Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 December 9

= December 9 =

French grammar
Does the following sentence make sense?

Pourquoi est-ce que elle n'aime pas les mathematiques?

Vltava  68  09:56, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's grammatically correct too. Two small typos: que before elle gets apostrophized, and there is an accent aigu on the first "e" in mathématiques. "Pourqoui est-ce qu'elle n'aime pas les mathématiques?" You could also write "Pourquoi n'aime-t-elle pas les mathématiques?" ---Sluzzelin talk  10:02, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * "Pourquoi elle n'aime pas les mathématiques?" is correct too, isn't it? —Angr 10:13, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * It's certainly colloquial (and probably more so than either "correct" example given above), but, if I recall correctly, my French teacher would have marked it with a big fat red felt pen. I hope Lgriot or another native speaker will weigh in here. ---Sluzzelin talk  10:17, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * This is also good: "Pourqoui est-ce qu'elle n'aime pas la mathématique?" The singular la mathématique is more formal. Singular is standard, in names for the sciences: la physique, la cybernétique, l'astronautique, etc.
 * – ⊥¡ɐɔıʇǝo N  oetica! T– 11:09, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Even more colloquial is the French propensity to use only pronouns in direct conjunction with the verb, while stacking up nouns as appositives at the beginning and end of the sentence, as in "Ta sœur, pourquoi elle ne les aime pas, les maths?" —Angr 11:13, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Ouais, nous on aime pas les maths.
 * – ⊥¡ɐɔıʇǝo N  oetica! T– 11:33, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I disagree with Noetica. You simply can't say la mathématique that way without it standing out as odd. It makes you sound like some eighteenth-century philosopher proclaiming their admiration for the discipline. You might still say something like "la cruelle mathématique des réalités budgétaires." Apart from a handful of cases, the singular is highly marked. Bourbaki (in the 1930s) pointedly called their treatise Eléments de mathématique to emphasize the unity of mathematics, and drew attention to the title in doing so. 67.150.245.29 (talk) 14:07, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think we really disagree, Anon. When I say that it is "good", I mean that it is grammatically unexceptionable. That sentence with la mathématique is certainly proper to a different register, and something rather different and unusual would be intended by it: by way of connotation and perhaps meaning. It would indeed stand out as odd if uttered in most everyday contexts; thank you for stressing that. I merely said that it was "more formal", which is probably inadequate.
 * All that said, la mathématique is very widely used, and we should not prejudge what people are likely to want to say, in everyday talk! Depends who you talk to, every day. Or write to. A crude Google search sometimes helps in these explorations. La mathématique des jeux gets used often enough (not only in association with Gardner or Kraitchik); but les mathématiques des jeux only rarely. The case is similar to the Bourbaki one you mention, and there are inummerable others. One might like or not like such a "mathématique", and one might say so.
 * – ⊥¡ɐɔıʇǝo N  oetica! T– 19:47, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Angr, "Pourquoi ta soeur, elle aime pas ça, les maths?" or "Pourquoi elle aime pas ça, les maths, ta soeur?" would also be possible. 67.150.245.29 (talk) 17:36, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Correct, but very colloquial! --Lgriot (talk) 00:55, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Actually, Noetica, I think of the Bourbaki example as being quite different from examples you might find with "la mathématique de." "Eléments de mathématique" is an example in which mathématique denotes the discipline in a straightforward way, and is not qualified. The singular was idiosyncratic and intended to make a point. Bourbaki was characterized by its desire to use a modern algebraic viewpoint in its exposition of analysis, where traditionally these subjects were more isolated from each other. I think that a French mathematician who sees "la mathématique" is likely to think the writer is imitating Bourbaki.

Here's what Trésor de la langue française informatisé says:

