English questions

[Raphael]

But what's the alternative? "A complete grammar of the idiolect of Ms Jane Smith"?

[keenir]

The question this raises to me is "what is standard US English?" Are we speaking of an idealized General American, or the broad spectrum of varieties that most American would agree are "standard"? The former is likely to be detached from reality and anachronistic, while the latter runs into the immediate problem that "standard" US English isn't really all that coherent in the first place, which complicates writing a grammar for it.

Long ago, it was explained to me that people on the national news try to speak in such a way as to not use regional dialects. State or county news sometimes does the same, and sometimes leans heavily on local dialects.

Assuming that that is true, would that make national newsreporters' English be a standard to use for this, or would it be classed as one more dialect to have listed in the table of contents?

But let's say we restrict our grammar to the speech of newscasters and news reporters. A newscaster from California is very likely to be cot-caught merged, while a newscaster from Illinois is almost certainly not going to be. Conversely, a newscaster from Illinois is very likely to have conditional raising of /aɪ/ before fortis obstruents while this is likely not going to be the case of a newscaster from California. These two cases represent very broad internal variations within even very "standard" US English.

My bad then; when i learned what i mentioned before, my assumption was that the reporters were taught how to avoid the regional raising/merging/other that tells the audience where said reporter is from.

[Travis B.]

My bad then; when i learned what i mentioned before, my assumption was that the reporters were taught how to avoid the regional raising/merging/other that tells the audience where said reporter is from.

My point was that these are variations within what is considered standard - standard US English allows for both lack and presence of cot-caught merger and both lack and presence of raising of /aɪ/, such that these are not things that typically are regarded as making one sound "accented". I could be wrong, and Californian newscasters could be taught to unmerge the cot-caught merger and Illinoisian newscasters could be taught to not raise /aɪ/ before fortis obstruents. The former seems less plausible, because unmerging mergers is, well, very difficult to do well, and one is better off leaving them merged. The latter seems more plausible, because no vowel contrasts are created or destroyed, but at the same time from what I have read raising of /aɪ/ is considered part of General American (if anything I would expect the opposite, and Californian newscasters adopting the raising of /aɪ/).

[Otto Kretschmer]

Is the "be going to" construction going to replace "will" as the default future tense?

[Travis B.]

Is the "be going to" construction going to replace "will" as the default future tense?

No, because they have different meanings - will is future tense, be going to is prospective aspect or intention. One can combine be going to with past tense, to express a "future in the past", for instance:

"He was going to buy that car in the used car lot, until he saw the marks from hail on it."

[Raphael]

Is the "be going to" construction going to replace "will" as the default future tense?

No, because they have different meanings

Then again, meanings can shift over time.

[WarpedWartWars]

No, because they have different meanings

Then again, meanings can shift over time.

One interesting example is "with"--it originally meant "against". I think the LCK talks about that, but I'm not sure, and if it doesn't, it might be the ALC or David Peterson's The Art of Language Invention.

[Travis B.]

Is the "be going to" construction going to replace "will" as the default future tense?

No, because they have different meanings

Then again, meanings can shift over time.

The thing is that there is no evidence of such a shift happening at the present, and what signs there are of such a shift probably are a misinterpretation of what native speakers actually mean.

[WarpedWartWars]

Then again, meanings can shift over time.

The thing is that there is no evidence of such a shift happening at the present, and what signs there are of such a shift probably are a misinterpretation of what native speakers actually mean.

Such a shift could happen sufficiently far in the future that there are no signs of it yet. And such misinterpretations might be the cause of it.

[Travis B.]

Then again, meanings can shift over time.

The thing is that there is no evidence of such a shift happening at the present, and what signs there are of such a shift probably are a misinterpretation of what native speakers actually mean.

But such a shift could happen in the future, without us seeing signs of it because there are no signs of it yet.

Edit: (why is that hard to word right?)

The thing is all kinds of things could happen in the future without any signs of their happening at the present, but there is no sense in predicting them as possibilities for that very reason. The only predictions of the future that make sense are those with initial underlying signs at the present or similar parallel developments that suggest that the same could happen here and for which the underlying conditions are also present here.

[WarpedWartWars]

But such a shift could happen in the future, without us seeing signs of it because there are no signs of it yet.

Edit: (why is that hard to word right?)

The thing is all kinds of things could happen in the future without any signs of their happening at the present, but there is no sense in predicting them as possibilities for that very reason. The only predictions of the future that make sense are those with initial underlying signs at the present or similar parallel developments that suggest that the same could happen here and for which the underlying conditions are also present here.

True. However--and correct me if I'm wrong--here the latter seems to fit: intention turning into future tense, if I'm not mistaken, has happened, and, in my more recent edit,

And such misinterpretations might be the cause of it.

