Timeline for An adjective meaning “present at the place in question”
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
10 events
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| Apr 25, 2023 at 15:37 | comment | added | J D | @dbmag9 In short, your idiolect is one member of a fuzzy group of a dialect which is one aspect of a fuzzy group of a language, so I'd be cautious drawing too much certainty of what unnatural and clunky is by presuming your idiolect is somehow more accurate than other peoples'. That's why usage panels are composed of many people, and not just one. Language is socially constructed knowledge. | |
| Apr 25, 2023 at 15:32 | comment | added | J D | I live on the Southside of Chicago, and cockneyed English sounds at times baffling unlike English at all, so it's very unnatural to me. But were I from London, I'm sure the idiom that I'm comfortable understanding from the housing projects here in the city would be equally unnatural. | |
| Apr 25, 2023 at 15:31 | comment | added | J D | "unnatural and clunky" is largely prescriptivist and somewhat ego-centric sounding, and seems to be ignorant of the vast range of dialect that English is subject to, from the constructions from Scots that bleeds into English, to Indian-isms, to literate constructions one often finds in obscure books in distinct language communities. | |
| Apr 25, 2023 at 15:29 | comment | added | J D | @dbmag9 Well, you're certainly entitled to your impressions. All I can say is that modern English ranges from Shakespearean English in which place "visages are countenanced" to the Victorian elaboration of American authors like Emerson's largely semi-colon and colon cobbled-together sesquipedalia, to the curt grammar of Strunk, White, and Hemingway. The word is obviously in the dictionary, and given all of the British English literature I've read like that of Jane Eyre or Return of the Native, all I can say is it sounds perfectly natural to me to use attendant in that sense... | |
| Apr 24, 2023 at 22:58 | comment | added | dbmag9 | @JD I understand the difference but I wouldn't call your examples bookish; I would call them unnatural and clunky. From a good native writer I would suspect an autocorrect or editing error; from a writer I didn't know I would suspect they learned English as a foreign language. | |
| Apr 24, 2023 at 14:47 | comment | added | J D | @dbmag9 Personally, it seems redundant to me in minutes to point out that someone who is asking a question at a meeting is in attendance unless there's participation from someone teleconferencing? The shortest way to tackle the minutes would be to say 'Bob asked a question' to be short and specific in the general case. | |
| Apr 24, 2023 at 14:45 | comment | added | J D | @dbmag9 No doubt the language is bookish. You won't hear it in the county jail. But there's a difference in meaning between attendant (sense: one who attends) and attentive (sense: one who pays attention). Not all attendees are attentive, in which case you could say confusingly 'Not all attendees are attendant' if by attendant you use the alternative sense of attendant that means attentive. :D | |
| Apr 24, 2023 at 13:14 | comment | added | dbmag9 | I would find the first two examples unusual enough that I would guess it was supposed to be 'An attentive employee...'. | |
| Apr 23, 2023 at 16:53 | comment | added | Barmar | Note that "attending" gets an ideosyncractic meaning when it modifies "physician". | |
| Apr 23, 2023 at 1:24 | history | answered | J D | CC BY-SA 4.0 |