6. Le nom singulier «la mathématique» (...) était devenu presque inusité au début du XXe siècle (...), car on admettait généralement que les sciences mathématiques (...) étaient distinctes et non réductibles à l'unité. Cependant le singulier était conservé par le courant de pensée partisan de cette unité (...), courant qui aboutit aux «mathématiques modernes». DUPRÉ 1972. 67.150.244.150 (talk) 06:20, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * O, I respect and understand all of that, Anon. Certainly I respect TLFi deliverances on such matters. As I say, though: it is dangerous to pre-empt what people might actually say, and what they might mean by it. In the circles I move in, an utterance deploying the lexical resources of the Enlightenment or even much earlier would hardly raise an eyebrow. That is true for a number of others here too, I'm sure. I have already conceded what needs to be conceded, and I stand by what needs to be stood by.
 * – ⊥¡ɐɔıʇǝo N  oetica! T– 06:48, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. Two things: I was too lazy to look for the accent, so I just typed "mathématiques" without it. I've learnt a bit about the use of apostrophe thingy, or rather, where it is used. Vltava  68  08:55, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Ration
Why does ration not rhyme with nation? Kittybrewster &#9742;  10:19, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I think for some people it does, but for those of us for whom it doesn't rhyme, I don't know if there's a real answer to the question "Why doesn't it?". Why doesn't sew rhyme with few? Why don't tough, cough, plough, and dough rhyme with each other? Why isn't read (present tense) homophonous with read (past tense), or lead (verb) homophonous with lead (noun)? I guess because what English lacks in complexity of declension and conjugation of nouns and adjectives it makes up for with an utterly incomprehensible orthography. —Angr 11:10, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * A good "official" reason would be this: Latin nātiō has a long ā; Latin ratiō has a short a. In isolation, that would be sufficient to account for the difference. But in fact, that leaves English ratio (with /ei/) unexplained. We would say that the standard pronunciation of ratio exhibits so-called "false quantity" (assumption of the wrong vowel-length in a source word, generally Latin), like many other well-approved pronunciations in English. Compare also certain ways with culinary and patent, among a zillion others.
 * – ⊥¡ɐɔıʇǝo N  oetica! T– 11:30, 9 December 2008 (UTC)


 * OK then why does rational rhyme with national? Just kidding.  And for a fun journey through English orthography, read this.  --LarryMac  | Talk  16:11, 9 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Compare ration with cation and equation. -- Wavelength (talk) 17:15, 9 December 2008 (UTC)


 * My favorite is periodic acid. Hint: It is definately NOT pronounced like you think it is... screws my students up every time.  --Jayron32. talk . contribs  03:14, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Short answer: Ration and nation don't rhyme because although they share the same letters on the end, they're pronounced differently. - Mgm|(talk) 11:19, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Slave in Haitian Creole
I'm just looking for the word "Slave" or "Slavery" in Haitian Creole. Anybody know of any translators or anybody just know!? 71.115.157.126 (talk) 16:43, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I have a Haitian Creole Bible. If you give me a Bible verse that uses one of those words, I can look it up for you. —Angr 16:44, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land.  You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance.  You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way.  (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT) (Source: http://www.evilbible.com/Slavery.htm) 71.115.157.126 (talk) 16:45, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Using both sites with English passage searches and Haitian Creole passage searches, I've drawn that "esklav" would be the best translation. I could be wrong, but for my purposes I'm not really too worried about that. This makes me wish I were a linguist thought :( 71.115.157.126 (talk) 17:01, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * My Bible uses the spelling "ésklav" both there and in the Epistle to Philemon. —Angr 17:29, 9 December 2008 (UTC)


 * See Romans 6 God's Word Translation (boldface italics added).


 * (15) Then what is the implication? Should we sin because we are not controlled by laws but by God's favor? That's unthinkable! (16) Don't you know that if you offer to be someone's slave, you must obey that master? Either your master is sin, or your master is obedience. Letting sin be your master leads to death. Letting obedience be your master leads to God's approval. (17) You were slaves to sin. But I thank God that you have become wholeheartedly obedient to the teachings which you were given. (18) Freed from sin, you were made slaves who do what God approves of. (19) I'm speaking in a human way because of the weakness of your corrupt nature. Clearly, you once offered all the parts of your body as slaves to sexual perversion and disobedience. This led you to live disobedient lives. Now, in the same way, offer all the parts of your body as slaves that do what God approves of. This leads you to live holy lives.


 * (20) When you were slaves to sin, you were free from doing what God approves of. (21) What did you gain by doing those things? You're ashamed of what you used to do because it ended in death. (22) Now you have been freed from sin and have become God's slaves. This results in a holy life and, finally, in everlasting life. (23) The payment for sin is death, but the gift that God freely gives is everlasting life found in Christ Jesus our Lord.


