Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 September 25

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September 25

Paragraph structure, and topic sentences, used on Wikipedia.

Hello,

I have reviewed all available style, punctuation, grammar, and article guidelines available on Wikipedia and I can't seem to find any definitive guides. Any recommendations? PeterWesco (talk) 00:20, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

I've noticed some don't actually define the term in the first sentence. I hate this, since when you roll the mouse over a link you expect to see the definition pop right up. Having to actually click on the link to track down the definition disrupts the flow of reading the original page. StuRat (talk) 00:24, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

We also have an expectation that the lede will be written for a general audience (or as general as that topic will allow), while complexities like derivations of formulae be further down, in the body of the article. StuRat (talk) 00:29, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

As for topic sentences on subsequent paragraphs, they don't all need to have one, since paragraph breaks aren't always due to a change in topic, they are sometimes just added because a paragraph on one topic gets too long. Also, the title of each section and subsection may sometimes serve as a topic sentence. StuRat (talk) 00:33, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Okay, this provides some level of guidance. I am working under the belief that the topic sentence defines the paragraph and all subsequent sentences are supporting details of the topic sentence. It is different for Encyclopedic information on new, or newer, topics that are in flux and the details are added, by various editors, in a semi-frantic fashion. Would you agree that, at some point, these articles need a full copy-edit and the facts grouped in clean paragraphs with topic sentences?PeterWesco (talk) 00:47, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Mostly, yes. I often do exactly that, often to articles with which I had had no prior involvement. -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 02:47, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

I think there is a reluctance to impose style guidelines that will intimidate people with knowledge from adding material. Lots of people who have expertise on some topic are not particularly good writers. Looie496 (talk) 03:05, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

To which I agree and my desire is to not impose rigid standards as there are countless articles that are composed of a collection of "one liners" or "quick blurbs". Everyone plays a roll and these contributions benefit Wikipedia and will eventually be structured. PeterWesco (talk) 03:35, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Agree, my biggest pet peeve is the non-definitive lead sentence, along the lines of "The fratistats are a group of organisms belonging to the Fratistatidae". Or the lead sentence that defines the title of the article instead of what happened: "The Contested 2000 United States presidential election is an election that was held in the Ustited Nates on Yovember Nerth, in the year bum thousand and itch." I have rewritten the leads for a lot of articles such as fish, mammal, reptile with at least the goal of getting the subject defined in the first sentence and the main points of the entire article summarized in the lead. You run into two problems: experts who think a certain theory either should be mentioned in the lead although it's marginal, or should not be mentioned in the lead because it's become outmoded, even though historically it's hugely important (for example, Dinosaurs should not be mentioned in the lead of Reptile because the historical view that they were cold-blooded is false); and fanboiz who insist their fancruft (Gila monstaz is poisonous) has to go in the lead. Is this a ref desk question? μηδείς (talk) 03:53, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, if I am understanding your question, this is a ref desk question that I posed. Similar to your pet peeve, I have come across numerous articles that have been "corrected" to eliminate punctuation, sentences, paragraph structure, etc. I do not consider it an achievement to reduce sentences to less than 10 words and forgo the use of commas. Today, while searching in the WP:Manual of Style, I was pleased to find the WP:COMMA section.  :) PeterWesco (talk) 05:03, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Don't forget that you can, memetically stated, ignore ALL the rules! Any rule which states that leads like the 'fratistat' example are OK (other, similar forms I can picture occurring somewhere include "fountain pens are a kind of pen" and "bedspreads are a fabric designed for placement on beds") should be ignored, IMHO.  dalahäst ^{(let's talk!)} 07:26, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

My own pet peeve is tautological definition sentences in articles whose titles aren't proper names but self-descriptive phrases ("Elbonian grammar is the syntax and morphology of the Elbonian language"; or even worse: "Elbonian military decorations refers to military decorations awarded by Elbonia". But thank God we don't need to resort to IAR to solve this; the guidelines at WP:MOSBEGIN are actually quite reasonable. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:58, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

That's something dictionaries are famous for, as the alternative would be to define the same root word over and over. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:55, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Or you can get a loop definition, where a fweeble is defined as qwimstat, and a qwimstat is defined as a fweeble. Sometimes you can get quite a long loop, but the definition eventually returns to the original. In some cases this might be necessary, but they should define things in simpler terms, whenever possible, even if this requires more words. StuRat (talk) 00:38, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Have a look through my contributions log for the phrase "my holy mission" ;) —Tamfang (talk) 00:28, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Turkish help: File:HomelessParis 7032101.jpg

