Hard News: Compromise
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And to pay the bills, merc... always with the bills..
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Merc wrote:
I do now understand University Presses publication decisions more fondly following this insight into academia's inner grammar machinations...it's a proprietory pride thing.
Dude, I don't know if this is an insight into "academia's inner grammar machinations" at all.
But if you ask an internationally-regarded linguist whether a word is a noun or a verb... Well, it's like asking a professional classical musician if the note you're playing is a 'C'. Either it is, or it isn't. There's no 'machination' about their reply. It's simply a statement of fact.
But if it's any consolation, I can't tell a noun from a verb either. Actually, I think I was away from school that day.
My greatest fear is being on a plane during a hijack by grammar terrorists. They point a gun at my head, and ask me to parse a sentence. I'd be: "Mate, do us both a favour, just pull the trigger."
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merc,
Well I certainly admit to not fully understanding the full nuances of use of 'theatre', but here's my opinion, for what its worth:
I wouldn't have come out of the gate with this one.
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My greatest fear is being on a plane during a hijack by grammar terrorists
David, there is a secret password: "Usage determines propriety"
they will leave you unharmed.Deborah
I was the person who got a chocolate fish for using "theatre" in a staff meeting.
I hope they looked at you funny.
i dreamt of being in a crowded lobby, perhaps it was the Aotea, and hearing a loan "theatre", followed by a disjointed and erratic "chorus" of "theatre"s, with everyone looking at each other funny save for a few who were giggling happily. it was kind of a flash-theatering.Che
i managed to ask if this industrial research grant was in fact "some kind of wishy-washy arts grant".
it drew very strange looks.
but made my day, all the same.
I believe the strange looks and feeling good for it are much in the spirit of the "theatre" Bishop Che. (where have all the Bishops gone already? i don't know, you leave the known world for a couple of days and all the piety evaporates to heathen sin.)merc
I know some hamsters who know some cats
i have searched my soul long and hard while away from the machines and to my shame must agree it was wrong to give Che half of your share. let's keep the palm oil 50/50 and Che can have 5% of my royalties. if you wanted to contribute 5% of yours i'm sure that will help with the HP payments for the Porsche he bought and furnaced perhaps a tad prematurely. just keep the killer-hamsters away from the cats - we don't wants to be going there.Assoc-Prof Jen Hay (Department of Linguistics, University of Canterbury) tells me that "I call theatre on this thread" is to use it as a noun, not a verb
And do you know, I troubled myself with this throughout my retreat. Eventually I theatered myself so I could get some sleep.
I wondered with 3410 at the time of writing the origin amendment to Che’s entry, if a full account of the "unintended corruption of fire in a theatre” during a consideration of the limits of free speech, should be included. Che was right in my opinion to classify it primarily as a verb although the initial usage example ("I call theatre on this thread") is erroneous and does employ it as a noun. It should be "I theatre this thread".
And like Rob Stowell, I also considered describing it as an ejaculation (either declarative or imperative), but then that term has undergone such semantic narrowing that I figured people would just look at it funny, but not in the intended way (unless they happened to know the grammatical sense).AP Jen said when you yell out 'theatre" in a crowded theatre, it still remains a noun you are yelling out, just like if you yelled out "fire" you'd be yelling a noun, and if you yelled out "run!" you'd be yelling a verb. It is true, we would have been once calling out a noun. But in the PA usage, as merc notes, it is more akin to "RUN", "STOP", "SURRENDER [me or you]", or "DESIST"; but also "GET THEE A LIFE", “HUMPF” or “PFNARR”. So here lies some of the complexity because while I would suggest its primary function as a single-form verbal imperative, it can be merely an ejaculation too, expressing exasperation, assent (with a previously drawn absurdity), or joy arising from absurdity.
Emma invoked the gerund and I suspect there is also a gerund form being used here, further adding to the confusion, but derived from the specific verb form referred to herein, as in “I enjoyed the theatering”. (I also spent some of my weekend thinking about the pejoration of the feminine forms of gendered cognates Master/Mistress, King/Queen, dog/bitch, Sir/Madam – none of the masculine forms are used as an insult, but each of the feminine equivalents have come to also be used pejoratively, but that’s another story.)
