Timeline for What do you call the difference between when a verb expresses an actual state vs a potential state? [closed]
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| Jul 6 at 17:44 | comment | added | Quack E. Duck | Thanks to everyone who answered/commented! | |
| Jul 6 at 17:43 | comment | added | Quack E. Duck | @All Had Edwin Ashworth's comment about the middle voice been posted as an answer, I would have accepted it, but now the question is closed it can't be. Still, I consider the question [RESOLVED] since that seems like a perfect match. Like I suspected, it is a descriptor with some (but not wide) recognition, and is a general grammatical term, not technical jargon from another field. | |
| Jul 6 at 17:38 | comment | added | Quack E. Duck | @Lambie Oh, I see what you mean. Normally I'd just say something like "They're predicting [xyz] for this afternoon," but I thought that sounded too colloquial for writing. | |
| Jul 6 at 16:50 | history | closed |
TimR KillingTime Greybeard |
Needs details or clarity | |
| Jul 6 at 16:39 | comment | added | Lambie | It is not the "forecasted to be" that is ungrammatical. It's "There is forecasted to be". That would be like: There is announced to be. or: There is foreseen to be x. Ungrammatical. | |
| Jul 6 at 16:15 | comment | added | TimR | It's not clear how birds that eat grain but don't explode has anything more to do with capability of eating than birds that eat grain and are therefore placed in some taxonomic category. Aren't you letting the not exploding and the categorization color your sense of the verb eat? One has to do with something that has no direct bearing on the bird's life (what people call it) and the other with something that doesn't happen to the bird (it doesn't explode when it eats grain). | |
| Jul 6 at 16:15 | comment | added | Quack E. Duck | @jsw29 That is very convincing, and definitely explains the difference between the first set of examples. But, would you say it also fits for the "flying fish" sentences? | |
| Jul 6 at 16:07 | comment | added | Quack E. Duck | @Lambie I will change "forecasted" to "forecast" next edit (Edwin Ashworth convinced me with that first link), but Ngrams would disagree about it being straight-up ungrammatical in that construction: books.google.com/ngrams/… I see quite a few results for "is forecasted to be" and "is forecast to be," from published books. | |
| Jul 6 at 16:04 | comment | added | Lambie | Today there is forecasted to be a severe storm:= not grammatical in English regardless of forecasted. In flying fish and flying debris there is no change in the semantic core meaning of fly. | |
| Jul 6 at 16:04 | comment | added | jsw29 | There is definitely a distinction here but it is not between the actual and the potential. Rather it is between what is (actually) done (from time to time) by a typical, paradigmatic member of a class (but not necessarily by any particular member of it at any particular time), and what is done by some members of the class that are specifically referred to. The difference between the two sentences about birds is not in how eat works in them, but in how birds works. | |
| Jul 6 at 15:55 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | One of the uses of the simple present tense in English is 'to express habits, general truths, repeated actions or unchanging situations, emotions and wishes' [EF]. Some birds eat grain. // The continuous is used for an instantiation Some birds are/were eating the berries on the mountain ash. // But Some birds ate berries and some ate grain. is indeterminate between habitual ... and episodic (semelfactive, really). | |
| Jul 6 at 15:46 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | Google ngrams show that 'forecasted' is a rare (and hence quirky) choice. | |
| Jul 6 at 15:19 | comment | added | Quack E. Duck | @Lambie "Forecasted" is listed as an alternative past tense in the dictionary, and sounds more natural (at least to me): "forecast" sounds more formal and 'literary.' What is your opinion on the different usages of "flying fish"? I'm starting to think I should just delete the "eat" example or move it down below the "flying fish" section, since it's the "eat" sentences that seem to be causing all the confusion. | |
| Jul 6 at 15:14 | comment | added | Lambie | [correction: A severe storm is forecast for today] There's no concept here, there are just two different ideas after eat. The semantic weight of eat is not different. [to ingest a footstuff] | |
| Jul 6 at 15:13 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Jul 6 at 15:05 | answer | added | Jay | timeline score: 1 | |
| Jul 6 at 14:54 | comment | added | Quack E. Duck | @Barmar Oh, OK, then I guess it is more of a 'Linguistics' question. I don't have an account there, since it seems more for those with a full-time academic background. Since I'd consider the last example sentence in the melting chocolate comment to be an exact fit, does that make the question on-topic here too? | |
| Jul 6 at 14:51 | comment | added | Quack E. Duck | @RosieF I'm not sure how to clarify it further than by the second set of examples I already added, with the "flying fish" sentences. | |
| Jul 6 at 14:50 | comment | added | Barmar | ELL is for questions from learners -- it's for questions that would be too basic for ELU, because any native speaker would not have a problem. It's not for questions where other learners might know the answer because of insight from their native language. | |
