User talk:Victor Bob/Archive 1

Accuracy, simplicity, and framework preferences

Thank you, @Victor Bob:, for your recent edits to grammatical topics! Your edits seem to be inspired by the framework of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, a book that's very close to my own heart, so close, in fact, that I'm a co-author on the second edition of A Student's Introduction to English Grammar. You're right that the Simple English Wiktionary follows CGEL in its lexical categories (except that we use "determiner" where CGEL uses "determinative").

That said, this is the Simple English Wiktionary, and many of your changes just aren't simple. For example, in predicative you have added "complex-intransitive verb". That's simply not something that most folks will understand, so I've reverted it.

In future, I hope you'll keep in mind the balance between being simple and hewing closely to the CGEL framework. Brett (talk) 16:08, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

by virtue

Thanks for your helpful edits @Victor Bob! I wonder why you've changed this to preposition from expression? See CGEL p. 618. Brett (talk) 14:57, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Also in league.--Brett (talk) 14:58, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Particles

I know that CGEL has both Adj and P particles, but given that most particles are P, it seems to me that it's more likely that short is a P, not an Adj.--Brett (talk) 13:37, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

as

What prompted you to add a subordinator section for as? --Brett (talk) 22:52, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Please consider the following sentence pair:

① The house was reported to be in excellent condition.

② The house was reported as being in excellent condition.

In traditional grammar, both to in ① and as in ② are prepositions. Nonetheless, in Government and Binding Theory, to in ① and as in ② are Inflections rather than prepositions. In more recent work, i.e. Minimalist Program, to and as in the above sentence pair belong to the category of T(=tense-marker).

In a nutshell, the word as should be analyzed as belonging to the same category of tense-markers as infinitival to. The only difference between these two tense-markers is that to licenses a VP headed by a verb in plain form, while as licenses a VP headed by a verb in gerund-participle form.

That is to say, tense-markers are merged with VPs to form TPs. Notice that the term TP in Minimalist Program is the equivalent of the term clause in modern descriptive grammar. Thus we can say that the T to in ① plus the VP be in excellent condition forms the TP (i.e. the clause) to be in excellent condition. The same is true of ②.

Since infinitival to is analyzed as a subordinator in CGEL, the word as should also be a subordinator.

——Victor Bob (talk) 23:23, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Well, they do appear similar in that particular context, but in what other ways/contexts are as and to similar?

1. She was reported as/*to late.
2. We planned for her to be/*as being happy.
3. She's cheating, but I don't want to (cheat).
   1. She's cheating, and she's been reported as *(cheating).
4. She was reported as being late. --> What was she reported as?
   1. She was reported to be late. --> *What was she reported to?
5. To be on time is important.
   1. *As being on time is important.
6. To be on time, leave early.
   1. *As being on time, leave early

I don't think this evidence supports the idea that they are the same category.

——Brett (talk) 02:28, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

In your example sentences:

She was reported as late.

She was reported as being late.

The word as is an Inflection in the two sentences and as late is a verbless small clause, while as being late is a verbal small clause.

See Small clauses in English: the non-verbal types written by Bas Aarts (https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110861457/html) for more detailed discussion of the reason why as is analyzed as an Inflection rather than a preposition.

——Victor Bob (talk) 03:42, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Aart's original argument that from is a complementizer is, by his own admission, weak (p. 98). The arguments for making from and as something else are also weak. But even if you set that particular example aside, the point remains that to and as are really quite different. Brett (talk) 12:03, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

OK, I will revise the category of as. I'm sorry. Victor Bob (talk) 12:06, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Nothing to be sorry about. Be bold as an editor, but be willing to revise, as you seem to be. :-)--Brett (talk) 12:57, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Ok, thank you for your encouragement. Victor Bob (talk) 13:00, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

firstly, secondly, thirdly, etc.

What is the justification for categorizing these as prepositions? Brett (talk) 21:46, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

The word first must be a preposition in that it can license PP complements, say, up, off, and of all in expressions first up, first off, and first of all and that it can appear in a position where typical PPs can occur, say, she always puts her children first (cf. she always puts her children at ease).

Once we categorise first as a preposition, it follows that firsrly is morphologically derived from the preposition first rather than the adjective first, though indeed first is an adjective in other cases. Note that firstly has the same meaning as the preposition first in contexts like:

There are three reasons for this decision: firstly, .../ first, .../ first of all, ...

——Victor Bob (talk) 01:23, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

1. Adjectives can license PP complements (e.g., not happy about that).
2. The observation that first can occur as the second complement in a put VP is an interesting one, but is that all you've got?
3. Prepositions don't occur as pre-verb modifiers in VPs.
4. Even if there were a preposition first, why should that have anything to do with firstly, etc?

