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Mass/count vs. uncountable/countable

Aren't these normally referred to as countable or uncountable? Or maybe that's a regional thing; I have no idea. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 16:24, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

I know them as mass and count, FWIW.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  05:40, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Insertion test

Only the insertion test suggests that it is a proper name.—But doesn't the insertion test also suggest that coffee table is a proper name? Is it a useful test here? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 16:24, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Right. That was the first objection that occurred to me. Resistance to insertion is not a feature peculiar to proper names (note use of "names" here, not "nouns" – it also affects adjectival forms), it's simply one required by them, and is required by some other usages. It can even happen between two proper names where the second is a subset of the first – I drive a red Chevrolet Corvette not I drive a Chevrolet red Corvette. Even non-proper noun phrases like this are somewhat resistant to such insertions where the one modifier is integral to the subject and the insertion is not; they sound poetic and unnatural: I have a big, ugly, brown dog or I have an ugly, big, brown dog are natural phrases, while I have a brown, big, ugly dog and I have a big, brown, ugly dog don't sound right, because the dog's brownness is an innate trait, while a dog's size changes over time and is subjective, and its ugliness may just be a matter of grooming or opinion. All common names of taxa (not just at the species level) have this feature: all of these species are true parrots of Central America not all of these species are true Central American parrots, where the true parrots are a taxonomic family; consrast this bit of taxidermy is a true, albeit scrawny, parrot, while these others are fakes made of clay and random feathers, where "true" means "not artificial" and isn't saying anything taxonomic.

It's easy to engage in a fallacy of composition here, in which an assumption is made that because all proper names must have this indivisibility feature that all phrases that do have it must be proper names. We know that not all things with wings are bats, even though all bats are winged.  :-)

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  23:07, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

I personally don't think that the insertion test is of any use at all. Firstly, many compound nouns like coffee table behave as if they were a single word – note that the stress is on the first word (at least in my dialect). Secondly, as SMcCandlish notes, there are real if slightly vague ordering rules in English for the components of simple noun phrases. Thus small blue table is normal, whereas *blue small table is odd except in very restricted contexts (?no, the blue small table, not the red one). So the insertion test may fail because it violates these ordering rules. However, the test has been put forward by some linguists as one feature of non-prototypical proper names like White House, so I thought it should be mentioned. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:14, 21 April 2014 (UTc)

Thanks for the comments; I've now tightened up the essay to say that it's a weak test. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:38, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Species and prefixing with much/many

Proper nouns cannot be preceded by words like much or many. It seems like you can do that with species, though; "Many American robins are in that tree." It might be helpful to add some analysis about many/much prefixing in your "English names of species" section. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 16:24, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. Even something so specific as a subspecies or variety name can be used this way: I found many red-spotted newts in my garden yesterday. They seem to work with "many" and parallel constructions ("a whole bunch of", etc.), but not with "much", which only applies to mass nouns: I eat too much salt. The different noun types can even be the same phrase, but with a meaning change: I ate too much red-spotted newt; amphibian meat doesn't sit well with me.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  23:15, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

"It seems like you can do that with species" – well, be careful here. Some of those who argue that American Robin is a proper name say that it refers to the species viewed as a "individual entity". So they would say that in The American Robin is a kind of thrush, American Robin is the proper name of a species. On this view, Many American robins are in that tree is an ellipsis of something like Many American Robin birds are in that tree. However, this seems a bit implausible to me.

And of course it's not quite true that you can't use "many" with proper names; you can in the right context: There are many Janes in the company; which one did you want?

Note that with plant names which seem to be used as mass noun phrases, "much" works ok. There's too much Dog's Mercury here; There's too much Evergreen Alkanet in my garden (which there is, since one plant of this pernicious weed is too much).

So I agree that the ability to use "many" or "much" supports the idea that these are either count or mass nouns/noun phrases, not proper names, although not a "knock-down" argument. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:36, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Just species?

