Yes.

Just as you can have quantity without quality, you can have quality without quantity. — Pantagruel

Well, it is a big debate on what we consider "quality" on this site when the subjective interferes and depends (a lot) on who is the author of each thread.

Actually, moderators, you ought to move this question to metaphysics or ontology. — alan1000

No. They should move this “thread” (just a question and an emoji) to The Lounge. :smile:

Can't believe that an OP of just two phrases is not put in The Lounge.

jack-in-the-box toys... — Dawnstorm

Actually you did here the same as I do when I am not sure and I don't want be to harassed by the grammar police. Rewrite the sentence to avoid the problem. — Sir2u

Clever move, indeed!

I don't know exactly how correct I am but I mostly use a rule for things like this that I learned somewhere a long time ago.

If the noun-phrase or compound noun has several heads that are of equal value, when it is obvious that as a whole it refers a single object that cannot be broken down into separate pieces without losing its meaning or is used as a noun to describe an object the S goes at the end of the line, — Sir2u

Interesting! I am going to use your wisdom from now on. Again, I appreciate all this information which helps me out.

And frankly I don't even know what I'd have used if it weren't in a linguistic discussion. Maybe I'd have intuitively said "jack-in-the-boxes", too? I don't — Dawnstorm

I agree! This is why I find this debate funny and entertaining. Everything started when I was reading examples of how some phrases came onto one word.
"Jack is in the box" -> "Jack-in-the-box" or "break a fast" to "breakfast".
All of these are the key facts to keep understanding English and how works.

It is true that is difficult to find a context or conversation to use such a word in plural. Yet, it seems to be tricky and I never thought it could make a brief/short debate regarding to pluralize. It is a hidden gem inside the beautiful world of linguistics! :smile:

To be honest, if I have the opportunity, I would use or Jacks-in-the-box " or " Jack-in-the-boxes" but not altogether. I still see the latter complex.

How many jacks do you see here? — Sir2u

Well, I don't see any, but I presume Jack is there, but the toy hasn't popped up yet.

Having a picture of the toy can explain why I can only imagine "independent" objects. It is complex to visualize a Jack in different boxes or Jacks in a one box. 

Now there is a jack, but the name is still "Jack-in-the-box" — Sir2u

That's a perfect example of today's debate, indeed. :lol:

This is sort of weird because I have not been able to find any use of Jacks-in-the-box on the most popular web sites, they all return Jack. — Sir2u

I agree. I only found it as an example in Steven Pinker's book.

Javi is actually right here (in spirit): — Dawnstorm

Thanks :up: I appreciate your comment and support.



By the way, coming back to the original post and focusing on your analysis. 

I. It's interesting how you interpret "Jack-in-the-box" as a phrase and not as a word. I highlight this because, according to Steven Pinker, there are two different groups: those who interpret it as a phrase and those who interpret it as a word. He explains that they are not wrong, but in terms of pluralizing, that is when the debate starts up.


II. Yes, I am on the side of the idea that, using grammar analysis or "logic", the "s" goes to the phrase's head. But this specific argument made me ask myself some questions: is it plausible to say "Jack-in-the-boxes"? And why do some use plural in both: "Jacks in the boxes?"
It is complex but funny because, for a non native speaker like me, it is another activity to keep learning.

These are good books to read, especially if you are not native speakers. — Sir2u

Thanks for those books recommendations :up:

So what? — Jamal

Why are you keeping posting here? Didn't you consider this OP as “not philosophical”?

OK, I respect your decision!
Muchísimas gracias Jamal! I thought you had a different opinion on me.

You can even remove it if you want. But please do not be a hypocrite regarding what OP deserves more respect than other. At least we are not debating about religion or AI like the other 25161836 posts of this forum.

If I were @Banno or @Quixodian your opinion on my post would be different right?

Twenty boxes containing ten applesin each. Could not be an apple in boxes.
Twenty boxes containing ten Jacks in each. Could not be a jack in the boxes. — Sir2u

Oh! in each object, yes. You are referring to a scenario where there are multiple objects: twenty boxes and then twenty Jacks. I understand your point about using plural here. 

Yet, I thought that "Jack-in-the-box" was one word (which came from a phrase). So, in my view, I only considered the nouns separately. Either "Jacks in the box" or "Jack in the boxes"

As Quk points out, multiple Jacks in multiple boxes would be Jacks-in-the-boxes. — Sir2u

But how can we know that? I thought this word is tricky because of its plural conjugation precisely. Either you can pluralize Jack or pluralize box, I believed (maybe wrongly) that we can't pluralize both at the same time.

Nonetheless, @NOS4A2 thinks that the easiest way to resolve this grammar dilemma is to pluralize altogether :chin:

@Sir2u and @T Clark stated that there is plural of Jack. Thus, more than one Jack in a single box. The latter doesn't change.

