Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 January 15

= January 15 =

Japan elaborate manhole covers
There's a featured video on bbc.com about elaborate manhole covers in some cities/towns in Japan. The cover image of the video shows a Hello Kitty-themed manhole cover with two words in hiragana: たまし above and うすい below. I figure うすい in this case means "rain water", so it's a rain gutter cover I guess (although I only knew うすい means "weak"). But what does たまし mean??? I know "tamashi" means soul, but it's written たましい as far as I know. What's たまし ??? Thanks in advance, Dr Dima (talk) 03:59, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
 * 魂, perhaps? -- Hoary (talk) 11:09, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Nevermind, I figured it out. It's Tama-shi, a city west of Tokyo. Thanks anyways! Dr Dima (talk) 20:58, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Is "latter" an adjective or a noun??
Compare these sentences:

Wikipedia and Wikinews are both wikis, but the latter site is for news only.

Wikipedia and Wikinews are both wikis, but the latter is for news only.

For the former of these sentences, it's clear that "latter" is an adjective that modifies the noun site. But for the latter of these sentences, "latter" is technically being used as a noun (specifically it's the subject of the clause "is for news only".) But dictionaries all say that "latter" is an adjective regardless of which of these sentences it is being used in. (Check different dictionaries you know and find what part of speech they say "latter" is.) Georgia guy (talk) 15:30, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Adjective. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:34, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
 * The dictionaries are right.  "Latter" cannot take a plural form, and as it's not a collective noun it must be an adjective.

cf "There are good wines and bad" - the noun is supplied mentally. 195.147.104.148 (talk) 15:37, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
 * "Latter" cannot take a plural form, but this is because something can't have more than one latter. Any group of 2 items has a former and a latter. Nothing can have "2 latters". Georgia guy (talk) 15:45, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

"Latter" is the comparative form of "late" and applies to two of something. "Last" is the superlative form of "late." Many adjectives are used with an "understood noun" sense (see substantive adjective)  -  ''"He looked at a red apple and a green apple - and chose the red." '' makes sense. The example given - "The latter is for news" has an implicit noun ("wiki") in it. If your example used three or more examples, "latter" would be incorrect. Collect (talk) 16:00, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Although latter and last have the forms of comparative and superlative adjectives, they are not (nor are first and former). That is clear if you ask yourself what adjective they are the comparative and superlative of? There is no simple adjective: given the meanings, there can't be - you may need to use first or last for three or more, and former or latter for two - but there is nothing equivalent for just one. Wymspen (talk) 21:51, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I thought the comparative form of the adjective "late" was "later", which is the opposite of "earlier". Georgia guy (talk) 16:03, 15 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Georgia_guy -- "Latter" and "Last" were the comparative and superlative of "late" at an earlier stage of the language, but now they've become somewhat dissociated from "late", and new regular comparative and superlative forms have been created. Kind of like how "brethren" was the plural of "brother" at an earlier stage of the language, but now "brethren" has a special meaning, while a regular plural "brothers" has been created... AnonMoos (talk) 04:03, 16 January 2018 (UTC)


 * "Later" is an adjective or adverb, not a noun. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:55, 15 January 2018 (UTC)


 * See also Nominalized adjective. Loraof (talk) 16:57, 15 January 2018 (UTC)


 * The article "Nominalized adjective" is about averagely screwy for a WP article about the grammar of English. (And much of it is about the grammar of English.) It doesn't cite any source for the term "nominalized adjective", and seems to treat this as a synonym of "adjectival noun" -- another term for which it cites no source.


 * There's a variety of ways of looking at the grammar of English, of course. And they use different and sometimes incompatible nomenclature. "Determiner", for example, is a category in a framework that usually calls its primary function "specifier"; the latter function is called "determiner" in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, which calls the category "determinative". But whatever their preferred approach and terminology, I think most syntacticians would agree that category and function are separate and shouldn't be confused. Both "nominalized adjective" and "adjectival noun" seem to me to do just that: "Category X type category Y" (they're rather like "mammalian reptile" and "reptilian mammal").


 * The term that The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language uses for "latter" in "Wikipedia and Wikinews are both wikis, but the latter is for news only" is fused modifier-head. That is, "the latter" in that example is a noun phrase, headed by "latter", which remains an adjective. "Website", or something similar, is only inferred pragmatically, so it's a special fused head. The "modifier" part of "modifier-head" is because within "the latter website", "latter" functions as a modifier. By contrast, in "I'll take these bananas and you take those", "those" is a fused determiner-head as "those" stands for "those bananas" and within this "those" functions as determiner (in CGEL terminology). "Bananas" can be copied in from earlier in the sentence, so it's a simple fused head. -- Hoary (talk) 00:14, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

In "the latter is for news only", Merriam-Webster says "latter" is a noun, American Heritage says it's a noun, Cambridge says it's a noun, and Collins says it's a pronoun.Oxford (in the dictionary accessed from onelook.com) doesn't list that usage specifically, leaving the implication that it's an adjective modifying an understood noun. Personally I would have said it's a noun, but now that I've seen the opinion that it's really a pronoun, I think it makes the most sense. --70.29.13.251 (talk) 04:31, 17 January 2018 (UTC)


 * The judgments by dictionaries, even otherwise respectable dictionaries, of which categories words belong to constitute an enormous joke. See "Lexical categorization in English dictionaries and traditional grammars". -- Hoary (talk) 08:57, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Like said User:Collect, in the sentence "Wikipedia and Wikinews are both wikis, but the latter is for news only", "latter" is still an adjective, the noun is implicit. As when you say "I went to the cinema, and enjoyed myself" in the second part the subject is still "I", in the sentence "but the latter is for news only" the subject is still "wiki". A noun has an autonomous meaning even outside a phrase, thus is a noun. "Home" is the building where you live. "The latter" what should be? The second one of two things... ? According to this theory, in the sentence "Mine has been a long journey", "Mine" is a noun that means "something that belongs to me of which I am speaking elsewhere in the phrase". "Home" is a complete sentence. "Mine" and "The latter" not--Pierpao (talk) 10:12, 17 January 2018 (UTC)