zompist bboard

Travis B. wrote:As for recurse, that is a word you would know if you were a programmer.

That one I had to look up, and I was slightly baffled that this is something people say: I've always said "recur" or paraphrased with "recursion"

Not sure of a better place to put this, but I wanted to share: I just realized that maybe there’s an incipient sound change in English where word-final /nt/ is simplified to /t/, as demonstrated by misspellings/confusions such as “tenant” for “tenet”, “dominate” for “dominant”, “laminant” for “laminate”, and “ignorate” for “ignorant” (all of which I’ve seen before).

Porphyrogenitos wrote:Not sure of a better place to put this, but I wanted to share: I just realized that maybe there’s an incipient sound change in English where word-final /nt/ is simplified to /t/, as demonstrated by misspellings/confusions such as “tenant” for “tenet”, “dominate” for “dominant”, “laminant” for “laminate”, and “ignorate” for “ignorant” (all of which I’ve seen before).

I've always thought it's not a sound change, but more because -ate and -ant/-ent are both Latinate suffixes that can occur on adjectives or nouns (e.g. alternate, ultimate, surrogate) and have kind of similar meanings (one is a past-participle suffix, one is a present-participle suffix, but both kind of make sense for a word like "laminate"), they are unstressed, and in a number of the words where people get confused there is a preceding nasal, which may cause them to falsely re-analyze the nasalization of the following vowel/syllabic nasal as just a coarticulatory effect (I know English is usually described as having regressive, not progressive phonetic nasalization, but I would imagine that it's still harder for an English speaker to distinguish [nn̩t]~[nənt]~[nə̃t] from [nət] than it is to distinguish something like [sn̩t]~[sənt]~[sə̃t] from [sət]. (I know, that doesn't work for "ignorant", but it applies to the other words, and "ignorant" does that does have an /n/ further back in the word, for whatever that's worth.) I don't think I've ever noticed people saying things like "deeset" for "decent", "ayjet" for "agent", "vayket" for "vacant"..

To me this seems to be a result of allophonic vowel nasalization, followed by loss of the original nasal consonant, followed by loss of vowel nasalization in unstressed syllables; the second stage seems to be very common in present-day NAE, and I notice sporadic loss of nasalization (along with loss of the nasal consonant) in unstressed syllables in both my own speech and the speech of others I hear. And yes, [ˈtisɘʔ ˈeːtʃɘʔ ˈvekɘʔ] are not odd pronunciations at all to me.

A separate, but perhaps somewhat related innovation: I used to mentally pronounce "consonantal" and related words with /ˈɛntəl/, I guess because there are so many more common words that end in "-ental" like environmental, incidental, accidental, fundamental than there are than end in "-antal" (I guess, aside from consonantal, there is covenantal). Does this seem familar to anyone else?

I mean, it doesn't seem particularly weird to me. *shrug*

Sumelic wrote:A separate, but perhaps somewhat related innovation: I used to mentally pronounce "consonantal" and related words with /ˈɛntəl/

There's no "used to" about it in my case. And I'm pin/pen merged so my actual vowel here is [ɪ]. Actually using [æ] here sounds so overpronounced to me I'd probably consider it a tell for L2 English acquisition.

I also pronounce consonantal with /ɛ/ (which is [ɛ] for me).

On a related note, as I child I pronounced magnet with an intrusive /n/: [mægnɛnt].

I pronounce consonantal with /ɪ/ (which is [ɘ] for me) and I'm not even pin-pen merged.

Just saw George Herbert Walker Bush described in a headline as "Bush 41". (He was the 41st President of the United States.) I found this usage confusing, as "Bush, 41" is a longstanding newspaper convention for "Bush, who is 41 years old" and I wonder if it would be intelligible at all if not for the very recent popularity of referring to the current POTUS as "45".

linguoboy wrote:Just saw George Herbert Walker Bush described in a headline as "Bush 41". (He was the 41st President of the United States.) I found this usage confusing, as "Bush, 41" is a longstanding newspaper convention for "Bush, who is 41 years old" and I wonder if it would be intelligible at all if not for the very recent popularity of referring to the current POTUS as "45".

They should've written it Bush XLI. :P

I just went to a food place with an Indian professor, and he asked the server whether they are "getting off" for Thanksgiving. Is it just my perverted mind, or do "getting time off" and "getting off" mean completely different things?

Or maybe it is just a specific way of celebrating it? :P

That should be what you do after celebrating it the traditional way with food, not while you're celebrating it!

Unless maybe you're doing both at the same time...and...you're not around family? Doing that around family is just creepy.

This usage of getting off seems perfectly normal to me, and not at all perverted.

Travis B. wrote:This usage of getting off seems perfectly normal to me, and not at all perverted.

Same. Wouldn't have even crossed my mind.

Yeah see, I honestly wasn't sure if it was perverted or not. Since Vijay is a native English speaker, now I'm even more confused.

(I think I would at least say "getting off work", just to avoid the double entendre.)

Travis B. wrote:This usage of getting off seems perfectly normal to me, and not at all perverted.

I think I'd be more likely to say "getting Thanksgiving off". "Getting off on Thanksgiving" is certainly open to misinterpretation, "getting off for Thanksgiving" less do.

I always pronounce "uvular" as [ˈʌlvjulɚ] even though there is only one <l> and it's after the [v].

I was surprised to find "make it up to" defined in Wiktionary as "to pay back; to return someone a previous good deed". Do people use it that way? The only meaning I'm familiar with is "to make amends", e.g. "Sorry I forgot your birthday. Let me make it up to you by taking you out to that barbecue place you love." If I were returning a good deed, I'd say, "pay back" or "return the favour".

"Shit, I don't have any cash on me! Do you mind covering for my lunch today?, I'll totally make it up to you next time!"

Yeah, I've heard this usage before, and even probably used it before.

Honestly, I don't think I really see a big difference between those two in meaning. Paying somebody back is effectively making amends for not having already done the same for someone else as they did for you.

Vijay wrote:Honestly, I don't think I really see a big difference between those two in meaning. Paying somebody back is effectively making amends for not having already done the same for someone else as they did for you.

"Pay back" can cover both situations, but using "make it up to" for a spontaneous good act just sounds wrong. Even in Axiem's example, I understand "make it up to you" as "I'll make amends for importuning you". It means you recognise that asking for money is a little rude.

Consider: "Thanks for taking me out for my birthday. I'll make it up to you by taking you out for yours." This implies to me that this is something the listener would rather not have done and requires recompense for. It sounds self-deprecating and suggests a do ut des view of friendship. "Pay you back" has a similar implication, but at least it doesn't make it sound like the speaker is excusing themself for being a burden. Only "You'll have to let me return the favour when the time comes" sounds unquestionably positive to me.

I don't think any of those sounds unquestionably positive to me. To me, they all mean the same thing (except in contexts where they can't both be grammatically used, of course) and all sound self-deprecating.

linguoboy wrote:I was surprised to find "make it up to" defined in Wiktionary as "to pay back; to return someone a previous good deed". Do people use it that way? The only meaning I'm familiar with is "to make amends", e.g. "Sorry I forgot your birthday. Let me make it up to you by taking you out to that barbecue place you love." If I were returning a good deed, I'd say, "pay back" or "return the favour".

Aaaaah, so that's what “make amends” means!