Ok -- for all you teachers and teacher wannabes (that�s want-to-be for you Sir Adrian) out there... I have a question that was posed to me by a student today that has me stumped. I have yet to come up with a logical explanation (although not everything in English has an explanation or is logical!)
So (drumroll please)... the question was..
"why do the signs in the stores say open and closed and not opened and closed or open and close?"
Got me on that one (that�s �murican speak for "I don�t have an intelligible answer for you" translation done by peeka chica for Il Mufino).
I can do this!!! I know I can!!!!! It is the same question I asked my Spanish tutor, but the other way round. It is something to do with movement!!! (And much as my tutor tried to explain I was still confused - though I got the drift, eventually!!)
Open is ongoing, whilst opened means it was, but isn�t, or may not be, anymore. Close means it may do any minute, but closed means that it is.
I�m sure there�s more, but I have now confused myself!
________________________________________ Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional
I've just been skirting around some etymology sites in hopes of finding something of use there, but I haven't found anything and I've done some pretty dad-gummed complex Google searches in the process.
I'd have to motion for putting this in the... Porque s�, leches. �Que no me toques los huevos m�s!... ��Joder!! category . Or at least that's the way my blushing bride used to refer to it when I asked her such questions early on during my Spanish 'aprendizaje...'
:cheers:
poseso.... Tony --- English Unlimited... Un ambiente para aprender ingl�s... (An English Learning Environment)
Posts: 656 | Location: Madrid (Kansas City, USA) | Registered: 06 November 2001
Is your student asking why it says open and closed ? or is he asking why even though the words are a logical pair, why don't they share the same form when being used as reciprocal actions?
If he's simply asking why the sign says Open and Closed, I guess I would say that the signs derive from what is actually taking place. The store is Open. The store is Closed. It's a one word description for the longer descriptive statement.
On the other hand, eytmologically speaking, I have no idea why the adjective forms of the logical pair are asymmetrical, i.e. Open does not = Close but rather Closed. My guess would be as with a lot of languages people wanted to phonetically differentiate the words. You already have Open and Close as the verb form so it would be nicer to have Closed as the adjective form. Saying It's close sounds more awkward than saying It's closed. Besides close when pronounced with the soft S, meaning near to, already exists so maybe the d was added to differentiate.
I will check the histories of the words tonight in the <drum roll please> OED.
P.S. I love word history!!! It's so exciting! Mikey
"He who hath not a dram of folly in his mixture, hath pounds of much worse matter in his composition".
Posts: 334 | Location: New York, USA | Registered: 06 June 2003
Mike, I am pretty sure Chica's student was asking asking why even though the words are a logical pair, why don't they share the same form when being used as reciprocal actions.
I like Tony's answer. Tony, you have proven to be one of the best teachers (and parents) in one phrase.
Here's my crack at this, since my sister is the grammer guru in my family and not me (sometimez my iinglish es not zo gut!)
When the store is open, it says open because you're actually inviting people to open the door and come inside. Closed instead of close because there is no possibility of them coming in - so you're not inviting or asking anyone to partake in the action of 'close' the door: its closed, period, point blank no business until doors open the next day
Does that work for you?
Siguiendo mi propio Camino de Santiago
Posts: 387 | Location: Madrid | Registered: 19 October 2002
Great post Mikey...that was exactly my student�s question...
But never fear, the answer is here...
In the case of saying that the store is open or closed , both open and closed serve as adjectives. Remember that the past participle as well as the gerund forms of some verbs can also be utilized as adjectives. As stated in the link that you provided, depending on the situation, a different adjective is used.
Open is an adjective and a verb. As an adjective, open suggests an invitation (as posted by Espe3). An open person "invites" other people to interact with them. An open store invites potential customers to enter in. In the sentence: The store is open. Open takes on the same role (adjective) as the word old in the following sentence: The store is old.
On the other hand, opened is merely the past participle of the verb "to open".
Closed is an example of the past participle being used as an adjective . Ex. He is a very closed person. Here closed, although a verb, is used as an adjective modifying the noun person. As an adjective in this usage, closed refers to the state of something/someone. Just like the The store is closed. Referring to the state of the store.
Close is also an adjective, but has a different meaning . For example, A very close friend of mine is coming to visit me next month. Close means "near to me" or "special to me" not a state.
Although the verb "to be" is used in the phrases the store is open/the store is closed, it is the main verb, not the auxiliary verb as we would find it in passive voice sentences such as:
The store is opened by the the manager. The store is closed everyday at 9pm.
ENGLISH! WHAT A LOVELY LANGUAGE!!! :jeje: :jeje:
Thanks for all your responses guys! Tony...I hope you and the crew have a great vacation!!
you are right mikey...but then look at the form of the following word... minded
There must be a linguistic term for when we take a noun and make it a past-participle adjective. Close-minded is a compound adjective and mind is the part of the word that takes on the participle form, rather than close.
So, I suppose the participle rule still applies here.
I'm still searching why the verbs are formed that way. I've posted messages on some etymology forums. I keep forgetting to look up the words in the OED.
Mike
"He who hath not a dram of folly in his mixture, hath pounds of much worse matter in his composition".
Posts: 334 | Location: New York, USA | Registered: 06 June 2003
I love this thread! It helps me a lot with my never-ending process of learning English. It's amazing how many differences in meaning you can get by just changing a little bit English words. This reminds me of phrasal verbs, the nightmare, the torture for Spanish speaking students of English, like "un servidor". If English grammar seems to be far easier than that of the Spanish language, the richness of its lexicon and the infinity of meaningful features which can be expressed make up for its morphological simplicity, it seems. We need a lot of patience when learning a language, but isn�t it beautiful?
Cuiusvis hominis est errare, nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare
You got that right Spanish is more difficult as far as structure goes. But the depth of the English vocabulary stretches far beyond that of Spanish I think.
"He who hath not a dram of folly in his mixture, hath pounds of much worse matter in his composition".
Posts: 334 | Location: New York, USA | Registered: 06 June 2003
I�ve studied Filolog�a Inglesa and had to learn a lot about these matters which are not simple at all but very interesting, from my point of view. It is amazing how much English grammar got simplified throughout its evolution since Anglo-Saxon times!! I think the only way to learn English well is to practice (as I�m doing right now in this message board) since it is in its use when we can really understand its complexity and the way it really works. That is to say, in the case of English, it is more important to know when and how to use the words in order to express the right meaning -for instance, MUST and HAVE TO- in real speech, rather than to learn a huge list of grammatical forms, as it is the case for Spanish (like "Pret�rito imperfecto de subjuntivo del verbo ser: Yo fuera o fuese, t� fueras o fueses, �l/ella fuera o fuese,...") I have read that, when the English language lost the majority of its grammatical complexity (i.e: declensions and verbal forms) by being scarcely written after the Norman invasion of England in the Middle Ages, and only used by non-educated speakers it had to develop alternative ways for expressing meanings in an accurate way and to compensate for the "poverty" of its grammar, and that's how it has nowadays a very very rich vocabulary (always open to new words -including loans from other languages, towards which Spanish seems to have been a little reluctant) and so many phrasal verbs, modals and compounds. As it is the case for all the cultural things, the answer is in History. I�ve also read that, only when we manage to understand the past, we'll be able to fully understand the present.
Cuiusvis hominis est errare, nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare
- though I got the drift, eventually!!)
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no business until doors open the next day 
