Has "late" split up into a pair of homonyms?
Dan McGrath
share a common origin with "late" meaning "tardy", "at an advanced
point in time", etc. But are these still synchronically the same
word? What does everyone think? I probably first started running
into the construction "the late so-and-so" in my reading when I was
about 11 years old, but I was almost 19 when I finally went to look up
its meaning. The term hardly made any sense to me: I certainly could
see no obvious reason that a person who has died should be called
"late". This is evidence that, to the average speaker of modern
English, the two "late"s could be homonyms and not a polyseme. (But
note that I am not sure if my own mind even *makes* the
homonymy/polysemy distinction.)
- Dan
--
Daniel G. McGrath
Binghamton, New York
e-mail: dmcg6174[AT]gmail[DOT]com
grammatim
I see no connection between the words.
You can make a joke by referring to someone who's tardy as "the
late ...," which wouldn't make an impression if they were just the
same word.
James Hogg
Do you think that they should be listed as two separate words in
dictionaries? At present they are treated as one, and that seems
like the natural approach for a historical dictionary like the
OED, especially when the semantic development from "recent" to
"recently deceased" is clear.
--
James
grammatim
It would be unusual for two words of common origin that happen not to
be spelled differently to be put into separate lemmas. I'd hope they
would at least be "I" and "II" rather than just "1-5" and "6-10."
Adam Funk
(I've asked this previously, but AFAICT no-one has answered it.)
In synchronic description, what criteria are used to distinguish
homonyms from polysemes?
Or does it avoid the question by treating any putative pair of words
with the same pronunciation, spelling, and POS as one polysemous word?
--
() ascii ribbon campaign - against html e-mail
/\ www.asciiribbon.org - against proprietary attachments
Robert Bannister
Take up German: the equivalent for "late" means "blessed".
--
Rob Bannister
Weland
No, it hasn't. And it isn't hard to understand the relationship between
late meaning "after the customary time" and late meaning "recently
alive". In the later Middle Ages, the 14th century, the adverbial form
of late developed the meaning of something occurring recently, a small
step from the older definition of "late" meaning "advanced in time".
Thus, we still say "Of late I've been feeling well" or "What have you
done for me lately" both meaning "recently". A new usage developed in
the 15th century: something recent but no longer. Thus one could refer
to "the late magistrate" meaning he was the magistrate but is no longer
the magistrate, or Shakespeare's "Their vertue lost wherein they late
exceld." From this usage, it became applied to those who had died, i.
e. who had recently been very much alive but are so no longer. "The
late Mr. Smith" is not a reference to "Mr Smith, deceased" but to "Mr
Smith, alive not so long ago, but alas no longer."
So, no, not two words that are homonyms, but one very old word that has
undergone semantic development, a development over 600 years old now.
Joachim Pense
> the 15th century: something recent but no longer. Thus one could refer
> to "the late magistrate" meaning he was the magistrate but is no longer
> the magistrate, or Shakespeare's "Their vertue lost wherein they late
> exceld."
Is this usage still possible? Could I say "The late president GWB" not
implying "deceased" but just "president until recently"? I vaguely recall
having seen the expression used like that somewhere, but I am not sure.
Joachim
Pat Durkin
news:gqv0aj$lh2$01$1...@news.t-online.com
I don't think that 15th C. citation would hold true today, nor would
Shakespeare's(outside poetry). You could say, "GWB, of late the
President" or "GWB, lately the President".
Leslie Danks
WIWAL and sorely tried my father's patience with my slowness, he would say
that I would be "late for my own funeral". Is this the common ancestor we
are looking for?
--
Les (BrE)
grammatim
You just might be able to get away with "Roger Wagoner, late of
GM." (the CEO who just resigned under pressure from the
Administration, or, as you would say, the Government.)
Christian Weisgerber
> > The word "late", when used in the sense of "deceased", is known to
> > share a common origin with "late" meaning "tardy", "at an advanced
> > point in time", etc. But are these still synchronically the same
> > word?
>
> Take up German: the equivalent for "late" means "blessed".
What German word do you have in mind?
German doesn't employ a euphemism here and simply uses "verstorben"
(deceased, dead).
--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber na...@mips.inka.de
johnk
>
> (I've asked this previously, but AFAICT no-one has answered it.)
>
> In synchronic description, what criteria are used to distinguish
> homonyms from polysemes?
I'm sure there may be exceptions but I've always considered that
polysemes come from a common origin while homonyms come from seperate
sources. For the examples of 'late' discussed here, I would consider
them to be polysymous.
JohnK
James Hogg
(Christian Weisgerber) wrote:
>Robert Bannister <rob...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>
>> > The word "late", when used in the sense of "deceased", is known to
>> > share a common origin with "late" meaning "tardy", "at an advanced
>> > point in time", etc. But are these still synchronically the same
>> > word?
>>
>> Take up German: the equivalent for "late" means "blessed".
>
>What German word do you have in mind?
>
>German doesn't employ a euphemism here and simply uses "verstorben"
>(deceased, dead).
I see from my Langenscheidt that "mein seliger Vater" is
labelled "obs".
--
James
António Marques
> On Mar 31, 3:55 pm, Adam Funk<a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
>> (I've asked this previously, but AFAICT no-one has answered it.)
>>
>> In synchronic description, what criteria are used to distinguish
>> homonyms from polysemes?
>
> I'm sure there may be exceptions but I've always considered that
> polysemes come from a common origin while homonyms come from
> seperate sources. For the examples of 'late' discussed here, I would
> consider them to be polysymous.
But in synchronic description, which was Adam's question, you don't use
origin/source. I suppose the only way to do it, then, is to suppose that
words with meanings that seem related are polysemes, whereas the others
are homonyms, but you're prone to get false positives in both cases.
--
António Marques
Mike Mooney
>
> You can make a joke by referring to someone who's tardy as "the
> late ...," which wouldn't make an impression if they were just the
> same word.
>
"Late as in the late Arthur Dent; it's a sort of a threat you see?"
Mike M
Lars Enderin
It's probably not very common in Swedish nowadays, but I have often
heard "salig" referring to some deceased person.
Weland
You can, but it isn't much of a joke. Referring to Student Smith who is
tardy as "the late Student Smith" means literally that he's late. It
doesn't refer to his death, and such a reference would hardly be funny.
James Hogg
And it doesn't behave like normal adjectives. You say
"min salig far", not "min salige far".
I was prompted to look up the French equivalent "feu" to see why
they use the word for fire here. It turns out it's not related at
all. It's from Late Latin *fatutus and means that a person has
accomplished his or her destiny.
Death awaits us all, if we're spared.
--
James
Weland
But you do, to some degree; what's more though is that if we restrict
ourselves to simply synchronic description, then any "word" with
multiple definitions may be said to be a "homonym" of other words.
Thus, we have 5 words "and" in English: the conjunction, the one that
means "to add" (four and twenty blackbirds, five and five are ten); the
result clause marker (Give him a chance and you'll see what he can do);
the and that means "to" in infinitives (try and find it=try to find it;
go and see it=go to see it), and the now admittedly archaic and that
means "if" "and it pleases you, we shall picnic in the park". 5 words
if we're simply describing things synchronically.
Joachim Pense
> Robert Bannister <rob...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>
>> > The word "late", when used in the sense of "deceased", is known to
>> > share a common origin with "late" meaning "tardy", "at an advanced
>> > point in time", etc. But are these still synchronically the same
>> > word?
>>
>> Take up German: the equivalent for "late" means "blessed".
>
> What German word do you have in mind?
>
selig.
But that's a bit old-fashioned.
Joachim
Weland
Its still possible, and you'll see it used in reference to inanimates,
such as "the late administration" rather than to people, simply because
of the confusion.