[zompist]

One interesting example is "with"--it originally meant "against". I think the LCK talks about that, but I'm not sure, and if it doesn't, it might be the ALC or David Peterson's The Art of Language Invention.

That's in the Conlanger's Lexipedia; for more see here, including some survivals of the 'against' meaning. Something that I didn't know till I saw that page was that "with" is cognate to Russian второй '2nd'. Neat!

[WarpedWartWars]

One interesting example is "with"--it originally meant "against". I think the LCK talks about that, but I'm not sure, and if it doesn't, it might be the ALC or David Peterson's The Art of Language Invention.

That's in the Conlanger's Lexipedia; for more see here, including some survivals of the 'against' meaning. Something that I didn't know till I saw that page was that "with" is cognate to Russian второй '2nd'. Neat!

Ah.

Edit: wiðer looks a lot like wither; I wonder why...

[Travis B.]

One interesting example is "with"--it originally meant "against". I think the LCK talks about that, but I'm not sure, and if it doesn't, it might be the ALC or David Peterson's The Art of Language Invention.

That's in the Conlanger's Lexipedia; for more see here, including some survivals of the 'against' meaning. Something that I didn't know till I saw that page was that "with" is cognate to Russian второй '2nd'. Neat!

Ah.

Edit: wiðer looks a lot like wither; I wonder why...

According to Etymonline, wither comes from an alteration of Middle English wydderen, itself an alternation of wederen, related to to weather, and German verwittern (compare with German Wetter "weather"). Conversely, with is related to German wider "against".

[Travis B.]

I should note that the change from -/dər/ to -/ðər/ is a change also found in mother (Middle English moder, German Mutter), father (Middle English fader, German Vater), weather (Middle English weder, German Wetter) and so on.

[WarpedWartWars]

Ah.

Edit: wiðer looks a lot like wither; I wonder why...

According to Etymonline, wither comes from an alteration of Middle English wydderen, itself an alternation of wederen, related to to weather, and German verwittern (compare with German Wetter "weather"). Conversely, with is related to German wider "against".

I actually saw all that there, but forgot to say here.

So "weather" and "wither" are a little bit like the two "ear"s--"ear" of corn, "ear" on the side of one's head? Except, of course, not exactly homophones.

[Richard W]

Is the "be going to" construction going to replace "will" as the default future tense?

No, because they have different meanings - will is future tense, be going to is prospective aspect or intention. One can combine be going to with past tense, to express a "future in the past", for instance:

"He was going to buy that car in the used car lot, until he saw the marks from hail on it."

But 'going to' can already be used for the senses of will. "Something that cheap is going to have something badly wrong with it" is generally a statement about the present and says nothing about volition.

[Travis B.]

Is the "be going to" construction going to replace "will" as the default future tense?

No, because they have different meanings - will is future tense, be going to is prospective aspect or intention. One can combine be going to with past tense, to express a "future in the past", for instance:

"He was going to buy that car in the used car lot, until he saw the marks from hail on it."

But 'going to' can already be used for the senses of will. "Something that cheap is going to have something badly wrong with it" is generally a statement about the present and says nothing about volition.

Be going to does not require volition but rather is prospective, even though for animate subjects it often implies volition. For instance, take "If he keeps on running into the street like that he's gonna get run over by a bus", which is prospective without indicating volition (even though the subject is animate).

The real difference between the will future tense and the be going to prospective aspect in English is that the latter can be combined with past tense, and that it indicates that the present is leading towards a future event happening (and is thus changeable) or, when combined with the past, that the past was leading towards a future event happening (which likely never actually happened) whereas the will future more strongly indicates a fixed future that is not readily changeable.

Take "He will eat the hamburger in one bite" versus "He is going to eat the hamburger in one bite" - the former expresses a fixed fact - the subject will eat the hamburger in one bite, and nothing is going to change this - while the latter expresses only that the present is leading towards the subject eating the hamburger in one bite (he may fail to stuff the whole burger in his mouth and gulp it down in one bite, even thouogh he probably will do his best to try).

[Richard W]

Take "He will eat the hamburger in one bite" versus "He is going to eat the hamburger in one bite" - the former expresses a fixed fact - the subject will eat the hamburger in one bite, and nothing is going to change this - while the latter expresses only that the present is leading towards the subject eating the hamburger in one bite (he may fail to stuff the whole burger in his mouth and gulp it down in one bite, even thouogh he probably will do his best to try).

You're talking about some lect I am not familiar with.

[Travis B.]

I've noticed another oddity in "Canadian" Raising in my lect - snark and snarky lack raising, unlike practically all other instances of /ɑr/ before a fortis obstruent.