Hi! What is Turkish for "A homeless man in Paris" - I want to add it to File:HomelessParis 7032101.jpg Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 07:21, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

According to Google Translate it's "Paris'te evsiz bir adam". Gabbe (talk) 08:43, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Although the "bir" (meaning "one") is not really necessary. --Xuxl (talk) 11:53, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Seeing the question earlier today, I also was going to guess "Paris'te evsiz bir adam" exactly, but refrained from posting since my Turkish skills are limited. In any case, remember that if you choose to set off the Turkish in all caps, the i's still must be dotted: "PARİS'TE EVSİZ BİR ADAM". Not keeping the dot of a dotted İi is a mistake in Turkish, because that produces another letter, the dotless Iı. --Theurgist (talk) 16:25, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

"Paris'teki evsiz (bir) adam" looks like a more correct option, though I'm still not completely sure about that. The -te ending turns Paris into a locative, and then the -ki ending turns the locative into an adjective. You really should consult a Turkish speaker for a definite answer (see Category:User tr). --Theurgist (talk) 15:22, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

In my understanding, the -ki suffix is only used when the noun is definite. So "Paris'teki evsiz adam" would mean "the homeless man in Paris" (as opposed to the one in Rome), whereas "Paris'te evsiz bir adam" would mean "a homeless man in Paris." Not completely sure either, though, I agree about finding a more fluent speaker. Lesgles (talk) 23:30, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the help! I'll wait around and see if a native speaker comes on - In the meantime I will use "Paris'te evsiz bir adam" WhisperToMe (talk) 03:49, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

"Thank you for verbing" in German

In German, how are statements like "Thank you for doing something" said? When I look up phrases like "Thank you for visiting" or "Thank you for helping", they inevitably give the translations "Danke für Ihren Besuch" or "Danke für Ihre Hilfe" - in other words, they rewrite the sentence so the thing that the speaker is grateful for is a noun, rather than a verb. However, I've not found any site that explains what the more general pattern is, in cases where there's not necessary an obvious noun (apart from the verb infinitive) covering the act. For instance, "Thank you for bringing my glasses" - would that be something like "Danke für Ihr Bringen von(?) meine Brille" (Google translates that as "Danke, dass Sie meine Brille" or "Danke für die meine Brille", but that sounds grammatically odd, and like it's thanking someone for the glasses themselves, rather than the act of bringing them)? Smurrayinchester 11:42, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

"Thank you for bringing my glasses" would translate as Danke, dass Sie meine Brille gebracht haben. Google strangely fails to translate the verb. The general construction is with a dass subclause. --Wrongfilter (talk) 13:06, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

I agree with both your phrase books and Wrongfilter. If "Xing" in "Thank you for Xing" can be conveniently converted into a noun, that's probably the most idiomatic way of saying it. If it can't, then a dass phrase is the way to go. Angr (talk) 13:32, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

"Doing", "visiting", "helping" are all nouns, not verbs. Bazza (talk) 14:05, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Actually, not quite: they are gerunds, a special category in English that shares structural properties of nominal and verbal syntax. The reason for the observed difference with German is just that German does not have such a category. The syntactic frame "to thank (sb.) for (sth.)" ("danken für"), being prepositional, requires a nominal complement in both languages. English has this convenient trick of using a gerund phrase in that place, which can act like a noun phrase outwardly but still have fully verbal syntax internally. German can't do that; it only has nominalized infinitives, which are much more unambiguously noun-like than English gerunds. ("Danke fürs Blumengießen"; "Danke für das Gießen der Blumen"). That's why the most elegant option is often a paraphrase with a real noun, or the "that" alternative. Wir bedanken uns, dass Sie heute Wikipedia für Ihre Informationsbeschaffung gewählt haben, wünschen Ihnen noch einen schönen Nachmittag im Internet und hoffen, Sie bald wieder auf unseren Seiten begrüßen zu dürfen. – Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:28, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

There seems to be some disagreement whether the -ing forms used in the English present progressive tense are gerunds or present participles. In English, the two forms are morphologically identical, so you can't distinguish that way.

We just went through that question a few months back. The derivation is gerundive: "I am on singing > I am a-singing > I am singing". μηδείς (talk) 04:41, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

I can't seem to find that discussion in the archives. When you say "gerundive", are you just using an adjectival form of "gerund", or do you really mean something parallel to the Latin gerundive (Cartago delenda est)? --Trovatore (talk) 04:10, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

In Italian, you can tell, and you use the gerund (e.g. facendo), which is an adverb, not the present participle (facente), which is an adjective. But in Italian, the auxiliary verb is stare ("to be", but in the sense of "to stand" or "to stay"), so conceivably an adverb makes sense.

