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Iversen’s Multiconfused Log (see p.1!)

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Iversen
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 Message 3617 of 3959
23 May 2014 at 1:38pm | IP Logged 
Thanks to Lassus for the corrections, which almost certainly were warranted. My error checking in Russian under time constraints clearly isn't top notch.

Apart from that I have written about the construction "it is not allowed to" in the thread about misused English words in EU documents. My conclusion there was the following:

Quote:
"it is not permitted to" (without any further restrictions) occurs 651.000.000 times. I have only checked the first forty hits, but among these no less than 12 were from internet pages which explains Sharia laws. Two of these used 'it' with a specific reference, and apart from one ambiguous example these were the only ones to do so - and I suspect they quoted the same dubious Islamic source.

Among the rest at least 6 were from 'foreign' homepages, 9 were from computer pages and 5 others were found on language related pages, which all agreed that the use of the construction with a dummy "it" isn't allowed. Which is patently wrong, given that ALL examples with the construction apart from two (maybe three) represent the impersonal use of "it" - not in a passive construction, as sometimes claimed, but rather with "it" as a dummy pronoun and "allowed" as a subject predicative.

So the correct rule seems to be: avoid the construction, but if you DO decide to use it then "it" should be used as a dummy, NOT with a distinct reference.


I was puzzled by the extremely large number of Islamic hits so I tried to limit the search to pages from Great Britain, but to no avail: out of the first 10 results 6 now were Islamic and 2 clearly from foreigners with a limited knowledge of English grammar. One of these two is worth quoting because it is a rare case of "it" with a regular reference (the stinking oriental fruit durian):

"But it is not allowed to be brought to Public Transporation worrying it might cause discomfort for other passangers".

Apart from this experiment the first forty hits were as follows (reordered to put them into groups):


'GRAMMAR NAZI' PAGES:

Is it correct to say: "It is not allowed to park here"? Is it better to say: "You are not allowed to park here"? Thank you (Wordreference)

But "Is it allowed to smoke here?" or "It is allowed to smoke here" sounds wrong to my ears. I note however that this construction has been used a lot on the web, often by non-native speakers

Is this grammatically correct?It is not allowed to smoke here.? (…)It is grammatically incorrect.

My grammar book says the verb 'allow' cannot be used in a passive structure when the subject is 'It'. For example, (a) It is not allowed to smoke in the (...)

It is not allowed to offer or sell the shares of the Company in the USA or to U.S.
citizens (as defined in Regulation S of U.S. Securities Act from 1933) (…) Linguee Wörterbuch



ISLAMIC PAGES WITH NON-DUMMY "IT":

It is not allowed to enact a general law that limits the freedom of spouses in
having children.

Almost all the scholars including Shaykh Ibn Baaz, Council of the Senior
Scholars [of Saudi Arabia] agree that it is not allowed to take birth control pills (
Fataawa ...

I have read on your site that the Prophet SAWS peace and blessings of Allaah be
upon him forbade fasting on Saturdays. What is the reason for this prohibition

The scholars have stated that the reason why it is not allowed to dye the hair
black is because of the deception involved, as it makes a person appear to be

It is not allowed to enact a general law that limits the freedom of spouses in
having children. It..

If it is not allowed to imitate the Christians in things that really are part of their religion
- but not part of our religion - then how about things which they have

It is not allowed to open specialist clincs for Ruqya treatment

Similarly, it is not allowed to steal, even

This one is Jahmee, it is not allowed to pray behind him!

It is not allowed to take or give money with interest


COMPUTER BUFF EXAMPLES WITH NON-DUMMY "IT":

It is not allowed to use other people's email addresses or false email addresses

Exception while property mapping at
property path "positions":It is not allowed to map property "2

Exception while property mapping at property path "":It is not
allowed to map property "badproperty". You need to use ...

It is not allowed to sit an account and use it just to push other accounts

Assignability. It is not allowed to sub-license, assign, or transfer your licenses to
anyone.

It is not allowed to use other services (e.g. via Telnet, remote execution, etc.)
without preliminary permission from the owner of the system

Android: what does “it is not allowed to update UI from a non-ui thread” mean?

