Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 December 18

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Language desk
< December 17 << Nov | December | Jan >> December 19 >
Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.


Contents


[edit] December 18

[edit] Gender proportions

Out of curiosity, is there any information available on what percentage of nouns are of each gender in German, French, Spanish, or any other language with grammatical gender? Either for the full lexicon or for the _______ most common words. Thanks. -Elmer Clark (talk) 00:36, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I assume that in Romance languages (French, Spanish, ...) masculine nouns are more common than feminine nouns. After all, vulgar Latin has dropped the neuter, which was largely absorbed into the masculine gender.
As a native speaker of German I would guess that masculine nouns are also the majority in a colloquial vocabulary of this language.
Unfortunately, I can not find any hard figures which give a percentage anywhere. A program which parses some lengthy texts would be less than trivial, as gender is falsified by declension and plural number. Most of the time the article is merely implied in any sentence.
Sorry, this is not really of much help. Maybe user:Schlüsselchen knows. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 11:29, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
This is really interesting. I have found an analysis of German nouns here:[1] This is what the author has to say:

The feature definition that ended up working best was that “high” frequency words were those with counts greater than 100, “low” frequency words had a count of 0 and “medium” frequency words were everything between 1 and 100 inclusive. The distribution of gender at each frequency level (Figure 12) is about what would be expected, given the gender distribution across the language as a whole. Figure 12: Distribution of Frequency Feature

Paradigm  Masc.  Fem.  Neut.  Total
High        679   782    351   1812
Medium     6597  8316   3467  18380
Low        3343  4488   2025   9856

(sorry, I am not wikigeek (yet) enough to put in a proper table. SaundersW (talk) 20:27, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I fixed the formatting a little to make it more readable. — Kpalion(talk) 22:06, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Wow, so feminine is most common in German? Not what I would have expected. Very interesting, thanks. -Elmer Clark (talk) 03:54, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Thank you, SaundersW, for the interesting reference. As table 11 in this document indicates that masculine nouns are in the lead for words with one to two syllables I deduct that size is, indeed, of prime importance when it comes to the female gender :-) --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 10:51, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
The relatively high proportion of feminine words in German may well be due to the fact that the majority of suffixes used to form abstract nouns from verbs, adjectives and other nouns - e.g. -ung, -heit, -schaft - happen to form feminine nouns. I have a recollection of reading something a few years back that suggested that, if such "compounded" nouns are disregarded, the largest group of nouns are masculine. I don't have a reference for this, I'm afraid. Valiantis (talk) 15:31, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Japanese Names

1. In names like Mairi, Saigo, Taika, and Daito, how "i" is pronouced? In the first syllable, as Mai-ri, Sai-go, etc., or as a seperate syllable, like Ma-i-ri, Sa-i-go, etc.? 2. In names like Heike, Meiji, Teika, and Seito, how "i" is pronouced? In the first syllable, as Hei-ke, Mei-ji, etc., or as a seperate syllable, like He-i-ke, Me-i-ji, etc.? 3. If a sound is lost in this transcription, what is it? Is this kind of transcription honest at all? --Omidinist (talk) 07:30, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Japanese phonology would help you. And "i" is always read as "ee". So mairi is like my-re or smiley without s, Saigo is sigh-go, Taika is tie-kha, Daito is die-toe. Heike is hey-ke, Meiji is may-ji. I described them in a convenient way. Think "i" is in separate syllable. Oda Mari (talk) 08:12, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I assume that Oda Mari is interpreting "syllable" as 音節. However, note that Japanese is a mora-based language. Mairi, for instance, consists of two syllables: mai.ri. However, at the same time, it contains three mora: ma.i.ri.
In regard to #1, "i" is [i]. Part of the first syllable, but a separate mora.
In regard to #2, the vowel cluster /ei/ has a tendency to become [eː] (long vowel; repeat e twice) in normal speech. Thus, [heːke], [teːka] etc. Again, part of the first syllable, but a separate mora. Bendono (talk) 08:42, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Oops. Sorry for my misunderstanding. I'm not a phonologist. And thank you Bendono. Oda Mari (talk) 14:23, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Oda Mari is correct. Japanese words like Mairi and Taika are, in fact, three syllables. In songs, the 'i' becomes separated, and haikus treat them as separate syllables. In normal speech, they tend to come together to form diphthongs, but this is a natural thing.--ChokinBako (talk) 13:17, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for comments. Omidinist (talk) 16:48, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Examples of Conflict/Irony in "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"

I have tried to google conflict/irony in the book, but all that has been showing up are websites offering to sell me papers. I am not going to buy a paper to find what someone else has written, I am just looking for some examples of Conflict/Irony. Any help would be well appreciated.