Jacks-in-the-box would imply that there are more than one Jack in one box, so it is grammatically incorrect as a plural when used for more than box. — Sir2u

The problem is that "Jacks-in-the-box" could be more than one Jack in a single box. So, I vote for that. Ambiguous and a little goofy. I am a big fan of ambiguous, goofy language. — T Clark

OK. This is so interesting. Clarky is American, and sir2u is British. Yet, you both have interpreted the same regarding that there could be more than one Jack in the box. So, the subject of this example is Jack, not the boxes. Ergo, plural would always be applied to Jack instead of box (right?).

I know you are a fan of goofy language, Clarky! :wink:

I cannot actually say that I have ever heard anyone say "runner-ups", but it definitely sounds wrong. — Sir2u

I agree with you. When I was reading the paper by Steven Pinker, I had some difficulties with the pronunciation, and my tongue suffered instead of being easy. So, yes, it sounds wrong, or at least weird.

As I am an agnostic atheist, I'm unable to contribute with helpful comments in this discussion about "God's bodies" and "Plato's ideas" etc. I'm sorry. — Quk

I like your comments and you contribute with good arguments. They make me think for a while, indeed. I was just debating with you, that's the nature of a philosophy forum.

I think it doesn't matter if someone is an agnostic atheist. Everyone is, somehow, free to express arguments on religious matters. Respecting and avoiding insults, that's for granted. :up:

Yes, but that doesn't exclude the idea of seeking for mercy in an overly controlled way rather than in a randomly surprising way, does it? — Quk

What is the main difference? You can seek for mercy in both controlled way and free will.
I would include redemption in our acts. But a Christian (or other religious person) is not necessarily overly controlled. They are even aware that some acts escape out of from their control.




 

So, I am asking how do you see the relationship between religion and sexuality? — Jack Cummins

The relationship is contradictory because religion seeks purity while sex is, somehow, related to "corruption" of the bodies. With the aim of reaching purity, a believer needs to avoid tentations, and sex is included in one of these. Our bodies only belong to God, and we should not "rot them." I do not want to get out of context, but with this argument, it is explained why religion bans suicide too. Conclusion, We are not free, and we can't play with our bodies and souls, because they are not "ours."

Related to this topic, I recommend you read Kazantzakis. Excellent writer and novelist. He made some interesting conclusions on the "humanization" of Jesus Christ, Francis of Assisi, etc.

I think religious persons seek control more than other persons do. — Quk

No. A religious person only seeks for mercy.

Wow! you are deep in Murakami's world!
I know that feeling. When you start reading his books, it is impossible to get rid of him.

Thanks for sharing. Another important and informative video. Some points to consider of:

I will never be enough grateful to all of those scientists and researchers who do this to open our eyes, and escape from lies and corruption from governments.

Yes, it is important to point out that most of the researchers are independent. He said that the paper is important because is not made by "money searchers"

Minute 9:16. Yes, I would be furious too if I were not well informed about the risks of the mRNA-1273 Booster vaccine. Completely unacceptable.

Minute 11:46. An informed consent statement is usually a trap. But this is the subject of another thread.
I agree with him. Let's get legal implications.

Loved the way it started simply with a lost cat and gradually branched into a complex story that came together in the end. Loved the rich and beautifully flowing writing. — praxis

I am glad that you are enjoying Murakami's wind-up chronicle :up: Yes, it is beautifully written, and it shows the skills of the novelist in developing such a complex story.

Be careful with Noboru Wataya :eyes:

I understand. Yet, this is where I disagree or at least I am against it. We can’t allow changes in a language if they are “back-peddling” and destroys the real sense/nature of the vocabulary, syntax or lexicon.

I think the core of the of decreasing culture and art is in these examples. There is a time where it seems that people don’t care about speaking and writing correctly. For example: if the past-tense of think is thought, we can’t allow people to keep saying “thinked”. Doesn’t matter if a big group use the second form.

I think that there are nearly 2 billion English speakers in the world, it would be difficult for them all to change to one way of speaking, and I don't just mean accents. — Sir2u

I agree. It is a difficult task. Nonetheless, I guess those 2 billion English speakers maintain the basic structure of grammar. Otherwise, They would be destroying the language.

This position is not necessarily from a traditionalist or conservative.

There is a history of attempts to reform and regularize language. France and Sweden have had government regulation for more than 100 years. When Greece acquired independence from the Ottoman Empire, there was an move to revert to pure Greek, divested of all those pesky bits of Turkisn that had crept in. The result was two dialects, "purified" for use on formal, official occasions and "popular" for everyday life. — Ludwig V

This point is interesting, and yes, some governments have ruled on linguistics. France is indeed a good example. But, if I am not mistaken, the competent authority to rule on this matter is the Académie française. This public (or private?) institute has the simple goal of keeping well written and spoken French. Nonetheless, it has received a lot of criticism, for being "classic" and "euro- centralised" and not taking into account other kinds of French, such as the one that comes from Africa.

