differences - "distinguish them more completely" vs. "more completely distinguish them"

Is there a rule I could tell the difference between:

• Both A and B have other attributes that distinguish them more completely.



• Both A and B have other attributes that more completely distinguish them.

american english - Origin and connotations of RBF (Resting Bitch Face)

Well, I don't know how or why, but until a week ago I had never come across the initialism RBF. I read it in a comment that had a very nasty tone, like so many of the comments posted nowadays on social media, so I guessed it had to have a negative slant.

The target? A young North American woman currently working in television. For what it's worth, she's attractive-looking, slim, and appears to come from a good family.

Finding it impossible to work out the meaning of RBF on my own, I asked Google and found a Wikipedia page containing the following information.

Resting bitch face, also known as RBF or bitchy resting face, is a term for a facial expression (or lack thereof) which unintentionally appears angry, annoyed, irritated, or contemptuous.

The initialism appears to be sexist, and offensive because of the word bitch. Which Merriam-Webster defines as

2. a often offensive : a lewd or immoral woman
   b often offensive : a malicious, spiteful, or overbearing woman —sometimes used as a generalized term of abuse

And, as I discovered two years ago — to my chagrin — bitchy is an emotionally charged expression on EL&U, far more than I had anticipated, when I posted a question with that adjective in its title. In the end it was rewarded with 9 downvotes.

Although the terms bitch and bitchy are not compliments in the UK, they are (or were) less loaded. Dog breeders, and dog lovers use the term bitch for female dogs, as is only right and proper. I doubt whether the following title, first printed in 1988, The Book of the Bitch: A Complete Guide to Understanding and Caring for Bitches, would be possible in the US.

Thanks to Breaking Bad, we (non-Americans) know that bitch can be directed at both genders. But would an American English speaker describe Conan's relaxed face as being bitchy?

He might look sour, grumpy, tired, drawn, or depressed but a “bitch face”? I don't think so.

Origin

Grant Barrett, a New York Times journalist, said the concept of a person's sour expression by default existed at least ten years before Resting Bitch Face, Bitchy Resting Face, and Bitch Face came to light in 2013.

And an article on CNN reports,

RBF first gained attention when a meme took over the Internet in 2013. That, plus a viral mock-public service announcement on "Bitchy Resting Face" made the "condition" somewhat of a joke.

The YouTube video, Bitchy Resting Face, posted 22 May, 2013, is a parody of those TV commercials which talk about pseudo afflictions and disorders.

The Guardian, a British paper, dedicated an article to the neologism in July that year, stating

The real cause is that it wasn't coined until – amazingly – May of this year. Needless to say, it instantly grabbed the media's attention. Truly, a titbit with such potential for female anxiety and self-loathing is like an iron filing to the media's magnet.

Further on, the British journalist smugly added

The weirdest thing is the BRF does not actually exist: the video that coined the term was made by comedian Taylor Orci and is a joke, as some of you might have guessed from the very name BRF.[sic] Yet this has not stopped plastic surgeons eagerly offering cures for this non-existent problem.

However, digging around, I found a teen magazine online called xo Vain, and an article by Olga, dated April 10 2013, in which she wrote:

I've been afflicted with chronic bitchface for as long as I can remember. The first time a girl said to me "You know, I really don't like you, but now that we have to work on this project together, I'm having so much fun with you," was in the third grade. I was eight.

Bitchface starts early, y'all. Like really early.

On the very same day, a YouTube video by Madeline Mann, entitled: “My Struggle With Resting B*tch Face”, was posted. In the video she utters the initialism, RBF, and confesses earnestly to the camera

So, erm, this song is about, er... well, I've been told that I have an RBF, which is a ‘resting bitch face’. And that pretty much means — like my friend once told me that he would never come up to me in a bar because I just look so freakin', like I would just—like, bite off his head.

Digging further, I discovered what might be the predecessor of RBF, the term chronic bitchface. The British blogger/illustrator, Kristina, mentions it in her post dated March 26th, 2011, two years before “resting bitch face” had became viral.

Just doing my bit to spread awareness for this common, but little understood condition. Thousands around the world are affected by chronic bitchface, with sufferers having to endure being told to “SMILE” and “cheer up” by well meaning, but irritating strangers. There is no known cure.

