Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 November 10

= November 10 =

Never...Never...Never...Never...ARGH!
I was curious to know the answer to this question: Why is it that sometimes when you say (or think perhaps?) a word often enough, you realize that it makes no sense? Let me explain:

Suppose that you have nothing better to do and you decide to repeat the word "Never" over and over again without thinking about what it means or anything else (you can try it right now too!). After a while, you'll start to realize that the word "Never" is strange and/or that it sounds weird. Why?

I'll wait five minutes  ^.^

[Follow the directions above: If you have a lot of free time, Now answer the question]

Thanks!

♥  ECH3LON   ♥  00:29, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

P.S.- this works with other words as well, is there a word to describe this?


 * Reference_desk/Archives/Science/2007_August_20 fails to deal with it properly. I thought this had come up more than that, but if that is so I'm using the wrong search terms. Hmmm, I'd imagine there's a word and a fair amount of study about it, since it's so widespread. It's led me to look German words like Sport up in the dictionary, in the past :) I'll have a further look... Skittle 00:39, 10 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Everything2 has some musing on the subject, although obviously as amateur as any you'll find here. Wittgenstein apparently thought it was to do with the way we assign meaning to words. Generally, it seems to be because words have specific meanings because of context as well as because of the actual sounds/letters. Remove the context and you can start to hear the bare sound, without the meaning. For example, if you hear someone say "I only threw it so far", the sound so has a completely different meaning to if you heard someone say "I can't sew very well". If you just repeat so over and over again, there are no clues as to what it is meant to mean and the meaning is stripped away. I think.


 * In the Theatre of Consciousness apparently calls it semantic satiation and offers a different explanation.


 * Oh, and here is a bizarre related phenomenon. Apparently, if you play people a loop of a voice saying something over and over again, they start to hear changes. Skittle 00:54, 10 November 2007 (UTC)


 * About 15 seconds into saying "never" I started thinking of snow. It took me a further 30 seconds to realize why I started thinking of it - it's Portuguese. H YENASTE 04:32, 10 November 2007 (UTC)


 * The principle works in reverse in meditation using a mantra. Mantras are useful because they are word-like sounds that are easy to pronounce, but they are not words and thus have no meaning.  When you're chanting the mantra, or repeating it inside your head, the mind has no meaning to latch on to and it ceases to dominate your consciousness.  A word like "snow", "never" (or any word, really) that's repeated sufficiently often will lose its meaning for the reasons outlined by the other respondents, and it too will become a mantra.  Practitioners of meditation know that it's more efficient to bypass the process by choosing sounds that are already absent of meaning.  --  JackofOz 06:12, 10 November 2007 (UTC)


 * All very true. More schematically perhaps: a word has three aspects—
 * form (its sounds)
 * function (how it "works" in a sentence/context)
 * meaning (what idea it refers to).


 * We associate form with meaning through a process of conditioning, called language acquisition.
 * But if you repeat a word over and over again, all you repeat is its form! No wonder it loses its meaning as well as its function: you have started by eliminating those in the first place, foregrounding the form. Constant repetition makes your exercise so successful that any association between form and function-cum-meaning is destroyed: you have successfully deconditioned yourself. But "you realize that it makes no sense" is not quite correct: on the contrary, you have made it impossible for yourself to realize the sense of the word. Bessel Dekker 11:38, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * BTW, never has to be repeated more often to lose its meaning: in Thou shalt come no more, never 1, never 2, never 3, never 4, never 5, a dying King Lear still manages to make sense. Bessel Dekker 11:40, 10 November 2007 (UTC)


 * ←Unindent A similar phenomenon has been reported when a word is written many times in succession in a short space of time, as described in the Jamais vu article and in a link from there. Bessel Dekker's reasoning above applies in the same way to this exercise.  By the time the volunteers in the study mentioned in the article had finished writing "door" 30 times in one minute, more than two-thirds were reporting "weird" sensations such as "...beginning to doubt that 'door' was a real word".  Hassocks5489 23:22, 13 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Very interesting. However, the quote refers to "brain fatigue", and from my ponderous comment above it will be clear that such an explanation seems to me incorrect (or rather, beside the point). Incidentally, is the external link quite right? It seems to refer to implanted chips, and surely only the more paranoid among us would make that connection? Bessel Dekker 13:18, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Deaf naming
How much has been written on naming practices among the Deaf? —Tamfang 06:07, 10 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Can you explain what you mean? Are we talking about the words that deaf people use to name things?  --  JackofOz 06:14, 10 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Personal names. —Tamfang 07:11, 10 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Sorry, you're still not being very clear. Personal names for each other?  Personal names given to them by their parents (who in most cases don't know the child is deaf until after they're named)?  What?  Come to the party, Tamfang.  --  JackofOz 07:52, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I assume Tamfang means "the Deaf" (the community of people who are deaf) and their naming practices. What would deaf parents call their children and how? --Kjoonlee 08:04, 10 November 2007 (UTC)


