English questions

[Travis B.]

(I have mentioned this before, but do not recall getting any real responses.) Does anyone else have alternative past participle forms that are not synonymous with the standard past participle forms but rather coexist with them in their variety of English?

For instance, my dialect of English has pairs (or triplets) like eaten and aten, drunk and dranken (and drunken), shaken and shooken, brought and broughten, caught and caughten, and so on. Interestingly enough, aten, dranken, and shooken feel more "past-y" than eaten, drunk (or drunken), and shaken, and when using them with "have" like the normal present perfect they seem to have a meaning between between the present perfect and the past perfect.

An example of ths is "I've eaten the hamburger", which seems to indicate that the eating of the hamburger just happened, whereas "I've aten the hamburger" seems to indicate that more time has passed since the hamburger was eaten.

As for forms like brought and caught versus broughten and caughten, the former seem more static or perfective while the latter seem more dynamic and imperfective and often implies a process involving a change of state (and are typically combined with a particle such as up).

An example of this is "I've caught up with my homework", which seems to indicate a singular event, whereas "I've caughten up with my homework" seems to indicate the completion of a process of catching up with one's homework. Forms like caughten are not usable in all cases, as shown by "I've caught the spider" but *"I've caughten the spider", as catching a spider is perceived as an event rather than a process.

[bradrn]

(I have mentioned this before, but do not recall getting any real responses.) Does anyone else have alternative past participle forms that are not synonymous with the standard past participle forms but rather coexist with them in their variety of English?.

We’ve discussed ‘got’ vs ‘gotten’ before.

[Travis B.]

(I have mentioned this before, but do not recall getting any real responses.) Does anyone else have alternative past participle forms that are not synonymous with the standard past participle forms but rather coexist with them in their variety of English?.

We’ve discussed ‘got’ vs ‘gotten’ before.

For some reason the distinction between the two seems vaguenly similar to that between -ought and -oughten PP's in my variety.

[Travis B.]

What really is the meaning of we guys? I have caught myself using this, and just noticed my boss using it today. Is this explicit 1+2 clusivity?

[TomHChappell]

What really is the meaning of we guys? I have caught myself using this, and just noticed my boss using it today. Is this explicit 1+2 clusivity?

I don’t know!

But In my estimation it could also be 1+2+2 or 1+2+3.

[Travis B.]

What really is the meaning of we guys? I have caught myself using this, and just noticed my boss using it today. Is this explicit 1+2 clusivity?

I don’t know!

But In my estimation it could also be 1+2+2 or 1+2+3.

From second thought, it sounds like 1+2+2 clusivity to me.

[Travis B.]

Growing up I pronounced hundred as /ˈhʌnər/ within numbers such as three /ˈhʌnər/ and sixty five and as /ˈhʌndʒrəd/ otherwise. However, recently I have been noticing here that a lot of people here pronounce hundred even by itself as /ˈhʌnərd/ even though I don't, and I am wondering if my /ˈhʌndʒrəd/ is just an oddity of the exact microdialect of the particular suburb I grew up in (and apparently it does have oddities specific to it, as the exact suburb I grew up in has been picked out just from how I speak), or if this is just an influence of prescriptive pronunciation or spelling pronunciation on my own speech.

[Zju]

As in "China restaurant" instead of "Chinese restaurant" or "Spain road" instead of "Spanish road"?

Do you mean this Spanish Road? How often do people even talk about that one?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Road

No, I made up the example. But I swear I kept seeing such examples quite often one or two months ago.

Case in point: Hungary law could make Ukrainian refugees homeless

[Linguoboy]

Do folks find this sentence well-formed:

"Stop immediately if you feel faint or pain."

[zompist]

Do folks find this sentence well-formed:

"Stop immediately if you feel faint or pain."

Nope, but it's tricky to say why. It seems like straightforward Right-Node Raising (i.e. deletion of identical leftward material in conjoined clauses) applied to "...if you feel faint or if you feel pain."

Cf. "Are you feeling sick or back pain?" Also bad for me.

But "That track is a banger and ultramodern" is fine. Or "These accusations are unwarranted and a travesty."

[Man in Space]

Do folks find this sentence well-formed:

"Stop immediately if you feel faint or pain."

I find it well-formed. I wouldn’t give it a second thought.