I understand the excitement of feeling you've made a discovery, but overall, it would be good if you'd slow down and think things through a bit before making a bunch of changes. It would also be good if you'd avoid making 7 edits when one will do.

Brett (talk) 02:06, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your remarks. In my opinion, when first expresses the meaning before anyone/anything else, it's a preposition.

Firstly is used in speech or writing when we want to give a reason, make a point, or mention an item that will be followed by others, in which case, it is interchangeable with first. And it can't express meanings like for the first time and at first that can be expressed by the adverb first.

When firstly was added in the first edition of Webster’s Dictionary in 1847, it wasn’t even accorded the courtesy of a definition; instead, the entry simply reads Improperly used instead of first.

Note also the second interpretation of then. It's best to analyse first as belonging to the same category as then.

As you have said earlier, prepositions don't occur as pre-verb modifiers in VPs, so the ungrammaticality of the clause I firstly noticed it yesterday can be attributed to the misplacement of the preposition firstly that is anything like a prototypical adverb which can generally function as VP-internal modifier. In addition, firstly doesn't inflect for grade. The adverb immediately is reanalysed as a preposition partly because it cannot function as VP-internal modifier and it doesn't inflect for grade. Why can't firstly be a preposition?

Anyway, if you are not in favour of my edits, I respect your opinion, ready to revise it forthwith.

——Victor Bob (talk) 02:31, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Let's deal with first first. As I said, the ability of first to function as a complement in a put VP is a nice piece of evidence in favour of first being a preposition, but

1. You cannot modify first with right or just, as you typically can for PP complements in put VPs.
   1. That puts us right in first place.
   2. *That puts us right first.
2. You cannot use first as a complement in a head VP; it must be a modifier, even other PPs can typically function as complements here.
   1. She headed to first place.
   2. *She headed first.
3. Other non-prepositions may appear in the same function in a put VP.
   1. That puts it front and centre.
   2. She put it best. (meaning of put is different)
   3. Can you put it a bit lower/higher?
   4. Put the second line perpendicular/parallel to the first.

So the preponderance of the evidence seems to argue against first as a preposition.

I'll leave it to you to consider firstly and the rest.

(PS. I may have been too hasty above when claiming that PPs don't function as pre-head modifiers in VPs: He at first thought it impossible.) Brett (talk) 11:50, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

As you have said, PPs can function as pre-head modifier in VPs; in addition, they can also function as pre-head modifier in NPs, as in the above discussion. I agree with you, and I have revised it.

——Victor Bob (talk) 23:59, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Modal meaning

Modality is a particular kind of semantics, distinct from the syntax of auxiliaries. Modal meanings are related to non-factual statements about necessity, obligation, ability, and possibility. This is not a kind of meaning that to has.

——Brett (talk) 16:41, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Hello, Prof.Brett. In a paper written by Bas Aarts (https://www.academia.edu/4666240/Grammatici_certant_Review_of_the_Cambridge_Grammar_of_the_English_Language), he remarks on the last line on p. 376: Contrary to received opinion, infinitival to is not without semantic content because it frequently expresses modal meaning.

——Victor Bob (talk) 23:43, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

I'm not a semanticist, but, personally, I can find no meaning in the word to, while must in clearly has meaning. So, I think Aarts has confused the meaning of the be to verb construction with the meaning of the word to. The OED says, "II. 11. b. Expressing duty, obligation, or necessity.

(a) with infinitive active: is to..= is bound to, has to.., must.., ought to...

--Brett (talk) 18:22, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. Victor Bob (talk) 11:38, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Use preview

Hello. Thank you for contributing to the Simple English Wiktionary. I have noticed that you've made at least 30 edits to the and it seems like only formatting fixes have been made. Kindly use the preview interface (beside the "Publish changes" button) to check if what you intent to do is done correctly. Minorax (talk) 14:59, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you very much for editing prompts, because I use mobilephone and I find there are many pages which looks bad in formatting when containging labels such as BNC or AVL. Victor Bob (talk) 15:38, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Linking words

Why did you strip this information from all those verbs? Brett (talk) 10:30, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

In CGEL, the only linking verb (i.e. copular verb) in English is the verb be. Verbs like feel, seem, and so on are simply complex-intransitive.

Furthermore, there is one highly complex construction in English,

namely, the Copular Construction headed by be , which is the hot topic in the TG framework, and for those Small Clause proponents, they also view be as the only copula, assigning the label quasi-copula to seem, look, arrive, marry, freeze, etc.