Leslie Danks
> On Wed, 1 Apr 2009 11:42:25 +0000 (UTC), na...@mips.inka.de
> (Christian Weisgerber) wrote:
>
>>Robert Bannister <rob...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>>
>>> > The word "late", when used in the sense of "deceased", is known to
>>> > share a common origin with "late" meaning "tardy", "at an advanced
>>> > point in time", etc. But are these still synchronically the same
>>> > word?
>>>
>>> Take up German: the equivalent for "late" means "blessed".
>>2
>>What German word do you have in mind?
>>
>>German doesn't employ a euphemism here and simply uses "verstorben"
>>(deceased, dead).
>
> I see from my Langenscheidt that "mein seliger Vater" is
> labelled "obs".
My late mother sometimes used to say "My sainted aunt!" as an expression of
astonishment.
--
Les (BrE)
Trond Engen
> On Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:42:16 GMT, Lars Enderin
> <lars.e...@telia.com> wrote:
>
>> James Hogg wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, 1 Apr 2009 11:42:25 +0000 (UTC), na...@mips.inka.de
>>> (Christian Weisgerber) wrote:
>>>
>>>> Robert Bannister <rob...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> The word "late", when used in the sense of "deceased", is known
>>>>>> to share a common origin with "late" meaning "tardy", "at an
>>>>>> advanced point in time", etc. But are these still
>>>>>> synchronically the same word?
>>>>>
>>>>> Take up German: the equivalent for "late" means "blessed".
>>>>
>>>> What German word do you have in mind?
>>>>
>>>> German doesn't employ a euphemism here and simply uses
>>>> "verstorben" (deceased, dead).
>>>
>>> I see from my Langenscheidt that "mein seliger Vater" is labelled
>>> "obs".
>>
>> It's probably not very common in Swedish nowadays, but I have often
>> heard "salig" referring to some deceased person.
>
> And it doesn't behave like normal adjectives. You say "min salig
> far", not "min salige far".
In Norwegian it's "salig N.N." but "min salige far". Archaic, and
deliberately so, but not stone dead.
> I was prompted to look up the French equivalent "feu" to see why
> they use the word for fire here. It turns out it's not related at
> all. It's from Late Latin *fatutus and means that a person has
> accomplished his or her destiny.
>
> Death awaits us all, if we're spared.
I once heard myself use the line 'Gud velsigne min salige mor!' "God
bless my late/blessed mother!" in a situation where I couldn't swear for
real to the (percieved) idiot.
--
Trond Engen
grammatim
No, it doesn't literally mean that he's late; literally, it means that
he's dead. That's why it's a joke.
grammatim
> António Marques wrote:
> > johnk wrote:
>
> >> On Mar 31, 3:55 pm, Adam Funk<a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
>
> >>> (I've asked this previously, but AFAICT no-one has answered it.)
>
> >>> In synchronic description, what criteria are used to distinguish
> >>> homonyms from polysemes?
>
> >> I'm sure there may be exceptions but I've always considered that
> >> polysemes come from a common origin while homonyms come from
> >> seperate sources. For the examples of 'late' discussed here, I would
> >> consider them to be polysymous.
>
> > But in synchronic description, which was Adam's question, you don't use
> > origin/source. I suppose the only way to do it, then, is to suppose that
> > words with meanings that seem related are polysemes, whereas the others
> > are homonyms, but you're prone to get false positives in both cases.
>
> But you do, to some degree; what's more though is that if we restrict
> ourselves to simply synchronic description, then any "word" with
> multiple definitions may be said to be a "homonym" of other words.
> Thus, we have 5 words "and" in English: the conjunction, the one that
> means "to add" (four and twenty blackbirds, five and five are ten); the
> result clause marker (Give him a chance and you'll see what he can do);
those are all the same meaning
> the and that means "to" in infinitives (try and find it=try to find it;
> go and see it=go to see it),
hendiadys is basically the same meaning, too
> and the now admittedly archaic and that
> means "if" "and it pleases you, we shall picnic in the park". 5 words
> if we're simply describing things synchronically.-
that's an, not and
johnk
> But in synchronic description, which was Adam's question, you don't use
> origin/source. I suppose the only way to do it, then, is to suppose that
> words with meanings that seem related are polysemes, whereas the others
> are homonyms, but you're prone to get false positives in both cases.
> --
> António Marques
I guess I overlooked that 'synchronic' part. It probably isn't
possible sychronically since the definitions (polysymy vs. homonymy)
are based on a diachronic analysis.
Mike Lyle
> grammatim wrote:
[...]>>
>> You can make a joke by referring to someone who's tardy as "the
>> late ...," which wouldn't make an impression if they were just the
>> same word.
>
> You can, but it isn't much of a joke. Referring to Student Smith who
> is tardy as "the late Student Smith" means literally that he's late.
> It doesn't refer to his death, and such a reference would hardly be
> funny.
Oh, dear. The importance of not being earnest. That's /why/ it's
considered funny, or was the first time we heard it, lo, these many
decades past. (I quite like your whimsical idea of using "Student" as a
sort of title, by the way.)
--
Mike.
James Hogg
wrote:
Haven't you heard of ambiguity? Referring to the tardy Student
Smith as "the late Student Smith" does refer to his death as well
as his tardiness. The whole point of the joke, such as it is, is
the play on the fact that the word has two meanings.
--
James
Jens Brix Christiansen
> On 31 Mar, 19:31, grammatim <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> "Late as in the late Arthur Dent; it's a sort of a threat you see?"
Shouldn't that be "... the late Dentarthurdent ..."?
--
Jens Brix Christiansen
Jens Brix Christiansen
> I don't think that 15th C. citation would hold true today, nor would
> Shakespeare's(outside poetry). You could say, "GWB, of late the
> President" or "GWB, lately the President".
In 1967 The Beatles were inspired by a contemporary circus poster and
wrote these lyrics:
The Hendersons will all be there
Late of Pablo Fanque's Fair -- what a scene
--
Jens Brix Christiansen
Jens Brix Christiansen
> In 1967 The Beatles were inspired by a contemporary circus poster and
> wrote these lyrics:
Did I write "contemporary"? Scratch that.
--
Jens Brix Christiansen
Robert Bannister
> Robert Bannister <rob...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>
>>> The word "late", when used in the sense of "deceased", is known to
>>> share a common origin with "late" meaning "tardy", "at an advanced
>>> point in time", etc. But are these still synchronically the same
>>> word?
>> Take up German: the equivalent for "late" means "blessed".
>
> What German word do you have in mind?
>
> German doesn't employ a euphemism here and simply uses "verstorben"
> (deceased, dead).
>
selig
--
Rob Bannister
R H Draney
>
>Mike Mooney skrev:
>> On 31 Mar, 19:31, grammatim <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>> "Late as in the late Arthur Dent; it's a sort of a threat you see?"
>
>Shouldn't that be "... the late Dentarthurdent ..."?
That would be the equivalent in SlartibartfastE....r
--
A pessimist sees the glass as half empty.
An optometrist asks whether you see the glass
more full like this?...or like this?
Weland
I'm afraid it doesn't. If he's late, and you call him late, it means
he's tardy.
Weland
Quite, except if Student Smith is up and walking about, or more
particularly, walking into the room, the meaning of "recently alive but
no longer" that late in certain contexts has cannot apply--certainly
there's ambiguity out of context, in context none.
Weland
> On Apr 1, 12:00 pm, Weland <gi...@poetic.com> wrote:
>
>>António Marques wrote:
>>
>>>johnk wrote:
>>
>>>>On Mar 31, 3:55 pm, Adam Funk<a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
>>
>>>>>(I've asked this previously, but AFAICT no-one has answered it.)
>>
>>>>>In synchronic description, what criteria are used to distinguish
>>>>>homonyms from polysemes?
