Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with syntax

Am I losing it?

anniecat — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:38:41 -0800

I'm suddenly having a problem with writing and speaking, specifically with being articulate. This has happened (temporarily) before as well. What do I do to get over this? I grew up abroad, but my family has always spoken English and another language. In all the schools I attended, we spoke English exclusively. I even consider English as my first language, learned simulataneously with our mother tongue. I have lived in the US for awhile and speak English exclusively.

I feel like I'm becoming less articulate in English. I don't know what's wrong. My writing ability is what's really going downhill and I feel like I haven't been able to fully able to express myself. The writing seems to be affecting my speech (or both the writing and speaking problems are manifesting at the same time) and I find myself trying to come up with all the right words. I think the way I'm ordering my words is coming out wrong, too. This has happened really briefly before (for about three months during an internship in college where I often felt tongue-tied and worried about how I was being perceived -- I don't have that problem now, I don't think, because I've been in my same job for awhile and am fairly comfortable with my colleagues).

I think the way I've written my question here probably serves as evidence that there is some kind of problem in how I've been writing lately. It's this way when I speak, too. I think it's temporary, but I don't understand why this happens or if there is something wrong with me. I feel like I'm losing words. Is there any method for helping myself get over this period quickly?

I'm kicking around a concept for a theoretical piece I hope to work on in the near future, dealing with the way "femininity" and the "female" category are conceived of linguistically. Help me find some empirical data!

parkbench — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:42:00 -0800

I'm kicking around a concept for a theoretical piece I hope to work on in the near future, dealing with the way "femininity" and the "female" category are conceived of linguistically. Help me find some empirical data! Thus, I want to look at everything from--

-1} "benignly" feminine morphemes, like feminine nouns in Spanish or Arabic; to

-2} idiomatic expressions that are ambiguously connotative of "femininity," like the syntactical habit in English (for example) of referring to countries, ships, and organisations with "feminine" syntax (thus "the ship's majesty reflected her righteous purpose," or the "benevolent womb" of "the motherland"--as opposed to the sagacious & stern "protective embrace" of "the fatherland"); to

-3} more directly identifiable conceptual assumptions about "the female essence"--the only case I can think of being the Japanese logograph "姦," meaning "wickedness" or "cunning," which is comprised of the radical signifying "woman" repeated three times, and is commonly known for its presence in the expression, "女三人寄れば姦しい," [おんなさんにんよればかしましい] which roughly means "wherever women gather, it is noisy [literally, "if there are 3 women, it is noisy"].

My purpose in all of this is to take a critical eye to the common-sense argument that such gender constructions in language are purely "neutral"--as they are arbitrary, symbolic constructions--and problematise it by addressing the very real assumptions & power dynamics inherent in any linguistic exchange, which in the face of arbitrary/"relative" symbolism nonetheless manage to actively cathect meaning, perspective, and oppression onto selfsame symbols, and insodoing reinforce (intentionally or unintentionally) broader cultural/ideological conceptions of women and "femininity" (think Althusser, Butler, etc).

As you may have already guessed, then, I want to accomplish this by demonstrating the continuum between the subtle and mostly inconsequential cases (as in case #1) to the more overt and problematic ones (as in case #3) with concrete examples for a robust comparative analysis. And as you can see, I have only a handful at my disposal.

So!

What I'm soliciting the askmefi community for is two things:

-1} compelling examples/cases of different languages which have constructions falling into these categories. Anything goes. Examples of languages that manage to address "femininity" even without strictly "feminine" grammatical structures (like English), or "rare" languages surviving among uncolonised peoples which defy or problematise my thesis with highly unique constructions, are welcome.

My realm of experience is mostly with english, spanish, japanese, arabic, and russian, so any insight into languages other than these will be extremely appreciated--though prominent/interesting/striking examples that I have completely overlooked in said languages are of course still very much welcome.

-2} any existing commentaries, texts, articles, authors who touch on this issue directly or indirectly which I can look into for further research.

Thanks so much for your time & patience. I know that might have been a lot to swallow. For any who are interested, if this ever comes to fruition I'll surely share it with the mefi community.

note: I am not looking for a peer review of my thesis. I'd love to talk about it to anyone who wishes, but if it's not too much to ask, please keep this thread to empirical examples and not a debate as to whether or not women are unfairly treated in society. thank you.

