Random Thread ~Usagi-Chan ☮ Tūsurī~

[rikkikow]

Speaking of technical and very technical:


Cute and awesome Anna Deguzman was on Penn and Teller this week.
Did she fool Penn and Teller?

Spoiler: show

[erilaz]

I remember my usual afternoon cartoons and sitcom reruns being preempted by the Watergate hearings. I was seven at the time.

[TotallyUncool]

I had a lousy time in the 20th century, and I'd demand my money back and a recount, except that I know that it wouldn't do any good.

Spoiler: show

Well, OK, I had a few good times, but I wouldn't go back and do it again for anything. Sufficient unto the day is the suckage thereof.

[rikkikow]

Especially for Celedam
Enjoy


how to do it for real

Spoiler: show

[Zunu]

Lol, if it wasn’t obvious from the word “parody,” that spoiler is not at all how you do it for real.

Anyway, have a question for you grammarheads*. I’m wondering, is there a term for a grammar feature which is more hard-wired into a language as opposed to one which is more flexible.

Here’s an example of what I mean by flexible. In English, you can say big, bigger and biggest. But if you want to say “biggerer” to refer to something larger than a previously named bigger item, that’s ungrammatical in English, but it still works. You won’t really confuse people by what you mean.

Here’s what I mean by hard-wired. You can say that both “big” and “bigger” are English words. You can’t say both “big,” “bigger,” and “biggest” are English words, because “both” only works for two items. And you can’t just make up a word the same way you did with “biggerer.” If you try to say bothoth or threeboth to add emphasis to a list with three items, you’ll just baffle people. “Both” can’t be intuitively modified or powered up in any way.

*basically laz or esm.

[erilaz]

I can't think of any linguistic term that would really fit the bill. Productivity may be relevant here, but it doesn't address everything that you're talking about.

As I see it, your two examples involve very different operations. In the case of -er, you're talking about the application (or misapplication) of a rule. Even a small child would understand that -er is added to the end of a word — I don't think anyone would say "er big" instead of "bigger" — but the child may not yet have mastered the finer points of the rule's application and may therefore produce forms with a duplicated comparative, such as the aforementioned "biggerer" or something like "more taller," which is how I described a Big Mac when I was three years old. Non-standard forms of this sort can also be used deliberately with humorous intent, as in the case of Little Caesar's Extra Most Bestest Pizza.

The "twoness" of the word both, on the other hand, is not a matter of a grammatical rule being applied but rather part of its core meaning. In other words, your example of "both big, bigger, and biggest" is incorrect in the same way that "all three Beatles: John, Paul, George, and Ringo" would be.

[Zunu]

Thanks. That distinction makes perfect sense!!

Spoiler: show

Although it continues to bug me that "both" is nonextensible, at least in the context I was using it.

"All three" and "all four" etc. work in some usages, like "both surviving Beatles visited Dollywood the same week but never coincided" vs "all three vocally talented Beatles also played guitar" vs "all four Beatles were mercilessly rooked by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in 1968."

But they don't work as when saying "The surviving Beatles, both John and George, visited Dollywood the same week" vs "The vocally talented Beatles, all three John, George and Ringo, also played guitar" vs "The Beatles, all four John, Paul, George and Pete, were mercilessly rooked by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in 1968."

[erilaz]

Spoiler: show

You'd just have to stick with having "all three" etc. in the initial phrases, not the appositives: "All four Beatles, Dirk, Nasty, Stig, and Barry, were idolized by Naoko Yamano."

[TotallyUncool]

Speaking of Dirk, Nasty, Stig, and Barry, the singer in my brother's old band noticed at one point that Sky Saxon of the Seeds had a tendency to use "all the time" and "both day and night" as stock phrases, so he combined them to produce what he considered to be the ultimate Sky Saxon phrase: "both all the time," as in "Girl, I need you both all the time!"
After all these years, I still think of it as the best (and perhaps the ultimate) violation of the standard rules for using "both".

[erilaz]

It would make perfect sense if he were singing to a girl with a split personality!