Questions

• In light of the comment posted by ‘justposting’ above, is RBF an emotionally charged term in the US? How offensive or derogatory is it?





• Has this initialism, or expression caught on in the UK? If not, is there an equivalent?




• When did RBF, Rest Bitch Face, or any of its variants first appear?

Research:
1. Resting bitch face (Wikipedia)
2. A Wordnado of Words in 2013 The New York Times
3. Resting bitch face' is real, scientists say CNN (February 4, 2016)
4. Non-derogatory word/phrase analog of "bi**** resting face" but for a young kid (EL&U)
5. Bitchy resting face: must it be taken so seriously? The Guardian
6. Does My Snobby Face Make Me Less Attractive?
7. My Struggle With Resting B*tch Face (YouTube)

Answer

The BRF video is my first exposure to this meme, but as an American and Texan I have encountered references to this phenomenon (if not the specific acronym) far earlier than the mentioned dates. In light of that, in my experience RBF is mentioned as a way of adding humor to an awkward situation of misunderstanding or in defense of a person seen as having a cold personality without the accuser having yet met that person. It is a description of a condition, not normally a personal attack. It is normally used as a way to defuse situations, and as such is not generally seen as offensive.

However, if someone in the conversation uses the phrase "Resting Bitch Face" with persons who are not familiar with the phrase it may then provoke offense by the listener for having uttered the word "bitch", and further misunderstanding may ensue. This is especially likely in cases where conversationalists happen to be from the southern United States, are especially religious, in an older demographic, or any combination of the previous.

To clarify earlier encounters: As a US Southerner I am accustomed to hearing the essence of the RBF spirit worded in a variety of colorful Southern expressions. For instance, when a woman here is told she would look prettier if she smiled, common responses might be (all most likely uttered while walking away):

• "Tell the Governor to buy me a horse. Tell me when it happens."


• "I bet you want banjos to whistle for you, too."


• "I bet you think the roosters talk to you in the morning."


• "You just make me tired all over."


• "I'm saving my muscles for a man I'd like to kiss."


• "Whoever told you you're God's gift (to women) was wrong."


• "Not if you were the [frog prince | King of England | richest man alive]."

Or the military version: "Duly noted."

Also of note are expressions used in defense of a friend's disheveled or unhappy appearance. These are used in defense of the friend, and meant to imply that despite appearances, the friend is in fact a good or nice person.

• "You just caught her on a bad day | after a rainstorm | when her makeup ran out."


• "She's busier than a cat covering crap on a marble floor."


• "The horse she rode in on was a mule." (implying that either the vehicle she drives is in poor repair or her husband is difficult to deal with)

I am told there are similar (more biting) versions used in the Northern United States.

Though (as stated) I am not British, I have not yet seen anyone from Britain any similar acronym or phrase in traditional or social. My roommate (also American) is a writer for a prominent David Tennant fan club and has not mentioned any such occurrence. Both myself and my roommate have heard such usage in Scotland and Ireland.

Regarding the first appearance, the first recorded instance appears to be a submission on the Urban Dictionary on August 18, 2009. The related KnowYourMeme site appears to still be researching the topic.

grammaticality - Is "Who art" correct?

I came across these lines in a hymn:

Cherubim and seraphim falling down before Thee,
Which wert and art, and ever more shalt be.

I noticed that "wert", "art", and "shalt" were used with the subject "which" in the last line instead of which "thou." At first I thought this was just a grammatical mistake on the side of the hymn writer, but then I kept seeing such things where verbs in second person singular form are used with indefinite pronouns such as "which" or "who". Another example is give in this StackExchange question whose answer doesn't really answer my question.

So now I'm wondering, is it correct to use second person singular verbs with indefinite pronouns if the indefinite pronoun refers to a second person singular pronoun (in the hymn, "which" reffers to "Thee" from the last line)?

Answer

Yes, "thou (...) who art" or "thee (...) who art" are correct.

I wasn't sure from the title whether you were asking about relative pronouns or interrogative pronouns, so I will discuss both in my post.

