The Innovative Usage Thread

[Zaarin]

I think levelling is the right word.

That sounds right, actually, thanks.

I use this thread too much but damn is it convenient for these little questions.

Do any Brits here use "palaver" to mean a fuss, a kerfuffle, essentially? The dictionary definition is more along the lines of idle chatter but I have heard this word once or twice used in a situation where it seemed "kerfuffle" would be an appropriate synonym. Does this word have that meaning for you and do you use it or have you heard it used that way? Also does the word belong to a particular register in your opinion?

Thank you for finally revealing to me the word Silver uses in Treasure Planet that I could never understand. :p

[Yng]

Do any Brits here use "palaver" to mean a fuss, a kerfuffle, essentially? The dictionary definition is more along the lines of idle chatter but I have heard this word once or twice used in a situation where it seemed "kerfuffle" would be an appropriate synonym. Does this word have that meaning for you and do you use it or have you heard it used that way? Also does the word belong to a particular register in your opinion?

yes. In fact I don't think we usually use it in the sense of 'idle chatter'. I think it only appears in the expression 'what a palaver!'

[Viktor77]

Listening to Emmanuel Macron speak in French, I noticed that instead of carrying the liaison of the final /t/ in "c'est" over to the onset of the first syllable of the next word as in /se tyn/ 'c'est une' he maintains the /t/ on the coda of /se/ creating /set/. His prosody shows a clear pause here /set yn/. I wonder if, in his attempts to embrace a high register of French which maintains many liaisons, he is just assuming that 'c'est' will almost always follow a vowel onset.

[Sumelic]

Listening to Emmanuel Macron speak in French, I noticed that instead of carrying the liaison of the final /t/ in "c'est" over to the onset of the first syllable of the next word as in /se tyn/ 'c'est une' he maintains the /t/ on the coda of /se/ creating /set/. His prosody shows a clear pause here /set yn/. I wonder if, in his attempts to embrace a high register of French which maintains many liaisons, he is just assuming that 'c'est' will almost always follow a vowel onset.

I have heard of this; apparently it's reasonably common in the speech of some French politicians. I don't believe it is ever used before consonants, so there is no assumption of a following vowel-initial word: the liaison consonant is still conditioned by the actual presence of a following word that starts with a vowel. It's just liaison, occurring in the usual liaison environments, but without enchainement. I'm not sure, but I think it may only be possible with some liaisons, not all. I would guess it is possible, for speakers who use it, with any facultative liaison at least.

On the other hand, it would seem odd to me if French speakers use pronunciations like [lez(.)ami] or [lɛz(.)ami] with any frequency: I think enchainement is obligatory, or at least nearly so, between a determiner and the following word. (I might be wrong about this.) But apparently there are also some kinds of "obligatory" liaisons that can lack enchainement: for example, those between masculine adjectives and following nouns. I found this information in http://www.linguistiquefrancaise.org/ar ... f08038.pdf ...it seems to be talking about a subset of masculine adjectives that lack enchainement even in standard French, but I would guess it might be possible for others to be used without enchainement in actual spoken contexts.

Here is a relevant passage I found in Google Books:

Code: Select all

https://books.google.com/books?id=FecVBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT292&lpg=PT292&dq=La+liaison+avec+et+sans+enchaînement:
+Phonologie+tridimensionnelle+et+usages+du+français.&source=bl&ots=t2wG_rDw3v&sig=le58zycioylQwjMUdkw-Wmvqd1w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwijh46S06_TAhWL1IMKHbZ6BV44FBDoAQgjMAA#v=onepage&q=
La%20liaison%20avec%20et%20sans%20enchaînement%3A%20Phonologie%20tridimensionnelle%20et%20usages%20du%20français.&f=false

It summarizes La liaison avec et sans enchaînement by Pierre Encrevé.

[Viktor77]

I have heard of this; apparently it's reasonably common in the speech of some French politicians. I don't believe it is ever used before consonants, so there is no assumption of a following vowel-initial word: the liaison consonant is still conditioned by the actual presence of a following word that starts with a vowel. It's just liaison, occurring in the usual liaison environments, but without enchainement. I'm not sure, but I think it may only be possible with some liaisons, not all. I would guess it is possible, for speakers who use it, with any facultative liaison at least.

On the other hand, it would seem odd to me if French speakers use pronunciations like [lez(.)ami] or [lɛz(.)ami] with any frequency: I think enchainement is obligatory, or at least nearly so, between a determiner and the following word. (I might be wrong about this.) But apparently there are also some kinds of "obligatory" liaisons that can lack enchainement: for example, those between masculine adjectives and following nouns. I found this information in http://www.linguistiquefrancaise.org/ar ... f08038.pdf ...it seems to be talking about a subset of masculine adjectives that lack enchainement even in standard French, but I would guess it might be possible for others to be used without enchainement in actual spoken contexts.