>>
>>>>I'm sure there may be exceptions but I've always considered that
>>>>polysemes come from a common origin while homonyms come from
>>>>seperate sources. For the examples of 'late' discussed here, I would
>>>>consider them to be polysymous.
>>
>>>But in synchronic description, which was Adam's question, you don't use
>>>origin/source. I suppose the only way to do it, then, is to suppose that
>>>words with meanings that seem related are polysemes, whereas the others
>>>are homonyms, but you're prone to get false positives in both cases.
>>
>>But you do, to some degree; what's more though is that if we restrict
>>ourselves to simply synchronic description, then any "word" with
>>multiple definitions may be said to be a "homonym" of other words.
>>Thus, we have 5 words "and" in English: the conjunction, the one that
>>means "to add" (four and twenty blackbirds, five and five are ten); the
>>result clause marker (Give him a chance and you'll see what he can do);
>
>
> those are all the same meaning
No they aren't, no more so than saying the various meanings of "late"
are all the same since they stem from the same semantic idea and are but
permutations of it.
>
>>the and that means "to" in infinitives (try and find it=try to find it;
>>go and see it=go to see it),
>
>
> hendiadys is basically the same meaning, too
No, wrong again. As hendiadys as a "word" indicates, being a
Latinization of a Greek phrase, it isn't the joining of two distinct
things, but rather the statement of 1 thing with two words.
>
>
>>and the now admittedly archaic and that
>>means "if" "and it pleases you, we shall picnic in the park". 5 words
>>if we're simply describing things synchronically.-
>
>
> that's an, not and
Wrong again, batting 1000 today. In some contexts, such as some
Shakespeare its "an' it please you" where the apostrophe indicates the
omitted letter "d" for "and", but other contexts such as the Paston
Letters or trial of Nicholas Throckmorton, 16th century, or other places
in Shakespeare's corpus, or Charles I's speech in 1648 before his
execution, or even up to the early 20th.
Jack Campin - bogus address
> The word "late", when used in the sense of "deceased", is known to
> share a common origin with "late" meaning "tardy", "at an advanced
> point in time", etc. But are these still synchronically the same
> word? What does everyone think?
You would probably like Adrian Room's book "Dunces, Gourmands
and Petticoats: 1,300 Words Whose Meanings Have Changed Through
the Ages". ("Late" is not one he covers).
Just don't bring it all here to argue about it, ok?
==== j a c k at c a m p i n . m e . u k === <http://www.campin.me.uk> ====
Jack Campin, 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland == mob 07800 739 557
CD-ROMs and free stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, and Mac logic fonts
craoi...@gmail.com
> The word "late", when used in the sense of "deceased", is known to
> share a common origin with "late" meaning "tardy", "at an advanced
> point in time", etc. But are these still synchronically the same
> into the construction "the late so-and-so" in my reading when I was
> about 11 years old, but I was almost 19 when I finally went to look up
> its meaning. The term hardly made any sense to me: I certainly could
> see no obvious reason that a person who has died should be called
> "late". This is evidence that, to the average speaker of modern
> English, the two "late"s could be homonyms and not a polyseme. (But
> note that I am not sure if my own mind even *makes* the
> homonymy/polysemy distinction.)
>
> --
> Daniel G. McGrath
> Binghamton, New York
> e-mail: dmcg6174[AT]gmail[DOT]com
I still wonder whether these two words are the same word, or not. In
Icelandic, "deceased" is "látinn", the participle of "látast", the
deponent form of "láta" = E. "let", while "late" = "tardy" in English
might be a cognate of Ge letzt.
grammatim
That is what makes it a JOKE. Are you autistic, rather than merely not
a native speaker?
grammatim
Not if you say "the late Student Smith." How did you learn to speak
English?
grammatim
Which, in English, is frequently accomplished with the unmarked
copula. Are you, in addition to being a nonnative speaker and
autistic, also ignorant of grammar?
> >>and the now admittedly archaic and that
> >>means "if" "and it pleases you, we shall picnic in the park". 5 words
> >>if we're simply describing things synchronically.-
>
> > that's an, not and
>
> Wrong again, batting 1000 today. In some contexts, such as some
> Shakespeare its "an' it please you" where the apostrophe indicates the
> omitted letter "d" for "and", but other contexts such as the Paston
> Letters or trial of Nicholas Throckmorton, 16th century, or other places
> in Shakespeare's corpus, or Charles I's speech in 1648 before his
> execution, or even up to the early 20th.-
Hypercorrection.
António Marques
> António Marques wrote:
>> johnk wrote:
>>
>>> On Mar 31, 3:55 pm, Adam Funk<a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> (I've asked this previously, but AFAICT no-one has answered it.)
>>>>
>>>> In synchronic description, what criteria are used to distinguish
>>>> homonyms from polysemes?
>>>
>>>
>>> I'm sure there may be exceptions but I've always considered that
>>> polysemes come from a common origin while homonyms come from
>>> seperate sources. For the examples of 'late' discussed here, I would
>>> consider them to be polysymous.
>>
>>
>> But in synchronic description, which was Adam's question, you don't use
>> origin/source. I suppose the only way to do it, then, is to suppose that
>> words with meanings that seem related are polysemes, whereas the others
>> are homonyms, but you're prone to get false positives in both cases.
>
> But you do, to some degree;
What's it that you do?
> what's more though is that if we restrict
> ourselves to simply synchronic description, then any "word" with
> multiple definitions may be said to be a "homonym" of other words.
It *may*, but then again what matters is not what may be done, but what
people find useful doing.
> Thus,
> we have 5 words "and" in English: the conjunction, the one that means
> "to add" (four and twenty blackbirds, five and five are ten); the result
> clause marker (Give him a chance and you'll see what he can do); the and
> that means "to" in infinitives (try and find it=try to find it; go and
> see it=go to see it), and the now admittedly archaic and that means "if"
> "and it pleases you, we shall picnic in the park". 5 words if we're
> simply describing things synchronically.
If their meanings/functions are easily derivable from one another, then
the useful thing to do is to recognise that fact.
--
António Marques
John Atkinson
> On Apr 2, 1:18 am, Weland <gi...@poetic.com> wrote:
>> grammatim wrote:
>>> On Apr 1, 12:00 pm, Weland <gi...@poetic.com> wrote:
>>
>
>>>> and the now admittedly archaic and that
>>>> means "if" "and it pleases you, we shall picnic in the park". 5
>>>> words if we're simply describing things synchronically.-
>>
>>> that's an, not and
>>
>> Wrong again, batting 1000 today. In some contexts, such as some
>> Shakespeare its "an' it please you" where the apostrophe indicates
>> the omitted letter "d" for "and",
No. You've got the quote wrong. It's "There, an't shall please you"
(Love's Labour Lost, v, ii). It's /not/ "an' it". Earlier in the same
scene, there's "Nay them two treyes, an if you grow so nice." These are the
only occurances in Shakespeare, it seems. While the word is indeed derived
from "and", in the First Folio it's spelled "an", not "an' ".
[...]
John.
Dan McGrath
>Dan McGrath wrote:
>> The word "late", when used in the sense of "deceased", is known to
>> share a common origin with "late" meaning "tardy", "at an advanced
>> point in time", etc. But are these still synchronically the same
>> word? What does everyone think? I probably first started running
>> into the construction "the late so-and-so" in my reading when I was
>> about 11 years old, but I was almost 19 when I finally went to look up
>> its meaning. The term hardly made any sense to me: I certainly could
>> see no obvious reason that a person who has died should be called
>> "late". This is evidence that, to the average speaker of modern
>> English, the two "late"s could be homonyms and not a polyseme. (But
>> note that I am not sure if my own mind even *makes* the
>> homonymy/polysemy distinction.)
>>
>> - Dan
>
>No, it hasn't. And it isn't hard to understand the relationship between
> late meaning "after the customary time" and late meaning "recently
>alive".
