Overuse of the word “the” in “Macbeth” • Hacker News Board

Re: Overuse of the word “the” in “Macbeth”

#61

Post by retrac » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 10:05 AM UTC

2bitencryption wrote: post #42

retrac wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stressed "the" and unstressed "the" have different implications for meter. (And meaning.) "The" has two pronunciations in English. "Thee" and "thuh". The former is stressed, the latter not. While part of it follows the same pattern as a/an governed by by the initial sound, some of the rules are complicated. "Thee" is also used for emphasis as a demonstrative. "Give me thuh cat toy." (Some ordinary toy.) "Give me thee…

But how was it pronounced at the time Shakespeare actually wrote Macbeth? If you listen to a performance of Shakespeare that replicates the original pronunciation, it's wildly different. I'd wager the "thuh" pronunciation is a modern simplification and not something Shakespeare accounted for. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiblRSqhL04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYiYd9RcK5M (though, having watched the second vid…

The pattern of the articles the and a/an being affected by the sound of the following word dates to Old English. The use of the stressed form as an emphatic does as well. It probably goes back further. There are similar traits in the other Germanic languages. German routinely reduces its definite article die ("dee"), to approximately "duh", and its indefinite article ein ("ayn") to approximately "uhn", as well. Except when emphasized. We even have traces of emphatic "a" in English which is now completely archaic -- except still irresistible in "an historic moment". That probably counts as a fixed expression now. But etymologically speaking, when someone says that they're saying "one historic moment" and emphasizing its distinctiveness. Germans would say "ein historischer Moment" and it's a safe bet they'd say ein (one) and not the usual "uhn" (a).

Re: Overuse of the word “the” in “Macbeth”

#62

Post by ncmncm » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 10:11 AM UTC

abathur wrote: post #10

Use of "the" considered harmful. :)

Overuse of "the" considered creepy.

Re: Overuse of the word “the” in “Macbeth”

#63

Post by ncmncm » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 10:19 AM UTC

yesenadam wrote: post #12

I read this a few times, looking for evidence I missed that it's a joke. Apparently not, but I can't be sure. If it's serious, it's possibly the worst article I've ever read. > But fans of Macbeth often say its freaky qualities are deeper than just the plot devices and characters. For centuries, people been unsettled by the very language of the play. > Actors and critics have long remarked that when you read Macbeth…

You read the article several times, yet didn't understand it.

As noted in the article, the Scottish play displays other oddities. But this one had not been commented upon before. To demonstrate vacuity, you would need to identify other plays that do not come off as creepy, but use "the" in the way noted. For an academic presentation, we might expect the authors to have checked for it in other plays, but this article was not.

Re: Overuse of the word “the” in “Macbeth”

#64

Post by wodenokoto » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 12:00 PM UTC

a_e_k wrote: post #50

I got curious about how all the other plays ranked. For example, which plays used those words the least? So I downloaded the text files from the Folger Shakespeare Library ( https://shakespeare.folger.edu/downloads/txt/shakespeares-wo... ) and ran this command to get a rough count of "the" and "th'" vs. the total words: for f (*.txt); do echo $f; tr " \r" "\n\n" Here were the results that gave me, formatted into a ta…

What would be the correct way of going about assessing statistical significance of these frequencies?

Like if we assumed that all English language is generated from a weighted distribution of all words and “the” is 3.5%, is a 4.3% occurrence rate even significant? (And what even would be the base occurrence rate?)

