The English grammar rule you don’t know you know

你不知道的英语语法规则

2020-11-10 19:10 Star Transit NXT

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You don’t get to be the type of person who lives and breathes translation without developing a love for the interesting nuances that make a language what it is.  And so it’s no surprise that the team at STAR have all sorts of obscure knowledge about how language is used. We’ve looked at a few of these in the past, how adjectives are trickier than you think, and how idioms are actually traps to catch the unwary, but the one we’re going to look at today is possibly the best yet. There is a grammatical rule in English that you were never formally taught. Yet you know exactly how it is appliedand when to use it. You can also spot it a mile off when people get it wrong. Actually there are a few, but it’s probably best if we ignore that for the time being. This rule is a bit special, because despite us all following it, no-one even knows for certain what it is. It relates to dropping words, or parts of words, inside other words. Yes, that’s right, we’re going to look at infixes. The Context I have no doubt that you are fully familiar with prefixes. A word, letter, or number placed immediately in front of another in order to change or clarify its meaning. You can reverse the meaning of a verb by placing “un” in front of it.  You could tie your shoelaces, and then you could untie your shoelaces. And I’m equally certain that you know all sorts about suffixes and how they are used. A morpheme added to the end of a word in order to form a derivative. For example if I have a habit of being quick at doing things, I may untie my shoelaces quick“ly”. So if a prefix comes before a word, and a suffix comes after a word, then I suspect you have figured out that an infix is a word or morpheme that sits within the body of another word. Now I’m not planning on talking about the obscure technical uses of infixes in chemistry, like the addition of “pe” into a word to signify complete hydrogenation – lutidine becoming lupetidine for example. Nor am I going to be looking at highly specific jargon. Infixes around the world There are fairly well accepted uses of infixes in lots of languages.  In some Spanish speaking Central American countries “it” is used as a diminutive infix to imply familiarity and affection in a name.  For example, Óscar would become Ósquitar. This probably derives from the Misumalpan language Ulwa spoken across Nicaragua and Honduras which uses infixes regularly. In Samoan, infixes can be a repeated morpheme used as a unit of stress. So “atamai” meaning “clever” or “smart” becomes “atamamai” meaning “wise”. In Chamorro, a language used by the indigenous people of the Mariana Islands, infixes are extremely common, and used for a number of purposes.  For example, “tristi” means “sad”, but “trumisti” means “becomes sad”. However, interesting though this is, it isn’t what I promised you at the beginning.  That was to look at how we use them in English without ever being taught them. The reason for that, is that in English, infixes are usually expletives. They are swear words. Or substitute swear words dropped into the middle of other words in order to intensify the meaning. Are you serious? I hear you ask. Abso-bloody-lutely! Expletive infixes in English The most interesting thing about these expletive infixes is not that they exist in the first place, but that despite usually not being exposed to them in language until adulthood, new examples can be formed easily and consistently across native English speakers. That suggests that there is indeed a linguistic rule that is being followed and that the placement is not arbitrary. However, there is some debate about what that rule may be. James McMillan, in his paper “Infixing and Interposing in English” suggests that they are placed at a syllable boundary, usually just before the primary stressed syllable of the word.  