Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 June 9

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June 9

"Maria's motorcycle helmet"

In "Maria's motorcycle helmet", "helmet" is obviously a noun, but what about "motorcycle"? Noun or adjective? And what is "Maria's"? I am not sure.

'Motorcycle' is an adjective describing the noun 'helmet'. "Maria's" is a possessive adjective also describing the noun 'helmet'. Remember to sign by typing four tildes (~). --Mayfare 03:09, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

It's an attributive noun. --Nricardo 04:30, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

The modifier motorcycle is a noun, and it is not common to call it an adjective here, as in the first response. The term attributive noun is used for this attributive use of a noun. Unlike adjectives, you can't use this modifier as a predicative: *Is this helmet motorcycle? is nonsense. Together, motorcycle helmet is a compound noun having an "open form".

A modifier like Maria's is called a possessive adjective, but it is not truly an adjective, and therefore also called a possessive determiner. Like normal adjectives, it can be used as a predicative: Is this helmet Maria's?.  --Lambiam^Talk 07:24, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

I've usually heard such things called noun adjuncts. --Reuben 07:36, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Maria's - Possessive noun!!! (This is not an adjective, people. "Blue," "fast," and "hard" are adjectives. A person is not an adjective.)

Motorcycle helmet - both (when seperate) are nouns, but form one compound noun when together. Another example would be "ocean fish." Some people call it a noun acting as an adjective, noun adjunts, or other needlessly complicated things. Just call it a "complex noun" or "two-part noun."

--67.177.170.96 05:26, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

"-i" in feminine names

When did women start using spellings such as "Cathi", "Mandi", etc., for their names?

While this isn't definitive, these were popular enough spellings to be in the top 1000 baby names (US Census Data) as early as 1940. See e.g. Cathi in 1950, Sandi at roughly the 700th most popular name in 1940, or Cindi at 600 in 1950. Mandi is quite popular at 500 in 1970 but isn't popular enough to appear before that. It's worth noting that the "-i" variants are most popular when the "-y" variants are at the height of their popularity as well - for example, "Cathy" was one of the absolute most-popular (top 50ish) girl's names in 1950, at the same time "Cathi" appears at around 1000. Tofof 04:29, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Hello. Why is The Secret Life of Walter Mitty so famous? Thanks. --Mayfare 03:05, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

You might consider posting this to the Humanities desk, which deals with questions related to literature.Tofof 04:33, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Ling: Female given name only?

I haven't encountered any Chinese male person with any form of "Ling" as a given name. Is Ling an exclusively female given name?203.21.40.253 03:43, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

In a sense, it doesn't have to be, no. Chinese names, unlike western names, are a string of characters which stand for something, so pretty much any character with the pronounciation of "Ling" may be used for a name. Ling is also a surname though, such as in the case of fictional Ling Xiaoyu. However, Ling used not as a surname is generally feminine, and thus much more likely to be female. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 04:16, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Thankyou!203.21.40.253 01:28, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

German-to-English translation request

Kindly provide a translation of Spontact.jad from German to English. This is the list of phrases in the Spontact program. Leave the text before the colon intact, translate only the part after the colon. Thanks! --Masatran 12:22, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Post-scipt: The translation will be useful to many people. I will acknowledge your help. I will post the translation on my web-page. --Masatran 13:03, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

German genders and plurals

I've read German nouns. It seems that, while guessing plural forms is as hard as the genders, the genitive endings are rather regular, with only a few exceptions.

Is it advisable to memorize words with gender + noun + plural forms together, and only pay attention to genitive endings when necessary?--61.92.239.192 13:07, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Most masculine and neuter nouns are strong and form their genitive regularly (with -(e)s), so all you have to memorize is the nouns that are weak, and then remember which weak nouns form their genitive with -en (des Löwen) and which form it with -ens (des Herzens). For weak nouns, you don't have to worry about memorizing the plural, since it's always in -en. In colloquial spoken German, you don't have to use the genitive anyway. —Angr 14:06, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks.--61.92.239.192 07:07, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Spanish double negation

I hope I'm not out of line asking a question about the Spanish language here, but a recent topic brought this question into mind.