Re: Overuse of the word “the” in “Macbeth”

#65

Post by wodenokoto » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 12:03 PM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #59

a_e_k wrote: post #50

I got curious about how all the other plays ranked. For example, which plays used those words the least? So I downloaded the text files from the Folger Shakespeare Library ( https://shakespeare.folger.edu/downloads/txt/shakespeares-wo... ) and ran this command to get a rough count of "the" and "th'" vs. the total words: for f (*.txt); do echo $f; tr " \r" "\n\n" Here were the results that gave me, formatted into a ta…

It might be worth noting that all the other plays that scored anywhere close to the Scottish play (427) are much longer. You have to go down to 17 (344) to get to a shorter play; only 6 (397) and 15 (345) approach it. If we scale by length twice (count/length^2), the contrast becomes more stark (retaining original order): | 1 | macbeth | 724 | 16929 | 252 | | 2 | henry-v | 1065 | 25577 | 162 | | 3 | coriolanus | 1126…

I’m not sure I understand why it’s not only valid but more precise to square the length of the play.

If we assume that length of a play has an influence on the frequency of stop words, shouldn’t we compare samples of each play? (First x pages or y randomly sampled words)

Re: Overuse of the word “the” in “Macbeth”

#66

Post by dunefox » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 1:00 PM UTC

To me, this is a very pretentious take. Nothing about the usage of "the" in the examples is unusual or creepy. Saying "an eye" or "my eye" that winks at "an" or "my" hand results in a different meaning. "The" here means a general expression.

Re: Overuse of the word “the” in “Macbeth”

#67

Post by rob_c » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 1:01 PM UTC

Cute. I did something similar at a-level with another book for a stats course Mining data can be surprisingly satisfying way of going back to look at something you liked.

Re: Overuse of the word “the” in “Macbeth”

#68

Post by Grakel » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 1:16 PM UTC

Not only is this riddled with spelling and grammar errors, but it's absurd.

Shakespeare's famous romantic scene does exactly the same thing: "it is the east, and Juliet is the sun." That's how he wrote.

Re: Overuse of the word “the” in “Macbeth”

#69

Post by allturtles » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

galaxyLogic wrote: post #36

allturtles wrote: post #4

I think this is just the way Shakespeare wrote, not anything specific to Macbeth's 'creepiness.' I was able to quickly find a similar example in Julius Caesar: "Then he offered it to him again; then he put it by again; but, to my thinking, he was very loath to lay his fingers off it. And then he offered it the third time; he put it the third time by;" Or Much Ado About Nothing: "I have the toothache." It is not surpr…

But isn't the article saying that Macbeth uses the word "the" more frequently than other plays by Shakespeare? In other words it is not the way Shakespeare typically wrote, and that difference gives the play a peculiar flavor

The statistical evidence shows that "the" is used more frequently in Macbeth, but the anecdotal evidence used to connect that fact to the play's spookiness relies on the idea that there are differences in the grammatical use of "the" that are specific to Macbeth.

The fact that "the" happens to be used more often in Macbeth than in other Shakespeare plays seems to me more likely to be noise with no deeper meaning.

Re: Overuse of the word “the” in “Macbeth”

#70

Post by ncmncm » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 8:34 PM UTC

wodenokoto wrote: post #65

ncmncm wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be worth noting that all the other plays that scored anywhere close to the Scottish play (427) are much longer. You have to go down to 17 (344) to get to a shorter play; only 6 (397) and 15 (345) approach it. If we scale by length twice (count/length^2), the contrast becomes more stark (retaining original order): | 1 | macbeth | 724 | 16929 | 252 | | 2 | henry-v | 1065 | 25577 | 162 | | 3 | coriolanus | 1126…

I’m not sure I understand why it’s not only valid but more precise to square the length of the play. If we assume that length of a play has an influence on the frequency of stop words, shouldn’t we compare samples of each play? (First x pages or y randomly sampled words)

It is an observed phenomenon. That doesn't make it a theory, it makes it a generator of hypotheses. It is another chore to figure out ways to test the hypotheses, and more chores testing them.

After one passes several different tests, it might be worth publishing, along with the list of rejected hypotheses. Then somebody else might identify a test that it fails, and another that could be tested, and might publish that.

Or, more likely, nothing comes of it, and you move on to other phenomena and other hypotheses for them. That's science. It always starts with, "that's odd, I wonder what it means." And, most usually, it seems to just mean "huh."