Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2020 October 14

= October 14 =

Latin translation
Our article Henry de Bracton contains a quotation from him "nullam enim meretur poenam quis, quamvis decedat intestatus". Unfortunately no translation is provided for those of us who, Wisty-like, never had the Latin. Can anyone help? Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 03:53, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I notice that the article doesn't actually say in English what Bracton's attitude was on the subject. But I make it that the Latin means: "No punishment indeed is deserved by anyone, although he has died intestate." --174.89.48.182 (talk) 04:18, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * mereor is deponent, so there's no need for a passive: "Nobody deserves any punishment for dying intestate". --ColinFine (talk) 11:28, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Which in turn means "not having made a will before one dies." 2003:F5:6F11:9700:C4E2:290F:31BC:51B2 (talk) 13:09, 14 October 2020 (UTC) Marco PB
 * How do you punish someone who's already dead? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:06, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Posthumous execution? 2003:F5:6F11:9700:C4E2:290F:31BC:51B2 (talk) 13:11, 14 October 2020 (UTC) Marco PB
 * Mutilation of a corpse does nothing to the person that was once in it. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:30, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Doing it officially, however, did damage to the reputation of the dead person, and to the social standing – and in some circumstances material wealth – of their still-living relatives and descendants. For example, the estate of someone executed, albeit posthumously, for treason might be forfeit to the Crown or other ruling authority.
 * With reference to the actual matter you queried; the idea is whether or not the estate of the dead person is disbursed to their legal heirs to the same extent as if they had made a will, or if a greater proportion goes to taxes and legal fees than would otherwise have been the case. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.122.178.0 (talk) 14:27, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * And punishment can not only mean to hurt to the guilty but also to concretely and morally satisfy the victims so beside spoiling the heritage resp. confiscating the inheritance of a dead personit can also make sense to cut their corpse to small pieces. And regarding your statement, that mutilation of a corpse does nothing to the person themselves, this is not universally true: according to many religions the eternal peace and well being of a dead in the next life can very well depend upon the corpse being intact and having been buried strictly in some prescribed way. 2003:F5:6F11:9700:ED82:D907:AA19:D52E (talk) 14:37, 14 October 2020 (UTC) Marco PB
 * If the quotation is translated correctly, it necessarily refers only to the person that died. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:47, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * A more literal translation: "for someone deserves no punishment, although he died intestate". The feller who ought not be punished, in Bracton's vision, is grammatically no other than the one that is now pushing up the daisies, but in the context of the full sentence ("Item si liber homo intestatus & subito decesserit, dominus suus nil intromittat de bonis defuncti, nisi de hoc tantum quod ad ipsum pertinuerit, s[cilicet] q[uod] habeat suum herioth; sed ad ecclesiam & ad amicos pertinebit executio bonorum, nullam enim meretur poenam quis, quamvis decedat intestatus.") this clearly includes their estate. Bracton also includes the supposition that someone should die suddenly – and therefore presumably had no time to draw up a last will. --Lambiam 13:22, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Punishment must refer to bona vacantia. Intestates. like felons, had their property confiscated by the Crown. DuncanHill (talk) 16:28, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Except that intestates are dead. They can't be punished. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:05, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * The point being that either the translation is faulty or the guy who wrote it originally was careless. In English it would have to be something like, "Nobody deserves any punishment for someone else dying intestate." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:02, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * So take it up with Henry de Bracton. --174.89.48.182 (talk) 04:33, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Bona vacantia only kicks in when no relatives can be traced.  See intestacy.   There is a television programme about this. 95.151.24.100 (talk) 10:00, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Under mediaeval law, alleged felons were "encouraged to confess" so that the Crown got their property.  This consisted of piling stones on their chest so they could barely breathe.   Relatives were sometimes present as they expired, accepting an unpleasant death to avoid their loved ones being reduced to penury. 95.151.24.100 (talk) 10:07, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Bona vacantia NOWADAYS only kicks in when no heirs can be traced, I rather suspect the laws were different in de Bracton's time. And as for not being able to punish the dead, that's a very modern idea. Cromwell was beheaded after death, I think there was a pope who was tried after death. The question isn't about modern laws or mores. DuncanHill (talk) 14:30, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, he lived in a very superstitious time. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:44, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * See inheritance.  There's a link there to primogeniture.   Given that practically everyone was illiterate that time, if such a law as Duncan describes had been passed, I suspect that private ownership would have become practically extinct within a generation, and there is no record of that happening. 2.31.65.97 (talk) 11:47, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