Thanks.


--Devol4 (talk) 10:33, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Please try at the Humanities desk. This desk is for questions about languages and linguistics, not literature. —Angr If you've written a quality article... 10:34, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, Thanks. --Devol4 (talk) 10:36, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Also try hunting through this [2] site for helpful links. SaundersW (talk) 12:53, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Person who knows the most languages

Is there a world record for being fluent in the most number of languages? --Candy-Panda (talk) 13:12, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Try reading this. Harland1 (t/c) 13:48, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
The problem is defining fluency precisely. What to most people would look like fluency would seem only intermediate skills to linguists, and this holds especially true when cases of polyglots are reported on the media - the more astounding a story seems, the easier it is to sell it.
Taking that into account, Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti could be your man. -- Danilot (talk) 14:25, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree the media is often unreliable. This man 'speaks' 60 languages but you are probably right, not fluently. Even if he did Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti would beat him! Harland1 (t/c) 14:38, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Harold Williams is listed in the Guinness book of Records as being able to speak 58 languages 'fluently' but this still doesn't seem to beat Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti. And you have to take 'fluently' with a pinch of salt. As it is highly unlikely that he spoke 58 languages as if they were his first, which is what fluently should mean. For instance a friend of mine is considered remarkable for being able to speak 4 languages fluently, I mean really fluently and many others unfluently (which isn't a word but I am unable to think of the proper one just now). So anyone who spoke 58 languages fluently (which word I am getting sick of now) would, I would say be impossible, if I were not forbidden by the almighty Guinness. Harland1 (t/c) 14:51, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I don't think "fluently" should mean "like a native language". Literally it just means "flowingly", so any language you can converse in without having to stop and mentally translate either what your interlocutor just said or what you want to say, you speak fluently. It doesn't have to mean you speak it without an accent or that you don't make occasional grammatical errors, just that you can jabber away in it without significant impediment. —Angr If you've written a quality article... 14:57, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree. From my personal experience, I can tell non-experts tend to be easily amazed by mediocre language skills. I speak five languages fluently, two more almost fluently, and have got a basic knowledge of five or six more. The thing is, when I speak in those languages of which I have only got an elementary knowledge (even when I speak with natives!), people tend to be very impressed and even natives say I can speak their language "very well" (which I contend is far from being true). So sometimes I find out that people have been exagerating my language skills, not maliciously, but because they honestly believe I can speak a given language very well.
On the other hand, if I spoke with linguists, they would certainly downplay my language abilities in several of the languages I speak. Therefore, I believe there is a selective bias in determining fluency - it all depends on to whom you speak.
So, going back to Candy-Panda's original question... I think the best help we can give you is to provide you with a List of Hyperpolyglots, and then let you decide for yourself if their claims are well founded. -- Danilot (talk) 15:05, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Watch this [3]. "Professor" Ziad Fazah showing off his skills in 58 languages. It's from the Chilean TV, so it's in Spanish, though the most important messages are communicated using "international" language :) --Taraborn (talk) 17:06, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Hehe, good video! Well, the subtitle reads: "what the fu** am I doing here?", complementing the international language. lol Pallida  Mors 03:34, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
The question has been asked before. See Wikipedia:Reference desk archive/Humanities/2006 August 16#Greatest Polyglot and Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 May 3#Most languages?.  --Lambiam 22:29, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
All very interesting! Thank you. :) --Candy-Panda (talk) 13:21, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Turkish and Arabic

As a worldwide stamp collector, I see little bits of many different languages. For quite a while, I've wondered: is the Turkish Cumhuriyeti (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, the official name of the state, Republic of Turkey) related to the Arabic الجماهيرية ("Jamahiriya", part of the official name of the state, Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya)? Obviously, Turkish and Arabic aren't related, but with apparently similar meanings and somewhat similar souns I wonder: did one language borrow from the other? Or is it simply a coincidence? Nyttend (talk) 15:50, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

It seems likely that it is a loanword - I would suspect from Arabic to Turkish. Our article Turkish language has some information about loanwords from Arabic, it appears that there are many, particularly in governmental vocabulary, but there is also a movement to replace loanwords with words of Turkic origin. I hope that someone with more expertise in Turkish and Arabic will turn up to enlighten us further. Good question, by the way. DuncanHill (talk) 16:12, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
A breakdown of the origin of the words on a Turkish dictonary can be seen in the pie chart to the right. About 6% is of Arabic origin. Words of Arabic origin entered the Turkish vocabulary in two ways: through Persian, if Persian used an Arabic loanword – mainly words related to culture and administration, and directly from Arabic – in particular words with a specific religious meaning in Islam.  --Lambiam 22:49, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

