gerunds - What is the grammar structure? "I am not going to stand here watching you do it"?

Is this sentence correct?

I am not going to stand here watching you do it.

I saw it in an article. If it is - and I think it is - why is "watching" a gerund? What is the grammar structure? Is it a subject complement or something similar?

grammaticality - Which is grammatically correct: "There is tea and juice" or "There are tea and juice"?

1. The bread and butter was tasty


2. Bread and butter are sold in this shop.

I have been taught when things are considered separately, we should use 'are' but when they are used collectively, we should use 'is'.

But in the following example, which one is correct?

A. There is tea and juice
B. There are tea and juice

Part of speech for non reflexive "oneself"

The words myself, yourself, himself and the like usually function as reflexive pronouns. However, they are also used in context that do not fulfill the common definitions of reflexive. Neither the "agent = patient" paradigm, nor the "agent = grammatical object" definition.

The author read the book himself.

What part of speech are those self referential words and why?

Answer

It’s an intensive or emphatic pronoun.

Per Wikipedia:

Intensive pronouns, also known as emphatic pronouns, re-emphasize a noun or pronoun that has already been mentioned. English uses the same forms as the reflexive pronouns; for example: I did it myself (contrast reflexive use, I did it to myself).

word choice - How to describe two different objects?

How to describe two different objects:
(Assume: one apple and one banana here)
"There are an apple and banana here." or
"There are an apple and a banana here." ??

Answer

You will use is if the object is in singular.

Eg:

There is an apple and a banana here.

You will use are if the objects are in plural.
Eg:

There are apples and bananas here.

More details on verb agreement is given here.

phrase usage - Which sentence is correct secret/secrets

I'm not English native speaker and debating with a friend that is also not native English speaker.

Which of the following sentence is the correct one?

a) I don't have any secret

b) I don't have any secrets

Is "secret" countable or uncountable noun?

Answer

Only "I don't have any secrets" is correct. Secret is a countable noun.

1 [countable] something that is known about by only a few people and
not told to others

https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/secret_2

grammatical number - "First part are [plural]", or "first part is [plural]"?

I'm currently writing my master thesis on Bitcoin and I'm not sure which version of this sentence is correct:

"The first most important part of the Bitcoin infrastructure are all applications that communicate with the Network."

"The first most important part of the Bitcoin infrastructure is all applications that communicate with the Network."

Or perhaps both of them are wrong?

EDIT:

Finished sentences.

Can subject–auxiliary inversion in conditionals be used with non-auxiliary (arbitrary) verbs?

Can I say something like

Come you there, I'll get you.

?

Or should I only say something like

Should you come there, I'll get you.

?

I understand that it looks like I must use an auxiliary verb in a subject-auxiliary inversion kind of by definition :) But I'm just not sure if I absolutely need it.

grammatical number - Subject–verb agreement — two schools of thought?

I wrote a sentence for our web site that was submitted for proofreading. The proofreader "corrected" my sentence. I asked how sure he was that he was correct and that I was incorrect. He explained that there are two schools of thought on what's correct and he chose his way as the right way.

I suggested that there were certainly two schools of thought: the right way and the wrong way.

1. School One:

   
   
   

   
   

   There is a large number of companies.

   
   




2. School Two:

   
   
   

   
   

   There are a large number of companies.

   
   

Can you tell me which is the correct school of thought and why?

Update. I think I should be able to reverse the sentence and still have it makes sense. When I attempt that, it works only with one of these sentences:

The number of companies is large.

The number of companies are large.

This suggests to me that the correct sentence uses "is". Does this make any difference?

Answer

Garner in Garner's Modern English Usage (2003) belongs to School Two. He writes (p559):

A. ... but a number of is quite correctly paired with a plural noun and a plural verb, as in there are a number of reasons ... .

This construction is correct because of the linguistic principle known as SYNESIS, which allows some constructions to control properties such as number according to their meaning rather than strict syntactical rules. Since the meaning of a number of things is many things (or several things), and since some things is plural, the verb must be plural. [...]

B. The number of. When the phrase is used with the definite article the, everything changes. Now, instead of talking about the multiple things, we're talking about the number itself, which is singular: the number of students planning to attend college is steadily rising.

grammaticality - "An abandoned cute little kitten" or "a cute abandoned little kitten"

• I saw an abandoned cute little kitten.


• I saw a cute abandoned little kitten.

Which sentence is correct? What is the rule for using consecutive adjectives in English?

"With whom" vs. "with who"

It suddenly came to my mind that this is quite strange:

1. Obama, with whom I was at school, has just come to live in our street.


2. Who are you hanging out with?

Obviously, both sentences are correct, so is "with whom".

But... why do you say "who are you hanging out with", not "whom"?

Answer

You can certainly ask Whom are you hanging out with?— it's completely grammatical— though the kind of person who would say it would probably use the even more stilted With whom are you hanging out?

The difference between who and whom has been covered extensively in previous questions. Whom has been suffering a steady decline (in conversational English) for some decades, and sounds formal or affected. As such, you'd be unlikely to hear it used with the colloquial hanging out, as whom is largely absent from less formal registers these days. Additionally, it is familiar to see who at the head of a sentence as an interrogative pronoun, so it is either less noticed by or less objectionable to pedants.

grammaticality - Is it grammatically correct to change tense in a sentence?

When writing a sentence, can I change from past-tense to present-tense in the middle of it? For example,

Joey realized that the ball is green.

or

Joey realized that the ball was green.

