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Offline rivka

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #975 on: March 22, 2016, 06:44:23 PM »
Can one of you Latin experts answer this?

Quote from: one of my listservs
I am hoping you can assist me in determining the correct title for a Doctor in Pedagogy - honorary degree in Latin. In my search I have come across two different terms: Paedagogatus Doctoris and Pedagogiae Doctoris. Is this term gender specific? if so, in this case the recipient is male..
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Offline Ela

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #976 on: March 24, 2016, 11:33:07 AM »
I'm not sure I buy this premise:
No one could "see" blue color in ancient times.

They are claiming that because many languages didn't have a color for blue till more recent times. But some words that mean a form of blue go back thousands of years.


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Offline Jonathon

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #977 on: March 25, 2016, 12:06:54 PM »
You are right to be skeptical. The story as it appeared in the media is more or less a fabrication. Here are a couple of good Language Log posts on the subject:

Himba color perception
It's not easy seeing green

The posts are kind of long and technical, but here's the short version. Linguists have found that there is a pretty predictable pattern to the development of what they call basic color terms. In English, these are words like red, yellow, blue, black, white, pink, and so on. We may have names for more specific shades of those colors, but those are the umbrella terms. Maroon is a shade of red, lemon is a shade of yellow, and so on.

There are some languages that only have two basic color terms, which basically mean cool/dark/black and warm/light/white. If a language gets a third, it'll be red, the fourth and fifth are yellow and green in either order, the sixth is blue, the seventh is brown, and then after that we get terms like purple, pink, grey, and orange. (Some people have apparently questioned the universality of this order, but we'll just go with it for now.)

So first off, blue isn't even the last color to be named. Second, there's a big difference between having a word for a particular thing and being able to perceive or conceive of a thing. People who don't have a basic color term for blue can still see blue, but they might be slightly slower at picking out the blue than people who do have a basic color term for blue. (For the record, the picture of the "test" that the Himba people were given is apparently a fake.) The real tests that I've seen haven't been nearly so exaggerated, and the difference is one of speed, not of ability.

If you take this to its logical conclusion, then no English speaker should be able to see the difference between light blue and dark blue, or between any two different shades of blue, really. Greek has separate words for light blue and dark blue, so obviously they can see the difference while English speakers literally can't, right?

And if you're talking about the physical ability to see color, then you're basically arguing that this is a relatively recent development in human evolution. But how would you explain different groups of humans across the globe evolving the ability to see different wavelengths tens of thousands of years after humans left Africa? And why would that evolution seem to go hand in hand with the degree of advancement that a civilization attains? Because obviously it has nothing to do with the evolution of a physical ability.

As for words for blue going back thousands of years, unfortunately I don't know much beyond Indo-European linguistics. I do know that Proto-Indo-European had words for red and yellow and maybe a few others, but there was apparently no common word for blue, which is why all the different branches of Indo-European have unrelated words for it. Some of those words probably go back at least two or three thousand years. But I really don't know anything about ancient Egyptian, which they mention in the video, or any other ancient languages. But, again, even if no language had a basic color term for blue five thousand years ago, that wouldn't mean that people were literally unable to perceive the color blue.
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Offline Ela

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #978 on: March 27, 2016, 11:36:26 AM »
Thanks for all that info, Jonathon. The video seemed to me to be inaccurate on the surface of it, like it was glossing over some evidence, and that seems to be true. I've shared the two links with the folks I was discussing it with.

I guess it's just one more way pop science and inaccuracies get spread via the internet. ;)


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Offline Annie Subjunctive

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #979 on: March 30, 2016, 01:19:33 PM »
Etymonline is failing me on this one: where does the -o in weirdo come from?
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Offline rivka

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #980 on: March 30, 2016, 01:58:07 PM »
http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-secret-origins-of-nerd-dork-and-other-things-you-1482137598

Quote
The –o that turns weird into the noun weirdo is thought to come from the Middle English interjection "o," and over time become an diminutive suffix. It's the same process that turns kid into "kiddo."

Also: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/-o
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Offline Annie Subjunctive

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #981 on: March 30, 2016, 03:16:13 PM »
Quote
also forms nouns, usually derogatory, for persons or things exemplifying or associated with that specified by the base noun or adjective ( cheapo; pinko; sicko; weirdo; wino).

Yeah! That's what I was looking for - the other words I could think of were sicko and wino; I wondered why the -o was a little bit negative in meaning.
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Offline Megan

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #982 on: March 30, 2016, 04:24:56 PM »
What do people generally think about then as a conjunction? (e.g., "She took off her shoes, then danced in the rain.") CMoS is wishy-washy on it. I don't like it, but at least one of my clients thinks it's peachy-keen (which means this is more idle pondering than anything else, since I pretty much have to do what the client wants in that regard).

Offline rivka

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"Sometimes you need a weirdo to tell you that things have gotten weird. Your normal friends, neighbors, and coworkers won’t tell you."
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Offline Jonathon

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #984 on: March 30, 2016, 10:01:34 PM »
I'm not terribly bothered by it, at least in less formal situations. Inserting an "and" before it is fine sometimes, and other times it sounds a little stuffy.

