definite articles - Is it proper to use "the" before the name of a government organization?

When I listen to major news programs, often I notice that they seem to intentionally omit "the" before the name of the government organizations. For example:

We contacted E.P.A. for comment but they refused our requests.

or

Others consider the actions of treasury to be detrimental to the economy.

These just sound wrong to me. I think it should be "the E.P.A" or "the treasury". However I most often hear this on very credible news programs (The PBS News Hour and Frontline come to mind) so I am sure they know what they're doing...

Is it proper to use "the" before the name of a government organization, or is it optional?

Answer

There are several reasons to drop the article. One is that some institutions, governmental or not, are never referred to using the definite article. Another is that the article can get dropped as a consequence of familiarity with and/or personification of the institution. Of course, NewsHour and the like may simply impose a stylistic preference to remove nonessential words.

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We often apply the definite article to the names of governmental organizations when the type of organization is part of the name (ministry, office, committee, et al). This is natural, since it sounds like we are specifying one organization of a type— National Park Service, which happens to be the name of the national park service; likewise the National Health Service or the Department for International Development. Where the organization is "branded," however, this is not the case, and we do not use the article: Parks Canada, Medicare, USAID (even though we would write out the United States Agency for International Development).

As with the names of countries and geographic features, there are no absolute rules in naming institutions. It is simply Gosbank but always the Bundesbank; someone attended North Carolina State University but attended the University of North Carolina (and yet attended UNC). With proper nouns, whichever usage becomes popular is that which becomes accepted, and sometimes (e.g. [the] Ohio State University) it is a muddle.

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Dropping the article is quite common in some other professional communication. People who work with a particular organization may personify it, especially in internal circles, and as English does not use articles for personal names, the article may get dropped.

This is more obvious where an unofficial nickname or abbreviation is used. A large company, say ABC Inc., might organize its employees into divisions. A press release or business school case study about them would write out the full name: the ABC Marketing Division and the ABC Product Development Division.

Suppose you worked for ABC, and you interact regularly with those divisions as well as with some outside actors: the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, and the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. Your internal emails will get simpler over time, indicating each group with the minimum of identifying information: there's good news out of Marketing, you should talk to PDD, send the proposal to Vegas but not Boston, we're waiting on approval from BIA. Obvious all those groups are made of up many different people doing many different things, but in terms of their interaction with you, they might as well be monolithic. It doesn't matter if it's Sandy from PDD or Chris from PDD, you just need someone from PDD.

grammatical number - "There Is"/"There are" depends on plurality of the first list element or not?

It seems I put a stick in the anthill at ELL.

Bounty assigned by outside party, two lengthy, reference-citing answers, one "-1" (awarded the bounty), one "-2", two others scored "0" and "-2" respectively, the answers suggesting one or the other is correct, 73 comments and no consensus so far - and me, as the asker, lost without a clue what to think of the answers anymore - this is no longer "Learners' Level" question, so I thought I'd bring it here and hear what the experts have to say.

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Original question:

An edit was suggested to my sentence.

There was were an orange, some grapes, two apples and a small pile of cherries on the plate.

In my native language plurality of the verb always follows plurality of the first element on the list. There were an orange,... sounds awkward to me, no matter what follows up. My simple solution was reordering:

There were some grapes, an orange, two apples and a small pile of cherries on the plate.

But that's not the first time I faced this situation and I'd like to know what the rules of grammar say about that - was my editor overzealous or am I trying to copy rules of my language that don't apply in English?

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Someone linked a related question for negatives, where the situation is more clear-cut ("There is no..."). Same applies to connection with "or" apparently, per accepted answer there. Still, nothing for "and".

It seems there is a consensus that in that if the verb goes after the list, it will be plural.

an orange, some grapes, two apples and a small pile of cherries were on the plate.

There doesn't seem to be clear consensus for:

On the plate { was | were } an orange, some grapes, two apples and a small pile of cherries

Adding more to the confusion is the abbreviated form: "There's"

One last note. In North America, at least, there is a widespread use of using a singular form like "there is" and "there was", without regard for the subject item or items, and this "there is" is often shortened to "there's":

There's three apples on the table!

Could you please clarify this mess?

Answer

‘The Cambridge Guide to English Usage’ deals with this pragmatically, as with much else:

Existential there couples with either singular or plural verbs (there
is / there are, according to the following noun phrase) . . . This
formal agreement is strictly maintained in academic writing. But in
narrative and everyday writing, there is and especially there’s is
found even with plural nouns . . . In conversation the combination of
there’s with a plural noun is in fact more common than there are,
according to the 'Longman Grammar' . . . Negative statements also seem
to attract there’s . . . When a compound subject follows, there’s
rather than there are is selected . . .

In such cases both formal and proximity agreement help to select the
singular verb. These various uses of there’s with plural (or
notionally plural) noun phrases show how the structure is working its
way into the standard. It seems to be evolving into a fixed phrase,
rather like the French C’est . . . serving the needs of the ongoing
discourse rather than the grammar of the sentence.

usage - Pronoun “you” can be omitted as subject in imperative form, what other pronouns can be omitted, when and why?

The pronoun you can be omited as a general rule, but sometimes I’ve seen sentences that should have used I or it as the subject but it was omitted.

Answer

In Standard English, the subject can be omitted only in an imperative sentence:

• Go to the store.

Colloquially, you can sometimes sneak by with an implied subject if there’s enough context:

• Got something to say?


• Went home sick — fell asleep immediately.



• Am not!

grammar - "I am gonna have to" vs. "I have to"

What is the difference between "I am gonna have to" and "I have to"?
When would you use the first one?

update: I am specifically asking about situations like the one described here.

Answer

Strictly speaking, "I am gonna have to" means the request is conditional.

In the type of case you're talking about, the request is not actually conditional. It's used in conditional form as a way of making it more polite. The basic idea is that if you're merely going to have to do something, that isn't as direct as if you actually had to do it right now. Indirection and extraneous words are typical ways of making something polite.

nouns - Parentheticals - referential, and antecedent use of pronouns

I am giving feedback on the following sentence:

"After one other attack (almost killing Chief Brody’s children) he decides that he needs to take action and he, Matt Hooper (marine biologist) and Quint (shark hunter) go off in Quint’s boat."

My issues / question:

• This is grammatically confusing writing - the 'he' pronoun refers to no noun / subject in the sentence.


• Obviously the author intends us to understand 'he' as referring to the parenthetical use of the proper noun 'Chief Brody'.


• QUESTION 1: This is, surely, precluded by the use of parentheses as adding additional information, rather than key information (such as proper nouns)?



• The sentence: "After one other attack (almost killing his children) Brody decides that he needs to take action..." would be correct. However, this does not follow the law that the pronoun 'his' should follow the noun 'Brody'.


• QUESTION 2: Is there a deeper grammatical law I need to know to explain all this?


• Meta-question 1: Am I making too many metaphors with nesting in programming space (or thesis statements in philosophy) and the English used in the first block-quoted sentence is fine, when it comes down to it?
  
  
  
  
  • Meta-question 2: What sort of modification's can be carried out in parentheses? For example, is the sentence "The boy (who was named Jim) ran away..." correct because it explicitly names the noun, rather than implicitly? E.g. "Running away (for the boy named Jim) wasn't new..." is stylistic, rather than incorrect.
  
  


• Pedagogical question: how does one teach this in a simple way?

tenses - A question about the usage of the word "occur"

I have read a sentence including occur in New Concept English,
a well-known English reference book focusing on rules of British English.
And in order to fully grasp the word, I tried to make a sentence with it,
but in the middle, I was greatly confused by the tense.

