Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 November 2

= November 2 =

-tröm surnames
What is the origin of the -tröm part of the Germanic (Yiddish? Swedish?) surnames like Bergstrom and Sandstrom? I just can't figure it out. Steewi 03:09, 2 November 2007 (UTC) (added in wrong day first - didn't think to check the date)Steewi 03:12, 2 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Could it be that the s is not a genitive marker? So it's Berg-strom (mountain river).--K.C. Tang 03:26, 2 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Rem acu tetigisti: you have it. Xn4  04:39, 2 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Spectacular. That won't be bothering me now. My fault for over analysing. Thanks! Steewi 05:57, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Issue page
Is there a page to post requests for fixing language issues in wikipedia? See my earlier Reference_desk/Language. Thanks. VanBurenen 09:38, 2 November 2007 (UTC)


 * There is AutoWikiBrowser/Typos, which, however, is intended more for misspellings. I'm not sure there is general consensus that "general consensus" is severely redundant. In general it is unwise to leave such things to fully automated bots; for example, we wouldn't want a bot to "fix" the use in Half Man Half Biscuit. BTW, my count of main space articles using the phrase "general consensus" is more like 400. --Lambiam 10:40, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
 * That's not too bad than ;). I'll leave it at that. Thanks. VanBurenen 11:11, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Children's vs Adult's voices (x-posted from Science refdesk)
Many thanks 81.153.3.36 10:05, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
 * What are the differences between children's and adult's voices, excepting the obvious physiological effects of growth and hormonal adjustments?
 * For example, children's voices tend to sound more sing-songy, breathy, and rhymical, but have there been any studies to make quantitative or qualitative measures of the difference in voice-qualities as age progresses?
 * It is obvious that human's are readily able to differentiate between younger and older speakers independently of any use of linguistic cues : are computers able to do the same, and under what heuristics would they operate?
 * Are there any posited hypotheses of the cognitive causes of these non-physiologically determined variations?


 * I think this belongs in the section on Language and Linguistics. Meanwhile, I'm not well studied at all in developmental linguistics, but I can try to answer with what I know.


 * Obviously, as you stated, as a child gets older his larynx expands and produces deeper tones as the vocal chords vibrate. Similar resonance differences occur as the size of the oral and nasal cavity expand. However, the prosodic changes (those in rhythm and tone) can probably be traced to what are still not well understood phenomena in child linguistics. For example, a toddler will show reduplication (repetition of words) and other types of word play, depending on age, as he learns to speak. He will also exaggerate and misuse intonation (the parents do this too when they speak to children for the precise reason that intonation is difficult to master). All of this is most likely a result of the problem of learning something as complicated as language simply from cues around you. Computational models of this type of learning are very simplistic, last I've seen, and usually involve limited degrees of freedom (such as a simple robot learning to walk or play the drums according to outside information). None that I know of are linguistic in nature.


 * It is true that the age of a speaker can be approximated by linguistic cues alone. This is done in precisely the same manner as you mentioned, as well as by judging vocabulary, grammar use, pronunciation, and pragmatics (appropriateness of responses). Computers are probably most advanced at this point in distinguishing pronunciation, but still trained phoneticians are used to diagnose and treat speech disorders, because software simply still isn't good enough. The variations you discussed are not well understood computationally or anatomically, so I don't believe there have been any good hypotheses other than those suggested by experience with children. SamuelRiv 04:02, 1 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks SamuelRiv. I guess I wasn't as clear as I could have been. I was interested in specifically those differences that aren't linguistic in any way. That is, not vocabulary, grammar use, pronounciation or pragmatics, nor anything else for which it is require to assign meaning to the sounds. Rather, I wondered what kind of differences were recognisable in the pure sound-form of the voice, aucoustic qualities you might say.
 * In any case, I found a paper which is along the lines of the ideas I expected : : though it still seems that there is woefully little work done on understanding speech outside of pathological/dysfunctional cases, which I guess is understandable, if not totally satisfactory. 81.153.3.36 12:09, 2 November 2007 (UTC) (Cross-posting to linguistics desk, just in case.)