Pretty code

sandking — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 08:37:49 -0800

Most syntax highlighting palettes are created by people with no graphic design/usability sense. What are some great examples of really lovely to look at (for long periods of time) and useful syntax highlighting palettes/schemes?

What's up with the funky syntax used by television reporters?

HotPatatta — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 07:13:23 -0800

Extra! Extra! The verb "to be" missing from TV newscasts! Anchors and TV reporters omitting "to be," often favor using participles instead. Why? I find TV news to be unwatchable for a lot of reasons, one of them being the wacky syntax used by reporters. They often put past events into the present tense:
"A fire ravages an apartment complex in Cleveland, one of the victims just twelve years old."

Then there's the whole participle thing:
"Mayor Bloomberg deciding to run for a third term after hinting he might do so for weeks."

"The stock market plunging 37% this week! Many investors deciding to sell their portfolios."

And sometimes they just drop "to be" and don't use a participle:
"The cause of this fire still under investigation."
"Many Americans unsure of the nation's economic stability."

When did this start? Where did it start? Did one influential newscaster promulgate it? Do they do it to add a sense of urgency to whatever they're reporting? I can understand doing it in a newspaper headline where space is limited, but in TV news that wouldn't be an issue.

[There is rockets.] vs [There are rockets.]

Quarter Pincher — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 20:34:52 -0800

GrammarFilter: True/False -- The following sentence can be grammatically correct. There's rockets. A friendly argument ensued after repeatedly remarking, "There's rockets," whilst playing Halo 3, referring to the rocket launcher containing rockets lying on the ground for someone to retrieve if desired. The context of the statement referred to an implied singular container of multiple rockets, as opposed to multiple bundles or specifically multiple rockets.

I, the English degree holder, am being kindheartedly informed second hand, through a bluff-caller whose father is a former English teacher, that a sentence may not possess verb disagreement for an implied singular object and may agree only with the actual available object by which to modify. It is my assertion that the verb modifies to that which specifically the speaker is referring, not according to which the hearer presumes the verb to modify.

The imperitive statement, "Go to the store," contains an implied, "(You shall) go to the store."

Likewise, "There is rockets," contains an implied, "There is (a rocket launcher containing) rockets."

As a side note, I also suggested that There refers specifically (as I, the speaker, intended it to be) to a singular location containing said rockets. It might be restated to report that, "That location contains rockets," whereas the verb still does not agree with rockets, as rockets is not the intended object.

Whatsit called?

sciapod — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 20:38:43 -0800

What is the term for the sentence construction used in this quotation: "time and her aunt moved slowly"? I seem to remember that there is a name for this type of syntactical construction, in which two vastly different subjects are joined by the same verb. Poor example: "Her porridge and the weather were cold too soon."

Google is a fickle lover and has forsaken me in this case.

RPy problems

Blazecock Pileon — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 21:05:44 -0800

Stumped with RPy, need help badly! I'd like to use RPy to try to manipulate a Python 2.3.4 list within R 2.4.1. My list is made up of five arrays (four of string-type — "utility", "target", "build" and "timeType" — and one float-type — "time").

My problem is that I can't seem to build a data frame in R. I'd like to, for example, group my data analysis by 'utility, 'target' and 'build' from calls made within Python.

When I use r.data_frame() to create a data frame object, the resulting object is not an R data frame. The following prints "False" on the call from r.is_data_frame():

==========

timeDataFrame = { "utility":[],

                  "target":[],

                  "build":[],

                  "timeType":[],

                  "time":[] }



for timeDataListObj in timeDataListArray:

  for timeDataObj in timeDataListObj.timedata:

    for timeDataType in timeDataTypes:

      timeDataFrame["utility"].append(timeDataListObj.utility)

      timeDataFrame["target"].append(timeDataListObj.target)

      timeDataFrame["build"].append(timeDataListObj.build)

      timeDataFrame["timeType"].append(timeDataType)

      timeDataFrame["time"].append(float(timeValue))



df = r.data_frame(timeDataFrame["utility"], \

             timeDataFrame["target"], \

             timeDataFrame["build"], \

             timeDataFrame["timeType"], \

             timeDataFrame["time"])

r.print_(r.is_data_frame(df))

==========

Another problem I have is with syntax. For example, how can I perform a column reference like df$target or df$timeType?

