personal pronouns - "Being [he/him] is not easy." Which is prescriptively "correct"?

"It is I" follows a well-known prescriptivist rule

This question is about prescriptive grammar. It’s a fairly well-known prescriptivist rule that “me, him, her, them” (in other words, pronouns in the objective case) should not be used after forms of the verb “to be” in sentences like “It’s me” or “The culprit is him.” The recommended alternative is to use “I, he, she, they” (pronouns in the nominative case) instead. Constructions of the form “it is me” can apparently be found as far back as the 16th century, but I’m not interested in learning how well (i.e. badly) this rule reflects actual usage. I want to learn more about the prescriptivist rule itself, and what forms educated people have prescribed for various situations. (It’s possible different people proposed slightly different rules.)

For example, I was not aware until recently that the objective case is prescribed after “to be” in sentences of the form “They thought her to be me.” The explanation is that “me” should agree in case with the antecedent “her,” which as the object of the sentence is in the objective case.

This rule is sometimes stated along the lines of "‘to be’ should link two noun phrases of the same case" (from Mark Israel’s "It's me" vs "It is I", adapted from an article by Roger Lustig, referenced in this question: Which one is correct to say: "It's me" or "It's I"?).
However, this is not sufficient as a comprehensive guide to the use of pronouns after to be, because there is not always a nominative or objective antecedent.

I found a grammar book from 1919 that seems to give slightly more guidance: Correct English, Volumes 20-21, edited by Josephine Turck Baker. In general, it follows the principle that “‘to be’ should link two noun phrases of the same case," but it also describes some exceptions.

Here's my summary of its rules, based on the examples given (I think the book's wording of the rules is unhelpful, as some of them falsely appear to contradict one another):

My interpretation of the rules in "Correct English"

1. Pronouns should be in the nominative case after

   
   
   
   
   
   • am, is, was, were
   
   
   • have been, has been, had been
   
   
   
   • can be, could be
   
   
   • may be, might be
   
   
   • shall be, will be
   
   
   
   
   

   
   Example: “I hardly think that it was he to whom Mr. Blank referred.”
   I would assume the author left out some combinations of modal verb and "be" from this list merely for reasons of space, so it should be read as including should be, would be, etc.




2. Pronouns should be in the objective case after “to be” when it is immediately preceded by an antecedent in the objective case.

   
   
   

   Example: “They supposed it to be me.”





3. Pronouns should be in the nominative case after “to be” when it is not immediately preceded by an antecedent in the objective case, and it is preceded earlier in the sentence by an antecedent in the nominative case.

   
   
   

   Examples:

   
   
   
   
   
   • "It was thought to be he to whom the speaker referred."
   
   
   • "I should like to be he."
   
   
   • "Do you think that you should like to be he?"
   
   
   
   
   
   

   
   It seems possible that sentences such as “I am free to be I” (which seems to be the same in structure as the first sentence, aside from substituting an adjective for a participle) would also fall under this category, although unfortunately no examples of this type are given. (if so, it would contradict this Grammarphobia post.)




4. Pronouns should be in the nominative case after “being” when it is immediately preceded by an antecedent in the genitive case.

   
   
   

   Example: “I had no thought of its being he.”

These rules still leave a gray area, however.

What form "should" be used where there is no antecedent of any kind?

In particular, I've thought of two cases:

What form did people prescribe after “being” when it is not preceded by an antecedent of any sort?

Being [he/him] is not easy.

What form did people prescribe after “to be” when it is not preceded by an antecedent of any sort?

To be [he/him] is not easy. It is not easy to be [he/him].

“It” is not an antecedent in the second sentence, as we can see from sentences such as “It is not easy to like her.”)

My thoughts

There is precedent for the use of the nominative after the copula without a nominative antecedent in sentences like “I had no thought of its being he.” I’m not sure why the nominative is prescribed here—it clearly would be ridiculous to use a genitive pronoun after the copula in such circumstances, but why not an objective pronoun?—but in any case, that’s clearly established in the book. So it seems a minor extension to use the nominative in sentences “Being he is not easy.” And in fact, the way the rule is phrased in Correct English suggests this: "A noun or pronoun after the verb be in the gerundial construction (being) is in the nominative case." It still sounds odd though, and there are no example sentences like this in Correct English (all of the example sentences have genitive pronouns before the gerund), so I’d like to know if it was actually prescribed by other sources.

The construction with “to be” is different. My best guess is that we would suppose an elided subject such as “[for me] to be” which would suggest the use of the objective case (“It is not easy [for him] to be him.”). But that assumption seems like it could also apply in sentences of the type *“I should like [for me] to be him,” and yet Correct English nonetheless prescribes the nominative case for the predicate noun in this sentence.

The situation in Correct English is confusing because at one point, it says "as the objective case always precedes the infinitive verb, the objective case must always follow the infinitive verb," and later on it says "The pronouns I, he, she, we, they follow to be when to be is not preceded by a noun or a pronoun." This is the apparent contradiction I was talking about earlier; you should look at it in context to see if I'm misinterpreting it. All of the example sentences where a nominative pronoun follows to be actually have nominative nouns or pronouns earlier in the sentence that can serve as antecedents, so it's not clear to me if this rule is meant to be exceptionless, or confined to certain grammatical contexts.

The kind of answer I'm interested in

As I said up top, I don't want to hear about actual usage or practical advice. I'm interested in learning what people have said is "correct" in these circumstances (preferably with examples, to make the construction totally clear). The more well-known or influential the prescriptivist, the better.

hyphenation - Is a hyphen required or is the proper use of it subjective?

My question is as stated in the title.

In a very famous article, I noticed the author used the word - "nonexperiment". I looked up the word and it is not actually a word, so I believe it should be written as "non-experiment". Am I wrong? Furthermore, my professor used the word binwidth, and it is not a word. Thus, I would write it as bin-width, but only because it is not a word.

I believe grammar and sentence structures are not explicitly well defined. But I do believe there are general definitions, and on top of that, experts in writing have extended the definitions based on their own opinion. Thus, even though I consider myself a beginner in writing, I would rather accept and use the words "nonexperiment" and "binwidth".

My professor considers himself as a terrible writer, but I like his style because it is not difficult for me to understand. Is it possible he used the word - "binwidth" incorrectly?

Answer

At the outset I should warn you that not all style manuals are alike. With that out of the way, here is probably the most relevant excerpt from The Chicago Manual of Style:

When using this guide (a return to the tabular format of earlier editions of this ?>manual), consult the preceding paragraphs in this section (7.77–84)—especially if a >relevant example cannot be found. In general, Chicago prefers a spare hyphenation >style: if no suitable example or analogy can be found either in this section or in the >dictionary, hyphenate only if doing so will aid readability. Each of the four sections >of the following table is arranged alphabetically (by first column). The first section >deals with compounds according to category; the second section, with compounds >according to parts of speech. The third section lists examples for words commonly used >as elements in compounds. The fourth section lists common prefixes, most of which join >to another word to form one unhyphenated word; note especially the hyphenated >exceptions, not all of which agree with Webster’s. (Compounds formed with suffixes—>e.g., nationhood, penniless—are almost always closed.)

The fourth section of the table referred to here gives these guidelines:

The Associated Press Stylebook is another good (and perhaps more user-friendly) resource.

nouns - Is the word "management" singular or plural?

Which one of the following is correct?

Management gets its ideas from its employees.
Management gets their ideas from their employees.

Using the definite article "the" with Company Name + Group denominations

Is it correct to use the definite article "the" with Company Name + Group denominations, like "the ExxonMobil Group", "the Total Group", "the General Motors Group"? Or is it better without, like "ExxonMobil Group", "Total Group", "General Motors Group"?

Answer

You should use the same formulation as the company itself uses. Have a quick look at the "About Us" tab on their websites - for example, ExxonMobil refers to itself as ExxonMobil - no "the" or "Group" - and it's the same with General Motors.

If "Group" is not an official part of the company's name but you want to reflect that the company has various incorporated entities related to it, then it would be appropriate to add "the" before the company name and "group" (not capitalised) after: hence "the ExxonMobil group".

pronunciation vs spelling - Weinstein: Why "Winesteen", not "Winestine" or "Weensteen"?

