Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 June 29

= June 29 =

Wikisource template in Korean
Would anyone mind translating this Wikisource template in Korean?
 * wikisource:en:Template:PD-USGov

You can use all or parts of Commons:Template:PD-USGov/ko in the one for Wikisource

Thank you, WhisperToMe (talk) 05:07, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Rockefeller University motto
What does the Latin motto on Rockefeller University's seal translate to in English? --Cyber cobra (talk) 06:20, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * My (admittedly very weak) latin gives me "Science for the benefit of human growth", but I will defer to someone who is stronger in latin than I am. -- Jayron  32  06:23, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * "Knowledge for the good of humanity" - "humanum genus" is "human kind", humans/people/humanity. Adam Bishop (talk) 06:59, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Ah. See I was thinking "generis" as being cognate with "generate" or "genesis" rather than "genus".  Good one.  -- Jayron  32  13:58, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * It is indeed cognate with "generate" and "genesis" as well as "genus". Also "general", and more remotely both "kin" and "kind". --ColinFine (talk) 19:54, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Yeah, and gender, gentle, almost anything that starts with gen- (except for words related to the root for "knee", that's different). Also, the -gn- bit of "pregnant", I think. Adam Bishop (talk) 21:57, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Different alphabets/scripts/writing systems
I was recently trying (unsucessfully) to convince a friend that the Arabic alphabet/script is used for several languages, not only Arabic itself. That got me wondering how many different "writing systems" (is that the correct term?) there are in the entire world and how many languages are written in each of them? I'm aware that particularly Asia has many different alphabets/scripts and that Western Europe had standardised on the Latin alphabet many centuries ago while eastern European languages mostly use Cyrillic, but outside of that I'm fairly ignorant. Please enlighten me. Roger (talk) 06:57, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * As a starting point, see Alphabet and List of writing systems, which also gives you the map I inserted at right. Jørgen (talk) 08:38, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * You can show this to your friend: Arabic alphabet. 80.123.210.172 (talk) 08:59, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Roger (talk) 10:31, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * There's also Omniglot, a webpage about writing systems and languages, which of course has a page for the arabic script. (I didn't answer your question on how much the arabig script is used today to write non-arabic languages.)  &#x2013; b_jonas 12:39, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Distinct reflexive pronouns
Are there any languages other than English which have distinct reflexive forms for the first and second persons - i.e. using different object pronouns in the sentences "She sees me" and "I see myself"? --Lazar Taxon (talk) 09:34, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes. In Irish, reflexive pronouns take féin in the same way as English reflexive pronouns take -self, so Feiceann sí mé  is "She sees me" and Feicimse mé féin  is "I see myself". In Yiddish, there's just a single reflexive pronoun zikh which is used in all persons, so Zi zet mikh  is "She sees me" and Ikh ze zikh  is "I see myself". (I hope I've gotten the conjugation of zen "to see" correct.) I think the Yiddish pattern is also found in the North Germanic and the Slavic languages, but I don't them well enough to know for sure. —Angr (talk) 09:49, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Hungarian does have reflexive pronouns for all numbers and persons (magam, magad, maga etc), with declensions to all cases. These can be used in a way somewhat similar to "myself" in English, but they come up a bit less often than in English.
 * Also, you may want to see the translation section of myself, though of course that page alone won't tell you all about the usage of those words in foreign languages. &#x2013; b_jonas 12:35, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Does anyone know if Welsh behaves like Irish? That could be another piece of evidence for a Brythonic substratum for English.  Marco polo (talk) 13:54, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Oops. I see this is already covered here. Marco polo (talk) 13:59, 29 June 2011 (UTC)


 * First of all, your question is not about "distinct reflexive forms for first and second person"; a reflexive pronoun only appears in your second sentence ("I see myself"), whereas the second sentence ("She sees me") contains only regular pronouns&mdash;a reflexive pronoun is one which refers to the same person/thing as its antecedent. Also, there is no second person in any of your sentences.
 * Secondly (assuming that what you are trying to ask about is whether other languages have different reflexive and non-reflexive forms), many languages behave like English in this way. Mandarin Chinese adds zìjǐ after regular pronouns to make them reflexive (tā yǒu kàn wǒ vs. wǒ yǒu kàn wǒ zìjǐ), French similarly adds -mème after regular pronouns (although this is optional, it doesn't happen to cliticized pronouns) Uyghur uses öz plus a person marker as a reflexive pronoun (e.g., özi for third-person, özang for second-person, etc.). r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 14:03, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * @Angr re Germanic and Slavic: no, there's a difference between these groups, in that Germanic languages (all of them AFAIK) use first and second person pronouns for reflexive use, while the Slavic ones I know use the invariable "się" (that's the Polish word, but there are similar forms in others) for all persons. This isn't quite germane to the question though. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ColinFine (talk • contribs) 20:02, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * My question is about distinct reflexive forms for the first and second person: reflexive forms, for the first and second person, which are distinct from the non-reflexive first and second person object pronouns. I know what reflexives are, I know what I'm asking, and everyone else knew what I was asking, so I don't appreciate your condescension. --Lazar Taxon (talk) 01:08, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

