> On Fri, 21 Jun 2002 19:44:47 GMT, Erik Naggum wrote:
> I don't think it is used with a singular referent, in fact. Various > people /say/ they do that, but sentences in which they claim to be > using "they" for a singular referent seem to always be a sort of "ad > sensum" construct where the real referent is plural. [Anyone have a > counterexample that doesn't sound strange?]
Does this sound strange?
"Somebody called and left a message. I couldn't tell whether it was a man or a woman. They didn't leave a name or number...."
In article <8hUQ8.2148$zN4.1003...@news2.news.adelphia.net>, "Robert Monfera"
<monf...@fisec.com> writes: >"One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
Armstrong was supposed to say "One small step for *a* man, one giant leap for mankind". He had such an important 15 minutes of fame that he still has a little residual fame, and he blew his main line. Maybe it's fitting that (as I guess) more people remember Sir Edmund Hillary's name.
What he would be supposed to say now is "One small step for a man, one giant leap for humanity". You still get the "man" sylable in there, so the second part is sonorous after saying the first, but many fewer people would perceive it as sexist. And rightly so, IMO.
-- Attaining and helping others attain "Aha!" experiences, as satisfying as attaining and helping others attain orgasms.
> > * Thomas Bushnell, BSG > > | I think the problem is that the actual grammatical rules of English > > | (or any other language) are very complex, and you simply can't find > > | them in any book. Linguists have been trying to write a correct > > | and complete syntax for English for a long time, and it's a major > > | ongoing research project, whose end is nowhere near in sight.
> > ISBN 0-582-51734-6
> Quirk's book is a serious and very good attempt on what was the latest > work in the linguistics (or grammatology, at least) of English. My > assertion is that the text is not, in fact, perfect. <...>
You (I mean, Erik and Thomas) are speaking about different things. Any given language has a thing which is called "usage". For sake of simplicity it can be defined as the set of all speech acts performed by all speakers of the language throughout its history. Some languages also have "grammars" which are systems of more or less formalised rules that constrain the usages of respective languages in a certain way.
A well-conceived grammar tends to describe the current usage of the language; thus, it is in many aspects like a standard of an algorythmich language. But, since the only thing which constrains the usage is mutual understanding between language speakers, no grammar can describe the usage accurately. This is a fundamental problem of the "categorical" linguistics, and one of the primary incentives of the statistical NLP (see, e.g. Manning and Schütze, "Foundations of statistical natural language processing", 1.2).
It is hardly surprising that Erik, who strongly advocates following standards in programming languages, also pushes his fellow Usenet users to comply to the grammar of human languages.
On the contrary, when Thomas writes: "actual grammatical rules", he means a description of the usage, not a set of standardisation rules.
"Robert Monfera" <monf...@fisec.com> writes: > By the way, do those knowledgeable about political correctness know how to > transliterate this?
> "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
What kind of transliteration is necessary?
If the goal is to accurately report Armstrong's words, then obviously no change would do so.
If the goal is to say to Armstrong that he should have said something different, than that is at best applying the standards of today to a 1969--and more than that, it's insulting unless you are his teacher.
If the goal is to ask what I would say (I being someone who tries to avoid unnecessarily gendered language) the answer is that I wasn't on the moon, I wouldn't have even thought up that fabulous sentence, and I'm much more fascinated by Armstrong's achievement, and not just his, but all those who did it with him (that "mankind" of which he spoke), and I just don't see the language issue...
> And there is a classic book written about how kids humiliate the > protagonist simply by writing his name in all lowercase letters among other > things.
dkco...@panix.com (David Combs) wrote in message <news:aemnva$52m$2@reader1.panix.com>... > Even assuming you're correct, and in fact > you could get the task done in 1/5th the time > (add that into your above proposal), do > you think he or her is going to *believe* you.
A good software development proposal includes working code. Common Lisp is part of what makes that working code feasible at the proposal stage.
Thinking in terms of getting the task done in 1/5 the time is the wrong way to think about it. Most of the time spent in software development is spent in learning. A typical proposal to accomplish something with Common Lisp is proposed by someone who doesn't yet know Common Lisp well enough to use it fluently and doesn't yet know the domain of the application well enough to be able to work in it fluently. Working code is important because it shows that you've done your homework, so to speak.