No coincidence. Turkish and Arabic are related. Turkish has borrowed many many words from Arabic. As a matter of fact, almost all Muslim peoples have borrowed from Arabic. The reason is obvious. And, Jamahir (جماهیر) is the plural form of Jomhur (or Cumhur جمهور) meaning people or nation. --Omidinist (talk) 16:29, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

No, they're not related at all, they are as different as English and Arabic. Due to centuries of contact, it has lots of Arabic loanwords, as Duncan said. It also has lots of borrowings from Persian (which is also as unrelated to Turkish as it is to Arabic, although it is actually related to English). The Turks were originally nomads and didn't have much vocabulary for government bureaucracy. They also borrowed "state" (devlet, from dawlat), "province" (vilayet, from wilayat), "sultan", etc. I don't know any Persian, unfortunately, so I'm not sure what they borrowed from it, but the Ottomans and their predecessors used Persian as their literary language, so sophisticated terms for literature and language probably come from there (what is Turkish for "book"? Probably something like the Persian "nameh" - in Arabic it is "kitab"). Arabic also borrowed heavily from Persian, which was the dominant language during the initial Arabic conquests. Adam Bishop (talk) 16:55, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
To be linguistically precise, we should say the two languages are not "genetically related". I guess we can't say two languages with so close a contact are not "related", in the common sense of the word. Language contact brings about not only changes in vocabulary, but also those in grammar and phonology, though probably not many in the case of Arabic and Turkish. So I guess Omidinist is not truly wrong in saying that they're "related".--K.C. Tang (talk) 04:49, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
"Book" in modern Turkish is kitap (Turkish phonology tends to devoice final b and d), but in several compound words loaned from Persian you find the suffix -name.  --Lambiam 22:27, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
A language, having borrowed words from another, does not automatically become related to the latter. Were it so, then English would be related to Nahuatl by the token of using the term "tomato".
I doubt wether an indigenous Peruvian, on a trip to London, would consider this to be a visit to linguistic relatives :) --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 17:39, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
English has "borrowed" many words from other languages. (See The Mother Tongue (book) for examples) What worries me is this. What will happen when they want thenm all back and see how we have mangled them? SaundersW (talk) 18:05, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Nothing will really happen.--droptone (talk) 18:30, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Any such person who is observed by the authorities of the Language Police to be utilizing terms not being in his or her lawful etymological possession is deemed to have accrued a debit of royalties payable to the original creator of the lexeme.
As the holders of the copyright of Anglo-Saxon, Latin and Norman French have already and sadly become extinct, the accumulated moneys may be transferred to the account of the legal representative of the aforementioned plaintiffs, --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 19:41, 18 December 2007 (UTC) (the banking details will be supplied at your convenience...)
But I am not sure that my convenience is a suitable place for the provision of such details... SaundersW (talk) 22:29, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

– James D. Nicoll, rec.arts.sf-lovers, 15 May 1990

Back to the original question, yes, technically it is true that Turkish and Arabic are from two different linguistic families, but the question is about whether the two words are related. I admit that I could phrase my sentence more precisely. --Omidinist (talk) 07:36, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the Turkish word is a loanword from Arabic. —Angr If you've written a quality article... 17:04, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Indeed, the Turkish is borrowed from Arabic, but not the word you mention, which was created by Gaddafi in one of his bursts of originality. Arabic for republic is جمهورية jumhu:ri:ya(t): you'll find this, for example at Tunisia. Also Swahili has borrowed this term as jamhuri. Drmaik (talk) 07:42, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What language can communicate the most information, while using the least amount of ink?

