The Innovative Usage Thread

[Salmoneus]

Overheard: "She didn't know how long it was going to be too."

What's innovative about this?

"Too" with negatives is unidiomatic IMD. Sentences like this used to be a foolproof way of spotting L2 speakers, but this I heard from a completely fluent presumed native speaker.

Really? It sounds perfectly fine to my ears, and I'm definitely a completely fluent native speaker.

To me it's unacceptable - has to be 'either' there.

[Viktor77]

Can anyone flip subject and verb here without changing the sense of the phrase into an interrogative?

"Women, you may be brave, free; you may behave like men, write like them, but you shall never stray away from them."

I can do this "Women, may you be brave, free; may you behave like men, write like them, but shall you never straw away from them."

It's not bothering me, I like the way it flows, but when I googled structures like "shall you" I only found them used in prose in interrogative sentences.

[Travis B.]

To me that kind of inversion seems to only work if the clause is interrogative, or if the verb in the clause is past subjunctive, as in "Should the Russian hackers get to your computer, you will need to wipe your hard drive."

[CatDoom]

Can anyone flip subject and verb here without changing the sense of the phrase into an interrogative?

"Women, you may be brave, free; you may behave like men, write like them, but you shall never stray away from them."

I can do this "Women, may you be brave, free; may you behave like men, write like them, but shall you never straw away from them."

It's not bothering me, I like the way it flows, but when I googled structures like "shall you" I only found them used in prose in interrogative sentences.

To me "may you" and "shall you" always mean different things from "you may" and "you shall."

The first is a turn of phrase that I usually see as a somewhat archaic optative, as in "may you find what you're looking for." This is as opposed to "you may," which is of course used when giving permission (and sounds a bit formal) or to express that something is possible but uncertain.

I would use "shall you" in the same way as Travis B., and never interchangeably with "you shall."

[Viktor77]

Thanks for the advice. I understanding now what you're getting at.

[Travis B.]

Can anyone flip subject and verb here without changing the sense of the phrase into an interrogative?

"Women, you may be brave, free; you may behave like men, write like them, but you shall never stray away from them."

I can do this "Women, may you be brave, free; may you behave like men, write like them, but shall you never straw away from them."

It's not bothering me, I like the way it flows, but when I googled structures like "shall you" I only found them used in prose in interrogative sentences.

To me "may you" and "shall you" always mean different things from "you may" and "you shall."

The first is a turn of phrase that I usually see as a somewhat archaic optative, as in "may you find what you're looking for." This is as opposed to "you may," which is of course used when giving permission (and sounds a bit formal) or to express that something is possible but uncertain.

I would use "shall you" in the same way as Travis B., and never interchangeably with "you shall."

I had not thought about that sort of, well, optative, but yes, to me may can be used that way as well.

[Salmoneus]

Oh dear lord. This is from the United States Code (Title 35, Section 103), as written in 1952:

"Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made."

[CatDoom]

Oh dear lord. This is from the United States Code (Title 35, Section 103), as written in 1952:

"Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made."

I think that "shall" appears more often in legalese than it does in colloquial English, since it's pretty much the go-to word for expressing that something is explicitly required or forbidden. As for "negatived"... holy crap, a google search shows that "negative" is actually considered a perfectly valid verb in legal documents, meaning "to refuse to approve; to veto."

I know, on a rational level, that language use isn't a particularly good metric for intelligence or legal expertise, but I think this fact just irreparably damaged my opinion of lawmakers and legal professionals in general. I mean, did some congressman or judge or something just start saying this, and everybody else was too polite to correct him?

[Salmoneus]

Oh dear lord. This is from the United States Code (Title 35, Section 103), as written in 1952:

"Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made."

I think that "shall" appears more often in legalese than it does in colloquial English, since it's pretty much the go-to word for expressing that something is explicitly required or forbidden. As for "negatived"... holy crap, a google search shows that "negative" is actually considered a perfectly valid verb in legal documents, meaning "to refuse to approve; to veto."

I know, on a rational level, that language use isn't a particularly good metric for intelligence or legal expertise, but I think this fact just irreparably damaged my opinion of lawmakers and legal professionals in general. I mean, did some congressman or judge or something just start saying this, and everybody else was too polite to correct him?

Shall didn't bother me at all - that's what I'd have said. But "negatived" just looks so wrong to me.