I am talking about a ball which is always green. The second example implies that the ball was green and that it may or may not still be green. However, Joey realizes it in the past. Is the first sentence grammatically correct?

Answer

The phenomenon you’re looking at is called sequence of tense. It is the topic of substantial research by linguists, but, in a nutshell, past tense matrix verbs (like realized) can take subordinate clauses with either past tense or present tense; however, the nature of the complement plays a substantial role in determining which, if either, is more appropriate.

Consider:

Ancient mariners realized that the earth isn’t/wasn’t flat, by watching how ships appeared mast first over the horizon.

In cases where the complement is permanently true, speakers generally feel quite comfortable with either past or present tense. Where, however, the complement clause reports something that was true around the time of the matrix event, the complement clause has to anchor its tense to the past tense matrix clause. Hence:

Last month, I walked into the room and saw that Mary was/??is asleep.

For events that last longer than the average bout of sleep (e.g., pregnancy), the present tense is more readily available. Hence, still using last month, you can say:

Mary’s husband only found out last month that she’s pregnant.

But, of course, if the pregnancy is over at the time of utterance, then, again, the past tense becomes obligatory:

Mary’s husband only found out ten months ago that she was/??is pregnant.

For permanent truths, however, like the earth’s not being flat, past tense in the subordinate clause does not imply that the earth has since ceased to be curved. For this reason, it is sometimes called a dummy past

meaning - What do we call this kind of recursive expression?

A metaphor is like a simile.

Is there a name for the kind of statement that suggests an infinite recursion?

It is in a way similar to a paradox such as the one with a statement written on each side of a piece of paper. Side one says "The statement on the other side of this page is true"; Side two says "The statement on the other side of this page is false." But the quotation above is not a paradox, an endless contradiction, but an endless reinforcement. What do we call that?

I'm finding it hard even to come up with adequate tags for this question.

And remember: All generalizations are false.

Answer

There's no recursion here, just self-reference.

It is not recursion (and certainly not "infinite recursion") because reading the sentence "A metaphor is like a simile" does not make you repeat/recurse on anything, nor does it invoke a smaller version of the same sentence, or anything like that. It merely so happens that "like a simile" is itself a simile. So this is just self-referential at most (it's not the sentence that refers to itself, but just the part "like a simile"), not recursive.

You may also consider the category of words that describe themselves (like "pentasyllabic"), sometimes called autological (though this is for words, rather than sentences), or (imprecisely) call your sentence self-descriptive, self-similar, or self-exemplifying. ("A metaphor is like a simile" is not an example of a metaphor — the subject of the sentence — but of a simile. But "A simile is like a metaphor" would be an example of a simile.)

Something related is sentences that describe themselves, known as autograms:

This autogram contains five a's, one b, two c's, two d's, thirty-one e's, five f's, five g's, eight h's, twelve i's, one j, one k, two l's, two m's, eighteen n's, sixteen o's, one p, one q, six r's, twenty-seven s's, twenty-one t's, three u's, seven v's, eight w's, three x's, four y's, and one z.

or

"This sentence contains five words."
"This sentence contains thirty-six letters."
"This sentence contains ten vowels."
"This sentence is written in English."
"This sentence contains precisely fifty characters."

or sentences that describe a part of themselves (from Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid):

"Is composed of five words" is composed of five words.

(In your sentence it's the other way round: a part of your sentence, but not your sentence itself, describes the whole sentence.)

More from GEB:

This sentence is meaningless because it is self-referential.
This sentence no verb.
This sentence is false. (Epimenides paradox)
The sentence I am now writing is the sentence you are now reading.

The self-reference in most of these is achieved by directly using "this sentence" or equivalent; in your sentence it is achieved more subtly. (So "subtle self-reference" is another phrase that may work for your sentence.) GEB has an entire chapter on self-reference and self-replication; perhaps sentences of your type are mentioned there.

More links that may be amusing: essay, list, and "This Is the Title of This Story, Which Is Also Found Several Times in the Story Itself"

word choice - Functionality vs. Functionalities: are both correct and idiomatic?

To me, inasmuch as use of the word functionality referring to software means the extent of its overall ability, I would write "The software implements the following functionality." However, I've seen (from my Indian counterparts), "The software implements the following functionalities." To me, this just sounds awkward and wrong. In fact, as I just typed functionalities, the text box editor underlines it in red. And yet, I read all over the internet that the plural of functionality is functionalities so I don't know why it should be flagged. However, I guess that's not my question. My question is as in the title; are both examples above correct inasmuch as the software quite obviously will implement more than one piece of functionality?

Edit
Based on the comments below, let me rephrase my titular question. Are both examples above correct English? If so, do they both convey the same message? The way I'm employing functionality only feels plural, but that wasn't the essence of my question.

Edit 2
It looks like someone edited my titular question which is good because the focus below became too much on pluralization vs. idiomatic correctness. It appears that both uses are idiomatically correct. However, within the "anglosphere", as Dan calls it, functionality is most commonly (and properly) used as a mass noun. From the Meriam Webster's Online Dictionary referenced below, functionality is defined as: "the particular use or set of uses for which something is designed".

Answer

Google defines functionality as the range of operations that can be run on a computer or other electronic system, so we would expect either "functions" or "functionality." The arguable exception would be if we were referring to multiple systems, each with a different functionality.

possessives - Indicating Possession Between You and Another Person

Is there a good way to indicate that something belongs to you and another person when you want to mention the other person by name?