It suddenly occurred to me that he [is/was] a considerate leader.

Supposing that the truth is he is definitely a considerate manager,

and while I was doing something yesterday, the thought slipped into my mind.
Which tense is more appropriate? And please explain in detail, thanks!

grammar - Join it / Join them

Can you explain me please when we should use "it" or "them" with the word company in the example below.
As I understand company is "it", so we use join it? Or should we use join them?

Our main partner is XXX (company) in the Netherlands. If you join them/it, we will offer you the different products to sell.

Thanks a lot!

Answer

Both 'it' and 'them' can be used to refer to a company.

'It' in this case is referring to the company as an inanimate object, which it is. 'Them' can also be used because a company is a collection of people working there.

So it all comes down to perspective I suppose. 'It' may also seem to be slightly negative and seem colder than if you can 'them'. 'Them' can be seen as a warmer word choice that can make people 'feel better'.

capitalization - Are the names of these metrics proper nouns?

In my thesis I am writing about a number of different metrics. Not metrics in the mathematical sense, but metrics which are measures, functions. A function which takes an input and returns a symolic value.

There are different metrics, most of them are taken from other papers, some are my own invention. They are based on adjectives:

• completeness


• weighted completeness


• richness of information


• accessibility


• accuracy


• ...

Obviously, these words are nouns, but are these proper nouns, too? My guess is yes, because they are very specific and they are not general known in a lot of areas, but a comparable small research field.

Examples of their usage can be found in this PhD thesis. There it was used in both ways: capitalized and lowercase. Apparently, in composition with metric lowercase and without capitalized.

“While straightforward, the simple completeness metric does not reflect how
humans measure the completeness of a instance.”

— p.112 [87]

“For the Weighted Completeness, also a table containing the
pre-calculated alpha values should be available”

— p.113 [88]

What is correct?

Answer

I am not a professional thesis writer but my opinion is that any sufficiently technical term can be capitalized for the sake of clarity as the author sees fit. This is very common in Philosophy when concepts and ideas are capitalized to distinguish them from standard linguistic usage:

Therefore, there is no such thing as Love.

This resolves the apparent Identity Paradox.

Humankind's dependency on the existence of Evil in order to properly identify the qualities of Good are [...]

An appropriate rule of thumb is to ask the question, "Can this term get confused with a different idea formed from the individual words used by the term?" Or, more simply, would your particular audience read "For the weighted completeness" and "For the Weighted Completeness" as having separate meanings?

If so, you should capitalize your terms. If not, then it doesn't matter what you do.

questions - "Does he go bowling?" or "Doesn't he go bowling?"

Let's say we know a boy called Jonny and he goes bowling twice a week. My daughter has asked me which of the following questions are correct.

1. Does Jonny go bowling?


2. Doesn't Jonny go bowling?

We are wondering, why is it that the answer to both questions is "yes", although the second question starts with a negative word?

word order - comparative adjective + a + noun

a) When can I use "comparative adjective + a + noun" and when not? When can I add "a + noun" after "comparative adjective" and when not?

b) What is the difference between "comparative adjective + a + noun" and "comparative adjective + noun"?

forum.wordreference.com:

1. It may be a bit longer a wait.

2. Theirs is no bigger a house than ours.

3. How much longer a journey was it to your old job?

4. I would have preferred more modern a style.

Thanks!

usage - Pronoun “you” can be omitted as subject in imperative form, what other pronouns can be omitted, when and why?

The pronoun you can be omited as a general rule, but sometimes I’ve seen sentences that should have used I or it as the subject but it was omitted.

Answer

In Standard English, the subject can be omitted only in an imperative sentence:

• Go to the store.

Colloquially, you can sometimes sneak by with an implied subject if there’s enough context:

• Got something to say?


• Went home sick — fell asleep immediately.


• Am not!

grammar - Should I use its or their in the following examples?

Which sentence is right?

"All public schools provide breakfast and lunch to its students and therefore they are well nourished."

"All public schools provide breakfast and lunch to their students and therefore they are well nourished."

Answer

to their students
Issue: The number of Pronoun (its vs their)

Let's begin with the question - Student of where?
Answer: Public schools
Antecedent to which the pronoun refers to --> Schools.

Therefore, their is better than its

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Recommendations:

All public schools provide breakfast and lunch to their students. Therefore, the students are well nourished.

This school provides breakfast and lunch to its students. Therefore, the students are well nourished.

grammatical number - Singular or plural usage for ellipsis in direct object

Suppose I have the following sentences:

1. There should be an X and a Y chromosome.


2. There should be an X and a Y chromosomes.

Is the second grammatically correct? If the last word had to be plural for the same meaning of the sentence and an ellipsis, would the following be correct?

3. There should be X and Y chromosomes.

Answer

The first and the last sentence are correct. The middle sentence is not correct.

The reason is this sentence, which is the original one:

• There should be an X chromosome and a Y chromosome.

Notice that this is not

• *There should be an X chromosomes and a Y chromosomes.

Neither chromosome should be plural.

That's what is meant.
Now the rule of Conjunction Reduction deletes the first chromosome, leaving sentence 1

• There should be an X [...] and a Y chromosome.

Since chromosome wasn't plural before Conjunction Reduction, it isn't plural afterwards.
So the second sentence above is ungrammatical.
Conjunction Reduction only deletes; it doesn't do arithmetic.

However, the speaker can do the arithmetic.
There is, after all, one X chromosome and one Y chromosome involved,
and that makes two chromosomes, should one need to speak of them.
(There is, of course, no article, since a/an is only singular.)

But X and Y is a perfectly reasonable conjoined NP that can modify
a plural chromosomes, which leads to the third sentence:

• There should be X and Y chromosomes.

prepositions - From/ by usage confusion

I got burned from being in the sun for a few hours.

I got burned by being in the sun for a few hours.

In the above examples, I am confused by the prepositions by and from. I started Googling this out of my curiosity and seem to find both phrases being used equally. Is there a correct version, or are both equally acceptable?

It happened from being in the sun for two hours.

It happened by being in the sun for two hours.

In this above example, I'm more inclined to use from, but not totally sure.

grammatical number - What is the correct plural form of an abbreviation whose last word starts with 'S'?

What is the correct plural form of an abbreviation whose last word starts with 'S' (thus making the last letter in the abbreviation an 'S')?

The example I keep running into is "CMS", an abbreviation of "Content Management System". How would I refer to a group of these beasts?

Answer

I think CMSes is perfectly fine. Some would say CMS's is okay, though I prefer the version without an apostrophe.

I don't agree with CMSs because CMS is an initialism where each letter is pronounced, not an acronym like SCUBA. (Though others might have input on the words initialism and acronym, you know what I mean.)

history - Why did English become a universal language and when?

As we all know, English is the universal communication medium. Now we know how powerful it is to convey our thoughts. When did it become a common language? Why did they opt for this language?

Answer

English became the lingua franca around WWII, but it was already used all through the British Colonial Empire, establishing it in North America and Australia among others. here is a citation of Wikipedia:

It[English] has
replaced French as the lingua franca
of diplomacy since World War II. The
rise of English in diplomacy began in
1919, in the aftermath of World War I,
when the Treaty of Versailles was
written in English as well as in
French, the dominant language used in

diplomacy until that time. The
widespread use of English was further
advanced by the prominent
international role played by
English-speaking nations (the United
States and the Commonwealth of
Nations) in the aftermath of World War
II, particularly in the establishment
and organization of the United
Nations.
[...]
When the United Kingdom

became a colonial power, English
served as the lingua franca of the
colonies of the British Empire. In the
post-colonial period, some of the
newly created nations which had
multiple indigenous languages opted
to continue using English as the
lingua franca to avoid the political
difficulties inherent in promoting any
one indigenous language above the

others. The British Empire established
the use of English in regions around
the world such as North America,
India, Africa, Australia and New
Zealand, so that by the late 19th
century its reach was truly global,
and in the latter half of the 20th
century, widespread international use
of English was much reinforced by the
global economic, financial,

scientific, military, and cultural
pre-eminence of the English-speaking
countries and especially the U.S.
Today, more than half of all
scientific journals are published in
English, while in France, almost one
third of all natural science research
appears in English, lending some
support to English being the lingua
franca of science and technology.