I am constantly bemused by American pronunciation of German names. How did it come to be pronounced "Winesteen"?

The German pronunciation, of course, is Vineshtine. I can understand the consonants changing to the English form that corresponds to the spelling, but why are the two vowels pronounced differently?

Answer

In 1787, Emperor Joseph II decreed that all Jewish citizens of the Hapsburg Empire were to assume hereditary surnames for administrative purposes. Though locally they might continue their custom of patronymics, i.e. x son of y, for official purposes, they and their children would have the same last name. Except among the urban middle class, these names were simply ignored except for official business.

Having to assign surnames to hundreds of thousands of citizens in a short time explains the “one from column A, one from column B” nature of many Jewish surnames. This also means that while these surnames may have been assigned by Austrian officials and have a German etymology, the people who bore them may have spoken any number of languages other than German.

The -stein to “-steen” pronunciation, however, seems to have been a strictly American affair, as a 1983 New York Times article explains:

A pattern is seen by John Algeo, professor of English at the University of Georgia. “The German names are usually pronounced with an eye sound. Most of the Jewish names have had the American influence of the ee sound, as in the words weird or receive, particularly that ei after the letter c.” Professor Algeo notes that, in Yiddish, a sound change occurred, with the ei pronounced as a long a, as in stain, but changed in American-influenced Yiddish to ee.”
“The ending of stein, pronounced steen,'' he concludes, ''reflects an American influence.”

Each family — or even each family member — may choose how to pronounce their last name. The composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein started out as a Bern-steen, but in adulthood changed it to Bernstein. So if California Sen. Dianne Feinstein wants to be a -stein and someone named Goldstein or Rosenstein wants to be a -steen, then that’s how their names should pronounced, because, of course, they’re American names, not German.

commas - Punctuation before ending a quotation

I was reading an article and came across this sentence:

“Much wow, Bercow hid his opposition to Brexit so very well when he was Speaker.,” Mark Wallace, executive editor of ConservativeHome, tweeted.

This quote is punctuated with a period and a comma. Is this a mistake?

When I was reading on English grammar, I was told to punctuate quotes in the following way:

"Much wow, Bercow hid his opposition to Brexit so very well when he was speaker," tweeted Mark Wallace, executive editor of ConservativeHome.

I did change the structure around, though. Perhaps it is necessary to put a period before the comma when using their word order?

grammatical case - Whoever vs whomever in "you could become whomever and whatever you wanted to be"

I think I noticed a mistake in Ready Player One:

In the OASIS, you could become whomever and whatever you wanted to be, without ever revealing your true identity, because your anonymity was guaranteed.

It’s supposed to be whoever right?

Answer

It's not actually clear whether "whomever" is a mistake here.

The relevant matrix clause breaks down like this:

You could become [whomever and whatever you wanted to be]

Here, [whomever and whatever you wanted to be] is a predicative complement.

In the embedded clause, "whomever and whatever" serves as the (fronted) predicative complement of "to be".

Here we run into a problem. "To be" is a non-finite form (it's the "to-infinitive"). In certain contexts, a to-infinitive may have a subject that takes "exceptional case-marking". For example, in the sentence "I wanted him to be my friend", "him" is marked for the accusative case even though it is the subject of the infinitive "to be". "Traditional" prescriptive grammarians seem to be in agreement that in a context like this, the predicate noun phrase associated with the to-infinitive is also supposed to be in the accusative, so for example, it would be "correct" to say "He said he would be whomever I wanted him to be".

But as far as I know, there is no consensus in "traditional" grammar about the "correct" case of "X" in a clause like "you wanted to be X". There seem to be two views: one is in favor of the nominative, because the (implied) subject of "to be" refers to the same person as the nominative pronoun "you". The other view is that there is an "implied" accusative subject (something like "you wanted yourself to be X") which means that the predicate noun phrase "X" should be in the accusative case. See Peter Shor's answer to my question “Being [he/him] is not easy.” Which is prescriptively “correct”?; Shor cites Reed and Kellogg (1878), who say that "I wish to be him—equalling I wish (me or myself) to be him—is the proper form" (p. 182). In contrast, Josephine Turck Baker (whom I cite in my question), says that "the pronouns I, he, she, we, they follow to be when to be is not preceded by a noun or a pronoun", and gives examples like "I should like to be she" (Correct English, Vol 21, 1920).

---

In fact, the actual distinction in usage between "whoever" and "whomever" is highly confused and unclear in modern English, so even if the "traditional" sources were unanimous it would be a bit difficult to say what is "supposed" to be the case.

Here are some possible explanations for the use of the "accusative" form whomever here:

1. "Hypercorrection." I don't actually understand the precise definition of this term; some people seem to use it with a fairly broad sense, but others seem to have a much narrower definition. In any case, this could be characterized as a kind of "mistake": it's where a form associated with more elevated language is used in an "incorrect" context, without following any particular rule.




2. Grammatical variation between Standard English speakers. If this is the cause, the use of "whomever" would not be categorized as a "mistake" by a linguist, although many speakers might call it a mistake regardless. I suppose it would not be entirely surprising if people don't all have the same grammatical intuitions about the use of rarely used words like "whomever". In this case, the use of "whomever" might be licensed in some dialects because "whomever and whoever" does not serve as the subject of the internal clause (that role is taken by "you").

word choice - "boilinghot" vs "boiling-hot" vs "boiling hot"

As the title indicates, these three forms of words/phrases can be quite confusing to me sometimes. When should they be written as one word ("boilinghot"), when should they be written in two words ("boiling hot"), and when should they be written as a hyphenated compound ("boiling-hot")? Does it make any difference which is used? There are other terms like this, such as blackboard/black board/black-board; swingman/swing man/swing-man etc.

Answer

In the first place, I've never seen boilinghot used.

As for the other two, there are different times for different uses. Only use the hyphen when it is a compound adjective

Let's speak of why the sea is boiling hot.

Let's speak of the boiling-hot sea.

@drm65 illustrates how Google NGrams may be misapplied. Searching for a hyphenated expression will cause it to flat-line unless you put a space between the hyphen and the words: e.g. "boiling hot,boiling - hot"

So while boiling hot appears to be used more often than boiling-hot, the latter's representation is not zero.

General usage term for "Project"

I am currently designing a project management tool and I want to know if there is a more generic term for projects.

For example, event companies undertake events, software companies undertake projects etc.

Is there a word like behold and hark but for any combination of sensory methods e.g. "be-sense"

I am looking for a word similar to behold and hark which applies to calling attention to or attending with senses to some phenomenon using any combination of sensory methods/channels (light, sound, touch, pressure, temperature, vibration, smell, taste) e.g. "be-sense", as in "Be-sense this peculiar animal", "Are you be-sensing that?" or "they be-sensed the asteroid impact without knowing what it was".

An earlier question hark behold smell asked if there was an olfactory equivalent of behold (visual sense) and hark (auditory-sense).

This question broaches the topic but doesn't address my specific question.

I was hoping to use behold until I read in this forum that it tends to be used exclusively for visual sensing.

I wish to exclude words which have cognitive connotations such as know, ken, perceive, notice.

As suggested by FumbleFingers the word sense on its own is technically a good fit but to me has connotations of subtlety e.g. "they sensed that something was not quite right".

I am also looking for a word that implies active concentration rather than passive registration in the manner of "he looked at" rather than "he saw", "she listened to" rather than "she heard", " we be-sensed" rather than "we sensed".

grammar - Was in the sentence of today

Why was she absent today for the morning class?
Is it right? Some one please answer me. l have a doubt about usage of was along with today.

Answer

"Was" indicates past tense - something that happened before this sentence was spoken. If it was in present tense ("is"), it would mean the morning class was still in session when this was spoken (i.e.,"Why is she absent today?"). This sentence is being spoken after morning class is over.

