Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 April 14

= April 14 =

Need to understand grammatical structure of the following sentence
"When the shouting ended, the bill passed, 114 to 4, sending it to the Senate, where a similar proposal is being sponsored by Sen& George Parkhouse of Dallas."

The above sentence is from the Brown corpus, I would like to understand its grammatical structure. In particular I am puzzled about the grammatical relation between the finite verb "passed" and the participle "sending". Is there a particular name for this kind of construction? 117.211.88.149 (talk) 12:52, 14 April 2011 (UTC)Vineet Chaitanya


 * It's a particularly horrible type of error, but I don't know whether it has a name. Bills cannot send themselves anywhere.  It needs to be something like "... the bill passed 114 to 4, and was sent to the Senate, where ...".  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  12:56, 14 April 2011 (UTC)


 * "sending it" is a shorthand way of saying that because the bill has been passed there is an unavoidable legislative route (to the senate) that it must follow. - X201 (talk) 13:07, 14 April 2011 (UTC)


 * See Dangling modifier. What "sending" is presumably intended to refer to is the notion of the bill's passing; but since the sentence contains no actual noun that the participle could logically modify, such a construction is often viewed as a grammatical error. Deor (talk) 13:14, 14 April 2011 (UTC)


 * It's ungrammatical, though I wouldn't call it particularly horrible. "The bill passed, 114 to 4, [with its passage] sending it..." You can't listen to a sports broadcast without hearing something similar: "At the last second, the ball went in, sending the game into overtime." --- OtherDave (talk) 15:37, 14 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Ah, but in that case, the action of the ball itself caused the overtime to occur. But in the OP's question, "sending" is an action taken not by the bill, but to the bill.  The only agent that can do any sending is the members of the lower house.  Yet it's written as if the receiver of the action is the doer of the action.  All dangling modifiers are horrible. but some are particularly horrible.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  19:47, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
 * It's like there's a piece missing. It's kind of like, "the pitcher delivered the ball into the batter's wheelhouse, sending it over the fence." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:22, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Distinguo, Jack, on two counts. 1. It is not the ball which sent the game into overtime, but the occurrence that the ball went into the net. Ditto the occurrence of the bill's passing. (Arguably, it was the referee which sent the game into overtime, anyway). 2. "The bill was passed" (passive) but equally "the bill passed" (middle). Perfectly good English. --ColinFine (talk) 20:26, 14 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I suppose it's in the same league as: The road rage victim has died, upgrading the assault charge to manslaughter.
 * @ Other Dave: What sports broadcasters do with language ranges between creative and abominable, and you won't generally find me using them as examplars of good language. --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  20:42, 14 April 2011 (UTC)


 * @Colin: I agree with Jack on the "sending the game into overtime". Regardless of the thematic relations, the point is, in Jack's example both a subject and an object are expressed in the sentence (the ball sends the game), whereas in the OP's example no subject for "sending the bill to Senate" is expressed in the sentence. r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 20:57, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
 * But I dispute that "the ball sends the game". --ColinFine (talk) 21:35, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

[outdent] I freely own up to (yet another) tangent. I had meant to state directly that I wasn't really answering the OP question. I think Jack's road-rage example is in fact similar to mine. There's a kind of implied expansion: "...[with the death] upgrading the charge..." English is replete with implied subjects, and my point was only that the vast majority of English speakers understand what's meant by the OP's example. This understanding no doubt brings great distress to Lynne Truss, so it's win-win. --- OtherDave (talk) 11:58, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * What a horrible thing to say. Take that back at once, or I'll tell.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  17:01, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Russian map
Could someone please translate the Russian text of this map: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ru/d/d6/%D0%A0%D0%B5%D0%B9%D1%85%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%81%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B0%D1%82_%D0%A2%D1%83%D1%80%D0%BA%D0%B5%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BD.JPG --151.41.135.213 (talk) 19:51, 14 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Appears to be about Nazi plans to administer Central Asia ("Reichskommissariat Turkestan"); not sure that Germany actually ever conquered much if any of the territory shown on the map... AnonMoos (talk) 23:05, 14 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, the title is "Reichskomissariat Turkestan". In the key, the dark green tint is labeled "stable ( or "fixed") territory"; the light green tint is labeled "potential parts (Turkic formation)"; the magenta tint is labeled "Chkalov Oblast (present-day Orenburg Oblast) as a connecting element between Bashkortostan and Turkestan"; and the blue tint is labeled "potential parts (non-Turkic formation)". Note that I am translating the word образования as "formation" even though its usual translation is "education", since "education" didn't seem to make sense.  Marco polo (talk) 23:17, 14 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Just a minor correction: "formations", because тюркские образования and нетюркские образования are plurals. --Theurgist (talk) 09:04, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Word for someone who enjoys seeing others suffering
I of course know of 'sadist' but I see this more as Wiktionary defines it, ie 'one who derives pleasure through cruelty or pain to others', and I want something stronger. I'm looking for a word where the observed really must be suffering to the true delight of the observer. Any suggestions? meromorphic  [talk to me]  20:08, 14 April 2011 (UTC)


