Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 November 13

= November 13 =

French expression
What is a French equivalent of "That's quite a mouth" or a similar quasi-polite bemused response to hearing swearing? Thanks. 24.92.78.167 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 02:09, 13 November 2010 (UTC).
 * I suppose they wouldn't say "Pardon my French" (Pardonez mon français). -- Jayron  32  02:57, 13 November 2010 (UTC)


 * I would say Quel langage fleuri ! (Aside: pardonnez with two "n") — AldoSyrt (talk) 10:08, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

prevalence of the conjugations in latin
Hi, does anyone know of any place where I can find statistics on the frequency of verbs from each of the declensions in latin? It seems to me the third conjugation is by far the most common, but I can't find any details. What about for nouns and the prevalence of each declension? Thanks in advance, It&#39;s been emotional (talk) 19:27, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The sources listed at Latin conjugation might help. r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 20:07, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I'd be interested in knowing the answer too. My (entirely unscientific) impression is that while the third conjugations contains a lot of the most commonly occurring verbs, it's the first conjugation that probably has the largest absolute number of verbs. The first conjugation is certainly the one that became the productive conjugation in Vulgar Latin and the Romance languages. —Angr (talk) 21:53, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not quite sure what you mean by the last sentence. Italian has three distinct conjugations (the Latin second and third conjugations have merged) with some sub-cases (e.g. the -ire verbs split depending on whether the first-person singular ends in -isco, and there are various subgroups distinguished by their preterites). --Trovatore (talk) 21:59, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I meant "productive" in the sense of Productivity (linguistics): the way that new words are formed. In Latin, denominative and deadjectival verbs almost always went into the first conjugation (donare, pugnare, curare, laudare, nominare, generare; novare, solare, levare), and I think in the modern Romance languages too, when a new verb is coined, it usually belongs to the first conjugation (or its modern descendants, the -are conjugation of Italian, -er conjugation of French, and -ar conjugation of Spanish, Catalan, and Portuguese). Verbs are also more likely to move from other conjugations into the first than the other way around, e.g. Latin cano, canere "to sing" (3rd conjugation) became "canto, cantare" in the modern languages (cantare/chanter/cantar). —Angr (talk) 22:56, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh OK, that rings true. --Trovatore (talk) 23:06, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Latin cantō, cantāre is a frequentative verb.—Wavelength (talk) 23:27, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
 * To clarify, you are saying that cantō means "I am a singer", whereas cano means "I am singing"? Or something along those lines? --Trovatore (talk) 23:37, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
 * They mean pretty much the same thing, according to Latin dictionaries. "I am a singer" would be more of a habitual or stative than a frequentative. AnonMoos (talk) 23:45, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, so just what is a frequentative, then? The article didn't help me much &mdash; I don't really see what point is being made by, say, the tramp/trample or crack/crackle juxtapositions. --Trovatore (talk) 00:00, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Basically it means (in a grammatical sense) that a new verb was formed from the past participle (well, the supine actually) - cantare from cantus (from canere), dictare from dictus (from dicere), statuere from status (from stare - and constituere, instituere, etc) . Originally, at least when both verbs existed in classical Latin, they were a more emphatic form of the base verb - so "dicere" is "speak" but "dictare" is "dictate", i.e. speak forcefully, or repetitively, and "statuere" is "set up" or "establish", as in a monument or a law, more firmly than simple "stare", "stand". Adam Bishop (talk) 03:32, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Right, in Classical Latin, cantare is a frequentative of canere. But in Vulgar Latin, it became the only word for "sing". And what conjugation do frequentatives formed from the supine belong to? The first. —Angr (talk) 07:17, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Except the ones formed from "stare", which end up in the third (what conjugation is "stare" anyway?). There might be other non-first conjugation ones but I can't think of any at the moment. Adam Bishop (talk) 19:01, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I think stare is considered a verb of the first conjugation with an irregularly formed perfect stem, at least for pedagogical purposes. —Angr (talk) 20:11, 17 November 2010 (UTC)