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Sum of parts
Latest comment: 18 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion
No, it is idiomatic. The usual meaning of "last summer" is the summer just passed, but a foreigner could easily misunderstand it as "final summer", "worst summer", "ultimate summer", "duration of summer", etc. Also, a proper translation of this into any other language will always be tricky, and only those with a good command of the language will be able to manage it. —Stephen14:44, 1 November 2006 (UTC)Reply
Do we have to wait to establish this in all languages that are now or might be covered in Wiktionary? Why not delete until we find a language for which this phrase corresponds to a single word in that language. DCDuring17:44, 29 October 2007 (UTC)Reply
Not a set phrase: "this past summer" means the same thing. Last is simply being used in one of its many capacities, and can precede many other words in this position with this same sense. --EncycloPetey23:58, 29 October 2007 (UTC)Reply
Keep for translation purposes only. The Japanese word 昨夏 passes Semper's test, and I was translating this I would want someone to tell me if the translation of "this past summer" or of "summer of last year" is more natural in the target language. Kappa03:08, 30 October 2007 (UTC)Reply
When 昨夏 gets an entry, it can certainly link to lastsummer (two words) as a translation, but it shouldn't link to last summer (single entry). The naturalness of translation will be affected by context and region in any case. --EncycloPetey04:46, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply
last night is also a standard phrase. The expected English would be the past night. Going in the other direction, last night sounds like it should mean "final night." Besides being idiomatic, it’s a set phrase. —Stephen03:26, 30 October 2007 (UTC)Reply
You can also say last week, last month, last season, last decade, the last census, his last book, the last apple I ate, my last wife, the last time I did this, the last news I heard, the last glimpse I had, in the last column I wrote... I can go on. Are all of these idioms and set phrases too? Cynewulf03:38, 30 October 2007 (UTC)Reply
Last month, yes, last year, yes, but not last season, last decade, last census, last book, last apple, last wife, last time, last news, last glimpse, or last column. The first two can reasonably be expected to appear in a good bilingual dictionary, either under "last" or as a separate entry (depending on the layout design), but experienced users would not expect to see entries for any of the others. —Stephen18:01, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply
Delete as sum of parts. An entry could be made in usage note for last + time and next + time, if anyone would like to do so. "Final night." would be the last night, the indicating uniqueness. Also consider The night before last, The summer after next. No, sorry. "Last" and "next" work like this with time nouns. They are not set phrases. Algrif14:11, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply
Keep, with major modifications (see below) Yes, I'm going back on my original thoughts, but this is following the discussion above.
Stephen, I agree that "last month" and "last year" might well be found in good bilingual dictionaries, but are given as examples of usage rather than as a set phrases. My Modern Greek dictionary gives "this Friday", "this morning" and "this afternoon" as examples, but these are given for grammatical reasons ("the" is used in these phrases instead of "this"). Note that monolingual dictionaries would not give these phrases, other than as examples, which shows that they are not set phrases.
In Modern Greek, "last year", "this year" and "next year" are (if I remember correctly) all translated by single phrases. For example, "this year" is φέτος rather than the literal "αυτός ο χρόνος" I don't know about Japanese. So there is a good case for keeping this entry solely to give the translations that cannot be deduced from the component words, with no implication of idiomaticity being made. The entries day after tomorrow and day before yesterday (discussed elsewhere) already exist for this purpose, and they say so explicitly.
However, with many (a few? lots of?) languages forming "last summer" regularly by simply translating "last" and "summer", would these translations belong in such an entry? — Paul G07:48, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply
Obviously you observe a different definition of "set phrase" than I do. To translate "last census", a translator will look up last and census as individual words. In the case of last week, last month, last year, and last summer, no experienced translator would think of looking up the individual words (if for some reason he did not already know the translation)...he would first check under last to see if there were any entries for any of last week, last month, last year, or last summer, and, if not found there, he would look to see if there were an example given under the noun portion. There are only two considerations: whether to give one or more of them under last, or to give one or more a separate entry. Cheaper, more generalized dictionaries that are used by college students, for example, usually put one of them only as an example under last. The more expensive dictionaries that professional translators buy are more likely to include one or more as separate entries. In paper dictionaries, the main differences in the two layouts is that separate entries are much easier and faster to navigate, but fewer words and phrases can be treated. Putting only one of the phrases in as an example is much more difficult for the user to locate (and professional users with time constraints don’t like that), but it means that more words can be entered. In an Internet dictionary, there is no reason that I can think of not to have them all as separate entries. —Stephen14:59, 2 November 2007 (UTC)Reply
Delete — but last is currently missing the relevant sense, and obviously that needs to be remedied. While we're at it, last also needs a usage note explaining when we say “the last” and when we say simply “last”. —RuakhTALK 15:39, 1 November 2007 (UTC) ← Never mind, I just remembered a previous suggestion, which I agree with, that we should keep debatably-SOP entries. I suppose this might fall into that category; so, weak keep. —RuakhTALK03:50, 4 November 2007 (UTC)Reply