Most programmers' proposals are not taken seriously because the programmers are known to have ulterior motives. They want to get experience with something new to them, such as Java or Corba or XML, so they propose using it. They might talk it up week after week, till they become known as fanatics for whatever they're proposing. But most of them could not even get past a job interview to use whatever it is they're proposing. The same is probably true of most proposals to use Common Lisp.
Tim Bradshaw <t...@cley.com> writes: > I think `queen' is right, but I'm not sure I'd use it. It's not as > bad as `bitch', which has become almost impossible to use naturally I > think: to me it's use for female dog would sound affected in anyone > under 50 (again, in a southern English context).
I think this is context and profession related too. Our local television station is broadcasting reruns of the BBC programme Vets in Practice and spaying bitches comes up fairly regularly.
> I've heard people wax about regular and idealized Latin is, with such > a strict set of rules, and no bending of them, just follow the rules, > and the mapping from syntax->meaning is just so much happier than > messy modern languages. This notion is quickly disabused if you gain > any facility in reading ordinary Latin (more than just the highest > poetry, that is) from the period where it was a living language. In > the dialogue of Terence (stylized at that!) you hear all the chaos and > "sloppiness" and grammatical weirdness that characterizes actual > spoken speech of that or any language.
The highest poetry is probably more ambiguous than a lot of other texts. Ovidius is far harder than Caesar.
Tim wrote: > The English parliament would be the British parliament before the act > of union with Scotland...
...in 1707 which then became the UK[1] in 1801 with the the legislative union of Great Britain and Ireland ;)
> I can only speak for myself, but I don't think `they' has died out.
I would concur though.
> I would be interested if anyone else who comes from a similar > background could comment on this.
I'm not sure that I could say my background was similar (childhood in the West of England and Mid-Wales, educated in State Schools). However, if you are talking about something like a dog, a cow or a sheep then `it' would be correct. Dogs are more complicated due to the different status (at least in Mid-Wales) given by farmers to house dogs -- in which case these animals are part of family and it is then, at least, polite to know the name and sex of the animal -- or working dogs, where `it' is fine.
However, using `it' or the wrong `he' or `she' is rude if used about a person. Particularly if used deliberately. I can remember as a child talking about people being `it' as a way of insulting them.
To refer to somebody who of indeterminate sex I would either refer to them as `they' or in limited cases guess that it is a `he' or `she' -- dependant on the context[2]. In a formal context, for example in a letter to the bank manager or the council I alway go with a "Dear Sir".
I had a more personal dilemma a couple of months ago during my wife's pregnancy. Not beliving in technology ;) we were joyously suprised with the birth of our daughter. However, up until that point I had tried a couple of `its' to my -- and my wife's strong -- disatisfaction and so with either construct tortuous sentences that tried to make no reference to her in the third person or went for `they.'
:)w
[1] ...or to push my pedantry to levels even I find frightening "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland" which became "and Northern Ireland" in 1921 with the partion. Not sure that before 1801. Following `unification' of Wales and England under Edward I in 1284 the name of the parliament that followed the Statute of Rhuddlan is all a bit vague. Particularly since people didn't speak english (as such) and the incumbent claimed title to being the Duke of Aquitaine and the Lord of Ireland too.
[2] If I was talking about a nurse or reception class teacher I would probably go for a `she'. A judge or a soldier I would guess `he'. Or again punt it with a `they.'
Erik Naggum wrote: > Does it remain _singular_? Not in my experience, except for the illiterates.
Sure.
Hmmm. I can think of a couple of dialects in the UK that use a plural form of you (yous or youse).
> but what normally happens is that people drop the correspondence in number > and use they as a _plural_ form to refer back to a _singular_ referent. I > use that myself, sometimes. But it does not remain singular. That would be > ungrammatical and extremely grating on my ear.
Sure. When speaking about someone of indeterminate gender "was" rather "were" doing something would be odd.
> I gave a pretty clear example of precisely what I meant. I have never heard > or heard about _anyone_ use "they" in the _singular_ grammatical capacity.
FWIW I have heard this in a spoken context. And it didn't sound *so* strange probably because of accent or being in a fairly incomprensible dialect.
> _Precision_ in communication is not a trait with native speakers, is it?
Probably not. However, in my experience precision in communication is quite often not a trait in any communication. Although, for most things, does it matter?