While I've sometimes seen it argued that "late" should mean "recently
deceased", I believe that in practice most users of modern English
think of it in the relevant contexts as meaning just "dead" or
"deceased". And with "recently alive", you need to be more specific:
it's "alive until recent times", not "alive since recent times" (which
would have made more sense to me).
>In the later Middle Ages, the 14th century, the adverbial form
>of late developed the meaning of something occurring recently, a small
>step from the older definition of "late" meaning "advanced in time".
>Thus, we still say "Of late I've been feeling well" or "What have you
>done for me lately" both meaning "recently". A new usage developed in
>the 15th century: something recent but no longer. Thus one could refer
>to "the late magistrate" meaning he was the magistrate but is no longer
>the magistrate, or Shakespeare's "Their vertue lost wherein they late
>exceld."
This usage, "recent but no longer", is where it starts to get
confusing. How did people come to understand the "no longer" part?
And that reminds me: is it true that, while "lately" means "since
recent times", the unsuffixed adverb "late" means "until recent
times"? That would seem quite bizarre.
>From this usage, it became applied to those who had died, i.
>e. who had recently been very much alive but are so no longer. "The
>late Mr. Smith" is not a reference to "Mr Smith, deceased" but to "Mr
>Smith, alive not so long ago, but alas no longer."
>
>So, no, not two words that are homonyms, but one very old word that has
>undergone semantic development, a development over 600 years old now.
One that's undergone so much semantic development that it appears to
essentially be two different words now. Actually, the two meanings
can sometimes seem to me something like opposites. "Early" (which,
FWIW, is etymologically related to "erstwhile") would have made a lot
more sense for a word that suggests "dead" or "no longer so".
António Marques
> On Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:55:03 -0500, Weland<gi...@poetic.com> wrote:
>> A new usage developed in the 15th century: something recent but no
>> longer. Thus one could refer to "the late magistrate" meaning he
>> was the magistrate but is no longer the magistrate, or
>> Shakespeare's "Their vertue lost wherein they late exceld."
> This usage, "recent but no longer", is where it starts to get
> confusing. How did people come to understand the "no longer" part?
It's implied. If it were "recent and still" then the most natural thing
would be to point out the "still" rather than the "recent", so calling
attention to the "recent" is suggestive of "[only] recent" as opposed to
"recent [and still]".
--
António Marques
Lars Eighner
lovely and talented Dan McGrath broadcast on alt.usage.english:
> While I've sometimes seen it argued that "late" should mean "recently
> deceased", I believe that in practice most users of modern English
> think of it in the relevant contexts as meaning just "dead" or
> "deceased".
I'm not going to weigh in on the main here, but this much I do agree with.
In a few cases "late" is applied ironically to the long dead, in other cases
perhaps "late" is a relative thing, just as "recent" is. But in many cases,
it is hard to tell that anything more or less than "dead" is intended.
--
Lars Eighner <http://larseighner.com/> use...@larseighner.com
72 days since Rick Warren prayed over Bush's third term.
Obama: No hope, no change, more of the same. Yes, he can, but no, he won't.
grammatim
> Lars Eighner <http://larseighner.com/> use...@larseighner.com
> 72 days since Rick Warren prayed over Bush's third term.
> Obama: No hope, no change, more of the same. Yes, he can, but no, he won't.
Does Lars know that Ralph Nader is using his name?
Weland
The more important question is how you think spotting a chap walking
about and calling him late means this obviously very alive chap is dead,
when the meaning of the word and its use in the context obviously refers
to his tardiness. Next you'll tell us that calling him a "corpse"
really means he's up and kicking up his heels.
Weland
Ah, argument by ad hominem.....and speaking of native speakers, you
might have noted if you had a basic reading comprehension that I said
that it wasn't much of a joke, not that it wasn't a joke at all: are
you, oh so very proud native speaker and non-autistic expert capable of
grasping the difference, or is basic English still lost on you? I mean,
who would say that calling a person "late" in the sense of tardy who is
late in the sense of tardy actually must mean something else.
Weland
Indeed, and thus, we're no longer talking strictly about synchronic
uses, and we can safely say that "late" has not split into a pair of
homonyms.
Robert Bannister
> I'm afraid it doesn't. If he's late, and you call him late, it means
> he's tardy.
Of course he'll be late if you call him late. He asked for an early
wake-up call.
--
Rob Bannister
Robert Bannister
> While I've sometimes seen it argued that "late" should mean "recently
> deceased", I believe that in practice most users of modern English
> think of it in the relevant contexts as meaning just "dead" or
> "deceased". And with "recently alive", you need to be more specific:
> it's "alive until recent times", not "alive since recent times" (which
> would have made more sense to me).
I think you are wrong here. While I doubt most English speakers stop to
analyse whether to use "late" or "deceased", I am quite sure that no-one
would use "late" to describe someone who died a century or more ago. The
late William Shakespeare might even agree.
--
Rob Bannister
grammatim
For at least the third time. It is a JOKE.
grammatim
Any normal English-speaker.
James Dolan
robert bannister <rob...@bigpond.com> wrote:
i think that you're wrong here, because i just googled "the late
william shakespeare" and had no trouble finding straightforwardly
non-ironic recent occurrences of it. (the apparent correlation with
cheap essay mill output doesn't help your case; it mostly just helps
to confirm the non-ironic nature of the occurrences.)
--
R H Draney
Does it matter if you're not sure exactly when they died?...
"The late Ambrose Bierce"...hmmm....r
Weland
Now that was a joke! grammatim, take notes!
Weland
Well, I suppose it depends on who you're calling normal. It certainly
can't be you.
Weland
> grammatim wrote:
>
>>That is what makes it a JOKE. Are you autistic, rather than merely not
>>a native speaker?
>
>
>
Well, he's trying to be a playground bully, but isn't succeeding at
anything more than blowing hot air....playground annoyance is more like
it. As for "overeducated", I'd say that's being far too
complimentary....after all he thinks calling someone who is late late
means he's dead and finds seeing a walking man called dead uproarious.
That's not a sign of overeducation, its a sign of a moron.
Weland
mean that we should accept that as a regular use for Hershey kisses?
In my own Google search on "late William Shakespeare", on the first page
of hits I found 3 that were a quote from Shakespeare, the quote ending
in "late."-William Shakespeare and so while not ironic, certainly not
the sort of thing referred to in this discussion, and so safely set
aside. One was to a paper mill essay, and so ought not to be trusted.
Errors in student papers sold on the internet aren't evidence of much
of anything. Two other similar references were in an online play review
in the comments section. Instances of misuse are interesting and
informative, but not evidence of a useful kind for this question. The
rest were to a bulesque from the early 19th century in which the
character, a Cockney with money, buys Shakespeare's birth place and
paints above the door on possession: "Chopkins, Late Shakespeare" where
it is ironic, and moreover here means "recently": the building was
recently "Shakespeare's", it is now Chopkins, who in the bulesque now
fancies himself a gent having acquired not just Shakespeare's birth
place but a place in society with it. In short, in the first page of
hits, not a single clear example of "late William Shakespeare" used in
the sense of "the deceased William Shakespeare" other than in comments
in a play review...not even in the review itself.
Weland
Well first, I'd point out that in this case the apostrophe stands in for
2 elided letters, the "d" of and and "i" of "it", and therefore one
cannot claim that it is spelled "an" here. You also seem to have missed
Henry V iv.vii; Henry IV pt. 2 i.ii, iii.ii as examples of "an't please
you.
Julius Caesar iv.iii "an it please you"
PaulJK
It was his fault.
He caused the confusion by asking to be knocked up early.