As an example, suppose some friends ask you "Where's the party at?" and the party is at the house that you and Bob share. Then

The party's at our house.

would work just fine. But what if some of the friends you wanted to invite didn't know that you lived with Bob, and you wanted to make sure they understand that Bob will be hosting the party with you?

In this situation, I've often found myself wanting to say something like

The party's at my and Bob's house.

This sounds clunky at best, but the obvious alternatives all seem slightly inappropriate to me. For example, you might propose saying

The party's at the house that belongs to Bob and me.

but I would say that seems a little stilted. Perhaps something like

You know where Bob and I live? That's where the party's at.

could work, but it certainly isn't very economical. The best option is probably something like

Bob and I will be hosting the party at our house.

but that sounds a little formal if someone just asks "Where's the party at?"

I know this situation sounds contrived, but I do run into it in various forms from time to time. I think part of the reason it sticks out to me is that there wouldn't be a problem if it was just your house or just Bob's house. You could easily say

The party's at Bob's house

or

The party's at my house

In fact, those are the responses I'd expect to "Where's the party at?" in everyday speech. But

The party's at my and Bob's house

sounds terrible.

What would you say in this situation?

Answer

"The party's at Bob's and my house."

Despite however "clunky" you think this sounds, this way is correct. There's nothing ungrammatical with this.

See the following references:

https://www.english-grammar-revolution.com/possessive-pronoun.html
(scroll down to "Compound Possessive Nouns and Pronouns")

https://ontariotraining.net/grammar-tip-possession-with-compound-nouns-and-pronouns/

https://erinwrightwriting.com/compound-possessive-pronoun-strings-or-who-owns-that-dog-anyway/

The appropriate usage of relative pronouns?

I particularly have some difficulties while using relative pronouns to illustrate a point. Let's consider the following example:

-> The local volcano has recently woken up.

Then, I want to add an additional information to the above sentence by inserting something like "The waking up of the volcano has triggered a turmoil in the surrounding community. Therefore, my combination of the two above sentences is like this:

-> The local volcano has recently woken up, triggering a turmoil in the surrounding community.

However, I still wonder if I can use a relative pronoun in the above sentence? Something like:

-> The local volcano has recently woken up, which has triggered a turmoil in the surrounding community.

I get confused because the relative pronoun "which" should refer to the subject or object right before it. But in this particular situation, does "which" refer to the whole clause "the local volcano has recently woken up" or only "the volcano" or nothing? I will appreciate any explanation and help!

Answer

CDO licenses the broadened usage you speak about:

which determiner, pronoun (ADDS INFORMATION)

B1 used to add extra information to a previous clause, in writing
usually after a comma:

She says it's Charlotte's fault, which is stupid, and that she blames
her.

He showed me round the town, which was very kind of him.

[inappropriate examples omitted]

One can imagine a determiner + suitable noun (statement/view, action; event in the original example) precursor. What the correct labelling of the POS for the looks-like-it-might-have-started-life-as-a-determiner 'which' now is, I wouldn't like to have to decide.

grammar - What's the difference between "you" and "one" in the indefinite?

English, especially in the colloquial, often uses you for generic statements about people. For example, When you are angry, you act less rationally is not necessarily a statement about the listener, but about people in general. However, it's also correct (as far as I know) to say When one is angry, one acts less rationally. Is there a difference between these two forms? Is one of them more correct than the other?

Answer

It's generally regarded that the two are grammatically acceptable pronouns in American English. However, "one" is also considered to be more formal than you and excessive use of the word can lead one to appear as overly haughty or pretentious. One can use the pronoun "one" as an impersonal pronoun that's representative of the average person - this generalization can lead to a sense of social superiority.

One of them isn't really more correct than the other - however, "one" can sound rather pedantic when used in relaxed or informal settings. This is realized in the object case when "one" sounds quite odd - "When lemons are handed to one, one should make lemonade."

Sources: Grammar Girl and Capital Community College Foundation

grammar - Which is grammatically correct: "first and last name" or "first and last names"?

So I'm having a bit of a pluraltiy issue here, and I'm not sure which is the correct version because they both seem right, and I've seen both versions used in writing:

A. What is your first and last name?

B. What are your first and last names?

The second version seems more grammatically correct than the first one, but it just sounds odd. The first one is what you'd typically hear in speech, but that of course doesn't mean it's right.

Then again, this doesn't seem grammatically correct:

Your first and last name is ...

While this does:

Your first and last names are ...

So is one of these more right than the other, or are they equally valid?

EDIT: Option A previously said "What are your first and last name" when it should have said "What is your first and last name". My question is about the pluralization of "name".

Answer

More broadly, one might consider four possibilities:

A. What is your first and last name?

B. What is your first and last names?

C. What are your first and last name?

D. What are your first and last names?

Of these,

A is the right choice if you only need one full name,

B is ungrammatical,

C is ungrammatical (One might think that the distributive property, X Z + Y Z = (X + Y) Z applies here, making "first and last name" equivalent to "first name and last name", which is plural. However, "first and last name" is singular)

D is not ungrammatical, but is less idiomatic, and may be construed as requesting multiple names (such as aliases),

Word order in a descriptive statement

When stating the conditions in which an experiment was done (no particular emphasis needed)... What's the correct word order "Plants were exposed to freezing temperatures for 2 hours" OR "Plants were exposed for 2 hours to freezing temperatures"? Are both correct?

gender - How to explicitly specify non-binary support when using pronouns?

