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Re: The English Language

Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2018 1:11 pm
by soheil_hooshdaran
Carl Hibbard wrote:
Thu Feb 08, 2018 10:26 pm
MJMcCready wrote:
Thu Feb 08, 2018 4:01 pm
I certainly hope so, he has been taking advantage of the courtesy shown on this site for far too long. Why others continue to put up with it I don't know.
It’s a boring thread that could mainly be googled but it can be ignored.
I had already googled it but didn't find 'public notary'. I don't want to bother others either.

Re: The English Language

Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2018 6:48 pm
by IM Jack Rudd
The opening paragraphs of the Wikipedia article on "notary public":
A notary public (or notary or public notary) of the common law is a public officer constituted by law to serve the public in non-contentious matters usually concerned with estates, deeds, powers-of-attorney, and foreign and international business. A notary's main functions are to administer oaths and affirmations, take affidavits and statutory declarations, witness and authenticate the execution of certain classes of documents, take acknowledgments of deeds and other conveyances, protest notes and bills of exchange, provide notice of foreign drafts, prepare marine or ship's protests in cases of damage, provide exemplifications and notarial copies, and perform certain other official acts depending on the jurisdiction. Any such act is known as a notarization. The term notary public only refers to common-law notaries and should not be confused with civil-law notaries.

With the exceptions of Louisiana, Puerto Rico, Quebec, whose private law is based on civil law, and British Columbia, whose notarial tradition stems from scrivener notary practice, a notary public in the rest of the United States and most of Canada has powers that are far more limited than those of civil-law or other common-law notaries, both of whom are qualified lawyers admitted to the bar: such notaries may be referred to as notaries-at-law or lawyer notaries. Therefore, at common law, notarial service is distinctly different from the practice of law, and giving legal advice and preparing legal instruments is forbidden to lay notaries such as those appointed throughout most of the United States of America.

Re: The English Language

Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2018 8:49 pm
by E Michael White
Michael Farthing wrote:
Fri Feb 09, 2018 8:52 am
Umm.. Yes that was alluded to in this boring thread not long ago! :-)
Is the word "boring" a gerundive in that sentence ? Some don't think a gerundive exists in ECF English or ancient BCF English..

Re: The English Language

Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2018 9:25 pm
by MJMcCready
Technically it is a participle from the verb 'to bore' but it functions as an adjective. English is rather quirky and there are examples where this isn't the case, such as 'balding' as there is no verb 'to bald'. Adjectives should, in principle precede a noun and they shouldn't follow a verb but English is rather complex, and the sentences 'I am good', 'He is annoying' are okay because the conjugation 'to be' is one of the few verbs that permits them.

Re: The English Language

Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2018 9:30 am
by Michael Farthing
Then I shall coin the verb by back formation and affirm that my head is struggling to decide whether it should bald faster than its hair greys.

Re: The English Language

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2018 9:34 pm
by E Michael White
MJMcCready wrote:
Sun Feb 11, 2018 9:25 pm
Technically it is a participle from the verb 'to bore' but it functions as an adjective.
I don't think I agree with you on that. Functioning as an adjective makes it a gerundive. Words ending in "ing" are not always participles; it is the use that determines its type. "ing" words can be gerunds, gerundives, participles, verbs or nouns depending on usage.

Re: The English Language

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2018 10:06 pm
by MJMcCready
Well gerundive is an outdated term, you need to clarify what you mean. -ing is added to a verb which may then change to either a noun, or gerund as its called, or an adjective. The base form of the verb is a participle but yes it does change and naturally there are exceptions such as morning and ceiling to name some of the more obvious. The inflection -ing is one of many that didn't fair very well over the history of English but it can clearly be found in Olde English in various forms.

Re: The English Language

Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2018 3:43 pm
by Michael Farthing
H W Fowler expresses this view:
The English adjectives formed in -ble from verbs, like lovable, might well enough be called gerundives from their similarity to the Latin gerundive; but they are not in practice so called, and the word gerundive has accordingly no proper function in English grammar
So: "This allegedly boring thread has now indeed been demonstrated by recent contributions to be eminently borable" might conceivably be deemed to contain a gerundive [properly used predicatively and not attributively].

Personally, I would prefer -worthy to -ble and assert that the topic has shown itself to be thoroughly boreworthy.

In any event, a gerundive should not be confused with a participle used as an adjective on the spurious grounds that the English present participle used as a noun happens to be the English method of expressing the concept of a Latin gerund.

Re: The English Language

Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2018 4:53 pm
by MJMcCready
Fowler the grammarian has been derided by a great many for obvious reasons. He fits into the category of writing to show why someone is wrong rather than expressing a genuine interest in language itself. Things have moved on quite a bit since then, syntactic drift is accepted as a recurring theme of all major languages, and its been that way for a few decades now. All west-germanic languages have examples of gerunds stretching back well over one thousand years, its an over-simplification to claim its a more recent latin concept, olde English, Frisian and old German all have them nor is it a criticism for the aforementioned reason.

Re: The English Language

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2018 7:54 pm
by soheil_hooshdaran
What's the difference between 'gaffe' and 'blunder'?

Re: The English Language

Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2018 11:23 am
by Barry Sandercock
A gaffe is a blunder, but it is a social or diplomatic or embarrassing blunder. Whereas a blunder is just a blunder.

Re: The English Language

Posted: Sat Mar 10, 2018 7:50 am
by soheil_hooshdaran
So it only differs in being social?

Re: The English Language

Posted: Sat Mar 10, 2018 10:32 am
by Barry Sandercock
More often it means embarrassing blunder.

Re: The English Language

Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2018 12:54 pm
by soheil_hooshdaran
What does 'storied mean in:
We all know of Kramnik's famous mate-in-one blunder against Deep Fritz in 2006, and of Fischer's inexplicable ...Bxh2 against Spassky in the first round of their storied 1972 World Championship match,

Re: The English Language

Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2018 1:11 pm
by Ian Thompson
soheil_hooshdaran wrote:
Sun Mar 11, 2018 12:54 pm
What does 'storied mean in:
We all know of Kramnik's famous mate-in-one blunder against Deep Fritz in 2006, and of Fischer's inexplicable ...Bxh2 against Spassky in the first round of their storied 1972 World Championship match,
"often spoken of or written about"

It's a rarely used word in English.