I love me some mashed potatoes!
I'm familiar enough with the construction (though I found it jarring when used with an entity ("Netflix loves it some data..."). Does it have a specific source or inspiration? How unusual is the construction? It shows emphasis well, but it must make ESL learners weep. Matt Deres (talk) 15:36, 14 October 2020 (UTC)


 * African American personal dative? 2003:E8:B726:D00B:C855:136D:9C9C:94E6 (talk) 15:58, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Here's a page about Personal datives. -Austronesier (talk) 16:00, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Interesting - and it specifically calls out that it can't be used with the personal dative. Since that matches my own notions, I recognize this as a reliable source. :-) A number of their examples also include the some intensifier, which seems common. Matt Deres (talk) 17:00, 14 October 2020 (UTC)


 * The personal dative is one part of what was traditionally known as the "ethical dative". The treatment of this in Wikipedia is somewhat inadequate, as far as I can tell, but Merriam-Webster has a nice handy definition: ... -- AnonMoos (talk) 16:03, 14 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Here's a link for those of us unfamiliar with the topic: Dative case.  --2606:A000:1126:28D:A993:1D91:B432:3122 (talk) 20:34, 14 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Of course, modern English does not have inflectionally-distinct dative forms, but English pronoun object forms sometimes occur where languages which have a dative would use it, including certain specialized usages (such as the ethical dative) which are not ordinary verb indirect objects or prepositional objects... AnonMoos (talk) 21:55, 14 October 2020 (UTC)


 * There's something about this (for)-me that reminds me of the on-me construction. They seem related, but kind of opposite? Temerarius (talk) 05:34, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

An England
On the Finnish Wikipedia someone asked us Finns, why there is an indefinite artice "an" before England in the lyrics of the song There'll Always Be an England. It's probably used the same way as in sentences like "There really should be a Hyde Park in every major city", or "There's a Mr. Hudson downstairs who wants to speak to Janet." I cannot explain the usage in proper terms (and conditions). I hope you can. Then there is also the question concerning Vera Lynn's pronunciation of the word England itself but that is not as interesting. --Pxos (talk) 16:17, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * If the subject (England) starts with a vowel, then the a becomes an. So A dog, An Eagle, a horse, an airplane.  -- Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.150.105.98 (talk) 16:37, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I think the question is "why is there an article at all", not "why is an used instead of a". DuncanHill (talk) 16:39, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, a thank you is placed here anyway, but the question really is more complex and DuncanHill got it right. --Pxos (talk) 16:51, 14 October 2020 (UTC)


 * 86.150.105.98 -- "There will always be England" sounds a little awkward, and would probably be rephrased as "England will always exist" or whatever. "There will always be an England" has a meaning more like "There will always be something called England".  The sentence with "...a Mr. Hudson..." could be rephrased with "...a certain Mr. Hudson...", which is not true for the geographical terms... AnonMoos (talk) 16:49, 14 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Referring to "Mr Hudson" implies someone who is familiar to both parties.  The "a" indicates he is unfamiliar.   Many years ago I wrote to the Eastern Daily Press suggesting the introduction of parking meters to solve Norwich's traffic congestion problem.   I used the term "a Norwich free of congestion" (or something similar) because the idea of Norwich being free of traffic jams was as unfamiliar then as it probably still is today. 92.27.12.232 (talk) 16:58, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Actually it wasn't parking meters, it was parking zones, an idea which is popular today in the part of London where I live.  I have an idea that parking meters have rather gone out of fashion. 92.27.12.232 (talk) 17:01, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * "A certain Mr Hudson" is grammatical, but it's slightly longer. 92.27.12.232 (talk) 17:05, 14 October 2020 (UTC)


