Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 July 20

= July 20 =

Terminology or terminologies?
Let's say that each of the 50 states uses different wording to describe something. Would we say that the 50 states employ "different terminology" or "different terminologies"? Neither choice sounds good to me, for some reason. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 19:03, 20 July 2019 (UTC)


 * "Each state employs a different terminology".


 * "The states employ different terminologies". SinisterLefty (talk) 19:21, 20 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Thanks. So, does this sound right?


 * Among the 49 lower houses of state legislatures in the United States, various terminologies are employed:


 * House of Representatives: 42 states


 * State Assembly: 4 states (California, Nevada, New York, and Wisconsin)


 * House of Delegates: 2 states (Maryland and Virginia)


 * General Assembly: 1 state (New Jersey)


 * No lower house: 1 state (Nebraska)


 * Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 19:35, 20 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Looks good, except that Nebraska doesn't belong in that list. Discard it in the intro: "...States (Nebraska lacks a lower house), various...". You might also want to avoid saying "state" quite so many times, say by putting "US" in the intro. SinisterLefty (talk) 19:56, 20 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Great. Thanks.    Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 20:01, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

I disagree. You are talking about different terms, not different terminologies. "Different terminology" would be correct but why not just use the shorter word? --69.159.11.113 (talk) 21:45, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Ditto. Terminology is the vocabulary of technical terms, (or the study of nomenclature) -- they don't use different vocabularies, just different terms. 107.15.157.44 (talk) 22:28, 20 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Yeah, the whole thing with "terminologies" seemed somehow "off" to me.  But I could not put my finger on why that was.  Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 00:09, 21 July 2019 (UTC)


 * I considered shortening to "terms", but the problem is the obvious potential for confusion with the length of time served, hence I believe the longer word is justified. Perhaps "names" would both be short and clear. SinisterLefty (talk) 22:44, 20 July 2019 (UTC)


 * True. "Terms" would bring to mind the "duration" of the representative's tenure.  Which I'd rather avoid.   I have to give this some thought.   Can someone suggest how to rephrase this while using "different (or various) terminology " (singular)?   What I have right now is:


 * Among the 49 lower houses of state legislatures in the United States – Nebraska lacks a lower house – various terminologies are employed:


 * * House of Representatives: 42 states;


 * * State Assembly: 4 states (California, Nevada, New York, and Wisconsin);


 * * House of Delegates: 2 states (Maryland and Virginia); and


 * * General Assembly: 1 state (New Jersey).


 * Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 00:09, 21 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Don't you like my suggestion of "names" ? (I would say "names are used" rather than "employed".)SinisterLefty (talk) 00:13, 21 July 2019 (UTC)


 * It's OK. For some reason, I am stuck on "terminology" (singular).   Making it plural is what threw me all off, here.   Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 00:16, 21 July 2019 (UTC)


 * The 49 lower houses... have various names. Howzat? --69.159.11.113 (talk) 00:19, 21 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Yes, I am going with that. Incorporating your suggestion as well as SinisterLefty's.    Thanks.    Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 04:02, 21 July 2019 (UTC)


 * An interesting observation on Nebraska: It based its adoption of unicamerality on the example of Queensland, Australia. But Queensland abolished its upper house, while Nebraska abolished its lower house.  What's left in each case is actually neither upper nor lower.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  01:34, 21 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Exactly.  Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 03:58, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 04:02, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

The NOW corpus shows that the verb most commonly used immediately before either the string "different terminology" or the string "different terminologies" is USE (this being the lexeme, however inflected); and it shows that "USE different terminology" occurs a lot more frequently than "USE different terminologies". -- Hoary (talk) 10:19, 21 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Very interesting.  I never knew that "someone" kept track of all that type of stuff. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 18:39, 21 July 2019 (UTC)


 * The NOW corpus is one of a number of large corpora of English that are excellent resources for answering questions of the form "Would we say that X or that Y?". However, when there are thirty or three hundred tokens of a string that to me (or very likely to you or anybody else) are obviously an example of this or that particular construction ... closer inspection often shows that no, a sizable percentage of the tokens are of other, more or less unrelated constructions. And so corpus findings have to be used with care. -- Hoary (talk) 22:16, 21 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Very interesting. Thanks for the info!     Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:13, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

From a non-English speaker
Hello, if "lift" is to elevate a thing, isn't "lift up" redundant? Thanks --181.27.158.49 (talk) 21:39, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
 * So what if it is? --69.159.11.113 (talk) 21:46, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
 * That's kind of a snippy response to a non-native English speaker. More instructive is Lefty's comment, as "up" is one of those words that gets used a lot. You go to the gas station and "fill 'er up!" for example. And sometimes it helps complete a thought, as with the song containing the line, "Lift us up where we belong." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:48, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, but it's a rather short redundant word ("up"), and adds emphasis, so it's worth it. SinisterLefty (talk) 22:46, 20 July 2019 (UTC)


 * 181.27.158.49 -- A lot of times in English the phrasal verb particle "up" means "to completion". So "The house burned down" and the "The house burned up" mean pretty much the same thing, because "up" means "completely" here (it has nothing to do with the direction of the flames).  "He lifted it up" sometimes has the same meaning as "He lifted it", but in some contexts "He lifted it up" could carry a connotation of lifting it all the way to a particular location or position which the speaker has in mind.  In any case, languages have a number of redundancies, because their purpose is communication between human beings, not pure abstract logic.  In a phrase like las francesas viejas "the old French women", the feminine gender and the plurality are each marked three times, which is a lot more redundant than most things in English... AnonMoos (talk) 01:33, 21 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Teachers know that sitting down is followed by sitting up. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  01:25, 21 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Note also that redundancy is can be beneficial, to add emphasis or ensure a message is still understandable even if part of it is lost. Iapetus (talk) 08:09, 22 July 2019 (UTC)


 * In some contexts it may be used to ensure the message will not be confused with 'lift down', which may denote moving something to a lower position (the Free Dictionary Definitions & Idioms; Merriam-Webster). --CiaPan (non-English speaker, too) (talk) 09:55, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

From a non-Italian speaker
One can easily check that "tiramisù" (from "tirami su") literally means "pick me up". But does the verb "tirare" alone, its imperative "tira", or the compound "tirami", already imply elevation or motion upwards, literal or figurative? Or is the particle "su" needed to indicate this? --Theurgist (talk) 19:04, 22 July 2019 (UTC)