In article <87hejwus9s....@ganglion.bhasha.com>, Boris Smilga
<bo...@bhasha.com> writes: >You (I mean, Erik and Thomas) are speaking about different things. >Any given language has a thing which is called "usage". For sake of >simplicity it can be defined as the set of all speech acts performed >by all speakers of the language throughout its history. Some >languages also have "grammars" which are systems of more or less >formalised rules that constrain the usages of respective languages in >a certain way.
From the perspective of linguistics, *all* languages (and dialects, etc.) have grammars, and it is the job of linguists to discern, not create, them. This corresponds with the usage you percieve in Thomas's posts, and would be considered the "correct" usage in current highbrow English.
However, because textbooks that teach grammar have traditionally 1) claimed to be omniscient and 2) been called "grammar"s for short, your usage (which is also the one you perceive in Erik's posts) is understandable.
This issustrates both the need for standards that allow people of diverse backgrounds to communicate and that there are established patterns of usage which conflict with those standards that cannot simply be dismissed as "incorrect" except in a particular context (such as cross-background highbrow discussion).
>A well-conceived grammar tends to describe the current usage of the >language; thus, it is in many aspects like a standard of an >algorythmich language. But, since the only thing which constrains the >usage is mutual understanding between language speakers, no grammar >can describe the usage accurately. This is a fundamental problem of >the "categorical" linguistics, and one of the primary incentives of >the statistical NLP (see, e.g. Manning and Schütze, "Foundations of >statistical natural language processing", 1.2).
>It is hardly surprising that Erik, who strongly advocates following >standards in programming languages, also pushes his fellow Usenet >users to comply to the grammar of human languages.
>On the contrary, when Thomas writes: "actual grammatical rules", he >means a description of the usage, not a set of standardisation rules.
-- Attaining and helping others attain "Aha!" experiences, as satisfying as attaining and helping others attain orgasms.
Erik Naggum wrote: > This is another curious thing about native English speakers, which I seldom > see in people who have had the luxury of studying the language.
I think this is a very good point. Part of the problem with my education was poor English teaching. There was an othodoxy that grammar would be absorbed "through the skin" and, hey daddio, it was far more important to talk about polical issues and how we felt about ecology than to be constrained by the Evil Victorian Orthodoxies of learning English. (sigh). I also remember watching a lot of videos taped from the TV of Shakespeare. Hmmm.
> One way to get rid of this sign of illiteracy is to avoid > contractions in writing.
Avoid? I thought contractions in writing were a total no-no.
--
kenny tilton clinisys, inc --------------------------------------------------------------- ""Well, I've wrestled with reality for thirty-five years, Doctor, and I'm happy to state I finally won out over it."" Elwood P. Dowd
* Thomas Bushnell, BSG | Do you have evidence? Other people who agree with you? People who | actually know me?
You have said do so yourself, here in this newsgroup. Of course, you forget what you say, and so do I, most of it, but some things stick. You really do _enjoy_ hurting people and you do it for no reason whatsoever. You are the aggressor, Thomas Bushnell. Back down. Quit it. Stop playing games.
| Are you willing to put that into print somewhere where the libel or slander | laws clearly apply? Or are you just a tedious coward?
You have not slandered me anywhere libel and slander laws clearly apply, so why do I need to _answer_ your behavior anywhere but where you misbehave? Perhaps you are just very, very unintelligent and really think that I have attacked you first. This is not so. You attack me, and I answer you where you have attacked me. Since you are such a fucking coward that you only use this forum for it, I have no _reason_ to go after you elsewhere. WHy is this so hard for your sub-Bush IQ to come to grips with?
You keep bringing this act of bravery up, but I do not see you going out of your way to seek media where your acts could cause you trouble. Why not? And why is it so bad to be a coward? I would _love_ to steal the tapes from your psychiatric sessions to find out what went on in your childhood that makes you think that you can ask something to do something stupid that you refuse to do yourself, and then call others cowards in the hopes that that will make you look anything but like a retarded, angry child. You are such a pathetic specimen, Thomas Bushnell, and your need to deflect criticism is such a charming personaltiy trait -- in a child.. A little child emotionally still at the level of a six-year-old, I would guess. How cute. Except that you are probably 18 or something equally mature and testosteroneladen. -- Guide to non-spammers: If you want to send me a business proposal, please be specific and do not put "business proposal" in the Subject header. If it is urgent, do not use the word "urgent". If you need an immediate answer, give me a reason, do not shout "for your immediate attention". Thank you.
* Kenny Tilton | Avoid? I thought contractions in writing were a total no-no.