In other words, what language can communicate the most, while remaining short and concise? 64.236.121.129 (talk) 16:06, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Probably a highly agglutinative language; maybe Georgian. -- Danilot (talk) 16:11, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Languages that use logogram-based writing systems instead of an alphabet would presumably communicate more information with "less ink" when written, but I assume Danilot's answer is more in line with what you're asking. -Elmer Clark (talk) 17:56, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I flatly disagree. The basic idea of information theory is that conciseness means reduced redundancy, and agglutinative languages are notoriously redundant. A highly-analytic language like Chinese would probably be the closest you'll find (and I'm not referring to the writing system here, although script Chinese characters arguably save considerable strokes over any other writing system). In the ideal case, however, a language would be complete with some kind of compression operators that allow for metasemantic conciseness, like if I were to refer to a story about some object in the past tense, I would set the tense and object as context with an initial statement, then proceed with the story with every verb tense assumed to be in the past and every dangling reference assumed to be toward that object. This behavior again can occur more often in analytic languages than agglutinative languages. SamuelRiv (talk) 19:03, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
The least amount of ink is not necessarily identical with the least amount of think. And - whilst still stunned by the sheer brilliancy of my statement - Jorge Luis Borges had something to say about the OP´s question. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 22:16, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
It's definitely dependent on the information to be conveyed. A number of Amazonian languages can (and must) tell you about the source of information. Rather than say "I heard from a friend that you were engaged", you might say "You are engaged" and add a particle that shows that you know this from a third source (or show that you saw them get engaged, or that there's a rumour to that effect). This information is less easily conveyed. Of course any alnguage can convey a huge amount of information without ink, by use of speech (or signing). Steewi (talk) 02:12, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
It's also one of the FAQs. Since you guys've started the hardest language, why not take a shot at the most economical language?--K.C. Tang (talk) 06:41, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Steewi's comment is applicable to Japanese too. 'konnyaku shita sou' means the same thing, in that the 'sou' means 'I heard' or 'there is a rumour' or 'looks like'. 'konnyaku shita' means '(someone) got engaged, and the person referred to can be inferred from context.--ChokinBako (talk) 13:10, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
There is a possible objective test for this. An appropriate passage is translated or rendered in all the languages under consideration (what text: that is an interesting question) and then the amount of ink used is approximated by the number of black pixels used (decisions about appropriate font sizes in different scripts needed). SaundersW (talk) 17:21, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Well, we could just look at the hundreds of translations of Harry Potter, type them all out in the same font size on A4 paper and see which language has the least pages. Languages which use one or two syllables for each word (and the corresponding number of spaces to write), like Chinese, would definitely be contenders. --ChokinBako (talk) 00:04, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Verb tense

I was trying to make some edits on Wikipedia and was having some difficulty with correct grammar. Ultimately, I realized that I was utterly confused about the distinction between past tense and past perfect tense. Can anyone offer a very brief summary of this distinction, perhaps in a sentence or two, to make it clear? Just a quick "Cliff Notes" version so that I can capture the basic gist of it. These below, for example, are the types of sentences that were giving me trouble and causing me confusion.

Example A:
John Smith broke the world record in 1973 by eating 100 donuts.
Prior to that, the record-holder was Joe Blow.
(OR) Prior to that, Joe Blow held the record by eating 50 donuts.

Example B:
John Smith broke the world record in 1973 by eating 100 donuts.
Prior to that, the record-holder had been Joe Blow.
(OR) Prior to that, Joe Blow had held the record by eating 50 donuts.

So, are some sentences correct while the others are incorrect? (Which are correct and why?) Are they all correct? Are they all correct, but each is stating something a little different than the others? Please help. Thanks. I would like to know which are correct ... and, more importantly, why. Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 18:05, 18 December 2007 (UTC))

The past perfect is being "replaced" by the past tense to some degree in English. Example B is the "correct" choice, but you'd probably see A more often now. I can't really think of a good way to describe the distinction. The best way I can think of would be you use the past perfect when you're talking about "the former status of something before something changed it," but I'm not sure this is entirely right or helpful. -Elmer Clark (talk) 18:39, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Yes, that's what I was tought, and that's the function Spanish or Latin pluscuamperfect tenses have. By the way, look at Wiki's view on the topic. Pallida  Mors 19:30, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
You have to think of exactly what it is you want to say.
  • John Smith broke the world record in 1973 by eating 100 donuts.
  • Prior to that, the record-holder was Joe Blow.
This is right. Joe was the record-holder in 1972.
  • (OR) Prior to that, Joe Blow held the record by eating 50 donuts.
Doesn't work. Wrong word. Joe set the record by eating 50 donuts, he didn't hold it by doing that. Let's look at "Prior to that, Joe Blow held the record." Again, the past perfect would be wrong. Joe simply did hold the record then.
We can say "Joe Blow set the world record of 100 donuts in 1973. He had held the record previously, from 1969 to 1971, but John Smith briefly took it away in late 1972." Only use the past perfect when you need to.
I suspect there is some terminological confusion. The simple past is replacing the present perfect, especially in American English. "Did you eat yet?" is the usual example. A Brit would likely say "Have you eaten yet?" Formal American English still demands the present perfect there. --Milkbreath (talk) 20:19, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I definitely see many instances of the simple past replacing the past perfect as well - it would not surprise me at all to hear Example A. I am just referring to colloquial speech, however. -Elmer Clark (talk) 20:58, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I don't know if this helps, because it is actually notoriously difficult, and, additionally in flux. Here is an example sentence.
I had looked at noon, and then everything seemed OK, but when I looked again an hour later, she had disappeared.
In reporting things in the past, the speaker can focus on some moment in the past and report with respect to that moment. Here that moment is apparently one o'clock. In reporting about what happened at a focus moment in the past, the speaker uses the simple past tense, or the past progressive if it was an ongoing action. The act of looking was not ongoing, so the simple past looked is used. The hamster (or whoever) having transited to another plane of existence, or just escaped, is something that did not happen at the focus moment but apparently earlier – sometime between noon and one. In reporting acts or actions prior to a past focus moment, the past perfect is used: had disappeared. After all, that disappearing act had been performed and completed earlier ("perfect" means something like "completed"). Likewise, the past act of looking at noon happened prior to the one o'clock focus, so we get: had looked. So why is it then seemed? First, if you put had seemed there, that is not wrong. But what has happened here is a temporary shift of focus in that clause to the moment when the speaker was looking, at noon, a shift that is underscored by the word then.
To make this really complicated, there is an important exception. If the focus is not a specific moment in the past, but a definite period in the past (like during February 1962, or all my life), you tend to use the past perfect anyway, even if there is no sense of completion: All my life I have wanted to visit Tibet.  --Lambiam 23:27, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
If you've now achieved your goal of visiting Tibet, would it become:
  • "All my life I had wanted to visit Tibet, and I finally did it last year", or
  • "All my life I wanted to visit Tibet, and I finally did it last year", or
  • "All my life I was wanting to visit Tibet, and I finally did it last year", or
  • is there very little difference between these versions? -- JackofOz (talk) 00:00, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Name for terms that are clarifying sub-classes of themselves