 * schadenfreude's meaning has gotten pretty bleached from overuse, so I think it's probably weaker than what you're looking for. Schadenfreude has a few more examples, several of which are probably not what you're looking for; the definition given there for "Roman holiday" sounds similar to what you're asking for, although personally I've never seen that idiom used before. r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 20:18, 14 April 2011 (UTC)


 * "Sadist" is what I would have said, and that's pretty strong. It's someone who's evil, who lacks a conscience. How about "abuser"? How about "sociopath" or "psychopath"? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:20, 14 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I don’t knew whether there has been any bleaching of schadenfreude's meaning in English–but I can tell you that the German word Schadenfreude is seldem used for an actually sadistic feeling; more often it is used for the feeling that accompanies comments like “It serves him right”. -- Irene1949 (talk) 22:33, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Facebook Terminology
When I browse friends' pages on Facebook, I am constantly given the opportunity to 'friend' people with whom my actual friends are already friends with, and I am told these new people are 'mutual friends'. Is this true? Even though these people are my friends' friends but not my friends yet (and probably won't be, because I don't add random people), can they be termed 'mutual friends'? I would have thought that if only one side in a couple has something or other, it would not be 'mutual'. --  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  22:01, 14 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Are you sure? I get those same things on facebook, but it's not telling me they're "mutual friends", but rather listing how many mutual friends I have with them. Are you sure that's not what's going on? r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 22:38, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Here is an example of what I mean; is this the thing you're asking about? r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 22:42, 14 April 2011 (UTC) Fbook-sample.PNG


 * I see this the same way as the previous editor. If you are friends with A, B & C and if X is also friends with A, B & C, then you and X have 3 mutual friends.  (This is the case whether or not you and X are friends.)  Wanderer57 (talk) 22:51, 14 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Mutual properly means 'of/to/(etc) each other'; "mutual aid" means helping each other, a "mutual admiration society" is a group whose members spend their time praising each other. But Dickens with Our Mutual Friend helped legitimize the sense 'in common'; hence the usage in Facebook. —Tamfang (talk) 23:10, 14 April 2011 (UTC)


 * A "mutual agreement" is "an agreement between...", so on facebook a mutual friend is a facebook user you and another friend have in common. "Mutual friend" is not a new neologism either. Juliancolton (talk) 01:07, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * What would be a non-mutual agreement? —Tamfang (talk) 01:18, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * A mutual agreement is usually one reached summarily due to similar desires and/or intentions by both or all of the parties, whereas hypothetically a "normal" agreement might take more extensive debate and compromise. That's my interpretation, at least. Juliancolton (talk) 02:48, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * It's not obvious to me that reaching agreement by negotiation makes it any less "between". But we digress. —Tamfang (talk) 04:01, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Aha! So, I have misunderstood - the 'mutual friend' bit refers to my friend, and not my friend's friend.... Embarrassing. Thanks a lot. I shall go and hide in a little hole in the corner of the garden now. --  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  04:06, 15 April 2011 (UTC)


 * So would "friends common with that person" or "friends shared with that person" be more approperiate? &#x2013; b_jonas 18:14, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
 * It would make some of us pedants happier. —Tamfang (talk) 19:52, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Adverbs and auxiliaries
All the grammar references I've been able to find say that an adverb should go after an auxiliary verb but before the main verb, as in "On Sunday morning he would usually read a newspaper". But I often see things like "On Sunday morning he usually would read a newspaper", even in formal registers. Is this a difference of regional variants, or what? --Stfg (talk) 23:04, 14 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't think that there is really a hard-and-fast rule about the placement of adverbs in relation to verb phrases, except that the adverb should precede the main verb. It may also precede the auxiliary verb.  Both variants occur in all regional variants of American English, and I suspect in other versions of English as well.  The different placement may involve a subtle difference in emphasis.  For example, if you read "On Sunday mornings he would usually read a newspaper", you might expect the next sentence to read something like "However, on this Sunday morning he read a Russian novel".  By contrast, a sentence like "On Sunday mornings he usually would read a newspaper" suggests a follow-up like "However, on this Sunday morning he went bicycling instead".  In other words, the closer the qualifying adverb is to the verb complement, the more likely it is to modify it.  However, this is not a hard-and-fast rule either, just a tendency.  Marco polo (talk) 00:48, 15 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Stfg -- Some words, like "only", can go quite a few places in a sentence... AnonMoos (talk) 03:11, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * "Only" is often used in a position that is technically illogical, e.g. "he only ate three bananas", but more natural and idiomatic than the "logical" version ("he ate only three bananas"). -- 10:12, 15 April 2011 User:AndrewWTaylor

Thanks everyone. The rule I was alluding to is found in Fowler, just here. It may be, of course, that the language is evolving away from Fowler's view of it :) --Stfg (talk) 14:33, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, it looks as if it already had: Fowler quotes and criticises several examples which don't follow his rule. --ColinFine (talk) 17:18, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * For those of us lucky enough to have the physical book, what entry? (Google Books isn't giving it up for me.) —Tamfang (talk) 00:44, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Entry "Position of adverbs", section 4, "Splitting of the compound verb". Deor (talk) 10:09, 16 April 2011 (UTC)