English is also the lingua franca of
international Air Traffic Control
communications.

Passive and past tense

I have to write an abstract which present my research and results.
Do you think the following sentences are right in terms of tense and using of passive together?

1."It has been observed that the unsteady simulations with first method are not capable of predicting details pertaining to flow physics".

2."Overall, both the unsteady simulation approaches have been successfully validated by experiments for the computation of the speed. The unsteady method provides more accurate results"

Thanks

grammatical number - Which is the correct verb form with Who?

Sentence :

She is one of those gifted writers who (turns, turn) out one best
seller after another.

My answer is: turns.
As we are talking about she, singular third person.

But the correct answer says: turn.

word choice - Usage of "neither . . . nor" versus "not . . . or"

First, this is not a dupe of:

"Not bad either" versus "not bad neither"

nor a dupe of:

"Neither Michael nor Albert is correct" or "Neither Michael nor Albert are correct"?

So on to my question...

I'm not a native english speaker and there's something that I always find very strange when I read sentence containing the following construct:

"and try not to be shocked or
overreact if..."

Isn't something using "neither/nor" better, like maybe the following:

"and try neither to be shocked nor
overreact if..."

To me the first sentence can be interpreted in two ways:

• you should either try not to be shocked or you should overreact (wrong of course, this is not what the writer meant but in other case it is not that obvious that it is a wrong interpretation




• you should try not to be shocked and you should also not overreact

while with the second sentence, there's no room for interpretation (once again, in this case in the first sentence it can be deduced from the sentence but I often encounter cases where it is not so).

So... not/or or neither/nor?

Bare infinitive after "help" with intervening past participle phrase

Which is correct?

Our mission is to help everyone touched by tragedy thrive.

or

Our mission is to help everyone touched by tragedy to thrive.

I know that technically help can admit the bare infinitive, but something about the presence of the intervening past participle phrase makes it strike my ear as incorrect. Thoughts?

Usage of definite article with "last episode"

I have a question about the usage of the definite article with the phrase "last episode". Compare the following examples:

• In last episode, John met with Karen.


• In the last episode, John met with Karen.

Am I correct in assuming that the first sentence speaks about the previous episode while the second about the final one? Or is the first sentence incorrect at all and the definite article is necessary in both cases?

Furthermore, can you use this phrase without the definite article in the same way you would use last time/last week etc.? Example:

• Last episode, John met with Karen.

Thank you kindly for your help.

Answer

You can use the phrase "last episode" the same way you'd use "last year," or "yesterday" that is, as an adverb, which means in the most recent prior episode:

Yesterday/Last year, he went to the park -> Last episode, he went to the park
I think he was sick yesterday/last year -> I think he was sick last episode
On yesterday/In last year, he went to the park -> In last episode, he went to the park
I think he was sick on yesterday/in last year -> I think he was sick in last episode

Or, you can use "the last episode" as you would a standard superlative adjective, meaning either the most recent prior episode or the final episode - the ambiguity comes from the word "last" which has both meanings (it has nothing to do with TV series). Superlatives always require the definite article. You cannot say "a last episode" for the same reason you cannot say, "I am a best student."

Beyond that, the standard rules for articles with nouns and noun phrases apply. Hopefully these rules are clear to you. Here are some examples, in case they're not:

Best episode is the one where Kramer gets a hot tub -> The best episode is the one where Kramer gets a hot tub.
During long episode, I have to take a break -> During a long episode, I have to take a break.
In last episode, John met with Karen. -> In the last episode, John met with Karen.

Why does the contraction of "I will" sound strange in certain sentence constructions?

Recently, while chatting with a friend via text, my friend asked me, "Can you ask them tomorrow?"

I responded with:

I will when I go.

It occurred to me when writing this response that it would be really weird sounding to say:

I'll when I go.

However, it would have been normal sounding if I had said:

I'll ask when I go.

Is there any formal reason why the version without "ask" following "I'll" is incorrect? Or maybe it is correct, but merely awkward?

I suppose there may not be any explanation deeper than, "it just sounds weird," but any informative insights into why, ideally with examples of similar cases, would stand as an answer.

expressions - The feeling when someone doesn't understand your meaning no matter how many different ways you explain it

There are single (albeit compound) words in some languages (including English) which describe sensations that would otherwise be cumbersome to explain more than once (e.g. petrichor, schadenfreude, deja vu).

I recently came across the expression "to ring hollow". At first, I thought that was the suitable expression (crudely speaking, not understanding could imply a hyperbolic lack of a brain which would thus a hollow cranium make - hence "ring hollow"). Digging further, I found that it's more akin to a false promise <--> lack of credibility.

So is there a word or an expression in English that conveys:

The feeling when someone doesn't understand your meaning no matter how many different ways you explain it"? Or the feeling when, if what you say does register with the other person, it doesn't register at the level it should?

How do you answer tag questions with ", right?"?

When you asked "You don't love me, right?":
Which word is used to answer, "Right." or "Yes."?

If the answer is "Right":

--> Does "Right" mean "What you said is right, i.e., I don't love you.", doesn't it?

If the answer is "Yes":

--> Which does "Yes" mean, "Yes, what you said is right." or "Yes, I love you."?

grammar - Use of "Particular" in sentence

I was wondering if it was the correct way to use 'Particular'. Correct me if I am wrong.

"it is good for us to focus on basic things in particular before we go in deep."

Answer

Alas, this isn't a question of grammar.

It is good for us to focus on basic things in particular before we go in deep.

It's just awkward. Don't fix it: rewrite it. There are several ways to express the same sentiment. Here are a few:

1. Basics before details.


2. Let's cover the basics before going into details.


3. It would be beneficial to everyone if we focused on the basics before delving into all kinds of particulars.


4. Let's go over the basics first.

And so forth. Aim for brevity: long-winded, wordy speeches make audiences wish they were playing poker instead of listening to you, and that's never a good thing. You want your audience to adore you and be your bosom friend and staunch supporter.

Depending on the situation, "It is good for us" may even sound a bit rude. People should be free to decide what is good for them and what isn't. When that freedom is questioned, they tend to get resentful. The rule of thumb is go with "would be" instead of "is" - the illusion of courtesy created by the ambiguity always goes down well ("Would it be good for us? Probably. I don't know. You decide. Don't kill me, I'm just trying to do my job here.")

Usage of a verb " to need" with to-infinitive or -ing form: change in meanings

The Cambridge dictionary says that the meaning of a verb "to need" can change depending on what you have used after it: to-infinitive or -ing form.

I haven't comprehended it completely. Could someone, please, give me any examples of this change in meanings.

P.S.: is this related to a fact that need can be sometimes in a role of a semi-modal verb?

Answer

"You need to correct your ways." means that the speaker thinks that you need to change something in yourself. "You need correcting." means that the speaker wants to change you himself.

adverbs - Inversion or no inversion after "only"?

• Only now you can even get them on top of wrinkles.


• Only infrequently does it happen.