 * I hear "a certain Mr Hudson" as Archie Goodwin's arch way of saying to Nero Wolfe, "you know jolly well which Hudson, and I agree that he is a nuisance." —Tamfang (talk) 04:08, 17 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Answering my own (or somebody else's own) question, the artice "a(n)" might even be used more definitely than "the" itself. Maybe it means that even if the Nazis occupy the island (and Scotland as well) and kill the King, there shall still exist the very England that is not attached to king or country, but is rather an idea of Englishness that will prevail. Or something like that. --Pxos (talk) 17:19, 14 October 2020 (UTC)


 * I rather think you've got it. DuncanHill (talk) 17:28, 14 October 2020 (UTC)


 * It's there precisely to make you ask the question you did ask: what does it mean to be "an England"? The second line of the chorus partly answers this with "freedom".  But I think the real answer is in the last two lines of the chorus.  They identify the "meaning of" England with its "meaning to" you and me, that is, how much we value it and what we're willing to do to preserve it. --Amble (talk) 18:24, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * "It becomes clear why sentences in (8) are acceptable: they do not assert the material existence of an individual entity (Santa Claus, England or the best theory), but they state there is some entity in the world with the properties needed for it to be defined as Santa Claus, England or best theory and this is for sure an exist-C reading (Milsark 1974: 182)."
 * Source: Sorrenti (1995). Opacity and the definiteness effect: A contrastive analysis in languages with and without articles. Dissertation from the University of Hamburg.
 * The first line of the chorus raises the question of what properties are needed for something to be "an England" (and the following lines answer the question). --Amble (talk) 20:29, 14 October 2020 (UTC)


 * The dissertation seems interesting. It has, however, 356 pages. Hey Amble, how much do you charge for a page number revealing the exact location of that citation within the thesis? This is an annoyingly common problem in Wikipedia. People give a source pointing to the Bible of Everything, which contains Zen Thousand Pages of Pure Wisdom, but the reader is tasked to track down every morsel of information themselves, because the Journey is more important than the Answer, which happens to be seventy-seven at least for now. But to be less mock-angry and more serious-minded, I must thank you for a very good answer. --Pxos (talk) 21:11, 14 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Ctrl+f tells me it's on page 77. The quotation from the song is on page 75. DuncanHill (talk) 21:17, 14 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Hey, we were just about to discuss pricing, and now you've disrupted my whole business model! --Amble (talk) 21:40, 14 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Ctrl+f is nice, but keep in mind that there are always greater idiots than I. Once upon a certain time there was once a book that is out of print, long since incinerated from all public libraries and naturally not digitized. I managed to track down a copy that was in the back room of a secret cellar in the National Library for Serious Scholars and Zombies. The book had over 300 pages. It took me two visits to find the dissected, page-number-less, without-any-meaningful-context-bearing paragraph in question that was given in evidence to some esoteric claim about Life, Universe, and Losing Weight. I was too exhausted to feel any happy thoughts of discovery or deliverance. Nowadays I'm just like everyone else: if it cannot be clicked, it doesn't exist. --Pxos (talk) 21:51, 14 October 2020 (UTC)


 * I don't understand that thesis in its entirety, but I think this is a simple question of grammer with no hidden meaning - for example "1976 had a very hot July" means no more than "July 1976 was very hot". 95.151.24.100 (talk) 08:35, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Your example is quite different, because every year has a July and we are comparing one against the others. --Amble (talk) 19:09, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't say that July 1976 is being compared specifically with July of other years, but it's more a general statement about summer weather.  For example, in 2003 a record temperature (in the region of 100°) was recorded in September. 2A00:23C4:7C86:9000:E9DB:6543:7C9E:A34F (talk) 09:00, 17 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Another example: "Yes, there will always be an England, but by that we do not mean a mere geographical area, a few islands in the Northern Atlantic, although there are millions of people who would fight for that alone; but there will always be an England of the kind referred to in the publication I have here [...]. That is freedom of speech, freedom of the written word, freedom of justice, freedom of Government, freedom of worship, freedom of learning, freedom of occupation, freedom of association, freedom of leisure.  That is what people mean when they say that there will always be an England[.]"
 * Source: New Zealand parliamentary debates (1941), p. 56, address by Tom Bloodworth on March 19, 1941. . --Amble (talk) 19:16, 16 October 2020 (UTC)