When I tried to do either:

r.print_(df$target)

or

r.print_(df+r['$']+target)

or

r['print(df$target)']

I get syntax errors. Same with r.split(df$target, df$build) and similar.

The problem seems to come down to how these are interpreted. Either Python misinterprets the r.print_() calls and complains about the $ reference, or when I use r['print(df$target)'], the R interpreter doesn't have any knowledge of the variable df and complains about non-existent variables.

Any advice from seasoned Python/R/RPy users would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Looking for an Eclipse theme for GeSHI (syntax highlighting)

andytmp — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 07:49:41 -0800

I'm using GeSHi for syntax highlighting but I am looking for a GeSHi theme that does Eclipse syntax highlighting. With Eclipse being such a popular IDE I'm sure someone has created such a theme for GeSHi, but alas my attempts to find one have failed. Anyone have any tips/direction for me? Thanks!

Should I get this TV?

zackdog — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 21:09:37 -0800

I am planning on buying a Syntax 37" LVD TV. Any pros or cons you know about?

Need to colorize my code!

blahtsk — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 09:46:29 -0800

Looking for a decent (free) C# + JavaScript source code colorizer. I wouldn't think it would be hard to find, but I'm having trouble. I need something easy and quick that generates fairly clean, colorized HTML from C# and JavaScript code snippets. Oh, and it has to run on XP. And preferrably be a little configurable?

I found one that was pretty good but it always generated a grey background and a little "generated by" message at the bottom.

Thanks in advance!

What is the History of English Capitalization?

freebird — Tue, 27 Dec 2005 09:41:00 -0800

What is the History of English Language Capitalization? I have been Interested for some time in the Capitalization used in Older English Texts - I think of the style as fading into the "Modern" System sometime in the 1800s, but have No Idea if that is Accurate. Many "Improper" Nouns and even some Verbs are Capitalized, but it often Appears as though there is little System to it all but Individual Aesthetic. Is that the case? If not, what is the Underlying Method? When and Why did it change?

As a fairly representative Example, this Text (via Mefi).

Google query syntax query

carter — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 11:28:34 -0800

Google syntax query. So: I want to be able to find all the links to Site X, while filtering out all internal links from within Site X. I'm using [link:sitex.org -site:sitex.org] as my query and get about 3 results. However I know there are thousands of links out there. Others seem to have had the same problem. Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

(How|Where) does one find Google's (guide|help) on (searching|querying) using regular expressions?

Gyan — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 04:34:41 -0800

Well, what do you know, err.. what do I know, Google does support some sort of regular expressions. However, I can't find the usage guide. Anyone?

Are there any grammatical rules for linktext?

revgeorge — Wed, 09 Feb 2005 08:33:03 -0800

I know I'm being a bit of a hypertext pedant, but are there any grammatical rules for linktext? Any stylistic rules for linktext? Linktext is the stuff that goes in between <a> and </a>. I know to never use "click here" as linktext but I'm interested in other rules about syntax and style. (more inside) I should point out that I'm barely literate (mostly due to reading MetaFilter) and have the only the loosest grasp on the parts of speech, i.e. I thought "the" was a preposition.

Should I include articles in linktext? "The Star-Belly Sneetches" or "The Star-Belly Sneetches"? Are there differences in linking to nouns and verbs? Do I need to think about how the document would read without the hypertext when writing my linktext?

In the question I wrote the linktext so that if you saw the link 'never use "click here" as linktext' on its own you would know where it goes.

Do I need to think about how the hypertext would read without the surrounding document when choosing what to link? Using my question as an example again, I think that it would read correctly

I've developed a feel for where links should go but the web has been around for over a decade, there have got to be some rules somewhere. I couldn't find anything from MLA or AskOxford.

What is the plural of "presence"?

werty — Wed, 08 Dec 2004 22:55:52 -0800

What is the plural of "presence?" Context:

The Internet has allowed traditional print information providers to improve their businesses by licensing content to websites and developing their own online presence.

Grammatically, presence is plural in this context, following businesses and websites. Is there a word derivation of presence that applies? Is it even appropriate to use in this way?