That would work, too. :) -- Guide to non-spammers: If you want to send me a business proposal, please be specific and do not put "business proposal" in the Subject header. If it is urgent, do not use the word "urgent". If you need an immediate answer, give me a reason, do not shout "for your immediate attention". Thank you.
> >"One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
> Armstrong was supposed to say "One small step for *a* man, one giant leap for > mankind".
At least he was dissuaded from saying "I claim this land for Texas." :)
> He had such an important 15 minutes of fame that he still has a > little residual fame
He got a lot more than 15 minutes of fame. He became the first man on the moon. The first on another celestial body.
> and he blew his main line. Maybe it's fitting that (as I > guess) more people remember Sir Edmund Hillary's name.
Not very likely, I had to look up his name. :)
As I understand, he's claimed to be the first on the top of Mt Everest.
The moon is rather a lot higher up. :)
> What he would be supposed to say now is "One small step for a man, one giant > leap for humanity". You still get the "man" sylable in there, so the second > part is sonorous after saying the first, but many fewer people would perceive > it as sexist. And rightly so, IMO.
You also loose the pattern man - mankind. "mankind" and "humanity" means the same thing, anyway (note the "man" in "human" and "humanity"). There's nothing sexist about it.
* Boris Smilga | It is hardly surprising that Erik, who strongly advocates following standards | in programming languages, also pushes his fellow Usenet users to comply to | the grammar of human languages.
Interesting connection, but entirely false. Standards have clearly defined scope. If you want to do something within that scope, and there is standard way to do it, you do it _only_ that way. If what you is not in the standard or not within its scope, you are free to do it any way you like. Some parts of grammar are standardized. My stand is: Follow those.
| On the contrary, when Thomas writes: "actual grammatical rules", he | means a description of the usage, not a set of standardisation rules.
There is con contradiction here at all. In fact, the two are overlapping. If not, the standard rules would spring into existence only when all of them were known, as opposed to be written rules that people decided to follow, but as all writing, and standards, laws, etc, they are subject to change.
Sometimes, I think people who see me argue for standards do not know how standards are made, probably because they are equally ignorant of how laws are made, indeed, how all human endeavor that seeks to strike a balance between descriptive and prescriptive. Standards are not freaky religions. (Some reach for "religion" to insult people as soon as they do not get their will, but let us ignore immature children still protesting against their parents for now.)
Standards, laws, just about anything people decide on, are best efforts with current knowledge. If you want to implement unwind-protect, here is how you do it. Anything else is _wrong_. If you want to spell "thought", here is how you do it. Anything else is _wrong_. If you want to spell "through", you can choose between "thru" or "through", but anything else is _wrong_. If you want to purchase something from someone in a store, you can have any price in mind _except_ 0, and you can carry it any way you like, _except_ hidden away in your jacket without paying for it. Most standards in simple areas like programming are positively prescriptive -- do this -- while most laws are negatively prescriptive -- don't do this. Most rules of grammar are of the "you have one choice" kind, but which rule to apply and whether to apply it is _not_ similarly restricted.
Why is it so hard for people to understand how standards, laws, grammar, etc, work, and why do so many people have to _rebel_ against them? That is _so_ clueless. This inability or intense lack of will to do what some other people tell you to do is so goddamn _childish_. Why are misbehaving children not simply taught to get with the program and shut up? They fill USENET with their idiotic taunts and teases, they gang up with each other to hurt people, they post their retarded lazy questions expecting others to do their homework for them. Is this also some American thing, I have to wonder. All this very intense marketing for staying young and fresh and _immature_ in so many TV series, movies, ads, you would think there are no Americans older than 30, and none of them ever developed after hitting puberty. No wonder they have such serious problems dealing with _parent_-style constructs like standards, laws, grammars, etc. However, there is another option: GROW UP, and do not force people who do not want to deal with children to deal with children. -- Guide to non-spammers: If you want to send me a business proposal, please be specific and do not put "business proposal" in the Subject header. If it is urgent, do not use the word "urgent". If you need an immediate answer, give me a reason, do not shout "for your immediate attention". Thank you.
Erik Naggum <e...@naggum.net> writes: > But what is most interesting here is that some native speakers do > not know their own language, nor do they have a "feel" for it.