If species names are proper nouns, then common names of genera would be as well, right? There's no difference, is there? Human, mountain toucan, etc would all be proper names, right? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 16:24, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

The insertion test (see 2 sections above) applies to all taxa, at least. Not sure about other features of proper names; haven't thought much further on it (other stuff to do today).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  23:09, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Well, semantically this should be the case, but as noted in the essay, applying semantic tests is difficult because there's just no agreement on how to use them. Note that it used to be common to capitalize the English names of families, particularly plants: "the Lily Family", "the Orchid Family", ?"the Thrush Family". Editors do definitely add such capitalized family names to plant articles. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:42, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Really great page. At last someone who actually knows some linguistics...! (I've almost half of a Grad Dip myself but not likely to finish it and the grammar subject is one of the outstandings...! I spent two years teaching the computing component of the Grad Dip course and it just seemed sensible to do some of the units at the same time, mainly to help find out exactly what I needed to teach. But I dug out my copy of the grammar text, Beginning Morphology and Syntax by Elson and Picket ISBN 978-0883129258 and it doesn't say anything specifically helpful.)

Question 1: How about car models? Holden Statesman, Morris Major, etc.? Andrewa (talk) 04:16, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

@Andrewa: good question. Brand names are discussed in a number of linguistic sources. It's clear that grammatically very many are common nouns obeying all the expected rules. Thus when "Honda" = "Honda car/automobile", it's a count noun:

*I've got Honda. – determiner required in the singular, as in I've got a Honda or My Honda is in the garage.

Hondas are common in the UK now. – plural is fine

Others behave grammatically as mass nouns; thus like "water", "Coke" can be used as a mass noun or a count noun:

Too much Coke is bad for me. – mass noun shown by "much"

Too many Cokes are bad for me. – count noun shown by "many"

Capitalizing is simply a convention. "Hoover" in the UK is a well-known example that moved from being a capitalized brand name to being an uncapitalized common noun and indeed verb. (I regularly forget when I'm in Canada that "I'll hoover" is there an odd or even unknown use.)

I'll add this point to my last section; thanks for the prompt. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:16, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

OK... but your examples, both here and in the essay, are all nouns, consisting of one word only rather than a phrase. My examples, and the article names in dispute, are all names consisting of more than one word.

I guess you could call Holden Statesman a brand, similar to Honda or Coke... but that doesn't seem to me to be the normal English usage of the term, either. The brand there is Holden. There are multi word brands, such as Hispano-Suiza, Fisher and Paykel, and even General Motors Holden and Coca-Cola, but they seem to be treated slightly differently to car models. Anyway, the main point is that the names particularly in question in the discussion are noun phrases, whatever we call them.

I'm still digesting your essay, it goes 'way beyond my own studies (obviously, from the textbook I mentioned) so for now I can only ask possibly naive questions. Andrewa (talk) 00:00, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

I don't think the number of words does matter. Sure, single word species names will be capitalized in an article title either way, but the issue is also about running text. The Bobolink article capitalizes the name throughout. I was perhaps a little free with the term "brand name", but brand names and model names seem to me to treated very similarly. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:05, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

At university

You'd flagged *at University with a *, but in spoken British English that would be normal; the capitalization is the only "wrong" part here, on that side of the Pond. UK English has several such peculiarities, e.g. my wife's in hospital, that are ungrammatical in North American English. But that set of English variants uses the same sort of construction also, just with different particulars: our son is away in college, which is the direct equivalent of the UK our son is away at university. Many cases are cross-dialect, whichever way they run (with or without the definite article): my mother is in prison, I went to the store, but not my mother is in the prison unless a specific facility is obviously meant in the context, nor I went to store. So, I think the essay needs to account for that, and not use at University as an example, because it'll confuse and raise mental objections in any British readers who don't at first notice the capital U.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  22:51, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Tricky. "I'm at University" is different from "I'm at the University" in British English. "What do you do?" – "I'm at university". "Where are you?" – "I'm at the University."