 * -- Wavelength (talk) 20:12, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * All of those are ésklav too. —Angr 21:13, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * On a side note, the Bible scares me. TomorrowTime (talk) 21:45, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Our God is Not a Tame God. Strawless  (talk) 22:11, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Slavery seems to be ésklavay, or so says the interwiki language link from the article on slavery to the corresponding one at "lang kreyòl ayisyen" Wikipedia, which also has an entry under ésklav. (Angr, how many different language versions of the bible do you own?) ---Sluzzelin talk  04:14, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I have at least portions of the Bible in 41 languages. For some of these languages (e.g. English, German, Welsh) I have more than one translation. Some people collect stamps, I collect the Bible in different languages. —Angr 06:45, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Way more interesting (Bibles in different languages than stamps in different postages) and useful too (as proven here). I wish I had an edition of ''La Sacra Biblia quai ais tuot la sonchia scrittüra: Dal velg et novf Testamaint: Cun l'agiunta dall'Apocrifa for your collection. ---Sluzzelin  talk  07:05, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I wish I had €600 to spare so I could buy it! I don't even have a modern Romansh Bible. And even though I live only a few dozen kilometers away from Lower Lusatia, I don't have a Bible in Lower Sorbian, because there isn't one. :-( —Angr 07:27, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * See Scripturetext.com: Online Multilingual Bible. "Search the Bible in over 40 Languages".
 * -- Wavelength (talk) 16:42, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Here is one supplier of Bibles in various languages.
 * Publications Available - Jehovah's Witnesses Official Web Site
 * The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures in English is online here.
 * Read the Bible online: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures - Jehovah's Witnesses Official Web Site
 * -- Wavelength (talk) 17:48, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * AFAICT, none of those links allows you to buy paper Bibles in various languages. The American Bible Society has a page here where you can, and some of my Bibles come from there. But lately either people give them to me as presents, or I just swipe the Gideon's Bible from the hotel room when I'm traveling abroad ;-) —Angr 18:10, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Do you come equipped with a gun to shoot off the legs of your rival? Deor (talk) 19:13, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The page "Publications Available" has the following information at the bottom of the page.
 * "These items may be obtained from the local Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses. If you are not familiar with the location of the nearest Kingdom Hall, you may check the telephone book for the address, or you may write to one of our branch offices."
 * The phrase "branch offices" is linked to How to Contact Us - Jehovah's Witnesses Official Web Site.
 * -- Wavelength (talk) 19:32, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * You can also download audio recordings of the Bible in various languages from http://www.jw.org/.
 * -- Wavelength (talk) 19:53, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Each Bible book, in turn, will be available for download for a limited time.
 * -- Wavelength (talk) 17:29, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
 * [The website http://www.watchtower.org/ is obsolete, but Wayback Machine has archives of the home page indexed at https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.watchtower.org/. Today the official website of Jehovah's Witnesses is http://www.jw.org, and the Greek Scriptures of the Bible in Haitian Creole are indexed at http://wol.jw.org/ht/wol/binav/r60/lp-cr/bi7/CR/2010.  Romans 6 is at http://wol.jw.org/ht/wol/b/r60/lp-cr/bi7/CR/2010/45/6, with the word "esklav" occurring several times between verses 15 and 23.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 21:43, 30 December 2014 (UTC)]

Number of syllables
How many syllables does English have? 80.58.205.37 (talk) 18:00, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Two: Eng - lish. (In pronunciation, ing - glish.) —Angr 18:35, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually, my dyslexicon says, it´s three: E - Angr - ish. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 20:52, 9 December 2008 (UTC)


