I.T XX

On facebook, I saw a photo labeled as "[male cousin] with girlfriend!" Having been made aware that the cousin in question had been single for a long time, I was quite curious, so I decided to check out the 60-photo album. Apparently my cousin decided to go to a party in HK called "I.T XX" (20 yrs of I.T), and apparently a lot of the HK celebs were there. From the photos, the theme/caption was "is a season of celebration for twentieth birthday [sic]".


Is it just me, or does that read somewhat awkwardly? At first, knowing absolutely nothing about the event, I assumed that it was some sort of party for 20-yr olds. But that wouldn't make sense, since most of my HK cousins are well over 30 by now. (But from what I've read online, the organisation of the party was a rough equivalent to that expected from a 20-yr old. But the "1988/2008" tag was a clue, and so I assumed that it was a 20th anniversary

Anyway, from the other photos, I couldn't find any evidence of Chinese text, which suggests that the awkwardly phrased slogan was intended to refer to the company (I.T) anniversary. Sure, they could have been trying to be artistic with the birthday/anniversary thing, but there are still two places in the phrase that strike me as being particularly problematic.

1. "... of celebration for ..."
My first immediate instinct was to change it into a gerund: "is a season of celebrating for twentieth birthday"

2. "...for twentieth birthday"
Normally, the noun phrase that follows a preposition is complete with its determiner. For example:

(1) Around the time he was sick
(2) *Around time he was sick

So it should either be

(3) "...for a twentieth birthday," or
(4) "...for twentieth birthdays."

And even then, there are more standard phrases to express similar sentiments in the industry. "Celebrating 20 years of young fashion!" seems to work pretty well.

Another thing I don't get is the use of "season". Anniversaries for corporations and companies don't generally have seasons associated with them, unlike religious/cultural holidays (eg: winter for Christmas, Easter in spring, autumn for halloween and thanksgiving, etc.) So what season, exactly, are they trying to reference? (And especially in a place like HK, which is riight on the border of the Tropic of Cancer, are there really any seasons to speak of?) Moreover, it's usually at the 25-yr mark that they have the huge celebrations. Silver Anniversary and all that.

Normally I wouldn't care so much about the less-than-natural English that gets churned out in East Asia, but having been a British colony for a century (technically 99 years), you'd think they would have a better handle on the language, or at least have better trained translators on hand. Then again, if the organisation of the party was as terrible as people are making it out to be, it shouldn't be surprising that they wouldn't bother with a professional translator.

Adverse Adverbials

Saw this title on dA today: "Till the End with You". The title made me reread it several times until I was able to process it properly: "With you till the end". But both "till the end" and "with you" are adverbials, so it's understandable that there should be free variation between the two, right?

(As an aside, it should be noted the the artist who titled her work is not a native English speaker.)

The problem is, in this case, the preposition "till" ('til, until) is orthographically identical to the verb "till" (labour, cultivate, plough). And when the verb is in first position, usually one of two structures follow: questions, and imperatives. As most of us know, classical grammar requires a simple inversion of the subject-verb in the declarative clause in order to form a question. For example:

"He is a man" -> "Is he a man?"
"You think she's beautiful" -> "Think you she's beautiful?"

But of course, our current variety of English normally employs the curious verb "do" (for all verbs except auxilliary/modals): "Do you think she's beautiful?"

The imperative is normally distincted from the elision of the subject, which is seemingly always second-person. Thus, "clean [you] the desk," or "buy [you] the tickets."

In "Till the end with you," there is clearly no subject, since the first word is followed by a noun phrase "the end" (or "the end with you", depending on how you read it!) Thus, the first instinct is that this is an imperative. Moreover, the ending "with you" is commonly seen for emphasis in select imperatives:

"be off with you!"
"fly to Siberia with ye!"
etc.

Thus, my first interpretation of "Till the end with you", was somewhat of a mixture between an emphatic statement to the reader to cultivate the end of something, possibly a field, OR a clumsy statement of the artist, expression her desire to cultivate land together with the reader.

After I realised what was meant, I started considering what could be changed. A dry replacement for the preposition obviously wouldn't be enough: "until the end with you" could mean something like "waiting for your demise". The only solution, really, was to swap the two adverbials into "With you 'til the end". An [uncontextualised] statment that begins with "with", can be taken to have elipsed "I am" at the beginning. Thus, "with you till the end" is really "I am with you until the end [of the world]".

And yet, I still have trouble understanding how or why anybody would have written the line in the opposite order. I suppose there could be a pause between the two: "Till the end, with you", but that slows the pace. Although maybe that's intended. Personally, I prefer the quick and succinct when it comes to titles, and I'm also partial to ones that make you think instead of the dry, literal and unimaginative titles of most research papers. (e.g. "Strategy for Determination of in Vitro Protein Acetylation Sites by Using Isotope-Labeled Acetyl Coenzyme A and Liquid Chromatography−Mass Spectrometry".)

Imperial Inquisition

This has been floating around in my head for a while, but I didn't bother looking into it until the other day. According to most people (and google search), "Inca Empire" is the preferred term (as opposed to "Incan Empire").

This strikes me as odd because usually, the word that precedes Empire is an adjective of the nation-name. (consider: British, Byzantine, Ottoman, Peruvian, Prussian, Roman, Russian, Turkish, etc.) However, most of these adjectives are also used to describe the inhabitants of the nation. From that point of view, Inca and Aztec are correct, and British and Turkish become the exceptions.

To my ears though, it's the grammatical form rather than the semantic form that's easier to grasp, and thus, {[n.]+"empire"} sounds stranger than {[nationality adj.]+"empire"}.

Maybe they're just exceptions to the "rule". Or maybe English-speakers should switch to using "Incan Empire" and "Aztecan Empire".