User talk:Nwallins

Grammar?

In the sentence

The conventional mantra that "correlation does not imply causation" is treated in the article titled spurious relationship, which see.

you removed the last two words. I don't have any major problem with that, but I don't understand why you used the word "grammar" in your edit summary. Using the phrase "which see" in a reference work is pretty standard, isn't it? And I don't see what could be considered ungrammatical about it. Michael Hardy 20:56, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Put it back, by all means. I've never come across that convention. I thought it was broken English. JunkCookie 17:24, Aug 6, 2004 (UTC)

Actually, I now think that maybe it's better off not being there, since the context is the web rather than the printed page. In printed encyclopedias, it serves to notify the reader that an article exists; on the web, one can see that there's a clickable link, so the verbal notice is rather redundant. Michael Hardy 17:32, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It's a funny little phrase. I still don't think it is grammatically correct English. Is 'see' an imperative as you used it? Are there implied or understood words? I'm curious, now. :-) JunkCookie 22:34, Aug 6, 2004 (UTC)

See is imperative. Which is the object of the verb see. The expression is commonplace in encyclopedias. In older encyclopedias one sees the abbreviation q.v., which is Latin, I think for quid vis or something like that, meaning the same thing. An article may say:

Julius Caesar had a relationship with Cleopatra (q.v.).

and the letters q.v. indicated that Cleopatra was the title of another article in the same encyclopedia. Michael Hardy 20:59, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

So, to get completely pedantic, that makes our funny little phrase a run-on sentence, does it not? We have a full sentence (The conventional mantra that "correlation does not imply causation" is treated in the article titled spurious relationship), followed by a comma, and then another full sentence ([you] see which). It seems to me that if you want to make a compound sentence out of those two full sentences, you would technically need a conjunction after the comma -- either that or parenthesize as in the latin above. Am I missing something? JunkCookie 22:34, Aug 6, 2004 (UTC)

I don't see that it's a run-on sentence. "Yesterday I bought a dog, a large and fierce animal, which is now guarding my house." Is that a run-on sentence, for the same reason? Michael Hardy 22:48, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Nope, because there is only one full sentence (ie having a subject and predicate, at minimum). The subject is 'I', and the predicate is 'bought a dog', and the rest of the sentence modifies 'dog'. The rest of the sentence does not contain another predicate. In the 'which see' case, we have two full sentences: Subject1 = 'the conventional mantra'; Predicate1 = 'is treated'; Subject2 = you[understood]; Predicate2 = 'see'; An analogous (run-on) sentence to the 'which see' case is: My stomach is empty, feed me. <-- gramatically incorrect. AFAIK, it would be grammatically correct (though improper and incoherent) to say 'My stomach is empty, and feed me.'. Better yet would be 'My stomach is empty. Feed me.' or something along those lines. A simple comma cannot connect two sentences. Proper connectors include semicolon, comma + conjunction, hypen, period, etc. JunkCookie 23:08, Aug 6, 2004 (UTC)

OK, "I bought a dog, which you can see."

"I bought a dog" is a sentence. "You can see it." is a sentence. Do you know the word "clause"? A clause is a complete sentence that is a part of a larger complete sentence. If you say "I was here before you got here", the clause "You got here" is a complete sentence. "Before" is (in this case) a subordinating conjunction (used in a somewhat different way "before" can be a preposition or an adverb). Michael Hardy 00:23, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'm with you 100%. I'm rusty on the terminology, but 'which' in the first example and 'before' in the second are both valid 'connectors' (my terminology), whereas a mere comma is not. "My stomach is empty until you feed me" - valid. "My stomach is empty, (you) feed me" - invalid. Back to the subject at hand -- I am 100% convinced that ending any valid English sentence with ", which see." creates an invalid sentence, gramatically speaking, though it may be a traditional construction. JunkCookie 03:12, Aug 7, 2004 (UTC)

F.O.R.

Michael, just checked out your article on FOR. My mom happens to be a member of FOR, and good friends with Martin. Are you based in Atlanta? Do you participate? She's a member of another philosphy group or two, and I've been to a couple get-togethers. Not sure if any were FOR-specific, though. Small world.. Reply on my User_talk:JunkCookie page JunkCookie 00:08, Aug 7, 2004 (UTC)

No -- but I have a copy of Martin Cowan's book. I haven't actually read all of it; I've skipped around in it. (For now I'm in Minneapolis.) Michael Hardy 00:19, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)