In the hymn that you quote, the relative pronoun "which" takes second-person singular agreement because its antecedent is the second-person singular pronoun "thee". This is a special thing that happened/happens in old-fashioned or formal English' related questions about this topic are What rules make “Remember me, who am your friend” grammatical? and "Me who is" or "me who am"?

In terms of interrogatives, "Who art..." would be possible in a sentence with "thou": "Who art thou?" In modern English, sentences of this type (e.g. "Who am I?") are best analyzed as having "who" as the (fronted) predicate rather than as the subject: a piece of evidence that "I" and not "who" is the subject of "Who am I?" is that we can't say *"Who am me", even though in predicate position "me" is usually possible (we can say “It was me,” regardless of whether it’s considered “incorrect” from a prescriptive point of view). In older varieties of English, I'm not sure whether there is any clear way of establishing which word is the subject in questions like this.

terminology - Word referring to process of curing meats?

I remember watching an episode of Floyd on France some time ago which described a French town as famous for their cured meats. I believe the word began with an 'H', and referred to the process of curing meat. If anyone could remember the term, I would sleep easier.

Answer

Charcuterie.
From French : chair 'flesh' & cuit 'cooked'.

Reference : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charcuterie

history - Why have the subjunctive and indicative converged in Modern English?

It is to me a curious fact that the subjunctive mood of verbs in English has so nearly disappeared in modern times. In fact, even the correct form and usage of the subjunctive in Modern English barely distinguishes itself from the indicative! In many regions and dialects, the subjunctive would appear to be entirely obsolete, replaced by the indicative in all cases. (Educated speakers, certainly in Britain at least, do however still make good use of it.)

The present subjunctive form in Modern English is (in almost all cases) virtually identical to the third-person plural present indicative (e.g. 'He were', 'She own'). This is markedly different from Old English, where the subjunctive form a form was much more easily noticeable. Even by the advent of Early Modern English in the 16th century, the subjunctive was already converging with the indicative.

Other Modern European languages, not only Romance ones such as French and Spanish, but Germanic languages related to English (e.g. Dutch/German) have a much more pronounced subjunctive form. From what I remember of my Classical Latin, word suffixes for a variety of tenses are hugely obvious in the subjunctive.

My question is: why is this convergence of the subjunctive and indicative so strongly the case in Modern English? Is it a general trend in other Germanic/Romance (or more generally Indo-European) languages? Why is its disappearance so much more apparent in English than other related languages?

Answer

I mentioned this in another question, but just because the morphological inflection is disappearing, that doesn't mean the subjunctive mood is actually disappearing from the language. Just like when most of our verbal inflection disappeared (now it's "I go", "you go", "we go", "they go"), that doesn't mean we lost verbs for first person singular and plural, 2nd person, and so on.

Nohat's short answer gives the main point — if 9 out of 10 times the form looks identical to a MUCH more common form, then over time things might converge and regularize. A linguist would call this "paradigm leveling". Less common words and structures tend to regularize faster than more common ones (which is why words like "to be" and "to have" are irregular in so many different languages). The subjunctive is rare and not that distinct in English, so it is in trouble.

We see the past subjunctive form only in "to be", but we see the present subjunctive in the third person singular form of any verb — it has no "s" at the end like the indicative form.

So, this is of course subjunctive:

If I were ten years younger... (often said "If I was...")

But this is subjunctive too:

So be it.

It's important that he arrive on time tomorrow.

There are a bunch of examples here that include this other kind of subjunctive. This is just anecdotal but I haven't noticed this one disappearing as much.

Is this a general trend in related languages? Well, in Swedish this seems to be happening. In German one subjunctive form is used all over the place, and the other is used pretty much just in newspapers and journalism in general, but it is at no risk of dying out (it has legal implications akin to those that make the word "allegedly" so important in English journalism).

backshifting - Is the concept of "backshifted past tense" in reported speech applicable to other types of subordinate clauses?

BACKGROUND

Cambridge Grammar of the English Language has this portion regarding backshift on page 154:

• Backsift not confined to indirect reported speech

We introduced a concept of a backshifted preterite with an example involving indirect reported speech, [10]. It is important to emphasise, however, that the backshifted preterite is used much more generally than in reported speech. Compare:

[21] i This meant that Jill had too many commitments.

ii That Jill had too many commitments was undeniable.

