Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 July 24

= July 24 =

Stuttering and languages
Are there any languages which are known to be particularly easier or harder to speak in if you have a stutter - or, out of curiosity, any other kind of speech impediment? Vimescarrot (talk) 14:15, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * British Sign Language? :-) Now I'm wondering if that gets harder when you're old and doddery. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 14:26, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I've never heard of any languages with a reputation for being easier to speak with a speech impediment but that's probably because if it were easier enough, it would more than likely become a normal part of the language. Speech impediments are typically language specific anyway.  So, for instance, it's considered a speech impediment for an English speaker to pronounce /r/ as .  There are instances, however, where a speech impediment of one language is not one in another.  If I understand correctly, the term for Russian speech with a uvular /r/ instead of an alveolar one is translated into English as "lisp" whereas this is a normal feature of French (and the alveolar realization is also normal, though dialectal).  Similarly, some Spanish dialects merge the dental and alveolar fricatives to  (the sound of thin) which we would call a speech impediment but they don't seem to (I could be mistaken on this).
 * I doubt that any language would be easier to speak with a stutter since it inherently means someone is stalling in their utterances. It might be the case that, with languages with phonemic gemination or reduplication, such stalling might cause some confusion.  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  16:44, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It shouldn't be translated as 'lisp', as a lisp is a specific speech impediment (call it what you will), where the phoneme 's' is pronounced differently from the common populace, not 'r'. And it is caused by something or other which is not the cause of the uvular 'R' pronunciation translated as 'lisp'. It's like translating 'chopsticks' into 'knife and fork' just because they are both used to eat with, but they are totally different things. --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 18:30, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * You'd better tell the translators of the Russian works I've read, because that's what they do. It may be incorrect, but my point was that it's seen as a speech impediment and the (mis)translation indicates this.  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  19:56, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Stuttering is generally not a problem with the physical production of sounds, but is probably related to brain function. This means that it's not the language that's the issue, but the individual's genetics or biochemistry (or trauma or...). By the way, in response to the comment above, it's not the same thing as stuttering, but deaf babies babble in sign language. Exploding Boy (talk) 18:50, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Your question made me wonder if stuttering existed in tonal languages, since apparently singing isn't affected by stuttering, but apparently there's plenty of examples of stuttering in Chinese. 1 So, I have no idea. Indeterminate (talk) 23:49, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, speaking a tonal language isn't singing, any more than speaking English with standard prosody is. You can sing in Chinese and it's different from speaking Chinese. (Although I do wonder how they tell the tones apart in a song!) rspεεr (talk) 08:57, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Usually the context supplies it. 'Wo qi wo de ma' can mean either 'I am riding my horse' or 'I am riding my mother' depending on the tones. It's up to the listener to have common sense (also, Chinese CDs all come with the lyrics written in the jacket). --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 11:41, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * The question of singing in a tonal language was raised here quite recently. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 12:30, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * "I'm riding my mother" would be a singularly unusual lyric, I would think. It would be a singularly unusual statement in general, really.  Exploding Boy (talk) 06:14, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, it was an extreme example, but still it illustrates my case that anyone with common sense would be able to understand the lyrics of a song, just based on context. --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 06:22, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. I wondered specifically because a friend of mine who stutters suffers particularly with certain sounds - so wondered if languages which tend to lack these sounds might be easier to talk in. She finds English easier than her native language, for example. Vimescarrot (talk) 10:26, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I think it might be possible that stuttering occurs more often in languages which have a lot of conjugation, declension and other complicated grammar rules. There are lots of complicated rules in German, my mother tongue. -- Irene1949 (talk) 22:13, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I would be very surprised if that were so, because I would expect stuttering to be a fault in the uttering component, which is pretty well independent of the grammar component. Do you have any evidence? And if not, why do you think it might? --ColinFine (talk) 23:07, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't have any evidence. But I think that the more rules there are to be observed, the more thinking is required before speaking. And that might make speaking less fluent. In a similar way as a computer cannot achieve a fluent performance when it has poor system resources and a task which requires a lot of computing.-- Irene1949 (talk) 23:34, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Simple english grammar question
From Four stages of competence:

"The individual neither understands or knows how to do something, nor recognizes the deficit or has a desire to address it. "

Should that be 'neither/nor' instead of 'neither .. or understands knows..'

Or doesn't it matter, or not?83.100.250.79 (talk) 15:07, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It looks like they're trying to set up the structure thus: "neither (1) [understands or knows how to do something] nor (2) [recognizes the deficit...]". But that's hard to parse, and I don't see that there's any tremendous difference between understanding how to do something and knowing how to do it. I'd just say "neither knows how to do something nor recognizes the deficit...". +Angr 15:27, 24 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with Angr about the structure the writer is trying to set up. In terms of understand vs. know, I suppose it could be thought of as intellectual vs. practical knowledge: I understand how a knuckleball is thrown, but I'll be darned if I can actually throw one.


 * The recognizing deficit vs. desiring to address piece it appears to be there because Stage 2, Conscious Incompetence, is defined as "Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, he or she does recognize the deficit, without yet addressing it." On its own, the Stage 1 sentence would not need to mention the lack of desire to address a deficit, since one cannot wish to change something one does not know about. But since Stage 2 acknowledges but doesn't do anything about it, the sentence is constructed to differentiate.  It makes for an awkward construction.  Something like "The individual does not know or understand how to do something, and neither acknowledges the deficit nor desires to address it" might be a little more clear. Some jerk on the Internet (talk) 17:30, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * OOPS my mistake, typed it in wrong. I've made the question I was asking much more explicit below. It wasn't a question about the meaning, which is clear from the linked article (above), but whether the grammar is a bit wrong in context of the intended meaning?