As one of our members has said, inversion happens when a sentence starts with "only" and never otherwise. So why does no inversion happen in the first sentence?

British usage of “cha”, “char” or “chai” to mean “tea”

By happenstance, I stumbled upon the words cha, char and chai in the dictionary today, all defined as meaning tea in informal British English. I lived and worked in London for some time, but never heard it used, so I am wondering: is it specific to certain dialects? Or is it dated? The Oxford English Dictionary doesn't mention anything like that.

Answer

"Char" is an old British English (in fact I would say English English) slang term for "tea". I don't think it is heard particularly often, but you might see or hear the phrase "cup of char and a wad" (meaning "cup of tea and a slice of cake") in a WWII context for example.

I seem to recall that Reggie Perrin used this expression in David Nobbs' novel 'The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin' back in the 1970s, but even then the café waitress didn't understand it and he had to translate. So I think it is a fairly rare beast, and probably often used (as in Reggie's case) to sound deliberately working class or for humourous effect.

capitalization - Which words in a title should be capitalized?

Are there any concrete rules that say which words (parts of speech) in a title should start with a capital letter? What would be a correct capitalization for the title of this question?

Answer

This Writer's Block page on capitalization sums up the rules in one page which is the most useful that I have found, basically these rules from the Chicago Manual of Style plus a number of minor rules which are worth reading:

1. Always capitalize the first and the last word.


2. Capitalize all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and subordinate conjunctions ("as", "because", "although").


3. Lowercase all articles, coordinate conjunctions ("and", "or", "nor"), and prepositions regardless of length, when they are other than the first or last word. (Note: NIVA prefers to capitalize prepositions of five characters or more ("after", "among", "between").)


4. Lowercase the "to" in an infinitive.

grammar - present simple and adding s after the Sentence

why do i have to add s after the word causes in the follow Sentence i know that it is because causes is present simple but when i look at the grammar it say i/we/you/they take drive/work/do etc. he/she/it take drives/works/does etc
but the Sentence dose not start with any of them

Bad driving cause(s) many accidents.

word choice - "Speak to" vs. "Speak with"

What are the differences between these two phrasal verbs and what are the best situations to use each?

Answer

These two are more or less equivalent. They can both be used for the situation where A and B speak to each other. "Speak to" can also be used for the situation where A talks and B listens without speaking.

grammar - Location - sentence constructions

Having studied English from an early age, I've been always taught that English has a fixed sentence structure and words within it appear in a fixed order.

For example, one is supposed to say: A pen is on the table. Or: There is a pen on the table. According to this principle (the subject coming before the predicate), one shouldn't say: On the table is a pen.

However, reading some English books and articles, I've noticed a violation of this rule. I've seen it in sentences like these:

• In the east is the Atlantic coast.


• In the far north is the famous Arctic region.


• In the mountain region are big deposits of coal.

What is the justification of these structures? Are they correct?

grammar - Why is the Elizabethan English incorrect in this quote?

I saw a Geico commercial with Elizabethan verb forms that bothered me because they were being misused:

Trick Number 1. Lookest over there!
Servant looks
Haha! Madest thou look!
So endest the trick!

How would a native speaker of Elizabethan English have phrased these sentences? Specifically, what verb forms would they have used if this scene were authentic?

Answer

The main problem with the commercial is that the second person indicative/interrogative lookest/madest thou/endest is used for all instances of the verb. Ironically, its use is not warranted in any of the times that it is used!

The first sentence should be imperative, the second sentence first person, and the third sentence third person. The irony is that the more correct they would be, the more they would need to change other words to preserve the archaic sound of the speech:

Trick Number 1: Look thou yonder!
Haha! I made thee to look!
So endeth the trick!

british english - Using "them" instead of "those"

Background:

Nowadays, I see this usage a lot. I don't know if it was this common in the past.

For example: "one of them people"

When I did a research about it, some people say it comes from a dialect of British English. And some says it is a "non-standard" usage.

I see this usage in Canadian English also and seems like some people use in a sarcastic way.

Moreover, I saw in a song title as "one of them days". And I saw in the book called "A Broken Promise" as "Now my mother become one of them people."

And finally, Wikipedia says that it is a usage in Appalachian English (a common name for the Southern Midland dialect of American English):

Pronouns and demonstratives

"Them" is sometimes used in place of "those" as a demonstrative in both nominative and oblique constructions. Examples are "Them are the pants I want" and "Give me some of them crackers."

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Question(s):

What would you say about the usage of this word? Is it correct? Can we use it in daily speech? Can this usage go beyond a specific dialect and be used in other dialects, regions etc.?

Is it really originated from Appalachian English? Why did this usage become popular among other English speakers?

Note: I already saw this question:
What are the grammatical rules for use of "these", "those", and "them"?

But it only says "ungrammatical" there. This question is specific to this situation only and there is more to it.

Answer

In the succinctly named textbook: English Grammar in Familiar lectures. Embracing a new Systematick Order of Parsing. A New System of Punctuation, Exercises in false Syntax, and A System of Philosophical Grammar. Designed for the use of Schools and Private Learners by Samuel Kirkham, dated 1834 we have this example of usage pertaining to Pennsylvania

The author provides further examples and an explanation as to why this construction is considered ungrammatical

I found an even earlier instance from an American textbook illustrating this usage, dated 1803, The Elements of English Grammar: Methodically Arranged for the Assistance of Young Persons, Who Study the English language Grammatically by George Neville Ussher ¹

The above extracts prove without doubt that this form of speech (and writing) was used and heard in the past. I cannot say for certain if this usage of them originated in the Central and Southern Appalachian Mountain region of the Eastern United States. I can only testify that when I attended primary school in North London way back in the 70s this form of speech was very common among children.

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Aha! I found an even older school textbook The Rudiments of English Grammar For the Use of Those Who Have Made Some Proficiency in the Language
By Joseph Priestley, dated MDCCLXXII (1772) printed in London, England.²

grammar - Using "and" twice in a list

About using and, I've learned it is usually used in lists, between the last two items. For example:

I like movies, traveling and going out with friends.

Please tell me if the use of and twice in this next example is correct. The first and is used between the last two items of the list, and the second is used to combine two things in the second part.

I am a software developer who has permanent residence, Bachelor degree and 4 years experience in .net for developing new software and doing enhancements in existing once.

Answer

Your usage is indeed entirely correct. "And" can be used in such a way.
Just note, that in a list, the second and last element of the list is separated by a comma, which I note in both of your examples, is lacking :

I like movies, traveling and going out with friends./A comma is needed between "traveling" and "and"

So, it should be:

I like movies, traveling, and going out with friends.

That's one way of preventing confusion from the "and's"

nouns - What is the difference between "risk" and "uncertainty"?

What is the difference between "risk" and "uncertainty"?
In what situation should I use each word?

Answer

Risk and Uncertainty have a specialized meaning in the financial world.

The Wikipedia article on Risk has an extended quote from Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit by Frank Knight (1921). He implies that risk is sometimes mathematically quantifiable, but uncertainty is never quantifiable.

By Knight's reasoning, you would use risk when examining a stock's previous return to predict its future return. If a stock were volatile in the past, one might expect that it would be more volatile in the future and thus have a higher risk. If the price changes of a stock were small and predictable, then one might expect that the price changes would continue to be less volatile in the future and thus have a lower risk.

There is a mathematical concept called expected value that can be used to quantify the risk. It may be based on a probability (such as a coin turning up heads 50% of the time). It may instead be based on statistics (using a concept of variance, which is related to standard deviation). Financial risk is based on expected value, and is quantifiable.