Weland
> On Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:55:03 -0500, Weland <gi...@poetic.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Dan McGrath wrote:
>>
>>>The word "late", when used in the sense of "deceased", is known to
>>>share a common origin with "late" meaning "tardy", "at an advanced
>>>point in time", etc. But are these still synchronically the same
>>>word? What does everyone think? I probably first started running
>>>into the construction "the late so-and-so" in my reading when I was
>>>about 11 years old, but I was almost 19 when I finally went to look up
>>>its meaning. The term hardly made any sense to me: I certainly could
>>>see no obvious reason that a person who has died should be called
>>>"late". This is evidence that, to the average speaker of modern
>>>English, the two "late"s could be homonyms and not a polyseme. (But
>>>note that I am not sure if my own mind even *makes* the
>>>homonymy/polysemy distinction.)
>>>
>>>- Dan
>>
>>No, it hasn't. And it isn't hard to understand the relationship between
>> late meaning "after the customary time" and late meaning "recently
>>alive".
>
> While I've sometimes seen it argued that "late" should mean "recently
> deceased", I believe that in practice most users of modern English
> think of it in the relevant contexts as meaning just "dead" or
> "deceased".
Well, Dan, the problem here is that my experience of what most users of
modern English in practice do differs.
And with "recently alive", you need to be more specific:
> it's "alive until recent times", not "alive since recent times" (which
> would have made more sense to me).
I don't see this. "alive since recent times" to me indicates someone
born in the near past and yet alive as of this writing rather than
someone who has died whereas "recently alive" or "alive until recent
times" indicates someone who has died in the recent past.
>
>>In the later Middle Ages, the 14th century, the adverbial form
>>of late developed the meaning of something occurring recently, a small
>>step from the older definition of "late" meaning "advanced in time".
>>Thus, we still say "Of late I've been feeling well" or "What have you
>>done for me lately" both meaning "recently". A new usage developed in
>>the 15th century: something recent but no longer. Thus one could refer
>>to "the late magistrate" meaning he was the magistrate but is no longer
>>the magistrate, or Shakespeare's "Their vertue lost wherein they late
>>exceld."
>
> This usage, "recent but no longer", is where it starts to get
> confusing. How did people come to understand the "no longer" part?
Rather because of the meaning of "late"....consider "Smith, late of New
York City..." esp in contexts where a contrast is being made to what
Smith did lately, and what Smith is doing now.
> And that reminds me: is it true that, while "lately" means "since
> recent times", the unsuffixed adverb "late" means "until recent
> times"? That would seem quite bizarre.
I wouldn't say so. "Lately" usually means "recently", "during or in the
near past with sometimes implications in the present" ("I've been
jonesing for some burritos lately") whereas "until recent times" is only
one of the definitions of the adverbial "late." There's only shades of
gray difference between them.
>>From this usage, it became applied to those who had died, i.
>
>>e. who had recently been very much alive but are so no longer. "The
>>late Mr. Smith" is not a reference to "Mr Smith, deceased" but to "Mr
>>Smith, alive not so long ago, but alas no longer."
>>
>>So, no, not two words that are homonyms, but one very old word that has
>>undergone semantic development, a development over 600 years old now.
>
>
> One that's undergone so much semantic development that it appears to
> essentially be two different words now.
I don't see it. I see a perfectly normal, easily explainable expansion
of the semantic range, each "new" definition deriving from older
meanings (and even the one we're discussing is a pre-modern development!)
Actually, the two meanings
> can sometimes seem to me something like opposites.
I don't see how. "advanced in time" and "so advanced in time as to be
recently dead" don't seem opposite to me.
"Early" (which,
> FWIW, is etymologically related to "erstwhile")
Closer than that: the "ear-" part of early and the "erst" part of
"erstwhile" are the same word, the latter being the superlative form.
would have made a lot
> more sense for a word that suggests "dead" or "no longer so".
Again, I don't see it. "The early Mr. Smith will be interred at 10 AM?"
Well, I suppose that means he'll at least be on time for his own
funeral! "The soon deceased"? No, sorry, I just don't see it.
Weland
Well, since you can't quite seem to see what the grammar actually is,
I'd have to say that you're merely projecting your weaknesses onto me.
I might suggest you find a dictionary and read up on the words you're
discussing or a good English grammar.
"go and see" isn't hendiadys.
>
>>>>and the now admittedly archaic and that
>>>>means "if" "and it pleases you, we shall picnic in the park". 5 words
>>>>if we're simply describing things synchronically.-
>>
>>>that's an, not and
>>
>>Wrong again, batting 1000 today. In some contexts, such as some
>>Shakespeare its "an' it please you" where the apostrophe indicates the
>>omitted letter "d" for "and", but other contexts such as the Paston
>>Letters or trial of Nicholas Throckmorton, 16th century, or other places
>>in Shakespeare's corpus, or Charles I's speech in 1648 before his
>>execution, or even up to the early 20th.-
>
>
> Hypercorrection.
No, you claimed that the phrase was "an", not "an'" or "and". It isn't,
except in one instance that I've found.
Adam Funk
> grammatim wrote:
>>
>> That is what makes it a JOKE. Are you autistic, rather than merely not
>> a native speaker?
>
> Nice work from an overeducated playground bully.
I guess it was his tasteless way of remembering World Autism Awareness
Day (2 April).
--
() ascii ribbon campaign - against html e-mail
/\ www.asciiribbon.org - against proprietary attachments
grammatim
No, you nimcompoop.
Saying "the late Smith" is not "calling Smith late."
If you can't see the syntactic difference between "the late Smith" and
"Smith, who is late," then you absolutely cannot be a native speaker
of English. The former means literally only 'recently dead', the
latter means literally only 'tardy'.
Dan McGrath
wrote:
You don't understand. Logically, it could be "having become in recent
times". In which case the formula "the late <name>" would refer to
someone who was *born* recently.
In any case, I became convinced a long time ago that when someone uses
"the late" of a person, even if they're intending a suggestion of
"recentness" to the person's death, it's the death itself that they
want to emphasize: "recently DEAD", not "RECENTLY dead". It's hard to
understand how the term came to be used as such in modern English when
it originally had everything to do with "recent" and nothing at all to
do with "dead".
Weland
> On Apr 3, 1:04 am, Weland <gi...@poetic.com> wrote:
>
>>Ramblin Bob wrote:
>>
>>>grammatim wrote:
>>
>>>>That is what makes it a JOKE. Are you autistic, rather than merely not
>>>>a native speaker?
>>
>>>Nice work from an overeducated playground bully.
>>
>>Well, he's trying to be a playground bully, but isn't succeeding at
>>anything more than blowing hot air....playground annoyance is more like
>>it. As for "overeducated", I'd say that's being far too
>>complimentary....after all he thinks calling someone who is late late
>>means he's dead and finds seeing a walking man called dead uproarious.
>>That's not a sign of overeducation, its a sign of a moron.
>
>
> No, you nimcompoop.
>
> Saying "the late Smith" is not "calling Smith late."
Of course it is, if in fact, Smith is tardy. As James Hogg pointed out,
the joke, which isn't much of a joke in my view, depends on that
ambiguity. You do know what ambiguity means, being a native speaker of
English and all?
>
> If you can't see the syntactic difference between "the late Smith" and
> "Smith, who is late,"
But we aren't talking about syntactic differences, but about semantic
differences. Being a contributor to English usage and linguistic
groups, you are aware that there is a difference between syntax and
semantics, are you not? Or are you deliberately creating straw man
arguments?
then you absolutely cannot be a native speaker
> of English. The former means literally only 'recently dead', the
> latter means literally only 'tardy'.
So much for you're claim to be a native speaker. The former does *NOT*
only mean "recently dead"....hence the ambiguity. If in doubt there's a
tool that many utilize as a guide and for additional information. It's
called a dictionary, probably ought to be your first port of call if you
think that the "late Mr. Smith" can *only* mean "recently dead."