In English, by that reasoning, because the auxiliary is plain to be, which normally takes an adjective, the -ing forms should be viewed as present participles. But you'll find sources claiming either. --Trovatore (talk) 21:43, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

(Oh, now I see that you weren't actually talking about the present progressive tense. Sorry about that.) --Trovatore (talk) 21:48, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Jeez, I didn't know Wikipedia had its own stewardesses. Angr (talk) 14:41, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

The joke survived Google Translate, too. :>) Bielle (talk) 15:53, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, when I was in Germany a few months ago, I decided to speak German with Anglo-Saxon influence, and it got understood, but people said it was weird. There is no present progressive tense in German, because the gerund itself can only be used as an adjective, so 'ich bin dich folgende' would describe a state in which you are always following the person, which is a bit creepy. This is not what my friend wanted to hear me say when we were walking very quickly to the train station in a dark tunnel in Munich. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 14:57, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

"Ich bin dich folgende" is flat-out gibberish. You can use am + gerund or dabei + infinitive phrase to form a progressive in German, and folgen takes the dative, so: Ich bin dir am Folgen (I guess, though that still sounds mighty weird to my non-native-speaking ears) or Ich bin dabei, dir zu folgen (which is grammatical but not a pragmatically sensible way to say "I'm following you" to a friend in a dark tunnel near the train station). However, the am + gerund construction is only really standard when the verb doesn't have any object (accusative or dative), e.g. Wir sind am Grillen. Constructions with an object, like Ich bin den Wagen am Reparieren are grammatical only in the Rhineland dialect. See de:Rheinische Verlaufsform for more info. If the verb has a convenient verbal noun, you can use bei plus the verbal noun instead of dabei + infinitive clause, e.g. Ich bin bei der Arbeit for "I'm working" instead of Ich bin dabei, zu arbeiten. Angr (talk) 17:45, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

She was one of the Germans relocated from Russia to Germany after the fall of the Soviet Union, having been one of the descendants of people who had followed Catherine the Great to Russia in the 18th Century, and still speaks the German of that time, so maybe this is why she understood it that way. Not sure, but this is how she explained it to me. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 04:04, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

@ Trovatore above, my bad for using gerundive, yes, I meant it as an adjectival form but should have known better. Here is at least one of the discussions of the "to be on gerunding" source of the progressive: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Language/2012_August_9 It has a link to a relevant discussion of the issue. μηδείς (talk) 04:15, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks everyone. Smurrayinchester 17:33, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Pronunciation of the French surname "Serville"

According to the general rules the name of this person should be /sɛrvij/. Though there is a quite homonymous word "servile" and the final part of the surname homographic with "ville". So it can be also /servil/. But my opinion that the surname came from the first word, and the bearer modified it to avoid any bad connotations, this is why there is not -ile, but -lle, which should be pronounced as /-ij/. How should it be pronounced anyway?--Luboslov Yezykin (talk) 13:10, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

As /-ij/. Your opinion that there is any connection between the name and the word "servile" is highly unlikely, and any similarity is coincidental. The name is a toponymn from Serville, a village in France, and there is no plausible reason to suspect that the name of the village is related in any way to the word "servile", either. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 14:10, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

If it comes from a village Serville, then it should be pronounced with an /-il/. The word ville is pronounced that way, as are most if not all the place names ending in ville. Itsmejudith (talk) 14:47, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm with Judith on this. The "-ville" suffix in surnames is almost always pronounced "/vil/", similar to (but less diphthongy) the English word "veal", and the "l" isn't the "dark l" typical in final English L's. But it definately isn't usually /j/ at the endwhich would appear in words like "travail", or "work". (My mom's surname is a -ville name, and I've heard it spoken in Quebecois French many times. I don't think Metropolitan French deals with it much differently.) --Jayron32 16:56, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

It's interesting then, what is the etymology of Serville? "Serre ville"? "Serf ville"?--Luboslov Yezykin (talk) 03:57, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

It depends on which Serville. For Serville in Eure-et-Loir département, it comes from Servo villa. "Villa" is the latin name of domain and "Servo" is the name of a germanic person: The domain of Servo. The reference: Les noms de personne sur le territoire de l'ancienne Gaule. For Serville in Belgium, and Daubeuf-Serville in Seine-Maritime French département, I couldn't find the etymology. — AldoSyrt (talk) 07:39, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Untranslated Russian term of early Sovet era