How about this example: "I'm in Central Park" shortened to "I'm in the Park". This would, I think, not be capitalized by most contemporary British sources (I'm old fashioned!), but makes the same point as my example using "university". Peter coxhead (talk) 21:38, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Mass & count nitpicks

Mass nouns can conventionally be turned into count nouns with a change of meaning to "types of x " or "instances of x". Thus Peace between the neighboring peoples of the Middle East will be hard to achieve. and Unrelated but convergently evolved fishes fill similar niches in the waters of the world. "Peoples", "fishes" and "waters" all illustrate this here. I think these examples contradict what is said in the essay about "waters" and perhaps "peoples", too, but I'd have to go read it again to be sure.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  05:51, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

If they contradict what I wrote, I haven't explained it properly! Your examples are why strict grammarians (in which category I place myself) are only willing to classify the usage of a word in a given sentence/context and not absolutely. For example, if really pushed I would say that in Jane is here, Jane is a proper noun/name, but in There are several Janes in this room; which did you want?, Janes is not a plural proper noun/name. So the question to be answered about the English name of a species is always "in this sentence is there evidence that it is a count/mass/proper noun?" Peter coxhead (talk) 19:49, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

I've now tightened up the essay to make even clearer that I am only classifying specific uses, not nouns per se. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:48, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Bird names in particular

While I like anything that undermines the putsch to capitalize bird names on Pickyweedia, I don't really buy the distinction this piece is trying to draw between the common names of bird species and those of other spieces of organism. These two statements are entirely interchangeable: The area has two genetically distinct populations of Mexican jay, and The area has two genetically distinct populations of the Mexican jay (i.e., subspieces A and subspecies B). Over at the MOS:ORGANISMS draft I'll add a preference for the "the" version, because it's less ambiguous. I think that's why the "the-less" version isn't common on WP. It's not that the construction is wrong, it's just being intentionally avoided. The version without "the" is also easily confused with this different statement (notice the plural and where the links go this time): The area has two genetically distinct populations of Mexican jays, which any thoughtful person would rewrite as something like The area has two genetically distinct populations of jays, both of species endemic to Mexico. Anyway, the case you found really should have been "even subspecies of the American Robin", with "the" in there.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  06:22, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Actually, I'll amend my essay, because I haven't analysed the "NP1 of NP2" construction, which is quite complex. Consider a count noun, like door, used in NP2. Whether "the" is required of forbidden depends on NP1:

two kinds of door – *two kinds of the door

two parts of the door – *two parts of door

The presence or absence of "the" in NP2 is thus at least partly determined by NP1, so is not good evidence for the status of NP2. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:43, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Returning to the difference between bird names and (some) plant names, the head noun in most bird names is regularly used as a simple count noun referring to individual organisms. It's always ok to say I saw three robins, so by extension it's ok to say I saw three American Robins. Plant names like "bluebell" or "buttercup" behave in the same way: I saw three bluebells (species indeterminate), I saw three Spanish Bluebells. On the other hand, head nouns like "mercury" or "alkanet" are odd in the plural: *I saw three mercuries – I'd say something like I saw three plants of mercury or perhaps I saw three mercury plants. I think this is why in a sentence like ... is common in this area we treat Dog's Mercury differently from American Robin:

Dog's Mercury is common in this area

The American Robin is common in this area or American Robins are common in this area

However, the reason is speculation. The fact is that bird names are almost always treated grammatically in English as if they were count nouns/noun phrases, whereas some plant names are treated differently. (I haven't systematically analysed the English names of other organisms.) Peter coxhead (talk) 18:55, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

I don't know how it fits into this discussion, if at all, but for what it's worth, it is common in bird publications to use the English species name as a singular noun without an article--the idea being that the species functions as one biologically defensible unit. For example, "American Robin is found from Alaska to Oaxaca." And, "Are you looking for Connecticut Warbler? This is the right time of year." The exception, at least in the magazine I edit, is when an adjective comes before the species. For example, "Canada Warbler may be told from the congeneric Red-faced Warbler by its yellow coloration." But "Canada Warbler may be told from Red-faced Warbler by its yellow coloration." Natureguy1980 (talk) 20:12, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

interestingly, I found very few examples of this style in the sources I looked at, so your magazine may be unusual. I suspect this is an example of treating the English name of a bird as a mass rather than a common noun, but I need to think more about it. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:01, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Good page

Well done. Tony (talk) 09:59, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Tony, your approval is most appreciated. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:58, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Agree with Tony. Definitely a step in the right direction, and lots of time went into it. Thank you! Andrewa (talk) 04:39, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Question

Thanks for a very enlightening essay. Just wondering: do you see a distinction in usage: (A) between species names that are simple words, like lion, and ones that involve some descriptive component, like long-tailed tit or Przewalski's horse; (B) words that are common and in everyone's vocabulary (lion will do again) and those that are not, such as kagu? --Stfg (talk) 11:33, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