The absurdism is important because I like to think of The T Word as a single-form koan or for those who feel more comfortable with IT analogies. it is meant to stop the mind long enough for the reader to remember we can be one and we can be happy. So in that sense it is simultaneously an imperative and a declarative, and the distinction between nouns and verbs becomes immaterial. AP Hay observes that this seem quite a strange semantic extension of the word. And I would agree that it is.
Rob S is correct in stating [AP Hay] is right, since even absurdities require semantics to make them absurd (it’s a wonderful truth to me that order is required to define and make disorder). But prettily the original call of "theatre" in a theatre, "theatre" fairly clearly refers to a theatre.... isn’t so. Indeed, the original call of “theatre” in a theatre, actually referred to a “fire”, which of course is far from clear, and hence we come back to the absurdity.
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Well... it's like asking a professional classical musician if the note you're playing is a 'C'. Either it is, or it isn't. There's no 'machination' about their reply. It's simply a statement of fact.
So can everyone now stop receiving "invites"?
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Can I suggest the title "Pious Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics" Walker?
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merc,
And do you know, I troubled myself with this throughout my retreat. Eventually I theatered myself so I could get some sleep.
R. you are now My Master, can I come next time?
The absurdism is important because I like to think of The T Word as a single-form koan
How I tried to say this and failed and you nail it in one word (koan), I lost sleep last night over this...it's a poet versus AP Linguistics thing. If I studied linguistic stuff I would never be able to write one word of poetry, and some say I can't, no I lie, that was self gratuitous, I too perhaps will call THEATRE! on myself, though I have learned much and earned nothing.
Che can have my 5%, it was never about the money in the first place and he did torch the Porsche. -
Sorry to have diverted the thread down an agonizingly boring (to me too!) grammar path. I hereby bow out of the 'theatre' discussion, in proud possession of a slightly more respectable post count (cheers, Che!).
Have fun.
(But be careful what y'all say about my inner machinations - or it looks like my husband might come over and beat you up...) -
merc,
BTW, I can play at least 5 versions of "C" on my bad gat.
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Andrew Llewellyn wrote:
So can everyone now stop receiving "invites"?
I've had long discussions with Assoc-Prof Hay on this sort of thing. As I understand it, she sees linguistics as being descriptive rather than prescriptive.
To use the musician analogy: I think (if asked) she'd inform you that your 'C' was a eighth-tone flat -- but she wouldn't suggest for a moment that you stopped playing it. She'd just try to figure out how your brain worked in making sense of a eighth-tone flat 'C'.
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merc,
Jen, you'll have to give your husband some words to counter the need to resort to the bash. I was never bored, quite the opposite, I didn't sleep!
Sheesh. What DO they teach in schools these days....
This hurt quite a bit I have to confess.
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But if it's any consolation, I can't tell a noun from a verb either. Actually, I think I was away from school that day.
My greatest fear is being on a plane during a hijack by grammar terrorists. They point a gun at my head, and ask me to parse a sentence. I'd be: "Mate, do us both a favour, just pull the trigger."
My 7th form English teacher used to make me parse sentences in the same way you'd display a talking monkey. "Look, look, you have to watch this. Emma?" Fecker.
I was reading down this thinking, oh ffs, just verb the bloody noun already.
Eventually I theatered myself so I could get some sleep.
And lo, it was done. This is how internet pidgins are supposed to work. This thread's been well and truly theatred now. But it's made an entertaining change from teaching people who call themselves writers* where to put the freaking speech marks.
*I never call myself a writer. They don't come when you call them anyway.**
** Except when they do, but that's a whole other story.
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i've added a "discusion of usuage disambiguation" link to the wiki.
if i get to choose, can i have "Bishop Hairless Pink Guinea Pig With the Words and Stuff the Pious"?
of course you can come m. the surf at tawhas was non-existent but it was beautiful nonetheless.
and thank you Jen, like m i found it too interesting, so please don't be a stranger.
and thanks for "leet" Emma
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Ditto thanks Jen. Don't go away! WRT the "inner machinations"- you can all the husband off, he's both machine and poet and he's got a licence to use, abuse and recycle metaphors, metonyms or any other trope he can sling his hat at!