 * That is actually a very good question, Anon.
 * As a preliminary, observe that it is easier to say how many "syllables" are possible in Mandarin Chinese, though the term is not so much used in discussing that language. There is a limited and known set of initials (like p-, or zh-), and a limited and known set of finals (like -ing, or -ei). Multiply the numbers of these two components, and you have the number of abstractly possible syllables. Take away syllables that are impossible for phonotactic reasons (like chü, or qang); take away syllables that simply happen not to occur (like tia, or nui); and you are left with the syllables of Mandarin Chinese. See them all at Pinyin table. There is, however, some disagreement among authorities, probably because some include non-standard or archaic forms, while others do not. Some may admit merely phonotactically possible forms, others may not.
 * Turning to English, the problem is harder. Unlike Chinese, English has consonant clusters like cl, str, and very many others; we also have a complex vowel system, with many unstable variants, and diphthongs; and of course English syllables may have consonants or consonant clusters at the start or the end of a syllable. To compound the problem, division into syllables is not absolutely standardised, and there we get into trouble with schwa and such evanescent sounds (as in rhythm, bottle, etc.).
 * Much of the theory is discussed at Syllable, and there are good links from there. To get a sense of the complexity that is possible in English syllables, see List of the longest English words with one syllable, to which I have just now added strengthed.
 * How many? These numbers are from John DeFrancis, The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, 1984:
 * English: "more than 8,000" [citing Jespersen]
 * Mandarin Chinese: 398–418, depending on various assumptions, and disregarding tones and addition of -r (see Erhua: DeFrancis does not in fact mention this, but should)
 * Cantonese: 664
 * Japanese: 113
 * Vietnamese: 4,800
 * I am suspicious of that figure for English; I would like to see the underlying assumptions made explicit.
 * – ⊥¡ɐɔıʇǝo N  oetica! T– 20:49, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The number for English depends of course on how you account for neologisms, such as pwn. I would assume that most traditional English syllables can be approximated by the following Backus–Naur Form. I am assuming we're talking about pronunciation here, not spelling, or else you pretty much have no upper limit, as the spelling "ghoti" for "fish" indicates. So I'm using IPA. (I'm counting affricates as stop+fricative in the onset. In the coda, I'm not distinguishing voiced fricatives, because I assume they're not phonemic. For the sake of mathematical simplicity, I'm also assuming /CV.CV/ syllabification) . The little hand points to how many instances I get for each of the lines:
 * ::= "p" | "t" | "k" | "b" | "d" | "g" ☛ 6
 * ::= "l" | "r" | "n" | "m" | "w" | "j" ☛ 6
 * ::= "s" | "z" | "ʃ" | "ʒ" ☛ 4
 * ::= "f" | "v" | "θ" | "ð" | ☛ 4+4 = 8
 *  ::= | ☛ 6+8 = 14
 *  ::= | | ☛ 6+6+8 = 20
 * ::= "ts" | "dz" | "tʃ" | "dʒ" ☛ 4
 * ::= (("" | "s") ("" | ) ("" | | ) | "h" ☛ 2*(1+6)*(1+4+6)+1 = 2*7*13+1 = 183
 * ::= "ʊ" | "ɪ" ☛ 2
 * ::= /* differs, we can assume there are some 12 */ ☛ 12
 * ::= ("" | ) ("" | | "ɹ") ☛ (1+2)*12*(1+2+1) = 144
 *  = "f" | "θ" | "s" | "ʃ" ☛ 4
 *  ::=  | | ( | "") ) ☛ 20+4+14*((6+1)*4) = 416
 * ::=  ("" | "s" | "θ" | "θs" ) ☛ 416*4 = 1664
 * ::=  ☛ 183*144*1664 = 43849728
 * So we get over 4 40 million possible syllables. This of course doesn't say that English has that many syllables, but I thought I'd put it here to put Jespersen's number in context. (Of course, many of the possible combinations are not realized or not phonemic (such as /tz/ or /ds/). &mdash; Sebastian 09:43, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Sebastian, why do you assume that voiced fricatives are not phonemic in the coda? There are numerous minimal pairs for /s/ versus /z/ and /f/ versus /v/ occurring in the coda (face/phase, safe/save are examples), at least a couple for /θ/ versus /ð/ (the noun mouth/the verb mouth), and while I can only think of subminimal pairs for /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ in the coda (e.g. douche versus rouge), minimal pairs exist in other positions. Thylacoleo (talk) 00:25, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah, my apologies, Sebastian. I see with more careful scrutiny of your formulae that they do account for the contrasts I mention above - it was just your earlier statement that was a little under-explicit. Although am I right that the formulae don't make allowance for the contrast between, for instance, pens and pence or shelf and shelve? Thylacoleo (talk) 01:47, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Good observation! Yes, the formula overlooks this! I found another mistake: We don't actually have as many triphthongs as I assumed. The only ones that do occur are "ɹ", not  ( . Instead, I should add "j" and "w" to the possible onset. The overall number then should reduce to one third - about 14 million. I'm a bit reluctant to correct that because it will get more complicated. If there's interest, we could move it to a subpage where we can work on it together. &mdash; Sebastian 06:09, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Indeed, I suspect tweaking it to account for all of the possible and impossible/unattested combinations would be an almost endless exercise. A larger gap though might be the absence of the phoneme /ŋ/, yes? Adding it would be problematic as well, as it doesn't occur after a great many vowels. For what it's worth, I have created a database of all monosyllabic English words. In my dialect (which is non-rhotic) these add up to at least 6481 different syllables, which is only a small fraction of all phonotactically possible English monosyllables (and doesn't even take into account syllables that occur in plurisyllabic words). Thylacoleo (talk) 23:00, 11 December 2008 (UTC)


