English questions

[zompist]

"...and these are some of the experiences I made back when I was growing up..."

Would experiences from early childhood belong in such a report?

Yes, but with no implication that at age three you were "grown up".

[Raphael]

Thank you! (I was always asking about the entire process, not just its completion.)

[jal]

Your feeling is wrong. The abstract uses are robust, as in Around 2.6 million children are growing up in households without enough food,... It's not too difficult to find geographical examples for the present tenses. Incidentally, you overlooked the non-finite forms, which are also quite common.

Ah yes, you're right, that would be a use I'm familiar with as well.


JAL

[Travis B.]

Does anyone else here speak or is otherwise familiar with any English variety which is frequently h-dropping in grammar words but normally h-preserving in content words? I ask because I have not seen such a pattern described for other English varieties but such a pattern exists in the dialect here, where words like have (and words derived from it such as have to) are frequently subject to h-dropping even when fully stressed, but most content words are h-preserving aside from words such as hour, herb (but not Herb the name), and honor as well as often house, which may go either way.

[abahot]

Does anyone have any resources on modern English dialects which merge the coda -ing into -in in only some contexts? I was at a phone repair store and heard the employee use -in for words which were verbs and -ing for words which were nominals.

I can't remember the sentences he said but "This phone needs a good fixing" would use the velar nasal but "I'm fixing the phone" would use an alveolar nasal.

[jal]

Does anyone have any resources on modern English dialects which merge the coda -ing into -in in only some contexts? I was at a phone repair store and heard the employee use -in for words which were verbs and -ing for words which were nominals.
I can't remember the sentences he said but "This phone needs a good fixing" would use the velar nasal but "I'm fixing the phone" would use an alveolar nasal.

Originally, present participles and adjectives didn't have /N/ but /n/, and nouns had /N/. Merging of the two began early (etymonline says 13th century, Wikpedia mentions Middle English), but I'm not sure whether merging was ever complete in all dialects. It might be what you heard was a dialect that never merged the two?


JAL

[Travis B.]

Does anyone have any resources on modern English dialects which merge the coda -ing into -in in only some contexts? I was at a phone repair store and heard the employee use -in for words which were verbs and -ing for words which were nominals.

I can't remember the sentences he said but "This phone needs a good fixing" would use the velar nasal but "I'm fixing the phone" would use an alveolar nasal.

My dialect is like this, as I have mentioned before on here. In my dialect present participles take either, depending on register, stress, and dissimilation if there is /n/ before the -in/-ing, or often the nasal is just elided leaving the preceding vowel nasalized (edit: note that final /n/ is often elided in my dialect, so I would analyze the elision cases as underlyingly /n/), while gerunds always take /ŋ/.

As jal mentions this goes back to Middle English and before, but the merger of the two is not complete in all dialects to this day.

[Starbeam]

Does anyone have any resources on modern English dialects which merge the coda -ing into -in in only some contexts? I was at a phone repair store and heard the employee use -in for words which were verbs and -ing for words which were nominals.
I can't remember the sentences he said but "This phone needs a good fixing" would use the velar nasal but "I'm fixing the phone" would use an alveolar nasal.

Originally, present participles and adjectives didn't have /N/ but /n/, and nouns had /N/. Merging of the two began early (etymonline says 13th century, Wikpedia mentions Middle English), but I'm not sure whether merging was ever complete in all dialects. It might be what you heard was a dialect that never merged the two?


JAL

I thought present participles were more /nd/ than /n/

[Travis B.]

Does anyone have any resources on modern English dialects which merge the coda -ing into -in in only some contexts? I was at a phone repair store and heard the employee use -in for words which were verbs and -ing for words which were nominals.
I can't remember the sentences he said but "This phone needs a good fixing" would use the velar nasal but "I'm fixing the phone" would use an alveolar nasal.

Originally, present participles and adjectives didn't have /N/ but /n/, and nouns had /N/. Merging of the two began early (etymonline says 13th century, Wikpedia mentions Middle English), but I'm not sure whether merging was ever complete in all dialects. It might be what you heard was a dialect that never merged the two?


JAL

I thought present participles were more /nd/ than /n/

They originally were -/ɛndɛ/ in OE but slowly got reduced over time.

[abahot]

Originally, present participles and adjectives didn't have /N/ but /n/, and nouns had /N/. Merging of the two began early (etymonline says 13th century, Wikpedia mentions Middle English), but I'm not sure whether merging was ever complete in all dialects. It might be what you heard was a dialect that never merged the two?


JAL

I had heard this as well but wasn't aware that there were any dialects that kept them unmerged. Really cool stuff!

In my dialect present participles take either, depending on register, stress, and dissimilation if there is /n/ before the -in/-ing, or often the nasal is just elided leaving the preceding vowel nasalized (edit: note that final /n/ is often elided in my dialect, so I would analyze the elision cases as underlyingly /n/), while gerunds always take /ŋ/.

