But not all languages use the same parts of speech and constituents as given here. In the Sa language from Vanuatu you would say:
Lo-k be New York
Desire-1sg COPula NY
Desire-my is New York āI like New Yorkā
Yes. That is one of the problems of basic order typology. Afaik the Welsh version is also over-simplified.
Unfortunately, loving is a concept that is not optimal for comparing transitive sentences because in many languages the most common, idiomatic expression would involve experiencer constructions, indirect objects, etc.Ā Hence all the hitting and kicking in linguistic sample sentences.
Another problematic point is, of course, mixing lexical (āverbā) and syntactic (āsubjectā,Ā āobjectā) categories.
Thereās some explanation on whatās wrong with the Welsh example in the comments here, so it might work better to just use a different Celtic language? Irish and Scottish Gaelic are both VSO, for example, although they might also have additional complications I donāt know about.Ā
JESSE: EVERYTHING THAT WE KNOW AND LOVE IS REDUCIBLE TO THE ABSURD ACTS OF CHEMICALS, AND THERE IS THEREFORE NO INTRINSIC VALUE IN THIS MATERIAL UNIVERSE.
JAMES: HYPOCRITE THAT YOU ARE, FOR YOU TRUST THE CHEMICALS IN YOUR BRAIN TO TELL YOU THEY ARE CHEMICALS. ALL KNOWLEDGE IS ULTIMATELY BASED ON THAT WHICH WE CANNOT PROVE. WILL YOU FIGHT? OR WILL YOU PERISH LIKE A HERDIER?
First we LOLed. Now weāre changing the way a sentence works
I talked to Clive Thompson for The Message about (nominalized) subordinate clauses and the rise of internet syntax. It was hard to pick just one part to excerpt though ā you should probably just go read the whole thing here, which has lots more examples and also features commentary from Ben Zimmer.Ā
Grammatically speaking, whatās going on here is the rise of the āsubordinate clause.ā A subordinate clause isnāt a sentence on its own. As the name implies, it requires another sentence fragment to complete it, as with this example that McCulloch and I looked at on Yik Yak:
Usually you can quickly deduce what the missing part would be. Maybe itās something like You, sadly, always know what to do when sheās holding a dog on her Tinder and youāre like, ācute dog.ā Or maybe the full sentence that emerges in your head is more convoluted, like Nothing is more bittersweet than reflecting on the challenges of dating someone who is superficially attractive but owns a pomeranian and thus, you worry, has all sorts of dog/partner priority issues, which you can instantly intuit when youāre using a dating app and see someone when sheās holding a dog on her Tinder and youāre like, ācute dog.ā
The point is, itās up to you imagine the rest of the utterance. Itās like the author is handing you a little puzzle. Subordinate-clause tweets and Yik-Yak postings seduce us into filling out that missing info, McCulloch says. āOur brain has to work a little bit harder to figure out what itās referring to, and so making that connection is very satisfying. Itās like getting a joke. You have to draw that connection for yourself a little bitāāābut because you can do it, it works really well.ā
A historic parallel? The crazy, long chapter headings in 19th-century novels, which often were also dependent clauses, inviting the reader to imagine the rest of the baroque narrative. āIn Which Our Protagonist Meets A Dashing Stranger,ā McCulloch jokes. āThe āin whichā is doing a very similar thing.ā
(Read the rest.)
Something thatās also occurred to me since the interview is the relationship between (nominalized) subordinate clauses and the gif-captioning tumblrs that were popular around 2012, like whatshouldwecallme and its themed variations. A classic early post, for example, has the subordinate clause caption āWhen my best friend and I decide weāre not going outā and the reaction gif of a really pleased-looking kid saying āIāve got on my eating pantsā. But at some point between then and now, the subordinate-clause-style caption and the reaction gif or image split ways.Ā
For reference, hereās a list of some older nominalizations: āthat feel whenā¦ā, āmy face whenā¦ā; and more current ones: āthat feeling whenā¦ā, āthat thing whereā¦ā, āthat time whenā¦ā; and of course the non-nominalized form, which is just āwhenā¦ā. Anyone else want to comment on historical and/or current internet syntax-y uses of subordinate clauses, nominalized or not, with or without reaction gifs?Ā
Because itās not true that Tumblr never uses punctuation. But it is true that lack of punctuation has become, itself, a form of punctuation. On Tumblr the lack of punctuation in multisentence-long posts creates the function of rhetorical speech, or speech that is not intended to have an answer, usually in the form of a question. Consider the following two potential posts. Each individual line should be taken as a post:
ugh is there any particular reason people at work have to take these massive handfuls of sauce packets they know theyāre not going to use like god put that back we have to pay for that stuff
Ugh. Is there any particular reason people at work have to take these massive handfuls of sauce packets they know theyāre not going to use? Like god, put that back. We have to pay for that stuff.
