Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Whimemsz]

Quick Quiz, how do you render these? I realize some of these are not the most natural way to phrase these statements, but bear with me.

The Tongolese delegation to the UN storms out of the chamber: "Tonga _ leaving."
Seven family members sit down to dinner: "The family _ gathering."
Manchester United beats City: "City _ reeling from the loss."
People are arguing at their place of business: "The office _ fighting."

"Is" in all cases for me. "Tonga are leaving" and "The office are fighting" are completely ungrammatical for me; "The family are gathering" and "City are reeling from the loss" are both ? awkward but understandable. (only because "city" is a sports team here. If it was a literal city, then "are" would be ungrammatical again)

(Inland North American English for me)

"Tonga are leaving" and "The office are fighting" are both completely ungrammatical for me, as is "The family are gathering". "City are reeling from the loss" is very awkward to me, and is only grammatical at all to me because of the common pattern of sports teams taking the plural (except that the sports teams that take the plural for me have names which are in the plural to begin with).

(Inland North American Engilsh here too)

[American from Massachusetts and then Texas:]

I concur that "are" is ungrammatical with "Tonga" and "office." "Is" is definitely more preferable to me for "City" than "are," but the latter isn't ungrammatical. Interestingly, "are" sounds perfectly fine to me with "family," though? (Though I think I probably use "is," and I may be overthinking it too much at this point, idk...)

[zompist]

Interestingly, "are" sounds perfectly fine to me with "family," though? (Though I think I probably use "is," [...])

You're not alone. Although I'd use "is" in all four sentences, "the family are gathering" doesn't sound bad to me.

[Travis B.]

Interestingly, "are" sounds perfectly fine to me with "family," though? (Though I think I probably use "is," [...])

You're not alone. Although I'd use "is" in all four sentences, "the family are gathering" doesn't sound bad to me.

On second thought, while I cannot see myself saying "the family are gathering", I can picture someone else saying that IRL.

[Space60]

"Inflammable" is a dangerous word. While it means the same thing as flammable, people can mistakenly think it means nonflammable or fireproof .

[Space60]

I have seen on the internet where someone named Lee Craig Schoonmaker claimed to originate the term "gay pride". He passed away recently according to a Google search which shows an obituary. Did he really coin the term or is he just claiming to?

[Pabappa]

I have seen on the internet where someone named Lee Craig Schoonmaker claimed to originate the term "gay pride". He passed away recently according to a Google search which shows an obituary. Did he really coin the term or is he just claiming to?

Its possible, but I doubt it. I first heard about Schoonmaker in the late 90s ... I think hes primarily known for the Expansionist Party, a political party which supports annexing the rest of the world into the USA. I read his website then and kept tabs every now and then .... the XPUS seemed to go their own way on nearly every possible issue, as if they were purposely trying to be different. I dont know. I think he spent a lot of effort trying to make himself seem bigger than he was. Its possible he coined "gay pride" not having heard it before but simply wasnt the first to do so, nor was he the one who popularized it. e.g. i coined "symblematic" back in ~2010 on my own but soon learned I wasnt the first to use it, nor the most famous ... that honor goes to Donald Trump.

I wish him a happy hereafter.

[kodé]

Haven’t trawled through this thread (or the one on the previous inwebtation of the Zeeb) to know if this has been discussed, but I’ve been thinking about the word “slash” used as a conjunction, as in, “that cat is a cuddlepuss-slash-demon”, or “this kind of rain flood streets-slash-ruins parades”. Semantically “-slash-“ seems akin to “as well as” of “in addition”. Syntactically, at very first blush, “-slash-“ seems similar to “and”, insofar as it sounds wrong if it’s conjoining different syntactic categories. And I’m pretty sure there’s gotta be specific pragmatic conditions as to when you can use it.

Mostly, I just think it’s pleasantly interesting that English has grammaticalized the name for a punctuation symbol.

[zompist]

Haven’t trawled through this thread (or the one on the previous inwebtation of the Zeeb) to know if this has been discussed, but I’ve been thinking about the word “slash” used as a conjunction, as in, “that cat is a cuddlepuss-slash-demon”, or “this kind of rain flood streets-slash-ruins parades”. Semantically “-slash-“ seems akin to “as well as” of “in addition”. Syntactically, at very first blush, “-slash-“ seems similar to “and”, insofar as it sounds wrong if it’s conjoining different syntactic categories. And I’m pretty sure there’s gotta be specific pragmatic conditions as to when you can use it.

Interesting stuff. I think it retains some sense of "or" as well. I may be too influenced by the punctuation usage, but I think it resists being an S-conjunction: "?I'm a lumberjack slash I'm OK". "*Slash God created the heavens and the earth."

Mostly, I just think it’s pleasantly interesting that English has grammaticalized the name for a punctuation symbol.

"Period" can be used as an emphatic particle. I wonder if the Brits ever use "stroke" in place of "slash"...

