Sisyphus' thread for grammatical and lexical help in english

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Sisyphus' thread for grammatical and lexical help in english

Post by Sisyphe »

:roll: No one here is unaware of the lacks and weakness of my english, which looks like some porridge of german syntax, old-fashioned and Shakespeare-originated figures, at-school-"my-name-is-Sisyphus-and-my-favorite-colour-is-the-purple"-learnt-basics, scholar buzz-words and phraseology, and thanks-to-Freelang-dictionary-but-alas-here-malapropriate-words.

Therefore, after german, dutch and spanich, I cry for help in this new topic. With my humble apologies to the english conjugational system I've never understood anything of...

*

At a Phd. Academical buzzword, to my mind :
The avenue of inquiry for this attempt will be an examination of...
I did not found it in a dictionary. I figure it means something like "l'angle d'attaque, le point de départ..." ?
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Re: Sisyphus' thread for grammatical and lexical help in eng

Post by ElieDeLeuze »

Isn't it just inquiry. :-? ??
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Re: Sisyphus' thread for grammatical and lexical help in eng

Post by Sisyphe »

ElieDeLeuze wrote:Isn't it just inquiry. :-? ??
Of course. I have emended it.
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Re: Sisyphus' thread for grammatical and lexical help in eng

Post by Olivier »

Something like "méthode d'investigation", judging from this definition of "avenue (possibility)" in Cambridge Learner's online:
a method or way of doing something; a possibility
We should explore/pursue every avenue in the search for an answer to this problem.
Only two avenues are open to us - either we accept his offer or we give up the fight completely.
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Re: Sisyphus' thread for grammatical and lexical help in eng

Post by ANTHOS »

I would translate "avenue" as "a specific set or sequence of actions". A similar expression is "line of enquiry", which is used by detectives.

Note, in British English "enquiry" and "inquiry" differ in terms of scale and formality.
eg
Sisyphe enquired about train times at the helpdesk at Kings Cross station.
The government is to conduct an inquiry to determine the cause of the information leak.

I think that Americans use "inquiry" in the way that Brits use "enquiry"
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Re: Sisyphus' thread for grammatical and lexical help in eng

Post by Sisyphe »

Thanks for all above. :jap

*

Once again... If I were a good student, I would have learnt my phrasal verbs (not to mention the utterance of hypothetical/conditionnal statements and clauses and the use of moods and modals :shy:). Thus I am not sure I have understood at length the meaning of the following turn of speech, though the general idea stays clear :
despite the fact (...) that the theory vas most closely attended to and worked out in the syntactic component, the chief and perhaps the only effect of transformative grammar is etc.
And farer, some idiomatic features :
it must be conceded (...) that the overall contribution of this model to our understanding of syntactic change must be judged as less than impressive
Does it signify that this model (sc. the generative grammar) had actually had* a major contribution to the comprehension of syntactic changes, greater than what we could have thougt at the outset (thus "impressive" would be a pejorative word), OR, on the contrary, that the alluded model has no real contribution thereto ? The paper seems to assume the first way.

*to have a contribution ? To let a contribution ? To bear a contribution ? :-?
Generative grammar had failed to live up to its advance bilings
My dictionary says "affichage" for "billing" but nothing more or deeper. I roughly understand : "La grammaire générative avait échoué à accomplir les promesses qu'elle s'était fixée ?"

:) Thanks in advance.
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Re: Sisyphus' thread for grammatical and lexical help in eng

Post by ANTHOS »

Rough translation
…malgré le fait que la théorie a été suivie et que celle-ci donne les résultats escomptés/attendus pour la partie syntactique…
--
" less than impressive" is not very precise but idiomatically used in a negative way.
In your context, I understand that the model *has* made a contribution but not as big a contribution as some people claim.
--
We say "to make a contribution"
--
I understand:
"La grammaire générative n'avait pas été à la hauteur attendu"
The nuance is that it's not necessarily generative grammer itself making promises – it could be the supporters of this model making exaggerated claims.
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Re: Sisyphus' thread for grammatical and lexical help in eng

Post by Olivier »

the theory [w]as most closely attended to and worked out in the syntactic component
The difficulty, as is often the case in English, is the right grammatical division: :)
| the theory was most
| - closely attended to
| - and worked out
in the syntactic component
= c'est dans le domaine (la composante) syntaxique que cette théorie a été le plus examinée de près et développée.
-- Olivier
PS. comparative for far = further

edited: English-speaking forum
Last edited by Olivier on 08 Mar 2011 09:15, edited 1 time in total.
Se nem kicsi, se nem nagy: Ni trop petit(e), ni trop grand(e):
Éppen hozzám való vagy! Tu es juste fait(e) pour moi!
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Re: Sisyphus' thread for grammatical and lexical help in eng

Post by ANTHOS »

= c'est dans le domaine (la composante) syntaxique que cette théorie a été le plus examinée de près et développée.
Bien vu, c'est très possible - la phrase comme je la vois est ambigue.
Toutefois, je me demande si le sens de "work out" est comme tu dis (verbe transitif) ou ma première interpretation (verbe intransitif)
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Re: Sisyphus' thread for grammatical and lexical help in eng

Post by Beaumont »

Guys this thread was posted in the English speaking forum... ;)
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Re: Sisyphus' thread for grammatical and lexical help in eng

Post by Sisyphe »

Hey, what should I do if english-speaking members themselves fail in analyzing those bloody phrasals ! :ape:

I'm joking. It did help me.
Beaumont wrote:Guys this thread was posted in the English speaking forum... ;)
I feel a tinge of irony about my abilities in english, should I ? ;)