"Today" is also both necessary and grammatically correct. There are multiple points of time in one day (today), so an action done this morning is now in the past. Without "today", we don't know on which day she was absent. (i.e., "She was absent from class." Was she absent yesterday? No, she was absent today.)

grammar - Was vs had been

I guess this question has been asked before, but please take a look the following sentence and tell me if there is a difference between them.

1. When the transaction had been completed, A was still a partner of ABC & co.




2. When the transaction was completed, A was still a partner of ABC & co.

verb agreement - "Number of attempts per question is unlimited" or "are limited"?

I want to know whether the following construct is correct:

Number of Attempts per Question is unlimited.

I want to know if it should be are in place of is in the above sentence.

I have read somewhere that the article before number (whether the or a) governs the form of the verb. However, here there is no article before Number.

differences - "Back to where" vs "back where"

Is it grammatically okay to omit the "to" in the following sentence?

1) Put something back to where it belongs

2) Put something back where it belongs

What's the difference between them? which one of them is grammatically correct?

Similarly we have these 2 sentences

3) Go back to where you came from

4) Go back where you came from

any help will be appreciated

Answer

Oops, I meant to post this as an answer, not a comment...

Sentences 2 and 4 are correct. Though it isn't a hard core rule of grammar, brevity can be a useful guide. Even people who speak English as a native English often tend to insert words that aren't really needed - to, of, etc. As a general rule, it helps to try to say something with as few words as possible.

negation - perfect continuous or simple perfect in negative sentences

I want to know the difference between present perfect continuous and present perfect in negative sentences. My textbook says (namely, English Grammar In Use, 2nd edition) 'use simple for negative sentences'. Surprisingly, it does not explain the reason. After some googling I found that continuous forms are also used, but I couldn't get the precise distinction. Please help.

Answer

Your textbook is oversimplifying things at best or just plain wrong at worst. To understand which to use in a negative sentence, you need to understand the difference between them in a positive sentence.

Present Perfect: She has sung at many opera houses.

The point here is that the action I'm speaking of is completed. At some unspecified point in the past, the woman I'm speaking of traveled to various opera houses and sang at all of them. Though she may no longer be singing, or no longer singing at multiple venues, this statement doesn't rule out those possibilities. Either fact is simply not relevant to my statement, I'm only talking about the performances she's previously given. Even though the actions I'm referring to are in the past, it is different from using the past tense in that regard.

Past: She sang at many opera houses.

This sentence has a similar meaning to the one above, but with some added implications. The singer may no longer be singing at opera houses (preferring other venues), may not be singing at all, or may even be dead. Regardless, that part of her life is behind her.

Present Perfect Continuous: She has been singing at many opera houses.

Again, the meaning is similar to the first example I gave, but the implications are the opposite of the example above. Just as the name implies, present perfect continuous indicates that the activity is continuous, starting at some point in the past (either specified or unspecified) and continuing up until now. In my example, she has been moving between opera houses and giving performances, and is still in the process of touring around.

--

So now let me actually answer your question about negative sentences. In short, the differences in the meanings conveyed are the same.

Present Perfect: She has not sung at many opera houses.

Again, this is referring to an action that is complete and the future of her singing career is not the focus of discussion. This would be suitable in a statement such as: "She has not sung at many opera houses, but I always buy tickets when she does." My actions (buying tickets) are in the present tense. Using the future tense would not be natural here, since I am not making any comment on what she may or may not be doing in the future.

(Actually, you could use the future tense for buying, which would give a slightly different implied meaning to the first half of the sentence but I'm employing a little simplification of my own to avoid getting overly confusing. The future tense of 'buy' would only be wrong paired with the past tense example below.)

For the sake of completion, here's the negative example in past tense:

Past: She did not sing at many opera houses.

Again, her singing career (at least in opera houses) is over. In "She did not sing at many opera houses, but I always bought tickets when she did" my actions are unsurprisingly in the past tense as well, since I'm referring to a time grounded in the past.

Present Perfect Continuous: She has not been singing at many opera houses.

The number of performances she has been giving of late has been fairly low, and that is still the case.

"She has not been singing at many opera houses, but I always buy tickets when she does."

"She has not been singing at many opera houses, but I will always buy tickets when she does."

My actions don't sound awkward in either the present tense or the future tense, since this a situation being continued. That allows you to speak of it in the present or project it into the future without sounding bizarre.

[You could also say that you have been buying tickets to either the present perfect or present perfect continuous examples, but that didn't sound like it would help to highlight the differences between them.]

grammaticality - Collective nouns treated as singular and plural in the same sentence

I have a problem with a sentence in a news announcement I'm writing. This is the sentence:

1) Company X is expanding and hires Person Y as their new CEO.

I've previously understood that it is correct to treat collective nouns, the company in this case, as singular or plural depending on if one refers to "the company itself" or "the people in the company". In this case, I'm referring to both (the company in itself is expanding, but the people are hiring someone as their new CEO). As such, the number of the pronoun does not agree with the number of the verb.

Two other possible versions that don't sound as right as the above are:

2) Company X is expanding and hire Person Y as their new CEO.

3) Company X is expanding and hires Person Y as its new CEO.

Which one is correct / do you prefer?

grammar - Is it "get" or "gets" in "Nobody move and nobody get(s) hurt"?

Which of these is correct?

• 1.) "Nobody move and nobody gets hurt."

or should it be,

• 2.) "Nobody move and nobody get hurt."

Here's some related info in wikipedia.

Answer

• 1.) "Nobody move and nobody gets hurt."




• 2.) "Nobody move and nobody get hurt."

Both of your examples are sentences that, although each one has the appearance of an "and" coordination of two main clauses, each sentence is actually interpreted as if it was a conditional construction ("if P then Q").

In this type of construction, the first clause in each sentence is an imperative clause, which happens in your examples to retain most of its directive force (for both sentences, it retains the directive force of "Nobody move!"). The second clause can be of various different clause types (e.g. declarative, imperative, interrogative, exclamative).

The construction involves an asymmetric "and" coordination, and the topic of asymmetric coordination is often not taught in grammar usage manuals, or in classrooms (high school or lower), or by "pop grammarians", or by online grammar sites -- although we native English speakers commonly use them, and uses of them can easily be found in print and spoken forms.

In the top part of my post, I'll deal with your #1 version. At the bottom of this post I'll address your #2 version.

= = = = PART A:

• 1.) "Nobody move and nobody gets hurt."

SHORT ANSWER: Version #1 is grammatical. The sentence is in the form of a coordination of an imperative clause and a declarative clause; and the sentence can be interpreted as a conditional ("If nobody moves, then nobody gets hurt"); and it seems that the full directive force of the imperative ("Nobody move!") is retained.

LONG ANSWER: Your sentence is in the form of a coordination of clauses: an imperative clause and a declarative clause. Your first clause is identical to what is in the 2002 CGEL, page 927, as an example of an imperative with a 3rd person subject:

• [7].i. Nobody move. -- [subject]

Also, CGEL also has this tidbit on that example:

Nobody in [7.i] is unambiguously subject because a vocative can't be negative, . . .

Your sentence, which is an asymmetric "and" coordination of an imperative clause with a declarative clause, can be interpreted as a conditional. Here's a related excerpt from CGEL, in "9.5 Imperatives interpreted as conditionals", page 937-8:

When an imperative is the first element in a clause-coordination, it is commonly interpreted as a conditional:

[39]

• i. Ask him about his business deals and he quickly changes the subject.




• ii. Do that again and you'll regret it.




• iii. Persuade her to agree and I'll be forever in your debt.




• iv. Don't make him the center of attention and he gets in a huff.

Thus we understand "If you ask him about his business deals he quickly changes the subject", and so on. The examples illustrate the prototypical case, where the second clause is declarative and overtly linked to the imperative by and. The conditional interpretation derives from the implicative of consequence that is commonly conveyed by and -- compare I'll offer him a 10% discount and he's bound to take it. The first clause is usually positive, but it is just possible for it to be negative, as in [iv]; the form of the negative shows clearly that it is indeed the imperative construction that we are dealing with here.

(There's more neat info in there, but my fingers are tired.)