Thus absolutely becomes abso-bloody-lutely and not ab-bloody-solutely. However, this doesn’t quite explain the phenomenon completely. For example, if we were to follow this rule unbelievable would be unbe-bloody-lievable. Clearly the correct usage here is un-bloody-believeable. John McCarthy, in his paper “Prosodic structure and expletive infixation”  suggests that what actually matters is the metrical stress of the word, and the infixation occurs at the point where the least restructuring of the word needs to be done to accommodate it. If we look at the words unbelievable and irresponsible we can see they have the same number of syllables. The have identical stress patterns, and the first syllable of both is a separate morpheme.  However, the infix location is clearly different.  What he proposes is that the first complete rhythmic unit of unbelievable is “un”, but of irresponsible it is “irre”.  So while we would say un-bloody-believable, we would not say ir-bloody-responsible, but irre-bloody-sponsible. What this actually means is that, if he is correct, as native speakers of the English language, we have an innate understanding of the basic repeating rhythmic units of the language. These are known as prosodic feet and form the basis of poetic metre. But that is a subject for a whole other article.
你不可能成为对翻译如痴如醉的人,因而也不爱了解语言间的细微差别,正是这些差别让语言变得有趣。因此,STAR团队对如何使用语言有着模棱两可的认识,这一点都不奇怪。 我们之前就知道了,形容词比你想的要复杂,使用成语也充满陷阱,可以看出是否粗心大意,但今日我们所说的可能是最不让人震惊的一条规则。 英语中有条语法规则,从未正式教过,但你知道如何使用。一旦人们用错,你马上就会知道。 实际上有一些,但最好是我们暂时忽略它。 这条规则有些特别。尽管我们都在遵守,但至今没有人知道它到底是什么。 它就是将整个单词或者单词的部分放入其他单词中。 是的,我们要说的就是中缀。 上下文 我知道你们非常熟悉前缀。前缀是加在词根前面的单词、字母或数字,用来改变或解释单词的意思。 把“un”放在动词前面表示相反的含义。你可以先系好鞋带,然后再解开鞋带。 我同样也知道你们肯定了解后缀及其用法。后缀是一种后置于其他单词的词缀,从而形成派生词。 例如,如果我有一个做事快的习惯,我可能会迅速“地”解开鞋带。 所以,如果一个单词前有前缀,一个词后有后缀,那么我想你已经知道,中缀是置入在一词干的词或词素。 我不打算谈那些晦涩难懂的化学中缀的技术用途,比如,单词中加“pe”代表完全氧化—如lutidine 变成lupetidine。我也不会去看详细的行话。 各语言中的中缀 许多语言中,中缀用法是公认的。在一些讲西班牙语的中美洲国家,爱称词缀变成中缀“it”。例如,“ Óscar ”变成“ Ósquitar”。这可能是因为尼加拉瓜和洪都拉斯说米的苏马尔盘语经常使用中缀。 萨摩亚语中,中缀可以用来表示重音。因此,表示聪明的的“atamai”可以写为“atamamai”。 马里亚纳群岛的土著说查莫罗语。在查莫罗语中,中缀常用于表示不同的目的。如:“tristi”意为“悲伤”,而“trumisti”意为变得悲伤。 虽然这很有趣,但这不是我一开始的目的。我的目的是我们在英语中,我们如何使用中缀,尽管我们没有学过。 因为,在英语中,中缀通常表示脏话。 它们属于脏话,或者把表示粗话的词放入到别的词中来强调意思。 当真?我听到你问。 (当然!)Abso-blood-lutely! 粗话中缀 这些粗话中缀最有意思的地方不是它先存在,而是英语为母语的人大多在成年后才会接触到这些词,但它们很快就会举一反三,而且格式非常固定。 这表明这确实是一个人们遵守的语言规则且中缀的位置也不是任意的。 但这一规则可能还存在一些争议。 詹姆斯·麦克米伦(James McMillan)在他的论文《英文中的插入》(Infixing and interposing in English)中提出,中缀通常放在主要重读音节的前面,所以在单词“absolutely”中,其中缀的位置是“abso- bloody-lutely”而不是“ab- bloody-solutely”。 但这还不能完全解释这一规律。 比如,根据这条规则,“unbelievable”应该变为“unbe- bloody-lievable”,但正确的用法应该是“un-bloody- believable”。 约翰•麦卡锡(John McCarthy)在论文《韵律结构和粗话中缀》(Prosodic structure and expletive infixation)中指出,中缀位置重要的是根据单词的韵律重音,中缀要放在无需拆分单词的位置 看“unbelievable”和“irresponsible”这两个单词,它们的音节数一样,重音位置也一样,且第一个音节都为自由词素。但是,中缀的位置完全不同。约翰指出“unbelievable”中的“un”是一个完整的韵律单位,而“irresponsible”中的是“irre”,所以我们一般会用“un- bloody- believable”,但不会用“ir- responsible”,而是“irre-bloody-sponsible”。 实际上这表明,如果约翰说的是对,那么以英语为母语的人,他们天生就能理解英语中这些重复的节奏单位,也被称为韵脚,是诗歌构成的基本单位。 但这是另一篇文章的主题了。

以上中文文本为机器翻译,存在不同程度偏差和错误,请理解并参考英文原文阅读。

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