 * They name them by having their names recorded in the Register of Births, like any other parents. What they call them, and how, is a different matter.  --  JackofOz 08:11, 10 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Perhaps Tamfang is curious about how they address their children, whereupon I must assume that they have to call them "you" or spell the name out in sign language. I doubt there is a specific sign for too many first names. I agree Tamfang is being more than a little cryptic here. 203.221.127.81 13:23, 10 November 2007 (UTC)


 * In my experience, in conversation using BSL or Makaton people tend to use just the first letter of someone's name. No doubt there are nicknames and suchlike as well, but I have no experience of that. Skittle 14:59, 10 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Sign language often uses some visual characteristics of people instead of their name. This has to be agreed upon when you're starting to get to know people, but it's basically no different from learning that other people are named Peter and Mary. For example, a friend of mine once did a sign language course before he started working with a group of deaf people; he had very long hair and was the only male in the group with long hair. His name among the deaf (and consequently among his non-deaf friends, at least for a while) was a downward movement with open hand from the ears to the shoulders to indicate his hair. -- Ferkelparade &pi; 20:14, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I've encountered that sort of thing too. Gestures like that are often made with the hand taking the shape of the initial letter of the person's name. —Angr 21:20, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Ferkelparade, that's what I was getting at. So I'm wondering whether there's any research on such questions as: Apart from those given by signing parents, are name-signs more often assumed by the bearer or given by peers? What fraction of name-signs incorporate the initial of the legal name? What kinds of elements occur most commonly in name-signs? In what circumstances and how often does a person's name-sign change? How much do the answers to these questions vary between different signing communities? What questions haven't I thought of? —Tamfang 23:51, 10 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I had a deaf student in the USA; I do not understand sign language. I was told she gave me one of the gesture-names where she made the sign for the first letter of my name and then moved her whole hand. I imagine most signers do that for the hearing people that they talk about very much. --Gerry Ashton 00:04, 11 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Assuming that American Sign language is the same as Australian, nickname signs are given to you by your friends. It follows the previous replies where the first letter is used in coordination with a characteristic. You can decide on a nickname for yourself, and people might use it, but like choosing a nickname for hearing people, they might use a different one.

Deaf people don't use name signs very often in the presence of the person being spoken about, because you can simply point to them. You would very rarely sign your own name unless you were introducing yourself. A deaf person won't necessarily know how they are referred to by other people until they ask, or will have different nicknames in different groups. When you introduce yourself, you fingerspell your given name, and you can suggest (along the same lines as "My name's James, but you can call me Jim"). Steewi 11:11, 11 November 2007 (UTC)


 * In my experience with Japanese sign language, when talking to a person you would point at them (using the full hand with palm facing upwards - as pointing with a single finger is considered rude), or you would spell their names. Obviously, you would have to spell the name when the person is not actually present (i.e. you are talking about them to someone else). When spelling the name, you would use the meaning of the person's Kanji + Title (Teacher, Sect. Manager, etc.). If you are using the person's given name, you would generally spell it out.--Manga 23:12, 12 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Yep Ferkelparade is correct. On first occasions names are spelled out using fingerspelling, but eventually -especially when you have a long cumbersome name- signers will start using shorter, more convenient signs; often based on nicknames. - Mgm|(talk) 21:19, 14 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Nicknames tend to be unique to particular groups of friends. For example, among some of my hearing-impaired friends my nickname is the letter 'H' making the sign for 'beautiful'.  Another group affectionately refers to me with the letter 'H' making the sign for 'bitch' (this is a bit of a running joke, as they all refer to one another as either 'bitch' or 'bastard').  But if I were introducing myself to someone I've just met, I would never call myself "Beautiful H" or "Bitchy H".  That would be either arrogant or rude (or both!).  I would simply finger-spell my name and allow them to call me what they wished.   -Heleneotroy  66.100.89.121 (talk) 15:45, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Gender of coined words in Latin
I know we've had a variant of this one before, about how they pick the gender of nouns in languages that require it, but this has a twist. Does anyone know of a case where a new word was added to Latin (or any other gendered language, but Latin is my main interest), and where it led to an open discussion/ decision about which gender the word should be? How did they decide in such cases, where they were forced to do so consciously? 203.221.127.81 14:43, 10 November 2007 (UTC)


 * From French, usually a new word will be given the gender that "sounds right", given the phonological pattern of most regular genders in the language. I'm not sure with Latin, but I believe that only grammarians would actually discuss metalanguage to this extent - everybody else would just go with what feels right. It's similar to what English speakers do when a new word is coined: are we Wikipedians or Wikipediites? Go with what feels right. That's how language evolves. SamuelRiv 17:29, 10 November 2007 (UTC)


