The Innovative Usage Thread

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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by 2+3 clusivity »

Drydic Guy wrote:Naeetlrcreejl wrote:Do any of y'all use "themself" as the reflexive of singular they?Anyone who doesn't (and does use singular they) is an idiot. Singular they may not be standard but I don't think it qualifies as innovation
I heavily use singular they. Mostly with distant or ambiguous third persons but also sometimes as a general replacement for 3d person singular pronouns. I flipflop between themself and themselves in the construction being discussed.

For instance, if I was describing what someone was doing in the distance in an airport bathroom, it might be: "they are looking at themself in the mirror," or "they are looking at themselves in the mirror." For me, the latter would also serve double duty when "they" are actually plural; however, I feel that the former, "themself," feels more natural in the singular context--despite the red squiggly error correction line.
linguoboy wrote:So that's what it looks like when the master satirist is moistened by his own moutarde.

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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

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Yeah, I meant when the particular instance of they was unambiguously singular.
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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

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2+3 clusivity wrote:For instance, if I was describing what someone was doing in the distance in an airport bathroom, it might be: "they are looking at themself in the mirror," . . .
linguoboy wrote:So that's what it looks like when the master satirist is moistened by his own moutarde.

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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by Drydic »

I noticed. I was just qualifying my 'is an idiot' statement.
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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by finlay »

Radius Solis wrote:
finlay wrote: "loads of" is not innovative. what are you talking about?
I'm talking about number agreement. Specifically, which of these sets does it belong to?

Set 1:
Bottles of water are/*is in the fridge.
Boxes of junk are/*is stacked up in the corner.


Set 2:
Lots of water *are/is in the fridge.
Tons of junk *are/is stacked up in the corner.


Though "loads of" is semantically bleached in the manner of set 2, it remains grammatically a member of set 1:

Loads of junk are/*is stacked up in the corner.

But the speaker in the video treated it grammatically as a member of set 2 - which would represent the last step in grammaticalizing it as a quantifier, if it sticks. Of course, perhaps you have the innovation already and it's all old hat to you.
If you said "loads of junk are stacked up" to me, I'd assume you weren't a native speaker of English, but ok. It's like when Americans use plural agreement for "politics".

Also not to you but the other guy, "there is" and "there are" are not reliable testers of plural agreement because many people always use "there's".

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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

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finlay wrote:Also not to you but the other guy, "there is" and "there are" are not reliable testers of plural agreement because many people always use "there's".
this, yes, and "where's", anything that would have /r#/ + 're takes 's instead

in higher registers I think I'd even replace "where's the X[plural]?" with "where'd the X[plural] go?" or somesuch to avoid "where're"
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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by finlay »

Actually i would agree it with the other noun: "loads of water is in the tank" vs "loads of men are in the tank" - i imagine this is expected though.

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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

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finlay wrote:Actually i would agree it with the other noun: "loads of water is in the tank" vs "loads of men are in the tank" - i imagine this is expected though.
Personally loads of doesn't work with water for me. It'd have to be there's a lot of water in the tank.

And the other sentence sounds pretty stilted...
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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by Nortaneous »

both of finlay's sentences work fine for me, and swapping singular/plural doesn't in either
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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

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yes but you are insane
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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

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Drydic Guy wrote:
finlay wrote:Actually i would agree it with the other noun: "loads of water is in the tank" vs "loads of men are in the tank" - i imagine this is expected though.
Personally loads of doesn't work with water for me. It'd have to be there's a lot of water in the tank.

And the other sentence sounds pretty stilted...
use your imagination.

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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

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finlay wrote:
Drydic Guy wrote:
finlay wrote:Actually i would agree it with the other noun: "loads of water is in the tank" vs "loads of men are in the tank" - i imagine this is expected though.
Personally loads of doesn't work with water for me. It'd have to be there's a lot of water in the tank.

And the other sentence sounds pretty stilted...
use your imagination.
If I do that Tankin muchwater is valid.
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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by Ser »

I just saw "beastiality" here:

http://imgur.com/gallery/jGn4fps

That's one fantastic eggcorn.

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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by Astraios »

"I do have solved this puzzle before, but I'm doing it again for you guys."

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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by Ser »

Yes, as an L2 speaker, I feel like the compound tenses should allow do-emphasis as well. (No, he does not have said that! And yes, we do not be changing our opinion!)

Of course, you can always use in fact or never or such adverbs, or rely on intonation... (No, he has never said that! And yes, we're not changing our opinion!)

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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by Astraios »

It was a native speaker who said it as well, that's what made it stand out to me.

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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by Radius Solis »

Heard in the wild, just last night:

Tomorrow we might gonna want to open some windows.

When queried afterwards, she didn't understand what would be wrong with it. Of course this is someone who messes up grammatical things all the time, but normally she recognizes them as errors on her own or as soon as pointed out.

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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by Kereb »

from one of my friends, this use of super for emphasis seems to be spreading among my circle

"Hendricks? Is that the really good gin?"
"It super is."

as well as a similar use of mega

"But I don't really like gin."
"Yeah but you'll like this one. You gotta try it."
"I gotta?"
"You mega gotta."
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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by Ser »

Back when I was in grade 3 and grade 4, quite a number of my (male) classmates would use súper, ultra and mega like that, with mega > ultra and ultra > súper, likely as some influence from Pokemon/Digimon (IIRC the translations of Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow and Gold/Silver into (Spaniard) Spanish actually used SÚPERBALL and ULTRABALL (yes, in English and with no space), and the dubbing of Digimon into Latin American Spanish used Ultra and Mega for the Ultimate and Mega forms in digivolution).

(In fact, said dubbing might've even used Súper for Champion forms, I don't remember them using Campeones for them. This would require watching that again...)

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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by Dewrad »

Kereb wrote:from one of my friends, this use of super for emphasis seems to be spreading among my circle

"Hendricks? Is that the really good gin?"
"It super is."

as well as a similar use of mega

"But I don't really like gin."
"Yeah but you'll like this one. You gotta try it."
"I gotta?"
"You mega gotta."
Slap everyone you know every time they use this. (But try the hendricks, it's not a bad gin.)
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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by Nesescosac »

Radius Solis wrote:Heard in the wild, just last night:

Tomorrow we might gonna want to open some windows.

When queried afterwards, she didn't understand what would be wrong with it. Of course this is someone who messes up grammatical things all the time, but normally she recognizes them as errors on her own or as soon as pointed out.
Austin, Texas native here - this wouldn't be out of place at all here, and would be even more expected as one heads east into the core of the South.
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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by R.Rusanov »

I already monophthongize aj to a: (before voiced cons.) but I just caught myself monophthongizing oj earlier. I don't monophthongize front vowels ɪj and ej to i:/e: so it seems to be just a back vowel thing.

The word in question was "boiling" btw., I said /bo:lɪŋ/ or /boəlɪŋ/. Maybe I'm not extending aj > a: but instead generalizing resonant schwa-appendage like in <peel> [pil] /piəl/.
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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by ---- »

Are you using your brackets backwards? I'm pretty sure <peel> is phonemically /pil/, but it surfaces as [pʰiəɫ] for a lot of people.

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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by linguoboy »

Does anyone know of a good account of the usage of "yeah no"? I find it an intriguing expression, but even though I use it regularly, I can't figure out how to describe the operative conditions.

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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread

Post by Nortaneous »

linguoboy wrote:Does anyone know of a good account of the usage of "yeah no"? I find it an intriguing expression, but even though I use it regularly, I can't figure out how to describe the operative conditions.
isn't it just a polite way of saying "that's stupid and you're stupid for saying it"
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