With the OP's example:

"Nobody move and nobody gets hurt."

the interpretation can be: "If nobody moves, then nobody gets hurt". Though, in the OP's example, it seems that the full directive force of the imperative ("Nobody move!") is retained.

(Note that CGEL is the 2002 reference grammar by Huddleston and Pullum et al., The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language.)

= = = = PART B:

• 2.) "Nobody move and nobody get hurt."

Your version #2 seems to be pretty much kinda similar to your version #1, with the difference being that the 2nd coordinate is also an imperative clause.

That is: The sentence is in the form of a coordination of two imperative clauses; and the sentence can be interpreted as a conditional ("If nobody moves, then nobody gets hurt"); and it seems that the full directive force of the first imperative ("Nobody move!") is retained, while the directive force of the second imperative is lost.

Basically, everything else that I've mentioned in the above "Part A" also applies here. For your version #2, here's some related info from CGEL, in "Clause type of second coordinate", page 939:

The second clause can belong to other clause types than declarative; what is important is not the form but what the clause conveys:

[41]

• i. Invite one without the other and what a row there'll be. -- [exclamative]




• ii. Tell the truth and [who'll believe you / what'll they do]? -- [open interrogative]




• iii. Act in haste and repent at leisure. -- [imperative]

. . . In [iii] the second imperative indirectly conveys approximately "you'll regret it (for a long time)".

.

Hope this is what you were looking for.

nouns - Are there any words in English that have a plural with a separate derivation?

There are some irregular plurals in English (child/children, goose/geese), but all of the ones I know of share the same root word.

In some languages, there are some irregular pairs where the singular form does not have the same root as the plural form, such as in Russian (год/лет, человек/люди).

Are there any such irregular plurals in English?

grammar - Using "you" and "your" as a representation for yourself and everyone in general

Example sentence:

I love when your dog just lets you sit there to pet them. You don’t necessarily know if they are enjoying it, but they love you enough to just sit there with you for a bit.

Is this correct? We assume the words "you" and "your" refer to the speaker of the sentence, and not to the listener, as second-person usually does. But it also refers to dog owners in general. I have always been curious about this.

conditionals - Tense agreement: If I have a chance... I would

Here is the example sentence my Japanese teacher who teaches English gave to her students:

1. If I have a chance to visit... I would like to visit...

This immediately struck me as odd. My instinct is to make both verbs past tense and say:

2. If I had the chance to visit... I would visit...

Then you have a conditional using the unreal past to describe a hypothetical situation.

Now, I assume the "would like to" is an attempt to make "want to" more formal. But my brain just doesn't like the present tense "have" and the past tense "would" put together.

My question is, is the first example sentence grammatical? And if it is grammatical, is the second sentence just more idiomatic?

grammar - Whomever or Whoever?

In the following sentence, should I use WHOMEVER or WHOEVER?

I don’t want whomever it is to see that I’m a woman alone.

Or should it be:

I don’t want whoever it is to see that I’m a woman alone.

The first option makes more sense grammatically, though the second sounds better to me.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

grammaticality - Is the phrase "various information" grammatically correct?

As far as I know, the adjective "various" always requires a plural noun; however, the English word "information" does not have any plural form. My question is therefore as follows: Is the phrase "various information" grammatically correct or should one instead use something like "various types / kinds of information"?

I already did some research on this issue, but found contradictory statements: While it is said here that "various information" is not correct, the Linguee dictionary has an entry for "various information", but also has many examples of external ressources using the phrase "various types of information" (here) and "various kinds of information" (here).

Answer

"Information" is usually* uncountable in English (although the equivalent word may be countable in other languages).

The adjective "various" is generally used to modify countable nouns, not uncountable nouns, so it is not usually appropriate to say "various information"--unless "information" is acting as a noun adjunct.

At present, most users, at least in the US, would use "various kinds of information" or "various types of information" rather than "various information" for this reason.

However, there may be regional and historical differences in the usage of "various information."

A search of the Corpus of Historical American English finds 11 uses of the phrase "various information" from 1820 through 1995. "Information" acts as a noun adjunct in only 2 of the 11 cases. By contrast, a search of the Corpus of Contemporary American English finds 12 uses of "various information" from 1990 through 2015. In all of these cases, "information" is acting as an noun adjunct (examples: "various information gathering processes," "various information formats," "various information sources," "various information technology firms"). This suggests that there has been a shift away from using "various information" except as a noun adjunct over the years.

A search of the Hansard Corpus, covering proceedings of the British Parliament from 1803 through 2005, finds that from 1810 through 1939, "information" was never used in that phrase as a noun adjunct. However, from 1940 through 1990, "information" was used as a noun adjunct in roughly half of the uses, with the proportion increasing in the latter years. No instances of the use of the phrase appear in the Corpus from 2000 through 2005.

A search of the British National Corpus, covering the 1980s and early 1990s, finds 5 uses of "various information." In 4 of the 5, "information" acts as a noun adjunct.

---

*Oxford Living Dictionaries indicates that "information" may be used in legal jargon as a countable noun. Examples provided with this definition at that source include:
- ‘the tenant may lay an information against his landlord’
- ‘However, the duty of the court is to hear informations which are properly before it.’
- ‘These private informations came before the Justice of the Peace for the pre-hearing required under Section 507.1 of the Criminal Code.’
- ‘When the justices purported to commit the appellant on these informations, they were doing something which in law they had no power to do.’

This use of "information" appears to also occur in law in the US (for example: "The order of the Appellate Term should be reversed, and the informations dismissed"--from a New York State appellate court ruling in 2003).

grammaticality - Why can't the contraction "you're" be used in this sentence?

How come this sentence works:

'Let me know if you’re available.'

But this one doesn’t:
'Let me know if either of you’re available.'

Because the second one doesn't work, there must be some sort of rule about where contractions are valid. What is it?

verb agreement - present/past tense in a subordinate clause

A few days back I asked a question about whether a present tense verb in a subordinate clause can be followed by a past tense verb in the main clause.
A veteran grammarian (Andrew Leach) says yes, it is possible to have present tense in a subordinate clause and a past tense in a main clause.

So by this logic one can say the sentences like:

A year back there was a rumor that Citibank is in a debt.
A family was celebrating a wedding when somehow a rumor spread that the bride is feeling hungry.

Obviously, with

Yesterday, John expressed that he likes ice cream.

there is no problem: this sentence is absolutely correct.

Andrew says that present tense in a subordinate clause can be used even if there is a past tense in the main clause. So again by this logic one can say the sentence

Yesterday, John said that he is hungry.

Is this correct?

Answer

The example that you identify as correct expresses a general of habitual state: John likes ice cream. This is not something John did yesterday, or at any specific time, it expresses a general truth about John's likings.

This is one of the ways in which the simple present is used, and when used in that way, it can be used in a subordinate clause following a past tense in the main clause:

Yesterday I found out that Peter is married.
Last year she told me she is an avid bird-watcher.
Last week I asked him if he enjoys swimming.

However, semantically, some things cannot be parsed as a general state or a habit. If I tell you that I am hungry, it is unlikely that you understand that I am a kind of person that is usually or always hungry, or that I am in a continuously hungry state. So if I am hungry now, that implies I want to eat something and stop being hungry.

That is why this sentence feels funny:

A family was celebrating a wedding when somehow a rumor spread that bride is feeling hungry.

Unless we are to understand that the bride is "a hungry person", the sentence is confusing. If we do want to make a statement about the bride's eating habits, we could say:

A family was celebrating a wedding when somehow a rumor spread that bride loves fine dining.

In case of the bank being in debt, something similar is going on. We don't interpret "the bank is in debt" as a habitual or general state for a bank (although that may actually be changing the in light of the last couple of crises …). If we want to express a general feature of that bank, we could say:

A year back there was a rumour that Citibank wasts a lot of money.

Now, even in the sentences where we can use the simple present to express a general property of habit of the subject, it is very common to still use the past, in line with the main clause. This does sometimes raise question (here and on ELL) as to whether it shouldn't be the present if the described property still persists at the moment of reporting:

A rumour spread that the bride loved fine dining.
I found out Peter was married.