It is not allowed to create an interface on external…

Error: Jump in or outside of an exception block: It is not allowed to jump in or
outside of an exception block like try..finally..end;. For example, the following
code ...


NON NATIVE EXAMPLES WITH NON-DUMMY "IT" (non exhaustible):

There are also tough requirements so that it is not allowed to present any risk.
Der findes også strenge krav om, at det ikke får lov til at indebære nogen risiko (Bab.la for Danish)   

It is not allowed to walk outside the path through the settlement area during the
summer months. Thus (Greenland)     

Parking: It is not allowed to park beside his caravan or tent (Truckstop Denmark)

Some people think it is needed in research, meanwhile others think it is not allowed
to sacrifice animals for sciences because they are treated badly during their lifetime

It is not allowed to put up tents on the fire access roads or within the safety
distance from the high-voltage lines

It is not allowed to smoke in the public (you can get a fine, but usually just a
reminder from the policeman), (Amsterdam)


OTHER EXAMPLES WITH NON-DUMMY "IT":

It is not allowed to smoke in the rooms or even...

I'm so sorry, but it is not allowed to play with the lionbaby, the lionmother wouldn't let you.

It is not allowed to bring your own food & drinks or decorations.

(in) July it is not allowed to arrest Anybody   (Crazy laws)

Except in special cases like the protection of young forest or biotopes it is not
allowed to fence in forest areas. (en.wikipedia.org)



THE ONE AND ONLY NON-ISLAMIC EXAMPLE WITH AN AMBIGUOUS "IT"

Cardiff's Olympic rings recycled after city told it is not allowed to keep them


ISLAMIC EXAMPLES WITH NON-DUMMY "IT":

If a fish is caught, kept in a water container, then released and it died in the water, it is not allowed to be consumed. It is abominable to go fishing on Friday

If a fish is caught, kept in a water container, then released and it died in the water, it is not allowed to be consumed. It is abominable to go fishing on Friday


Edited by Iversen on 24 May 2014 at 4:07pm

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Doitsujin
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 Message 3618 of 3959
24 May 2014 at 12:27am | IP Logged 
If you want to add yet another dimension to your "it is not allowed to" research, check out Google books NGram Viewer, which allows you to search all books digitized by Google.

For example: it's not allowed to vs it's not permitted to shows a clear preference for "it's not permitted to," however, the results for the older, non-contracted forms are slightly different: it is not allowed to vs it is not permitted to.

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Iversen
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 Message 3619 of 3959
24 May 2014 at 3:35pm | IP Logged 
I may spend a lot of time trying out that NGram Viewer - but not today. Otherwise I fear I might be totally engulfed in the statistical study of weird English expressions.

FR: En ce moment je regarde un programme sur TV5 Monde de la ville de Dinant, où l'on a mentionné que le coeur d'un certain Bertrand de Guesclin se trouve dans la cathédrale de la ville, tandis le reste dudit seigneur se trouve a Saint-Denis (comme le seul vestige d'une personne non royale - et comme on sait, les corps royaux ont largement été jetés a la poubelle durant la Révolution, sauf peut-être la tête du roi Henri IV, qui aurait été volé). On a soutenu que tout le monde connaisse cette personne, et qu'il soit été un grand héro. Mais comme d'habitude l'histoire est écrit par les vainqueurs - les Bretons n'ont aucune raison particulière pour aimer M. Guesclin et les Anglais encore moins, à moins qu'on préfère des états bien définis. D'ailleurs je n'ai pas encore eu la chance de visiter Dinant, qui parait être une ville fort belle.

ENG: Yesterday I made a rough plan of the things I'm going to say in Berlin in June - mostly because I have to prepare some pictures to illustrate my speech. As part of this I have some time ago decided to illustrate the grammar-translation method with a scan of the first lesson in "Mikkelsen's Læsebog", my first Latin textbook. I found out that there was a copy in a remote branch of our local library, and I reserved it and got a message that it had arrived at the central library, ready to be picked up. But when I arrived it turned out that I now was no.2 on the waiting list for the copy at the branch closest to my own address - my original reservation had been changed. However the copy at the other location was still standing on the shelf according to their computer system, so I spent a whole hour getting there, a couple of minutes to grab it and register the loan and another hour to get home. Luckily not all pictures will cost me that much time and trouble, but it does take time to piece such a pictoral documentation together. And once it is done I can't change my general plan of action.