Well, this also happens in Spain. We have the so called "Real Academia Española" and it receives the same criticism as above.  Speak and write accurately in whatever language is important. Yet, I think this issue is not part of politics but philosophy of language and linguistics.

Only 180? You surprise me. — Ludwig V

It surprised me too!

Perfect tense takes the past participle. — Hanover

OK, thanks a lot. I get it now.

Knowing who isn't from your tribe can matter, especially historically. — Hanover

To be honest, for me, it is the main cause of irregular forms. Otherwise, they just complicate the process of learning and understanding. I don't want to remove it, and I am aware that it is not impossible to learn, but it surprises me how some words or verbs are just there because of etymology rather than rules. Interesting indeed... After years of studying and reading English, I am conscious that the past tense of come is "came" not "comed". Pinker says that there are 180 of these exceptions from regular forms, and he states that we have to do the effort to allocate them in our memory, despite the fact that the lexicon and syntax are not regular...

One thing you see in languages spoken by people from many different backgrounds is a reduction in word designators because they are largely unneeded. For example, in modern English (unlike older forms), we say I walk, he walks, they walk, we walk, you walk. Note that the word only changes form once, but then compare the various ways you'd have to say that in your native tongue. — Hanover

I agree.

One thing that grates on my ears is the common misuse of the past participles in the past perfect, as in, "I have come home" versus the incorrect "I have came home." I used to hear that only among the uneducated, but it's everywhere now. A point could be made that these identifiers are irrelevant. — Hanover

OK, this exploded my mind. I always used the past participle in the past perfect. So yes, when I want to say in English "he venido a casa" (I have came home), even Google translates it as it is. Now I am very worried because I guess that maybe I am committing the same mistake with other verbs in English...  But what I do not understand is if it is used anyway or if we should correct it despite the fact that most people use the conjugation wrongly.

My mind is twisted in this point... so the correct form is: I have come home and not "I have came home"

I'd just point out that irregular verbs are difficult for adult, non-native speakers, but not for children. — Hanover

Well, it is difficult for kids anyway, because irregular verbs are less predictable, and this is my point. While they are learning, they just add "-ed" to a verb that they do not have in their knowledge.  So, I think this is why Pinker raised a good point regarding irregular verbs: are they logic, or do we just memorise them because they have been part of our vocabulary for centuries?

First of all, it is important to highlight the fact that I am not taking part in the critique of Pinker on the usefulness or uselessness of irregular verbs. Yet, I guess he is raising very good points regarding learning. As I perceived this morning, we just learned that the past of think is thought and not "thinked.". But rather than having a "logic" in its conjugation, it is just a mix of etymology and pleasure to the tongue.

On the other hand, he raised another point to consider of. Regular verbs are predictable, while irregular are chaotic for a child or learner. Meanwhile regular verbs just need an "-ed" in the ending, irregular verbs have different conjugation. the past tense of ring is "rang" but the the past tense of buy is "bought" and some verbs such as "cut" doesn't mutate. It keeps the same form, "cutted" doesn't exist.

Well, I am interested in understand why this happens in all languages apart from its etymology, and why people keep the irregular verbs when they are so chaotic.
What is proven with some cases and experiments, is the fact that children tend to use logic when they do not recognise a verb. For example: they mistakenly say "patted a dog" instead of "pet a dog", etc... because when they do not know a specific verb they just conjugated in the regular form... as it should be, right?

My point is not absolutely remove irregular verbs, but to state that they are learned just because memory.

It is clear to me where irregular verbs in English come from. What is twisted (in my honest opinion) is the conjugation. As Pinker noticed in his book, irregular verbs are idiosyncratic, so we do not have any chance other than to memorise why the past-tense of think is tought and not thinked. It is just the exception to the rule.  When some modern words came into common parlance, such as fax, no one had its past tense form, but obviously everyone adopted the regular form: "faxed". It's less chaotic.

many words were not used because of the way they rolled off the tongue, "thinked" is not easy to say.

But what puts the brakes on theories like that is that — Sir2u

This point is interesting because Steven Pinker also provides some lines about it.
Pinker states that the very obliviousness to the details of the verb that makes a rule so powerful can let it blindly jam a suffix onto the end of an inhospitable sound. The result can be uneuphonious tongue-twister such as edited ir sithxs. Examples like these are never found among the irregulars, which all have standard Anglo-Saxon word sounds such as "grew", which please the ear and roll off the tongue.

Thank you Ludwig for your answer.