What's more important, there seems to be no need for the Simple Wiktionary to add an additional and unnecessary label linking among already existing and sufficient labels like intransitive and transitive.

——Victor Bob (talk) 11:11, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Can you think of a better way for the Simple English Wiktionary to express that a verb is "complex-intransitive", because, clearly that term is not going to be meaningful to most, but the fact that a verb licenses a PC complement is a useful piece of information.--Brett (talk) 11:39, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

I think we do not have to express that a verb is complex-intransitive, even in a more understandable way, because we have never subsumed verbs such as make and consider under the category of complex-transitive verbs either (we just simply label them as transitive in this wiktionary). I remember on p.104 of SIEG2, you simply label felt as an intransitive verb and made as an transitive one. Since you have not used more accurate labels like monotransitive, ditransitive and complex-transitive in this Simple English Wiktionary and SIEG2, why do we need specially to express that some verbs license subject-oriented PCs? Labelling those verbs as intransitive is enough, just as you do in SIEG2, a textbook for college students of English, whose grammar level is likely to be higher than those who use this Simple Wiktionary.

——Victor Bob (talk) 12:29, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Please, be less bold

On the one hand, I do appreciate your thoroughgoing review of the categorization of the so-called closed-class words. On the other, I don't appreciate your boldly changing categories without any explanation and forcing me to trundle after you cleaning up. By now, it should be clear that your hits-to-misses ratio is rather low. Often, it seems, the changes are made simply on the basis of a single example or a case that doesn't seem to fit, or a different analysis you've found in some paper somewhere. Or, as with all, you just didn't think it through.

To be clear, there may be errors, but I think that the categories assigned here are almost entirely correct. They should not be changed without substantial evidence and discussion. Please, revert your recent round of changes, and going forward, please, be less bold. Brett (talk) 10:54, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

The words here, there, then, and now are analysed as pronouns by Bresnan, Radford and McCawley.

Bresnan is the founder of LFG, Radford is a grammarian working in the Minimalist framework, and McCawley is the author of The Syntactic Phenomena of English. I know Huddleston and Pullum are respectable grammarians and you have had many personal discussions with them. Before reverting some edits, though I don't want to unless I am persuaded by linguistic evidence rather than personal opinions, we'd better discuss this topic more deeply. Most importantly, my purpose is not to debate with you.

--Victor Bob [talk] 11:27, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Are you sure you want to frame my position as "personal opinions"? And are you sure that your edits should stand until disproved rather than the converse?--Brett (talk) 11:47, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

No, I don't want to define your position as personal opinions. My edits are based on the afore-mentioned linguists' opinions. And what you propose to do is let me follow CGEL's analysis. I like CGEL very much but the afore-mentioned linguists' opinions deserve our attention. Everything changes in the world.

If my edits are bad, I will change my edits at once. I feel very sorry I make you so angry.

--Victor Bob [talk] 12:00, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Of course, they deserve our attention, but simply noting that they have a different conclusion is not giving them due attention. That would require putting their analyses into conversation with each other and interrogating them. Just as one tiny piece of the puzzle, how do you explain modification by right? Brett (talk) 12:44, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

The intensifier right modifies the null preposition plus its object realised by a deictic pronoun. But you seem not to be able to give a satisfactory account of why the Head, realised by where, of an NP like where I live in This is where I live is not a noun but a preposition (as favored by CGEL). Victor Bob [talk] 12:53, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Linguistics is very easy when you can just make up null items to deal with inconvenient data. How is this explanation consistent with anything else in this wiktionary? Brett (talk) 17:06, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

This explanation is applicable to at least four words in the Simple English Wiktionary, namely, yesterday, today, tonight and tomorrow. They are deictic pronouns as well, though in some cases they have the same distribution as typical PPs, as can be seen in a sentence like He chaired the meeting yesterday, where the word yesterday is taken to be a pronoun by CGEL, though it is traditionally analysed as an adverb. If you do not take yesterday to be preceded by a null preposition in the NP the meeting yesterday, you have to add an additional rule in the current grammar: pronouns can directly function as internal modifier, which is problematic. That said, we should not confuse syntactic distribution with syntactic category. Bresnan, Radford and McCawley think that in addition to yesterday, today, tonight and tomorrow, items like here, there, then, and now are also deictic pronouns.

--Victor Bob [talk] 01:19, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

"If you do not take yesterday to be preceded by a null preposition in the NP the meeting yesterday, you have to add an additional rule in the current grammar: pronouns can directly function as internal modifier, which is problematic." You're confusing category with function. There is no need for, and no such thing as, "null prepositions." Other nouns and pronouns already function as modifiers in clause structure: he chaired the meeting himself/the other day. In fact, with the other day, there isn't a preposition that could work there and still get the 'recently' meaning. He chaired the meeting on the other day can only mean 'on the alternative day'.

