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Is there a difference? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.4.236.254 ( talk) 01:08, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
A few years back, I was looking at a phonetics chart designed for young learners of English, and each "English sound" was accompanied by a sample word and a picture illustrating that word.
If I recall correctly, every sample word had the sound in question as its first morpheme, with two exceptions: /ʒ/ (television) and /ð/ (mother). The former does not appear at the start of English words in general (and I couldn't come up with any examples of exceptions that weren't recent loan-words), but the latter appears at the start of function words like "this", "that", "these", "those", "they", "them", "there", "then", "thee", "thou", "though", "than", "the" -- just not at the start of content words. Why is this? None of those function words can be easily represented by an image, which explains why they went with "mother", but it kinda blew my mind when I noticed this.
Our function word article states this as fact (actually it says "few", which is likely inaccurate) without giving any historical information or a reason, but it has been tagged as needing a citation since February 2015. The English phonology article, content word article, and voiced dental fricative article were no help.
Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 02:32, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
a small closed set of "function words"came about.
If you're in Ottawa and speaking specifically of the buildings you can see (so nobody thinks you're referring to some other parliament), but you want to refer specifically to the buildings (and not the hill upon which they sit, the surrounding neighborhood, or Parliament itself), what term do you typically use to refer to the buildings in which the Canadian federal parliament's meetings are held? Something comparable to the Washington, D.C., usage of "The Capitol" rather than "Capitol Hill" or "Congress". 2014 shootings at Parliament Hill, Ottawa says Buildings under lockdown included Canada's parliament, the University of Ottawa and the United States embassy. Aside from the non-necessity of Canada's (there being no other parliament that meets in Ottawa), "parliament" isn't generally used for a building (unless this is a Canadian usage with which I'm not familiar?), so I suppose it ought to be replaced with a specific reference to the building. Nyttend ( talk) 04:12, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
HOTmag ( talk) 09:27, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
Offhand seems to have both negative and positive (or at least non-negative) connotations.
Is my understanding correct? Or is it that one's an adjective and the other's an adverb and shouldn't be compared like that? -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 22:18, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
Language desk | ||
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< May 31 | << May | June | Jul >> | June 2 > |
Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives |
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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. |
Is there a difference? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.4.236.254 ( talk) 01:08, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
A few years back, I was looking at a phonetics chart designed for young learners of English, and each "English sound" was accompanied by a sample word and a picture illustrating that word.
If I recall correctly, every sample word had the sound in question as its first morpheme, with two exceptions: /ʒ/ (television) and /ð/ (mother). The former does not appear at the start of English words in general (and I couldn't come up with any examples of exceptions that weren't recent loan-words), but the latter appears at the start of function words like "this", "that", "these", "those", "they", "them", "there", "then", "thee", "thou", "though", "than", "the" -- just not at the start of content words. Why is this? None of those function words can be easily represented by an image, which explains why they went with "mother", but it kinda blew my mind when I noticed this.
Our function word article states this as fact (actually it says "few", which is likely inaccurate) without giving any historical information or a reason, but it has been tagged as needing a citation since February 2015. The English phonology article, content word article, and voiced dental fricative article were no help.
Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 02:32, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
a small closed set of "function words"came about.
If you're in Ottawa and speaking specifically of the buildings you can see (so nobody thinks you're referring to some other parliament), but you want to refer specifically to the buildings (and not the hill upon which they sit, the surrounding neighborhood, or Parliament itself), what term do you typically use to refer to the buildings in which the Canadian federal parliament's meetings are held? Something comparable to the Washington, D.C., usage of "The Capitol" rather than "Capitol Hill" or "Congress". 2014 shootings at Parliament Hill, Ottawa says Buildings under lockdown included Canada's parliament, the University of Ottawa and the United States embassy. Aside from the non-necessity of Canada's (there being no other parliament that meets in Ottawa), "parliament" isn't generally used for a building (unless this is a Canadian usage with which I'm not familiar?), so I suppose it ought to be replaced with a specific reference to the building. Nyttend ( talk) 04:12, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
HOTmag ( talk) 09:27, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
Offhand seems to have both negative and positive (or at least non-negative) connotations.
Is my understanding correct? Or is it that one's an adjective and the other's an adverb and shouldn't be compared like that? -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 22:18, 1 June 2017 (UTC)