LAT: Ita liber Mikkelseni nunc apud me est, et antiquatatem meam in schola Coldingensi sancti Nicolai cum magistri Kylling (="Gallinaceus") revocare possum. Idem magister mihi etiam sermonem teudiscam docebat, iterum rationem grammaticam-translationem utens. Etiam "Lingvam Latinam per se illustratam" Oerbergi mutuatus sum, alter liber auctoris danici, sed in rationem fondata quod lingua sua natalis stricte evitanda est. Ratio mea est quod lingua natalis certe per activitates extensivas evitanda sit (praeter consultationem vocabularii), sed inter actiones intensivas non valde efficax est omnia in lingua ignota explicare.

ENG: I also got time for some serious study yesterday, and somehow it turned out to be an expedition into the ancient world of the dinosaurs. And as you know by now, birds are just a special group within the dinosaurs so it is false to say that the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago. If I look out of my window here in 2014 I'm far more likely to see wild dinosaurs than wild mammals.

BA I: Di bahasa Indonesia telah membuat koleksi teks-tekst tentang dinosaurus dari Wikipedia, Planetdino dan sumber lain. Tadi malam saya berlatih terjemahan-kembali ('retranslation') : terjemahan satu-dua kalimat dimentuliskan, dan setelah itu merekonstruksi versi asli menggunakan memori saya dan terjemahan - tetapi berasa sebagai ciptaanku sendiri. Keahlian membaca saya hampir cukup untuk mengerti teks-teks tentang dinosaurus tanpa kamus, namun nyaris tidak untuk berkata. Aku hampir tidak terlatih bicara. ...

POL: Z wikipedii polskim jest artykuł o dinozaurach piersastych. Ja od niepamiętnycj lat ("Jahr und Tag", Pons) przeczytałem podobny artykuł po holendersku, a tym razem użuję dwujęcznego teksta: polskiego oryginała i rosyjskiego tłumaczenia maszynowego. I wyjątkowo, nie ma tłumaczenia duński.





Edited by Iversen on 24 May 2014 at 4:04pm

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Iversen
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 Message 3620 of 3959
26 May 2014 at 4:58pm | IP Logged 
I spent some time yesterday on making a 'green sheet' with the morphology of Polish nouns and adjectives - and no, it isn't complete - my Swann grammar spends some 4 pages just on sketching the thirteen or so main subgroups among the non-animate mascine nouns which have 'a' in the genitive singular. Actually 'a' is normal her in Russian and Serbian and personal and animate masculine nouns so it would rather be the ending 'u' that needed an explanation, and after the four pages of examples with 'a' I felt that it might have been easier to tell us where 'u' is used.

After the Polish sheet I also revised my sheet for Russian, but when I continued to Serbian I ran against a wall - not because the system in that language is more complicated, but because the relevant parts of my Routledge grammar are quite complicated and confused, and to boot it quotes all words in both Roman and Cyrillic letters so that I felt I was fallen victim to vertical double vision. I also have an old Serbocroatian grammar in French, but it seems more inclined to give spiritual comments to grammatical phenomena than to put up simple tables. In Polish it was were useful also to have the thin Pons grammar (in German), and maybe there is something similar for Serbian in that series. Is so, I can probably get it in Berlin. And to fill out the gap right now I have printed some tables from the internet

My goodnight reading for the time being is the second volume of Ørbergs "Via Latina per se explicata", and yesterday I got through the first part of Livii history of Rome - the book has some word explanations in Latin, but I didn't have a real dictionary within reach. Nevertheless I understood most of the text - Livius is writing in a quite simple and clear style. Besides I continued my studies of dinosaurs in Polish and Indonesian - with and/or without feathers.


