Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2022 October 22

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October 22

Singular/plural

I wrote the following to exclude certain entries from Category:Reputed virgins: "Excluded are people who were virgins because they were a member of a religious order". Now that I think of it, I'm not sure this is right. Should it be "they were members of religious orders"? (I could bypass the whole issue by rephrasing as "A person who was a virgin because they were a member of a religious order is excluded", but I'm curious.) Clarityfiend (talk) 14:22, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Plural sounds better. But it's such a small category, getting rid of it would be good too. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:13, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

I'd say "they were members of a religious order" would sound okay, but my native language is Swedish with no verbal plural conjugations, anyway... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 16:20, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

We find, "public school teachers who indicated that they were members of a union or an employee association similar to a union",^[1] next to, "[the Jews] also believed because they were a member of the tribe of Judah".^[2] Either sounds OK to me.  --Lambiam 17:17, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Singular they normally takes the "plural" verb. This is exactly parallel to how, when you started being used in the singular, gradually ousting thou, it continued to take the verb form associated with you (e.g. "you are") not the form associated with thou ("thou art"). So "because they were a member of a religious order" is fine. But the plural is also fine. ColinFine (talk) 21:58, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Consider:

• "Everyone raised their hand": they raised one hand each.
• "Everyone raised their hands": maybe they raised one hand each, but we can't tell.

Each person could only be one member of the order, so "because they were a member" works and I think it's preferable.

--174.89.144.126 (talk) 04:57, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Clarityfiend (talk) 03:43, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Sound questions

A couple of sound questions.

1. Is there any language in the world with vowel length harmony?
2. Can [j] and [w] be syllabic ([j̩]) and ([w̩])?
3. Are voiceless central approximants (such as [j̊], [ɹ̊], [ʋ̥] and [β̞̊] really possible or are they mislabeled fricatives ([j̊] → [ç], [ɹ̊] → [θ̠], [ʋ̥] → [f], [β̞̊] → [ɸ]]), since I know no language which contrast them with corresponding fricatives and none of then have article in English Wikipedia?
4. Is there any other language than Dutch and nearby languages that make a phonemic contrast with voiced labiodental fricative and voiced labiodental approximant. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 40bus (talk • contribs) 20:05, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

There's vowel-length transfer, also known as "quantitative metathesis". The "rhythmical law" of the Slovak language says that no two adjacent syllables can both have long vowels... AnonMoos (talk) 02:30, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

2. Those would be [i] and [u] correspondingly, as explained in Semivowel --82.166.199.42 (talk) 12:26, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

Do near-close vowels [ɪ], [ʏ], [ɯ̽] and [ʊ] have semivocalic equivalents? --40bus (talk) 15:03, 23 October 2022 (UTC)