Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 June 22

Language desk
< June 21	<< May | June | Jul >>	June 23 >

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.

June 22

V NP = V P NP

Either (A) "The strike lasted two weeks" means the same as "The strike lasted for two weeks" or (B) the difference in meaning is so subtle that I'm not consciously aware of it.

For can't always be used with LAST: "Those shoes should last for till you're 50", for example, is ungrammatical. But most of the time, for seems optional.

It's hard to come up with verb-plus-preposition combinations* where the preposition is similarly unnecessary. FORGET about is one. (When I skimread examples of "forget about" at COCA and mentally remove the "about", the resulting sentences are good and mean the same; similarly, when I skimread COCA's examples of "forget the" and mentally insert "about", the resulting sentences are good and mean the same.)

I can't think of any reason why anyone would compile a list of verb plus preposition sequences in which the preposition is, usually, entirely optional. So there probably is no such list. But does anyone here know of one, or can anyone think of a way in which I could generate such a list without laborious introspection?

* Such a description of course doesn't reflect the structure (PP versus simple NP), but I'm trying to avoid technicalities that aren't needed here. More.coffy (talk) 05:39, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

I think it's fairly common with certain time expressions: "I did it Tuesday" vs. "I did it on Tuesday".

"Forget" (transitive) and "forget about" do not always mean exactly the same thing. "I forgot the coffee" has a fairly strong implication that you forgot to bring the coffee with you, while "I forgot about the coffee" doesn't. AnonMoos (talk) 09:44, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

One thing which puzzles me is that when Americans say "through Thursday" they mean "up to" and possibly "including Thursday" while the British use this expression to mean "during the course of Thursday". They would say "through to Thursday" to express the first idea. So why do Americans omit the preposition, and how would they translate the British expression "through Thursday" into American English? 94.195.147.35 (talk) 10:11, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

I don't recognise this as a British expression. Do you have an example? Henry^Flower 15:07, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for the ideas, AnonMoos. But I think my idiolect differs a little from yours. Arriving back from shopping: "Here you are: bacon, coriander, avocados, beer, pineapple juice, soy milk." / "Ah good. But the coffee?" / "Damn, I forgot (about) the coffee." Either would sound perfectly idiomatic to me. However, I do detect differences elsewhere. Wondering whether to make a return visit to a particular restaurant: "The meal was superb, remember? The antipasti, the risotto.... Even the house wine was excellent." / "Well, yes, but what they called 'espresso' was pretty awful." / "Ah yes, I'd forgotten (about) the coffee." Here, omission of "about" might sound slightly strange to me. More.coffy (talk) 11:49, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

I've heard 'should last for till' but it does sound clunky and unnecessary. Dmcq (talk) 12:18, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Neither "last for till" nor "lasted for till" appears in COCA. Merely a performance error, perhaps? More.coffy (talk) 22:29, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Or just speech compared to writing, for instance how often do people use 'till' in writing compared to 'until'? Dmcq (talk) 09:03, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Reference: see this book, found on google scholar, for a detailed discussion. Don't know if a single-sourced article is permissible, but this might be a good starting point for an article on optional prepositions. Some of the factors in play are cognitive complexity, tense, rhythm, and the involvement of time expressions or causality. 70.67.222.124 (talk) 15:00, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Would it be reasonable to say that "forget about" something means "to forget the existence or relevance of something", whereas "forget" something means either to forget to bring something, or to forget the details of something. Compare for example "I forgot my password" vs. "I forgot about my password". Iapetus (talk) 15:13, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for your pointer to Google Books, Mr/Ms Not-logged-in. Unfortunately Google Books won't serve this up to me, but maybe I can find a PDF somewhere. More.coffy (talk) 22:29, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

I suspect that your suggested difference is too simple, Iapetus. However, I can't immediately come up with anything better, and your example is very good: certainly the version with "about" would sound very odd to me. More.coffy (talk) 22:29, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Couple more examples in Zero-marking_in_English#Zero_prepositions.70.67.222.124 (talk) 15:06, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

The "about" version could make sense if for example I told someone to use my computer for some purpose, but had forgotten that they would have needed a password to do so. Iapetus (talk) 11:23, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you ... but Wikipedia's treatment of "zero prepositions" is horrible! It starts

In Northern Britain some speakers omit the prepositions to or of in sentences with two objects.

"So, she won't give us it." (She won't give it to us.)

