Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 July 22

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July 22

Philomena Cunk's English

The kind of English accent Philomena Cunk uses is obviously not RP. What would you call it? 178.51.74.75 (talk) 01:45, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Diane Morgan plays Philomena Cunk and she comes from Bolton, where they speak a type of Lancashire dialect. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 08:43, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Does she use her native accent when playing Philomena Cunk? I don't think I've ever heard her speak out of character. —Mahāgaja · talk 10:02, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

I'd only seen her as Cunk and in Motherland (where she also has a Bolton accent), but here she is on Late Night with Seth Meyers, explaining that she plays Cunk in her own accent (at about 1m 45s). AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 11:22, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Leaving out "to be"

I've noticed that many classic-format jokes, especially as found in joke books, do something odd with the tense: they have a tendency to remove the "to be" portion and I'm not sure what that would be called or what the purpose is. Example: "Two men in a barbershop having their hair cut..." rather than the more standard "Two men are in a barbershop having their hair cut...". Is it just for brevity and flow? The setup to a joke typically needs to be executed quickly - is that all it is? Is there a term for this kind of formation? Matt Deres (talk) 01:55, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

"Brevity is the soul of wit"? But if you're telling a shaggy dog story, you'd leave in all of these extraneous words. Xuxl (talk) 07:35, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Can you give a full sentence exemplifying the phenomenon? There is nothing odd with the tenses in "Two men in a barbershop having their hair cut were startled by a strange sound" - although I'd insert a couple of commas. Also, "Two men in a barbershop having their hair cut" is a cromulent image caption.  --Lambiam 12:37, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

It's cromulent, but I would consider it marked. Like, someone made the decision to leave out the are. Your point about it being a good image caption is kind of what I'm getting at: image captions can only be evaluated within the context of the image they're captioning: this reads like an image caption, but... there's no image. Maybe I'm hypersensitive to it; I've been studying jokes for several months now and there are other stylistic choices common to jokes that are unusual elsewhere, like leaving out articles: "Man walks into a talent agent..." rather than "A man walks into a talent agent...". What I'm wondering is if there's a more specific term for this kind of thing than ellipsis. Matt Deres (talk) 20:08, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Probably not. One style manual I'm familiar with just uses "elliptical style" to describe the omission of articles in assembly directions ("Glue wings to fuselage"), recipes ("Pour batter into 12-inch cake pan"), and the like. Deor (talk) 20:34, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

I didn't find other terms for this, but I found this grammar page that gives examples of leaving out unstressed words [[[1]]. I've seen standup comedians drop them too, for brevity and to command attention. Modocc (talk) 21:12, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Nominative absolute may be relevant in some cases. AnonMoos (talk) 21:46, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

I think sometimes jokes have their own formulaic grammars. In German, it's very common for jokes use verb-first order, something ordinarily reserved for questions and if-clauses (with the if suppressed). So a joke beginning "A horse goes into a bar" would start in German "Kommt ein Pferd in eine Kneipe", which outside of a joke could only mean "Does a horse go into a bar?" or "If a horse goes into a bar". It is standard German to say "Es kommt ein Pferd in eine Kneipe", but in jokes you leave out the "es" (roughly = dummy "there"). —Mahāgaja · talk 10:09, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Doesn't always work, as in the infamous Shakespearian joke intro "Or not". -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 19:13, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

It reminds me of the way a scene is described in a play. Play_(theatre)#Terminology has the example "Scene 1. Before the cell of Prospero," but I could imagine also "Scene 2. Man walks into a talent agent," and "Scene 3. Two men in a barbershop having their hair cut." This register (sociolinguistics) is appropriate for a setup (storytelling).  Card Zero  (talk) 22:53, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

That's the kind of thing I was thinking of. It's unfortunate that our article is shorter than your response. :-) Matt Deres (talk) 16:36, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

OSV and VSO words orders

A question I was reminded of reading the thread about reverse English: in the OSV and VSO order the predicate group is separated by the subject group? Isn't that a problem? Is the notion of "predicate" with verb and object (and other complements) belonging to it universal? Isn't it more natural that words belonging to the same syntactic group be close together by default? Do OSV and VSO languages have that notion of predicate?