 * Ah, vocal acoustics is something I haven't studied. Anatomically, I'd look closely at the shape and size of the oral and nasal cavities and the ability to completely close the nasal passage while speaking orally (/b/,/s/,/v/, etc), or the oral passage while speaking nasally (/m/,/n/,/N/). Also, the shape and contraction of the pharynx would likely be important. See if you can find some x-ray images of children's vocal tracts to compare to adults, as that would be the clearest comparison. SamuelRiv 14:43, 2 November 2007 (UTC)


 * There have been studies on the vocal tract differences and the acoustic differences, although I can't name them off the top of my head. What I remember is that there is surprisingly little difference between boys' and girls' voices, acoustically, and they're not able to be reliably differentiated. On the other hand, it is very easy to tell a child's voice from an adult's voice. The difference doesn't lay only in pitch, but also in phonation, articulation and the shape of the upper vocal tract. Steewi 01:12, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Coombeshead College
What is the pronunciation of the word "Coombeshead"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.188.159.167 (talk) 13:28, 2 November 2007 (UTC)


 * As a placename, it's probably from "coombe's head" = "top of the valley"; coombe usually rhymes with boom and doom, but it's a variant of combe, which rhymes with roam and dome. So my guess is  "coom's head" or possibly  "comb's head"; though I can't say which syllable is stressed.  A better option might be to ask at Talk:Coombeshead College. jnestorius(talk) 14:19, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
 * But you know how those Brits are about names. If Featherstonehaugh is supposed to be pronounced, then Coombeshead is probably equally unpredictable-- maybe. —Angr 10:07, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Your theory is unsound, unfortunately. Unpredicatability is inherently ... well, unpredictable.  --  JackofOz 23:26, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

People from Niger
If people from Nigeria are called Nigerians then people from Niger are called...? --Candy-Panda 13:50, 2 November 2007 (UTC)


 * They're called Nigeriens or Nigerois. See Niger.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back 13:53, 2 November 2007 (UTC)


 * cf. "Dominican" for Dominica and Dominican  for Dominican Republic. jnestorius(talk) 14:25, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

This has been bothering me as well. Go wikipedia volunteers!!!!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.13.35.88 (talk) 23:07, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

latin
What is the meaning of the latin phrase in the following sentence: The prince ... is not free to enact ... laws which go counter to ... that "aequitas" which is "rerum convenientia, tribuens unicuique quod suum est"? 78.109.196.167 13:51, 2 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Aequitas means "fairness" or "justice", and the long phrase means "the agreement/harmony of things, granting to each one that which is his/her own". —Keenan Pepper 14:26, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Name syntax
Does anyone have any information on the origin and first use of the phrasal structure '[First Name] generally sarcastic quote or idea [Last Name]' as in 'Ted "series of tubes" Stevens' or 'Mohammed "there are no tanks in Baghdad" Saeed al-Sahaf'. I would guess that it's something to do with the 'x is my middle name' idea, but it seems to have extended to the point where it breaks up a noun phrase in a way that in any other case I can think of would seem ungrammatical. For example, 'The Blue-footed clumsy Booby' sounds wrong to me in a way that 'The clumsy Blue-footed Booby' doesn't (obviously the latter has a different meaning), but this switch isn't possible with the first two names. Has anyone written about this in the Cambridge Grammar or Language Log?

Cheers Trebor27trebor 17:20, 2 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I have no specific information about when, but I would have thought it was a simple extension of the principle used in Charles "Buddy" Rogers, Edd "Kookie" Byrnes, etc. --  JackofOz 22:54, 2 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the help, and for helping so many other people out on this page. Trebor27trebor 17:45, 4 November 2007 (UTC)


 * See "Trope or Internym" on this page. --ColinFine 00:35, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

translation
how would you say: its all good in the hood in french? i know its something like c'est bon dans la... but i can't be sure. thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.13.35.88 (talk) 23:04, 2 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Is this supposed to rhyme? Assuming you mean 'hood = neighbourhood, you could say Tout va bien dans le quartier, but that does not have a slang quality. --Lambiam 03:19, 3 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Although it's nothing like so slangy as it's all good in the hood, if you can't find anything better you could use ça marche, ça marche. I believe this can allude to a popular song by Christophe Maé which has the stirring chorus "La la la la la la la, ça marche, ça marche, Oh no, oh la la la, ça marche, Houu la la la la la la la." It's called, unsurprisingly, 'Ça marche'. Xn4  04:32, 3 November 2007 (UTC)


 * This is a good example of the principles discussed in Le Ton beau de Marot. One might object that Xn4's translation doesn't say the same thing, but its overall quality is closer to the English original than Lambiam's is. —Keenan Pepper 01:11, 4 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree, Keenan, if you mean a literal translation could take us into deep waters. And I'm sure you're not confusing "ça marche?" (how's it going?) with "ça marche!" (it's going fine). Xn4  04:55, 4 November 2007 (UTC)