Timeline for In the phrase "Good afternoon" what type of word is "afternoon"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
16 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jun 3, 2016 at 3:34 | answer | added | Tulsi PATEL | timeline score: -1 | |
| Jun 2, 2016 at 10:42 | comment | added | Matt Fellows | The absence of a defined endpoint to afternoon could be argued to make it diectic? Is 7pm afternoon? What about 5? 4? etc. | |
| Jun 1, 2016 at 14:22 | comment | added | John Lawler | Day names are calendric, not deictic; Tuesday is still Tuesday whether it's today or not. Check out Fillmore's Deixis lectures. | |
| Jun 1, 2016 at 12:49 | comment | added | Michael Scott | The word "afternoon" is simply a noun, referring to a part of the day. No different than the word "arm" being a noun referring to a part of the body. It's the "good" portion of this expression which holds the intrigue/mystique. Etymologists appear to agree that the "good" part of good day, good morning, good afternoon, comes from the old expression "God......be with you"......or as we say now: Goodbye. All of these are conventional, polite expressions used when greeting or parting. | |
| Jun 1, 2016 at 12:27 | comment | added | Matt Fellows | @DanBron Indeed... The pedant was out pedanted ;) | |
| Jun 1, 2016 at 12:26 | comment | added | Dan Bron | @MattFellows Ah, so you were bitten by Muphry's Law? Well, I suppose they call it a law for a reason. (No, I did not misspell Murphy's; follow the link.) | |
| Jun 1, 2016 at 12:11 | comment | added | Matt Fellows | So the reason I was looking to categorise the "afternoon" in particular, rather than the entire phrase "good afternoon" was because someone sent me an email saying "Good afternoon" at 11:59 and I was being a pedant (Not to them, but to colleagues). I stated that they were a little keen on their temporal pronoun. So it's specifically the "afternoon" part that is in question, rather than "Good afternoon". | |
| Jun 1, 2016 at 12:05 | comment | added | Dan Bron | @Kris Care to counter the mini-argument I made for afternoon being deictic in my original comment? You don't have to, obviously, and we can drop it, but simply gainsaying my suggestion doesn't tell me much. | |
| Jun 1, 2016 at 12:00 | comment | added | Kris | @DanBron I don't think deictic noun has anything to do with the expression at hand. | |
| Jun 1, 2016 at 11:55 | comment | added | Dan Bron | @Kris An argument could be made that afternoon is deictic, as its semantic meaning is constant but what it denotes varies with time and context. So if you're looking for a fancy term to show off your grammatical chops, try deictic noun (but be prepared to debate it a little with anyone already familiar with deixis). | |
| Jun 1, 2016 at 11:47 | comment | added | Kris | I think afternoon. by itself, is a temporal noun; good afternoon is a phrasal exclamation. | |
| Jun 1, 2016 at 11:43 | history | edited | Matt Fellows | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jun 1, 2016 at 11:37 | comment | added | Matt Fellows | Sorry @Kris I don't know - I just called it that because it sounded sensible to me. Are you suggesting it's just a noun and there's no more specific term? | |
| Jun 1, 2016 at 11:35 | comment | added | Kris | Where's the pro- from, please? | |
| Jun 1, 2016 at 11:31 | review | First posts | |||
| Jun 1, 2016 at 12:28 | |||||
| Jun 1, 2016 at 11:28 | history | asked | Matt Fellows | CC BY-SA 3.0 |