Language desk
< April 10	<< Mar \| April \| May >>	April 12 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

April 11[edit]

Why present continuous tense[edit]

Could you tell me why "discover" is used in present continuous tense in the following sentence: "Researchers are discovering that the more people talk to others, the less likely they are to suffer from depression."? Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 1.202.187.153 (talk) 00:58, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It implies that the information is still in the process of being discovered, and more evidence is still emerging. It's the sort of thing that you can't really know is true until afterwards (what happens if all future results go the other way?) but that's what is being implied. --Trovatore (talk) 01:32, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There is more than one type of present tense in English. The example you give uses the present continuous (English).OttawaAC (talk) 02:14, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Were you responding to me? I thought I explained that. The present continuous is used here to imply that the information is still in the process of emerging. If you used the simple present tense, it would not imply that.

Sorry, got cut off while editing. To continue: simple present means an action or condition happening either at this exact instant, or generally in the past, present and future together . Present continuous means an action or condition either currently intended to occur in the future or happening now and in the future....OttawaAC (talk) 02:32, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, it's hard to imagine a situation where you would phrase that sentence in the simple present. If you say researchers discover that the more people talk..., it sounds like a habitual thing; this is what they discover on a regular basis. Apparently they don't read each others' papers, so they have to keep investigating the same topic.

Or, the simple present could also be used as a narrative present, for example in a timeline: 1983: Depeche Mode tops the charts. 1984: Researchers discover that..... --Trovatore (talk) 02:25, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with everything people have said, although it is a mistake to look for reasons that are too precise for these things. For example, why do we say "I'm going to the movies on Sunday"? Now surely that is present continuous. It isn't even immediate future, "I am going to go," so it should mean that I am currently in the process of going on Sunday, like I've decided to do Sunday a couple of days early. I don't think there can be an exact reason, for what it's worth. IBE (talk) 04:07, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that "I am going to do X" is a form of periphrastic future, so that the verb "to go" is here functioning not as an expression of motion, but as a sort of auxiliary verb. It is not a modal verb, though, because the "going" is already in the indicative mood, and thus expresses a matter of fact. Note, though, that the fact that is being expressed is not that the expected future action will certainly be performed, but that the speaker has a fixed intention to perform in the stated way at the appropriate time. Other Indo-European languages have similar constructions (e.g. "Je vais dire..." for "I'm going to say..." in French). RomanSpa (talk) 06:36, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

RomanSpa: you are not answering IBE, who was talking about "I'm going to the movies on Sunday", not "I'm going to go to the movies on Sunday". I think the answer to that is that English hasn't got a future tense. It has many ways of expressing the future, one of which (the modal I will ...) nearly always has future meaning; but all forms of the so-called present can have future meaning too. --ColinFine (talk) 09:03, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You're absolutely right. I read too fast, and answered the wrong question! I'll be more careful next time. RomanSpa (talk) 10:38, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To expand on what Trovatore said, for most verbs in English the present continuous is far more common than the simple present; the simple present gets used for special senses such as universal, timeless, or habitual statements ("Everybody does that"), future intentions ("I go to Spain next week") and realis conditionals ("if you eat too much, you'll be uncomfortable"). Verbs of perception and mental state - see, hear, feel, want, think - are exceptions to this. --ColinFine (talk) 09:03, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A growing exception is the specialist area of post-game sports interviews, where some interviewees (e.g. soccer club managers) habitually use the simple present to describe past events. Example (you may imagine an 'Arry Redknapp accent for added verisimilitude) . . .

Interviewer to Manager: "How did you see the 'Chopper' Harris red card incident?"

Manager: "Weow, Nudger sends an 'igh baow up the middle, Chopper an' Ibromavich bofe go up for it, it's an accidenteow clash of 'eads, nuffink intentional, should never even be a bookin'." {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 212.95.237.92 (talk) 15:12, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think they're just using Historical_present, which is kind of a nice foil to the continual present. As others point out in this thread, English "present" tense can be used for previous, current, or future times! SemanticMantis (talk) 16:51, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Some good answers so far. One point I'd like to make is that the -ing suffix and related construction sometimes gets used simply to increase verbiage. For example, it is seen as somehow more polite to say "Will you be wanting anything else?" instead of "Would you like anything else?" because it is less direct. Retail clerks seem to have a real passion for this: "Is there anything else you'll be wanting help looking for?" (see periphrasis (linked above) and verbosity). Matt Deres (talk) 16:31, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To my English ears, any use of the word want (including that one) can't be more polite than would like! mg SH 17:16, 12 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Japanese help: translating names of Japanese sources listed in Wikipedia discusión:Consultas de borrado/Liceo Mexicano Japonés[edit]

How would someone translate into English the lists of sources at es:Wikipedia discusión:Consultas de borrado/Liceo Mexicano Japonés? That way the editors can determine which ones are more likely to have what will help the article. WhisperToMe (talk) 05:04, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Try Wikipedia:Translators available#Japanese-to-English --Jayron32 12:48, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much! WhisperToMe (talk) 13:29, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't heard back from two I have contacted. I'm still looking for someone to translate the list. WhisperToMe (talk) 02:18, 13 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Unusual pronunciation pattern[edit]

My mom, whose native language is Chinese, often exhibits the following pronunciation pattern in English: when a word begins with a schwa sound followed by another consonant, she often deletes the initial schwa sound (for example, "approve" would be pronounced just like "prove"). Is this practice common among people whose native language is Chinese (or possibly other non-English languages)? 24.47.140.246 (talk) 20:43, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

More an additional question/observation than an answer, but I've noticed similar dropping of sounds in native Mandarin speakers (my PI and some lab members), very noticeably in their pronunciations of alpha and beta, which become alph and bet, dropping the end 'a' sounds. Never notice this in any other non-native speakers. Haven't noticed the phenomenon described by the OP though. Fgf10 (talk) 21:12, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To me as a non-specialist, it may be related to the difference between Isochrony#Syllable_timing and stress timing. Syllable timing is used in Chinese (and Spanish, Italian, etc.). Stress timing is used in English. Perhaps (for lack of a better term) the "mental map" of English phonology for many Chinese L1 speakers results in the weakly-stressed syllable all but disappearing. It may also be related to the treatment of syllable-final consonants by speakers of Mandarin. Nearly all syllables end in either a vowel or a nasal consonant in Mandarin. By contrast, while the pronunciation used for letters of the Latin alphabet for which the vocalization when pronouncing them as letters of the alphabet (e.g., F, L, M, etc.) is in Chinese theoretically (i) one syllable consisting of a vowel followed (ii) a second syllable consisting of an initial consonant and a vowel (e.g., something like /eifu̯ɔ/ for "F" or "eff") -- in actual practice many Mandarin speakers use a pronunciation which strongly emphasizes the initial (vowel) syllable and the following consonant, thus all but deletes the second (final) vowel following the consonant, thus making the treatment of the consonant in such words much closer to English (or many Western languages that regularly have syllables ending in consonants) than would theoretically be the case in Mandarin. --69.204.228.240 (talk) 23:51, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Why don't you ask your mom? She presumably knows a lot of other native Chinese speakers, and can tell you what a typical accent sounds like. --Bowlhover (talk) 20:58, 12 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]