I believed it starts with the letter "O"

Basically, the meaning is active Communists who actively sought out "traitors" of the Soviet ideal, sometimes innocents tu curry favours with the authorities. Eisenikov (talk) 14:49, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

One of the words for informant in Russian is осведомитель, osvedomitel'. Not sure if this is what you were looking for. Lesgles (talk) 20:45, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

I found out where I read about it, in an old article of Foreign Affairs. It's either a poor translation or a made-up word, because there doesn't seem to be that many relevant search results, even less if you drop the "soviet." Perhaps it has an alternate spelling. The word is oshestvennost, meaning "organised public opinion," namely in the form of Young Communists making sure everyone is upholding the Communist spirit, reporting lack of thereof to authorities. Link: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=obshestvennost+soviet&kl=ca-fr Eisenikov (talk) 04:16, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

It's a common word общественность [1][2]. Though in the Soviet times it can bear additional connotations.--Luboslov Yezykin (talk) 06:00, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

"xh" in Liégeois placenames

I notice a lot of places in Liège (province) contain the digraph "xh", both word-initially and word-internally. What sound is that meant to represent? My guess would be /x/ or /ç/ (being as "ch" signifies something else in French). 137.205.238.4 (talk) 15:49, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

According to xh (digraph), "In Walloon to write a sound that is variously /h/ or /ʃ/, depending on the dialect." So there you go. --Jayron32 16:49, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

In modern French, a lot of these towns are pronounced with /ks/ instead of /x/ or /h/. For instance, fr:Fexhe-le-Haut-Clocher, according to the French Wikipedia, is [fɛx] in Walloon but [fɛks] in French. For fr: Xhendelesse, we find [(h)ɑ̃dlɛs]. Note that the Liège province is one of the few places where (some) people actually still aspirate the aspirated h. Lesgles (talk) 20:37, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

countable or non countable

is the word fish plural or singular in the sentence below?

Fish can't live in the air.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.186.80.130 (talk) 18:16, 25 September 2012 (UTC) 

Plural. If it were singular, it would have taken the indefinite article "a". Compare to "Dogs can't live in the water", which is gramatical, but "Dog can't live in the water" which is not. Since the only possible grammatical construction there uses the plural form of "dogs", it would mean that "fish" in the sense of your sentence is plural. --Jayron32 18:27, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't think he's asking about whether you want to know about an individual fish. The point is that fish can sometimes be a mass noun (as in "I like fish"), and in that case would be grammatically singular. My intuition is that the mass-noun sense of fish refers to fish as food, not as individual organisms, and that they therefore would not usually be "living" at all. --Trovatore (talk) 18:32, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, but fish is also used in a plural, countable sense, as in "I have three fish in my aquarium at home" is a perfectly acceptable sentence. In the case of the sentence give, I think it is ambiguous, as both countable and non-countable nouns work. Consider "Cattle can't live in the water" vs. "Cows can't live in the water" vs. "Cow can't live in the water" The first two are fine, the third is not. Since "Fish" plays the same role as "Cattle" and "Cows" in the first two sentences here, there isn't any way at all to resolve the difference. --Jayron32 18:38, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

This is easy. Fish is uncountable when it is used as a kind of food: Fish is a good source of protein. Rice is a good source of carbohydrates. But the OP's example could be paraphrased as "Fishes aren't able to live in the air" which is unambiguously plural. The ambiguity lies only in the fact that fish happens to be an irregular plural, and can is a defective verb that shows no agreement with number. μηδείς (talk) 18:52, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

That's a really good explanation, Medeis. The "defective verb" thing is something I hadn't thought of in this sentence, but it is a very relevent point. Good response. --Jayron32 19:29, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I also accept stars. The trick to questions like these is the use of paraphrase to see what distinctive elements will substitute for others. That's how I worked this one out--the essence of language is analogy--I didn't have an answer ahead of time. μηδείς (talk) 19:31, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I did the same thing (see the dog and cow examples), but I missed the verb altogether. That does make a difference here. I don't have the linguistic background you do, I suspect, based on question answers, which is why your answers here are usually spot on. --Jayron32 19:36, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, when I was teaching English in Korea, I had to constantly remind students of plurals, because Korean doesn't have plurals for most nouns. "I like fish" is ambiguous - does it refer to fish as food, or as animals? "I like dog" was a complicated one, because I was in Korea, and made the students laugh. Basically, the way I worked it out was, in cases like "I like chicken" vs. "I like chickens", we tend to count how many there are (usually just the one, or maybe a few), whereas with 'fish', they are caught by the hundreds or thousands, and not easy to count. Similarly, "I like rice", not 'rices' (which would refer to different types of rice), and then the usual joke about lice, as opposed to 'rice'. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 10:26, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Actually I don't think the defective-verb thing is very explanatory here. It's true that can is a defective verb, in the sense that, for example, it has no past participle (you can say I have been able to but not *I have could), but it's not defective in the sense of lacking a third-person singular. It's just that the third-person singular happens to be identical with the third-person plural. That sort of thing happens all the time; by itself it doesn't make the verb defective.