My native language uses the equivalent of he/his as the default gender-less pronoun. When using English (as a second language) most people use "he/she" or "him/her" to indicate a person of unknown/unspecified gender. E.g.:

He/she must join the team by the end of this year.

I am aware that singular they does the trick, but I am interested in a form that explicitly acknowledge non-binary genders. Something like “he/she/*”, where * allows for anything else.

Question: How to explicitly specify non-binary support when using pronouns?

Answer

Any non-binary person I've known is happy with the usage of singular "they" which you mention. This is inclusive of non-binary people. It is admittedly not a list of alternatives with one specifically for non-binary people, but that is OK.

pronunciation - Is there a regional preference for accenting the first syllable in "finance" vs. the second syllable?

I accent the first syllable in "finance", but I have a colleague who accents the second syllable. The debate in my office (which is strictly American) now falls between people who say accenting the second syllable is "the British way" and those who says it's the "hillbilly way".

I've seen this question (UK emphasis on the second syllable vs US emphasis on the first) that seems to indicate that "the British way" might be to accent the second syllable, and I saw that in this question too (First or second syllable accent for "detail"?).

Is there a regional distribution of these pronunciations? Is accenting the first syllable considered "American" and accenting the second syllable considered "British" or is it more nuanced than that? I only see the first pronunciation in MW. I think it's the first one at any rate, but dictionary.com appears to list both, with the version accented on the second syllable listed first.

Definite article before "cinema"?

I'd like to speak about cinema as an invention.
Do we say

The cinema was invented in 1895.

or

Cinema was invented in 1895.

grammar - previously was/had been

So I asked a question that I knew I had asked a long time ago and actually made me think...

"Am I the only one whose program went back to how it previously was or not?"

The aforementioned quotation was my question and I started thinking if it should be "how it previously had been" since there are two actions in the sentence. One of which, "went back to", preceding the other one, meaning one action comes before the other, so perhaps should have put the past perfect tense to use?

Answer

There is not much difference in either expression.

The subtle difference is this:

‘was’ - the system went back to how it ‘was’ - has more of the sense of how the system ‘was’ - ‘in a single moment of time’. For example ‘the system went back to how it was last Wednesday at 3pm’.

‘had been’ - the system went back to ‘how it had been’ - for a continuous length of time - for example “the system went back to ‘how it had been’ in ‘Release 3.1’ - which had been active and installed from April 2016 until July 2018.”

grammatical number - Should the noun after "any" be singular or plural?

I always thought with "any" I should use the plural, but on the internet I can find both:

• It can be found in any book.




• It can be found in any books




• Do you have any books?





• It can be said in any language.




• This can be understood by anyone.




• It has been used in any form.

So, what's correct?
Is there any rule?

grammaticality - Staff were or staff was

I am having a hard time determining the correct usage when referring to my staff in a sentence. It includes multiple employees.

Should I say"

Staff were busy this fall or

Staff was busy this fall....

HELP!

adjectives - "Boys bicycle" vs. "boy's bicycle"

When describing, for example, a bicycle for boys as "a boys bicycle", should it be "boy's" or "boys"? The phrase is not implying ownership but the type of bicycle, in the same way as one for either sex might be described as unisex.

grammar - Get lost in so many "that, and, in proportion to" in this sentence

I read a paper about lake and got confused about the following sentence (lower left in page 11256), because it has so many "and", "that", "in proportion to". I do not know which part of the sentence belongs to which word above.

Short-term bioassays indicated that C-limited (i.e., carbon limited) photosynthesis and algal growth and did not predict the continued growth of algal biomass in proportion to P (i.e., phosphorus).

From the view of English grammar instead of knowledge of environmental science, how can I decompose this sentence? It is frustrating that I konw the meaning of every word in this sentence, but I cannot understand this sentence.

Answer

I think the comments by StoneyB and the OP have it more correct than the existing answers...

It's not really fair to try to read this sentence without context.

For the first five years (1969–1974), the ratio of N to P in fertilizer was added at 12: 1 by weight, well above the Redfield ratio, to ensure that phytoplankton had adequate N and P supplies during the period when we were testing the C limitation hypothesis

The sentence you refer to involves data from 1969-1974, with adequate N and P.

I would rewrite the sentence as:

(Short-term bioassays) indicated (carbon-limited photosynthesis and algal growth), and (therefore) did not predict the continued growth of algal biomass in proportion to P (i.e., phosphorus).

Or, maybe in English that is more clear:

Algae were carbon-limited so the level of phosphorus didn't affect algal growth.

---

I think what probably happened is that in editing they went from:

Short-term bioassays indicated that carbon limited photosynthesis

(meaning their tests showed carbon was limiting photosynthesis)

to

Short-term bioassays indicated carbon-limited photosynthesis

(meaning their tests showed the lake was in a state called 'C-limited/carbon-limited photosynthesis'...which has the same overall meaning as above)

and left in the "that" when converting to the compound adjective.

---

Caveat: I'm a neuroscientist, and plants don't have brains, so this is typically a bit outside my wheelhouse... I'm giving this answer as someone familiar with science writing, not someone familiar with lake eutrophication except as a childhood neighbor to a eutrophic lake with a terrible phosphorus problem resulting from nearby farms.

grammar - Past tense of past tense

If a book is written in past tense, how do you describe something which was in the past?