[Darren]

Do folks find this sentence well-formed:

"Stop immediately if you feel faint or pain."

It's a kind of zeugma, in the vein of "Miss Bolo ... went straight home, in a flood of tears and a sedan-chair." And zeugmas always just feel like puns.

I guess the reason is that "feel faint" is a verb + adjective predicate, but "feel pain" is a verb + noun predicate, and right-node raising is only really acceptable with identically formed predicates. So "she made do and a pavlova" feels flippant but "she made breakfast and lunch" is unremarkable.

But then the Dickens quote above is "in (NP) and (NP)" but still feels flippant, whereas the original sentence can be smoothed out a bit as "stop immediately if you feel faint or in pain", even though thats "feel (ADJ) or (PP)". So it's probably more semantic than structural.

[bradrn]

I guess the reason is that "feel faint" is a verb + adjective predicate, but "feel pain" is a verb + noun predicate, and right-node raising is only really acceptable with identically formed predicates. So "she made do and a pavlova" feels flippant but "she made breakfast and lunch" is unremarkable.

I agree with this analysis. It becomes acceptable to me if I change it to two adjectives: ‘Stop immediately if you feel faint or pained’. (Presumably it would work with two nouns also, but I’m not sure what the nominal equivalent to ‘faint’ would be.)

For some reason, an adjective + a PP also feels acceptable: ‘Stop immediately if you feel faint or in pain’.

[Travis B.]

Do folks find this sentence well-formed:

"Stop immediately if you feel faint or pain."

Nope, but it's tricky to say why. It seems like straightforward Right-Node Raising (i.e. deletion of identical leftward material in conjoined clauses) applied to "...if you feel faint or if you feel pain."

Cf. "Are you feeling sick or back pain?" Also bad for me.

But "That track is a banger and ultramodern" is fine. Or "These accusations are unwarranted and a travesty."

I am in agreement here. The original sentence sounds ill-formed to me, as does "Are you feeling sick or back pain", but the other two sentences sound perfectly fine to me. My guess, like others have mentioned, is that my English-speaking brain doesn't like mixing adjectives and NP's in these kinds of clauses.

[Raphael]

Do folks find this sentence well-formed:

"Stop immediately if you feel faint or pain."

Nope, but it's tricky to say why. It seems like straightforward Right-Node Raising (i.e. deletion of identical leftward material in conjoined clauses) applied to "...if you feel faint or if you feel pain."

Cf. "Are you feeling sick or back pain?" Also bad for me.

But "That track is a banger and ultramodern" is fine. Or "These accusations are unwarranted and a travesty."

Same.

[Raphael]

I'm currently reading an English-language novel in which a character is described as blond on one page and as red-haired on the next page. Is that just the author being sloppy, or can red-haired sometimes be seen as a subdivision of blond in the English language?

[Travis B.]

I'm currently reading an English-language novel in which a character is described as blond on one page and as red-haired on the next page. Is that just the author being sloppy, or can red-haired sometimes be seen as a subdivision of blond in the English language?

While there is a gradation between the two, in this case I suspect this is just sloppiness.

[linguistcat]

Do folks find this sentence well-formed:

"Stop immediately if you feel faint or pain."

Nope, but it's tricky to say why. It seems like straightforward Right-Node Raising (i.e. deletion of identical leftward material in conjoined clauses) applied to "...if you feel faint or if you feel pain."

Cf. "Are you feeling sick or back pain?" Also bad for me.

But "That track is a banger and ultramodern" is fine. Or "These accusations are unwarranted and a travesty."

Same.

I think it's the lack of parallelism in the construction. You could say "... if you feel faint or sore." because faint and sore are both adjectives. But I also think if someone said it in a conversation, it would be awkward but not really Wrong to my ear. One of those things people say or write without thinking too hard just to get the point across.

[Raholeun]

Are the terms 'colleague' and 'coworker' entirely synonymous? Are there perhaps differences in connotation?

[zompist]

Are the terms 'colleague' and 'coworker' entirely synonymous? Are there perhaps differences in connotation?

Yeah, it's class Doctors have colleagues, plumbers have co-workers. Someone in the middle, like developers, can have either.

As ever, there are nuances. You can talk about a grocery bagger's colleagues, but it's ironic or condescending. If you talk about a doctor's co-workers, it'd be likely taken as their secretaries and nurses.