Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 June 19

= June 19 =

‘someone or something’
This is a very common locution, but it always seemed redundant to me. Aren’t people technically things? Why don’t we just say ‘something?’ --66.190.99.112 (talk) 01:51, 19 June 2014 (UTC)


 * "Yes", "yes", and "Because people don't like to be referred to as an it." It's no different than the use of the word who - technically, it could always be replaced with a what, but people don't like that. Luckily this is the only illogical situation that's ever arisen in language. Matt Deres (talk) 02:20, 19 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Wait—"thing" is an English word and you're claiming that it's used illogically in English? Is that even possible? I think that people are technically not things in most contexts, with exceptions like "poor thing" and "pretty young thing" seeming to involve a certain amount of objectification. There's nothing illogical about a category that excludes human beings. -- BenRG (talk) 06:18, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
 * The evolution of "thing" is enlightening. As you all suggest, "thing" and "it" and similar terms are usually directed at humans only in some sarcastic way, or in a very generalistic way. "Living things" (including humans) are often referred to as "individuals". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 06:47, 19 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Some people get upset when they even see "something" else counting as "someone", notwithstanding whether "they" were ever called "that".


 * Theory of Forms may have answers, or may be confusing. Depends on the thing processing it (or "them", if an article is a sum of editors' minds). InedibleHulk (talk) 07:25, 19 June 2014 (UTC)


 * We can probably all agree that humans are animals. You might be interested in this essay by Temple Grandin, "Animals Are Not Things" . Of course, there are multiple angles on this sort of thing, and but it's hard to completely separate the linguistics from the ethics. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:29, 19 June 2014 (UTC)


 * So far, nobody has mentioned the principle of animacy. English is a language that makes a distinction between animate and inanimate subjects and objects. This is a linguistic (and therefore essentially arbitrary) distinction rather than a scientific or logical one. Plants and non-living things are classed as inanimate, while people are classed as animate. Animals fall into a grey area and may be classed as animate or inanimate depending on the situation.  (For example, people nearly always class their own pet mammals as animate but nearly always class invertebrates encountered in nature as inanimate.)  Subjects and objects with animacy in English have to be referred to with gendered third-person pronouns rather than it. That said, someone usually is limited to human subjects and objects, though people may still object to their pets being labeled something. Marco polo (talk) 17:23, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
 * The term "animate" or "animated" has to do with having breath, live, soul. In addition to the usual debates about what "life" and "soul" really are, there's the complication that animate objects are often called "living things". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:45, 19 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Corals are particularly confusing sorts of animals, especially considering mushrooms aren't any sort. Still, humans much quicker imagine anthropomorphic "mushroom people" than recognize their closer, weirder cousins as family. No eyes, no soul, it seems. Where would we even draw the eyes on a cartoon coral character? At least starfish (the "cool" kind, anyway) are pentagonal. InedibleHulk (talk) 03:49, 20 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I think that the phrase "someone or something did x, y, z" is essentially short-hand for "some person or perhaps some non-person is responsible for doing x, y, z". To simply say "something is responsible for doing x, y, z" does not convey the same meaning.  Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 15:34, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

[ɹ] and [ɻ]

 * [ɹ] [[File:Alveolar approximant.ogg]]
 * [ɻ] [[File:Retroflex approximant.ogg]]

Good afternoon, what is the difference of [ɹ] and [ɻ] ? These two recordings don't have the standard sound. Fort123 (talk) 16:24, 19 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Does this discussion from last week help at all? AlexTiefling (talk) 16:39, 19 June 2014 (UTC)


 * [[File:En-us-right.ogg]]

This pronunciation is [ɹaɪt] or [ɻaɪt] ? Fort123 (talk) 17:17, 19 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I think that's [ɹaɪt]. SemanticMantis (talk) 18:38, 19 June 2014 (UTC)


 * You should look at the definitions of alveolar and retroflex, there is a difference but difficult to distinguish for untrained ears. As for English, the standard is usually [ɹ] (alveolar). Retroflex consonants are one reason for the typical sound of Indian English. --2.245.76.23 (talk) 16:35, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Everybody and nobody
Among the native English speakers reading this, does everyone agree that sentence (1) sounds more idiomatic than sentence (2)?
 * (1) Nobody could enter the house because the doors were locked.
 * (2) Everybody couldn't enter the house because the doors were locked.

If so, what are native speakers' opinions of sentences (3) and (4)?
 * (3) Nobody could wait until the big day!
 * (4) Everybody couldn't wait until the big day!