There are so many confusions (or misunderstandings) within this. More.coffy (talk) 22:29, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

That doesn't have much to do with "omitting prepositions". "Give me the coffee" and "Give the coffee to me" are variants in English, and these dialects extend the first construction to cases when the direct object is pronominal... AnonMoos (talk) 08:37, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

I can think of the example of opening times. A Briton would say "9 to 5, Monday to Friday". An American would say "9 through 5, Monday to Friday. In some cases (as discussed above) prepositions are added unnecessarily. The station announcer yesterday morning said "The London, King's Cross train is now arriving into platform 2". The normal phrase is "arriving at", with "arriving on" also heard. This may be the same announcer who recently informed passengers "Your next King's Cross train will arrive at and depart from platform 2". Superfluous speech was the subject of a recent question:

Check:

"depends on whether...", vs. "depends whether...".

"ask about when...", vs. "ask when...".

HOTmag (talk) 15:39, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Back to "V NP = V P NP"

AnonMoos, I agree: some of the content of Zero-marking_in_English#Zero_prepositions is irrelevant to its stated subject. And it's very confused. -- More.coffy (talk) 13:07, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Gilding the lily

What is the origin of this phrase? On 3 January 2015 an unnamed Daily Telegraph journalist wrote:

"Unfortunately this year the almost-full waxing gibbous moon will obscure the display".

Are there any other examples of a writer repeating three times something which was perfectly obvious the first time (the word "gibbous" is superfluous here). 81.151.128.189 (talk) 10:05, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

If the question is about "gilding the lily", it's a misquotation from Shakespeare's King John, act iv, scene 2: "Therefore, to be possess'd with double pomp,/To guard a title that was rich before,/To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,/To throw a perfume on the violet,/To smooth the ice, or add another hue/Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light/To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,/Is wasteful and ridiculous excess." I'm sure that there are published triply redundant phrases, and why not? Redundancy is no sin, despite the imprecations of generations of Thistlebottoms. Though I agree the particular example of pleonasm you cite is singularly ungraceful... -Nunh-huh 07:04, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

"Almost full" implies "gibbous", but not the other way around, so those two are, shall we say, half-redundant. As for "waxing", it's not redundant at all; you can have a waxing gibbous, a waning gibbous, a waxing crescent, or a waning crescent. --Trovatore (talk) 18:46, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Hope nobody minds that I've reformatted this question. (For why this seems appropriate, see [https://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AReference_desk%2FLanguage&type=revision&diff=787261013&oldid=787228610 this set of edits.) More.coffy (talk) 13:07, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Turning stops into fricatives

When we correspond stops with fricatives, we usually go with p=f, t=th, and k=German ch. We even sometimes go with s=sh even though they are both fricatives. Naturally, however, the corresponding sounds are p=wh, t=s, and k=h in huge (a voiceless y.) If you don't believe me, try making a stop sound and try to hold it for as long as you can and then if it turns into something different, find what it turns into. Is there any reason the first 2 sentences in this paragraph are true despite the naturalness of the third sentence?? Georgia guy (talk) 22:18, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

I don't understand. Are you talking about finding which stops are made at the same places of articulation as various fricatives? What are "corresponding sounds"? In which of its various and nebulous senses are you using the word "naturally"? More.coffy (talk) 22:34, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

The first 2 sentences talk about how fricatives developed from other stops (and one fricative that's not the same as the fricative that developed from it) in the languages that formed fricatives. To understand the third sentence, try making a p, t, or k sound and hold it for a few seconds and guess what different sound it turns into. A p will turn to the wh sound in white. A t will turn into an s. A k will turn into the sound of the h in huge, which is a voiceless y. Try it if you don't believe me. Georgia guy (talk) 22:37, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Georgia_guy -- First off, a change from a stop to a fricative at or near the corresponding place of articulation is usually called "spirantization". Second, it would be nice if you would use some system of phonetic transcription. IPA or Americanist phonetic notation or whatever, I don't care, but ordinary unmodified English orthography simply doesn't work for this particular discussion. Third, the fricative with the same place of articulation as [p] is [ɸ], not [ʍ]. The [ʍ] sound is an approximant, not a fricative. Fourth, a change from [s] to [ʃ] is usually called a "palatalization", most definitely not a "spirantization". Your "22:37" comments are quite strange, but if they have any point, it's that slightly different points of articulation are often preferred for stops and fricatives. So, for example, bilabial [p] is preferred among the stops, while among the fricatives labiodental [f] is more often found than bilabial [ɸ]. A change of spirantization affecting a [p] sound will often end up with [f] as the result for this reason... AnonMoos (talk) 08:28, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

"labiodental [f] is more often found than bilabial [ɸ]": Japanese is one "major" language that has the latter (as an allophone of /h/) but not the former. More.coffy (talk) 13:07, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

If you looked things up in the Ian Maddieson books, I'm sure "[f] occurs more more often than [ɸ] in the world's languages" would be found to be true (especially with respect to phonemes)... AnonMoos (talk) 19:18, 26 June 2017 (UTC)