VSO is of course the word order (is "worder" a word?) used in Ancient Hebrew, Classical Arabic, etc.: does the predicate group (if it does exist in those languages) being split have any implication? I've noted that the verbal forms in the past (the non-past is more complicated) have exactly the same order for the suffixed pronouns: verb + subject suffix + object suffix. I've also read somewhere that Ancient Egyptian cycled through various word orders at different stages in its long history. Is that true? Is there a natural way in which word order changes? 178.51.74.75 (talk) 02:01, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

About "natural", Latin word order mentions the frequent use of hyperbaton:

Thus, Caesar's hae permānsērunt aquae diēs complūrēs, with hae "these" separated from aquae "flood waters", means not "These floods remained for several days" but "This time, the flood waters (unlike the previous ones) remained for several days."

--Error (talk) 09:41, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

V2 languages (including the Germanic languages other than English) also regularly break up the predicate. The concept of predicate (first definition) isn't used in the traditional grammar of every language and not all modern theories of syntax use the binary distinction of subject vs. predicate. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:50, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Even in English, the predicate may be broken up. "The devil is in the details" is traditionally analyzed as subject "the devil" + predicate "is in the details". By asking, "Is the devil in the details?", the subject is transposed to a position inside the predicate.  --Lambiam 12:25, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

In modern linguistic theories, what 178.51.74.75 calls the "predicate" is often known as a verb phrase. In the four-word sentence "Who do you love?", there are two separate breaches of the boundaries of the verb phrase. The exact answer to 178.51.74.75's question would depend on the details of specific linguistic theories (and there's probably a lot more data and linguistic discussion about VSO than OSV)... AnonMoos (talk) 17:13, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Why is the verb yap considered a TikTok trend?

The practice of referring to senseless chatter as yapping or yapping on (about something) doesn't seem new to me. Of course, the word's entry on the list of Generation Z slang points out that it dates back hundreds of years, but still, its use in its modern sense seems to have been popular for at least a bit longer than some sources might have us believe. Here's a couple of examples I can recall from the top of my head:

Quit yappin' and start workin'!

— Doc Hudson to Lightning McQueen

Is it SHUTYERYAPS?

— Grunkle Stan while competing on Cash Wheel

I doubt that "yapping" would've sounded out of place in a 20th-century Warner Bros. or Hanna-Barbera cartoon. – MrPersonHumanGuy (talk) 17:21, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Here it is used in a play from 1953, in the sense of needless talking. Perhaps it is used on TikTok to refer to any speech act.  --Lambiam 18:34, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

It goes back a thousand years, originally in reference to dogs barking.[2] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:29, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Seems as if it's only attested from the 17th century, though. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 16:40, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Every generation rejuvenates old customs, mores, folkways, and linguistic usages, and then gives itself credit for having invented them. Gen Z is no different from any other generation in this respect. --Trovatore (talk) 21:17, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

For what it's worth, as a Gen Z'er, I don't think I've ever actually seen any of us actually claim invention of the term, even if we use it a lot. Maybe I just haven't looked hard enough. GalacticShoe (talk) 16:21, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

I mean, a trend doesn't technically have to be completely new, I guess, as a Xennial. Robert Crumb popularized the Keep on truckin'... slogan, but he had picked it up from the 1936 single Truckin' My Blues Away by Blind Boy Fuller. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 19:52, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

No, of course not. When I was a teenager in the '80s, the fashionable word for "very good" was awesome, but awesome has had the meaning awe-inspiring since the 17th century. It wasn't a new coinage (like, say, skibidi is), but we still managed to make it "our" word, and it was embarrassing to hear a grownup try to use it the way we did. —Mahāgaja · talk 09:56, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Suspend

The verb "suspend" seems to be undergoing a change, particularly in relation to political campaigns. Once, it meant that a campaign was being halted temporarily, but not permanently. Now, we read @ Kamala Harris#2024 presidential campaign:

• On July 21, 2024, incumbent president and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden suspended his campaign for re-election in 2024 with Harris and endorsed her as the Democratic presidential nominee.

