Questions about English language & grammar

[Spring]

I agree 100%. And in this topic it's often a question about British versus American/Canadian/Australian English, and it's 99.9% all the same English. There are a few tiny variations in spelling, and much variation in colloquial or dialectical phraseology. But that even happens in the short distances between towns, cities and states in the USA. And 99.999% of the time, (e.g.) an American can understand a Brit well enough, or even perfectly well, even the most tiny nuances of usage. But (or 'and') in plain fact, it is impossible for anyone to completely define what "perfect English" is.

Same is with all languages I guess.. there are even parts of my own country where people speak in such a way that I do not understand them (though there's no doubt about the fact that it's because the Grammar never climbed to the areas)
As for Am/Br, I've finally found my starting point in solving the issue in my own Eng mixture (just talking about writting) because someone told me it was like half Serbian half Croatian (same thing different packaging but since then, I am trying to stick to Br though of course I don't think I'm succeeding in it )

Spring, I have "just a feeling" that n-gram analysis could be useful (but not speaking of its primary or more immediate purposes) during middle/intermediate stages of learning a language, rather than for someone who's already become fluent ... ? ... I have a vague sort of impression that it could help someone like me to absorb and assimilate another language, even on some slightly-higher-than-conscious plane. But I'm just thinking out loud now, so maybe I don't even know what I'm saying ...

I like to know things but my brain never understood simple stuff so, the more something disintegrated, the more disappealing it is to me and when combined with a load of tutting, I admit, only one function is active - skip
Oh yes.. we are going to establish an entirely new definition of the word tutting ...

[Sanmayce]

The 'tutting' crisis over:

A fast-try to analyze the obvious:
Looking at 'tutting' dump let us extract some useful info:

first two 4-grams tell us that 'tutting' is a type of sound encountered 5+2=7 times:
0,000,002 a_little_tutting_sound
0,000,005 a_loud_tutting_noise

the third 4-gram shows one appearance of the preposition 'about':
0,000,001 a_tut_tutting_about

further below, two 4-grams with 'over' preposition:
0,000,002 and_tutting_over_the

further below, five 4-grams with 'at' preposition:
0,000,005 are_you_tutting_at

further below, two 4-grams with 'for' preposition:
0,000,002 arthur_sits_tutting_for

further below, one 4-gram with 'to' preposition:
0,000,001 tutting_to_himself_as

further below, three 4-grams with 'up' preposition:
0,000,003 tutting_up_wall_posters

The info retrieved so far:
- a kind of sound - undetermined meaning;
- tutting about - undetermined meaning;
- tutting over - undetermined meaning;
- tutting at - undetermined meaning;
- tutting for - undetermined meaning;
- tutting to - undetermined meaning;
- tutting up - undetermined meaning;
- Several a part-of-speech detected: noun(0,000,001 hear_uniformed_tutting_amongst), adjective(0,000,001 tutting_reports_from_every), both transitive(0,000,005 what_are_you_tutting) & intransitive(0,000,001 tutting_to_himself_as) verb.

Of course when a need for some word (or bi-gram or tri-gram) arise the first place to be looked in is the n-gram corpus of similar order i.e. 1 or 2 or 3. If we need further clarity we scale up until we reach (for example) a meaningful phrase or even sentence.

[Let's see what SOED (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary) holds for us:]

tut, interjection, noun3, & verb.

/tVt/
Freq. redupl. tut-tut /tVt"tVt/, tut tut. E16.
[Natural exclam. As interjection freq. repr. the sound of a click of the tongue against the teeth.]

A. interjection. Expr. impatience, annoyance, rebuke, disapproval, etc. E16.

Thackeray "Tut, tut!..let us hear no more of this nonsense."

B. noun. An utterance of 'tut-tut'. L16.

R. P. Graves "To the accompaniment of shocked tut-tuts.., he made slighting references to..Herbert Spencer."

C. verb. Infl. -tt-.

1. verb intrans. Utter or exclaim 'tut-tut'. M19.

O. Manning "Galpin tut-tutted at Yakimov's ignorance."

2. verb trans. Express disapproval of by exclaiming 'tut-tut'; say disapprovingly. L20.

