That is poor use of bull, ox, and cow. They are three words with different meanings. A bull is male, an ox is a castrated male, and a cow is a female. All three words refer to domesticated cattle but they are not interchangeable.

Picky, picky... but you get the get the point.

@albanian...

while you are correct in one definition of "ox", it is also used to refer to "any" member of the bovine family... so if a bovine is referred to as an "ox", it could also be a "bull", even though it would seem to be opposite. "male cow" is not actually a definition, but since here in America people tend to call all bovines "cows" it would make sense in the example cited. (cows are actually female bovine that have given birth)

so... you are both right, in a sense.

English has got to be the most confusing language there is! XD

Hmm... well... I wasn't trying to be "right" about the specific current academy definitions of ox, cow, and bull... I was just in need of some synonyms and that was the first thing to pop into my head.

English is full of synonyms because of the multiple-roots of the language, so I generally expect for there to be about three synonyms for each common thing, such that in order to help keep track within the context of style I sort them out according to their linguistic origins, and to my ear ox would have been what the original Celtic inhabitants of the British isles would have called the things, cow is what the Anglo-Saxon invaders called it, and bull would have come in after the Norman invasion from people who spoke a romantic language.

English is basically a mish-mash of three language groups: Celtic, spoken by the original inhabitants, Germanic, spoken by the Anglo-Saxon invaders, and Romantic, spoken by the Norman invaders, plus you can throw in some Greek (usually those words with 'ph' for the 'F' sound) and what we call "English" was a pidgin-language spoken in the market-place until the 1600's.

Prior to that time, the peasants tended to speak Celtic (Gaelic being an example) at home, the middle class spoke Anglic (what we'd call middle-English now) at home, and the upper class of nobility spoke Normandish at home, but they needed to trade, and so pidgin-language was worked out in the marketplace, and when Henry-VIII split the Church of England from the Roman Church it was inevitable that they would need a non-Latin Bible, and after arguing a bit about which dialect to use, they settled on the pidgin version that everyone more-or-less knew from the marketplace... and that's when English as we know it became "formalized" with Samuel Johnson's first dictionary, and why it was at that time that Shakespeare made a mark for himself by taking a bunch of stories that had been told by many before but in different languages and hammered them out in the now-official-definition of "proper" English. He was the first English play-write (whom we know of) to realize that not only did market-language have lots of synonyms, but it also had a very plastic grammar, such that it could make for speech hard to understand, but it could also be used to word-craft in ways that one couldn't with just Gaelic or Germanic or Normandish.

Like any tool with lots of extra buttons and options and features, a lot more can be done with it than other tools (languages) in the hands of someone who takes the time to learn how to use it, but like complex tools, those extra options can sometimes backfire such that the appliance just sits there blinking 12:00, however, it's winning out by virtue of the same grammatical plasticity that creates issues with things like run-on sentences.

I hear that from ESL students all the time. They hate the spelling, and they hate the plethora of synonyms and the huge vocabulary ("why do you have separate words for rat and mouse... they both pests... why do you have separate words for bean and pea... they both food seeds in pod... why do you have he and she... they both person...", etc.) but once they get a grip on the written grammar, they will continue to *speak* their mother tongue among each other, but they will *write* in English to each other, and I've read some of their stuff, and you know what? Technically, their grammar is correct, but man-oh-man sometimes I have to read it three times to understand what they're saying.

I mean, the irony is, it started as just a trade language, and even 150 years after Samuel Johnson and Shakespeare many were still thinking about it that way.

When the new US Congress was thinking about what languages they would write their laws in, it wasn't for sure that it would be English, because the majority of immigrants at that time were speaking German, and some wanted to make it officially German in order to further delineate a line between England and the US, but they decided to stick with English because they figured that in the long run it would be better for *trade*, because even though they didn't want to be a British territory anymore, they still wanted to be able to trade with British colonies like the Caribbean.

But many non-mercenaries noticed that because of the vocabulary full of synonyms, and because of the plastic grammar, both derived from polyglot roots, it's also a powerful tool for word-smithing, but it takes some work to get a grip on because it's got LOTs! of options...

I've talked to many, many people with non-English mother tongues, and they all say the same thing: Writing in their languages is not such an issue, because it's like driving with an automatic, but with English you have to learn how to shift with a standard, still... they like it the way professional race car and long-haul semi drivers want to control the transmission.

And that's why the question today is about run-on sentences, and why you'll notice there hadn't been a simple answer!

It's a legitimate question, and it's something that's been an issue for *everyone*!