Here is a relevant passage I found in Google Books:

Code: Select all

https://books.google.com/books?id=FecVBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT292&lpg=PT292&dq=La+liaison+avec+et+sans+enchaînement:
+Phonologie+tridimensionnelle+et+usages+du+français.&source=bl&ots=t2wG_rDw3v&sig=le58zycioylQwjMUdkw-Wmvqd1w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwijh46S06_TAhWL1IMKHbZ6BV44FBDoAQgjMAA#v=onepage&q=
La%20liaison%20avec%20et%20sans%20enchaînement%3A%20Phonologie%20tridimensionnelle%20et%20usages%20du%20français.&f=false

It summarizes La liaison avec et sans enchaînement by Pierre Encrevé.

Thanks for reminding me of enchainement. I had temporarily forgot the name for this phenomenon, which is sad because I teach it.

I wouldn't expect a lack of enchainement with obligatory liaison (article and noun, subject and verb, etc.).

I'm actually not terribly surprised by the lack of enchainement the paper you linked demonstrates. I suspect that if you examine parler jeune you will find this to be very common. I didn't read the whole paper though so perhaps he mentions that.

Apparently, liaison with /t/ in 'est' is obligatory in the standard language but optional in dialects and certain registers (such as parler jeune) so I'm unsure it's a lack of enchainement in optional liaison. It may be a very marked hypercorrection, the speaker intending to enchaine the verb 'est' and following vowel but for some reason hypercorrects the /t/ as the coda of /e/ (the hypercorrection itself being caused by the orthography). I'm unsure how to explain it, honestly, but if I see my advisor (who studies all things variation in phonetics and phonology in French), I'll have to ask her about it.

[Viktor77]

Sumelic, I just heard Emmanuel Macron say /set(.)da.vwaR/ c'est d'avoir, with a considerable pause between c'est and d'avoir, so it is likely a performance error because the second time he says it he does not include the liaison. What's fascinating is that he still did it that first time though.

This also apparently happens with the word débat /de.bat/.

[Sumelic]

Sumelic, I just heard Emmanuel Macron say /set(.)da.vwaR/ c'est d'avoir, with a considerable pause between c'est and d'avoir, so it is likely a performance error because the second time he says it he does not include the liaison. What's fascinating is that he still did it that first time though.

Interesting. That definitely seems non-standard.

This also apparently happens with the word débat /de.bat/.

Interesting. I'm not sure if that would be the phenomenon of liaison without enchainement, or more like the pronunciation of "t" at the end of "fait" in some contexts where there isn't liaison. Maybe both are related. Apparently "soit" can also have pronounced /t/.

[Vijay]

Can you use wanderlust as a verb? And, if so, can it take a direct object or only a prepositional one? In the latter case, which preposition(s)?

A certain person I used to be friends with once argued when talking to me (I'm actually not entirely sure how serious they were being) that wanderlust was a whole sentence ("why are you learning language X?" "Because wanderlust!").

[KathTheDragon]

("why are you learning language X?" "Because wanderlust!").

Except you can do the "because X" thing with any noun, where it's short for "because of X"

[Vijay]

("why are you learning language X?" "Because wanderlust!").

Except you can do the "because X" thing with any noun, where it's short for "because of X"

That's true, but right after I had that exact conversation with this person, I asked them, "Wanderlust is a whole sentence now?" and they said, "Yes."

[Axiem]

I'd probably call that a clause rather than a sentence myself.

But yeah, the "because NOUN" phenomenon is interesting, because it peppers my speech all the time now, and I'm pretty sure I didn't use it or hear it when I was young, so sometime in the intervening decades I picked it up and didn't notice it at all—speaking as someone who's a little more aware than the average person of weird things like that.

[Pole, the]

Sumelic, I just heard Emmanuel Macron say /set(.)da.vwaR/ c'est d'avoir, with a considerable pause between c'est and d'avoir, so it is likely a performance error because the second time he says it he does not include the liaison. What's fascinating is that he still did it that first time though.

Interesting. That definitely seems non-standard.

Breaking news! A French politician pronounces a letter he shouldn't have pronounced. What a faux pas!

But yeah, the "because NOUN" phenomenon is interesting, because it peppers my speech all the time now, and I'm pretty sure I didn't use it or hear it when I was young, so sometime in the intervening decades I picked it up and didn't notice it at all—speaking as someone who's a little more aware than the average person of weird things like that.

Well, it looks like a figure of speech. Not much weirder than writing “Exeunt X and Y” instead of “X and Y exit”.