A bit a translation is helpful to me. By the way, a new problem, found on the covering sheet of an unpublished but electronic-reproduced american PhD thesis :
A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requierements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in linguistics
What does it actually mean ? That he did receive the degree but with a low assessement of the jury ? Something like a "mention assez bien" in the french system ? That would explain why the PhD never get into a book.
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Re: Sisyphus' thread for grammatical and lexical help in eng

Post by ANTHOS »

It means that the dissertation only fulfilled some - not all - of the requirements
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Re: Sisyphus' thread for grammatical and lexical help in eng

Post by Olivier »

I believe it is a pretty standard formulation: the written dissertation is not all, since there is also an oral examination with a jury.
-- Olivier
Se nem kicsi, se nem nagy: Ni trop petit(e), ni trop grand(e):
Éppen hozzám való vagy! Tu es juste fait(e) pour moi!
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Re: Sisyphus' thread for grammatical and lexical help in eng

Post by Sisyphe »

As I said on the french-speaking forum, I do not know the right translation of "oups", but I apologize though for having, one more time, forgotten to thank you for the last problem.

*

The new one is a bitter harder : it is linguistical terminolgy. I have some difficult with the "measuring-out argument".

"Argument" is more or less synonym to "complement" in the english-speaking linguistics (I wonder whether a canonical differenciation does exist). Sometimes translated as "complément", or by "actant"... English teaching scholars are accustomed to let it as such ("un argument"), in spite of the doubtfulness with the rhetorical meaning of it.

To be that as it may, this paper clarifies (or think to do so) the concept :
Tenny (1987, 1992) discusses a semantic phenomenon she calls 'measuring
out'. The clearest examples involve verbs of consumption and creation,
for example (1):
(1)a. Bill ate an apple. [consumption]
b. Bill drew a circle. [creation]
Tenny's (1987, pp. 77-78) characterization of 'measuring out' is as follows.
The apple referred to by the direct object in [(la)] 'measures out' gradually the event
described by the verb phrase. Someone who eats an apple progresses through the event in
increments of apple . . . . We may think of an event as a series of snapshots of the objects
involved, at points along a time line. The snapshots record the property that is changing in the object . . . . In the case of apple-eating there will eventually be some snapshot in which
the apple is gone... It is the existence of this distinctive point of time, provided by some
changing property of the object, that makes a delimited accomplishment.
Similar considerations apply to (lb), where successive stages of the event
correspond to more and more of the circle coming into existence, until a
final stage in which it is complete. Dowty (1991), from similar observations,
terms the direct objects in (1) 'incremental themes'.
Let us try to :
Tenny 1987 analyse un phénomène sémantique qu’elle nomme « measuring out ». L’exemple le plus simple se trouve dans l’emploi des verbes désignant la consommation ou la création. Par exemple

1a. Bill ate an apple / B. mangea une pomme (consommation)
b. Bill drew a circle / B. dessina un cercle (création)

La définition de que Tenny donne du concept de « measuring out » est la suivante : La pomme à laquelle réfère l’objet direct est l’élément qui permet de mesurer la progression du procès décrit par le syntagme verbal. Quiconque mange une pomme progresse, par le biais du procès, dans le ???? de la pomme. On peut concevoir le procès comme une série d’images instantanées de l’objet en question, positionnables le long d’une frise chronologique. Ces instantanées témoignent de la propriété qui est en cours de modification dans l’objet. Dans le cas d’une pomme que l’on mange, il faudra bien qu’il y ait une ou plusieurs images instantanées où la pomme ne sera plus. C’est l’existence de ce point précis sur la frise chronologique, rendu possible par l’existence d’une caractéristique évolutive de l’objet, qui permet de définir un accomplissement précis.
S’agissant de la phrase 1b, on considérera semblablement qu’il existe des stades successifs au sein du procès qui correspondent à l’apparition progressive du cercle, jusqu’à un stade final, dans lequel il est parachevé. Dowty, sur la base d’observations similaires, nomme l’objet direct en 1 « thème incrémentiel ».
:gniii : The word « increment » is me quite abstruse here. It could not be « the act of increasing » (the apple does not increase ! It gradually ceases to be*, on the contrary). A mathematical acception is « a small positive or negative change in a variable of function », my Collins says...

(*this is not a dead-parrot sketch…)

Well, I roughly understand that, according to Jackendoff, the objet complement (or argument) is like a « yardstick » of the achieving of the event, but the details are unclear to me. And the translation doubly so.

heeeeeelp :mad:
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Re: Sisyphus' thread for grammatical and lexical help in eng

Post by Beaumont »

Sisyphe wrote:La pomme à laquelle réfère l’objet direct est l’élément qui permet de mesurer la progression du procès décrit par le syntagme verbal.
Oui, measuring out c'est simplement mesurer. Le out indique à la base l'idée de faire une sortir une mesure, une quantité, d'une quantité plus importante (mesurer une livre de farine ou une quantité d'alcool). Ici c'est la pomme qui mesure progressivement l'action.
Sisyphe wrote:Quiconque mange une pomme progresse, par le biais du procès, dans le ???? de la pomme.
Through the event : au travers, au sein de l'action ou du procès. Quelqu'un qui mange une pomme progresse au sein de l'action par incrément de pomme. Je ne pense pas qu'incrémenter d'une valeur négative pose problème, même pour les sciences molles, sinon il faut trouver une traduction plus élégante (à mesure que la pomme disparait ?).
Sisyphe wrote:Dans le cas d’une pomme que l’on mange, il faudra bien qu’il y ait une ou plusieurs images instantanées où la pomme ne sera plus.
Attention, some désigne ici un singulier : there will eventually be some snapshot in which the apple is gone, il y aura au final un instantané (mais on ne sait pas lequel) où la pomme aura disparu.
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