Just Seventeen "'Shocking, the prices in this place,' tutted the customer."

[Let's see what LDOCE (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English) holds for us:]

tut 1 / t?t / ( also tut-tut ) interjection
the sound that you make by touching the top of your mouth with your tongue in order to show disapproval

tut 2 ( also tut-tut ) verb ( past tense and past participle tutted , present participle tutting ) [ intransitive ]
to express disapproval by making a tut sound :
The nurse rushed in, tutting with irritation.

Not strange for me, but have you noticed the lack of transitive form in the Longman's entry, as if there is no such.

I would include more definitions (and a dump of all sentences containing dumped already 4-grams) but since I don't want fully to crucify the 'tutting' the above glance is enough.

My amateurish experience (regarding words-crucifying) hails: OED mostly.
For me its 2 million examples are very precious to me but not always enough and surely NO MATCH for incoming sentence corpora.

Using manuals/dictionaries is one thing, using n-gram/sentence dumpers is another, combined the latter doubles your ability to understand.

@Spring:
Not feeling(in the literal sense) the things I talk about I accept as a personal failure to make myself clear, but you (in particular) should put a little effort, if you care of course.

[Mixalopoulos]

Yes, but, it still doesn't explain what "tutting your heels" means.

[Spring]

@Mixalopoulos
I'm not even sure why I asked that in the first place lol

@Spring:
Not feeling(in the literal sense) the things I talk about I accept as a personal failure to make myself clear, but you (in particular) should put a little effort, if you care of course.

Hm... you are right but you should see how your posts look on the screen on which I first saw them.. on wide screen they are not so deadly but still.. I admit the load of characters didn't get my attention although I totally appreciate your efforts. It had been as if you were trying to explain rocket science to a complete moron (which obviously can't be your fault)

[Sanmayce]

I think the tutting sound is just as the clicking one, here tutting is a transitive verb causing the heel (woman's are with very small surface and hard which produces the cha-cha like sound) to hit the ground loudly.

[Mixalopoulos]

I think the tutting sound is just as the clicking one, here tutting is a transitive verb causing the heel (woman's are with very small surface and hard which produces the cha-cha like sound) to hit the ground loudly.

Bravo A straight answer

[Mixalopoulos]

@Mixalopoulos
I'm not even sure why I asked that in the first place lol

Nor am I, it's quite obviously the sound of the heels hitting the pavement

[jandros]

.....but if you can drive through the R country, than our roads are magnificent....

and I think everyone would say the same thing and actually I knew that, because we do see some good things in fiction and documentaries, and please trust me, I'm not just saying that [/QUOTE]

... it's beautiful ... From your prospective, you might think s live here but trust me - everything you hear is like in that movie ... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120885/

And again believe it or not, I was actually wanting to rent a car in Spain and drive aaaaall the way through Serbia, but I was "voted down" ... for several reasons, one of which was time, but I ended up wasting most of 4 days anyway ... but I really wanted to do it, and next time I will!

PS
Gosh I'm a bad mod! ...

Nope, you're just human like the rest of us, and we'll all promise not to tell any of the other mods about your "unforgivable behavior"

[jandros]

Bravo A straight answer

But it's still very true that in all of my 5 decades as a native-English speaker I have never heard "tut" used in the context that those song lyrics wanted to suggest ... just saying this in case someone actually starts to think that the song lyric is actually good English, or even commonly used English, which it really isn't

[jandros]

Also Sanmayce, your post at the top of this page (#1881) is a repetition of exactly the same lines that Spring originally asked about, so ... maybe I'm missing something, but I'm not sure what the point of that is ...?

As for what you said about my earlier philosophical comments, I should have clarified that I meant more of a passive or subliminal mode of learning, and of hearing more than anything else ... I think maybe in the way that a baby first learns to speak, which (as much as anything) is to try to mimic (specifically) vowel sounds that he/she hears often, and so assimilates more deeply ..... does that make any sense?