For example:

I was waiting in the back of the line because I "punched" the son of the principal.

The verb "punch" happened in the past of the past. Should I use past perfect tense here just like in German language?

Answer

You need the past perfect (also called the pluperfect) tense:

I was waiting in the back of the line because I had punched the son of
the principal.

The past perfect tense indicates an action that was completed at some point in the past before something else happened.

If you search for "past perfect tense" you will find plenty of examples online.

(By the way, in BrE we would say "at the back of the line", unless you mean you were near the back of the line, among other people. And we would call it a queue, not a line.)

phrases - Me and X or X and me?

When should I say, for instance, "Mary and me," and when should I say "Me and Mary?"

Example:

Which option should I use in the following sentence?

After drinking our tea and saying goodbye to Hank, [...] made out way back

to the hotel.

Answer

The order is not a matter of grammar but of convention. It is generally thought to be more polite to mention the other person first.

word usage - Late “latter” last

PREMISE: I am not asking about the difference in meaning or usage between latter and later; it is, therefore, not a duplicate of the older question:
what is the difference between later and latter?

Instead, I would like to understand more about its history and why it is rarely used as the comparative adjective of late, and, finally, if the superlative “the most latter” ever existed.

According to Wiktionary, latter is not comparable.

Latter

Adjective
latter (not comparable)

Relating to or being the second of two items.
Near (or nearer) to the end.
Close (or closer) to the present time.

In fact, “more latter” or “lattermore” are nonexistent as is “most latter” but “lattermost” is cited in all the major dictionaries, English Oxford Dictionaries defines it as: Nearest to the end, final, last although it fails to mention that it is a superlative.

I admit to feeling confused, and I would argue that the following examples are using latter as a comparative adjective.

• I prefer his latter book than his first (I prefer his second book)




• There are more ways of achieving the latter [fame] than the former [great wealth].

It also seems clear that latter is an ungradable adjective; it cannot be modified by using very, really, quite or less in front nor by using words such as absolutely or completely and I have never seen the superlative form, “the most latter”.

Additionally, I cannot come up with a single example where the word latter is used in a sentence without the definite article or a determiner.

From Oxford Dictionaries

‘the latter half of 1989’
‘heart disease dogged his latter years’
‘… in the latter stages of the game.’
‘…in the latter part of the week than at the beginning of the week.’
‘The latter half of my previous letter,…’

I later checked on Google Ngrams and "the latter" is by far the most common pairing

Last but not least, I found the following chart that says latter is the comparative adjective, until very recently I had never seen nor heard that the adjective late was irregular.

Different charts which include latter can be seen on this site (23/28 image) and here. I'm tempted to say that the charts are mistaken, but are they?

• Is (or was) late an irregular adjective?


• Is latter non-comparable as Wiktionary claims it to be?


• Why is latter nearly always preceded by the definite article, is this semantically or grammatically significant?

grammaticality - Is "things such as this" singular or plural?

Which of the following is correct?

Things such as this make me happy.

Things such as this makes me happy.

Is the subject "things" or "this"?

grammar - Do you use "there is" or "there are" before a list?

When I use "there are:" (with a colon) to introduce a list starting with a singular item, should I use "there is" or "there are"?

According to grammar rules, I should use "there is" if the following item is singular, but in this case the colon introduces a plural group.

For example:

In my room there [is/are]: a bed, 2 chairs, a table, 2 carpets and a wardrobe.

grammar - Are there other grammatical ways to say, "I'm reading a novel of Steinbeck's"?

I would like to ask why the following sentence is only possible according to grammatical rules:

I'm reading a novel of Steinbeck's

What's wrong with "I'm reading a novel of Steinbeck" or "I'm reading Steinbeck's novel"?

punctuation - When is a clause not essential?

I am having trouble figuring out when to use commas to set off "nonessential" information. Sometimes it's obvious:

Bob, who is thirty years old, is an alcoholic.

But other times I'm not sure:

The day he quits drinking * he will start a llama farm

He has his heart set on owning El Duderino ranch * in New Mexico.

In the first case, my ear says that there should be a comma at *, even though information before it seems essential to me. In the second case, the stuff after * is not essential, and yet it seems a little much to use a comma.

Even that last sentence I wrote confuses me. "In the second case" seems essential but I used a comma. Is this correct?

Does it depend on personal style and the length of the clause? Or perhaps I'm misinterpreting the meaning of "essential" in this context?

Answer

• In the second case, the stuff after [asterisk] is not essential, and yet it seems a little much to use a comma. Even that last sentence I wrote confuses me. "In the second case" seems essential but I used a comma. Is this correct?

According to the Chicago Manual of Style it's optional, even though according to them skipping the comma might be a good idea. I'd use it.

It does depend on personal style, as some authors prefer a breezier style, with less punctuation. Read Cormac McCarthy.

grammar - Writing a novel past tense confusion

I was taught to pick a tense when writing a story. So normally I choose past tense. But how to deal with this ambiguity?

• John was brave the day before.


• John was a kind person.

Does this mean John is no longer kind?

In the story time line John is still brave as of now. But since the story happened in the past I have to use "was". How can I convey presentness within the past?

