Language desk
< December 5	<< Nov \| December \| Jan >>	December 7 >

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

December 6[edit]

Parsing of comparative sentences (English)[edit]

I was thinking about an oddity in comparative sentences. Take "My brother is taller than me" - I think this has the following form:

"My Brother" - Subject
"is" - verb
"taller than" - adjective clause
"me" - object.

First of all is that correct? Assuming that it is, a variation of this sentence is "My brother is taller than I am" ... whoa! what has happened here: My Brother" - Subject

"is" - verb
"taller than" - adjective clause
"I" - Well I is the subject form, not sure?"
"am" - another verb, in intransient form!"

My first thought is could "I am" be a noun phrase? It doesn't look like one! What's going on here? Do other languages have similar forms? -- Q Chris (talk) 09:15, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Of course the first version is correct. Yes, the second version is correct. By "intransient", do you perhaps mean "intransitive"? The verb BE is never transitive (though it very often takes a predicative complement). "I am" is never a noun phrase; it's a clause. (Here, it's a comparative clause.) In your example, the clause is a complement of the preposition THAN. What's going on here? Well, you're effectively asking for an edumacation in English grammar. Just yesterday I received my copy of Huddleston, Pullum and Reynolds' brand new second edition of A Student's Introduction to English Grammar, which I warmly recommend to you. -- Hoary (talk) 09:44, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, more. There's no such thing as an "adjective clause"; and "taller than" isn't even a constituent. -- Hoary (talk) 09:46, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Q_Chris -- Think of "me" as a kind of Disjunctive pronoun here. For example in French, there's "je" as the 1st person pronoun subject of verbs, and "me" as the 1st person pronoun object of verbs, but both those words are commonly unstressed clitics (they have schwa vowels), so there's yet a third form "moi" when the pronoun is emphatic (pronounced as a separate word). A classic English example of a disjunctive pronoun is in "It's me", which should be "It's I" according to Latin grammar rules which were often applied to English before the 20th century, but people don't say "It's I". (They very occasionally say "It is I" when being self-consciously archaic.) AnonMoos (talk) 22:48, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alternatively, think of me as a pronoun in the accusative case, and as such the noun phrase complement of the preposition than. (In English, if a preposition takes an NP complement, and if this is a pronoun with distinctive case forms, then it's in the accusative: "about/behind/beyond/despite him" (not "he" or "his"). "Disjunctive pronoun" doesn't appear in David Crystal's A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, 6th ed; in R. L. Trask's A Dictionary of Grammatical Terms in Linguistics; or in Bas Aarts et al's Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar; and while "disjunction" does appear in each of the three, it doesn't do so with any meaning of "full-blown word and not a mere clitic". "Disjunctive pronoun" is used to describe French; on p.249 of his Foundations of French Syntax (1996), Michael Allan Jones describes how these pronouns differ from clitic pronouns (which of course are very important in French); but it's the clitic pronouns that require special treatment in this hefty book, and English doesn't have clitic pronouns. -- Hoary (talk) 00:21, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hoary -- the term "disjunctive pronoun" describes phenomena which are part of the basic core grammar of French, while when it applies to the English language it describes some semi-marginal cases which were disapproved of in the 19th century (when Latin grammar rules were commonly applied to English). However, it can still be quite useful when used to describe those particular cases. I'm not sure I care too much about dictionaries (which do not really constrain terminology used by linguists), but "disjunctive pronoun" does occur in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics (ISBN 0-19-280008-6), so there!

-- AnonMoos (talk) 04:30, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

[Edit clash] Or again (now that I'm wider awake): than is a preposition. Prepositions differ in what kinds of complement they take; than is one of many that take either a noun phrase or a subordinate clause. Above, the noun phrase is exemplified by "me". As for the subordinate clause, than (together with comparative as and informal comparative like) takes what's called a comparative clause (which would be incomplete if it were used as a main clause). The comparative clause is exemplified above by "I am". Now, a comparative clause such as this can be further reduced, resulting in "My brother is taller than I." This is grammatical (even if formal/stilted). So "My brother is taller than ____" can be completed with either accusative me or nominative I. The choice may seem to some speakers to parallel choices elsewhere ("Dave and ____ had a great time", etc); and if so, then perhaps it's hypercorrection that makes some of these speakers fret about the (perfectly good) use of me. Silly books about "correct English", "good grammar" and the like profit off these groundless fears. -- Hoary (talk) 22:51, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Simples, innit, Do0d? MinorProphet (talk) 22:27, 12 December 2021 (UTC) [reply]

Children's syntax, for expresing: "whose".[edit]

Hi, I'm a non native English speaker.