Yet, everything I've heard and read tells me Biden has abandoned his campaign, permanently and irrevocably. It's over. It's not just suspended. I've also seen this language with previous contenders who pulled out. Nobody believed they were just re-grouping or whatever, and intended to mount a reinvigorated campaign in the near future. No, they were withdrawing permanently. It seems to be a purely American phenomenon, as far as I can tell.

Wiktionary:suspend tells me @ Definition 3, that suspend can mean:

• To discontinue or interrupt a function, task, position, or event, e.g. to suspend a thread of execution in a computer program.

That seems to be the only case where suspension can mean permanent cessation. All the other definitions are about temporary cessation. Computer jargon is often the most impenetrable rubbish, with expressions meaning things that are completely at odds with their natural meanings (eg. client). So, why is this computer jargon now being trotted out for use in political contexts? Is it that words that don't mean what they seem to mean are an obvious and natural fit for politics? </cynicism>-- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:40, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

I think this relates to some obscure aspect of American campaign-finance law. If you actually officially drop out, it triggers some sort of legal requirement or complication that "suspending" the campaign does not. So campaigns are almost never officially terminated, always suspended. I don't remember the details but I'm sure someone else can help you find them, or this might be enough of a clue by itself. --Trovatore (talk) 22:03, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Mpls in 73! —Tamfang (talk) 22:42, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm hoping to attend, but I will be 119. --Orange Mike | Talk 23:31, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

This reminds me of a question I asked once on some refdesk; I think it was about Ruth Ellis. The article went into some detail about the possibility of a "reprieve", ultimately not granted.

Now to me a "reprieve" is a temporary suspension of the sentence, essentially the same thing as a "stay". But it was explained to me that the authorities had no option to actually commute her sentence, but they could have stayed it indefinitely, which is the sort of reprieve that was intended in the article. --Trovatore (talk) 23:08, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

In US presidential campaigns in recent years, especially during primary season, it has become customary for a candidate to say they are "suspending" their campaign when it's obvious they have no chance of winning. There could be legalistic nuances to that, as Trovatore indicates. In the case of Biden, he's not resigning as president (at least not yet), and if Harris suddenly decides against running, Biden could still say, "Here I am!" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:14, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Here's an Atlantic article that deals with the subject. It's a "gift" article that should be de-paywalled for the next couple weeks (sorry future readers of the archive).

article

Key quote:

Financially, the benefits of a suspension are even more important. "By not officially terminating his campaign, a candidate can continue to raise money to retire debt," ABC News' Domenico Montarao explained after Herman Cain similarly announced the suspension of his campaign in December. "But a candidate would not be ALLOWED to terminate unless they paid off their obligations and debts."

I think this bit about fundraising to retire debt is the nuance I was thinking about. --Trovatore (talk) 01:02, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Ah, I see. It's a legal fiction. Enough said. Thanks. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 07:38, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Technically, I guess the campaign isn't dropped, as much as revamped from Biden-Harris to Harris-Vice (incumbent). 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:59, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

No, those are two different campaigns. When fundraising, the precise wording is legally important, and in many jurisdictions it's often illegal to divert donations given for cause A to cause B, even if A is defunct and they are linked in some way. I actually served on a Crown Court jury (in the UK) where this was a background factor in the case. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195}

94.2.67.235 (talk) 17:46, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

As I understood it, picking Harris allowed the Democrats to retain most of their collected donations, but I didn't understand all of the details. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 18:49, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

What does "retire debt" mean? DuncanHill (talk) 23:39, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

Just a fancy way of saying pay it off. (The weak implication is it's a big amount.) Clarityfiend (talk) 08:08, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Ah, thanks, repay. DuncanHill (talk) 17:25, 29 July 2024 (UTC)