Although we will generally understand that the bride still loves fine dining and Peter (in absence of proof to the contrary) is still married, some people may ask if those things still hold true today.

syntactic analysis - "...and all would have to be accounted for." Improper sentence ending at 'for'. Please suggest alternative

I have this statement that I do not want to end at 'for' (I read somewhere that it is improper to end at 'for').

The problem is hard as there are many sources of failures, and all
would have to be accounted for.

Please suggest alternative.

Answer

You do not want to end your sentence with for because you read "somewhere" that is improper.

I will give you a place to read the opposite:

There is nothing wrong with ending a sentence with for.

This should solve your problem.

On a general note: beware of any and all (restrictive) grammar and style advises that have accumulated over the years and that tend to be:

• incomplete



• based on false assumptions


• unworkable


• out of touch with linguistic reality


• simply wrong

Most generalized "rules" tend to fall into one or more of these categories.
Famous examples include don't use the passive (given by someone who showed no understanding of passive constructions to start with) and don't split infinitives (unless they mean that you should not write wo [something else] rk).

usage - Use of Apostrophes - FAQs vs FAQ's

Is it also correct to say FAQ's as some sites like http://transition.fcc.gov/oet/rfsafety/rf-faqs.html refer? Or is FAQs the right and correct way to say it?

Answer

FAQ is an acronym for Frequently Asked Questions.

It's not possessive, not a contraction, doesn't have any foreign origins and is not used to indicate stress, so I write FAQs. For more information consult your favorite style manual or the thread linked in the comment above about the more general case:
What is the correct way to pluralize an acronym?

grammar - Would after will/ will after would

Can you say "you'll hurt me more if you wouldn't."

If the person wouldn't do this thing they talk about now, in the future it will hurt the person more- you know for a fact that it'll hurt.

Another example: if you wouldn't take care of this now it will get worse

Gender-neutral mermaid

What’s the gender-neutral word for an individual mermaid (Ariel) or merman (Triton) of unknown gender?

• Merperson?


• Hiberno-English merrow?


• Germanic nixie (Melusine)?
  German: die Nixe (f.) and – rarely – der Nix/Neck/Nöck (m.), e.g. in Grimm’s “The Nixie of the Mill-Pond” and “The Water Nixie”.


• Descriptive fish-tailed person, person with fluke or human-dolphin chimæra?
  Most illustrations don’t use vertical tailfins but horizontal flukes as found in dolphins and whales, but often greenish scales, sometimes gills and no blow-holes.


• Mermaid as a gender-neutral term, distinguished as either merman or *merwoman (or *merboy and *mergirl)?


• Singular use of the plural words merpeople and merfolk?

This group of fictional beings is of course inherently sexist, with female mermaids usually being described as beautiful nymphs or sirens and less popular male mermen frequently being depicted as strong but ugly green-haired homo aquensis. Also, maid is archaic and not commonly seen as a neutral lexemic antonym of man.

Background

Unicode is adding a respective generic 🧜 emoji to version 10 of its standard at code point U+1F9DC. Its official name – which can be changed only until mid-2017 – currently is merperson.

hyphenation - Is a hyphen or a dash longer?

Can anyone confirm if the hyphen or dash is longer? Which one is longer than the other and which one is the shorter?

pronunciation - What's with the 'o' in 'one'?

Generally, o's at the start of a word are either short (as in 'operation') or long (as in 'open'), or related sounds. However, the word 'one' has a very different initial sound, which (as far as I can tell, from playing around with Mathematica's WordData constructs) is unique apart from related words like 'once', 'oneness' and 'oneself'.

How did this o come to be pronounced this way? Or, alternatively, how did this /wʌ/ come to be spelt with an o?

parentheses - How to format a parenthetical citation in a parenthetical phrase?

Specifically, in APA style. I'm talking about this, for example:

...where there has been a long history (artefacts have been found (Smith, 2006)) of such matters...

Is it okay to have double closing parentheses like so? What's the proper formatting otherwise?

Thanks!

Answer

Try take a look in this article http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2013/05/punctuation-junction-parentheses-and-brackets.html

The author suggests use a bracket inside parentheses to create a double enclosure.

grammar - What is going on in this sentence?

I was helping my brother study for the SAT, and we came across this sentence:

While it was different from all the other classes he had taken, Eric was unhappy with his psychology class.

The answer was that there are no errors in that sentence. But my brother thinks that the noun following the comma should be consistent with the "it" in the first clause. I have come across sentences of this form in the works of well-known writers, but I do not know how to explain to him why this is correct.

american english - What does the word "whereabouts" mean, and how do I respond to it?

If someone asks me the following questions after I tell them I'm going to be in a certain country, what specifically do they want to know? For example,

Someone: "Oh, so you are going to Indonesia. Whereabouts in Indonesia are you going? Do you plan to go to Jakarta, the capitol city of Indonesia?"

and

Me: "Yes, I do plan to make a stop in Jakarta. After stopping there, I plan to keep my whereabouts a secret!"

pronunciation - "A/An" preceding a parenthetical statement

When a/an precedes a parenthetical aside (sometimes seen in informal/conversational writing), should the vowel rule depend on the first word in parentheses, or the next word in the "regular" flow of the sentence?

I need a (memorable) idiom (preceding an m word; use a)

or

I need an (memorable) idiom (preceding an i word; use an)

Answer

The example given is not parenthetical:

(i) I need a (memorable) idiom.

A parenthesis is a remark which you insert into the middle of a sentence as if you are interrupting yourself. A parenthesis contributes to the meaning of the sentence but interrupts and stands outside its syntax. In writing, we typically use curved brackets, dashes, or commas to mark a parenthesis.

The syntax of the example sentence is not interrupted by the word memorable. Instead, the word memorable functions as an adjective modifying idiom. Consequently, the pronunciation rule applies to the word memorable and the article to use is a.

Compare this variation:

(ii) I need an (well, if I need anything at all) idiom.

Not an example of great writing, to be sure. But it shows how a parenthesis interrupts and stands outside the syntax of a sentence. The phrase “well, if I need anything at all” is not part of the noun phrase “an idiom”. The pronunciation rule still applies, but it applies to the word idiom and the article to use is an. This is true even though you would not normally pair an with well. You would, for instance, say:

(iii) I need a well known idiom.

The difference is that well is parenthetical only in example (ii) above.

Is there any such thing as noun pronoun proximity?

I have read of Concord (or noun-verb agreement) and was wondering if, is as I have been told, there is a similar grammar rule for noun-pronoun agreement/proximity.

When there's a sentence where two nouns are given and a pronoun used, to which noun will the pronoun be assigned?

1. Carol visited Mary. Mary is the lady living next door. She had barely eaten that day.
   Or


2. Carol visited Mary. Mary lives next door. She had barely eaten that day.

Are the above sentences even grammatical?

Assuming they are, I am tempted, in the first example, to assign the pronoun to the subject in the preceding sentence, but I'm not absolutely certain because I've heard that the pronoun(just as in noun-verb agreement) should be assigned to the noun closest.

3. Carol and Mary had been best friends for years. Until she got sick.

To who does the pronoun refer? Why?
Is there any such rule as alluded?

Answer

The name of the linguistic principle that governs how pronouns are resolved to entities mentioned in the discourse is:

anaphora resolution.

Not all languages are identical in anaphora resolution, but the simplest rule is mostly universal, the closest preceding noun that matches number, gender, person, etc. Exceptions tend to start from this. (as to a literal answer to your question, no, there is no name for this rule. But 'anaphora resolution' is what you're talking about, it's the name for what any such rule is trying to do.

grammar - In EModE should 'may' become 'mayest' when expressing a wish

I'm translating a text from Sanskrit, which has a singular/plural (and, actually, dual) distinction in the second person. It has long been the custom in English translation to render the 2nd singular with 'thou', etc. and the 2nd plural with 'ye/you', etc., as in Early Modern English (EModE). This creates a suitably archaic and liturgical feel to the translation.

But I've come unstuck with the phrase 'may you be covered'. If I want to replace 'you' with 'thou', should 'may' become 'mayest' or not?