"She" or "Her"?
Telephone caller: "Is Mary there?" Response by Mary: "This is "she". Or, "This is her"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.91.89.34 (talk) 17:33, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The least problematic would be "I am Mary." (I have always liked "I am she.") Bielle (talk) 17:42, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * How about I am I? Except then if you can avoid continuing with ... Don Quixote, the Lord of La Mancha, my destiny calls and I go, you're a stronger person than I am. --Trovatore (talk) 18:55, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * This is she also works. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie &#124; Say Shalom! 17:43, 29 June 2011 (UTC)


 * (ec) "It's Mary speaking" or "That's me" or "I'm Mary" would be preferable to either. But if you must restrict yourself to those 2 options, the first sounds toffy and pedantic (although it might work in a certain register), and the second is for colloquial use only (well, obviously ...). I dislike both of them and can't split them.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  17:45, 29 June 2011 (UTC)


 * It may be an Americanism, but I just say "speaking". It seems to work.  -- LarryMac  | Talk  17:49, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Not an Americanism Larry - when I was trained as a secretary in the UK I was taught that "speaking" was the correct polite response. --TammyMoet (talk) 18:29, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * See predicate nominative, which describes this issue in some detail. Others have mentioned work-arounds, but that just dodges the issue. The crux is deciding if you care more about prescriptive grammar or descriptive grammar. For most English speakers, mutual understanding of either phrase will not be an issue, so it really comes down to taste. SemanticMantis (talk) 18:21, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

This is me. works quite adequately in informal speech; nevertheless, This is I. is far more proper. I'm not quite sure what the rule is apropos constructions such as I am I [sic], but I, for one, should say I am myself. Pine (talk) 20:16, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * It's not really an English construction, no. In Italian you render "it is {I/me}" with sono io, which could be literally translated "I am I", or perhaps just "I am", with the emphasis on I ("the one who is am I", or some such).  I assume it's the same in Spanish (would be soy yo, I guess), which probably explains the choice of the Knight of the Woeful Countenance. --Trovatore (talk) 17:42, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

You're absolutely correct, Trovatore, the construction does exist in Italian and Spanish. But that is simply because verbs in Romance Languages are far robuster than those in English. (See here for what I mean by that.) Pine (talk) 19:01, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure it was derived from Latin, which had a system of declension. That is, a noun has a different ending depending on whether it is a subject, a direct object, an indirect object, etc. Ordinarily, the accusative case is used for direct objects and the nominative for subjects. However, with forms of the verb "to be," the nominative is used for both the subject and the object. I know at least some Indo-European languages still have this rule. Some language people used to insist that English follow the rules of Latin grammar. That's where the now universally derided rule on split infinitives comes from. You can't say "to boldly go" in Latin, because "to go" is a single word. Similarly, some people would say that because the nominative is used with "to be" in Latin, the same should go for English. English doesn't even have noun cases any more, except with pronouns. I, he, she and they are nominative; me, him, her and them are accusative. So, "This is she." Of course, English is a completely different language from Latin, and there's no reason English should have to follow Latin rules. I don't think anyone should complain about saying "It's me at the door." -- Mwalcoff (talk) 01:14, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Strictly speaking, what the verb "to be" takes isn't called an object but a subject complement. The latter generally take the nominative, not just in Latin but, I think, in most languages with case distinctions. French and English are strange in this respect. I guess this has something to do with the transformation of the former accusative forms into "disjunctive pronouns" (that article discusses the issue of "it's me" reasonably), while the former nominative forms are now only used as clitics in French.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 16:41, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

C'est moi. μηδείς (talk) 01:32, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, we know how Louis XIV would have answered the phone.--Shirt58 (talk) 01:22, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

The redlink above should be Disjunctive pronoun. μηδείς (talk) 18:57, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Thnx, fixed it.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 22:09, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Chart of suffix-based verb derivatives in English.
Greetings. I've been trying to refine my knowledge of how one derives adjectives, adverbs, and nouns in the English language from verbs.