English is not my first language. I hope this make some sort of sense!

grammaticality - Jameson whiskey commercial construction with implicit verb

While watching the Daily Show, a commercial came on. Here is the construction:

"...When the Hawk of Achill took a barrel of John Jameson's whiskey, well that was another matter. But Jameson was generous, the Hawk, greedy, very greedy..."

The issue is "Jameson was generous, the hawk greedy." There is no verb in the second construction, and we are asked to fill in the verb from context. This is a no-no in a generative description of English grammar.

Are these sentences acceptable English?

1. "The doctor put his gown on the table; the nurse, on the cabinet."



2. "The soldier eats his bread with cheese; the general, with caviar."


3. "The soldier eats his bread with cheese; the general, his pita with olives"


4. "The bum sleeps in the streets; the oil magnate comfortably, without snoring, in a bed with sheets."


5. "The maid spreads the sheet on the bed; my kitchen knife butter on the bread."


6. "He pitted the two contestents in battle; she, a date"


7. "He drove a car; she, a point home."


8. "The surgeon walks to surgery, quickly, and without thinking about all the patients that he lost over the years; John, on the beach."

Is there a discussion of the rules for mystery implicit verbs? Has anyone encountered an implicit verb construction in a newspaper context?

Answer

As others have said, there's nothing wrong with the construct of sentence in the ad. It reads gruffly, which works well in the context of the ad. Your sentences, meanwhile, are more of a mixed bag:

The soldier eats his bread with cheese, the general, with caviar.

I have no problem with this one, although, as John and JLG said, a semi-colon should be used after the word cheese.

He drove a car, she, a point home.

This one reads like a clever pun. I'm reminded of Groucho Marx: "Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

"The surgeon walks to surgery, quickly, and without thinking about
all the patients that he lost over the years, John on the beach."

Um, no. It's not wrong per se, but it reads as if you were trying to deliberately stretch the rules. It reads awkward, because the two parts clash as unrelated. Just because you can write this way, doesn't mean you should.

"The doctor put his gown on the table, the nurse, on the cabinet."

Wait... the doctor put the nurse on the cabinet? Then what happened? (This reminds me of some of those humorous newspaper headlines, like "4-H Girls Win Prizes for Fat Calves").

questions - How to answer this "as ... as" comparison?

With the question, "Is [noun1] as [adjective] as [noun2]?", should one answer in the negative or affirmative when [noun1] is more [adjective] than [noun2]?

Example:

Animal      Top speed  
=======     =========  
gazelle     40mph  
deer        40mph  
lion        50mph 

Easy cases:

Q: Is a gazelle as fast as a lion?
A: No, it isn't.

Q: Is a gazelle as fast as a deer?
A: Yes, it is.

But should the following be answered in the affirmative or negative:

Q: Is a lion as fast as a gazelle?

Some possible answers:

A: Yes, (in fact) it is faster. [My preference]
A: No, it is faster.

My foreign wife is teaching a children's English class as I write this, and she just asked me to explain how to answer this last "as...as" question. Unfortunately, the textbook she's using avoids the above issue. And my wife is skeptical of my preferred answer (above); hence, my appeal to the experts here.

grammar - Help with commas

Recently I found myself in a situation where I was unsure about comma usage. The sentence was Cereals can be extremely nutritious, for example, Frosted Flakes.

Now is the usage of the comma before and after for example incorrect? I am not particularly concerned about whether or not there is a better way to rephrase the sentence, but I want to know whether it is grammatically correct for me to place the commas there or not. If so, can somebody explain why.

word choice - "I consider it true" or "I consider it to be true"?

Which one is correct or more correct?

I consider it to be true.

or

I consider it true.

Or maybe both?

According to Google Ngram Viewer both are used with the second being more common. Google Ngram Viewer

articles - We are physicists and we are arguing over the use of "a" and "an"

Here is the situation. I am in an office full of physicists and one physicist is writing his PhD Thesis. Fundamentally, he wants to know whether he should type "an SV" or "a SV" into the computer.

SV is an acronym for "Secondary Vertex", so it is clear to us that "a secondary vertex" is correct.

So the argument is over whether

• a or an "sounds better"

and additionally

• is SV a new, alternative word which means the same thing as "secondary vertex" (just as one can use "roll", "bap", "barm" interchangeably in the phrase "bacon roll" to mean some bread which is probably also buttered into which one has inserted some grilled, or otherwise cooked using another method, bacon causing the butter to melt into a delicious snack most suited for eating at lunchtime.





• or is SV an object which is to be expanded by the readed using a previously defined definition (should one read "SV" as "secondary vertex"?)

So, he should type "a secondary vertex", but is it "an SV" or "a SV". My vote is for the former as it "sounds better". (Or at least that is my opinion.)

Finally, we also consider "an STFC" or "an SRVTLVF" to be "better sounding", however "a TRVTLVF" seems to be "better sounding". We have discovered that it doesn't seem to matter what the letters of an acronym following a first "S" letter are, the "better sounding" choice is still "an" rather than "a".

Is there a rule about whether "a" or "an" should be used for acronyms?

etymology - How did the slang meaning of "flog" come about?

I've searched multiple dictionaries and Etymonline but the only origin for "flog" that I can find is:

1670s, slang, perhaps a schoolboy shortening of L. flagellare "flagellate."

This clearly relates to its proper meaning, to whip or beat.

However, in (British, and perhaps other) slang, the verb "to flog" has come to mean "to sell" with an implication being that something being flogged is being sold quickly or cheaply.