Weland
> On Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:20:23 +0100, António Marques <m....@sapo.pt>
> wrote:
>
>
>>Dan McGrath wrote:
>>
>>>On Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:55:03 -0500, Weland<gi...@poetic.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>A new usage developed in the 15th century: something recent but no
>>>>longer. Thus one could refer to "the late magistrate" meaning he
>>>>was the magistrate but is no longer the magistrate, or
>>>>Shakespeare's "Their vertue lost wherein they late exceld."
>>>
>>>This usage, "recent but no longer", is where it starts to get
>>>confusing. How did people come to understand the "no longer" part?
>>
>>It's implied. If it were "recent and still" then the most natural thing
>>would be to point out the "still" rather than the "recent", so calling
>>attention to the "recent" is suggestive of "[only] recent" as opposed to
>>"recent [and still]".
>
>
> You don't understand. Logically, it could be "having become in recent
> times". In which case the formula "the late <name>" would refer to
> someone who was *born* recently.
Not at all, since the root meaning of "late" is "advanced in time", an
attribute hardly apt for a newborn.
> In any case, I became convinced a long time ago that when someone uses
> "the late" of a person, even if they're intending a suggestion of
> "recentness" to the person's death, it's the death itself that they
> want to emphasize: "recently DEAD", not "RECENTLY dead".
Ok, but on what grounds?
It's hard to
> understand how the term came to be used as such in modern English when
> it originally had everything to do with "recent" and nothing at all to
> do with "dead".
Its not hard at all (apart from that no, it didn't originally have
*everything* to do with recent, I think therein lies part of the
problem). Usage. Frequent usage of "the late X" in the sense of
"recently alive but no more" calcifies the association.
António Marques
> On Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:20:23 +0100, António Marques<m....@sapo.pt>
> wrote:
>
>> Dan McGrath wrote:
>>> On Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:55:03 -0500, Weland<gi...@poetic.com> wrote:
>>>> A new usage developed in the 15th century: something recent but no
>>>> longer. Thus one could refer to "the late magistrate" meaning he
>>>> was the magistrate but is no longer the magistrate, or
>>>> Shakespeare's "Their vertue lost wherein they late exceld."
>>> This usage, "recent but no longer", is where it starts to get
>>> confusing. How did people come to understand the "no longer" part?
>> It's implied. If it were "recent and still" then the most natural thing
>> would be to point out the "still" rather than the "recent", so calling
>> attention to the "recent" is suggestive of "[only] recent" as opposed to
>> "recent [and still]".
>
> You don't understand.
I'm trying to explain it to you, not the opposite.
> Logically, it could be "having become in recent
> times". In which case the formula "the late<name>" would refer to
> someone who was *born* recently.
For that there are other devices, such as "recent", "new", etc, so the
fact that one of those isn't used suggests that that's not the intended
meaning.
> In any case, I became convinced a long time ago that when someone uses
> "the late" of a person, even if they're intending a suggestion of
> "recentness" to the person's death, it's the death itself that they
> want to emphasize: "recently DEAD", not "RECENTLY dead". It's hard to
> understand how the term came to be used as such in modern English when
> it originally had everything to do with "recent" and nothing at all to
> do with "dead".
It's not hard to understand, you're just stuck.
I think the meaning is "who was *living* until some point in our
reference time frame".
--
António Marques
Weland
burlesque was meant of course, not bulesque.....unless of course we take
this as evidence of neologism
grammatim
> grammatim wrote:
> > On Apr 3, 1:04 am, Weland <gi...@poetic.com> wrote:
>
> >>Ramblin Bob wrote:
>
> >>>grammatim wrote:
>
> >>>>That is what makes it a JOKE. Are you autistic, rather than merely not
> >>>>a native speaker?
>
> >>>Nice work from an overeducated playground bully.
>
> >>Well, he's trying to be a playground bully, but isn't succeeding at
> >>anything more than blowing hot air....playground annoyance is more like
> >>it. As for "overeducated", I'd say that's being far too
> >>complimentary....after all he thinks calling someone who is late late
> >>means he's dead and finds seeing a walking man called dead uproarious.
> >>That's not a sign of overeducation, its a sign of a moron.
>
> > No, you nimcompoop.
>
> > Saying "the late Smith" is not "calling Smith late."
>
> Of course it is, if in fact, Smith is tardy. As James Hogg pointed out,
> the joke, which isn't much of a joke in my view, depends on that
> ambiguity. You do know what ambiguity means, being a native speaker of
> English and all?
Since you are not familiar with the expression "the late Smith,"
there's no point in continuing. Therefore, I will explain it to you.
In spoken English, adjectives do not generally occur in the frame "the
___ N" where no contrast is intended with the same noun qualified by a
contrasting adjective. (You don't say "the tall Smith" unless there's
a short Smith who might be confused with the Smith you're referring
to.) "Late," however, behaves differently from other adjectives. (1)
it occurs in that frame _without_ intending a contrast with some other
person with a similar name -- it's there solely to confer the
information that the person named is (recently) deceased. (2) it
occurs with proper names and other definite descriptions -- a _very_
unusual property for adjectives.
"Late" can only literally mean 'tardy' in the expression "the late
Smith" when there is another Smith within the universe of discourse
who was not tardy. "The late Smith was docked an hour's pay, but his
brother, who showed up on time, will receive his full compensation."
> > If you can't see the syntactic difference between "the late Smith" and
> > "Smith, who is late,"
>
> But we aren't talking about syntactic differences, but about semantic
> differences. Being a contributor to English usage and linguistic
> groups, you are aware that there is a difference between syntax and
> semantics, are you not? Or are you deliberately creating straw man
> arguments?
Do you really imagine that syntax makes no contribution to the
interpretation of an utterance?
> > then you absolutely cannot be a native speaker
> > of English. The former means literally only 'recently dead', the
> > latter means literally only 'tardy'.
>
> So much for you're claim to be a native speaker. The former does *NOT*
> only mean "recently dead"....hence the ambiguity. If in doubt there's a
> tool that many utilize as a guide and for additional information. It's
> called a dictionary, probably ought to be your first port of call if you
> think that the "late Mr. Smith" can *only* mean "recently dead."-
Obviously no linguist, you have no idea what a dictionary is intended
for and what it can and cannot do.
You have yet to produce a sentence in which your interpretation of
"late" in that syntagm is possible. (You didn't even cite the
contrastive use exemplified above; contrastive use accounts for many
seeming anomalies.)
R H Draney
>
>In spoken English, adjectives do not generally occur in the frame "the
>___ N" where no contrast is intended with the same noun qualified by a
>contrasting adjective. (You don't say "the tall Smith" unless there's
>a short Smith who might be confused with the Smith you're referring
>to.)
You do, however, say "the honorable Smith" when Smith is the governor of a
state, for example...this quite independent of whether Smith is actually
honorable or not....r
Adam Funk
> grammatim filted:
>>
>>In spoken English, adjectives do not generally occur in the frame "the
>>___ N" where no contrast is intended with the same noun qualified by a
>>contrasting adjective. (You don't say "the tall Smith" unless there's
>>a short Smith who might be confused with the Smith you're referring
>>to.)
>
> You do, however, say "the honorable Smith" when Smith is the governor of a
> state, for example...this quite independent of whether Smith is actually
> honorable or not....r
So true for MPs as well. They even *have* to call each other "the
honourable member" when they know better.
--
Pengo is having second thoughts about his years working for the KGB.
(Stoll 1989)
Adam Funk
> johnk wrote:
>> On Mar 31, 3:55 pm, Adam Funk<a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
>>> (I've asked this previously, but AFAICT no-one has answered it.)
>>>
>>> In synchronic description, what criteria are used to distinguish
>>> homonyms from polysemes?
>>
>> I'm sure there may be exceptions but I've always considered that
>> polysemes come from a common origin while homonyms come from
>> seperate sources. For the examples of 'late' discussed here, I would
>> consider them to be polysymous.