In contrast, by Knight's reasoning, uncertainty would not be quantifiable. The returns of both the volatile and the steady stock in the future are neither knowable nor quantifiable, so the returns are uncertain.

The face that turns up on a die before it is cast is unknowable and therefore uncertain. The probability that it will turn up a 1, 2, or 3 is quantifiable (it will happen in half the cases). So there is a known risk in casting the die and winning $10 if it turns up 1, 2, or 3 while losing $10 if it turns up 4, 5, or 6.

contractions - Why are expressions like “gonna”, “wanna” and “shoulda” American English?

As Etymonline suggests, the use of “a” meaning “have” in expressions like “should have” (shoulda), “could have” (coulda) and “would have” (woulda) were almost standard usage until the 17th century:

shoulda:

verbal phrase, 1902, representing casual (American) pronunciation of should have.

• The use of a or 'a to represent a loose pronunciation of have as an auxiliary verb is attested from mid-14c. and was all but standard English until 17c. (also preserved in coulda, woulda).

Similar expressions like gonna (going to) and wanna (want to) have a less clear origin.

From BBC.co.uk:

• Wanna and gonna are frequently used in speech in informal colloquial English, particularly American English, instead of ‘want to’ and ‘going to’. You will also see them used in writing in quotes of direct speech to show the conversational pronunciation of ‘want to’ and ‘going to’.

Gonna appears to have similar earlier usages in Scottish dialect (ganna, gaumna) but it is not clear if they are related to the AmE ones:

wanna:

representing the casual pronunciation of ‘want to’, by 1896.

gonna:

• attempt to represent the casual pronunciation of ‘going to’. In Scottish dialect, ganna, gaunna recorded from 1806.




• Going to - Casually pronounced form : I'm gonna veg out tonight (1913+) - (Dictionary.com)

According to the above sources, the cited expressions appear to have rather old origins, but they emerged, or probably reemerged, around the end of the 19th century/beginning of the 20th century mainly in American English.

Questions:

• Is there evidence that the older original usage of shoulda, coulda etc. actually influenced by assonance the later expressions like gonna and wanna, or have they unrelated origins?




• Is there a plausible reason why this “a” usage emerged mainly in AmE?

Answer

I'll paste the relevant part of Postal and Pullum's (1978) article Traces and the Description of English Complementizer Contraction (Linguistic Inquiry 9:1):

Why American? That is very difficult to say! Rarely does someone have a good answer for why a specific sound change happened at a specific time for a specific speech community. We can only say what sorts of thing tend to happen, and what sort of things are rare. In this case, you see that the verb+clitic combination forms a trochee, and the unstressed syllable is the one that gets reduced. It would be interesting if a stressed syllable were the one to get reduced. In fact, we'd even start to question whether it was truly stressed.

grammatical number - Use of the verb form "review" vs "reviews"

When referring to a team of people, would it be appropriate to say that the team "reviews" something, or that they "review" that thing? Wouldn't both usages be correct depending on whether you're referring to the team as a whole, or the individuals that make it up?

Ex: "A team of trained monkeys reviews the best jobs."

It's possible that the "team [...] reviews the best jobs," but not possible to have "trained monkeys reviews" the best jobs, even though the latter section is part of the overall sentence.

Answer

"Team" is the subject of your example sentence, so it is correct to use "reviews" to agree with the singular noun "team." The phrase "of trained monkeys" is just additional information describing "team." As you note, this phrase can be omitted without changing the structure of the rest of the sentence.

Removing "A team of" would change the structure by making the plural "monkeys" the subject; in that case, "review" would be correct. However, your example is correct as written.

A word that describes something that has been given a name

Is there a word besides named that describes something that has been given a proper name?

For example, a guitar is just a guitar, but if I call it, say, Shirley, is there another word that would now describe the guitar?

I'm looking for something specifically that can be used to identify things that have names (like people) but could also include books and movies, or say "Old Glory" for the flag.

Is there such a word?

EDIT: Here's a bit more information:

I'm looking specifically for a noun, a word which describes any object, person, or idea that has a name.

Perhaps an example will help: say you had a hat full of names, movie and book titles, as well as say names of famous characters from tv shows, and maybe even important events in history like "The Great Depression".

If I asked you to reach in and pick one, what could I say to pick besides "choose a name" (and of course, besides "choose a piece of paper"!) that would describe every one of the items in the hat?

EDIT2:
Okay here's some final context for everyone. The reason I posed this question is I am developing a game for windows phone that involves guessing a name, but although "Name" is a simple enough name for the object, it also has additional properties like "category" and "description".

So if I called the object "Name", I need an additional property to reference the actual name of the object. If I used "Name" again I would be accessing it via Name.Name, and that's just silly.

In truth, this isn't a big deal, I ended up using "Name" as the object, and "Title" as the name. This was more a "curiousity" thing, where I wondered if there was a way to accurately name the object, so I could keep "Name" as a property.

Ultimately, my favorite solution is to keep the "Name" as the object and "Moniker" as the name. This feels like the most intuitive way to do it, but I'll probably keep it as it is with "Title". But since that's my favorite that gets the answer, thanks to all who contributed!

Answer

How about moniker for the noun?

And I'd be inclined to invent monikerize for the verb.

(I also like appelation, but I don't have the right to up-vote it yet.)

writing style - Future-In-The-Past Form of 'Should [subject]…, or should [subject]…?'-Type Sentences?

     Consider a present-tense sentence in which a story's narrator expresses a situation in which the character in focus is considering which of two alternative choices he or she should make in the near future. Such a sentence can be constructed as follows:

[a] Should he or she…, or should he or she…?

[b] Should he or she…, or would it be better if he or she…?

…, et cetera.

Here's an example of this kind of sentence:

[a] Should he eat the sandwich, or should he save it for later?

[b] Should he eat the sandwich, or would it be better if he saved it for later?

…, etc.

Now suppose the person who wrote that sentence and its surrounding text decided to change his or her work relative to the past tense. How would he or she then alter a sentence like the one presented above as an example to make it fit in right alongside his or her newly revised content without needless linguistic contortions on his or her part? Would the author use the 'future in the past' tense in some way, shape, or form? If so, then how? I haven't, for the life of me, been able to figure that out by myself.

Answer

Your question is still confusing from my perspective, but I feel the answer is similar in that we use a variation of to do +/- past perfect.

Did Joe want to play soccer in the morning, or did he want to wait until later in the day?

Had Joe waited until the morning to play soccer, then he wouldn't have sprained his ankle in the dark.

In either case, you are using a past-tense auxiliary verb along with your action verb. In the first example, by adding an infinitive it brings your past tense "into the present," giving an illusion, if you will, of a future action.

It seems to me a problem you're having is leaving a semblance of mystery in a past-tense story frame. A primary reason most novels are written past tense is so the author can describe the action and describe the scene in a way the reader can take it all in.

You can't really write Did he eat the sandwich or didn't he? with any kind of interest unless that's the primary question of your mystery.

In third person, you have to be a little creative: Joe considered eating the sandwich. It sure looked tasty. But then he remembered the warnings, the rumors. Food was not be trusted from this kitchen. Should I eat the sandwich or shouldn't I, Joe thought to himself. He ate the sandwich; and it was a good thing, too. For that would be the last solid food Joe would eat for three days.

You can keep your basic premise by attributing to a thought or conversation, which is usually in present tense, of a past-tense story.

grammar - "a" or "an" ubiquitous?

I am unsure whether to use "a" or "an" in the following sentence:

Video games have become a/an ubiquitous part of American culture.

For me, saying the two sentences out loud makes "an" seem like the right choice but Microsoft Word proofing disagrees.

