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Re: The Innovative Usage Thread
Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 8:49 am
by Astraios
Shrdlu wrote:Isn't, along with dosn't is the way I learnt to spell at school, also isn't is correct according to the spell-checker.
Try reading things properly before you reply to them.
I'd expect /ɪ.ˈzn̩t/ if it was in the context of: "Did you say 'it is red'?" "No, I said 'it is
n't red'", but not normally elsewhere.
Re: The Innovative Usage Thread
Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 8:51 am
by finlay
Also, you definitely didn't learn "dosn't" at school, idiot.
Re: The Innovative Usage Thread
Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 9:00 am
by Shrdlu
Well, I did along with whant. It was only later that I learnt that it should be want and doesn't. Why this need to make such a huge thing a simple misunderstanding?
Re: The Innovative Usage Thread
Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 10:16 am
by ----
This better have been a one/two-time writing error. How would someone be able to teach English if they literally did not know how to spell such basic words?
Re: The Innovative Usage Thread
Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 3:23 pm
by Travis B.
linguoboy wrote:"Barba faces a suspension hearing at her school today. Her father, Michael Barba, is calling her punishment “extensive” and is demanding she be allowed to return to school, that the suspension be erased and that she be allowed to submit the project as school work." [Source:
http://www.care2.com/causes/take-action ... video.html]
Not sure if this is simply a malapropism or if "extensive" is actually moving into the territory covered by "excessive".
I have never heard of this; I took it to be a malapropism myself.
Re: The Innovative Usage Thread
Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 3:26 pm
by Travis B.
Jetboy wrote:I ran across <isn't> online recently, which I interpreted as indicating stress on the second syllable– except I can't imagine anyone saying /ɪ.ˈzn̩t/. I'm not sure whether that's some sort of formatting error, a writing convention, or actually reflective of a pronunciation.
If what you are referring to is the
n't being bolded and not the
is, that sounds like a formatting error. Normally if people want to stress like that, they instead use
is not, where the
not receives full stress.
Re: The Innovative Usage Thread
Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 10:26 pm
by Jetboy
Astraios wrote:
I'd expect /ɪ.ˈzn̩t/ if it was in the context of: "Did you say 'it is red'?" "No, I said 'it isn't red'", but not normally elsewhere.
The thing is, though, I'd still give <isn't> initial stress– stronger initial stress, but still initial stress. Or maybe "it's not"; that's not terribly likely (or maybe it is), but definitely sounds less awkward than the wholly uncontracted one.
Re: The Innovative Usage Thread
Posted: Tue May 29, 2012 10:03 pm
by Eschatologist
I've heard my parents use the -en ending for past participles of some verbs that normally don't have it; e.g., using "have boughten" instead of "have bought".
Re: The Innovative Usage Thread
Posted: Tue May 29, 2012 10:26 pm
by Pinetree
Eschatologist wrote:I've heard my parents use the -en ending for past participles of some verbs that normally don't have it; e.g., using "have boughten" instead of "have bought".
Tangentially, in the Little House on the Prairie series (and, i'm sure, in other books of the time), "boughten" was used as an adjective, denoting that something was bought in a store, rather than hand-made: A boughten shirt, a boughten hat, that sort of thing.
Re: The Innovative Usage Thread
Posted: Tue May 29, 2012 10:44 pm
by Jetboy
My teenage nephew use "a lettuce" today for "a piece of lettuce"
Re: The Innovative Usage Thread
Posted: Tue May 29, 2012 10:55 pm
by Pinetree
Jetboy wrote:My teenage nephew use "a lettuce" today for "a piece of lettuce"
Mein Gott. that's like saying "a scissors". it hurts my head.
Re: The Innovative Usage Thread
Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 1:22 am
by Maulrus
Does anybody use the word "sensical" as a back formation from "nonsensical"? It seemed so natural to me until a few of my friends gave me puzzled looks when I used it. I've met some other people who had no problem with it, but a lot of people tell me it sounds wrong, and I was surprised to find out it's not really a widely accepted word.
Re: The Innovative Usage Thread
Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 1:39 am
by Bob Johnson
I haven't heard it, but it sounds about the same as various other silly back-formations; not too awful.
Re: The Innovative Usage Thread
Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 10:39 am
by Yng
Maulrus wrote:Does anybody use the word "sensical" as a back formation from "nonsensical"? It seemed so natural to me until a few of my friends gave me puzzled looks when I used it. I've met some other people who had no problem with it, but a lot of people tell me it sounds wrong, and I was surprised to find out it's not really a widely accepted word.
It's in the dictionary and I've seen it in academic writing, so...
Edit: Also it's arguably a derivation from 'sense' by analogy with nonsensical rather than necessarily a back-formation.
Re: The Innovative Usage Thread
Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 12:45 pm
by Aurora Rossa
KhúbrisInkálkjulabul wrote:Mein Gott. that's like saying "a scissors". it hurts my head.
Could be worse. He could invent the form "letti" as the plural of "lettuce".
