Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 April 13

= April 13 =

"On aggregate"
Is this correct English? "The benefit system does not affect marginal tax rates very much on aggregate and is therefore ignored." Or should I write "in the aggregate" or "in aggregate"? 130.238.165.147 (talk) 11:54, 13 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Checking the correct meanings in the dictionary, I don't think you should actually use "aggregate" - I would suggest "overall" Wymspen (talk) 14:11, 13 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Certainly in British English, "on aggregate" is just fine. The Rambling Man (talk) 00:28, 14 April 2017 (UTC)


 * "in the aggregate" sounds better to this American. —Tamfang (talk) 01:27, 14 April 2017 (UTC)


 * To this American too. Loraof (talk) 16:02, 14 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Is that because Americans don't play soccer?  See this post for explanation:


 * Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes in the aggregate. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:18, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

I don't see any problem here. On the sports pages you regularly encounter constructions like

Arsenal won the second leg 2-1 but Benfica win 4-2 on aggregate. 2A02:C7F:BE2D:9E00:918D:B637:2B4C:48 (talk) 17:40, 13 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I would think they'd rather play on grass than on aggregate-- Jayron 32 13:53, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

PIE gender
I have read that normally, ergativity affects intimates first, and then animates. This would be a problem for the ergative hypothesis of pre-PIE, which states the exact opposite. But I think a safe way to erase the problem would to be this; lets just assume for a moment that Pre-PIE had two genders, masculine and feminine, like Afro Asiatic. This is Stage I. In Stage II, ergativity affects many of the nouns, adjectives, the pronouns, and suffixes. However, one cannot just assume everything would be affected. Those nouns, adjectives, ect. which were not affected by ergativity developed no true nominative case. Instead, their so called nominative case, which in reality didn't exist, looked just like the accusative and vocative. In Pre-PIE, all these were the uninflected absolutive case, and in Stage II they remained unchanged, just revalued.

In Stage III, these conservative nouns are reinterpreted as neither masculine nor feminine, since they have not developed any nominative case. They then began to viewed as generally unable to act as agents of intransitive verbs.

This model solves the problem, since now there was no inanimate to begin with. It is a good explanation for why the neuter nouns first three cases are identical.

Is this model fringe or not. I truly do not know what the mainstream views on this subject are. Idielive (talk) 19:36, 13 April 2017 (UTC)


 * We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate. --31.168.171.66 (talk) 19:13, 13 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Hmmm... I think the OP is a badly worded request. Had the OP been more concerned with finding out the mainstream views of ergativity than proposing his/her own theory, this topic wouldn't have been closed. But, I second the closing, because this is a badly worded request. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 19:07, 15 April 2017 (UTC)