 * The eight-digit final figure is over 40 million. -- Wavelength (talk) 16:44, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Oops - corrected that. &mdash; Sebastian 06:09, 11 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Solresol has only seven different syllables.
 * The Hawaiian language and the Māori language are two languages with few phonemes, and therefore few syllables.
 * -- Wavelength (talk) 18:10, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * And not just the low number of phonemes, but the highly restricted permissible syllable structure. In both Hawaiian and Maori, I believe, syllables can have only the form V or CV (where V is a short vowel, long vowel, or diphthong and C is a consonant). —Angr 18:17, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Thylacoleo makes good points above: "an almost endless exercise". It is an interesting and useful preliminary, to compute the huge number of merely abstract possibilities. But for practical purposes (designing pedagogical materials, or voice-recognition and voice-synthesising systems) we'd like to know what could occur – and then what is likely to occur. It is for such reasons that I started with Chinese, above, and worked down from a theoretical superset, down through a phonotactically possible set, and then down to syllables in actual use. That serves to model, with a language whose syllables are far simpler, how we might proceed for English.
 * To go a little further with Chinese, we should consider the tones. In Mandarin there are four of these, and they are certainly semantic (as opposed to variations of tone in English). Famously, mā, má, mǎ, and mà have quite distinct meanings. (And some mean more than one thing: there are several elements pronounced mǎ, each written with its own character, and meaning variously "a horse", "morphine", "a mammoth", "agate", "a leech", and so on. In speech these must be distinguished by context, occurrence in combinations, and especially by the use of appropriate classifiers; see Chinese measure word.) There is also a neutral tone; but the few elements that have that are normally also realisable with one of the four standard tones. Now, I suppose we could assume that the syllables in actual use occur on average with, say, 3.5 tonal variations. Taking 408 as the mid-point estimate of number of syllables in use, that yields an estimate of 408 x 3.5, rounded down to roughly 1400 toned syllables. Now consider erhua, which is the addition of a sort of r to the end of a syllable, along with nasalisation or other changes in what precedes. If all estimated 1400 toned syllables were sometimes modified by erhua, we would get another 1400, yielding a total of 2800. But many syllables, I think, would never have erhua applied to them in practice (and practice with erhua is subject to strong regional variation). So my upper estimate for the number of syllables actually used in Mandarin Chinese is 2000.
 * There. I have stretched my present competence with Chinese phonology to the limit, without recourse to any relevant studies beyond DeFrancis. I'd be interested in comments. Some of the above may also model, by parallels in reasoning, how we might proceed for English and other languages.
 * – ⊥¡ɐɔıʇǝo N  oetica! T– 23:49, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Noetica, it's always a pleasure to read your insightful contributions here. I agree with your proceeding for Chinese. (I would probably attribute a little less to erhua, because it often isn't phonemic and widely varies between speakers and regions, but I'm no expert.) So, the question is: How can you use this approach for English? Frankly, I don't think it works - I think that's basically what I tried above. I did the same for French once, and got reasonable values, just like what you get for Chinese. Maybe, for English we would need a fundamentally different approach. I think Thylacoleo's approach is more promising. If we can agree on a well-defined syllabification (no ambisyllabicity), then maybe Thylacoleo could extend database? &mdash; Sebastian 01:22, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
 * "By one estimate, English contains about 5,000 syllables."
 * (Beginning to Read: Thinking and ... - Google Book Search)
 * -- Wavelength (talk) 02:39, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Good, Wavelength. For even more fun, look at this Google book search. I recommend especially these hits:
 * For general considerations in Chinese.
 * For techniques like those I devised, applied to Kam.
 * A fine analysis for Chinese, from a book I must get, and on p. 496: "English has tens of thousands of possible syllables (about 8,000 by counting CVC alone)". There's our answer regarding Jespersen.
 * Chinese, Korean, and Thai.
 * Closely related to my technique for Chinese.
 * So tantalising! Can't see beyond the spippet: but it definitely includes erhua in the analysis.
 * Another tantalising one.
 * Sebastian, thank you. I very much enjoy your contributions and those of the other eruditi who frequent the desk. Now, I would say that the erhua suffix is very definitely phonemic. Can you show a case in which it is not? We have both noted that use of erhua varies regionally; in fact, like many issues in Chinese language for at least the last hundred years, it is a hot political issue in language standardisation and pedagogy. For this reason it rarely enters into analyses of the Chinese syllable (though see one of the Google hits, above), and it is often ignored in grammars – especially those published in China. It is also more fluidly and freely applied in conversation than standard grammars allow. These factors converge to make the identification of "standard" syllables both theoretically and practically challenging. But I am sure it ought to be taken into account. I should add: Don't let anyone tell you that erhua is only a feature of the "Beijing dialect". Not so, and some erhua features are firmly embedded in standard (often identified as Northern) practice, like nǎr ("where") and nàr ("there"). Southern practice may lean towards the variants nǎli and nàli, but they all understand the standard with erhua. And there are several nouns that have erhua universally throughout the Mandarin-native region, which stretches well into the south, and includes even Yunnan.
 * The technique I demonstrate for Chinese is applicable to English by giving a broad, logical format for how to proceed. Of course the details must differ; but given the uncertainties in procedure and reporting that our informal survey of the literature has revealed, there is a serious need for such general guidelines. And as I suggest above, the matter has practical implications. For a fleeting but indicative mention of that sort of cross-linguistic cross-pollination in modelling (for hybrid vigour), consider this:
 * "By the mid-1980s, the syllable – having been totally ignored within standard generative phonology – was attracting considerable attention in North America. Using fairly traditional terms (reminiscent of those used in Chinese linguistics; section 11.2 above), we can take a syllable to consist of a RHYME preceded (usually) by an ONSET. (Clark and Yallop, An Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology, 2nd edition, 1995, p. 411)"
 * Let us recall also the enrichment that a study of Chinese affords for Halliday. Other sources tell us that the Chinese syllable is intermediate in complexity between Japanese and English. Both are therefore worthy of study as preliminaries, for us. Finally, it is fascinating how central a notion word is for us, and how elusive and peripheral syllable is, when we turn to examine it. It is the exact reverse for the Chinese, as I can attest from my conversations with linguistically sophisticated speakers of Chinese in China. This has deep implications for pedagogy, at least.
 * But enough. If more is to be said, be my guest at my talkpage, dear colleagues.
 * – ⊥¡ɐɔıʇǝo N  oetica! T– 05:15, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Narrative Poetry and the Real World
Question moved to Reference desk/Humanities. Strawless (talk) 21:56, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