In your head, those two potential posts sound totally different. In the first one Iām ranting about work, and this requires no answer. The second may actually engage you to give an answer about hoarding sauce packets. And if you answer the first post, you will likely do so in the same style.Ā
Hereās what makes this exciting: the English language has no actual punctuation for rhetorical speechāthat is, there are no special marks that specifically indicate āthis speech is in the abstract, and requires no answer.ā Not only that, it never has. The first written record of English (actually proto-English, predating even Old English) dates to the 400s CE, so weāre talking about 1600 years of having absolutely no marker whatsoever for rhetorical speech.
A group of teens and young adults on a blogging website literally reshaped a deficit a millennium and a half old in our language to fit their language needs. More! This group has agreed on a more or less universal standard for these new rules, which fits the definition of ālanguage.ā Which is to say Tumblr English is its own actual, real, separate dialect of the English language, and because it is spoken by people worldwide who have introduced concepts from their own languages into it, it may qualify as a written form of pidgin.Ā
Tumblr English should literally be treated as its own language, because it does not follow the rules of any form of formal written English, and yet it does have its own consistent internal rules. If you donāt think thatās cool as fuck then I donāt even know what to tell you.
This is super cool!
Also idk if this has any relevance whatsoever but if you wanna have an argument inside one tag you cannot have commas in it so thatās a real existing constraint that has forced tumblrites to construct commaless sentences and perhaps this has helped in adopting the custom into posts as well ok I have no idea if this is whatās happened just I think itās a reasonable assumption there might be a connection
The tags are absolutely a factor. You want someone to take a breath in the middle of a sentence, you start a new tag. You want to have, as seen here, this removable piece between commas (does it have a name?) - you have 5 tags in this sentence alone. And sometimes you just
look at all you precious brilliant nerds nerding about language you make me so fucking happy omg
language is this constantly evolving thing tbh, it doesnāt remain the same unless itās dead and the people who used it gone so seeing the evolution of the language used on tumblr is literally so fucking amazing i want to cry with joy at it
because we also add in words from other languages, or make entirely new words up as additional terms to denote something (see ātolā and āsmolā in relation toĀ ātallā andĀ āsmallā) and this is constant. we are doing this daily without any sort of breathing space because thereās millions of us on this hellsite and we are constantly talkingĀ and so the language changes day-by-day until we have general, universal rules for what to do in a post, what to add in our tags, how to add it, why we add it, what we mean by it
weāve created a language in the same way our ancestors all did: by building on the ones that came before and changing them to suit our needs and our system
I love this so much and language is so great and Iāve noticed the lack of punctuation thing recently, even on twitter, and used it for like a specific kind of rhetorical effect. idk itās so fun I fucking love linguistics and the evolution of language
How many times people repeat the āuā in āfuckā on twitter, from a study of how people say fuckĀ on twitter that also includes this excellent set of examples:Ā Ā
- I hate cats.. just evil little fuckers (-0.91)
- I just want to go to fucking sleep these stupid ass cats are fighting right outside my window (-0.85)
- I just got a cat fucking drunk and heās abusive (-0.78)
- i want a cat now who the fuck am i (-0.49)
- Let your cat be a fucking cat. (0.0)
- honestly scaring cats is fucking hilarious (0.48)
- aye bruh how bout you show yo cats some love too mufucka (0.64)
- Cats are just so fucking perfect and I love them and want them all (0.88)
- I FUCKING LOVE MY CATS SO MUCH LOOK AT THIS BEAUTIFUL GUY I SWEAR WHAT A SMART LOYAL LOVING ANIMAL GIFTED TO ME (0.96)
me: actually, english is not the most difficult language to learn...
right-wing american who almost failed Spanish 2 in high school: how dare you. the past tense of think isn't thinked, it's thought. how much harder can a language possibly be? enough and though don't even rhyme. english is at the apex of linguistic complexity. how dare you.
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