I am of course using "couldn't wait" in its idiomatic sense of "was eagerly looking forward to". To me, (3) sounds much better than (4), but I've heard (4) from other people and am wondering how widespread it is. Logically, I can understand it since "couldn't wait" doesn't really have a negative meaning, so the negation shouldn't leave the idiom and attach to the subject the way it does in a truly negative sentence like (1). So what do other people from various parts of the English-speaking world think? Are you more likely to say (3) or (4)? Does the one you're less likely to say sound wrong or funny to you, or do they both sound acceptable? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:03, 19 June 2014 (UTC)


 * AmEng here, lived in many states across the country. While "they couldn't wait for..." sounds fine and common to me, I still prefer 3 to 4. I actually disagree about the movement of the negation to "outside" the idiom. It is not a true negation, yes, but to me the idiom survives the moved negative. 4 sounds like it is awkwardly forcing the "couldn't wait" phrase. SemanticMantis (talk) 21:16, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I didn't mean the idiom can't survive having the negation moved out; I only meant that the nonnegative idiom might be a factor discouraging some speakers from moving the negation out. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:55, 19 June 2014 (UTC)


 * UKEng speaker here. (1) is definitely more natural than (2). I prefer (3) to (4), but I'd find "No-one could wait..." to be even more idiomatic. AlexTiefling (talk) 21:29, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
 * "Everybody couldn't enter the house" is ambiguous, but probably means "it wasn't possible for everyone to enter" rather than "everyone found it impossible to enter".
 * Like Alex, I'd prefer "no one" to "nobody" in sentence 3, but would leave out the hyphen. --Trovatore (talk) 21:50, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not interested in the "everyone/no one" vs. "everybody/nobody" debate at this point; for purposes of this question, consider "No one could wait" (with or without a hyphen, which has nothing to do with language) to be equivalent to "Nobody could wait" (and "Everyone couldn't wait" to be equivalent to "Everybody couldn't wait"). —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:55, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
 * OK, let's put that aside then. My point is that 1 and 2 do not mean the same thing.  In first-order logic, it seems like they should, but they don't, at least not as they would ordinarily be read.  Sentence 1 means not even one person got inside; sentence 2 means that at least one person was not able to get past the locks. --Trovatore (talk) 00:39, 20 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Sentence (1) is the only one I'm comfortable with. I would find another way of saying (3) and (4). HiLo48 (talk) 22:31, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
 * What 48 said. —Tamfang (talk) 00:29, 20 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Okay, that's interesting. Using the "couldn't wait" idiom, how would you say "Everybody was eagerly looking forward to the big day"? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 06:31, 20 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't. That's the point. HiLo48 (talk) 07:33, 20 June 2014 (UTC)


 * (2) and (4) are but two of the many variants of the "all ... not" construction, which is inherently ambiguous. Example: "All the children did not like the broccoli they were served".  Does this mean that all the children disliked it, or that not all of them liked it, meaning that some were OK with it?  No way to tell.  Example: "The whole family is not coming to the wedding".  Is that "some but not all are coming", or "none are coming"?  No way of knowing. Avoid these expressions if you want to make yourself understood.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  02:06, 20 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I concede that (2) is ambiguous, so to clarify, I'm only interested in the meaning that's identical to (1). And I do think we can all agree that (1) is the preferred way of saying that. And I suppose (4) could also mean "Not everyone could wait" (as in "Some but not all people were eagerly looking forward to it"), but when I've heard the construction used by native speakers, it's always meant the same thing as (3). —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 06:31, 20 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Canadian speaker. I would understand and have probably heard both 3 and 4, but my preference would be 4 with "everyone" rather than "everybody". Between 3 and 4, I'd switch depending on what I wanted to emphasize; to me, 4 stresses the opening while 3 stresses the people. Matt Deres (talk) 13:28, 20 June 2014 (UTC)
 * OK, cool, somebody for whom (4) is not only acceptable but even preferable to (3) under certain circumstances. It has occurred to me since starting this thread that if you put just in (as in I just couldn't wait!), then only the version with everybody is grammatical:
 * (5) *Nobody just could wait until the big day!
 * (6) Everybody just couldn't wait until the big day!
 * Unfortunately I'm not sure of the syntactic significance of that fact, though. ("Just nobody could wait..." is grammatical but there the scope of just is different.) —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:50, 20 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Interesting, the 3/4 re-wording keeps the idiom intact, but the "just" (acting as intensifier here?) breaks it! SemanticMantis (talk) 19:59, 20 June 2014 (UTC)