Talk:minus

Part of Speech

I've been wondering what part of speech would be correct for the basic use of plus and minus. Here on Wiktionary we have "ditransitive verb", which I'm sure is wrong.

My best guess was either conjunction or preposition. Oddly, dictionary.com lists "plus" as a conjunction and "minus" as a preposition, even though their example sentences are completely equivalent:

• Ten minus four is six
• Two plus two is four

I think we're both wrong. — Hippietrail 22:42, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

RFM discussion: March–October 2011

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minus

Claimed to be a conjunction. It looks like a preposition to me. Also to all OneLook dictionaries, except Cobuild. DCDuring TALK 14:44, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

The same applies to times and other arithmetic operators. I am not as sure about truly mathematical binary operators, but in ordinary use there is a clear sense that the "minus X" modifies the quantity preceding. BTW, is the corresponding Japanese term considered a conjunction? DCDuring TALK 14:53, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Most binary mathematical operators (plus, minus, times, …) indeed behave like prepositions grammatically. Some are even named after prepositions: over (in the sense of divided by), of (function application: "f of x"). I would even go as far as to challenge anyone to come up with another grammatical analysis of mathematical expressions than that the binary operators are in fact prepositions. 130.239.218.89 13:09, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Also, the existing definition is in the form of a noun def and should be revised in any event. DCDuring TALK 14:55, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

RFC discussion: May 2017–May 2018

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part of speech of minus, times, over

plus, of

Our entries disagree on whether mathematical terms like "plus", "minus", "times" and "over" are prepositions (as argued on Talk:minus and asserted by other dictionaries), or conjunctions. Does anyone want to argue against relabelling them prepositions? @Msh210, as a mathematician and a wiki-lexicographer, what is your view? - -sche (discuss) 20:48, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

"Plus" and "minus" can be used without a preceding word, which is not typically a feature of conjunctions. "Times" seems to be more in between, as you can say "fifty times that", where "that" appears to be the head of the phrase rather than "fifty". However, like plus and minus, "times" has started to be used without a preceding word as well. —CodeCat 21:02, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

And? (See and (“sense 1.9”).) DCDuring (talk) 13:36, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, -sche. I'll quote John Lawler from 1997:

Since the basic operations of arithmetic… postdate the Classic Latin Eight Parts of Speech, and since… we're not speaking Latin here, why be surprised if the words for them don't fit the Procrustean Paradigm?

Mathematicians would call them "operators" or "relations", and that's not a bad name. Check out "divided by", a participial phrase, but equivalent to a true preposition, "over". Parts Of Speech are for grade school (if that). Let's not let our zest for the Classics get in the way of numeracy the way the way it has of literacy.

Of course he's a linguist, not a lexicographer, so don't mind his descriptivism. The relevance of his comment to us is in its pointing out the difficulty of categorization; see other posts in that thread for more.

I don't know what to call these, myself, and see nothing wrong with "preposition".​—msh210℠ (talk) 23:05, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

I've relabelled plus a preposition; although one of its senses was "and also", even that does not seem to require being a conjunction, as "besides" and some other terms can be substituted into the usex in its place, (plus|and|besides which) it does seem to be the same POS as the senses before it, which are argued above and on the talk pages and in other dictionaries to be prepositions. The other entries were already labelled prepositions. - -sche (discuss) 21:35, 26 May 2018 (UTC)