Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 November 19

= November 19 =

Placement of adverbs in transitive-verb, English clauses. (By Mood.)
Hello, again!

I recently found myself thumbing through some tips on writing from usage commentator Wilson Follett, and something caught my eye. Namely, he states that—in order to produce a neat, writing style—one must place adverbs in between the various, auxiliary verbs in a transitive clause, and that many people misappropriate the rule on "splitting infinitives" to mean that a chain of auxiliary verbs may also not be split. Mr. Follett then goes on to describe the results of this usage as "uniformly bad."

To wit:

Present Indicative

Past Indicative

Present Interrogative

Past Interrogative

Past Subjunctive

When it comes to all indicative and interrogative constructions (as well as the past subjunctive), I agree wholeheartedly with this advice.

When it comes to the present subjunctive, though, methinks that Mr. Follett erred. In my personal writing style, I never split the auxiliaries whenever utilizing the subjunctive mood in the present tense.

e.g.:

Now, if someone followed Follett's advice unequivocally, then he would instead get this:

My question is simple: Which of the two forms above (for the present subjunctive, only) would you consider more proper?

--Thank You! Pine (talk) 02:00, 19 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I would say you are correct, except that the present subjunctive with "to be" is perhaps a special case; "not have stopped" is preferable to "have not stopped", but "constantly be learning" and "be constantly learning" are both correct (in fact, I would prefer the latter, personally). Adam Bishop (talk) 02:38, 19 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Your "present subjunctive" forms are actually ambiguous as to structure: they could have finite subjunctive verbs, but they can also be read as having non-finite clauses ("be" and "have" as infinitives), and this has a bearing on the question, because the adverb is more fluid with an infinitive. If the verb is taken as finite, then "be constantly learning" is normal, as in the other cases (and for myself, I find this form preferable, though I find both to be stilted). In preferring "constantly be learning", I think you are taking the "be" to be infinitive. This is even more clear cut for "not": "not" is not an adverb, and has its own syntax different from every other word in the language. It must follow a finite verb (though this is archaic except for auxiliaries, eg "do not") and must precede an infinite verb (eg "not do"). "Not have stopped" is the inifinite "have". "Have not stopped" would indeed be the (moribund) present subjunctive, which reads very oddly because it does not match the past tense of the matrix clause. --ColinFine (talk) 11:06, 19 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Hmm, that is a much better explanation than what I was thinking! Adam Bishop (talk) 23:13, 19 November 2013 (UTC)


 * The question alone is over a page long. I have collapsed some of the side examples, which people can look at if they want, in order to prevent the need for endless scrolling here. μηδείς (talk) 18:15, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Lip reading and tonal languages
Can (totally) deaf people in societies with tonal languages (contour tones like Chinese, Thai, etc) able to understand others speaking said languages by reading lips?--William Thweatt TalkContribs 23:43, 19 November 2013 (UTC)


 * See http://linguistlist.org/ask-ling/message-details1.cfm?asklingid=200338091.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 00:32, 20 November 2013 (UTC)


 * While I appreciate the effort, that link is only a restatement of my question, no answers were given. I have already done a Google search and cursory Google Scholar search to no avail.--William Thweatt TalkContribs 05:59, 20 November 2013 (UTC)


 * The Chinese Wikipedia has an article on lip reading. I only skimmed the article, but it does not indicate that lip reading is especially difficult in Chinese.  In fact, there is a lot of ambiguity in lip reading even non-tonal languages such as English.  In Mandarin and most, if not all, tonal languages, tones are somewhat redundant to the meaning at the utterance (as opposed to the word) level due to context.  There are cases where tone is distinctive within an utterance, but most utterances do not depend on tonality for comprehension. Even in those cases, facial expression will help resolve ambiguity, for example, between 他在哪儿？ (Tā zài nǎr; Where is he?) and 他在那儿.  （Tā zài nàr; He is there). While lip reading might be more challenging in some tonal languages than in non-tonal languages, it is apparently useful enough to be known in Mandarin.  Marco polo (talk) 20:38, 20 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Marco is right. I taught deaf children in Japan (not really a tonal language), but I had to learn Japanese Sign Language. The thing is, people with hard of hearing (PC for deaf) will look at your body language, rather than just lip reading, especially with people who have been deaf since they were born. It's all about context. "This is your milk" can be easily rendered by pointing at the milk, and pointing at the person, for example.  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  09:40, 21 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Article Japanese pitch accent... -- AnonMoos (talk) 06:28, 22 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Observations from a speaker of a language that is not a considered tonal language, but yet where many words are distinguished by tone only: when I spoke words with toneme_1, such as "tanken" (the tank), "sider" (cider), "bønder" (farmers/peasants), I noticed that I nodded my head very slightly forwards/downwards on the first syllable, when the pitch was lowered, and raised back it again on the second syllable, where the pitch returned to the base level. When speaking words in toneme_2, such as "tanken" (the thought), "sider", (pages), "bønner" (beans or prayers), the opposite happened; I raised my head very slightly on the first syllable when the pitch increased, lowering it back on the second when the pitch returned to base level. I then conducted the same experiment, having my wife say the same words, without knowing the purpose. She moved her head in a similar way that I did. This is WP:OR with a sample size of 2, and not a realistic setting (not fluent speech). Also, a couple that have lived together for decades may be mimicking each others mannerisms. Nevertheless, it suggests that there might be other visual cues than the movement of the lips, which could be used for inferring the tone of words being spoken in tonal languages. --NorwegianBluetalk 21:55, 21 November 2013 (UTC)


 * It's possible, but harder than in English. Try understanding this sentence without tones:
 * Yi da li de liang ge zu qiu ju le bu gong tong yong you yi ming qiu yuan de suo you quan bei cheng wei she me?
 * A few people on this forum say they know how to lip-read in Chinese, or that they know people who know how to lip read. --Bowlhover (talk) 21:05, 21 November 2013 (UTC)


 * It would be very difficult to lip-read the 92-character poem "Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den".
 * —Wavelength (talk) 23:59, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Think about Chinese music. Tones are not used, but people understand the lyrics well enough.  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  11:40, 23 November 2013 (UTC)