My feeling is that 'may' is functioning as an auxiliary here. In Modern English, we say 'he likes it', but 'may he like it'. We do not say 'mays he like it', the 'may' is not a finite verb. So I would expect the same to apply to EModE.

However, we would also apply the same logic to 'should'. We would say 'Has he eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded him that he should not eat?', not '... that he shoulds not eat?'. And so I would have expected, applying that logic, to find '... that thou should not eat?'. And yet we have in Genesis:

And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?

(Genesis 3:11)

Which leads me to question whether the may would be finite and agree with thou, or not. Should it be 'mayest thou be covered' or 'may thou be covered', and why? This, to be clear, is in the sense of an imperative: 'Be covered!' - only softer.

Answer

Generally, you would use mayest with thou. Modal verbs (mayest, might, wilt, wouldst, canst, couldst, shalt, shouldst) were conjugated only in 2nd person singular.

The question is whether you still use mayest if the sentence is in the subjunctive mood, or whether you use the bare infinitive may. With main verbs, the subjunctive mood used the bare infinitive, even in 2nd person singular. Did modal verbs obey the same rules?

The evidence from Shakespeare (one of the two standard exemplars of Early Modern English) is that they did not. Even in constructions we would expect to be in the subjunctive mood, modal verbs are still conjugated by adding an -est. Shakespeare used mayst thou 16 times, and never once used may thou. And the following are clearly wishes:

O Imogen, safe mayst thou wander, safe return again!

In dreadful war mayst thou be overcome,
Or live in peace abandon'd and despised!

long mayst thou live
To bear his image and renew his glories!

Hermia, sleep thou there:
And never mayst thou come Lysander near!

Of all say'd yet, mayst thou prove prosperous!
Of all say'd yet, I wish thee happiness!

Ill mayst thou thrive, if thou grant any grace!

Long mayst thou live to wail thy children's loss;

Long mayst thou live in Richard's seat to sit,
And soon lie Richard in an earthly pit!

The last of these examples pairs "mayst thou live" with the subjunctive "soon lie Richard" (not "lies"), so we see that "mayst" was used here in parallel with the subjunctive mood for a non-modal verb.

Your quote from Genesis uses thou shouldest in a context that should be in the subjunctive and Tim Romano has found mayest thou for a wish, that would normally be in the subjunctive mood. My conclusion is that in Middle English, for auxiliary verbs, the conjugation was still "thou mayest", "thou shouldest" and so forth, even in the subjunctive. As more support for this conclusion, Shakespeare wrote

How dearly would it touch me to the quick,
Shouldst thou but hear I were licentious
And that this body, consecrate to thee,
By ruffian lust should be contaminate!

and clauses starting should always have a counterfactual meaning, something which normally triggers the subjunctive mood.

So use mayest thou.

One more thing—today hardly anybody understands the details of Middle English grammar, so hardly any of your readers will even notice if you use the wrong verb form.

questions - Can words like "what" be the subject of a sentence?

In a question like "Who hears a noise?", is the subject of the sentence who?

I can think of a few tests for subjects like: "the subject is the phrase that inverts with the auxiliary to form a question". But this is a question and there is no auxiliary. We could say that's because it's a subject, but that would be just to presuppose that it's a subject in the first place.

I can think of tests like: "the form of the verb will agree with the number of the subject", but on the other hand who does not seem to have fixed grammatical number, and it sometimes seems like who might actually be agreeing with noun phrases later in the sentence:

• Who are the most prolific writers of our age?


• Who is the most prolific writer of our age?

There are also tests like "the subject is usually the first noun phrase in the sentence". But of course if we have a question like:

• Who have you bitten?

... you, not who seems to be the subject. The first noun phrase test is not very good.

I also know that some theories of grammar say that there is a gap in wh- questions that the wh- word is extracted from. So can this gap for instance be the real object of a question? If so, is there a gap in questions like mine functioning as subject?[See community wiki post in the linked to question]

How can we show whether who is really the subject of my original example question? And how about other wh- words like what? Can they (also) function as subjects?

Answer

Both sides of this question have been argued in the linguistic literature. "who" could be a topic, and then the sentence structure would be

[who [ __ hears a noise]]

on the analogy of other wh-questions with a wh-word moved to the top of the structure and leaving a gap, __, where it once was. Or, perhaps questions whose subject is a wh-word simply don't need to be changed by moving the wh-word to the front, because, well, it's already there. In that case, we have

[who hears a noise]

and "who" is simply a subject.

There are a number of grammatical theories which do not permit stating grammatical relations in terms of word order, but only structural relationships, so such theories would presumably not recognize the logic of the argument that a wh-word subject must remain a subject in a question, because it is already at the front of the sentence, where it needs to be. (Such "order free" theories are Chomsky's latest theories (I think), dependency grammar, relational grammar, and GPSG.)

You might think that the subject-agreement in the verb "hears" with the singular "who" shows that "who" is a subject. And perhaps that is evidence, but a follower of the east coast school of linguistics would assume that the gap created by extracting the subject is a "trace" which is coindexed with the former subject, so the verb agreement can still be correctly described.

There is an argument for the second no-movement treatment quoted and discussed in the book Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, and the argument itself (if I recall correctly, due to Pauline Jacobson) is based on so-called parasitic gaps. In the Wikipedia entry for Parasitic gap, this illustration is given:

Which explanation did you reject __1 without first really considering __2?

where the first gap must be higher up in the structure tree than the second (parasitic) gap. The relevance of parasitic gaps here is that they give us a diagnostic for detecting a gap in subject position. A subject gap, since it is highest in the structure of its clause, should license a parasitic gap elsewhere in the clause. But if there is no subject gap, there won't be any parasitic gap, because parasitic gaps depend for their existence on a gap higher up.

So, we can construct a test case from the above parasitic gap sentence by making it a passive whose subject is the wh-expression:

*Which explanation __1 was rejected by you without first really considering __2?

This is ungrammatical. If there were really a subject gap, it should have been okay. So, we can conclude that there is no subject gap and that a wh-subject in a question remains in place. I know of no evidence on the other side of this question, so that is my conclusion.

pronunciation - Pronouncing the "th" sound in American accent

First of all, I'm not a native speaker (I'm a Vietnamese) and I'm still learning English as my university major (using American accent, mostly) so I can't really say I'm as fluent as a native speaker.

However, I can say I have no problem pronouncing the voiceless "th" (/θ/) as taught by many sources including my lecturers by placing the tip of your tongue between your teeth but just blow air through your mouth without vibrating your vocal cords. My pronunciation of, say "think", always sounds like a little bit of air at the beginning (when I place my finger in front of my mouth, I can feel the air blown out), followed by the sound of "ink".

So here's the thing I find irritating: when watching American TV shows, movies and especially listening to pop music, I usually (if not always) hear they pronounce/enunciate this "th" sound like a hard /t/ as in "thing", "something", "think", "thought" (this one sounds exactly like /tot/), etc. in fast speaking situations. They sound like they do place the tip of their tongues between their teeth but no air was blown out of the mouth, thus making the sound of /θ/ somewhat voiced.

So my question is, is this a correct way to produce the sound of the voiceless "th" or is this just a matter of dialect?

Thank you!

grammaticality - Can the word "facing" be used both ways?

Can the word "facing" be used both ways?

To write

major water problems facing the world

or

challenges and opportunities facing low- and middle-income countries and their citizens

seems to me to switch the roles.

Is it OK to use facing in this way, or would the only correct usage be faced by in these two examples?

grammatical number - Should a noun following "singular they" be singular or plural?

I've understood how to use singular they on a single sentence, but the problem comes with articulated sentences like this one:

If a person lies to you this way, they are probably thieves.

My doubt is about its correctness, I would also say it this way:

If a person lies to you this way, they are probably a thief.

Is the second sentence correct?

Answer

Try:

If {a person / someone} lies to you like this, they are probably a thief. [Singular subject]

If people lie to you like this, they're probably thieves. [Plural subject]

logic - Many to one or many to many

Record A is linked to case 1
Record B is linked to case 2
Record C is linked to case 3

Which of the following sentences is correct?