Answer

This isn't straightforward. In my version of English, I would say 'a ubiquitous'. It seems that the grammar checkers in MS Word agree -- both in US and UK English.

However, take a look at this ngram of published works.

Google ngram: a ubiquitous,an ubiquitous

You can see that a changeover occurred in the late 1880s but both versions survive up to the present day.

grammaticality - Can you end a sentence with 'hence'?

Pretentiousness/archaism aside, does the sentence

Any changes that were made have been detailed hence.

make sense? The context would be that the descriptions of changes would be found in the paragraphs following this sentence.

Answer

A look at the three meanings of hence, reveal possible meanings of:

1. "As a consequence; for this reason". Not the meaning here, and makes no grammatical sense.


2. "From now" I expect that is the intended meaning, (i.e. "we will detail the changes after this") but the dictionary says it must be "used after a period of time" - i.e. that the period of time must come before 'hence' in the sentence, which is not the case.


3. "From here" (archaic). Again not what is meant.

Therefore I conclude that the word is misused here. You could say "the changes that were made will be detailed a week hence". The writing of "have been detailed" means the detailing occurred in the past, even if it is later in the document (which I assume is what the writer is trying to imply), so that's two reasons 'hence' shouldn't be used.

There are plenty of ways to correctly end a sentence with 'hence'., including the example I gave above and Joe Dark's example.

british english - "Mr. Smith, John" or "Smith, Mr. John" Title location in reversed name

When writing a name in reverse order (following the commonly used [Last Name], [First Name] [Middle Name(s)] format) where is the most appropriate place to put the title?

For example, is it Mr. Smith, John or Smith, Mr. John?

I'm particularly confused about this since I know that a title like "Mr." or "Ms." is appropriate for both the first and last name. For example, both "Mr. John" and "Mr. Smith" are correct.

Edit: For context, this is for a list of teacher names at a high school. It will be included in various publications such as newsletters and timetables.

commas - Parenthesis and apostrophes

If there is a noun, then parenthesis or a comma, where should a 's go? For example:

The dog (who was very big)'s ears perked up.

or

The dog's (who was very big) ears perked up.

or

The dog's, who was very big, ears perked up.

or maybe just:

The very big dog's ears perked up.

Answer

Your first one is questionable.

Your second two are justifiable, but awkward. They're probably the closest thing to an answer to the question of "what is the correct way to use a parenthetical clause about a subject while using the subject in the genitive?" but they're still awkward.

Your last does the best by rephrasing to make the issue go away.

So too would:

The dog's ears perked up.

In-between those two ways of avoiding the issue entirely would be:

The dog's ears (he was very big) perked up.

The dog's ears (and he was very big) perked up.

The dog's ears perked up. He was very big.

grammar - Subject/Complement Agreement. How to describe problem with "The thing is the objects."

In my ell answer, version 32, I provided the following, problematic, wording (especially bold italic), and I need help to better understand this issue so I can fix my answer:¹

The thing is the books. (Reduced form of Sentence 2.a)

Fundamentally, Sentence 2.a (the so-called "correct" answer), is grammatically defective. Recall there is another grammatical rule: the subject and subject's complement should match in number.

A clarification is needed here. I am not suggesting here, in this EL&U question, that there is any such singular grammatical rule as indicated in the quote above. The quote continues as follows:

The reduced sentence makes the disagreement between the subject's and complement's plurality obvious. What is one to do? Language is linear and we know "The thing is X" is better than "The thing are X", so we go with the former, which is the subject-verb agreement rule. But what is "the books" then? It must be thought of as a collective noun, even if it doesn't look or feel like one. Forcing something to be a collective noun is related to the idea of notional agreement.

Others noted that grammatically defective is too strongly worded. There is no such "grammatical rule" for subject/complement agreement. Please help me understand/improve upon my line of thought here. I'm stating that Sentence 2.1 presents a fundamental "conflict" or "error" (however one might define error) at some level (morphological, syntax, grammatical, semantic):

The thing is the books. (Or, "The thing is the objects.")

Based on the "obvious" morphosyntactic plurality conflict, the above sentence feels so wrong that I think many native speakers would think it "simply" grammatically incorrect. However, @F.E. gives counter examples:

And here are some more grammatical examples, where the number of subject and predicative complement don't agree: "They were a problem to us all", "That so-called work of art is simply four pieces of driftwood glued together" (CGEL, page 254-5). As CGEL says: "What is required is semantic compatibility, not syntactic agreement . . .". There are more examples on page 512: "The only thing we need now is some new curtains", "The major asset of the team is its world-class opening bowlers", "Our neighbors are a nuisance", "This gadget is five different tools in one".

I think all the examples given above can be explained as notional agreement.

Question 1: If we explain this phenomena in terms of notional vs syntactic agreement, where does "grammatically correct/incorrect" fit in?

Question 2: Can a simple sentence such as "The thing is the objects." be grammatically incorrect while more complex sentences such as "The thing is four pieces of driftwood glued together." be grammatically correct? (The answer, in my mind, must be no; this is my conundrum.)

Question 3: Would it be better to say that Sentence 2.a has a low level of (linguistic) grammaticality?

Question 4: How about a low level of gradient well-formedness and that it's semantically difficult to be (linguistically) acceptable?

Question 5: Do we simply draw a hard line and say "The thing is the objects." is 100% grammatically correct? I didn't particularly like this option based on intuitive notions of "grammatically correct".

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^{1. Please help me and be kind; I'm trying to improve my understanding. I'm looking for cool, objective advice on how to look at this.}

^{I numbered my questions so they can be easily referenced, if desired. My preference is the final answer would sufficiently answer all the questions, but of course that can be done explicitly or implicitly.}

Answer

The thing is the books.

As the preponderance of comments suggests, an appropriate way to describe the grammar of this sentence, along with a host of others just like it, is: it is aces:

Exclamation that expresses something as being exceedingly good.
Urbandictionary.com

Divorcing the reduced construction from its larger context might give some native speakers pause, because the reduction eliminates contextual signals of the idiomatic usage:

thing

noun

6 (the thing) informal Used to introduce or emphasize an important
point:

ODO

One might argue that the thing is the books is inappropriate for a formal lecture or paper, but one cannot argue that it is grammatically defective. The reduced expression is correct, and in its original context, it doesn't sound the least bit strange:

The only thing that I want you to hit right now is the books.

One might forgive an untrained writer for the erroneous proximity agreement, and even decipher the meaning of it in the full sentence:

*The only thing that I want you to hit right now ?are? the books.

But it is, in fact, erroneous proximity agreement between the verb and the predicative complement, as the reduced construction reveals:

*The thing ?are? the books.

It is one thing to forgive an error. It is quite another thing to teach an error, and the OP's rule may seem correct under cursory inspection, but it is spurious. Must the subject and subject complement match in number?

The only reason the thing is the books might sound strange is that our ears are more familiar with common predicative expressions of similar construction:

• The girls are musicians. But not: The girls are musician.


• The car is a clunker. But not: The car is [the] clunkers.



• The actors are men. But not: The actors are man.

Even if the vast majority of predicative complements happens to match the number of the subject, there is no universal syntactical rule requiring it. Consider how simple it is to generate exceptions to this imaginary rule:

• Taxes are the issue. Or The issue is taxes.


• The prices are my concern. Or My concern is the prices.



• The mosquitos are his problem. Or His problem is the mosquitos.


• Her clothes are the point. Or The point is her clothes.


• Flowers are today's subject. Or Today's subject is flowers.

In the five constructions above, mismatching the number of the subject and predicative complement works in both directions:

plural X are singular Y
AND
singular Y is plural X.

