Gentoo bans AI-created contributions
Gentoo bans AI-created contributions
Posted Apr 21, 2024 18:07 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252)In reply to: Gentoo bans AI-created contributions by Wol
Parent article: Gentoo bans AI-created contributions
> I program, I am programming, I do program.
And where do you see different present tenses?
> Well, I was taught we have the same 6 tenses. It makes perfect sense to me.Well… to some degree it even makes sense to me. Just different from what sense it makes to you. Please open that Wikipedia link, scroll down literally dozen of lines and read:
English has only two morphological tenses: the present (or non-past), as in he goes, and the past (or preterite), as in he went.
WHA… what happened to these “six tenses”? That's also explained right there, too:
The study of modern languages has been greatly influenced by the grammar of the Classical languages, since early grammarians, often monks, had no other reference point to describe their language. Latin terminology is often used to describe modern languages, sometimes with a change of meaning, as with the application of "perfect" to forms in English that do not necessarily have perfective meaning, or the words Imperfekt and Perfekt to German past tense forms that mostly lack any relationship to the aspects implied by those terms.> I'm not aware of any other European language with multiple present tenses - doesn't mean there aren't any, I've just never heard of any...
English times are “different” for the same reason English inches, feet and miles are different from meters, that everyone else uses. Difference is not in language per see, it's in how it's teached. Just why you say that I am programming is separate time while I love programming is not?
In reality most European languages may also use verbs to adjust time perception, they just don't [try to] pretend it's, somehow, grammatically different time and are [slowly] adopting the rules what actual linguistic designed and not [try to] pretend everyone is talking in a variant of Latin.
Posted Apr 21, 2024 22:14 UTC (Sun)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (9 responses)
> And where do you see different present tenses?
Because they have completely different meanings?
"I am a programmer, I program" - it's my job, I do it all the time, I may - OR MAY NOT - be doing it right now (I'm not - I'm busy writing right now :-)
"I am programming" - I'm not, I'm not doing it now, I'm writing.
"I do (not) act" - this variant is almost always either emphatic or negative - and when negative it implies "never".
So the first variant is the continuous present, I may not be doing it right now but it happens past present and future. (In the positive it also does not necessarily imply "right now".)
The second variant is the present - it's happening right now.
The third variant - I'm not sure what it's called - is almost always used to imply "never".
Three clearly different meanings.
To jump on your mention of "English has "he goes" and "he went"", what do you understand by the two sentences
"Jim is going to the gym" and "Jim goes to the gym". I was taught they are two - clearly different - present tenses. Because they have two - clearly different - meanings.
Cheers,
Posted Apr 22, 2024 4:38 UTC (Mon)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (8 responses)
Sure. And I love programming would be another meaning and I teach programming yet another one. Does it mean there are bazillion times in English? Loving present, teaching present and so on? No, there are two times and many verbs of which few selected ones are interpreted by teachers as “yet another time”. English is not unique and not even particularly hard WRT to how it treats time (other languages have many other and different ways to talk about time passage, too). What is inique is absolute refusal to change anything anywhere for any reason in teaching of said language.
Posted Apr 22, 2024 7:38 UTC (Mon)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (7 responses)
Let's apply some very simple logic.
"I program" = "I am programming"
therefore true = false
Unless you live in Crete, these two cannot be same, therefore while they are both present, they have to be different present tenses. And I don't know about you, but this confusion is one of the absolutely standard ways by which we detect foreign speakers ... it's a VERY common mistake. (Coupled with the occasional giveaway of "I programming" which simply doesn't exist in standard English.)
Cheers,
Posted Apr 22, 2024 10:29 UTC (Mon)
by kleptog (subscriber, #1183)
[Link] (4 responses)
The phrase "ik ga naar school" in Dutch can mean either "I go to school" or "I am going to school (now)" depending on the context. For some reason Dutch people often throw in the "am" when it is unnecessary, but other Dutch don't pick up the problem either. Once you point it out to them it usually corrects fairly quickly, but it's fascinating that the same type of error keeps popping up.
Posted Apr 22, 2024 11:00 UTC (Mon)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (2 responses)
Also (and ICBW, I've never really had native /adult/ dutch, and it's been a long time since I had native child's dutch), but could a dutch person not be more precise with "Ik ga nu naar school" for "I am going to school now"? Also, "Ik ga zo naar school" for "I am going to school shortly"? Part of the problem with dutch is it has become very terse, and dropped a lot of constructs - even in my lifetime AFAIK. (??).