• There are 3 records linked to a case




• There are 3 records linked to cases

verb agreement - 5 bottles of milk + IS or ARE?

Q 1. Is the subject "5 bottles of milk" countable or uncountable?

Q 2. What kind of verb should I use for "5 bottles of milk", singular or
plural?

Many thanks!

grammar - Using "it's" vs. using "it is" at the end of a sentence

Why is it that the following sounds incorrect:

"Would she know where it's?"

But this sounds fine:

"Would she know where it is?"

Answer

Because you don't contract away a stressed syllable. It's counter to the very nature of contraction.

See also the answer to Is there some rule against ending a sentence with the contraction "It's"?

omissibility - Interpreting of Omitted subject and verb

When you have a moment, could you please send over next Wednesday’s campaign info?
Double-checking a couple details before it goes live to make sure the client is happy!

The above sentences are from an e-mail. In the last sentence, I know what the author want to say. But, I wonder how it would be read to general readers.

(a) I want to double-check ...

(b) Double-checking a couple details before it goes makes sure that ...

(c) It is for double-checking ....

Or if something was omitted, what would be omitted?

grammaticality - Is it correct to use "their" instead of "his or her"?

Is this sentence grammatically correct?

Anyone who loves the English language should have a copy of this book in their bookcase.

or should it be:

Anyone who loves the English language should have a copy of this book in his or her bookcase.

Answer

Certainly many usage guides have advised against use of this "singular they" on various "logical" grounds. Nevertheless, singular they has long been part of the English language, and there are various posts on Language Log giving examples of it being used in the Bible, by Shakespeare, by the president, by the Canadian Department of Justice, etc.. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language's coauthor Geoff Pullum (a frequent Language Log contributor) calls the idea that they must never occur with a singular antecedent a myth.

There is no shortage of usage "experts" who advise against it, as the other answers in the question should make clear (though these days their reasoning tends away from a simple "it's wrong" towards something more defensive–"some people will think it's wrong, so avoid it"). But despite them, use of singular they occurs at all levels of the language, both spoken and written, informal and formal.

It's not ungrammatical per se on the basis of analysis of actual usage using reasonable linguistic methods. But use it at your own risk of being criticized by the self-righteous but misinformed.

grammatical number - Is a music band a singular or a collective entity, grammatically speaking?

Duplicate:
Is the usage of “are” correct when referring to a team/group/band?

What is correct to say?

Korn* is a great band

OR

Korn* are a great band.

(* You can replace your favourite band's name here)

Of course everybody there is no doubt about the following sentences:

The Beatles are a great band

Led Zeppelin is a great band

But with certain kinds of names, the situation becomes difficult.

Metallica are a great band

OR

Metallica is a great band

Is there any consensus on this matter?

grammar - In structures such as 'football manager', is 'football' a modifier or a complement of the head noun?

I thought I'd post this as it illustrates a problem often encountered on ELU.

In structures such as 'football manager', is 'football' a modifier or
a complement of the head noun?

I've seen both terms used as if there were only one possible correct answer. However, I've come across widely differing definitions of both 'modify' and 'complement' as used in grammar. I believe that people stating baldly that this is either one or the other are assuming a grammar that they prefer, rather than giving a balanced overview.

Notice that I intend this question to explore the usage/s of the term 'modify' and of the term 'complement' in this context. There may be overlap with the question of which word-class 'football' fits into, but that decision hardly answers the question.

Answer

Short answer

^{(Assuming that Modifiers and Complements exist ...)}

It's a Complement.

Here's some evidence, which will be explained in more detail in the longer answer. Firstly, the noun manager inherently implies that there is something being managed. This expectation is fulfilled by the noun football. This shows the tight semantic relationship we expect between Heads and their Complements. This observation is backed up by the fact that the noun manager derives directly from the verb manage. The thing being managed is an argument of the verb manage, and therefore appears as a Complement of the verb. As with many other deverbal nouns we would analogously expect the arguments of the noun manager to correspondingly occur as Complements of the noun, not as Modifiers. In addition, nouns which specifically have the thematic role of patient in relation to the activity indicated by the Head noun would often be expected to be able to occur either as a prehead Complement or, alternatively, as part of a post-head Complement headed by the preposition of:

• a football manager


• a manager of football


• a book collector


• a collector of books

In addition the word football must occur directly before the noun manager—any prehead Modifiers must come before the word football, not after it:

• an idiot football manager


• an overweight, second division football manager


• a second division, overweight, football manager


• *a football idiot manager


• *a football second division overweight manager


• *an overweight, football, second division manager

Lastly we can observe that football works badly with the anaphoric proform one if we want it to mean football manager

• I need a manager.


• I need a premier league one.


• I need a talented one.


• *I need a football one. (odd if not ungrammatical)

This is because one is taken to stand in for the Head noun and its Complements. We cannot then try and add another Complement to it. We could, however, modify it with an attributive Modifier as shown in the second and third examples.

Full answer

_{to be completed in installments ...}

1. An admission

First of all, I voluntarily stick my hands up and explain that many of my posts here arbitrarily—and incorrectly—refer to any prehead dependent of the noun in a noun phrase as a modifier. Mea maxima culpa. This is shoddy. The reasons for this errant behaviour are that a) it is often difficult to determine whether a prehead dependent of a noun is a modifier or a complement b) I normally don't care either way— I don't find the prehead dependents of nouns very sexy, unlike prepositions, determiners, verb phrase complementation, relative clauses and larger constructions in general c) my knowledge about the grammar in this area is not very robust d) I often can't tell, and so therefore, given a–c above, I ignore the distinction. So far, the only people who have ever noticed are the fellow posters BillJ and possibly Rathony too.

2.0 Complements versus Modifiers

2.1 Complements

OK, with that out of the way, we can have a look at what a Modifier is and what a Complement is. Well, roughly speaking, a Complement is a phrase which fills a special slot set up by another word or phrase in the sentence. So for example, the verb TEACH sets up a slot for the thing being taught, the Direct Object, and the people being taught, the so-called Indirect Object. These terms such as Direct Object, Indirect Object, Locative Complement and so forth are just more specific names for Complements of a verb. Prepositions take Complements too, often noun phrases which we can also sometimes describe as Predicative Complements or Objects. Adverbs can often take Complements either directly or indirectly as well. So for example, the infinitival clause to eat in one go fills a special slot set up by the adverb too in It was too big to eat in one go. Adjectives can take their own various sorts of Complements too; consider on chess in keen on chess or to leave in keen to leave.

So, all sort of words and phrases can set up these slots, and all sorts of words and phrases can fill them too. Sometimes Complements are obligatory and sometimes they aren't. Of course, it's nice and handy when Complements are obligatory, because it's easy to identify them. It is also, in such cases, easy to demonstrate how that word or phrase has a special relationship with the Head of the phrase. So, unfortunately, Complements are often construed as obligatory essential accompaniments to other words or phrases when we first start to learn about them. This isn't always the case. Let's revisit the verb TEACH:

• I teach.


• I teach English.


• I teach students.


• I teach students English.


• I teach English to students.

Here we see this verb taking no Complements, taking one Object, taking two Objects and taking an Object and a preposition phrase Complement. These different Complements are Complements because this verb sets up a special slot for them, not because they are obligatory.

Complements, of course, have other features. For example, they are usually selected by the word they are the Complements of. These Heads will allow certain types of Complements but not others. So for example, the adjective keen will select preposition phrases headed by the preposition on, but not ones headed by the preposition of:

• keen on spiders


• *keen of spiders (ungrammatical)

The verb inquire can take interrogative clauses as Complements, but not declarative ones:

• I inquired whether the elephants had left.



• *I inquired that the elephants had left. (ungrammatical)

Complements are thought of as being more tightly integrated into the phrases they occur in than Modifiers are. Whereas Complements are often required to be adjacent to the words that license them, Modifiers can often be moved further away from the phrases they modify or appear on either side of them. So if we see both Complements and Modifiers in the same phrase, as a rule of thumb, all other things being equal, we expect the Complements to be closer to the Head word than the Modifiers:

• Put it on the shop floor on Thursday.