So I guess I'm a little wishy-washy on it too.  ;)
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Offline Megan

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #985 on: March 31, 2016, 12:09:45 PM »
Rivka, I had seen that answer previously, and it does address the issue of using then between independent clauses (which the client in question doesn't like). But that's kind of what I was referring to when I called it wishy-washy: "The comma is necessary because it indicates the implied conjunction and prevents a run-on sentence; a semicolon would be even better." Although if it's okay between independent clauses, I imagine it's okay separating a compound predicate.

Jonathon, interesting that you think it sounds kind of stuffy at times. :D (CMoS agrees with you at least a little bit on that.)

Eh, as I said, mostly idle pondering, since I have to do what the client wants, even though it looks wrong to me.

Offline Tante Shvester

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #986 on: June 09, 2016, 12:28:50 PM »
Prefixes and suffixes are old hat for the English language, but infixes seem pretty new, like maybe they started in the last generation.

About when did the infix come into English?
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Offline Annie Subjunctive

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #987 on: June 13, 2016, 12:57:37 PM »
One of my linguistics professors told me that there is only one inflix used in the English language but he wasn't going to tell us what it was.

I figured out what it was and then challenged him, because I live in Utah and that's the exact sort of usage we would make new versions of. Abso-friggin-lutely.
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Offline Jonathon

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #988 on: June 13, 2016, 01:27:20 PM »
I'm not sure I'd say that the infix has come into English. Some languages (like Tagalog and other Austronesian languages) use infixation extensively to mark things like voice. Infixes in English, on the other hand, are pretty marginal—infixation with swear words because swear words are whole words, not affixes. And the only other ones I'm aware of are slang or ironic (like shiznit or edumacation), and they don't seem to serve a real grammatical or semantic function.

The OED dates obscenity infixation to the early twentieth century, but I'm not sure about the others.
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Offline Annie Subjunctive

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #989 on: June 14, 2016, 02:45:12 PM »
I just realized that we had fake infix "languages" that we used when we were kids. I heard several versions - one was called "Oppish" and was created by inserting the syllable "-opp," such as in "OppI'm Soppo hoppappoppy toppoo soppee yoppou!" The others were just a variation on the syllable you inserted. I always thought it was interesting when I was young how it sounded so complicated at first but then once you got the hang of it it came as second nature, both speaking and listening. But now I'm realizing we were just teaching ourselves a grammatical feature that didn't exist in English, but once it was learned, like any other foreign grammatical feature, our brains dealt with it just fine.
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Offline Jonathon

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #990 on: June 14, 2016, 03:27:03 PM »
I think my phonology professor used that language to illustrate infixation. Or maybe it was some other phonological or phonomorphological process.
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Offline Farmgirl

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #991 on: July 06, 2016, 06:31:06 PM »
I just realized that we had fake infix "languages" that we used when we were kids. I heard several versions - one was called "Oppish" and was created by inserting the syllable "-opp," such as in "OppI'm Soppo hoppappoppy toppoo soppee yoppou!" The others were just a variation on the syllable you inserted. I always thought it was interesting when I was young how it sounded so complicated at first but then once you got the hang of it it came as second nature, both speaking and listening. But now I'm realizing we were just teaching ourselves a grammatical feature that didn't exist in English, but once it was learned, like any other foreign grammatical feature, our brains dealt with it just fine.

By that definition/example -- then isn't 'pig latin' also an infix?
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Offline Jonathon

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #992 on: July 07, 2016, 08:20:10 AM »
Not really. Pig Latin is formed by taking the onset of the first syllable (the first consonant or consonant cluster) and moving it to the end followed by "ay". It's not being put in the middle of the word. It does end up in the middle in a sense, but only because you're tacking something on the end.
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Offline Tante Shvester

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #993 on: August 19, 2016, 10:00:41 AM »
What is this "base" that everyone wants to touch with me?
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Offline Porter

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #994 on: August 19, 2016, 10:26:05 AM »
Folk etymology guess:  it's a baseball reference.
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Offline Jonathon

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #995 on: August 19, 2016, 10:54:55 AM »
Oh dear. Your parents never had the talk with you, did they?

The base is a very special place that people like to touch sometimes. It helps them feel more connected to other people. But because it's a very special place, you shouldn't let just anyone touch it. If someone wants to touch base with you but you don't feel comfortable with it, raise your hands and firmly say "NO! I don't want you to touch me there!" You may feel embarrassed about making a scene, but don't worry—it's more important to let someone know that you don't want to touch base with them.
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Offline rivka

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #996 on: August 19, 2016, 04:57:46 PM »
 :D :D :D
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Offline Ela

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #997 on: August 28, 2016, 01:56:21 PM »
I have to say I never heard of an infix till I read the above. I'm still not sure I understand what it is.


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Offline Jonathon

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #998 on: August 28, 2016, 03:53:15 PM »
A real infix is just like a prefix or a suffix, except that it goes in the middle. Imagine if, instead of adding -ed on the end of a verb to make the past tense, we added it after the first consonant cluster in a word. So instead of kicked we'd have kedick, instead of walked we'd have wedalk, and so on. That's apparently how a lot of Austronesian languages work.

The process of plugging vowels into a triconsonantal root in the Semitic languages is somewhat similar, though it's different because those are always vowels (or sometimes the lack of a vowel, if I understand right), and they're applied throughout the word, not just in a single chunk in a predictable place. I just learned that that process is called transfixation.
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Offline Ela

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #999 on: August 28, 2016, 03:57:53 PM »
Thanks for the very clear explanation.


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