[Moose-tache]

I agree that using slash with conjunctata that could be grammatically independent sentences sounds awkward, though sometimes that might happen on purpose.

person 1: "When I push this button, everything goes back to normal."
person 2: "Slash, we all die."

I think the unique character of slash is that it emphasizes the interchangeability of the conjunctata:
"On the weekends I like to watch Netflix [and/or] steal diamonds." This is compatible with the idea that watching Netflix and stealing diamonds, even though they both may fill the same slot in your schedule, are perfectly distinct activities with their own consequences.
"On the weekends I like to watch Netflix slash steal diamonds." This implies that there really isn't much difference, or you are uninterested in the difference, between these two activities. It's six of one, half a dozen of the other.

[akam chinjir]

Ah, fond memories of this article, which maybe everyone's seen: Anne Curzan, Slash: Not Just a Punctuation Mark Anymore. It attests some examples with clauses. For example:

I really love that hot dog place on Liberty Street. Slash can we go there tomorrow?

[KathTheDragon]

I wonder if the Brits ever use "stroke" in place of "slash"...

I want to say yes, but I'm not sure. It doesn't feel wrong, at least...

[alynnidalar]

Anne Curzan

I didn't realize she'd written that article! I read the article awhile ago, and I also listen to her segment on language on NPR (which I think is a Michigan-only thing), but didn't put the two together previously.

[Raphael]

Parallel to the "Pronunciations you had to unlearn" thread, is there a thread about ideas about the meanings of words that you had to unlearn? Apparently there isn't.

Anyway, one example I'm thinking of right now is that for an embarrassingly long time, I thought that in English, the phrase "olive-skinned" referred to black people. I mean, olives generally come in two colors, green and black, and since there are no green-skinned human beings (that I know of), when you compare human skin to olives, you obviously have to mean black-skinned people, right? It took me a while to figure out that in English, "olive-skinned" means "the skin color of most of the people from the countries around the Mediterranean Sea where people have traditionally grown olives".

[Moose-tache]

Olive as a color word refers to a greenish-beige like this. I think using "olive" to refer to people is alluding to the medium luminosity, while ignoring the greenish hue. Some olives in fact are more of a light beige and not deep green. I doubt it has anything to do with agricultural output.

EDIT: fun fact, googling "olive skin" returns endless pictures of women with extremely light skin. Good to know the internet will never change.

[Raphael]

Olive as a color word refers to a greenish-beige like this. I think using "olive" to refer to people is alluding to the medium luminosity, while ignoring the greenish hue. Some olives in fact are more of a light beige and not deep green. I doubt it has anything to do with agricultural output.

Ah, thank you.

[Pabappa]

given that we still call Native Americans "redskins" I find no trouble believing that the term "olive-skinned" comes from olives. but just as we dont know the true etymology of "redskin", i dont think we can ever find out the true origin of the olive term.
i wrote much the same thing here.

Parallel to the "Pronunciations you had to unlearn" thread, is there a thread about ideas about the meanings of words that you had to unlearn? Apparently there isn't.

i'd be interested. right now I can only thinj of one term that i learned as an adult ... fixer-upper, which i thought meant "a person or tool who conveniently fixes things". but it is in fact a term for a house with a lot of problems, likely derived from "fix (h)er up" with a meaningless syllable added to make it rhyme.

only learned i was wrong because someone else made the same mistake and there was a thread about it on the ZBB. in fact maybe we did have a thread like that long ago .... but it would have been quite a long time ago, perhaps 2004.

[zompist]

Anyone have access to the OED? It'd be interesting to know how old the "olive skin" usage is, and where it was originally used.

This question has come up in other places, and nobody seems to have a scholarly answer, but two theories often come up that are more reasonable than "people thought that Mediterraneans looked green":
-- that it refers to the color of olive oil
-- that it refers to the color of olive wood

But who knows, we also have "red hair", which is not red. And almost none of the terms for colored skin are at all accurate.

[Hominid]

I mean, some olives are brown, but that's not the color being referred to either.

[zyxw59]

Arguably "red hair" is red, when you consider that "orange" as a basic color term in English is relatively recent (Wikipedia says the first recorded use of "orange" as a color term was in 1512)

[Zaarin]

given that we still call Native Americans "redskins" I find no trouble believing that the term "olive-skinned" comes from olives. but just as we dont know the true etymology of "redskin", i dont think we can ever find out the true origin of the olive term.

I don't think many people still refer to Native Americans as "redskins"...I'm not sure of the etymology, but I do find it interesting that both Native Americans and white Americans seem to have come up with the concept of "red identity" more or less independently at more or less the same time (in the mid 18th century). (I've seen it suggested that it has to do with the ochre paint used by the Beothuk, but I find that extremely doubtful. Quite a few tribes in the East and Midwest painted their hair or their part red using ochre and bear grease, but again that doesn't really explain red skin.)

But who knows, we also have "red hair", which is not red. And almost none of the terms for colored skin are at all accurate.

Light red hair is orange, but I've known redheads with darker hair that I'd call properly red.