dvd player? (Note: My son has just put a short video on
YouTube. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2XXSF4HV3Q .
--
Maria Conlon
CDB
>
> I recently read that "Google contains a lot of information from
> many various sources." There's something wrong with that
> statement, I think.
> Comments?
>
to individual sources, while "various", in that context, refers to the
sources as a group. For example, in "many reliable sources", the
reliability of the sources is to be found in each one; in "various
sources", the variety is in the group, not in the individual sources.