I choose not to argue semantics. I understood your answer perfectly and found it quite informative and entertaining. The way you describle blackfoot reminded me somewhat of spanish, where the ending of the word is what in english we would use as a personal pronoun such as "call me" would be "marcame" and "call him" would be "marcale", although I don't think it's the exact same thing, it was the closest example I could think of.

What gave you the idea to study Blackfoot anyway? What a great idea!

(althogh upon further examination, the semantics made for some more great reading material! Thanks again!)

What gave me the idea for Blackfoot?

Well, where I was living at the time, it was the second most commonly spoken language after English, so it made sense to do so. They formed a significant percentage of the population... basically 25%, or one in four, was Blackfoot, and although most spoke English, there were still some old-timers deep on the reserve who could only speak Siksika, and there was too much isolation between the Europeans and the Natives, and it wasn't for lack of trying on the part of the natives.

Besides, I was going for an honors degree, and part of that meant learning at least one other language, so I shrugged, and made it one I could go out and actually try out on real speakers.

It was fun, because although whites were accustomed to natives coming into town, it was very rare for whites to visit the reserve, so I always got real good treatment when I went.

They had a shopping mall built right in the middle of the prairies that looked surreal, like a picture of a shopping mall had been cut out of a magazine and pasted onto fence-less grassland with a ribbon of a road threading up to in, without a parking lot, so people would just park on graveled grassland, but inside it was utterly modern, state-of-the art with fountains and specialty shops with the latest designs in jeans and sneakers...

One shop was the Itoyopi cafe, where you could order ala cart, but the daily special was a paper plate of flat-bread piled with as much smoked meat as it could hold... enough to feed three people as far I could tell, yet I saw guys sit down and finish the whole thing... for $2.00... all made with modern Hobart restaurant kitchen equipment.

Then there was the time I decided to take a spring break from school and go on a backpacking/camping trip, and decided to camp of the reserve because it wasn't fenced plus there were no road or farm-lights lights around (they let their livestock run around free-range and would just sort them out according to branding), and they noticed the smoke from the fire, so some band police came up and over the ridge in a Toyota 4x4 and I gut busted for camping on the reserve without a permit... so yes... I'm one of the few white guys who's spent time in an Indian jail (and yes, the other natives in there gave me the gears about it... "Soo... what does it feel like for the white man to be in the Indian jail... >snicker snicker heyuck heyuck<").

They were going to fine me $200, but when they heard I could speak some pidgin Siksika, they let me go if I just paid the $35 fee for a camping permit.

And lots of other stuff happened too. It was neat. My Siksika name is Apohkiaayo.

Please refrain from responding to a question for which you don't have an answer. See Mahalo Answers Etiquette for guidelines about answering questions.

Moreover, your use of a 160-word sentence, in an answer to a question about how to avoid run-on sentences, further damaged your credibility.

"Prior to that time, the peasants tended to speak Celtic (Gaelic being an example) at home, the middle class spoke Anglic (what we'd call middle-English now) at home, and the upper class of nobility spoke Normandish at home, but they needed to trade, and so pidgin-language was worked out in the marketplace, and when Henry-VIII split the Church of England from the Roman Church it was inevitable that they would need a non-Latin Bible, and after arguing a bit about which dialect to use, they settled on the pidgin version that everyone more-or-less knew from the marketplace... and that's when English as we know it became "formalized" with Samuel Johnson's first dictionary, and why it was at that time that Shakespeare made a mark for himself by taking a bunch of stories that had been told by many before but in different languages and hammered them out in the now-official-definition of "proper" English."

Aww... nobody's got a sense of humor anymore.

I thought it was funny and made an illustrated point, but alas, there's no good way to illustrate one's affective attitude when writing on this thing, what with the dearth of emoticons.

Besides, the issue of run-on sentences is actually just a question of style, and has nothing to do with what really matters in order for something to be "proper" English, which is grammar.

In fact, sometimes run-on sentences are better - style wise - for making a piece of writing sound more like speech, and the only real problem with run-on sentences is that if the reader or listener has a limited short-term memory buffer, like if they were weaned on TV, then they can't remember what you were talking about by they time you reach the period.

If you read stuff by Homer or Thucydides, you'll see sentences that are much longer than 160 words, but those are pieces of litterateur from the days when it was considered normal for people to be able to listen to an hour-long speech and remember the whole thing verbatim.

In my opinion, he did answer the question, @shinju. He just took a more round about approach, and provided lots of extra information, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

If you read my original question, which was actually, if you would like to be technical, (and i'm assuming you do,) many questions, you will see where I wrote "Is this a problem other people have?" Which is the part of the question where amost of @omicron 's extra information proved quite helpful.