The great shift of English prose • Hacker News Board

Re: The great shift of English prose

#51

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 11:13 PM UTC

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #34

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did your elementary school teacher make it clear whether you should pronounce the middle two t's in gotten as a glottal or a held stop? What do you think of that advice today? How might it vary depending on where in the anglophone world you live, and your age?

> Did your elementary school teacher make it clear whether you should pronounce the middle two t's in gotten as a glottal or a held stop? Yes > What do you think of that advice today? It is a small part of my English enunciation. > How might it vary depending on where in the anglophone world you live, and your age? Significantly. But I did not author a critique regarding English prose and the nature of prevalent sent…

The point is that language, both written and spoken, changes through time and space.

Re: The great shift of English prose

#52

Post by gerdesj » Tue, Jan 06, 2026, 2:30 AM UTC

retrac wrote: post #21

gerdesj wrote: post #8

"Man dog walk. Boy biscuit eat. Girl throw ball." are held up as examples of incorrect english, which is largely fair. However, none of those examples are actually ambiguous. I'm pretty sure that those examples translated word for word into any language would also be understandable.

You're cheating with your world knowledge to guide the parsing. eat man lion. lion man eat. man eat lion. eat lion man. Who is eating who? When formed according to English grammar it doesn't leave any ambiguity even if the phrase is improbable: "The biscuit has eaten the girl." Linguistic topology is the study of patterns in languages according to structure. It's a niche topic which is unfortunate because certain pat…

Language cannot be decoupled from what it is trying to work with. It is a tool! We can manipulate the air in such a way with our mouths that ears can hear.

I don't think there is anything wrong with allowing a small amount of "world knowledge" to guide language parsing - the world caused language to "be" not the other way around.

Anyway whenever, outside of smoking crack, did a girl get eaten by a biscuit? Never, so that phase is unambiguous.

Object before subject: I'll grant you that - its a probable sign of madness or a green puppet.

Me, really? You screamed!

Re: The great shift of English prose

#53

Post by gerdesj » Sun, Jan 11, 2026, 12:08 AM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #40

gerdesj wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we can agree that they are awful examples! The problem is, that when you try to reduce an example of "bad" english to the bare bones (for clarity), you often end up with quite legitimate language. Even in Latin the occasional transgression is sort of allowed: "Alea iacta est" - that is of course "idium". I studied Latin via "Civis Romanus", "mental" and "idiot" (Mentor and Idium). An englander would of course…

what course do the Romans generally run?

One that misses a "u", not that the buggers themselves had one!