Are either of these more correct: (first line is original)

"The individual neither understands or knows how to do something, nor recognizes the deficit or has a desire to address it. " vs "The individual neither understands nor knows how to do something, nor recognizes the deficit (n)or has a desire to address it."


 * Both sentences seem equally incorrect to me, the more I consider them:


 * The first sentence is attempting to state that the individual does not engage in either of two behaviors. The first behavior is knowing or understanding something.  The second behavior is acknowledging or desiring to address something else.  The individual therefore satisfies the two criteria of unconscious incompetence.  It's grammatically correct, I suppose, since one could say "I have neither an apple or a banana (two fruits), nor a pork chop or a steak (two cuts of meat)," but it's awkward.


 * The second sentence states that the individual engages in none of four behaviors: understanding, knowing, acknowledging, and desiring. Even though the individual is still doing none of the things that he or she isn't doing in the first sentence, it's no longer implied that behaviors 1 & 2 and 3 & 4 are related.  Now it's less clear that unconscious incompetence is met by satisfying two criteria (incompetence and unconsciousness).


 * Better than both would be "the individual neither understands nor knows how to do something, and neither recognizes the deficit nor desires to address it. In this case, the individual meets criterion A (doesn't do X or Y) and also meets criterion B (doesn't do N or Z). Some jerk on the Internet (talk) 19:31, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Regicide
From regicide: ''In France, the judicial penalty for regicides (i.e. those who had murdered, or attempted to murder, the King) ...."

The word is being use in this context to refer not to the act, but to the perpetrator. I can imagine a sentence such as "A regicide is a person who commits regicide".

Do any other -cide words have this double meaning? I've never heard of a common-or-garden murderer being referred to as "a homicide", or a person who kills themself as "a suicide". What's special about regicide, and why? -- JackofOz (talk) 21:41, 24 July 2009 (UTC)


 * "a suicide" is uncommon, but not unknown - Harpers, Time magazine, New York Times, Psychiatry in Law/law in Psychiatry (a textbook), The Apocalypse (a bible commentary), and a 1950s Filipino court report uses the term to describe someone who is alive but intends suicide: here. -- Finlay McWalter Talk 21:59, 24 July 2009 (UTC)


 * "a homicide" seems less common and probably more archaic yet, but not entirely unknown: History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours,  The History of the Bible, an 1835 bible commentary, and Perspectives on Africa: a reader in culture, history, and representation, a 1997 textbook. -- Finlay McWalter Talk 22:06, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * The OED has quotes for this usage for "homicide", "suicide", "deicide", "regicide", "infanticide" and "fratricide" (all pre-1900) and recent quotes for "patricide", "parricide", "uxoricide" and "matricide". The only similar word I can find for which the OED does not attest such a usage is "genocide", a twentieth-century coining. Algebraist 22:10, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

In the original Latin, homicida is the person who commits the crime, while homicidium is the crime itself. AnonMoos (talk) 22:26, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * The ambiguity is probably due to the fact that the language upon which these words are modeled, French, regularly substitutes -e for both Latin -a (rosa) and -ium (dominium) (rendered as rose, domaine). Iblardi (talk) 23:24, 24 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks. All good stuff.  I see we have Category:Regicides by nationality, which lists perpetrators only.  We also have Category:Suicides by country; it's obvious why we'd reference a suicide by the name of the person involved, but I think it's conceptually about the act itself as much as about the doer/victim (but maybe it's impossible to extricate these meanings in such cases).  We have nothing under Category:Homicide that uses the word "homicide" to refer to either a perp or a victim, just an act (perps come under Category: Murderers and victims come under Category: Murder victims).  So, the only clear case where the -cide word means specifically the perpetrator is regicide.  I'm interested in why this word seems to still be reasonably common enough with this meaning, whereas the other -cide words almost always refer to the act only.  (I note the OED cites for the perp meanings of the less commonly-occurring -cide words, but surely they're used only rarely to refer to the perp.)  --  JackofOz (talk) 00:10, 25 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Heh, and Orson Scott Card has coined 'xenocide', for one who exterminates an alien race...Rhinoracer (talk) 12:28, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

"Rejection of Belief in God" - exact meaning?
In the article Atheism I read the sentence: "On our definition, an 'atheist' is a person who rejects belief in God ...". My question is not about the meaning of the word "atheism" - that would be a difficult affair. My question is about the exact meaning of "a person who rejects belief in God". Does - in that sentence - the rejection refer to the person's own beliefs only, or does it refer to other persons' beliefs too? I hope that I could make clear what I'd like to know. If not, I ask you to be patient with a German who is trying to understand the finer points of the English language. -- Irene1949 (talk) 22:57, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Does the formulation "a person who rejects belief in God" only mean "a person who decides that he or she doesn't believe in God"? So that the rejection refers to the person's own beliefs only, and that it is possible that the person doesn't care whether other other people believe in God or not?
 * Or does the rejection refer to anybody's belief in God? So that "rejecting belief in God" includes thinking that it would be good if other people didn't believe in God either?


 * I think the meaning intended by the author of the sentence to which you refer is the former, simply a personal rejection. But the sentence doesn't carry a special meaning that forces that first interpretation (your second interpretation is a perfectly valid view of what the sentence could mean). I think you understand the sentence as well as anyone, and if it seems ambiguous it's quite possible that its author intended both meanings to apply. -- Finlay McWalter Talk 23:05, 24 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your answer. I had already assumed that the former meaning was intended, but I was not sure. Now I am glad to read that apparently I was right. -- Irene1949 (talk) 23:46, 24 July 2009 (UTC)