 * While it's not exactly what the questioner was asking, they might find it interesting: In Spanish, a big gender discussion is underway over words for occupations that just recently women have taken. For example, lawyers (abogados) were always men, but when women started to enter the legal field, the feminine abogada sounded strange, so some people called them unas abogados, a masculine term with a feminine article. The RAE later ruled that la abogada was the only correct way of saying it.--El aprendelenguas 19:03, 10 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Also, when Spanish speakers barrowed the word Internet from English, they started using both |el Internet and |la Internet. As you can see from those Google searches, el Internet is more popular by about 110,000 results. However, the RAE says that the only correct usage is la Internet since the Spanish word for "net" (red) is feminine. This example tells us that even if speakers of any language formally get together to discuss the gender of a barrowed word, their decision will not have any significance with colloquial speakers.--El aprendelenguas 19:16, 10 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Back to Latin, I guess that if the word is latinized (e. g. it is made declinable), then the declination scheme assigned is the one corresponding to the preferred gender. So, in a way, you are free to choose to make it match the original gender. Exceptions to this include cities, trees, etc: those objects with pre-fixed genders.
 * I suppose that more abstract objects will tend to take the neuter gender. --Pallida Mors 76 07:40, 11 November 2007 (UTC)


 * There is actually a very lengthy precedent for creating Latin words. Native Latin speakers in antiquity, and people who spoke Latin in the Middle Ages, very frequently had to assign declensions to new words. Classically this was mostly because they were borrowing Greek words, which did not cause too much difficulty because Greek had the same three genders. If they had to come up with an entirely new Latin word, they would probably form it from the past participle of some related verb, and it would then be 4th declension and masculine. The same is true for the Middle Ages, but of course new words came from languages that were far less similar to Latin than Greek. Names of places and peoples were formed from classical examples (Francia, France, a feminine singular; Turci, the Turks, a masculine plural, etc). I can think of a few completely new nouns that were fourth declension, but masculine just because they are church positions held by men: patriarchatus, episcopatus, diaconatus, etc. There was sometimes confusion about what declension a new noun should be, and there was also confusion about what declension classical nouns should be, since medieval children didn't always learn Latin properly. You might want to look at a book called "Medieval Latin" by Mantello and Rigg for more about this. There are probably discussions for the same thing in modern neo-Latin too, especially with Internet terms, but I think nowadays everyone tries to use compounds of established Latin words just to avoid that confusion (for example, "interrete" for Internet has to be third declension neuter because of "rete"). And since there was never a single regulatory body for Latin, anyone could assign any declension to any word they wanted to make up, but if no one understood what they meant, then it would be pointless. I think it would also be true for all periods of Latin to say that there would be more of a dispute about how to translate a word in the first place, rather than how to decline it. Adam Bishop 01:59, 12 November 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.210.170.48 (talk)

Erstwhile object
I keep hearing the phrase "the erstwhile object" used by linguists and linguistic anthropologists. Could somebody explain the meaning of this phrase? Thanks!Benzocane 02:48, 11 November 2007 (UTC)


 * "Erstwhile" means "former" (but no more, as in "former husband"), and "object" can mean many things, like direct object, or artefact. So it means "the former direct object", or "the former artefact", or something else depending on the meaning of "object" in the context. --Lambiam 04:13, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I believe that in linguistics this has to do with the Active -> Passive transformation. In that process, the (direct or indirect) object of the Active sentence of course becomes the subject of the Passive construction: hence this new subject is in fact the erstwhile object. The phrase occurs in literary studies too, where it seems to refer to role reversal (promotion), cf. . Bessel Dekker 16:45, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Not quite a troll, not quite a sock puppet
I'm looking for a word in the Internet subculture to describe a userid created by a company to say good things about the company in online forums. "Troll" isn't right, because the company seeks to calm the trouble whenever the company's name is mentioned, not create trouble. "Sock puppet" isn't right, because the company does not take part in the forums except through the deceptive userid; I understand that socket puppets engage in dialogs with their alter egos. (By the way, the company in question is not active on Wikipedia, so far as I know). --Gerry Ashton 23:30, 10 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Astroturfer? Ashleeturfer? --Kurt Shaped Box 23:37, 10 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Astroturfing is a new word for me; I think it would fit if it were being done on a large scale, but does not seem to apply to creating a single userid. I have no idea what an Ashleeturfer is. --Gerry Ashton 23:47, 10 November 2007 (UTC)


 * A quick search suggests that "Ashleeturf" was coined to describe astroturf-style publicity organized by Ashlee Simpson's father. —Tamfang 05:01, 11 November 2007 (UTC)


 * What about shill or plant? —Keenan Pepper 05:07, 11 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, I think shill is the best word. Thanks. --Gerry Ashton 17:29, 11 November 2007 (UTC)