A little vocabulary help
I'm a little confused, and could use a gentle nudge in the right direction. On our vocabulary list for our English class, we have a word listed as "a outrance" (which does not exist). I get the feeling à outrance (a French word) is meant, but I'm not sure. Most of the words we've had this year have been related to grammar, but the next 142 words we've been given also seem to include regular vocabulary. We've had a couple of (technically) foreign words before, such as deus ex machina, and I can see ad hominem further down the list. Any ideas about what word I'm looking for? I've only just noticed it, and it's too late to ask my teacher. If I recall, she had trouble finding it, too...-- The Ninth Bright Shiner 23:41, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * It's likely the list is considering the term à outrance, a French term used in English (in the manner of deus ex machina) to mean "fight to the death" or "fight to the extreme". Used in medieval hastiludes and trials by combat, it was later used in other dueling and war contexts.  See attaque à outrance, for example.  The term is well spread throughout WP.  "Outrance" on its own is recognised as an English word by the big OED in archaic or historic contexts: "The greatest degree; a degree which goes beyond bounds or measure; extremity. to (also unto) (the) outrance: to the utmost, to the bitter end, to the death. at outrance: at the last extremity. to fight to (also at) (the) outrance: to fight to the death". It seems a slightly obscure choice for a vocab list, unless you are considering history. Gwinva (talk) 00:03, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Slightly pompous writers and speakers of English have been known to use à outrance in situations where hoi polloi would use "to the max" or a similar idiom. In his eulogy of Thoreau, for example, Emerson says that Thoreau "was a protestant à outrance." Deor (talk) 00:17, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Great, thank you!-- The Ninth Bright Shiner 22:56, 11 December 2008 (UTC)