The Innovative Usage Thread

[Eyowa]

I often use "sir" as an affectionate (and gender-neutral) term of address for my close friends and sister. All of the people I use it with have picked it up too. I often wonder what would happen if it became commonly used, and what would replace "sir" as a formal term of address.

[äreo]

I both hear and use that one quite a bit myself (and I'm from all the way in Wisconsin, but with Florida one cannot discount the effects of internal immigration). That is a pretty typical pattern I am used to for forming new past participles, i.e. preterite form plus -(e)n; e.g. aten, dranken, boughten, etc....

However, for me at least, there does seem to be some sort of aspectual distinction present, where the old past participles are often retained but are subtly different in aspect from these newly innovated ones with -(e)n*, and both in turn are subtly different from plain preterites used as past participles without the -(e)n**. In some cases it seems to be perfective versus imperfective, but it is not very clear overall.

* e.g. tooken is not synonymous with taken, aten is not synonymous with eaten, and broughten is not synonymous with brought, with both members of each pair being used in the same register

** e.g. aten is not synonymous with ate as a p.p., tooken is not synonymous with took as a p.p, with both members of each pair being used in the same register

Interesting. Any examples?

I often use "sir" as an affectionate (and gender-neutral) term of address for my close friends and sister. All of the people I use it with have picked it up too. I often wonder what would happen if it became commonly used, and what would replace "sir" as a formal term of address.

I'm going to start using this right now.

I've noticed myself using 'what' every now and then where I (and those around me) would normally say 'like' or 'you know'. I think it's got something to do with all the 'quoi' I hear used like that in French.

[Eyowa]

Re: the "sir" thing, I think Torco may be using it already!

http://zbb.spinnwebe.com/viewtopic.php?p=908520#p908520

Maybe not quite "affectionate and gender-neutral", but not the traditional formal sense either.

[Astraios]

No, that's not innovative what Torco said. Loads of people do it.

[Travis B.]

I both hear and use that one quite a bit myself (and I'm from all the way in Wisconsin, but with Florida one cannot discount the effects of internal immigration). That is a pretty typical pattern I am used to for forming new past participles, i.e. preterite form plus -(e)n; e.g. aten, dranken, boughten, etc....

However, for me at least, there does seem to be some sort of aspectual distinction present, where the old past participles are often retained but are subtly different in aspect from these newly innovated ones with -(e)n*, and both in turn are subtly different from plain preterites used as past participles without the -(e)n**. In some cases it seems to be perfective versus imperfective, but it is not very clear overall.

* e.g. tooken is not synonymous with taken, aten is not synonymous with eaten, and broughten is not synonymous with brought, with both members of each pair being used in the same register

** e.g. aten is not synonymous with ate as a p.p., tooken is not synonymous with took as a p.p, with both members of each pair being used in the same register

Interesting. Any examples?

I might be able to think up some more later, but in general it is often very hard to exactly put a finger on why a certain form sounds right in a certain place as a p.p. - it just does. And furthermore, for a given thing written a certain way in Standard English, different conceptions of how it actually happened may change which form sounds right.

For right now, here's one example of the above that illustrates it better than most other examples I can think of:

We've eaten all the food. - i.e. some undefined process, which is treated as timeless, resulted in the food's having been eaten.
We've aten all the food. - i.e. a particular process that specifically occurred in the past resulted in the food's having been eaten
We've ate all the food. - i.e. a singular event that specifically occurred in the past resulted in the food's having been eaten

While there is a definite imperfective versus perfective element here, with aten in particular being clearly imperfective, there is more going on here than just that...

[TaylorS]

Another one of those -en past participles NAE likes to form: my dad said "letten" today.

Heh - I caught myself (and some others caught it too...) using wroten in IRC once recently...

I've used "cutten", "putten", and "pullen", as well as "letten"

[Shm Jay]

I would like to know what a particular process is for "eating" is that isn't eating, let alone an undefined timeless process. The only thing I can think of would be if the food rotted, but of course, you couldn’t say "we've eaten" the food unless you're channeling the voice of decay bacteria. Perhaps what they mean is "We have eaten the food, but we don't want to admit it because we're ashamed of our gluttony and we're already fat enough". A perfect new grammatical mood when you consider how fat many people are in this country! And perhaps then the other form means, "We have eaten the food, but we're going to pretend like five-year-olds we live in the Family Circus comic strip and claim Not Me ate it."

[Travis B.]

I would like to know what a particular process is for "eating" is that isn't eating, let alone an undefined timeless process. The only thing I can think of would be if the food rotted, but of course, you couldn’t say "we've eaten" the food unless you're channeling the voice of decay bacteria. Perhaps what they mean is "We have eaten the food, but we don't want to admit it because we're ashamed of our gluttony and we're already fat enough". A perfect new grammatical mood when you consider how fat many people are in this country! And perhaps then the other form means, "We have eaten the food, but we're going to pretend like five-year-olds we live in the Family Circus comic strip and claim Not Me ate it."