What really annoys me, though, is that most dictionaries and usage guides that I've come across, only list each verb's derivatives after its definition, and do not instruct the reader on any kind of pattern. Please don't misunderstand me. When it comes to adjective to adverb derivations (just add "-ly") and preposition to adjective derivations (just add "-most"), I have very little difficulty learning. But verbs—at least in Indo-European languages—are an entirely different animal.

After a few sleepless nights, I've come up with a chart of sorts that I believe depicts the pattern of verb derivatives in English. It follows immediately below.

eg. To comply

My question is simple: Am I "on the right track" to understanding how derivations work, or is there some other factor that I must consider?

EDIT: Forgot to add:  Verb ==> Adjective:  add "-ive," "-ent/-ant" [recipient], or "-able/-ible", "-ic" [actor].

Verb ==> Abstract Noun: add "-ance/-ence/-ency," "tion/sion" [recipient], or "-ment," "-ity" [actor].

I apologize, by sleeplessness is REALLY starting to show now! :) Pine (talk) 20:54, 29 June 2011 (UTC)


 * It's actually quite complicated, and a lot of it seems to be lexically specified. E.g. one who acts is an actor while one who buys is a buyer.The suffixes that change a word's part-of-speech aren't always consistent. The only derivation that is consistent are the present participles (in -ing), past participles of weak verbs (in -ed), infinitives (in to ...) and 3rd person singular presents indicatives for non-modal verbs (in -s). Even noun plurals and genitive/posessives have some irregularities. There are common suffixes, but no reliable pattern; most people have to just learn each form from a given root as individual words. Wabbott9   Tell me about it....  01:31, 30 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, this is for the most part lexical, not grammatical. You are treating Latinate back formations as if they were necessarily productive.  English is quite tolerant of neologisms.  But you will produce a large number of inadvertantly funny forms if you take your inductions seriously. μηδείς (talk) 03:20, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
 * In particular, your "compliable", and all the forms derived from it, hardly exist. The OED lists two meanings for "compliable", but marks one as Obs(elete) and the other ? Obs. The meanings it gives do not agree with your "actor" - indeed, most words in "-able" are passive in meaning "able to be x-ed". I also do not recognised "compliedly", "compliedness" or "compliee" - and the last does not make any sense, since "comply" is not a transitive verb.
 * Applying an existing pattern to a different word does not necessarily give you a real word, and even if it does, it does not necessarily have the meaning you expect from how you constructed it. --ColinFine (talk) 19:23, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Thank you both for the prompt responses.

I understand quite well that this is definitely lexical, and not grammatical per se. I cannot help but think, however, that—lexical differences notwithstanding—there must be some sort of grammatical order to it.

eg. one boy, two boys, etc.

-->But: one man, two men, etc.

Though differences exist (and not all of these constructions, as Medeis said, are productive) there is clearly some kind of pattern involved. Regarding the two verbs mentioned by Wabbott9:

eg. To act

For these, the derivations form faily easily. But look at what happens when I try the irregular verb that Wabbot9 suggested.

eg. To buy

Here—for the recipient derivatives—the best I could think were: buyative, buyedly, buyatively, buyedness, buyativeness, buyation, and buyee; all of which strike me as total, utter nonsense. :)

———English is quite tolerant of neologisms. But you will produce a large number of inadvertantly funny forms if you take your inductions seriously.———

You are absolutely right, Medeis, but may this be particularly true of irregular verbs? To wit, are they, by their very nature, simply incapable of forming recipient derivatives (save, of course, for the past participle)?

EDIT: I saw your post, ColinFine. Perhaps "actor" and "recipient" are not the best words to describe what I'm suggesting. Indeed, "-able" does seem to suggest passivity. 2nd EDIT: Fixed an error in the table. Pine (talk) 20:24, 30 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Of course there are patterns. When you encounter a word that seems to fit a pattern, you can - usually - deduce the structure and role of the word. But there are both exceptions and irregularities, and there are 'holes' in the pattern for particular words. Read Pinker's Words and Rules. --ColinFine (talk) 07:49, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

You may also want to read agglutinating language and Esperanto as well as Quechua language and Turkish language. μηδείς (talk) 18:59, 3 July 2011 (UTC)