| Jul 6 at 14:45 | comment | added | Quack E. Duck | @Barmar I'd actually originally planned on asking on ELL, since other languages probably use different forms to express this distinction, so someone there might be able to provide an interesting analysis from that perspective. I asked it here instead because I don't know of any specific examples in other languages where the two forms are separate. | |
| Jul 6 at 14:42 | comment | added | Quack E. Duck | I hadn't even considered that, because I had thought of the middle voice as being for constructions that are not explicitly reflexive but where the subject is also affected by the action, such as "They washed and dressed." | |
| Jul 6 at 14:39 | comment | added | Quack E. Duck | @Barmar Thank you for the suggestion, but I believe Edwin Ashworth has already provided the answer, with the "middle voice" comment. | |
| Jul 6 at 14:38 | comment | added | Quack E. Duck | @EdwinAshworth That "Chocolate melts at 110 degrees F" seems like a nice parallel to the "potential" constructions I was asking about, because it's referring to an intrinsic property of chocolate regardless of the actual temperature. | |
| Jul 6 at 14:38 | comment | added | Barmar | This might be a better question for Linguistics. I presume there are similar words in other languages, so it's not really a question about English. | |
| Jul 6 at 14:37 | comment | added | Quack E. Duck | "Ongoing" isn't relevant, because that would just be an aspect difference | |
| Jul 6 at 14:36 | comment | added | Quack E. Duck | @TimR The present form "do feed" in your example would be 'actual' because it's something the person actually does (regularly, habitually) and not just something they can do. | |
| Jul 6 at 12:19 | comment | added | TimR | "What do you feed your dog?" The questioner wants to know what you do regularly. Is regular behavior "actual" as you see it? Or by "actual" do you mean ongoing at the time of the utterance? | |
| Jul 6 at 12:00 | review | Close votes | |||
| Jul 6 at 16:50 | |||||
| Jul 6 at 11:52 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | I've seen the following terminology for this situation involving verb voices. Take, for instance, the verb melt: [active] 'Jill melted the ice cubes.' // [passive] 'The ice cubes were melted.' // [†ergative] 'The chocolate melted almost at once.' (episodic interpretation) // [†middle voice] 'Chocolate melts at 110 degrees F.' (typical †middle usage having to do with permanent properties of entities). see Yang. //// † Though Yang makes this distinction, many grammarians don't use this terminology. | |
| Jul 6 at 11:50 | comment | added | TimR | And they're both statements about things birds (some of them) generally do: eat grains such as rice. The simple present can make generalizations. | |
| Jul 6 at 11:43 | comment | added | TimR | I think this question actually lacks clarity but is capable of being clarified. Both of your examples are statements about something birds (some of them) actually do: eat grains such as rice. | |
| Jul 6 at 5:46 | comment | added | Rosie F | Please clarify the distinction you're trying to make. Both your first two examples refer to birds that can eat rice; they are in the present tense, but neither refers to birds that are eating rice at the time of the utterance. | |
| Jul 6 at 4:58 | comment | added | alphabet | @QuackE.Duck This is on topic and should not be closed. | |
| Jul 6 at 3:55 | comment | added | Quack E. Duck | I edited the question to remove all mention of variable names, and of constructions formed by adding the suffix -able. Hopefully it's clearer now what I was actually asking about, but if the consensus is that it's still off topic, I'll delete it since no one has answered yet. | |
| Jul 6 at 3:53 | history | edited | Quack E. Duck | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Removed a section which could be interpreted as implying I was looking for variable naming conventions, and provided what I believe is a clearer example
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| Jul 6 at 2:59 | comment | added | Quack E. Duck |
@alphabet Although the question came up in the context of programming, I was asking whether there is a more general (and not domain-specific) term for the concept. I'd already decided to use the name "flying hoglin" since ambiguity isn't actually a problem in context - like Tinfoil Hat says, no one would interpret that other than as a hoglin that can fly. This was just asked out of academic interest :) Also, I didn't come up with that sittable usage, only found it. That's why I mentioned that it wouldn't work in a more general context.
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| Jul 6 at 2:45 | comment | added | Tinfoil Hat | Flying monkeys are monkeys that [can] fly. | |
| Jul 6 at 2:18 | comment | added | Tinfoil Hat | sittable is the ability to be sat [by someone], not the ability to sit. | |
| Jul 6 at 1:27 | comment | added | alphabet | One note: naming things in programming is, officially, off-topic for this site. We can answer the first part, but it may or may not work as a good term for use in code. | |
| Jul 6 at 0:57 | comment | added | Quack E. Duck | Why is neither 'actual' nor 'capable'? | |
| Jul 6 at 0:56 | comment | added | Quack E. Duck | I'm not sure what you mean: are you saying there's no difference between a flying squirrel that is flying and one that's just perched on a tree branch? (The second could be a "sitting flying squirrel.") | |
| Jul 6 at 0:52 | comment | added | TimR | I think the distinction you've made in "birds that eat" and "birds that eat" is specious. Neither is actual. Neither is capable. | |
| Jul 6 at 0:38 | history | asked | Quack E. Duck | CC BY-SA 4.0 |