The meaning is confirmed in several dictionaries, but I am at a loss as to why the meaning has arisen. And so I turn to you.

-Update-

I've not managed to find any further links between flogging and selling, which has led me to consider this possibility: Is it possible that the two meanings are unrelated? I had made the assumption that the "selling" variant was somehow derived from the same word which means "to whip or beat", but perhaps it's not.

Judging by the demographic from which the word appears to come from (first referenced by authors from around London), and given that its original meaning implied the illicit sale of goods, perhaps "to flog something" (in the sense of selling it) is a form of contrived rhyming slang.

Could anyone back this up?

Answer

When you flog a horse you make it go faster.
So to flog goods is to make them move faster.

grammaticality - Can "fires" be used as the plural of "fire"?

Can "fire" be plural? Can I say:

Do fires cause cancer?

Answer

One of the meanings of fire is a single conflagrative event. The word fires describes several such events. So, yes, Do fires cause cancer? is a grammatically conventional English sentence.

grammatical number - Use of "Here's" before a plural noun / noun phrase

I haven't ever read "Here is the potatoes." but I have read/heard sentences like "Here's the potatoes." and "Here are the potatoes."

Look at the following sentences:

• Here's the details.


• Here’s all the ways you can look at this problem.


• Here’s some things you should know.

I found the following, but it's difficult to find more than plain opinions.

Actually, though, there’s no prohibition against using “here’s” before a plural. As with “there’s,” you could make the case that putting “here’s” before a plural is standard in common speech -- idiomatic. So I’m not critical of people who make that choice unless they happen to be members of the media writing for publication. News organizations strive to avoid sloppy, informal, ungrammatical forms. They hold themselves to a higher standard, which seems like a good idea to me.

(Citation: 'Here's' or 'There's' Before a Plural – Grammar Underground with June Casagrande)

I acknowledge it is not convention or purist to do so, but rather how English is used by a dominant percentage of English speakers around the world (arguable).

QUESTION: Can you provide some literature that explains the phenomenon, and provide some insight on whether the use of "Here's" is legitimate before plurals while expressing colloquial English?

Answer

"Here's" seems to be used before plurals in colloquial contexts

"Here's the details" doesn't seem strange to me in a colloquial context. I agree with the comparison to "there's." You can see from the comments beneath your question that there are a fair amount of examples in English-language corpora (I can't verify this information at the moment, but it shouldn't be too hard to check if you doubt this).

The prescribed "correct" form is "Here are [plural noun phrase]"

You already know this. I don't think there's much more to say about that subject. Of course, different people have different levels of deviation from the prescribed standard and tolerance for such deviations by other people.

It is grammatical, if we use a linguist's definition of "grammatical"

"Ungrammatical" is not really well-defined in the sense it is used in that quotation. If the author just meant that "Here are the details" is preferable when writing for publication, I agree.

Arguably, though, "here's [plural noun]" is more consistent with the underlying grammar that native English speakers acquire than "Here are [plural noun]". Nicholas Sobin argued in "Agreement, Default Rules, and Grammatical Viruses" that plural agreement in expletive constructions such as "There's" is actually a "linguistically deviant" phenomenon that occurs as a special prestige form not generated by the grammar of English (the supposed mechanism for this is described by his "grammatical virus" theory).

The "grammatical virus" analysis of plural agreement has been contested by some other linguists (for a more recent paper on the subject that discusses some of the subsequent literature, see Fournier), but the reason I bring this up is to point out that it's not as simple as it might seem to figure out how grammar works.

And in fact, it seems like Schütze, one of the critics of the "grammatical virus" explanation for plural agreement in expletives, agrees with Sobin that singular agreement with plural nouns is grammatical (Schütze just thinks that plural agreement is also grammatical).

All of the previously-mentioned papers seem to focus on the "There's/There is/There are" construction. However, "here" is also an expletive, so it seems likely that the same or similar grammatical principles apply to the "Here's/Here is/Here are" construction. Edwin Ashworth found an example with "Here's" in Schütze that is taken from a 1984 paper by Randall B. Sparks titled "Here's a Few More Facts". Sparks notes that 's may also occur before a plural noun in questions beginning with where, when, how and what (such as "Where's my pants") and proposes that it occurs in declarative sentences "that are possible answers to these types of questions" (Sparks 180).

Bibliography

• Fournier, David H. "There's some Problems: Complex Subject Agreement in English and Virus Theory."




• Schütze, Carson T. "English Expletive Constructions Are Not Infected."




• Sobin, Nicholas. "Agreement, Default Rules, and Grammatical Viruses." Linguistic Inquiry Vol. 28, No. 2 (Spring, 1997), 318-343.




• Sparks, Randall B. "Here's a Few More Facts." Linguistic Inquiry Vol. 15, No. 1 (Winter, 1984), 179-183.

Also, after writing this answer I found something written by Sobin that is accessible (at least for me) from Google Books, "Prestige English Is Not a Natural Language"

Is this a correct usage of the word "recurring"?

After a month's attendance, I noticed how the teacher used a recurring approach to introduce some of the key words.

I'm trying to convey that the teacher used this particular method repeatedly across her lessons, is "recurring" a suitable word?

grammar - Verb forms in "Feelin' Myself" (will.i.am song)

I have been somewhat fascinated by this song recently, for various reasons, including the peculiar lyrics. I am especially wondering about the usage of infinitive-like verb forms in several lines, such as:

I be everywhere, everybody know me
Cause we be in the club
Look up in the mirror, the mirror look at me
The mirror be like 'baby [...]'