The consequence is that what are rules for language learners are habits for first-language speakers, and that use and practice determine what the rules are. (The same applies, nowadays, to dictionaries, as I'm sure you are aware.) — Ludwig V

I agree in this point. You even have read my mind because I was about to post some lines related to how these rules work when you are not a not a native speaker but a learner.
When I learned English in both school and college, my teachers never explained to me why regular verbs with "-ed" and irregular have exceptions. Yet, when I failed more than one English grammar text, those teachers simply said: "please study harder the English grammar"
But according to Steven Pinker, it is not something to be ashamed of. I didn't have the rules in my mind, so I simply put  "-ed" in the verbs, whose irregular form I hadn't learned yet.

Grammatical irregularities (which don't occur only in verbs) are a serious nuisance to learners. Sadly, use and practice pay little attention to their problems — Ludwig V

All children (and myself included) make error in the speech like this: "My teacher holded the baby rabbits and we patted them"
Berko Gleason analyzed this pattern in an experiment with 4 and 7 years old kids.
Gleason stated that children are not parrots who just play back what they hear. Children therefore are not like pigeons in a Skinner box, who increase or decrease the frequency of responses in reaction to contingencies of reinforcement.

You mentioned Chomsky and yes, he and Eric Lenneberg are pioneers in this field and they both stated that children's ability to generalize constructions such as the regular past tense is actively acquired by a special rule-forming mechanism in the mind of the child.

All languages force to their speakers to memorize thousands of arbitrary words. Languages differ in their division of labor between simple words and grammatical combinations, and some, such as Native American languages, have fewer words and more rules. But even in these languages speakers cannot deduce the meaning of most words from their sound, and must commit whole words to memory.

Don't you feel anxiety when you have limited time to do whatever or take any decision?

God's Pauper: Saint Francis of Assisi, Nikos Kazantzakis.

Letters to the Time/Space of Fond Memories, Kenzaburo Oe.

3. Posts should only be editable for X minutes. — Leontiskos

This would be unfair.

What do you consider to be the best 2 Murakami books? — Tom Storm

A difficult question to answer because my selection is personal and maybe some would disagree with me. I have read 14 books by Murakami and I consider as the best:

Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball 1973 (in the Spanish edition these come together in the same book). They are the first novels written by him. Fantastic, full of imagination. Concise and elegant.

Novelist as vocation. Murakami writes essays often. This one is an important book to understand him better. Nevertheless, what I learned afterwards is that the key to success and life is humility.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. — praxis

A masterpiece! you will love it.

@Noble Dust

I remember you showed me "nobody here" vaporwave song around the last year. It makes me feel nostalgia while I am alone in my home listening to it.
Interesting, right? This song can make us feel different moods depending on the context.

Thanks friend! To be honest, I enjoy learning these things. I appreciate your commitment to help me out to learn and discover facts about your language. :up:

Yes, Gjergj Kastrioti is his real name. — TheMadMan

I going to give it a try and pronounce both consonants and vowels:

Gjergj: I guess it is similar to "George" and the J is silent, but the last gj is complex to me. I do not know if it is an accent or just consonants.

Kastrioti: I pronounce it as "cÁstrioti" with a big accentuation in the vowel.

I recorded my voice pronouncing the name! :smile:

If you ask me, its like the story of the fox and the "sour" grapes. Its hard to let go of western dualistic way of thinking and thats what zen requires. It wants to push beyond logic and arrive to what is. So they use the excuse of the "hippy mode" to discard it altogether. — TheMadMan

I agree. Western world cannot get rid of dualism and other metaphysical stuff... I think it is a shame because the world is not only centralised here. Tao Te Ching is important as much as Locke, for example.



On the other hand, I saw the video of Skanderbeg.

I am not an expert on Ottoman wars/time, but after seeing the video I do understand why he is considered a national hero in Albania. The commentator of the video explains pretty well how Skanderbeg defended Albanian frontier and territory but most important, how he acted with cleverness. It is impressive how in a small land, he survived the attacks of the overwhelming soldiers of Ottoman empire.

Another interesting fact: Skanderbeg in Spanish is said Jorge Castriota (Albanian: Gjergj Kastrioti)

That's why I find the Kyoto school philosophers and D. T. Suzuki very helpful on bridging that gap. — TheMadMan

Yeah, I agree. Asian philosophy - specifically regarding to zen or ethics - is impressive and it is pretty developed. What I do not understand is why it is underrated is the Western world. Some "philosophers" or "thinkers" consider their principles just to have fun in a "hippy mode"

In Albanian history you might find the story of Gjergj Kastriot Skënderbeu most impressive: — TheMadMan

Thank you so much for that recommendation. I am a bit busy right now, but I promise I will see it later and comment later on! :up: