Talk:allotted

RFV discussion: April 2014–July 2015

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for verification (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

---

allotted

Is this really an adjective? “allotted”, in OneLook Dictionary Search. shows that many dictionaries make allotted in effect redirect to allot. AFAICT only WordNet shows it as an adjective, "assigned as a task" her allotted chores, but this seems to transfer meaning from the word modified to the modifier. Consider his allotted share of the garden. DCDuring TALK 20:38, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

I don't think this is well suited for RFV. I would like to see a precedent of deleting adjective sections from past participles via RFV or a Beer parlour discussion supporting such deletion via RFV. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:09, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

It is perfectly well suited for a fact-based discussion. Either the word is attestably used as an adjective or it is not. The question of whether a term is an adjective is fairly clear cut and reasonable quickly resolved by resort to the facts of usage. The role of lawyerly argumentation is useful in evaluating the attestation evidence or in challenging the authority behind the criteria used. DCDuring TALK 11:23, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

There are no purely attestation-based criteria necessary for adjectivity. An adjective does not need to be comparable and does not need to be modifiable by "very" and the like. RFD is not forbidden from being "fact-based". All criteria listed at Wiktionary:English adjectives are merely hints; none of the criteria is alone necessary and the criteria are not jointly necessary. If Wiktionary:English adjectives were applied to "allotted", google books:"become allotted" would suggest this to be adjective; nonetheless, I do not take Wiktionary:English adjectives very seriously. In any case, this does not fit my idea of proper use of RFV, which should IMHO above all be used to find whether a term or a sense are actually used to convey meaning. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:29, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

You seem to ignore our non-legislated practice of requiring that an English adjective be comparable/gradable OR be used as a predicate OR have a sense distinct from the sense of the noun or verb form from which a separate identity is to be established. The predicate case is that hardest to apply for adjectives that are alleged to be conversions of past participles, because it often requires a high level of sensitivity to the language to reliably distinguish passive use of the past participle from predicate use of an adjective. This is the kind of thing that interpretation of actual evidence rather than armchair introspection and gum-flapping (let alone legislating) is well suited to resolving. DCDuring TALK 15:46, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, the putative practice you speak of is a non-legislated practice, meaning it is, if it exists, not a result of a vote or a Beer parlour discussion. Now, any evidence of this being a common practice? Do you know of past RFV outcomes that fit this putative practice? How many are they? For the record, I oppose the use of RFV for this. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:12, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

• Yes, of course it can be an adjective, but I'm rather dubious about the comparative and superlative shown in the entry. Donnanz (talk) 10:21, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

  Why of course? It can be used attributively, but so can nouns and ing-forms and ed-forms of verbs.

  1. Can it be shown to be gradable or comparative?
  2. Can it be used after become or seem?
  3. Is it ever unambiguously used as a predicate, ie, following a form of be with semantics clearly distinguished from a past participle used to form a passive?
  4. Does it have a sense that is not present in the ed-form of the verb?

  If it doesn't meet at least one of these tests we do not show it as an adjective. DCDuring TALK 11:04, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

  All those hurdles? I'm virtually gobsmacked. Donnanz (talk) 11:42, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

  If it doesn't meet at least one of these tests we do not show it as an adjective.

  I share your skepticism about comparability, but can it be used with very or too (gradability)? I don't think so. I've never run into usage that meets any of the other tests either, but there might be such usage. DCDuring TALK 13:45, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

  1. The allotted tasks are less challenging than the other job expectations; the latter have no specific time set aside for their accomplishment.
  2. My days seem allotted either as a series of disasters and bad news, or boring montages of the same-ol'.
  3. Each is allotted a colour according to its priority. - Amgine/ ^t·e 06:45, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

  @Amgine The first is attributive use of a past participle. (Would attested usage of "the circumnavigated globe" make circumnavigated an adjective?) The third is clearly a use of the verb in the passive. (Consider Each is allotted a color by rule of priority., which makes the agent explicit.) The second is the sole telling example. It could be argued that it is an ellipsis of the passive, but I think not. Three citations of such usage for each of the two senses would settle the matter. DCDuring TALK 13:13, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

• There is enough sourcing on "This film has been modified from its original version to run in the allotted time" alone to support this as an adjective. Something can be an adjective while not taking comparatives or superlatives Purplebackpack89 ^{(Notes Taken) (Locker)} 14:36, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Your reason would imply that (deprecated template usage) cicumnavigated should be considered an adjective, given usage such as:

• 1965, G. B. Sansom, The Western World and Japan‎^[1], page 72:

  Not many years after the discovery of the Americas and the opening of the Cape route to India, Christian missionaries were making their way to almost every part of the now circumnavigated globe

There is a clear path to justifying treating this as an adjective: that it attestably meet at least ONE of the tests of adjectivity, such as those listed above (There may be more.). There is no amount of attributive use alone that would compel treatment of this as an adjective. DCDuring TALK 15:31, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

While I don't have an opinion on the rest, wouldn't the modifying element be now circumnavigated in that quote? - Amgine/ ^t·e 18:28, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

@Amgine Yes, but circumnavigated is the head of the modifying phrase. I searched for "now circumnavigated" to reduce the portion of the ocean that I had to boil to find relevant citations. DCDuring TALK 18:43, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Well, as a sailor, I would certainly consider a circumnavigated globe as qualitatively different from an uncircumnavigated one, in a comparable way an explored region differs from an unexplored one, a painted versus an unpainted canvas. In a related manner, an allotted hour or day is different from one unallotted. And that's entirely apart from parliamentary usage (throughout the commonwealth), the standard euphemisms allotted span, allotted hours, or allotted days to indicate length of life (or 70 years, whichever comes first?), and of course Google Books—whether religious, poetic, or otherwise. On another hand, your position that allotted is not adjectival is disputed by OED, Merriam-Webster, Cambridge... just wondering which authority is the basis for your position? - Amgine/ ^t·e 20:43, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

It appears there is enough sourcing to support allotted as an adjective. User:DCDuring, why do you fight words ending in -ed and -ing being defined as adjectives when they're clearly attestable as such? Purplebackpack89 ^{(Notes Taken) (Locker)} 16:47, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

@Purplebackpack89 To avoid the need to maintain English entries that convey no semantic information. All English nouns can be used attributively; all English past participles and -ing forms can be used in a variety of predictable ways. Perhaps you would enjoy adding complete adjective PoS sections to all (I do mean ALL) English noun entries, -ing-forms and past participles and complete noun sections to all -ing-form entries. In principle, each sense of the lemma form of a verb should have an appropriately reworded corresponding sense in the adjective section located on the same page as the section for the past participle and the -ing-form. Mutatis mutandis for nouns. DCDuring TALK 18:22, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Just because it can be done doesn't mean it has to be done only by me, or immediately. What we just do is end the ridiculous deletion of -ed and -ing adjectives, and create more as needed. Furthermore, it doesn't have to be ALL, because, in practice, not all are used frequently enough to be attributable. Purplebackpack89 ^{(Notes Taken) (Locker)} 15:53, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

I've removed one sense as RFV-failed, and suppressed the comparative and superlative forms. The remaining sense has one good citation, and one iffy citation. It needs at least one more citation. Here's another iffy (rather verbal) citation: 1913, Engineering News, volume 69, page 344: As these lands became allotted, they were gradually cultivated through irrigation by a canal from the Yakima River, built in the earlier days by the Indians without outside assistance. - -sche (discuss) 21:13, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

@DCDuring what do you make of the two citations in the entry and the one citation I provide above? - -sche (discuss) 21:07, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

The 1969 citation and the one above, with usage after become, seem supportive of an adjective interpretation. The other citation in the entry looks verbal to me. DCDuring TALK 22:13, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Assuming we play this little game absent from CFI, legislated by DCDuring, opposed by me and supported by some others:

As for DCDuring's "Can it be used after become or seem?" (I don't know why it would matter, but anyway):

• 1854, Mary Elizabeth Charles, ‎Mary, the handmaid of the Lord:

  Whilst to others, were there not the family of God in the world, and the grace of God in the heart, no necessary task might seem allotted.

• 1901, Evelyn Abbott, A History of Greece - Volume 2:

  Other words which seem allotted to certain places in the line receive this position because they are part of an established phrase: ...

• 1917, author?, Yale Sheffield Monthly - Volume 24:

  But such doubtful blessings as foresight are not vouchsafed to us and I started to fulfill my task as it seemed allotted, come what might.

• 1967, author?, Advanced Report - Issues 8-9:

  During the first hundred years or so, as settlements gradually increased in size and the land available in the original grant became allotted and subdivided through inheritance, small groups split off from the parent villages

• 1996, Dorothy Whitelock, English Historical Documents:

  ... but the process by which dues had become allotted to the individual churches or minsters and ceased to be administered for the diocese by the bishop is obscure, ...

• 2002, F. B. Meyer, Jeremiah: Priest and Prophet:

  ... who would by that time have become allotted to their captors and would seek to win the smiles of their new lords by ...

• More: google books:"seem allotted", google books:"seemed allotted", google books:"seems allotted", google books:"become allotted", google books:"becomes allotted", google books:"became allotted"

--Dan Polansky (talk) 22:45, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Verb forms are regularly used after "become" or "seem", so that test isn't helpful in this circumstance, where the alternative to "allotted" being an adjective is that it is a verb form. One can speak of "Other words which seem [assigned to / banned from / etc] certain places", "the process by which dues had become [assigned / bequeathed / etc] to [...] churches", etc, and the 1967 citation even directly parallels "allotted" to another verb, "subdivided". So we still only have two citations that are adjectival. I tried to search Issuu for citations citations of "very allotted" and other such collocations, but it's returning books that use "allotted" without very (must be an error on someone's end). - -sche (discuss) 21:01, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

The two citations which were in the entry were:

• 1969, Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, page 58,

  On the face of it, the President has only so much time—a very allotted time—to do the things he really believes in and thinks must be done.

• 2012 January, Robert L. Dorit, “Rereading Darwin”, in American Scientist‎^[2], volume 100, number 1, page 23:

  We live our lives in three dimensions for our threescore and ten allotted years. Yet every branch of contemporary science, from statistics to cosmology, alludes to processes that operate on scales outside of human experience: the millisecond and the nanometer, the eon and the light-year.

- -sche (discuss) 01:35, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

RFV-failed, with only two satisfactory citations. - -sche (discuss) 01:35, 1 July 2015 (UTC)