EDIT: I could just about go with 'negatived' meaning 'with colours inverted like a negative photograph', or 'recorded on a negative photograph' or something like that. But in this sense? Looks like non-native use to me - though, as you say, it's not.

[Magb]

Google n-gram for negatived vs. negated. It looks like "negatived" was still slightly more popular in 1952.

[KathTheDragon]

Interestingly, the crossing point for frequency was '42 for American English, but '66 for British English.

[Viktor77]

I just heard a BBC news reporter use a basically RP accent that was rhotic. I've never heard a rhotic RP accent and it was striking. She's based out of Lancaster. Has anyone heard such an accent before?

[Yng]

do you have a link

[Viktor77]

do you have a link

It took a while but I figured out who the reporter was and found this.

[Yng]

She sounds posh Scottish to me - and not just from the rhoticity, but also her vowel in 'now' and a couple of other things.

[Viktor77]

She sounds posh Scottish to me - and not just from the rhoticity, but also her vowel in 'now' and a couple of other things.

Scotland has rhotic accents?

[linguoboy]

She sounds posh Scottish to me - and not just from the rhoticity, but also her vowel in 'now' and a couple of other things.

Scotland has rhotic accents?

Which Scottish accents are non-rhotic? I certainly don't know of any.

[Viktor77]

Which Scottish accents are non-rhotic? I certainly don't know of any.

That is my fault. I didn't properly do my research. When I read the article on rhoticity in English English only localities in England were mentioned and I didn't realize the article was only about England so I mistakenly assumed that must mean Scottish is non-rhotic. My bad.

[Viktor77]

Forget all my Scottish nonsense, I've read up on that now and understand it well.

But can I trouble you with another rhotic British accent, Yng? This one struck me tonight watching a series. It's around the time stamp 43:35 where a young lady begins speaking. She has a very rhotic accent. Is she trying to do some sort of old rhotic pre-RP accent since the movie's supposed to be set in the late 1700s? From what I've read English was still very rhotic in those times, though it had begun to lose its rhoticity among Londoners. None of the other cast, as far as I can tell, made an effort to be rhotic, or at least as rhotic as her, so her accent stands out quite a bit.

[jmcd]

I am a Scotsman whose speech is, as expected, rhotic. But I am also often a devil's advocate (oh what a boring place the world would be if were all God's soldiers!). Thus I will mention that a few Scots, mainly young working class men in big cities, are starting to have non-rhotic speech. (http://www.ncl.ac.uk/linguistics/assets ... Llamas.pdf) And that's about it.

As for the Sense and Sensibility woman, I would've thought it might be due to her background considering it's only one actor. But she seems to be Hattie Morahan, a Londoner. So maybe it's just she made more research or effort than the others?

[Viktor77]

As for the Sense and Sensibility woman, I would've thought it might be due to her background considering it's only one actor. But she seems to be Hattie Morahan, a Londoner. So maybe it's just she made more research or effort than the others?

That's what I thought too. A bit odd that the director would permit such an imbalance but am I correct to assume that her accent is actually quite spot on for a 1700s rhotic British upper class accent?

[jmcd]

I am not sure; seems closer than the others though. If you're interested in different Anglo-Saxon languge varieties, have you heard some people from Yorkshire speak?

[Viktor77]

I am not sure; seems closer than the others though. If you're interested in different Anglo-Saxon languge varieties, have you heard some people from Yorkshire speak?

It's fascinating how Nordic that accent is. I had no idea such heavily influenced Nordic accents still existed.

I'm quite fascinated by old rhotic British accents, the kinds spoken by the first Colonists of the Americas and which gave us American English. I read yesterday that Americans speak much more like old Brits than Brits do. Of course I always knew this (I've read the history of RP after all), but I never knew to what extent it was true. That woman in Sense and Sensibility, for example, if her accent is authentic, sounds more modern American than modern British with her rhoticity and heavily diphthongized /o/.

[Yng]

She's putting on a folksy countryside accent - she sounds like a cliché of a farmer (or a poor person from The Old Times). I'm not entirely sure what the situation is now, but certainly relatively recently rhotic accents were widespread in rural areas across the south of England. Regardless of whether she's aware of the geographic distribution or not, we generally associate rural people with rhoticity because the platonic English farmer is from the West Country (where there still are well-established rural rhotic varieties).

[TaylorS]

I think I am being assimilated into the "on accident" areal zone...