• *Put it on Thursday on the shop floor. (awkward if not ungrammatical)

A sentence or phrase will often sound marked, awkward or ungrammatical if this does not occur. In the sentence above the Complement on the shop floor will ideally come closer to the verb put than the Modifier on Thursday.

Because Complements are more tightly integrated into the phrases they occur in than Modifiers, they are often obligatorily replaced when we use a proform, whereas Modifiers may be repeated or addended to such phrases:

• *I put my beer in the fridge and Bob did so in the cupboard. (ungrammatical)



• I drank my beer in the kitchen but Bob did so in the living room.




• *I am counting on their help, but I don't want you to do so on their help. (ungrammatical)



• I am counting on their help, but I don't want you to do so.

In the first sentence in the fridge is a Locative Complement. As the anaphoric proform do so includes the Locative Complement in the second clause in that example, we cannot then add a second Locative Complement, in the cupboard. In the second sentence, where in the kitchen is a Locative Adjunct (a Modifier), we can freely add another Locative Adjunct in the second clause, in the living room. In the last pair we see that the sentence is grammatical if we omit the Complement on their help after do so, and ungrammatical if we repeat it.

Lastly, semantically, Complements usually have a close relationship with the words that license them. Words inherently describe semantic relations between different things. So the verb PUT brings to mind a putter, a thing being put, and a location. It doesn't inherently involve any idea of time. So in Put it in the fridge tonight, we would not expect tonight to be a Complement of the verb put, but we would expect both it and in the fridge to be Complements, which as we have seen above, they are. The thing being put and the destination of that thing are suggested by the very use of the verb PUT. Similarly the noun collector also inherently implies that there are things which are collected and someone who collects them. The noun resignation implies a resigner. So in a collector of antique books, we would expect of antique books to be a Complement, and we would expect of the President to be a Complement in the resignation of the President. But we would not expect in the corner to be a Complement in the collector in the corner, because the noun collector does not inherently imply a location.

Because of semantic factors above we also expect Heads to impose semantic, as well as syntactic, selectional restrictions on their Complements. We can annoy elephants but not tables, unless we ascribe some sort of animacy to our tables for some reason. We don't expect such tight restrictions with Modifiers. One can do almost anything on Wednesday and almost anything pointlessly. And whereas the number of possible Complements is specified by the Head both semantically and syntactically, the number of Modifiers is not.

2.2 Modifiers

Modifiers are never obligatory. We can characterise them as syntactically extra elements. They are usually semantically extra too, in the sense that they are not automatically implied by the words or phrases that they modify. Unlike Complements, Modifiers are usually only loosely integrated into the larger phrases they occur in. Their position is often only loosely determined:

• I play foot ball [in the park][on Fridays][with my friends]


• I play football [with my friends][on Fridays][in the park]


• I play football [on Fridays][in the park][with my friends]


• [On Fridays] I play football [with my friends] [in the park]

As shown further above unlike Complements, modifiers are not obligatorily relaced when we use proforms to refer back to a larger phrase.

We can use various forms of cycle as an analogy for phrases here: unicycles, bicycles, tricycles, tandems and so forth. If we regard the frame of the cycle as the Head of a phrase or clause, then the Complements are all the things that fit into the different slots in the frame. So the frame dictates the size and number of wheels, saddles, handlebars and so forth (some of which may be optional, for example in the case of tandems) that the frame can take. These things are all Complements. You can't put the wrong Complements on the wrong frames. For example, a unicycle frame won't usually allow handlebars in the same way that an intransitive verb won't allow a Direct Object. Also you can't fit the wrong size parts into the wrong slots. So the stem of your handlebars must fit into the frame, for example. It cannot be too big or too small. So the frame puts restrictions on what can be slotted into it. In contrast, any lights, bells, mudguards, panniers, stickers and so forth are always optional extras. They are, to extend the metaphor, Modifiers. You can't ride your unicycle without a wheel, but a light is definitely an optional extra. Notice as well, that the bicylce frame puts very few selectional restrictions on the Modifiers available. You can stick lights, bells or horns on any cycle you want to, and any number of each as well—although admittedly things might get awkward if you do decide to use very many.

nouns - Are there sentences in languages which use grammatical gender that lose meaning when translated into English?

English nouns which don't denote people or animals with natural gender do not (apart from a few rare examples) use grammatical gender. So for example, "table" is always an "it" in English, whereas it could be masculine or feminine in another language.

So, is English missing out by not using genders in this way? If so, are there sentences which cannot be translated into English without losing some of their meaning?

Answer

Well, obviously you can't translate many things literally, as you would constantly end up with sentences such as "it gave it to it" in English, where in the source language with genders you have a perfectly clear "she gave it to him".

However, there are usually easy ways around this, the most obvious one being: kick out the pronouns and replace them with nouns. "The cat gave it to the kitten." If anything, you gain meaning by doing that (though you might waste quite a few syllables if you're translating a poem).

To me, this question sounds a lot like "How could one possibly translate from English to a language that doesn't have articles?" To which any professional translator should answer: "Without breaking a sweat".

[Disclaimer: I am a native speaker of two languages, one with genders but without articles, and one with genders and articles.]

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Edit.

Here's an example I should have thought of right away. It is still not quite what you are looking for, but I'm getting closer step by step.

Imagine any TV show where several candidates compete for whatever the prize is. The host is about to announce who is going to proceed to the next round. He says, "I have good news for one of you", or "The last one to reach the final is...", or something to that extent. Now, in many languages with genders he could give a subtle hint by using either the female or the male form of "one" (un/une, einer/eine, один/одна, um/uma, etc.). In English, the equivalent would be something along the lines of "I have good news for a male candidate", or "The last one to reach the final is a female, and her name is...". Which, of course, wouldn't be anywhere as succinct, and not subtle at all. The closest you could get to that kind of hint in English would be "I have good news for you guys", or "The last one of you gals to reach the final is...", but that still doesn't quite cut it (even if we ignore for a moment that guys does not necessarily refer to males).

In fact, in order to avoid giving any hints accidentally, in those languages it is quite common for the host to say "I have good news for one or one of you", or "The last one or one to reach the final is...", where the first one is the male form, and the second one is the female form. When translating that into English, you'd just drop one of the ones, so that one or one become one — which, of course, is more succinct without losing meaning, but the original expression is not really translatable "as is".

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Edit 2.

Here's yet another example.

In German, a language with grammatical genders, there is quite a lot of confusion going on whenever you want to say that Angela Merkel is the first chancellor to do something. Normally, Angela Merkel is referred to as die Bundeskanzlerin, a female form of the noun der Bundeskanzler, or "female chancellor" for short. So, naturally, the first thing you try is "Angela Merkel ist die erste Bundeskanzlerin, die X macht" ("Angela Merkel is the first female chancellor to do X"). However, that sounds kind of pointless, because Merkel is the first female chancellor ever, so no matter what she does, she can't help being the first female chancellor to do it.

In order to avoid that pointlessness, journalists sometimes use the male form of chancellor: "Angela Merkel is der erste Bundeskanzler...". Grammatically, this is probably the most sensible thing to do. However, to many Germans this sounds strange, and even funny, much like saying "Angela Merkel is the first man to do X".

In order to avoid that confusion, some political commentators bring the adjective weiblich ("female") into the equation: "Angela Merkel ist der erste weibliche Kanzler, der X macht". However, this brings us right back to where we started ("Merkel is the first female chancellor to do X"), in addition to introducing yet another bit of humor, because the sentence now reads much like "Merkel is the first female man to do X".

As if that weren't enough already, some political commentators completely overdo it by using both the adjective "female" and the female noun, as in "Angela Merkel ist die erste weibliche Bundeskanzlerin, die..." ("Merkel is the first female female chancellor to..."). This, of course, is the most stupid thing they could possibly do, but it's also the funniest, since it sounds much like "Angela Merkel is the first female woman to do X".

I am fairly confident I could come up with lots of similar examples in other languages with grammatical genders (say, French or Russian). By not having genders, English completely avoids that type of confusion, but it also misses out on all the humor associated with it.