zompist bboard

Viktor77 wrote:

KathTheDragon wrote: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?

Viktor77 wrote: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?

Viktor77 wrote: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.

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

Sumelic wrote: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 wrote: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.

Viktor77 wrote:This also apparently happens with the word débat /de.bat/.

linguoboy wrote: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)?

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

KathTheDragon wrote:

Vijay wrote:("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"

Sumelic wrote:

Viktor77 wrote: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.

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.

Arzena wrote: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

Qxentio wrote: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

Christine Sinclair wrote: 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.

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