Language Trainers Blog

I couldn’t for the life of me remember the term ‘attributive noun’ when I needed it today, so I did some searching around on the internet to see if I could come across it. I eventually found it by searching for something like ‘noun as adjective’. [An attributive noun is one which modifies another noun, but can be taken out of the noun phrase without affecting it too much, e.g. 'lab' in the term 'lab coat'.]

While I was searching, I found a Telegraph article that claims that nearly half of Britons can’t use apostrophes correctly. I am at once shocked but unsurprised.

The apostrophe has emerged in an independent poll of nearly 2,000 people as the punctuation mark that causes the most problems. Nearly half of UK adults tested were unable to use it properly.

The most common mistake was not knowing how to punctuate a possessive plural.

Nearly half (46 per cent) of those that sat the test thought that, in the context set, “people’s choice” was wrong – whereas it is, of course, correct.

Regionally, Londoners were the most likely to use apostrophes correctly, and age-wise, it was the 25-34 year olds that came out on top.

Note: There’s a self-test at the bottom of the article, and besides the fact that they didn’t put any full stops in the sentences (the horror!), I disagree with their first conclusion. They said that “These are Charlotte Brooks’ books” is correct, but certain style guides would advocate “These are Charlotte Brooks’s books”. I wonder how many people got this one ‘wrong’?

If you can't correct this properly, contact me immediately!

I was recently caught off guard when asked what the difference between ’sometimes’ and ’some times’ is, and when you should use one or the other.  My response was vague at best, so I’m hopefully going to make it a bit clearer here.

Sometimes is an adverb, and should be used to mean ‘occasionally’ or ‘at times’, and can be used in any case where a frequency is neither never nor always.

I sometimes go to the gym on Wednesdays.
Sometimes I have tacos for dinner.

Some times should be used as a noun phrase, that is when using ‘time’ as a noun.

The doctor gave me some times when I could come in for an appointment.
There were some times last week when it rained really hard.

Sometime is used as an adverb, meaning ‘at an indefinite point in time’ (in the future or the past).  It is also occasionally used as an adjective meaning ‘having been once’, or ‘occasional’.

We should meet for coffee sometime.
His flight arrives sometime next week.
He was away a lot, so could only be a sometime boyfriend.  

Some time is used as a noun phrase, describing a period of time with no definite length.

It took some time to finish the project.
Some time ago, I went on holiday to Paris.

As far as pronunciation goes, sometimes and sometime have slightly more emphasis on ’some’, and some times and some time have ‘time’ stressed.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned an experiment that found that people have a good try at predicting what a speaker is about to say, and this makes it easier for us to keep up with the rapid pace of conversation.

I also mentioned the mental stumbling blocks caused by hearing something that we haven’t predicted.  This is demonstrated by a particular kind of structure called a ‘garden path’ sentence.   The way that these sentences are written intentionally misleads the reader or listener, or ‘leads them up the garden path’.  Unusual phrasing and parsing (dividing up the sentence) make the audience expect or predict something different from what they end up hearing.

A good example of a garden path sentence is “The girl told the story cried.”  We expect the girl to be the one telling the story, but it turns out that she was the listener.  Writing the sentence using “the girl who was told” gets rid of any ambiguity, but takes all the fun out of it.

A few of the better ones that I’ve seen:

1. We painted the wall with cracks.
2. When Fred eats food gets thrown.
3. The prime number few.
4. Fat people eat accumulates.
5. The man who hunts ducks out on weekends.
6. The old man the boat.
7. The man whistling tunes pianos.
8.  The dog that I had really loved bones.

I don’t think they’re too hard to work out, so I’m not going to post the less-ambiguous versions.  Leave a comment if you need the answers, though!

The topic of metaphor lies at the root of semiotics, both historically and analytically. Historically, there is the long tradition of ‘theories’ of metaphor, which dates back to Aristotle. Analytically, metaphors concern the study of figurative signs and also raise the more fundamental question of whether ‘literal’ meaning is possible at all. Topics such as arbitrariness, conventionality, motivation, and iconicity have dominated the semiotic discussion of metaphors.

Despite many differences in detail, two central concepts reappear as criteria for most traditional definitions of metaphor: ‘transfer’ and ‘similarity’. Major variants of the former concept are replacement, substitution, and translation. Variants of the latter are likeness, comparison, and analogy. A typical definition combines these criteria as follows: “a figure of speech in which a word or a phrase denoting one kind of object or action is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them”.

The idea of transfer is already expressed in the etymology of the term. The Ancient Greek metaphorá means precisely that - ‘transfer’, or more literally ‘a carrying from one place to another’. The two ‘places’ implied in this definition refer to the spheres of literal and of figurative meaning. Both are said to be related by similarity or implicit comparison. Two terms are introduced for the two domains of meaning interacting in the metaphorical process: the ‘tenor’ and ‘vehicle’. When Shakespeare refers to the ‘sun’ as ‘the eye of heaven’, the sun (which is in certain respects like an eye) is the tenor - the underlying idea of this metaphor - and the eye is the vehicle - that is, the image which is used to represent or ‘carry’ the tenor.

Here are some phrases in a few different languages, with their English translations. Each of these sentences has a particular linguistic feature - can you tell what it is?

Latin: in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (”We enter the circle at night and are consumed by fire”)

Greek: Nipson anomēmata mē monan opsin [νιψον ανομηματα μη μοναν οψιν] (”Wash off my sins, not only my face”)

English: A man, a plan, a canal, Panama!

Finnish: Saippuakivikauppias (”soap-stone vendor”)

Brazilian Portuguese: Socorram-me, subi no onibus em Marrocos (”Help me, I took a bus in Morocco”)

Lithuanian: Sėdėk užu kėdės (”Sit behind the chair”)

Spanish: “Dábale arroz a la zorra el abad” (”the abbott gave rice to the fox”)

Hover here to find the answer: these sentences are all palindromes - words, phrases or numbers that read the same forwards and backwards.