People do not think like this about discussions of aspect in human languages, do they?

Goddammit you're creepy and weird, aren't you?

[Shm Jay]

People do not think like this about discussions of aspect in human languages, do they?

I'm sorry to puncture your idea, but you didn't mention aspect. Each of the three explanations you gave ends with the food having been eaten, i.e. completely eaten, so there is no difference in aspect as you have three perfectives. You mentioned some weird process that I think has to do with agency ("an undefined process having to do with eating"), which frankly seemed to be utter nonsense. If it's not nonsense, you need to explain it better.

If the forms differ in aspect, then one has to do with the eating being completely done (perfective) or done once (perfective), and one has to do with the eating not being finished (imperfective) or done repeatedly (imperfective), with perhaps a third for "it's not important whether the eating is finished or not or its repetition" (which I think may be aorist, though I'm not sure as Russian doesn't have an aorist and would use the imperfective for this — Ask Mecislau to be sure).

Demonstrating that your explanation does not make sense and what your explanation actually means is neither creepy nor weird.

[Travis B.]

People do not think like this about discussions of aspect in human languages, do they?

I'm sorry to puncture your idea, but you didn't mention aspect. Each of the three explanations you gave ends with the food having been eaten, i.e. completely eaten, so there is no difference in aspect as you have three perfectives. You mentioned some weird process that I think has to do with agency ("an undefined process having to do with eating"), which frankly seemed to be utter nonsense. If it's not nonsense, you need to explain it better.

I was obviously discussing aspect and also tense. Here aten is obviously imperfective while ate is obviously perfective. On the other hand eaten seems to not indicate perfectivity. Also, it seems that ate and aten are past participles tense-wise while eaten is only a "past" participle in terms of grammatical roles and has become tenseless.

If the forms differ in aspect, then one has to do with the eating being completely done (perfective) or done once (perfective), and one has to do with the eating not being finished (imperfective) or done repeatedly (imperfective), with perhaps a third for "it's not important whether the eating is finished or not or its repetition" (which I think may be aorist, though I'm not sure as Russian doesn't have an aorist and would use the imperfective for this — Ask Mecislau to be sure).

I should note that you are conflating perfectivity with telicity. While a given language, e.g. Russian, may have "perfective" and "imperfective" aspectual forms that conflate the two, a distinction in perfectivity in itself does not necessarily go along with a distinction in telicity.

For example, one can have something that is imperfective yet telic in aspect, whereas you indicate here that all things that are imperfective are also inherently atelic. (Note that in my example before all the sentences are telic, as indicated by the word all, yet one is clearly imperfective while another is clearly perfective.)

If you cannot be bothered to read Perfective aspect and Imperfective aspect, basically perfective aspect is about an action being treated as a structureless whole, whereas imperfective aspect is about an action being treated as a process with internal structure, regardless of what this structure is. Note that many languages with perfective and or imperfective aspects often use them to indicate other sorts of aspectual things beyond merely this, e.g. momentary events often being marked as perfective, but this is beyond the essence of what perfectivity is.

Demonstrating that your explanation does not make sense and what your explanation actually means is neither creepy nor weird.

... except that no one else would get that meaning out of it in the first place.

[Ser]

If the forms differ in aspect, then one has to do with the eating being completely done (perfective) or done once (perfective), and one has to do with the eating not being finished (imperfective) or done repeatedly (imperfective), with perhaps a third for "it's not important whether the eating is finished or not or its repetition" (which I think may be aorist, though I'm not sure as Russian doesn't have an aorist and would use the imperfective for this — Ask Mecislau to be sure).

What Travis said. An event can be finished but it can have no bounds (i.e. it is not seen as a whole), so it's imperfective. Hence why you often see explanations like "whether it's finished or not is irrelevant" when discussing imperfective vs perfective aspect.

[Travis B.]

Native English-speakers are not very good at wrapping their brains around perfectivity and telicity as separate quantities independent of tense, I should probably note here.

Okay, for an common example of a imperfective versus perfective distinction in a wider range of English varieties... both the preterite and past participle burned are imperfective while both the preterite and past participle burnt are perfective in very many English varieties.

[Travis B.]

I both hear and use that one quite a bit myself (and I'm from all the way in Wisconsin, but with Florida one cannot discount the effects of internal immigration). That is a pretty typical pattern I am used to for forming new past participles, i.e. preterite form plus -(e)n; e.g. aten, dranken, boughten, etc....

However, for me at least, there does seem to be some sort of aspectual distinction present, where the old past participles are often retained but are subtly different in aspect from these newly innovated ones with -(e)n*, and both in turn are subtly different from plain preterites used as past participles without the -(e)n**. In some cases it seems to be perfective versus imperfective, but it is not very clear overall.

* e.g. tooken is not synonymous with taken, aten is not synonymous with eaten, and broughten is not synonymous with brought, with both members of each pair being used in the same register

** e.g. aten is not synonymous with ate as a p.p., tooken is not synonymous with took as a p.p, with both members of each pair being used in the same register

Interesting. Any examples?