And if you're positing some kind of "null preposition" before yesterday, then, by your logic, we should be able to get *he chaired the meeting right yesterday. But of course you can't. There are no pronouns that allow modification by right. And, again, right is only one piece of the evidence. There's so much more you're ignoring. Saying, "look these folks are smart, I guess they must be right," is not an argument. Brett (talk) 11:15, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

First, I am sorry that I don't make my words more accurate. I mean pronouns can hardly function as Nom-internal modifier. In your example, himself doesn't function as Nom-internal modifier and the other day is not a pronoun at all.

Second, the null preposition is intrinsically covert, so, of course, you cannot get an overt counterpart. In fact, in a sense you are also supporting the existence of null constituents. Whereas Huddleston and Pullum take who in the guy who fainted to be in Subject function, you take it to be in Prenucleus function, postulating that the Subject is realised by a gap. The term gap corresponds to the term trace in TG and LFG, which is viewed as a kind of null constituent by those frameworks too. There is no doubt that you cannot make that gap overt, in much the same way as you cannot add overt prepositions in front of those pronouns demanding the presence of null prepositions.

Third, Huddleston is my idol but it does not mean he never errs. He insists that to be a subordinator, as represented in the supplementary diagrams of SIEG2. You are also my idol. But you take on purpose to be a preposition, which seems to me to be untenable. Victor Bob [talk] 15:18, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

1. I'm writing a paper that's due soon, co-editing a special issue of a journal, and writing a textbook and popular book. I don't have time to develop detailed arguments to explain the mistakes every time you change a word's category, which you do far too often, usually changing them back later. You still made any arguments yourself, and instead have simply pointed to a group of authors and said, "look there".
2. Neither Joan Bresnan nor McCawly has ever, as far as I know, included "null prepositions" in their grammars. Radford brings up the idea in an introductory textbook and as justification says, "(given the assumption that only like constituents can be coordinated)," which is a useful rule of thumb but is hardly sufficient theoretical justification for an invisible entity. You shouldn't be hoodwinked by such flim flam.
3. You're saying here that your analysis is (chaired (the (meeting yesterday))) as opposed to (chaired (the (meeting)) yesterday)? Fine, The meeting itself was a success.
4. If the "now-pronoun group" can be modified by right because it has null prepositions licensing such modification, why can't yesterday-pronoun group, which Radford says also has a null preposition?

Please, just revert your edits, slow down, and write up a long and well argued justification before you make any more hasty changes that will need to be reverted later. I don't have more time to pursue this, so this is my last comment on this thread. Brett (talk) 20:23, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Synonyms

Instead of changing === Synonyms === to === Synonym ===, please change to {{syn|...}} at the appropriate sense. Brett (talk) 11:32, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

OK. Victor Bob [talk] 12:00, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Definition change on impossibility

Hello! I'm new to the Simple English Wiktionary, so please bear with me. I have been writing definitions according to WT:STYLE. That page says that explanations of terms are preferred to the style of definition typical for most dictionaries. My question is, why the change from:

The impossibility of some something, is the fact that it cannot happen or exist.

to:

The quality of being impossible.

? The "some something" part, as well as the comma, seemed a bit dubious to me, but other than that the definition appeared fine. Did I misunderstand what it actually tells you to do, or is the page outdated? Hythonia (talk) 00:16, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Secondary question: why change "Related words" to "See also" on inescapable? The former seems a bit more precise, and is also included in WT:STYLE. Hythonia (talk) 00:20, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, the former is more precise. I have reverted it. Victor Bob [talk] 01:22, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

My understanding is that it is not a kind of fact; instead, it's our perception of something in the world. So I use the word quality. Victor Bob [talk] 00:35, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

none

Hi, Victor Bob. I'm profoundly impressed by your deep discussions with Brett on this page. You both have far more knowledge of grammar than I do. That said, I was wondering why you removed the latter portion of the definition of "none". I rather liked that there were a couple of restatements of the meaning with different words and I think they could be useful to our readers. Is there a particular rule that you are following? I'm sure the rules have been updated since I was most active here, so I won't be surprised if you are. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 02:31, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Zero and No things seem to be a little redundant, for which I delete them. This is the Simple English Wiktionary; therefore we'd better explain every word in short phrases. None can serve as fused Det-Head when it is used to substitute for a non-count noun, so the sense No things is inappropriate. Zero is a determinative and doesn't have the same distribution as none. Victor Bob [talk] 02:48, 20 December 2023 (UTC)