4 ms·

> Here are two English sentences in which a word appears solely to satisfy English syntactic requirements Not sure how that relates to what I'm saying about "t

by vorg 11y ago

> Here are two English sentences in which a word appears solely to satisfy English syntactic requirements Not sure how that relates to what I'm saying about "the". A minor note: the "is" in "Your house is big" is non-contractable, whereas in "It's raining outside" the "is" contracts, so they're really 2 different words.

thaumasiotes 11y ago
The "is" in "your house is big" is not non-contractable, as can be seen here: It's big. What are you saying about "the"? There are lots of words with essentially no (in the case of "it's raining", literally no) semantic content; they belong to various parts of speech just the same. EDIT: I want to also bring two more examples of "the" in English to your attention. The first was recently produced by me: > It's a famous result that the people who believe premarital sex is wrong account for fairly little of the premarital sex. "The premarital sex" has basically the same semantics as "all premarital sex", and the use of "the" is required for that effect. Here's the second: > In considering India it must always be borne in mind that here was the original seat of the Aryan civilization and that, though the Hindoo is as dark as many of the American negroes, he is of Aryan stock like ourselves. ( http://www.gutenberg.org/files/27233/27233-h/27233-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/27233/27233-h/27233-h.htm ) Again, "the Hindoo" uses a "the" that cannot be interpreted anaphorically, and the noun phrase is in fact not linked to anything prior. It appears in the context already marked for definiteness.
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  To pre-empt a potential reply: you can make the fact that the "is" of "your house is big" contracts freely even more stupid-obvious like so: Your dog's big. If it did contract in "your house is big", it would have exactly the same pronunciation, so there's not really much grounds to say it isn't contracted even in that specific sentence.
  - vorg 11y ago
    Looks like "your house is big" doesn't contract because the voiced "is" becomes unvoiced "-s" when contracting, and two unvoiced "s" sounds don't join together.
- vorg 11y ago
  > There are lots of words with essentially no semantic content; they belong to various parts of speech just the same I said "the" is solely a cohesive device, independent of the semantics and in the domain of thematics, so "a" and "the" are used orthogonally. I also said if "part of speech" is defined as being in the grammatical structure of languages, then "the" doesn't have a part of speech -- I was reinforcing the first point I made. All your arguments have only made some point which is tangential to what you've replied to. Linguists don't use the term "part of speech" anymore anyway, they instead define "word class". As for "the premarital sex" and "the Hindoo", you're creating an implied prior context when you use "the" instead of a regular form such as "all premarital sex" and "Hindoos". The "the" overlays onto the "all", "-s", or "a" to change the grammatical structure.
  - thaumasiotes 11y ago
    But "a" and "the" aren't used orthogonally -- they interfere with each other. They participate in the grammatical structure of English in exactly the same way. If you want a more focused reply, I need you to explain what you're talking about at greater length. As to "your house is big": you said > Looks like "your house is big" doesn't contract because the voiced "is" becomes unvoiced "-s" when contracting This isn't true. Just look at the followup I gave, "your dog's big". By analogy to the verb suffixes -s and -ed (and the clitic genitive particle 's), we can see that voiced "is" /ɪz/ would contract to [əz] (still a full syllable), not [s], when following "house". As it's pronounced that way anyway, investigation is pretty futile.
    - vorg 11y ago
      > But "a" and "the" aren't used orthogonally -- they interfere with each other. The semantic "a" and thematic "the" don't interfere with each other, and can be taught separately. Perhaps you're thinking of their influence on the end grammar of the sentence. > They participate in the grammatical structure of English in exactly the same way. Not exactly the same. As I said above, the "the" overlays onto the grammatical structure after the "a" does. > If you want a more focused reply, I need you to explain what you're talking about at greater length. What makes you think I want your replies? I never replied to you initially.

by vorg 11y ago

thaumasiotes 11y ago

The "is" in "your house is big" is not non-contractable, as can be seen here: It's big. What are you saying about "the"? There are lots of words with essentially no (in the case of "it's raining", literally no) semantic content; they belong to various parts of speech just the same. EDIT: I want to also bring two more examples of "the" in English to your attention. The first was recently produced by me: > It's a famous result that the people who believe premarital sex is wrong account for fairly little of the premarital sex. "The premarital sex" has basically the same semantics as "all premarital sex", and the use of "the" is required for that effect. Here's the second: > In considering India it must always be borne in mind that here was the original seat of the Aryan civilization and that, though the Hindoo is as dark as many of the American negroes, he is of Aryan stock like ourselves. ( http://www.gutenberg.org/files/27233/27233-h/27233-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/27233/27233-h/27233-h.htm ) Again, "the Hindoo" uses a "the" that cannot be interpreted anaphorically, and the noun phrase is in fact not linked to anything prior. It appears in the context already marked for definiteness.

thaumasiotes 11y ago
To pre-empt a potential reply: you can make the fact that the "is" of "your house is big" contracts freely even more stupid-obvious like so: Your dog's big. If it did contract in "your house is big", it would have exactly the same pronunciation, so there's not really much grounds to say it isn't contracted even in that specific sentence.
- vorg 11y ago
  Looks like "your house is big" doesn't contract because the voiced "is" becomes unvoiced "-s" when contracting, and two unvoiced "s" sounds don't join together.
vorg 11y ago
> There are lots of words with essentially no semantic content; they belong to various parts of speech just the same I said "the" is solely a cohesive device, independent of the semantics and in the domain of thematics, so "a" and "the" are used orthogonally. I also said if "part of speech" is defined as being in the grammatical structure of languages, then "the" doesn't have a part of speech -- I was reinforcing the first point I made. All your arguments have only made some point which is tangential to what you've replied to. Linguists don't use the term "part of speech" anymore anyway, they instead define "word class". As for "the premarital sex" and "the Hindoo", you're creating an implied prior context when you use "the" instead of a regular form such as "all premarital sex" and "Hindoos". The "the" overlays onto the "all", "-s", or "a" to change the grammatical structure.
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  But "a" and "the" aren't used orthogonally -- they interfere with each other. They participate in the grammatical structure of English in exactly the same way. If you want a more focused reply, I need you to explain what you're talking about at greater length. As to "your house is big": you said > Looks like "your house is big" doesn't contract because the voiced "is" becomes unvoiced "-s" when contracting This isn't true. Just look at the followup I gave, "your dog's big". By analogy to the verb suffixes -s and -ed (and the clitic genitive particle 's), we can see that voiced "is" /ɪz/ would contract to [əz] (still a full syllable), not [s], when following "house". As it's pronounced that way anyway, investigation is pretty futile.
  - vorg 11y ago
    > But "a" and "the" aren't used orthogonally -- they interfere with each other. The semantic "a" and thematic "the" don't interfere with each other, and can be taught separately. Perhaps you're thinking of their influence on the end grammar of the sentence. > They participate in the grammatical structure of English in exactly the same way. Not exactly the same. As I said above, the "the" overlays onto the grammatical structure after the "a" does. > If you want a more focused reply, I need you to explain what you're talking about at greater length. What makes you think I want your replies? I never replied to you initially.