The reason is quite simple: regardless of which is the subject, the predicative syntax cooperates with the semantics of the singular noun to put the plural noun in a single collective bucket. An idiomatic usage of the thing exerts the same collectivizing influence on the books:

• The books are the thing. Or The thing is the books.

The thing is singular, and the writer has chosen to equate the books with the thing. Apparently, the writer intends the reader to recognize the collective nature that turns the books into the thing. Should the reader respect the intentions of the writer, or cast pseudo-grammatical insults at the writer?

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Prescriptive grammarians presume to keep our language "manageable" by giving arbitrary orders to native speakers. Deep in their intuitive understanding of how English really works, native speakers know better, but tragically, they cave in to the intimidation of seventy-five-cent obfuscations like morphosyntactic plurality conflict. [People who can say such big words with presumptive authority probably know more than us, right?]

Since there is no morphosyntactic plurality conflict in the sentence, what is it that bothers the prescriptive grammarian? It is the words, the intelligent arrangement of the words, and the intelligent speaker's refusal to fill the erroneous prescription. Please notice the previous sentence:

It is the words [that bother the prescriptive grammarian].

We might call it a dummy-subject, but it is singular, because the larger context invited it to match the interrogative what is it. The syntax of English requires the verb to match the singular subject with the singular form: is. After that, the predicative complement offers an intelligent answer to the question: the words bother the prescriptive grammarian. Again, notice how the larger context welcomes the plural words, because a long list of perfectly intelligent constructions irritates prescriptive grammarians.

The coup de grâce for the prescriptive grammarian's imaginary morphosyntactic plurality conflict is that the sentence answers the question with a compound complement in addition to a plural complement:

It is the words, the intelligent arrangement of the words, and the intelligent speaker's refusal to fill the erroneous prescription.

Semantics is about the meaning of words. Syntax is about the intelligent arrangement of words in sentences. When native speakers understand they are not sick, they just refuse to fill the erroneous prescription. The thing is the books is not at all grammatically defective, and the prescriptive grammarian exposes his own ignorance of English grammar by asserting the imaginary defect.

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Question 1: If we explain this phenomena [sic] in terms of notional vs
syntactic agreement, where does "grammatically correct/incorrect" fit
in?

The premise of contradiction is flawed. From grammar.about.com, the definition of notional agreement is:

Agreement (or concord) of verbs with their subjects and of pronouns
with their antecedent nouns on the basis of meaning rather than
grammatical form. Also known as synesis.

The singular verb is agrees with the subject, so it is agreement, not "notional agreement." Even if there were a universal syntactical rule requiring the agreement of the subject and the predicative complement, it would be a discrete rule with no hard and fast bearing on the agreement between subject and verb. Regardless, the predicative syntax operates with the semantics of the singular subject to collectivize the plural predicative complement.

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Question 2: Can a simple sentence such as "The thing is the objects."
be grammatically incorrect while more complex sentences such as "The
thing is four pieces of driftwood glued together." be grammatically
correct? (The answer, in my mind, must be no; this is my conundrum.)

Although confused prescriptive grammarians might hope to salvage their sullied reputations, the simple sentence is just as correct as the more complex sentence, because in both situations, the predicative syntax operates with the semantics of the singular noun to collectivize the plural noun.

In the more complex sentence, the the semantics and syntax of the modifying phrase glued together reinforce the collectivization of the perfectly grammatical reduced expression: The thing is four pieces of driftwood. Please, notice that even this non-idiomatic use of The thing works quite well to break the imaginary rule about matching the number of subject and complement.

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Question 3: Would it be better to say that Sentence 2.a has a low
level of (linguistic) grammaticality?

Since the expression is perfectly grammatical, it might be better to say that the prescriptive grammarian making such a claim has a low level of insight into English grammar.

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Question 4: How about a low level of gradient well-formedness and that
it's semantically difficult to be (linguistically) acceptable?

Since the expression is well-formed and quite easy to understand, only a frustrated prescriptive grammarian refusing to abandon an imaginary rule would find it difficult to accept.

What is truly unacceptable is instructing students to break a real syntactic rule for the sake of applying a spurious rule. It would seem acceptable to lay out a descriptive rule for students: The subject complement normally agrees with its subject.

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Question 5: Do we simply draw a hard line and say "The thing is the
objects." is 100% grammatically correct? I didn't particularly like
this option based on intuitive notions of "grammatically correct".

Intuition informed by error is erroneous intuition. Native English-speaking Everyman has drawn an intelligent intelligible line, and most intelligent people are delighted to talk and write on Everyman's side of the line. What is it that bothers the prescriptive grammarian?

It is semantics, syntax, and the intelligent speaker's refusal to fill an erroneous prescription.

grammar - What's this? What is it? but not What's it? - Why?

Can anyone give a cogent, simply described explanation of why the verb BE in:

• What is it?

... doesn't seem to be able to be contracted with the subject:

• What's it? *

Compare the sentences above with:

• What's this?


• What's that?

These are perfectly fine. In fact, the contractions here should be expected in almost all examples of spoken English.

Bounty edit note: Any answer with any references to authoritative vetted sources will be strongly favoured.

Answer

(1) The word "it" doesn't like to be stressed. (2) Normally, a sentence has its strongest stress on the last thing that can be stressed, which in a simple subject-verb-object sentence will the object, since that is the last thing.

Principles (1) and (2) interact to give the strongest stress on the verb of a sentence, in case the object is "it" -- since the stress can't go on the "it", the last eligible thing for stress is the verb. Compare "I like yoghurt" with "I like it".

(3) Stressed vowels cannot be deleted.

Putting together (1-3), we deduce that the "is" in "What is it?" will be stressed, and consequently cannot be contracted to *"What's it?", because that would require deleting the "i" of "is", which must be stressed because of the following "it".

dates - Which acronyms are used for epochs? How are the acronyms placed?

For example, I usually use

• 560 BCE


• 1066 CE

As opposed to the traditional:

• 560 BC


• AD 1066

Some people, when using AD, place it after the year:

How are epochs commonly denoted?

Answer

Commonly, BC follows the date and AD precedes the date when referencing a specific year. Wikipedia suggests this is because English copies Latin usage of placing the abbreviation before the year number. Since AD is a latin phrase and BC is not, we arrive at 535 BC and AD 1066. Not the most compelling objective argument, I admit, but entirely plausible considering the other odd constructions we've kept around simply because of Latin tradition.

When referring to a century as a whole in text, the convention of placing either BC or AD after the stated century is considered acceptable by most of the style guides I dug up.

Wikipedia goes further to note that CE and BCE are becoming increasingly common in academic and religious writing, and suggests that CE and AD should not be used unless the date or century would be ambiguous without it.

As an aside, I remember seeing one unusual date-reference acronym that was a good five letters long. It had to do with radiocarbon years, if I recall correctly. The full acronym escapes my memory at the moment, but hopefully someone will read this and chime in.

articles - "Has a value of" vs. "has the value of"

The basic problem

The following types of expressions are ubiquitous, especially (but not only) in scientific and technical literature; note the indefinite article in the construction "...has/with a value of...":

At period 1, inflation has a value of about 1.021.

The electric field within the capacitor has a value of 170 N/C

The energy charge quotient has a value of unity (or, 1.00) when only ATP is present and a value of zero when only AMP is present.

The shipments of cattle were 84,205 head, with a value of $5,473,325.

In fact, it seems that all quantifiable properties obey the same relevant rule:

The Commodore PET was also released in 1977 with a price of $800.


The front of the train has a speed of 23 m/s.