Also, it doesn't need to be a separate sentence or even a clause. A single word can make a complete utterance. An exchange like “What is the reason you're learning X?” “Wanderlust.” would be perfectly normal, I think. (Even “Why are you learning X?” “Wanderlust.” might be acceptable.)

[Qxentio]

An acquaintance of mine, native speaker of Kurdish and Arabic, recently used the term "Weißarbeit" ("white labor") as an antonym to "Schwarzarbeit" ("black labor"), referring to a job that is official, including a contract, regulation by law, income tax et cetera. I thought that was very creative

[Arzena]

English speakers: who's replacing 'when' with 'where'? I feel that 'where' replaces a phrase like 'in which'...

Eg: There are days where you age years, and years where you age days

[Sumelic]

English speakers: who's replacing 'when' with 'where'? I feel that 'where' replaces a phrase like 'in which'...

Eg: There are days where you age years, and years where you age days

I am not sure this is recent. I assume the use is because prepositional phrases are often used to refer to times or time periods (we would say "you age years on those days") and "where" can substitute for many different kinds of prepositional phrases.

[Arzena]

Interesting... I will have to look out for this because I have felt personally that I'm replacing 'when' with 'where' more often. A grad-student friend of mine independently brought up this topic, too, when she mentioned that the freshmen in her seminar replace the words. Hence, my curiosity in the topic.

[Vijay]

That does sound a bit familiar to me. I've also been noticing people use "where" in places where(!) they don't have to.

[linguoboy]

Recently there was a hand-wringing article about the barbaristic replacement of who with that in reference to persons (e.g. "the man who I saw there" vs "the man that I saw there") and, from the response, it seems a more common peeve than I realised. I wasn't surprised to find, upon investigating, that the use of who here is the innovation, but I didn't expect it to be quite so recent. It apparently originates in the 16th century and as late as the Victorian period educated philologists were still claiming that no one uses "who" here.

The use of interrogatives as relatives is a well-known SAE feature and now I'm curious how it originated. The usual relative pronoun in Standard German is still cognate with that, but some dialects have generalised cognates of where (e.g. Alemannic e Buech, wu mer umbedingt sott läse "a book you should definitely read") and I wonder how far that goes back.

[Zaarin]

I'm always baffled by people who get upset about that. I was always taught "who" is animate, "which" is inanimate, and "that" is either, and I had an old-fashioned uptight grammar-prescriptive education.

[Yng]

An acquaintance of mine, native speaker of Kurdish and Arabic, recently used the term "Weißarbeit" ("white labor") as an antonym to "Schwarzarbeit" ("black labor"), referring to a job that is official, including a contract, regulation by law, income tax et cetera. I thought that was very creative

These are expressions in Arabic too (شغل بالابيض and شغل بالاسود).

[Vijay]

Last I remember, my mom's pronunciation of the word "queen" was [kʲʊˈʋɪn], and I remember her once (maybe about five years ago) telling me she was going to take a [kʲʋɪk] (quick) shower.

[Magb]

(This isn't particularly "innovative", but personally I think of this thread as the general "interesting grammar" thread.)

A passage in this Medium article garden pathed me hard (emphasis mine).

The whole conversation will be a hot awkward mess and anyone with any body (or general) anxiety will be glad to be rid of it.

On my first read I thought "any body" was a misspelling of "anybody". The parenthetical already tipped me off that something was off with my analysis, and when I got to "anxiety" I had to backtrack.

This is kind of a milder version of what they call WTF Coordination on Language Log, but those were usually deliberately weird stuff like "shut up and the door". Splitting the components of a compound noun seems a lot more ordinary, but this one still threw me off when I first read it, albeit mostly because of the preceding "any".

Any thoughts?

[Pole, the]

On my first read I thought "any body" was a misspelling of "anybody". The parenthetical already tipped me off that something was off with my analysis, and when I got to "anxiety" I had to backtrack.

The world would seem much simpler if all the human languages were LL(1).

[finlay]

On a similar note I always get thrown by the title of another thread here, "Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlearn" because "have" /hav/ and "have to" /haftə/ are totally different mental lexical entries for me, so I always start thinking it's something I possess instead of something with which I must do something.

Like I'd have worded it "have to (or have had to)", so strong is the connection between 'have' and 'to' in my mind. (had to is also normally /hattə/ for me, is this not normal with other people too?)

[linguoboy]

(had to is also normally /hattə/ for me, is this not normal with other people too?)

It's hard for me to say since I don't think /tt/ has a distinct realisation in my dialect. There's no flap in my had to, which contrasts with had a, but on the other hand gotta is flapped whether it represents got a or got to.