(Bold emphasis mine.)

The that-clause of the former example sentence functions as a complement to the verb "meant", whereas that of the latter the subject of the sentence. These are clearly outside the scope of reported speech. So CGEL does say the backshifted preterite (= past tense) can go beyond reported speech but does not clearly say how far it can go. In fact, CGEL fails to specify whether the backshifted preterite is applicable to other types of subordinate clauses than those mentioned above.

EXAMPLES FOR QUESTION

So I have laid out three example sentences as follows. (Boldfaced are the preterites that CGEL might--but fails to specifically--recognize as "backshift".)

(1) I assumed you were the type who kept your promises.

This one was borrowed from an earlier question. The clause "you were the type" is a complement to the verb "meant", where "were" is recognized by CGEL as "backshift"; the clause "who kept your promises" is a relative clause, where "kept" is not recognized by CGEL as "backshift".

(2) She was surprised that he still loved her.

The clause "he still loved her" is a complement to the adjective "surprised", where "loved" is not recognized by CGEL as "backshift".

The way people experience their iPhone has always started with the display.

(3) So we wouldn't introduce a larger display until we could make one that was great.

This is part of what an Apple's senior VP has said in a promotional video of iPhone 6. The clause "we could make one" is the complement to "until", and the clause "that was great" is a relative clause, where neither "could" nor "was" are recognized by CGEL as "backshift".

QUESTION

And the big question is whether any of the boldfaced verbs can possibly be subsumed under "the backshifted preterite" as defined in CGEL?

EDIT

CGEL at page 153 presents "conditions for backshift" in [13], along with relating examples in [14] and [15].

A backshifted preterite can occur when either of the following conditions obtains:

[13] i. The tense of the matrix clause is past.

ii. The time of the matrix clause situation is past.

The question of what types of subordinate clauses are covered in [13] hinges on the meaning of the term "backshifted preterite" at this point in CGEL (at page 153). Indeed, CGEL has this term defined at the bottom of page 151 leading to the top of page 152, as follows:

...the term backshifted preterite is intended to suggest this change from an original present to a preterite. We retain the traditional terminology for its mnemonic value, but emphasise that backshift is not conceived of here as a syntactic process: we are not proposing that had is syntactically derived by changing the present tense of an underlying have into a preterite. The issue to be considered is simply what the preterite means in this construction.

(Only the latter bold emphasis mine.)

The above-mentioned "this construction" at page 152 refers to indirect reported speech, and there is no change in the meaning of the term "backshifted preterite" between [10] of page 151 and [13] of page 153, in terms of in what construction it is being discussed. Therefore, it is clear that the meaning of the term "backshifted preterite" in [13] is limited to indirect reported speech, and that the types of subordinate clauses covered in [13] are at best limited to content clauses functioning as a complement to a verb of the matrix clause.

In fact, this is corroborated by the first boldfaced sentence (on page 154), which is shown at the top of this question. If the conditions set forth in [13] of page 153 were to cover other types of subordinate clauses than content clauses functioning as a complement to a verb of the matrix clause, CGEL would not have inserted, only after [13], the section of "backshift not confined to indirect reported speech". And even then, this section, as presented at the top of this answer, doesn't really go far beyond content clauses functioning as a complement to a verb of the matrix clause. The only expansion shown in this section is that the content clause may function as the subject of a verb of the matrix clause, as in [21ii] (That Jill had too many commitments was undeniable.).

grammaticality - Collective nouns treated as singular and plural in the same sentence

I have a problem with a sentence in a news announcement I'm writing. This is the sentence:

1) Company X is expanding and hires Person Y as their new CEO.

I've previously understood that it is correct to treat collective nouns, the company in this case, as singular or plural depending on if one refers to "the company itself" or "the people in the company". In this case, I'm referring to both (the company in itself is expanding, but the people are hiring someone as their new CEO). As such, the number of the pronoun does not agree with the number of the verb.

Two other possible versions that don't sound as right as the above are:

2) Company X is expanding and hire Person Y as their new CEO.

3) Company X is expanding and hires Person Y as its new CEO.

Which one is correct / do you prefer?