Posted Apr 22, 2024 11:45 UTC (Mon)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
My daughter goes to school - and she's 40. She's a deputy head :-)
The "am" is WRONG (not unnecessary, wrong) if it's school holidays :-) "I go to school" typically means "I am a student", while "I am going to school" means I'm on my way right now.
Cheers,
Posted Apr 22, 2024 21:04 UTC (Mon)
by kleptog (subscriber, #1183)
[Link]
A: What do you do during the day?
It's not that some languages cannot express certain tenses, given enough words you can express any tense in any (sufficiently advanced) language. It's whether certain tenses have a special status in the grammer of a language. Generally similar concepts in different languages are linked in different ways which leads to people learning the language using words in ways a native speaker finds confusing.
But yes, this is a post about Gentoo, so better leave it at that.
Posted Apr 22, 2024 13:48 UTC (Mon)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link]
What's fascinating about that? You are using less flexible language and are forcing someone to pick between two choice that to him (or her) are almost undistinguishable. Of course there would be mistakes! It's like an attempt of someone to write perl program for the first time. Learning when should you use `$` and when should you use `@` with arrays names is non-trivial, to say the least.
Posted Apr 22, 2024 13:43 UTC (Mon)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (1 responses)
I don't know whether continuing is constructive at this point. You are sprouting the same kind of nonsense that you sprouted when undefined behavior was discussed and ignore everything except what you believe to be true. Even if your believe don't even remotely match the reality. If by now “logic”, in English, means “random sequence of letters without any clear meaning”, then I guess I learned some kind of wrong English. Sure, they are not the same, but so are sentences “I am”, “I like”, “I like programming”, “I teach”, “I teach programming” and many others. Yes. And they are present in most other human languages. Or do you believe other languges couldn't distinguish without person who is programming for living and person who programs something right now, this very second? They can, that's not a reason to introduce some nonsense bazillion present tenses. Why does it may surprise that not all things that may happen in present have the same meaning… or why have you decided that alls these sequences of words should be split into three semi-randomly picked present times? Why? Why “I like programming” or “I teach programming” don't need different present tenses, but “I am programming” needs it? Yes, but is it because English have more “more present tenses” or… because has it “less present tenses”? I would say that it's because it has less. It's the same story as with articles: similarly to how most of the time difference between “a” and “the” is meaningless (can be picked from the context easily and can be easily conveyed if needed) difference between “I program” and “I am programming” exist but it's not useful! Of course other languages can distinguish between these two forms if needed, it's just most of the time there are no need to distingush them. Worse: the form that is conveying more often needed meaning (that I'm programming right now) is longer and more complicated. English is similar to BASH here: like in BASH you may want to write Indeed. English grammar is extremely inflexible, rigid and, I would even say, “strange”. It takes a long time for a speaker of some other language where words don't come in a sentence in any particular order to adjust to it. English, of course, have no choice because it has words that may sound identically when used as noun and as verb, but, again, problem arises not when English offers you more capabilities (you may just ignore them) but when it doesn't have capabilities that other languages have (similarly to how translating program from statically-typed language to dynamically-typed is easy but going in the other direction is not).
Posted Apr 22, 2024 13:57 UTC (Mon)
by corbet (editor, #1)
[Link]
Remember Gentoo? ... this is an article about Gentoo ...
Gentoo bans AI-created contributions
Wol
> And where do you see different present tenses?
Gentoo bans AI-created contributions
Gentoo bans AI-created contributions
Wol
Gentoo bans AI-created contributions
Gentoo bans AI-created contributions
Gentoo bans AI-created contributions
Wol
Gentoo bans AI-created contributions
B: I am working.
A: (confused) Clearly you are sitting here having a drink? Oh you mean "I work".
> Once you point it out to them it usually corrects fairly quickly, but it's fascinating that the same type of error keeps popping up.
Gentoo bans AI-created contributions
Gentoo bans AI-created contributions
therefore true = false
Unless you live in Crete, these two cannot be same
$* or "$@" and, most of the time, short form is not needed and not used so English insist on use of longer form where difference between two forms are meaningless (e.g. on a programmer's forum saying that you know how to program is not useful but saying that you are in process of writing program is useful).
Indeed, this conversation has gone fairly far afield, and it seems like a good time to wind it down.
On continuing