Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 March 31

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March 31

Taps

Why is Taps so called?--Shantavira|^{feed me} 07:00, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Supposedly from the Old Dutch 'taptoe' meaning 'turn off the taps', which also is the origin of the word 'tattoo' as in military tattoo. Mikenorton (talk) 07:24, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll try to find a reference and add it to the article tomorrow, unless anyone else has time to do it before then.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:24, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

This one isn't simply copied from our article Military tattoo. Roger (talk) 08:51, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

BTW it's not from Old Dutch which dates from the Middle Ages. It is in fact Modern Dutch which succeeded Middle Dutch by the mid-16th century. The term came into English during the 17th century which makes it early Modern Dutch. Roger (talk) 09:10, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Sentence

A question about sentence. From Oxford A-Z of Grammar & Punctuation by John Seely, sentence is "a unit of language consisting of one or more finite clauses." (p.141) The wikipedia definition is "a sentence is an expression in natural language, and often defined to indicate a grammatical unit consisting of one or more words that generally bear minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it." Now lets look at the following conversations:

conversation 1:

John: Hey, do you know we have won the war?

Rebekah: Hurray!

John: So let's celebrate the victory tonight.

conversation 2:

John: What are you doing?

Dave: Reading.

In the first conversation, the response by Rebekah consists of a single word "hurray". Can it be called a sentence? It does not have finite clause, and it bears syntactic relation to the words that precede it. But this single word can stand alone. Similarly in the second conversation, is the response by Dave constitute a sentence? --Novagalaxy (talk) 14:37, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh, sorry for bothering, just noticed the article Sentence word. So a second question, what should be the perfect definition of sentence? --Novagalaxy (talk) 14:50, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Another question

We know a simple sentence contains a subject and a verb. But if I say

"What a joke!"

The above example does not have verb, and it consists of multiple words. It is neither a simple sentence, nor a sentence word. So how to categorize the above example? --Novagalaxy (talk) 15:27, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

See Nominal sentence (not a great article, but may help you start). — Kpalion^(talk) 21:09, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

These are sentences that leave out words that are expected to be "understood" by their audience. The "proper" wordings could be, "I am reading", and "What a joke that is!" The "Hurray!" is OK by itself, being an interjection. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:14, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

The sentence is a concept from written language. It doesn't apply well to all but the most formal spoken language, where clause is a better base unit. — kwami (talk) 07:01, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

ᴥ Latin Letter Ain

I'm just wondering if there's anyone out there who knows what this character is for. For the most part, all I've been able to find on the Internet are its Unicode value (which I already knew), its name ("Latin Letter Ain"), and that it's apparently in the "Phonetic Extensions" block of Unicode. I've found it on the page for Stokoe notation, where it was supposed to represent a cursive e. Is this its only use? Where does the name Ain come from? Why does it have such an un-Latin shape, despite apparently being in the Latin alphabet? Is it used in the transcription of some foreign language? Or in some phonetic alphabet I'm unaware of? Lunaibis 18:46, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

That's an ad hoc usage in the Stokoe article, as Stokoe notation is not supported by Unicode. — kwami (talk) 07:00, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Ayin ? --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 19:12, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Lunaibis -- I believe it was used in books about (but not in) Arabic, especially some published in Britain ca. the middle of the 20th century. The 1956 book An Introduction to Egyptian Colloquial Arabic by T.F. Mitchell (ISBN 0-19-815148-9) uses a form of it which looks more like a reversed [ʒ] than an Arabic ع as such... AnonMoos (talk) 21:39, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

So, it was supposed to represent [ʕ] for people learning to speak Arabic, but not write it? Sort of like a precursor to the modifier letter left half ring? Lunaibis 00:26, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

If you're learning to speak and understand one particular variety of colloquial vernacular dialect Arabic, with no real interest in literary or "classical" Arabic as such, then Arabic script is really almost worse than useless (since in conventional accepted use it writes literary/classical Arabic only, and in many cases has great difficulty in clearly expressing non-classical pronunciations)... The Mitchell book uses a slightly odd transcription system, in which the symbol ʕ actually writes a glottal stop (IPA [ʔ]) and little hooks under letters (indicating retroflex in conventional linguistic use) are used to write "emphatic" consonants... AnonMoos (talk) 06:33, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, that makes sense. It's been really bugging me for a while now. I'm glad that this seemingly-random character now makes sense. Lunaibis 19:01, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

It looks like the Arabic 'ayn, as it appears in the middle of a word. -- 20:28, 31 March 2011 User:EamonnPKeane

I think the Phonetic Symbol Guide by Pullum might have it. I'll have a look later on. --Kjoonlee 00:34, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Oh well, no info in the Phonetic Symbol Guide. I guess you've already got your answer, though. --Kjoonlee 11:28, 4 April 2011 (UTC)