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Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

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Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#721

Post by cryptonector »

Aerbil313 wrote: post #686
bsaul wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

langage is taught in schools and by parents. It is 100% controlled by humans. you can't learn it by yourself as a baby.

I didn’t mean that. I meant evolution of language is not subject to any person’s desires or will.

But you and I can -by our own choices- resist some evolutions of the language and foster others. We can be anywhere from pedantic prescriptivists to outrageously innovative and everything in between. Our children, relatives, friends, and colleagues can all take cues from our stewardship of the language -- and vice versa.

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#722

Post by sunir »

lolinder wrote: post #395
sunir wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that's not much of a value argument, just a statement of reality that entropy exists and everything becomes crap over time without maintenance. Gardens also grow. But if you don't maintain your garden, they ahem literally become weeded, cough figuratively speaking.

You're welcome to tend your own garden, but until we figure out how to have fair elections I would invite all self-appointed language stewards to leave other people's plots alone. Languages belong to their speakers, and the only way we have to vote at the moment is with our idiolect.

Languages are social. Other people can push back. You’re an adult. You can take it.

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#723

Post by lamontcg »

maperz wrote: post #507

„Many writers use this phrase to aggrandize a sentence -- to intentionally make it longer and more sophisticated“ This has to be the perfect example for the usage of the word aggrandize itself.

And perfectly describes a problem that I see all too often with language and people trying desperately to sound smart/clever.

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#724

Post by bdg »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #657
logicchains wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I wonder if the editor read "1984" and straight up copied its ideas Maybe George Orwell copied the idea from Esperanto. For instance, "dark" in Esperanto is "notlight", and left is "notright".

The word "notright" is as clear of an example as you can get: does it mean straight or left? Up? The most confoundingly powerful feature of language is ambiguity: on one hand, you can't take it literally; on the other hand, you don't have to.

If you like that you're gonna love TokiPona. So few words that even basic objects might take a paragraph to explain.

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#725

Post by crote »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #189
crote wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't, Wikipedia is pretty much entirely pedantry at this point. To give an example: a while back a semi-notable object in my local area burned down. It has a short Wikipedia page of a few hundred words, but it is not something anyone would actually care about. At 02:00AM (in the middle of the night) I added this to its Wikipedia page, citing a Tweet from the official fire department. Five minutes later the entir…

If the Tweet that you cited was indeed from the official account of the local fire department, then the editor who reverted you was wrong. Twitter accounts are mostly unreliable sources, except when they are reliable: that is, when an official or verified account gives information about themselves. See WP:ABOUTSELF and WP:SPS. The same goes for any such social media platform: YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, whatever. I…

Yeah, but are you willing to fight a "power user" over some trivial edit like this? I, for one, have better things to do with my time.

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#726

Post by taejo »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #657
logicchains wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I wonder if the editor read "1984" and straight up copied its ideas Maybe George Orwell copied the idea from Esperanto. For instance, "dark" in Esperanto is "notlight", and left is "notright".

The word "notright" is as clear of an example as you can get: does it mean straight or left? Up? The most confoundingly powerful feature of language is ambiguity: on one hand, you can't take it literally; on the other hand, you don't have to.

Esperanto dekstra only means right, the direction/side, though, and so maldekstra only means left, the direction/side.

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#727

Post by taejo »

robocat wrote: post #547
Izkata wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because based on the words it's composed of, it's different from "left" - it would include "forward" and "backward". Similarly for "notlight" implying including twilight, which "dark" does not.

> twilight Perhaps that is lightandnotlight. We almost have notlight in English: unlit. An unlit room feels twilighty to me. > notright Left in Esperanto: maldekstra I can’t imagine why a language designer would choose “mal” as the prefix for “not”. In English and Spanish (two common languages), mal has some bad connotations (malodour, malady, malfeasance, malo, malformed). Let’s try the opposite: “not left” is defin…

> However it looks like Esperanto also has “liva”. Turnu liven tuj post la angulo ~= Turn left immediately after the corner.

If you wanted to be understood, it'd be better to say maldekstren though. I'd never heard of liv-, English Wiktionary lists it as "neologism, nonstandard" and Reta Vortaro as "malofte" (infrequent).

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#728

Post by samirillian »

msla wrote: post #710
samirillian wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, I have read 1984, and I wouldn't take issue with the analogy if I hadn't. Whether you have read any other books, I cannot say. Second, you say Orwell isn't a linguist, and language just happens, but then you explicitly reference his fictional account of a prescribed language. Clearly, Esperanto is a prescribed language. So prescribed languages do exist, and political forces can shape languages, you just…

> Clearly, Esperanto is a prescribed language. So prescribed languages do exist and political forces can shape languages, you just don't think that happens with English. You're misreading me: I'm saying that English didn't come into existence by fiat, and that it doesn't evolve through fiat most of the time. English, being a natural language as opposed to a constructed one, evolves naturally. > Well I do. People refe…

Okay, originally I just had to read 1984, to comment on an hn thread, now I need a 4 year linguistics degree. Increasing appeals to authority, when the previous one fails you.

You seem to be arguing that descriptivism is just what linguistics "does", therefore it does not inherently contradict prescriptivism? Because they have two separate roles. And if descriptivists stayed in their lane, and allowed prescription where obviously necessary (like when teaching a language) then we wouldn't be having this argument in the first place.

But if descriptivists turn around and say "therefore thou shalt not prescribe"، then we do have a problem, and descriptivists are indeed naive, they are the real prescribers of an ill-conceived political program.

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#730

Post by canjobear »

cryptonector wrote: post #719
canjobear wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In principle prescriptivism is about slowing language evolution, but in practice almost all of the prescriptive rules that people talk about (including opposing “comprised of”) are not based in any historical usage pattern. The prohibitions on ending a sentence with a preposition, “less” before a count noun, etc. are all made up out of thin air.

> The prohibitions on ending a sentence with a preposition, “less” before a count noun, etc. are all made up out of thin air. Yes, as is not splitting infinitives. All nonsense. But "comprised of" is not nonsense. "Irregardless" is wrong". Etc. Not all prescriptions are nonsense.

The usage dates to 1704.
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