The indefinite article is apparently at least allowable even when the relevant property refers to something previously mentioned, like in the second appearance of speed in the following example:

The train is moving with a speed of 5 mph. It then stops, and then slowly speeds up, until it is again moving with a speed of 5 mph.

(I don't have links to published versions of exactly these sentences, but I hope the following two examples come close enough: look for then accelerates back to a velocity of 25 m/s here, and for again with a speed of 250 r.p.m. here, the latter in the paragraph right below Fig. 2. See also Some analyses that (probably) don't work, B, below.)

The basic question is, why are we not using the definite article here? After all, in all these examples, the "of"-phrase would seem to be providing a further specification, a narrowing down, of the property in question. In other words, it would seem to be a standard prepositional phrase, which normally entails the definite article.

A fill-in-the-blank exercise

To help illustrate this last point, let's try an exercise. Fill in the blank ( __ ) in the following:

"The train is moving with a certain speed."

"What speed?"

"___ speed of 5 mph."

What did you put in the blank, "the," "a," or nothing? Surely, you put "the"?

I think I can show that the reason you put "the" is not that the speed is being mentioned for the second time---see Some analyses that (probably) don't work, A., below. The reason thus must be something else, and I think it is that "5 mph" provides a "narrowing down of possibilities to a single one," a "specifying," of the "speed."

And yet, just as surely, we would say,

The train is moving with a speed of 5 mph

even though here, too, it would seem that "5 mph" serves to "narrow down" the speed to a single value.

So, why the indefinite article? Why doesn't it matter that the numerical value narrows down the possibilities to just one? Why doesn't it matter if the relevant noun refers to something previously mentioned?

Categorical properties

The rule even seems to apply to the cases of categorical (as opposed to quantifiable) properties:

Forty-five percent of the population has a blood type of O.

He has a major in social work.

Wilde looked at the copy with an expression of surprise.

I am tempted to (semantically) analyze these examples as follows: they all involve a determinable property---i.e. a property that can get more specific---being more precisely characterized. In the case of quantifiable properties (inflation, speed, price, charge,...), we make them more specific by giving a numerical value. In the case of categorical properties, we restrict them by specifying the category: so a blood type can be A, B, AB or O; an expression can be one of surprise, fear, love, etc. And all of this talk of making things "more specific" would suggest the definite article, in contradiction to what is actually used.

Apparent counterexamples to the rule

Based on the preceding, we would expect the property of having an emotion (which can be more precisely characterized as happiness, sadness, boredom, surprise, anger, delight, ...) should require the indefinite article as well. And yet, instead we have

God eternally has the emotion of compassion.

For example, consider what happens when the reader has the emotion of surprise.

And to make things really confusing, consider the property called having a property, which we further characterize by specifying the kind of property. Here there seems to be no pattern at all. You might hope that some of the usual rules would explain the particular choices of the articles in the sentences below (e.g. the property was---or was not---previously mentioned). However, if you look at the full texts, it will be apparent that such an explanation doesn't really work here:

The class of all spoons has the property of not being member of itself.


There is a thing which has a property of being the only writer of Waverly and of being Scotch.

As a set of points space has the property of containing points.

The construction of womanhood has a property of Otherness.

Here and then one encounters counterexamples to the paradigmatic cases discussed at the beginning. In the following, the first and the third boldfaced article are the counterexamples, while the second one is the (usual) indefinite article.

A vehicle departing the roadway at the mean speed of 49.3 mph subjected to an effective friction of 0.7 due to braking would need to travel 30 ft before it slowed by 10 mph. If this vehicle was encroaching at the mean departure angle of 16.9 degrees...

You may think that it is significant that we have mean speed. But, no...

Elite human athletes run 100-m races in about 10 s, at a mean speed of 10 m/s.
Ahead of the fleet lay a journey of some 420 miles, scheduled to last for thirty-five hours at a mean speed of twelve knots.
By now the Exeter and the Graf Spee were approaching each other at a mean speed of forty miles an hour.

Additionally, it seems that with the weight of used to be more acceptable in the past (see here), but for many decades already, with a weight of is preferred (see here).

The question summarized: All the examples above would seem to be clear cases of a prepositional phrase telling us "which one," i.e. "which value" of the many possible ones, and so we would expect the definite article in all of them. But instead, we usually use the indefinite article instead. Why? And why don't we use the indefinite articles in the case of having an emotion and in half the cases of having a property?

It could be that this an example where English hasn't yet really worked out what the rule should be. It could be that matters here are simply illogical (see here and here for some comments on why some usages of the English articles---including the zero article---may well be simply illogical). But are they illogical in the particular cases presented here? Or is there, after all, some rule, some pattern behind all of this?

Update 1 (with thanks to Edwin Ashworth): Sometimes when we more precisely characterize a determinable property, we do it by saying that it is the same as something else. In this case, we do use the definite article:

It has the color of deep rich caramel.

One copper coin has the value of a measure of rice.

I think the reason is this: when, to our ear, it seems that the "of"-phrase is coming from a transformation of a possessive phrase, the urge to use the definite article is simply too great. So we say It has the value of a Spanish milled dollar because it feels like it is a rephrasing of It has a Spanish milled dollar's value.

On the other hand, we don't have the same urge to say I have five grains of gold, with the value of $13, because we are not inclined to hear this as a rephrasing of a possessive phrase. And this for the simple reason that there simply is no corresponding possessive phrase. Note that with a $13's value doesn't sound right at all; it would instead have to be with a $13 value, which is not a possessive phrase. So the urge to use the definite article is not as great here, and, indeed, we rather have I have five grains of gold, with a value of $13, consistent with the previous examples. (Of course, a "decreased urge" to use the definite article is one thing; what is the actual reason why we use the indefinite article is another...)

Some analyses that (probably) don't work:

A. It has been suggested that the reason we put "the" in the fill-in-the-blank exercise (the second subsection of the text; see above) is that it is the second mention of the speed, i.e. because it is a reference to something previously mentioned. But if it were so, then this "the" would be obligatory, and it isn't:

"The train moving with a certain speed."

"What speed?"

"A certain speed. The point is, the speed is increasing."

Here the second-to-last sentence is used by the speaker to let his correspondent know that the precise value of the speed doesn't matter. (If it did matter, the speaker's reply would begin with the definite article, e.g. The speed of 5 mph.) But even so, in the sentence that follows, it is obligatory to say the speed and not a speed, because this really is a reference to something previously mentioned. Since in the second-to-last sentence the definite article is not obligatory, I conclude that when we do put it, we don't put it because it is referring to something previously mentioned (if that were the reason we put it, it would be obligatory). Instead, I think the reason is that "5 mph" provides a "narrowing down of possibilities to a single one."

B. It has been suggested that the reason we put the indefinite article in The train is moving with a speed of 5 mph is that this is the first reference to that speed. But this analysis does not work. Consider the following:

The train is moving with a speed of 5 mph. It then stops, and then slowly speeds up, until it is again moving with a speed of 5 mph.

Note that, at the end of the second sentence, it is again the indefinite article, even though we are referring to a previously mentioned speed (a point emphasized by the appearance of again). From this example, I conclude that the whole business of previous mention is irrelevant to what article is to be used here, although, of course, I still don't understand the grammatical reason why it is irrelevant, or why "5 mph" doesn't count as a "narrowing down of possibilities to a single one," like it (I think) does in the fill-in-the-blank exercise (see sub-subsection A, just above).

(I don't have links to published versions of exactly these sentences, but I hope the following two links come close enough: then accelerates back to a velocity of 25m/s, and again with a speed of 250 r.p.m., the latter in the paragraph right below Fig. 2.)