I think there's definitely a distinction in (B), i.e. between cases where the head noun is a well known word and those where it's not. It's easier for me to use plant names, because I know them much better. This distinction is, in my view, the difference between "Bluebell" (which is only conventionally not written "Blue Bell") and "Dog's Mercury" or "Evergreen Alkanet". "Bell" is a commonly used count noun, so "Bluebells" seems 'natural'. By contrast, "mercury" is only normally found as a mass noun for the element and "alkanet" is not now used so far as I know except in plant names. So neither "Dog's Mercuries" nor "Evergreen Alkanets" seem quite so natural as "Bluebells" and hence (or so I think) the names are more likely to be used as mass nouns.

However, I also suspect that we humans tend to conceptualize other animals as individuals in a way we don't so much plants – I've been thinking of adding this hypothesis to the essay. So even animal names with non-English spelling patterns, like "okapi" or "kudu", seem to be used in the plural; witness the Misplaced Pages articles. Interestingly, if you look at the ratio of singular use to plural use in Google ngram for okapi/okapis/kudu/kudus and compare it to the one for lion/lions you see that "lions" is consistently just below half as common as "lion", but both "okapis" and "kudus" are much less than half as common as "okapi" and "kudu".

I suspect that a full investigation based on usage would show a steady decline in the use of the plural as the head noun becomes less familiar and also as the organism is less likely to be conceptualized as an individual.

I don't think there's a grammatical distinction in (A), since the properties of a noun phrase, like "long-tailed tit", are those of the head noun. One of the arguments for capitalization is, of course, stronger for descriptive names, because it is one way to avoid the possible confusion between "Long-tailed Tit" and "long-tailed tit". (Oddly, the Long-tailed Tit is not a long-tailed tit, because it's not a tit!) Peter coxhead (talk) 12:53, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Regardless whether species names are proper nouns, I think the last sentence in Peter's previous comment is the best argument that could be made for maintaining capitalization of English species names in birds. Take the following very contrived sentences... "Many people do not realize that long-tailed tits are not long-tailed tits. Even though they are long-tailed, long-tailed tits are not tits because they are not in the tit family."" vs. "Many people do not realize that Long-tailed Tits are not long-tailed tits. Even though they are long-tailed, Long-tailed Tits are not tits because they are not in the tit family." Natureguy1980 (talk) 20:28, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

I think regardless of which convention we use, we ought not write sentences like that. IOW, the fact that the convention allows otherwise-ambiguous/silly sentences to be constructed does not mean we should write such sentences, so the ability to write such sentences is not a reason to choose one convention over the other! ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 20:34, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

@ErikHaugen: I entirely agree that we should try to avoid sentences which are ambiguous without capitalization. And, yes, it is usually possible with care to write so that capitals aren't needed. On the other hand, the same is true of other conventional capitalizations, like geographical features: I live in the united kingdom or The president of the united states lives in the white house are no more and no less clear than This is a long-tailed tit. In all cases, capitalization adds a degree of clarity, but isn't essential. German capitalizes all nouns so that that the visual distinction we can make between the proper name Moon and the common noun moon can't be made, but Germans manage fine. The question is not whether we can manage without capitalizing English species names – we clearly can, but whether editors should be free to capitalize for clarity and faithfulness to sources on a per-article basis just as they can choose other styles on a per article basis, such as for citations. Other than "I don't like it", the reasons not to capitalize within an article seem to be conformity to style guides (which we ignore in many other cases – how many style guides recommend logical quotation in US English?) and a desire for conformity between articles – both good reasons, of course. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:47, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Good points by both. One consideration that probably doesn't get enough air time is that sight-impaired people will not read these articles, but will have them read to them. So I agree with Erik that we should try to write in a way that doesn't depend on capitalisation. --Stfg (talk) 11:18, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

That's a very good point, one that might even change my view on this whole topic, so while it's probably off-topic to the essay I'd like to explore it.