I find this concept quite alien. Can people not speak the language they speak? Much of American literature was written trying to remain faithful to regional dialects. Do you feel Samuel Clemens (to pick someone at random) lacked the ability to express himself because he used regional dialects in some of his books? Do you feel even current books like "Harry Potter" need to be translated into "American English" before publishing them in the US (as was recently done)? Is my non-standard use of parenthetic remarks difficult to understand?
Standard English has always been a (somewhat futile) attempt to fit the spoken and written language into a well organized set of (static) rules. Sometimes this has had mixed results, as in the attempt to purge the language of dangling prepositions.
Lisp is another language which has existed in many dialects. Lisp is a synthetic language, so unlike english, each dialect can be described formally. However, each dialect had proponents who felt constrained when using another dialect.
My impression was that Common Lisp was an attempt to bring into one language elements which could attract users from other dialects. The result is a language which provides familiarity at the expense of a great amount of (linguistic) irregularity.
Another approach might have been to construct a simpler, more regular language at the expense of familiarity. It would be easier for new people to learn but lack the maturity and techniques that the long time experience of people with a computer language brings. Languages like Java and Esparanto seem to have been constructed in this way.
Kenny Tilton <ktil...@nyc.rr.com> writes: > Avoid? I thought contractions in writing were a total no-no.
Formal writing in English used to say one should never use contractions, never speak in the first person, and so forth, but this has fallen by the way. It was really just a fad, actually, and the fad is dying out.
I find the first person to be a considerable help in some kinds of formal writing, especially when the point is to convey my own ideas--which is very frequently the case in philosophy, but, as I noted, I do avoid contractions in formal writing.
However, Usenet is not formal writing. To say that contractions in writing are a total no-no, full stop, regardless of what kind of kind of writing, is hardly right.
* Barry Fishman | I find this concept quite alien. Can people not speak the language they | speak?
There are two meanings to "your own language" -- it is whatever you manage to produce of sounds and lines, and it is the common language of the community in which you live. Some people never acquire a feel for the spelling of their language, meaning that they have their own _personal_ language, but could not be said to write in the language that people usually think of for their region.
I wonder how it is possible _not_ to see that there were several ways to interpret what I said (as there always are with all communication) and/or you had to choose one that was so silly. Is there no "reasonability test" for what you conclude that other people might have meant? Do people generally think "this does not compute. what would it mean if I had said exactly the same words", or do they "I would not have said that. what is the most likely thing that I would have meant that could have been expressed this way?". The whole point of standardized grammar, dictionaries, etc, is to reduce the need for the random guesswork and unfounded assumptions that go into interpreting what other people would have meant. It gives people a legitimate reason to say "this does not compute, can you try again?" instead of trying to piece together what someone _could_ have meant. Personally, I find that a lot of people who think very little when they read generally do not get what I say at all, but that those who do think, or even go back and look, find that I have been precise and accurate and not at all difficult to read. This tells me that I am writing for an audience that is not used to half-listen to what they hear, but of actually paying attention. I do not consider this bad, so I have no reason to try to adapt to the redundancy of half-attentioners or the low-impact communication of anything so that only very little effort is required to suck up the small amounts of ideas involved. Except for a few areas, such a my constantly being badgered by morons who neither read nor think about what I write before they attack me with their primitive brains, I try not to repeat myself or say something everybody already agree to. Some people, however, require a constant flow of repetitive reaffirmations of their beliefs and consider lack of such reaffirmation to be hostility towards their consensus-based mode of thinking. Then I wonder why such people read USENET, where "me too" is explicitly disallowed and seriously frowned upon. -- Guide to non-spammers: If you want to send me a business proposal, please be specific and do not put "business proposal" in the Subject header. If it is urgent, do not use the word "urgent". If you need an immediate answer, give me a reason, do not shout "for your immediate attention". Thank you.
> What he would be supposed to say now is "One small step for a man, one giant > leap for humanity". You still get the "man" sylable in there, so the second > part is sonorous after saying the first, but many fewer people would perceive > it as sexist. And rightly so, IMO.
* Terje Slettebų | You also loose the pattern man - mankind. "mankind" and "humanity" means the | same thing, anyway (note the "man" in "human" and "humanity"). There's | nothing sexist about it.
One small step for a human, one giant leap for humanity. -- Guide to non-spammers: If you want to send me a business proposal, please be specific and do not put "business proposal" in the Subject header. If it is urgent, do not use the word "urgent". If you need an immediate answer, give me a reason, do not shout "for your immediate attention". Thank you.