I wonder, what syntax children use, to express what adults express using the syntactic word "whose".

a) For example, instead of saying "the animal whose nose is long is the elephant", the children would probably say "the animal with the long nose is the elephant", but is it the only option for them? What about "the animal who has got a long nose is the elephant"? What about "the animal having a long nose is the elephant"? To my (non native) ears, these options don't sound like children's speech, but I may be wrong.

b) Here is a more complex sentence: "The animal, whose long nose I'm touching now, is called an elephant". As a non native English speaker, I wonder what option a kid would have, to express that sentence, as long as it begins with "the animal" and ends with "is an elephant" (i.e. without changing the subject, so I disregard structures with the same meaning but with another subject, like: "Now I'm touching a long nose, of an animal called an elephant"). -- 185.24.76.184 11:19, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

I think it's "the animal that's got a long nose is an elephant". (The elephant, if it refers to elephants in the abstract, sounds like something a 19th-century biologist with a long beard would say.) For part (b) this becomes "The animal that's got a long nose that ..." Card Zero (talk) 13:58, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. 14:40, 6 December 2021 (UTC) -- Preceding unsigned comment added by 185.24.76.184 (talk)

I think British children would be far more likely to say "who has a long nose" than "that's got a long nose". "that's got" sounds very American to me. DuncanHill (talk) 14:43, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Don't you think they would prefer "that" (has) to "who" (has)? 16:19, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

No, and nor would British adults. "Which" would work, but "that" sounds rather American, especially for a living thing. DuncanHill (talk) 18:39, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, an interesting difference between both varieties! Thnx... 19:31, 6 December 2021 (UTC) -- Preceding unsigned comment added by 185.24.76.173 (talk)

I believe that "that's got a long nose" shows acquisition and use of the construction have got. I'm amazed to see this, which I'd thought was something of a Briticism, described as sounding rather American. Perhaps an American would care to comment. -- Hoary (talk) 23:35, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In American English, "I've got" and "I have" are more or less in free variation when used in the sense of possession (or whatever you'd call it in the case of "I've got/I have a cold"; I guess you don't really "possess" a cold). The difference you may be thinking of is that American English uses "I've gotten" to mean "I have obtained", and rejects "I've got" for this purpose. --Trovatore (talk) 01:34, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

When does the far more gruesome "I have gotten..." come into play? HiLo48 (talk) 01:53, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

HiLo48 -- In American English, "got" is the past participle in cases of static possession or obligation, while "gotten" is the past participle in cases of obtaining or becoming. AnonMoos (talk) 04:48, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That's well put, except that I'd say the "got" instances are not felt as a participle at all; they're just part of a fixed form, and somewhat distant from any of the 3285 (at a rough estimate :-) ) meanings of the verb "get". --Trovatore (talk) 05:13, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Previous ref-desk thread on have vs. have got. Deor (talk) 19:26, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Then there's the matter of those who've gotten used to spelling "whose" as "who's". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:22, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Then theirs the second stuff, of those who replace - it's content - by theirs. Ewe no, its like speaking without saying anything. But the only (original) matter I do care about, is the way children describe the animal who's nose I'm touching now is quite long, i.e. about the way they speak about my lovely pet whose got this amazing trunk I always enjoy to look at, so whoever wants to talk about another matter, whether about replacing it's by theirs or about replacing bits by hairs or about substituting kits for pairs, should always remember mainly the original matter. . 23:45, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Henrik Kyhls "kileindgribningssystem"[edit]

Can someone help me with another puzzling translation please? Clockmaker Henrik Kyhl apparently invented a "kileindgribningssystem" as part of his work on clock towers, google seems to think this means a "wedge engagement system" but I'm unable to determine how this relates to clocks or clock towers. Any thoughts?--Jac16888 ^Talk 18:12, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

According to Wiktionary, “kile” can also be translated as “gusset” (often part of a clock). After conducting a search through various dictionary sources, I think “gribning” might be more accurately translated as “gripping” or some similar word. I think it’s a conjugation of the verb “gribe”, also present on Wiktionary, with several meanings given there. I don’t really know how clocks work very well, but hopefully that helps? Cheers, postleft ✍ (Arugula) ☞ say hello! 18:36, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I immediately though it sounded like some kind of escapement; but the equivalent German article, de:Hemmung contains Keil a couple of times, but not the rest of that word, so maybe not. --ColinFine (talk) 22:54, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Danish verb indgribe is cognate with German eingreifen; both mean "to intervene", so indgribning can usually be translated as intervention. Here the sense must be more literal – something grabbing hold of something else. I suppose even native Danish speakers who are familiar with clockwork mechanisms will not be able to make much of the scant information supplied by this term. --Lambiam 23:16, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's possible that the second paragraph on this page about a clock built by Kyhl is actually describing the wedge-engagement system, which might be the connection of the gear to the stokkedrevene (cage gear) shown in the picture. The "wedge" would be the tooth of the drive gear. The system, then, is this particular design of cage gear which can be taken apart easily to replace worn sticks. (Or I'm wrong, and this picture and accompanying text just happens to be placed after the passing mention of the kile-indgribningssystem.) Card Zero (talk) 03:19, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It is indeed unclear whether the Særlig in the sentence following the mention of the kile-indgribningssystem introduces a further elaboration on this wedge-engagement system, or a next, unconnected example of Kyhl's general engineering ingenuity. Page Kile on the Danish Wikipedia specifically mentions the tooth of a gear as an example of the "wedge effect": converting a small force on a large area to a large force on a small area. The what and how is not made more specific, whether there or in the article on gear to which the example links. The image of the cage gear serving as the sprocket of a roller chain does not show anything I'd call a wedge. --Lambiam 09:40, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Slightly confused, not sure where you're looking to see the roller chain. It isn't part of the clock, nor on da:kile or da:gear. Card Zero (talk) 10:41, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I mean the vertical structure behind the cage gear, which clearly engages with it. Perhaps it is not a flexible chain but a rigid rack. --Lambiam 10:44, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's an ordinary gearwheel, which can be seen on the left-side of the rightmost picture. It's much bigger than the cage gear, so the bit of the wheel you can see in the close-up looks linear. Card Zero (talk) 11:57, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]