My memory is that in many RMs, natural disambiguation using only unpronounced punctuation has been affirmed in the past. But, I can't provide any examples off the top of my head, and a few possible examples I looked at don't now use it. P!nk for example seems to have been moved to Pink (singer) with the following entry 16:51, 12 March 2007‎ Taalo (talk | contribs | block)‎ m . . (22,684 bytes) (0)‎ . . (moved P!nk to Pink (singer) over redirect: rv. please refer to the discussion page. it was decided to have the page at Pink (singer).) but the relevant (I think) move discussion now at Talk:Pink (singer)/Archive 1#Requested move was closed at 01:47, 28 October 2006 (UTC). There have been at least two other move discussions and I guess some bold moves as well.

Perhaps consensus has changed on this? Or is my memory of past RMs (which I can't now locate) faulty? Andrewa (talk) 18:19, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

See WP:DIFFCAPS. How to accommodate people with visual handicaps while allowing those with normal vision to benefit from visual information is always a tricky issue. For example, I deliberately used the "*" notation for 'incorrect' English rather than {{!xt}} because I have two colour blind colleagues who regularly remind us not to use red/green contrasts to convey information, yet the MOS makes considerable use of the contrast between {{xt}} and {{!xt}}. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:10, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

DIFFCAPS is about article titles, whereas Erik and I were discussing the writing of sentences. Titles and things like "incorrect sentence" markers are a different issue because someone reading aloud can act on them in a way that helps the listener. That's less feasible in running prose. In your essay, you write of "the conventional nature of capitalization", and to your question "What has this to do with capitalization?" you answer "not much". I agree with that: capitalization is a set of conventions. Using it to make semantic distinctions works poorly if at all, in my view. --Stfg (talk) 20:57, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes. I still see this dispute (I think it's safe to call it that rather than just a discussion) as being about article titles. I came into it via a Requested Move I closed, but it's not just for this historic reason. It seems to me that we need to focus on as specific an issue as we can, to counter the tendency several of us have (yes, I'm one, but I hope not the worst) to waffle.

The question of capitalisation in running text, together with the desire to be consistent between running text and titles, is of course relevant to this (somewhat arbitrary) focus. But we need to focus somewhere, and I see no reason to shift the focus away from article titles. There is also the more formal structure for discussing Requested Moves and Move Reviews (capitalisation helps clarity there, I think, and I couldn't resist it), which again helps to reduce the waffle factor, not always very successfully but it's a big ask. Andrewa (talk) 21:52, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Andrewa, this isn't the RFC page. --Stfg (talk) 23:43, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

I know... it's probably off-topic to the essay . We need to move this discussion somewhere more appropriate. Good point.

Those interested please comment at Misplaced Pages talk:Article titles#Visually impaired users and disambiguation, and that's probably just a start... there are several important off-topic issues raised above. Andrewa (talk) 06:34, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

@Stfg: (returning to the point) apologies if I return to essay/teaching mode. Language is primarily spoken; written language is a secondary development. The problem with writing is that some very important distinctions made in speech are lost, in particular stress and intonation. Stress I've already mentioned (the difference between "White House" and "white house"). As an intonation example, consider in The horse raced at Newmarket yesterday afternoon was sold today. In reading it can't be understood until either "and" or "was" is found. (It's a so-called "garden path sentence".) In speech when "the horse raced at Newmarket yesterday afternoon" is a noun phrase it is uttered with a relatively constant intonation which marks its connectedness, whereas when "raced" is a main verb the intonation varies.

So, yes, I agree that using capitalization to make distinctions has its limitations, as do all the other special features of written language, such as spacing between words, division into sentences, or punctuation marks (none of which were used consistently in the earliest writing systems). Good writing seeks to avoid language which is hard to interpret in the absence of spoken clues, such as stress, intonation or pause length. But that's not a justification for removing clues that can be provided, capitalization amongst them. In this respect, redundancy is helpful – provided it doesn't distract. The balance between helpfulness and distraction seems to be the nub of the RfC issue, but that's not a matter for this talk page! Peter coxhead (talk) 08:47, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Peter, please don't apologise for being in "essay/teaching mode"! This essay and talk page have been very enlightening for me, and far more valuable than an RFC that has become too politicized. Apologies if I seemed to be plugging a position on the RFC. It wasn't my intention. Above, I meant to be talking about what constitutes good writing. What you've said about that is pretty good too. Cheers, --Stfg (talk) 10:23, 27 April 2014 (UTC)