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October 21

At the Al Smith Memorial Dinner 2024: what are "hoyers"?

When introducing Jim Gaffigan at the Al Smith Memorial Dinner (beginning of the video) Mary Callahan Erdoes says of her and Jim: "We're both Irish Catholic, we're both from Chicago, we're both hoyers." The word "hoyers" (?) seems to be recognized by the audience: but what are "hoyers"? 178.51.16.158 (talk) 14:40, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What she said was "Hoyas"—i.e., both attended Georgetown University. See Georgetown Hoyas. Deor (talk) 14:52, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See Hoya Saxa. DuncanHill (talk) 14:59, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Desolate Case (?)

Hello! So, I have a doubt about something called the ‘desolate case’. As per what I know (from ChatGPT and my linguist friends) this case is either used in languages like Abkhaz, or is a hypothetical case. ChatGPT told me that it indicates that a noun is in a state of abandonment, desolation, chaos, anarchy, physical/emotional emptiness, loneliness and other things. My linguist friends said that it could be hypothetical, or used in conlangs. When I asked GeminiAI, it said that it is used in Udi and Abkhaz. I added this case to ‘List of Grammatical Cases’ but User Danyunsik told me about it. I hope you can clarify this doubt. Thank you! Long-live-ALOPUS (talk) 15:34, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A grammatical case indicates that a constituent noun phrase is used in one of a restricted set of grammatical functions. For example, in the Turkish sentence avcıyı öldürdü domuz we see the noun phrases avcıyı ("hunter") and domuz ("swine") separated by the verb form öldürdü ("killed"). Translated word by word, we'd get "the hunter killed the swine". But the suffix -yı tells us that the first word is in the accusative case, meaning it is the object of the sentence, so the actual meaning is that the swine killed the poor hunter. If it had been the other way, it could be reported as avcı domuzu öldürdü. The same case-based grammatical analysis holds for the Latin sentence venatorem occidit sus.

Indicating the state something is in is not a grammatical function. In many languages the state of something being sweet and cute is indicated by a hypocoristic suffix, like Turkish -cik. To this suffix, case endings can be added to indicate the grammatical function of a noun phrase, like avcı domuzcuğu öldürdü: "the hunter killed the little swine". The word order could also be domuzcuğu öldürdü avcı; the case endings reveal the roles of the actors in this drama.

Just for this reason alone – being desolate is not a grammatical function – it appears that the curious case of the desolate case is a made-up story. --Lambiam 18:20, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks so much! Long-live-ALOPUS (talk) 01:43, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I knew about cases. My only doubt was if this case exists or not. But anyways, it does seem like a good idea for a case in a conlang! Long-live-ALOPUS (talk) 01:46, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Except for the minor issue that being desolate, not being a grammatical function, cannot be indicated by a grammatical case in any language, whether natural or constructed, as I tried to explain. --Lambiam 06:53, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ok. Thank you so much! Long-live-ALOPUS (talk) 09:17, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Here’s some spaghetti:

Long-live-ALOPUS (talk) 09:22, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

AI chatbots are not reliable sources for Wikipedia. They don't contain facts, they contain probable combinations of words (so they don't know in a strict data tagging sense that the tallest building is the Burj Khalifa, but they do know that there's a very high chance that the sentence "The tallest building is" ends "the Burj Khalifa") - if you ask a question about something that doesn't actually exist in its training data (as the desolate case seems to be), it won't be able to say "This doesn't exist". Instead it will just slam words together according to those probabilities until it produces a sentence that it thinks make sense. ChatGPT knows how people talk about grammatical cases in general, so it can just take those sentences and swap the word "desolate" in without a desolate case actually existing. See AI hallucination for more details. Smurrayinchester 08:08, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you so much! Here’s some spaghetti:
Spaghetti For a fellow Wikipedian!
Long-live-ALOPUS (talk) 09:20, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Guys, I asked my linguist friends, and they said that they pranked me. It’s a FAKE ‘CASE’. I’m so very sorry for wasting both of your time. Do accept this apology. Long-live-ALOPUS (talk) 13:58, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If you learned something from our efforts, they were not wasted. --Lambiam 18:58, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You can find many instances of the phrase "desolate case", simply meaning a very unfortunate situation. It appears in books, newspaper articles, etc. ChatGPT or similar will happily take this existing phrase out of context and elaborate on it as a grammatical case. I'm sure the source data sets contain sentences along the lines of "the X case is a rare grammatical case found in the Abkhaz language". The model will take that as a template and run with it to make up plausible-sounding details as needed. --Amble (talk) 17:34, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]