Some words like "animal" and "vegetable" have both a narrow and a subsuming broader sense. For example, "animal" in the broader sense includes humans, but the term is also used as a disambiguator to mean "non-human animals", e.g. in the expression "animal medicine". (Some humans are offended to be described as "animals" but that's another matter.) Vegetable can mean any plant, or various different categories of edible plant part (e.g. consider tomato#Fruit or vegetable?). Is there a name for words like this? What other examples are there? Bovlb (talk) 19:16, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Not exactly what you're looking for, but antonomasy and eponym come to my mind. By the way, some languages (Spanish, for instance) have different words for the two meanings of vegetable (vegetal and verdura). Pallida  Mors 19:39, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
There are cases like "sheep". It can mean any sheep, male or female - or it can more particularly refer to a male sheep only, with a female being a "ewe". Same for duck/drake, horse/mare, goose/gander, dog/bitch, etc. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:35, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
And (gender-neutral) "sheep" can mean a domestic sheep, that is, a member of specifically the species Ovis aries, or a member of any species in the Ovis genus, such as the Desert Bighorn Sheep (Ovis canadensis nelsoni).  --Lambiam 22:20, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I have never heard a single word to describe this case. I would describe it as "a special case of polysemy, where one of the meanings is a hypernym of the other(s)". Maybe we could coin a name: "homonym-hypernym"? --Lgriot (talk) 08:35, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Guten Tag (German adjective endings)

Why is it guten Tag? Tag is masculine, it isn't preceded by a determinant so, in nominative, it should be guter Tag, isn't it? What's wrong here? --Taraborn (talk) 21:56, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

There is an implied "Ich wünsche Ihnen einen ..." ("I wish you a ..."). Guten Tag is in fact the accusative. ---Sluzzelin talk 22:11, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Another common example of an accusative with implied subject and verb is "Vielen Dank!" ("many thanks", though it's singular and also sounds archaic when inspected closely. Not sure how to translate it literally. "Much gratitude"?). I'm also uncertain what the implied part would be, but "(Ich gebe/schulde dir/euch/Ihnen) vielen Dank!" would work, for example. ---Sluzzelin talk 23:00, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. --Taraborn (talk) 09:29, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
If you were using the nominative, ie "Guter Tag", it would be understood as either:
a statement of fact / opinion, "it is a good day..." (for fishing or whatever), with the implied verb
a question "is it a good day ?", again with an implied verb
Both are possible, depending on the inflection you apply to the sentence, the body language / facial expression and the context. Either may be used, but of course, they are not standard greetings. Depending on the genus / gender of the noun the accusative may differ or may be identical to the nominative case. In "good night" / "Gute Nacht" this is still the object of the fragment of the sentence, but as the acc. is identical to the nom., you do not notice the objective case.
Implied subjects and / or verbs are, of course, also used in English for standard phrases. "Good morning" is just shorthand and "What a load of bull" implies "Well, in my humble opinion your preceding statement lacks a modicum of applicability to reality as observed by more perceptive analysts of the problem in question". --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 12:54, 19 December 2007 (UTC)