Re: The Innovative Usage Thread
Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 3:13 pm
by Ser
Jetboy wrote:My teenage nephew use "a lettuce" today for "a piece of lettuce"
What? So "lettuce" isn't actually a count noun? (I almost never talk about such things in English anyway, but still... In my dialect of Spanish at least
lechuga can be either a count noun or a mass noun.)
KhúbrisInkálkjulabul wrote:Jetboy wrote:My teenage nephew use "a lettuce" today for "a piece of lettuce"
Mein Gott. that's like saying "a scissors". it hurts my head.
In my dialect of Spanish we do say
una tijera... (Though I think it's more common across dialects to say
tijeras, as in English, though I'm not sure.)
Re: The Innovative Usage Thread
Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 3:27 pm
by Travis B.
Sinjana wrote:Jetboy wrote:My teenage nephew use "a lettuce" today for "a piece of lettuce"
What? So "lettuce" isn't actually a count noun? (I almost never talk about such things in English anyway, but still... In my dialect of Spanish at least
lechuga can be either a count noun or a mass noun.)
Yes,
lettuce is a mass noun; if one wants to use it like a count noun, one speaks of
heads of lettuce and similar constructions (e.g.
leaf of lettuce), which one can use in the singular as
a head of lettuce (or the like).
Sinjana wrote:KhúbrisInkálkjulabul wrote:Jetboy wrote:My teenage nephew use "a lettuce" today for "a piece of lettuce"
Mein Gott. that's like saying "a scissors". it hurts my head.
In my dialect of Spanish we do say
una tijera... (Though I think it's more common across dialects to say
tijeras, as in English, though I'm not sure.)
In English one normally speaks of
a pair of scissors if one wants to speak of a single object; for more than one, one still commonly speaks of
pairs of scissors.
Re: The Innovative Usage Thread
Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 3:52 pm
by AnTeallach
Travis B. wrote:Sinjana wrote:Jetboy wrote:My teenage nephew use "a lettuce" today for "a piece of lettuce"
What? So "lettuce" isn't actually a count noun? (I almost never talk about such things in English anyway, but still... In my dialect of Spanish at least
lechuga can be either a count noun or a mass noun.)
Yes,
lettuce is a mass noun; if one wants to use it like a count noun, one speaks of
heads of lettuce and similar constructions (e.g.
leaf of lettuce), which one can use in the singular as
a head of lettuce (or the like).
In my dialect it can be either a mass noun or a count noun (and "head of lettuce" isn't used).
Re: The Innovative Usage Thread
Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 4:04 pm
by Ser
inb4 somebody mentions that "pea" used to be a mass noun in english
"want some more pea in your soup?"
Re: The Innovative Usage Thread
Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 7:30 pm
by Boşkoventi
Sinjana wrote:inb4 somebody mentions that "pea" used to be a mass noun in english
"want some more pea in your soup?"
Actually,
it was "pease", with the singular "pea" being a back formation. (As if we derived "rie" to mean "a grain of rice".)
"Want some more pease in your soup?"
Re: The Innovative Usage Thread
Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 8:00 pm
by Bob Johnson
Travis B. wrote:Yes, lettuce is a mass noun; if one wants to use it like a count noun, one speaks of heads of lettuce and similar constructions (e.g. leaf of lettuce), which one can use in the singular as a head of lettuce (or the like).
or the usual "Different lettuces are used in different recipes" thing
Re: The Innovative Usage Thread
Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 11:04 pm
by clawgrip
I don't think saying "Can I have a lettuce?" is any worse than saying "Can I have a coffee?" It's just a mass noun turned into a count noun when the expected portion is obvious.
Re: The Innovative Usage Thread
Posted: Thu May 31, 2012 12:19 am
by Travis B.
clawgrip wrote:I don't think saying "Can I have a lettuce?" is any worse than saying "Can I have a coffee?" It's just a mass noun turned into a count noun when the expected portion is obvious.
See, what I am used to is saying "Can I have
some lettuce?", not *"Can I have
a lettuce?", which is ungrammatical to my ears.
Re: The Innovative Usage Thread
Posted: Thu May 31, 2012 8:13 am
by Astraios
Travis B. wrote:See, what I am used to is saying "Can I have some lettuce?", not *"Can I have a lettuce?", which is ungrammatical to my ears.
It's not ungrammatical to me, it just means you're asking for a whole single lettuce, not a piece, which is what was being talked about.
Re: The Innovative Usage Thread
Posted: Thu May 31, 2012 9:41 am
by Pinetree
Astraios wrote:Travis B. wrote:See, what I am used to is saying "Can I have some lettuce?", not *"Can I have a lettuce?", which is ungrammatical to my ears.
It's not ungrammatical to me, it just means you're asking for a whole single lettuce, not a piece, which is what was being talked about.
Well, It's definitely atypical. I would have asked for "a head of lettuce" if I wanted a whole one or maybe "a lettuce plant" if I wanted a live one.