As jal mentions this goes back to Middle English and before, but the merger of the two is not complete in all dialects to this day.

What stress rules are there? Just curious.

[Starbeam]

Originally, present participles and adjectives didn't have /N/ but /n/, and nouns had /N/. Merging of the two began early (etymonline says 13th century, Wikpedia mentions Middle English), but I'm not sure whether merging was ever complete in all dialects. It might be what you heard was a dialect that never merged the two?


JAL

I thought present participles were more /nd/ than /n/

They originally were -/ɛndɛ/ in OE but slowly got reduced over time.

That's what i mean. I thought they were still -/@nd/ across Middle and even some Early Modern English.

[jcb]

When counting time, in American English, there's a tradition of repeatedly saying "[number] Mississippi" to lengthen the time that it takes to say each phrase to make it fill a whole second. Given that Mississippi is an American state, do non-American varieties of English have a different word that they use instead to do the same thing?

[anteallach]

Does anyone else here speak or is otherwise familiar with any English variety which is frequently h-dropping in grammar words but normally h-preserving in content words? I ask because I have not seen such a pattern described for other English varieties but such a pattern exists in the dialect here, where words like have (and words derived from it such as have to) are frequently subject to h-dropping even when fully stressed, but most content words are h-preserving aside from words such as hour, herb (but not Herb the name), and honor as well as often house, which may go either way.

I think dropping /h/ in weak forms is pretty much universal, and is mentioned in the Wikipedia article on h dropping. My accent fits with this: the strong form of have does have /h/ but the weak form does not, which is how the weak forms of of and have become homophones. Note that for me (and I think this is normal) even the weak form of have to, unlike that of have, retains a full TRAP vowel so the combination of a dropped /h/ and an unreduced vowel -- [aftə] or similar -- is commonly heard.

It seems like you have a little more /h/ dropping than this if you're saying that have can lack [h] in what is apparently the strong form, and that you can also drop it in house.

[Travis B.]

In my dialect present participles take either, depending on register, stress, and dissimilation if there is /n/ before the -in/-ing, or often the nasal is just elided leaving the preceding vowel nasalized (edit: note that final /n/ is often elided in my dialect, so I would analyze the elision cases as underlyingly /n/), while gerunds always take /ŋ/.

As jal mentions this goes back to Middle English and before, but the merger of the two is not complete in all dialects to this day.

What stress rules are there? Just curious.

When more strongly stressed I am more likely to use a velar nasal.

[Travis B.]

Does anyone else here speak or is otherwise familiar with any English variety which is frequently h-dropping in grammar words but normally h-preserving in content words? I ask because I have not seen such a pattern described for other English varieties but such a pattern exists in the dialect here, where words like have (and words derived from it such as have to) are frequently subject to h-dropping even when fully stressed, but most content words are h-preserving aside from words such as hour, herb (but not Herb the name), and honor as well as often house, which may go either way.

I think dropping /h/ in weak forms is pretty much universal, and is mentioned in the Wikipedia article on h dropping. My accent fits with this: the strong form of have does have /h/ but the weak form does not, which is how the weak forms of of and have become homophones. Note that for me (and I think this is normal) even the weak form of have to, unlike that of have, retains a full TRAP vowel so the combination of a dropped /h/ and an unreduced vowel -- [aftə] or similar -- is commonly heard.

It seems like you have a little more /h/ dropping than this if you're saying that have can lack [h] in what is apparently the strong form, and that you can also drop it in house.

Yes, the strong form of have can lack [h] for me.

[bradrn]

When counting time, in American English, there's a tradition of repeatedly saying "[number] Mississippi" to lengthen the time that it takes to say each phrase to make it fill a whole second. Given that Mississippi is an American state, do non-American varieties of English have a different word that they use instead to do the same thing?

Oddly enough I use ‘Mississippi’ too, though it may be influenced by my childhood in Canada. An alternative I’m aware of is ‘[number] one thousand’.

[abahot]

Oddly enough I use ‘Mississippi’ too, though it may be influenced by my childhood in Canada. An alternative I’m aware of is ‘[number] one thousand’.

Even in the USA there are other alternatives. For example, at my (American) grade school, students would count using "one [name of school], two [name of school]", etc.

[Travis B.]

When counting time, in American English, there's a tradition of repeatedly saying "[number] Mississippi" to lengthen the time that it takes to say each phrase to make it fill a whole second. Given that Mississippi is an American state, do non-American varieties of English have a different word that they use instead to do the same thing?

Oddly enough I use ‘Mississippi’ too, though it may be influenced by my childhood in Canada. An alternative I’m aware of is ‘[number] one thousand’.

I'm familiar with 'Mississippi' and 'one thousand' myself.

[Raphael]

Which is the usual, default, more common form of the idiom:

"forcing square pegs into round holes"

or

"forcing round pegs into square holes"

?

[bradrn]

Which is the usual, default, more common form of the idiom:

"forcing square pegs into round holes"

or

"forcing round pegs into square holes"

?

The former.