Language desk
< January 22	<< Dec \| January \| Feb >>	January 24 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

January 23[edit]

Scoff who may[edit]

I recently had occasion to use the phrase in the subject heading, and it got me thinking about the structure. The verb scoff is clearly in the subjunctive mood. But what sort of subjunctive?

My first thought is that it's a hortative, as in let him scoff who may. But it occurs to me that, alternatively, it might be the same as come in come rain or come shine — or is that also a hortative?

Secondly, what about may? If we replaced it with a verb where you could tell, would it also be subjunctive? So for example, would you say scoff who scoff or scoff who scoffs?

And what if you change the second verb, so that the scoffer is no longer the subject? Scoff whom it please or scoff whom it pleases?

And finally, if you were to use the subjunctive in the last two cases, what kind of subjunctive would it be? --Trovatore (talk) 08:26, 23 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

As I've said before, it's very very doubtful whether there's a coherent synchronic morphological subjunctive conjugation in modern English. There are a few isolated constructions of limited productivity (mainly "If I/he were" and "I insist that he be removed from the room), and some archaic relics with zero productivity ("howbeit" etc.). There would be nothing to connect these various minor anomalies together without diachronic information from earlier historical stages of the language, so it's very difficult to say that any meaningful morphological "subjunctive" exists in modern English at all... AnonMoos (talk) 20:54, 23 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

OK, your opinion is noted. Any views from those who don't reject the premise? --Trovatore (talk) 20:57, 23 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

(To be explicit, I am not interested in restricting to "synchronic" or "morphological". Diachronic is fine; cross-linguistic is fine, deep structure is also fine.) --Trovatore (talk) 21:07, 23 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If you're not taking morphology into account, then you're ignoring verb-conjugation inflections, so that "subjunctive" becomes a somewhat free-floating semantic term, not necessarily tied to any particular specific concrete verb forms... AnonMoos (talk) 08:43, 24 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That's fine. Now, do you have any response to the actual question? --Trovatore (talk) 09:06, 24 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Since your question is apparently based on using the word "subjunctive" in a sense rather different from its most usual meaning, it therefore required a certain amount of clarification. AnonMoos (talk) 15:05, 24 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The answer is that the phrase is idiomatic, which means it resists useful grammatical analysis. There are older varieties of English which may have had constructions that were common like this, but that is not the language we speak today. This sort of Literary language is purely idiomatic in modern English; consider phrases such as come what may which dictionaries clearly define as "idiomatic". This construction you used is just a parallel construction based on that well known idiom. --Jayron 32 14:57, 24 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Come on, you can do better than that. Get all diachronic and analyze the structure. I don't care whether it's productive today. Or don't; maybe you're not interested and that's fine, but maybe someone else is. --Trovatore (talk) 19:47, 24 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I thought about not insulting you by actually quoting an article you would just read, but since you can't be bothered to read, I guess I'm going to have to quote the source directly. "In linguistics, idioms are usually presumed to be figures of speech contradicting the principle of compositionality... Arriving at the idiomatic reading from the literal reading is unlikely for most speakers. What this means is that the idiomatic reading is, rather, stored as a single lexical item that is now largely independent of the literal reading." And later in the article "The non-compositionality of meaning of idioms challenges theories of syntax. The fixed words of many idioms do not qualify as constituents in any sense...The fixed words of [idioms] do not form a constituent in any theory's analysis of syntactic structure." Or idioms cannot be analyzed. QED. --Jayron 32 05:56, 26 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it's your assertion that this is a non-analyzable idiom. I don't think it is; I've given a couple of potential ways of analyzing it. If you don't care to engage on that level, no one is making you, but it's kind of boring to see you keep repeating the same party line.

If you feel like playing along and seeing where it takes you, pretend I'm asking the question in 1850, when the relevant constructions are more common than they are today. --Trovatore (talk) 06:56, 26 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Fair point. Mea culpa. --Jayron 32 11:48, 26 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the discussion of the meaning of “subjunctive mood”, when morphological inflections are not involved the phrase “modal verb” and the noun “modality” are used. You might find your answer in English modal verbs or Linguistic modality. Loraof (talk) 16:56, 24 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't say morphology wasn't involved. You can tell "scoff" is in the subjunctive because it's not "scoffs", even though the subject ("who") is third-person singular. It's certainly not a modal verb.

I said I didn't want to restrict to morphology. Sometimes you can tell, sometimes you can't.

So for example it is important that he go and it is important that he goes are both grammatical sentences, but they mean different things. The second presumes that he does in fact go, and expresses the importance of that fact. The first makes no commitment at all as to whether he goes, but expresses that he'd better. This is one use of the English subjunctive, and you can distinguish them morphologically.

Now, what do we do with it is important that I go? Now, you can't distinguish the two senses by morphology. But both senses are still available, and depending on which one I mean, the sentence is either in the indicative or in the subjunctive, even though morphologically they're identical. --Trovatore (talk) 19:47, 24 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Please understand that "scoff" is an infinitive, not a subjunctive. The verb of the sentence is "may" - the non-idiomatic form is "whoever may scoff", from which you will see that it is a normal indicative. 86.169.56.163 (talk) 20:13, 24 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think so. "Who may" is a relative clause which is the subject of "scoff". That's how I read it, anyway.

I suppose your construction is another possibility. But you couldn't do that with scoff whom it please to scoff, which sounds correct to me. --Trovatore (talk) 20:16, 24 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe one way to analyze “Scoff who may” is that “who may” = “who may (scoff)” is a subordinate clause serving as the subject of the main clause, whose verb “scoff” (at the beginning of the sentence) is in the imperative mood. Loraof (talk) 00:04, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if it's an imperative, it's a third-person imperative, which is one kind of subjunctive. --Trovatore (talk) 01:22, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think the article is on rather shaky ground when it talks about challenging "theories of syntax". The syntax is perfectly regular, it's just that the words do not have the meaning you expect. For example, my big German dictionary has examples of idiomatic usage for practically every entry. The grammar is impeccable, but each example has to be individually translated. 92.19.172.194 (talk) 15:46, 26 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think that the "may" in this case is not "idiomatic" but uses the normal archaic sense of "have the ability" which then makes perfect sense. "If anyone has the ability to scoff at this, let him do so." Collect (talk) 15:22, 27 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

But who doesn't have the ability to scoff at something? Not saying it's a good thing, but we all have the ability to steal, murder, commit arson etc. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:25, 28 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Chinese to POJ[edit]

Hello, can someone tell me what this is in POJ (for a new article I'm writing):

三鶯線

Thanks! Gmc600 (talk) 09:39, 23 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a reason you don't think it is the Sanying Line? That is a real rail in Taipei. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 17:38, 23 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think Gmc600 wants to know how to write Sanying Line in POJ. As it's a name, you should be able to read it as it is (according to the dictionary). My guess would be saⁿ-eng-sòaⁿ. Alex Shih (talk) 17:57, 23 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]