EDIT: And now I have had time to combine the sources I mentioned, including the charts I found on the internet. In the Swann grammar (for Polish) each section was followed by a long list of complete declension tables. When I first saw them my reactions was that they showed a certain degree of desperation from the part of mr. Swann, but now I find them more informative than the verbally formulated rules. And the Wikipedia article about Serbo-Croatian grammar also supplies a number of full paradigms. Funnily enough there are several books available which just consist of quotes from Wikipedia.

I have also studied an article about Pachycephalos in Indonesian from Planetdino. And the funny thing is that I more or less can understand the text without looking words up and with just minimal peeks to the translation to the right. But when I then slow down and start doing my usual retranslation I can collect dozens of unknown words from that same article. Which goes to show how far there is from 'understanding' (= getting the message) to really understanding a language.

Edited by Iversen on 27 May 2014 at 2:49pm

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Iversen
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 Message 3621 of 3959
27 May 2014 at 2:42pm | IP Logged 
As the preceding messages show, I have been thinking about my upcoming rant about grammar at the Berlin conference in June, and because I had a couple of practical questions I returned to the homepage for the event and reread the list of participants and lectures. I can see that there still are some holes in the program, and with a bit of luck those will all be converted into aligatorejo sessions. One word puzzled me: "gufujo", which tuned out to be the name of a social tea- and candle-based ceremony spoken in Esperanto. But in fact the word is derived from the Esperantean name of a big horned owl, gufo, and thus I was lured into a study of all the owl-related articles at the Esperanto Vicipedia - and a few items beyond that.

EO: La gufo (Bufo bufo) estas la plej granda strigo en la mondo, kaj li kaj lia plej proksima parencoj estas rapide rekoneblaj per sia plumo-kornojn. Sed la gufo ne trinkas teon, do ĝi devas esti pro liaj noktaj kutimoj, ke grupo da teotrinkantoj nomumis siajn kunsidojn post lin. Mi ŝatas strigojn ĉar ili kutime sidis kviete en siaj kaĝoj en la bestoĝardenoj, samtempe ke mi provas foti ilin. Kaj ili malofta provas kaŝiĝis. Multaj malgrandaj birdoj flugas ĉirkaŭe en la kaĝoj, dum mi koncentris foti lin, kaj se unufoje sidos, ili povas demeti kaj flugi ĉe la alia fino de la kaĝo, dum mia fotilo preparas preni foton - 3-4 sekundoj sufiĉas. Krome strigoj manĝas musojn, kaj ekzistas sufiĉe da musoj. Sed malgraŭ ilia pensema aspekto kaj ekstera ligo al la diino de saĝeco Pallas Athene strigoj ne estas tre inteligentaj. Sed kelkfoje ĝi estas pli grava esti bona ĉe unu afero, kaj strigoj estas bona musoĉasistoj kun akraj sensoj. In Danujo la gufo estas tre rara (Danujo estas tro malgranda kaj dense loĝata), sed ni havas aliajn strigojn.


Edited by Iversen on 28 May 2014 at 1:53pm

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Luso
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 Message 3622 of 3959
27 May 2014 at 6:42pm | IP Logged 
Funny you should say that about this durian fruit (cf. message #3617). I use the subway often and there's always one day when you are so bored you take a look at the rules' billboard.

Apart from the usual stuff (ticket validation, fines, bicycles, dogs, cats, etc.) there are a few odd rules considering dangerous animals... and the durian fruit. :D

Edited by Luso on 27 May 2014 at 6:44pm

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Iversen
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 Message 3623 of 3959
28 May 2014 at 10:28am | IP Logged 
I have tasted durian twice: at a monks' initiation ceremony in Phetburi 25 years ago and as the active ingredient in some icecream i Chiang Mai. It doesn't taste as bad as it smells, but in this case that doesn't say much. Durian has a pungent odeur of dirty sewer stuffed with dead cats.
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Penelope
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 Message 3624 of 3959
28 May 2014 at 12:35pm | IP Logged 
An actual forbidden fruit!


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