[Spring]

Nor am I, it's quite obviously the sound of the heels hitting the pavement

Well, aside the old pavement nightmare (thank you for reminding me hehe) the question was what are the two grammatically nonsensical things (tutting my heel and strutting my feet) she is doing while "missing out the cracks in the pavement"



but I suppose she was strutting in high heels and making the noise with them...

[Sanmayce]

... does that make any sense?

Yes, but for me written and spoken English are two different planets.
I care of how the computer understands English (for now only the written aspect), as for the verbal/spoken aspect the quality of nowadays synthesizers and Speech-Recognition-Systems is just low.

I have a friend of mine who was impressed by Mr. Chomsky's writings emphasizing on some "tribal" approaches but I am a HARDLINER, from time to time I give an ear to some expert analysises but ... I am a long time fan of Mr. Negroponte. Oh no time now...

[jandros]

... what are the two grammatically nonsensical things (tutting my heel and strutting my feet) she is doing while "missing out the cracks in the pavement" ...

Aaah the video explains one other thing: I'm sure it's "missing all the cracks in the pavement"

but I suppose she was strutting in high heels and making the noise with them...

Perfect phrase structure in bold, and how about clacking her heels while not slacking on missing the cracks?

She should've asked one of us to write the lyrics for that song?

[Spring]

Thanks jandros!
I knew it you would find a mistake or two in those lyrics! Though, hoping for the tutting thing to be a mistake was something I didn't even consider until today.. but to no avail...
Maybe everything would've been easier if she'd broken a heel (or two) before getting into the studio to record the thing lol

Here's something for a change of tune and some refreshing tu tu without the t at the end



With English subtitles (but I like the above version more so...) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stbR3z-Cz68

[Mixalopoulos]

After going through the posts I understood that the people or students have problem in making the English sentences & in the grammar.So,I have the solution they should read the grammar text so that their problem will be solved out & after understand it they should read the English books,magazines,or supplements to remove the fear of making the sentences.

This paragraph of yours makes no sense..........ah, wait, I just realised. You're a spammer aren't you.

[Spring]

Yep!
An ex one!

[Mixalopoulos]

Yep!
An ex one!

Thank you, Spring

[Spring]

MHO, you must see this!

Anglo-Saxon (1/10)
The Norman Conquest (2/10)
Shakespeare (3/10)
The King James Bible (4/10)
The English of Science (5/10)
English and Empire (6/10)
The Age of the Dictionary (7/10)
American English (8/10)
Internet English (9/10)
Global English (10/10)

[Sanmayce]

It's good.
I liked the asylum sub-part (part 7) most: where one of the OED staff had gone crazy.

@jandros: I noticed that you liked the unfinished post about Mr. Negroponte, so I do like to hear your view on this matter.

For those who know nothing about OLPC non-profit project and Mr. Nicholas Negroponte:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q81TmwXe3ZM

THE GOAL: PRIMARY EDUCATION

500 million children do not have an education
100 million children literally GET NOTHING (without even 1st grade)

Mr. Negroponte's ideas are in the core of implementing the free educative ways. A lot of people do not get the idea and stress at the 'futility' as an argument - it is so simple: he shows a way, he cannot get it done by himself alone.

Worth to be seen/heard.

[Sanmayce]

In one of my recent posts I did a worthy-to-be-mentioned error, namely: 'to be send'.

Of course send/sent/sent is easy enough to remember, but that is not the point, but the lack of instant wrong-phrase warning system.
Nowadays (e.g. the form in which we write our posts/mails provide insufficient/poor help by underlining ONLY suspicious words not as in my example three words in a row) I still cannot believe that such functionality is missing.
It is not a philosophy such software to be written and made operational even in this hour, but for some reason the people all over the world are in pain and IGNORANCE in my opinion due to the insensitive developers/linguists/programmers.

Mr. Negroponte targets kids where I target the whole community (that is the nifty part of being greedy).

And again some digits for rumination: IMHO with 2,200,000,000+ souls using English it takes no a think-tank to say straightly: 2+ billions need an instant (real-time) coach/assistant/sidekick software or/and on-line TRULY COMPREHENSIVE resources preferably FREE OF CHARGE.

I have no problem with talking to myself at all, but I would like to see other visions as well.