Riddley, yeah, the "pious" was a slip of the fingers. But "guinea-pigs" are useless at grammar and too fidgety to get "koan". We have been trying to educate them here for decades, had more success with sheep! -
Merc wrote:
This hurt quite a bit I have to confess.
This is when misunderstandings could have been so easily avoided by use of Che's excellent RLML (Real Life Markup Language) tags.
<ironic>What DO they teach in schools these days <Desc = "Comment related to the frequent misconception of linguists as grammarians (see Frank Haden, Max Cryer, etc.)"></ironic>
<ironic>it looks like my husband might come over and beat you up <Desc = "Comment related to said husband unnecessarily springing (unasked) to the Assoc-Prof's defence"></ironic>
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Could someone post the wiki link again?
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This is when misunderstandings could have been so easily avoided by use of Che's excellent RLML (Real Life Markup Language) tags.
<ironic>What DO they teach in schools these days <Desc = "Comment related to the frequent misconception of linguists as grammarians (see Frank Haden, Max Cryer, etc.)"></ironic>
See, it works OK online, but I have real trouble portraying the tags in person.
I've resorted to sticking my hands on my hips and saying them out load, but people keep thinking that I'm starting the teapot song. And the closing tags - man that hurts my wrist.
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keep a little hip pouch of pre-written Post-It notes handy;
in ambiguous situations simply stick the Post-It to the appropriate body part to aid context comprehension -
merc,
You Pink Guinea Pigs and your post-its (TM), you're taking over the world.
Frankly if the whole of Creation can be described is a couple of paragrahs using 24 symbols (plus the fullstop, a symbol of Christ BTW) then I'm sure we can make ourselves understood on a blog, no?
Never harm, hinder or harass... -
isn't X also a sign of Christ, as in Xristos, his pre-anglicized name?
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merc,
The Cross is the hook and Christ is the bait (for fishies). I live with symbols, and number plates. The oldest recorded symbol is The Centred Sun Sign, a circle with a dot in the middle, it is also a symbol of The Centred Self. The Christ myth for the Gnostics was as the 4 in One, the Cross is a symbol of the 4, Christ on the Cross is the centred self. Christ achieved totality in his lifetime. However to ascribe to this version is heresy.
The Sun symbol is on cave walls dating from neolithic? times. The Star of Venus symbol has the Sun symbol with, because Venus tracks 8 points round the Sun, many things can be read into this.
8 Fold Way
Sun Cross
However Christ may have been crucified on a Tau cross, which is probably not as bad as St Peter, who was crucified upside down, so his symbol is the inverted cross, or for some, the sublimated cross. -
I've had long discussions with Assoc-Prof Hay on this sort of thing. As I understand it, she sees linguistics as being descriptive rather than prescriptive.
To use the musician analogy: I think (if asked) she'd inform you that your 'C' was a eighth-tone flat -- but she wouldn't suggest for a moment that you stopped playing it. She'd just try to figure out how your brain worked in making sense of a eighth-tone flat 'C'.
That makes sense. I can't parse a sentence, but I feel entirely comfortable writing one, and generally contrive to do so correctly. I feel sufficiently confident in this to, say, tell the Microsoft Word grammar-checker to piss off on occasion.
By contrast, I have no such feel for music, although I enjoy consuming it. And I know people who have a great deal more affinity for books than I do, but cannot write good prose to save themselves.
And seeing as no one asked, yes I am feeling better. Perhaps in a few hours I will eat.
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Way back when I edited Planet, we ran a column by Chris Hegan on the subject of verbing nouns, including the emergence of "trial" as a verb in business-speak.
I headlined it: 'These things are sent to trial us'. Made my day.
Prof Hay may have a view on whether "headlined" is a verbed noun that has attained respectability.
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good links thanks m.
how are you feeling Russell? are you feeling better now? nothing like a stomach upset.
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