>
> But in synchronic description, which was Adam's question, you don't use
> origin/source.
That's exactly why I asked the question. Lexicographers treat
rare/rare as homonyms and late/late as polysemes based on etymology,
but that's disallowed in synchronic description.
> I suppose the only way to do it, then, is to suppose that
> words with meanings that seem related are polysemes, whereas the others
> are homonyms, but you're prone to get false positives in both cases.
I thought this would be a straight question for the proper linguists
around here to answer.
Maybe synchronic description doesn't have a concept of homophony ---
if two words have the same POS, spelling, and pronunciation, they
*are* the same word?
--
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?
CDB
> grammatim filted:
[early Americans, late Americans]
> You do, however, say "the honorable Smith" when Smith is the
> governor of a state, for example...this quite independent of
> whether Smith is actually honorable or not....r
And of whether the Right Honourable John Smith (do you really use the
honorific with just the last name?) is right.
johnk
> On 2009-04-01, António Marques wrote:
>
> > johnk wrote:
> >> On Mar 31, 3:55 pm, Adam Funk<a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
> >>> (I've asked this previously, but AFAICT no-one has answered it.)
>
> >>> In synchronic description, what criteria are used to distinguish
> >>> homonyms from polysemes?
>
> >> I'm sure there may be exceptions but I've always considered that
> >> polysemes come from a common origin while homonyms come from
> >> seperate sources. For the examples of 'late' discussed here, I would
> >> consider them to be polysymous.
>
> > But in synchronic description, which was Adam's question, you don't use
> > origin/source.
>
> That's exactly why I asked the question. Lexicographers treat
> rare/rare as homonyms and late/late as polysemes based on etymology,
> but that's disallowed in synchronic description.
>
> > I suppose the only way to do it, then, is to suppose that
> > words with meanings that seem related are polysemes, whereas the others
> > are homonyms, but you're prone to get false positives in both cases.
>
> I thought this would be a straight question for the proper linguists
> around here to answer.
>
> Maybe synchronic description doesn't have a concept of homophony ---
> if two words have the same POS, spelling, and pronunciation, they
> *are* the same word?
>
You could treat them as seperate words based on semantics, but to
clarify whether it's polysymy or homonymy would require an
etymological analysis, at leasts that the way I see it.
JohnK
James Hogg
The recent turn taken by this thread, plus recent talk elsewhere
of the film "Hunger", reminds me of a death notice I saw in an
Irish paper when Bobby Sands died. He was apostrophised as:
The Rt Hon Bobby Sands MP POW
I wondered when he became a member of the Privy Council.
--
James
grammatim
> grammatim filted:
>
>
>
> >In spoken English, adjectives do not generally occur in the frame "the
> >___ N" where no contrast is intended with the same noun qualified by a
> >contrasting adjective. (You don't say "the tall Smith" unless there's
> >a short Smith who might be confused with the Smith you're referring
> >to.)
>
> You do, however, say "the honorable Smith" when Smith is the governor of a
> state, for example...this quite independent of whether Smith is actually
> honorable or not....r
When's the last time you encountered that usage -- outside a legal
document?
grammatim
> On 2009-04-01, António Marques wrote:
>
> > johnk wrote:
> >> On Mar 31, 3:55 pm, Adam Funk<a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
> >>> (I've asked this previously, but AFAICT no-one has answered it.)
>
> >>> In synchronic description, what criteria are used to distinguish
> >>> homonyms from polysemes?
>
> >> I'm sure there may be exceptions but I've always considered that
> >> polysemes come from a common origin while homonyms come from
> >> seperate sources. For the examples of 'late' discussed here, I would
> >> consider them to be polysymous.
>
> > But in synchronic description, which was Adam's question, you don't use
> > origin/source.
>
> That's exactly why I asked the question. Lexicographers treat
> rare/rare as homonyms and late/late as polysemes based on etymology,
> but that's disallowed in synchronic description.
>
> > I suppose the only way to do it, then, is to suppose that
> > words with meanings that seem related are polysemes, whereas the others
> > are homonyms, but you're prone to get false positives in both cases.
>
> I thought this would be a straight question for the proper linguists
> around here to answer.
As I've pointed out before (to much incredulity), lingusts and
lexicographers have very little to do with each other.
Nathan Sanders
<345f1a68-a24a-4b77...@p6g2000pre.googlegroups.com>,
johnk <jhoba...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Apr 3, 2:09 pm, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
>
> > Maybe synchronic description doesn't have a concept of homophony ---
> > if two words have the same POS, spelling, and pronunciation, they
> > *are* the same word?
>
> You could treat them as seperate words based on semantics, but to
> clarify whether it's polysymy or homonymy would require an
> etymological analysis, at leasts that the way I see it.
Before providing a synchronic analysis, we need clarity on the facts.
What precisely does it mean for "late/late" to be one word with
different meanings, or two separate words (or heaven forbid, something
in between)? How can we rigorously test this with native speakers?
What patterns in the data do we need to see?
My hunch is that we'd need to look at psycholinguistic data (response
times, priming effects, fMRIs, ERPs, etc.) to find a measurable
difference between synchronic homophones and synchronic polysemes.
And if such a difference exists, I certainly don't think will line up
exactly with the etymological division between diachronic homophones
and diachronic polysemes.
Nathan
R H Draney
>
>On Apr 3, 2:15=A0pm, R H Draney <dadoc...@spamcop.net> wrote:
>> grammatim filted:
>>
>>
>>
>> >In spoken English, adjectives do not generally occur in the frame "the
>> >___ N" where no contrast is intended with the same noun qualified by a
>> >contrasting adjective. (You don't say "the tall Smith" unless there's
>> >a short Smith who might be confused with the Smith you're referring
>> >to.)
>>
>a
>> state, for example...this quite independent of whether Smith is actually
>> honorable or not....r
>
>When's the last time you encountered that usage -- outside a legal
>document?
You're supposed to use it when you address a letter to one of them....r
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
wrote:
This was counterbalanced by words painted on a wall in a Loyalist
(anti-Irish-Republican) area of Belfast:
We will not forget you Billy Sands.
--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)
Evan Kirshenbaum
I think it's still current in courtrooms in "the honorable Judge
Soandso presiding".
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |If I may digress momentarily from
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |the mainstream of this evening's
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |symposium, I'd like to sing a song
|which is completely pointless.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | Tom Lehrer
(650)857-7572
grammatim
> grammatim filted:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> >On Apr 3, 2:15=A0pm, R H Draney <dadoc...@spamcop.net> wrote:
> >> grammatim filted:
>
> >> >In spoken English, adjectives do not generally occur in the frame "the
> >> >___ N" where no contrast is intended with the same noun qualified by a
> >> >contrasting adjective. (You don't say "the tall Smith" unless there's
> >> >a short Smith who might be confused with the Smith you're referring
> >> >to.)
>
> >> You do, however, say "the honorable Smith" when Smith is the governor of =
> >a
> >> state, for example...this quite independent of whether Smith is actually
> >> honorable or not....r
>
> >When's the last time you encountered that usage -- outside a legal
> >document?
>
> You're supposed to use it when you address a letter to one of them....r
We're advised not to send them letters, because all their mail goes
through some elaborate procedure to guard against anthrax. (Just as we
have to take off our shoes because they think the next terrorist is
going to have a bomb in his shoe, and we can't have more than 3 oz. of
toiletries because they think the next terrorist is going to make a
bomb by combining volatile liquids.)
Steve Hayes
wrote:
>Saying "the late Smith" is not "calling Smith late."
>
>If you can't see the syntactic difference between "the late Smith" and
>"Smith, who is late," then you absolutely cannot be a native speaker
>of English. The former means literally only 'recently dead', the
>latter means literally only 'tardy'.