From thinking about it some more, in general preterites when turned into past participles seem to be strongly perfective in aspect and past in tense. Attaching -(e)n to these preterites in turn does seem to turn from being perfective to being imperfective. And when a contrast is implied, the historical past participle forms seem to not mark tense, especially if it is identical to the infinitive or the infinitive with -(e)n attached, and seems ambiguous with regard to perfectivity, with past participles ending in -(e)n in particular being biased towards being imperfective and ones identical to perfective preterites being likewise biased towards being perfective, but with them being able to be used in an unmarked fashion in context.

Howeover, this does not apply in all the time. While most preterites are perfective when not used otherwise, some preterites seem basically imperfective (e.g. sang), and this is carried over to when they are being used as past participles, and these likewise do not seen to receive -(e)n as frequently as others (e.g. I have never heard or seen *sangen in use).

My guess is that the ending -(e)n for past participles is becoming an imperfective aspect marker, while most preterites and forms derived from them have become explicitly perfective aside from a more limited set that have become explicitly imperfective, except that any of these can still be used contrary to their default perfectivity if indicated by context.

Some verbs may still behave differently here, as the above is only from thinking over it a bit with regard to what happens in my dialect, and even then is not checking each possible verb affected systematically.

(My, what horrible an aspect marking system my dialect, and I would assume others not for away from it, at least seems to have and be further developing... on top of the already horrible Standard English tense/aspect system...)

[sirred]

Either the reporter on the news was speaking a dialect I've never heard or didn't know the word, but he pronounced compromise /kɒmˈprɒ.mɪs/.

[faiuwle]

"When I came home, the cats were hungrying at me, so I fed them."

[äreo]

"When I came home, the cats were hungrying at me, so I fed them."

That's awesome

'morphosyntastic'. that is all

[bulbaquil]

I love the verbability of basically the entire English lexicon.

[Jetboy]

I love the verbability of basically the entire English lexicon.

I think we've already gone through that pretty thoroughly in this thread.

On a different note, my sister-in-law has a habit of emphasizing words beginning with /l/ by turning this into a prolonged [ł], for example she'll often say that someone "just loves [łːǝvz]" something. There's some change to word overall, as well, but the velarization sticks out.

[äreo]

This dude I hung out with today said "I don't like to read stuff if it can be audio'd". And his girlfriend says "most less" for "least".

[Nortaneous]

Not quite an innovative usage, but stupid college inside jokes gave me evidence that plosives in sP clusters should be analyzed as lenis:

"My name is Elmer Fudd. Dubstep." "My name is Felmer Udd. Sdubdep."

[linguoboy]

Is everyone familiar with the officespeak term "direct reports" for "people who report directly [to someone]"? Can anyone think of other zero-derived agent nouns with the structure V ADV -> ADJ N?

[hwhatting]

Is everyone familiar with the officespeak term "direct reports" for "people who report directly [to someone]"? Can anyone think of other zero-derived agent nouns with the structure V ADV -> ADJ N?

I'm familiar with that term. There are of course lots of examples for V ADV -> ADJ N where N are verbal nouns (direct sales, indirect sales, direct debit, direct delivery etc.), so I assume that class served as pattern for "direct reports".
Now that I think a bit, is "direct report" so different from "smooth talker", "original thinker" etc.? I'd rather say that the suffix-less derivation of an agent noun (as opposed to a noun denoting an action or an object) from the verb is the unusual development here, than the derivation V ADV -> ADJ N.
BTW, one could also argue, tongue-in-cheek, that "direct report" is not an agent noun but an object (to be managed and to be placed in an org chart.)

[Ser]

For months, my girlfriend has been calling that thing of me misunderstanding words in English as having "accented listening".

Just some two weeks ago:

"Yeah, I have to go back for change."
"You're going back for CHAINS!?" (Honestly misheard it, I swear.)
"You and your accented listening! Yeah, CHAINS, totally."

She sometimes calls my Spanish accent "accented talking" as well.

[Jetboy]

I used "wraps" as a verb today, in the context, "Well, it was under wraps last time I was here, so they must have made a bit of progress, unless they're just unwrapsing it and wrapsing it again."

Also, I heard my nephew say "Why haven't they caught him up yet?", in the context of overtaking someone running, where I'd've expected "caught up to him"; the former means, to me, to bring someone "up to speed", or make sure they know everything they're expected to and that the group they're associated with do. I'd guess it's on analogy with dative-shifting.

[Astraios]

Also, I heard my nephew say "Why haven't they caught him up yet?", in the context of overtaking someone running, where I'd've expected "caught up to him"; the former means, to me, to bring someone "up to speed", or make sure they know everything they're expected to and that the group they're associated with do. I'd guess it's on analogy with dative-shifting.

Both "caught him up" and "caught up to him" mean the same for me (catching someone in a race).