Happens all the time? I am sorry, Trovatore, but unless you have some secret list of English verbs the rest of us don't know about, it is the defective verbs and only the defective verbs that lack a separate -s marked third person singular form. μηδείς (talk) 17:21, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

What happens all the time is different spots in the paradigm happening to have identical forms (not limited to third-person-singular-present-indicative). "Defective" means that the spot is actually missing, not that the entry in that spot is identical to an entry in another spot.

"Can" has a third-person singular present indicative; it's "can". It doesn't have a past participle (or present participle, or infinitive, or second-person-plural-present-subjunctive) at all, which is what makes it defective. --Trovatore (talk) 17:48, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

By the way, I mentioned the food aspect first. --Trovatore (talk) 09:46, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

You can say "I have canned", as in "I have canned some apples". KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 10:32, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

...but that's a different verb. Marnanel (talk) 13:26, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

The answer is readily apparent if you exchange the ambiguous (both in terms of sing/plural and in terms of food/organisms) "Fish" for the unambiguous "Octopi" and "Caviar" respectively. --Dweller (talk) 12:33, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

*twitch* Octopuses. Marnanel (talk) 13:26, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Plenty of people more intelligent than I am, and some of whom are experts on the order of octopoda, are equally happy to follow the OED. --Dweller (talk) 13:46, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

*twitch twitch* Octopodes.  dalahäst ^{(let's talk!)} 19:38, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

*twitch twitch twitch* Octopussy. --Jayron32 19:44, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

@ Trovatore above. That's a matter of analysis. One can surely say that the defective English auxiliaries lack a separate third person form that all normal verbs have. The fact that this is unique to all the defectives is telling. On the other hand one could perversely argue they aren't even defective, but just show suppletion with "to be able", etc., and that just as a third person form "exists" an infinitive "exists". Assuming I accept your narrow definition of defective, what other term would you use to describe the fact that these verbs and they alone lack inflected third persons singular forms? μηδείς (talk) 18:30, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

I have found these sources which refer to the English modals as defective and "neutral": [3] [4]. μηδείς (talk) 18:52, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

So she seems to be using neutral to mean what you are calling lacking inflected third-person singular (I could quibble with that description too, but whatevs). Honestly I've always just called them modal verbs; I don't know that I ever thought of them as defective until you pointed it out, but sure, they're reasonably described as being defective in the past and present participle. The fact that their third-singular-present-active-indicatives are the same as the other present active indicatives, though, I don't think is reasonably described as defectiveness. It's just a morphological coincidence.

We have an extension-v-intension issue here — the verbs whose third-person-singular-active-indicatives are the same as the other active indicatives may be extensionally the same as the defective verbs (at least, I can't immediately think of a counterexample) but not intensionally. Compare with other languages: In Italian dirimere, "to resolve", is defective in the past participle (no idea why; the regular form would be *dirimuto, but apparently it just doesn't exist), but it's certainly not a modal, and as far as I know the paradigm is otherwise regular. --Trovatore (talk) 22:39, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Given the verbs are old preterites (and that's why they actually lack any present tense forms, the he/she/it person included) one still could insist they are defective, depending on how one wants to do the analysis. If one ignores the fact that these are preterite verbs, takes them purely as presents, and sticks with the meaning of defective as used in the grammar of classical languages (not just no separate form, but no function, no "I snow" verb) then having a separate word, in this case "neutralization", for the third person is necessary. But diachronically that is not what happened. There never was a third person present "he cans" which neutralized its ending. Within the wider context of other languages, you are quite right to emphasize that a modal verb and a defective verb are two different things. It is just historical accident within English that the simple modals are indeed all defective. μηδείς (talk) 16:51, 1 October 2012 (UTC)