Saying "the late Smith" is a solecism.
It should be "the late Mr/Mrs/Miss/Ms Smith".
And when someone says "my father is late", in this neck of the woods it is
quite likely to mean "my father is dead" -- its darkie English.
--
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
the Omrud
> On Fri, 3 Apr 2009 05:34:52 -0700 (PDT), grammatim <gram...@verizon.net>
> wrote:
>
>> Saying "the late Smith" is not "calling Smith late."
>>
>> If you can't see the syntactic difference between "the late Smith" and
>> "Smith, who is late," then you absolutely cannot be a native speaker
>> of English. The former means literally only 'recently dead', the
>> latter means literally only 'tardy'.
>
> Saying "the late Smith" is a solecism.
>
> It should be "the late Mr/Mrs/Miss/Ms Smith".
>
> And when someone says "my father is late", in this neck of the woods it is
> quite likely to mean "my father is dead" -- its darkie English.
That last example is common in Botswana, if Mma Ramotswe is to be
believed (and she surely is). A delightful BBC TV series now, BTW, full
of good humour and politeness.
--
David
PaulJK
It's more commonly used in the UK, Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, and other Commonwealth Realms. Down here
downunder you can hear "The Honourable" and "The Right
Honourable" any time you tune to the news from the parliament.
pjk
Roland Hutchinson
> On Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:20:23 +0100, António Marques <m....@sapo.pt>
I'd imagine that it came about as a shortening of "late of our
number", "late a sojourner in this mortal vale", or other such expressions.
I might further conjecture that those sorts of formulaic expressions came
about as a way of avoiding saying the word "dead" when people felt it was
indelicate to speak so plainly. Then, when the formulas had become
established, they themselves eventually were felt to be indelicate, and
fell foul of the same social taboo.
This is of course purely conjecture on my part, but maybe someone else can
turn up evidence for or against it.
--
Roland Hutchinson Will play viola da gamba for food.
NB mail to my.spamtrap [at] verizon.net is heavily filtered to
remove spam. If your message looks like spam I may not see it.
CDB
[that was late, this is now]
> I'd imagine that it came about as a shortening of "late of our
> number", "late a sojourner in this mortal vale", or other such
> expressions.
> I might further conjecture that those sorts of formulaic
> expressions came about as a way of avoiding saying the word "dead"
> when people felt it was indelicate to speak so plainly. Then, when
> the formulas had become established, they themselves eventually
> were felt to be indelicate, and fell foul of the same social taboo.
> This is of course purely conjecture on my part, but maybe someone
> else can turn up evidence for or against it.
No evidence (OEDers?), but I've been wondering about a connection with
"late lamented". The adverbial use of "late" in such expressions, as
in "our late[-]lamented friend", could move fairly easily into the
adjectival use of "our late, lamented friend", and then lose one or
the other adjective.
the Omrud
OED has this:
----
5. a. Of a person: That was alive not long ago, but is not now; recently
deceased.
1490 CAXTON Eneydos vi. 28 Her swete and late amyable husbonde. a1548
HALL Chron., Hen. IV, 10b, The homecide of Thomas his uncle late duke of
Glocester. 1570 BUCHANAN Admonitioun Wks. (S.T.S.) 22 Ye murthour of ye
lait King Henry. 1662 STILLINGFL. Orig. Sacr. II. vii. §7 The late
learned Rabbi Manasse Ben Israel. 1727 DE FOE Syst. Magic I. iii. (1840)
84 Our late friend Jonathan. 1794 MRS. RADCLIFFE Myst. Udolpho xxv, I
did nothing but dream I saw my late lady's ghost. 1838 LYTTON Alice 23,
I always call the late Lord Vargrave my father. 1884 Times (weekly ed.)
5 Sept. 1/1 The remains of the late Lord Ampthill.
----
The basic adjective (1: slow, tardy; 2: coming after the appointed
time) are both very ancient in English, showing up around AD 1000 or
earlier.
--
David
CDB
Thank you for the quotations. I meant to refer only to the adjectival
use meaning "recently deceased"; I understand that the word was used
adjectivally in other ways much earlier. The uses cited don't seem to
support my notion of direct development, but I can't help thinking
there must have been some association with words introducing the idea
of death. That use of "late" doesn't, after all, mean "recently but
no longer", or a divorcee could have lunch with her late husband: it
means "recently *alive* but no longer, or recently dead. Maybe it's
down to Roland's point about avoiding the D-word. "Your lately-<dead>
husband" naturally became "your late<lcough/pause> husband", and the
new word was taken for an adjective.
There is sometimes a similar confusion about "the dearly departed",
although that would seem to be going the other way. People just
aren't at their most alert, on these occasions.
anal...@hotmail.com
>
> - Show quoted text -
how about an elementary derivation of the sense "dead" for late - an
antonym of quick = alive?
Adam Funk
> On Apr 3, 3:09 pm, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
>> That's exactly why I asked the question. Lexicographers treat
>> rare/rare as homonyms and late/late as polysemes based on etymology,
>> but that's disallowed in synchronic description.
>>
>> > I suppose the only way to do it, then, is to suppose that
>> > words with meanings that seem related are polysemes, whereas the others
>> > are homonyms, but you're prone to get false positives in both cases.
>>
>> I thought this would be a straight question for the proper linguists
>> around here to answer.
>
> As I've pointed out before (to much incredulity), lingusts and
> lexicographers have very little to do with each other.
No kidding. Did you notice that I made that distinction?
>> Maybe synchronic description doesn't have a concept of homophony ---
>> if two words have the same POS, spelling, and pronunciation, they
>> *are* the same word?
Do you know the answer?
--
Oh, I do most of my quality thinking on the old sandbox. [Bucky Katt]
Mike Lyle
No, these honorifics need an intervening first name or initial, or
style. If there's no name at all, though you can use the pattern "the
honourable gentleman" etc.
A friend once got a drink from James Roberston Justice in a pub: JRJ out
of the blue asked "Would the gallant captain care to indulge?", so
friend replied with WTTEO "That's very kind. I'd like a gin and tonic,
if I may." The actor, it turned out, had in fact been proferring his
snuff-box.
--
Mike.
Mike Lyle
[...]
>
> There is sometimes a similar confusion about "the dearly departed",
> although that would seem to be going the other way. People just
> aren't at their most alert, on these occasions.
You may not have seen the prices of funerals lately.
--
Mike.
the Omrud
> On Apr 4, 6:51 am, Roland Hutchinson <my.spamt...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> I might further conjecture that those sorts of formulaic expressions came
>> about as a way of avoiding saying the word "dead" when people felt it was
>> indelicate to speak so plainly. Then, when the formulas had become
>> established, they themselves eventually were felt to be indelicate, and
>> fell foul of the same social taboo.
>>
>> This is of course purely conjecture on my part, but maybe someone else can
>> turn up evidence for or against it.
>>
> antonym of quick = alive?
He shall come to judge the quick and the late?
--
David
CDB
> CDB wrote:
>> R H Draney wrote:
>>> grammatim filted:
>> [early Americans, late Americans]
>>> You do, however, say "the honorable Smith" when Smith is the
>>> governor of a state, for example...this quite independent of
>>> whether Smith is actually honorable or not....r
>> And of whether the Right Honourable John Smith (do you really use
>> the honorific with just the last name?) is right.
> No, these honorifics need an intervening first name or initial, or
> style. If there's no name at all, though you can use the pattern
> "the honourable gentleman" etc.
Yes. Should have said "you Yanks".
> A friend once got a drink from James Roberston Justice in a pub:
> JRJ out of the blue asked "Would the gallant captain care to
> indulge?", so friend replied with WTTEO "That's very kind. I'd like
> a gin and tonic, if I may." The actor, it turned out, had in fact
> been proferring his snuff-box.
One trusts he still stood him one, notwithstanding.