In English, we have a rule that a double negative equates to a positive, for example saying There isn't nothing here is the equivalent of There is something here.

In Spanish, I frequently hear a phrases such as "No hay nada aqui" which equates to the first English phrase I quoted above. However, I'm wondering if, in Spanish it is acceptable to state "Hay nada aqui", and if so, I wonder how, gramatically speaking it is possible that both phrases mean the same thing. Can somebody enlighten me? --JAXHERE | ^Talk 15:36, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

When I hear someone say There ain't nothing here!, I assume they mean "There is nothing here!". Although considered substandard nowadays, it is standard in some versions/registers/dialects of English (with a respectable pedigree), to the extent that if you say "there is nothing here", you run a chance of being corrected, because the audience will perceive this as ungrammatical. See the section entitled Double negative#Double negative resolving to a negative in our article on double negatives. Hay nada aqui, while understood, will be considered ungrammatical.  --Lambiam^Talk 16:09, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

No hablo español, however a similar rule applies in other languages. In Russian, for example, if I wanted to say "I have never murdered anyone", I would say the equivalent of "I have never not murdered nobody". It would never be analysed by a listener into any meaning other than "I have never murdered anyone", just as "There ain't nothing here" is clearly meant to communicate, and effectively does communicate, the meaning "There is nothing here", syntactical rules notwithstanding. -- JackofOz 01:22, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I speak some Spanish, but yes by default negation is multiple. For example, if I wanted to say "I did not talk to anyone", I would say "No hablé a nadie", which would directly translate to "I did not talk to nobody", but really means "I did not talk to anyone." You can go further in this fashion with triple negation and so on, for example, "They never bring anything for anyone" becomes "Nunca traen nada para nadie." I don't know why negation is this way, only that it is!

As far as your question about saying "Hay nada aquí", I'm doubtful that that's gramatically correct. Hay is the present tense form of the verb haber, meaning "there is" or "there are", and so you haven't satisfactorily negated it with just the nada--you need a negation word for that verb, so in this case you need to say "No hay nada aquí." –Pakman044 02:21, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Hey, Jaxhere! Don't worry, this desk isn't merely for the English language, but for language in general. Most Romance languages have this contruction, and plenty of other languages too. It isn't possible to say 'hay nada aquí,' because in negative phrases, the verb has to reflect the object's negativity. The same was the case in Middle English, where the double negative was just as prevalent, if not more, than the singular negative: an example that comes to my mind is in the prologue to the Miller's Tale, where the narrator says:

“ He nolde avalen neither hood ne hat

Ne abyde no man for his curtesye,

”

(he would not take off neither hood nor hat, nor wait for no man out of courtesy.)

Shakespeare too used the double negative on a few occasions. The mathematical idea of two negatives equalling positive didn't really stick until the 17th century and onwards, which, 'coincidentally,' was the time that prescriptive grammarians and the idea that a language should comply to some kind of formal logic. The Romance languages (unless there's some bizarre Rhaeto-Romansh dialect to blow me out of the water) never evolved in such a way.

Best wishes,

--It's-is-not-a-genitive 12:54, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

• Thanks all for your comments. I was under the mistaken impression that the concept of double negation producing a positive was the same in other languages. --JAXHERE | ^Talk 15:37, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Haiku Rules

Why is metaphor/simile not used in haiku? All I find is: "Do not use it", but why not? And also, most haiku is unrhymed. Is this for a specific reason, or is rhyme just unnecessary for three lines? 207.81.203.137 20:18, 9 June 2007 (UTC) Evan

Haiku is a form of traditional Japanese poetry, which employs the mora to produce a distinct rhythm. As in a lot of poetry in many languages, rhyme is not used. This is partly because haiku are so short and their phrases are completed by kireji, pausal words. The lack of metaphor and simile is due to the sparse, descriptive nature of the haiku: the clever leaps of imagination are made by the reader rather than the poet, or, perhaps more positively, the poet prepares the imagery in such a way that the reader completes the description with the unspoken meaning. In some ways, it is more clever to write such sparse poetry, as you have to do all that other poems do but without perceived effort. — Gareth Hughes 20:34, 9 June 2007 (UTC)