I recognized some of them as similar to "X be like Y" expressions, which I found to be classified as a combination of "habitual be" and "quotative like". But there are other verbs being used in an apparently similar way, and I'm wondering if they're habitual verb aspects, subjunctive mood (my first guess), artistic license, contractions, other forms of slang/vernacular or just bad grammar.

Edit: In case it wasn't painfully obvious from the above paragraph, I have already researched "X be like Y" and that is not what my question is about. Specifically (and repeating myself again), there are other verbs being used, which are not covered by the "habitual be" and "quotative like" explanations. Also, "AAVE" is not a suitable answer to either question (it's probably true but much too vague - I'm asking about the verb forms).

grammatical case - Who vs. Whom for: "...Satan, who/whom everyone imagines with horns."

Possible Duplicates:
What is the correct usage of “whom”?
Using “who” and “whom”

I'm not sure what the clause is called, but it usually describes something (such as Satan). I would think it's "whom" because, in this context, everyone is imagining him with horns. They don't imagine he with horns. That's how I reason it, but it's confusing at times.

Thoughts?

What if it were: "...Satan, who/whom everyone imagines has horns"? Would you use "who" or "whom"?

meaning - Are there any rules when combining "semi-" with other words?

The definition of semi is half, partial. Examples like semi-annual/semiannual, semi-truck come up pretty often. However, I've gotten into a debate with some who used the term semi-sales to refer to a sales job that is not quite actually sales. My reasoning was that you can't simply combine semi- with just about anything and create new words or new meanings to a word.

Are there any rules to using semi-?

Answer

Michael Quinion, Ologies and Isms: Word Beginnings and Endings (Oxford, 2002) has this to say about the prefix semi-:

semi- Half, a part. {Latin semi-, half.}

Th strict sense of a half occurs only in a minority of words, of which examples are semicircle; semidiameter; semilunar; shaped like a half-moon or crescent; and semiquaver, in British musical terminology a note having the time value of half a quaver, a sixteenth note. A few terms extend the idea to that of occurring twice in some time period, as in semi-annual, occurring twice a year (nominally every half year), and the North American semi-monthly, occurring or publishing twice a month (or every half month). A related idea occurs in semi-final, a match or round immediately preceding the final, the 'half-final'.

Most terms in the prefix, however, signal that something is partially or incompletely so: semi-professional, semi-conscious, semi-retired, semi-literate, semi-skilled, semi-derelict, semiprecious, semiconducting (of a substance that has a conductivity between that of an insulator and that of most metals), and semipermeable (of a material or membrane that allows certain substances to pass through it but not others).

A similar analysis could be applied to English words that begin with half-: there are the exact one-half words (half-crown, half-dollar, halfmoon, half-hour), the approximately one-half words (half-cell, half-life, half-mast, halftone), and the the words where half- really just means partial (half-baked, half-cocked, halfhearted, half-light, half-truth).

Under the circumstances, I have trouble drawing a bright line between semi-skilled in "a semi-skilled position" and semi-sales in "a semi-sales position" and saying that the former constitutes a legitimate use of semi- but the latter does not.

grammatical number - Using "there're" to abbreviate "there are"

Since using there's for a plural object would be incorrect, would it be possible to use there're to abbreviate there are?

e.g.

I've been told there're many different ways to solve this problem.

Answer

It's not incorrect, but it's difficult to say /'ðɛrər/, with two /r/s in a row, so mostly nobody does. The purpose of a contraction is to make things easier to say, not harder.

This difficulty is one of the forces that has led to widespread use and acceptance of there's as an unchanging existential idiom, like Es gibt in German, Hay in Spanish, Il y a in French, Yeʃ in Hebrew, etc.

Another is the fact that, if you think about it, number agreement contributes nothing to the meaning in this idiom, and should not appear at all, since the subject is there, which is a dummy noun that means nothing and is neither singular nor plural by logic, so by convention it should be singular.

That's good enough for nobody as a subject, too: Nobody is coming, even though it's neither singular nor plural, and even though it may represent many individual people and their individual decisions.

adjectives - I found an unusual usage of adj, please tell me how it works

Following the terror attacks in London on July 7, 2005, the then Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted those responsible were motivated by an "evil ideology," ...

From CNN. It uses those responsible; I searched on the Internet and found out that responsible is not a noun but an adjective. Can anybody tell me how to use such an expression?

Inversion after "only now"

I was wondering if the following sentence was grammatically correct:

"Only now am I sure who is my real friend."

I found it in my grammar book and I am confused.
Thanks in advance :)

Answer

In a comment, BillJ wrote:

Not really. The subject-auxiliary inversion ("am I") is fine and occurs as a result of fronting the adverb "only". But there should not be inversion in the subordinate interrogative clause, which should be who my real friend is.

"Was" or "were" in subjunctive clauses

I'm not a native english speaker, so even though I'm decently proficient at it, I don't really "know the rules" sometimes, and this is one that's been confusing me for a long time.

Which one is correct in each sentence?

If the movement [was/were] to continue uncorrected, the tower would
one day topple.

If I [was/were] rich, I would buy a yacht.

NOTE: I care not only about the case of "I", but also "she", "them", "it", etc, as in the example of the tower. Would it be any different if instead of the tower, it'd be me who'd topple if uncorrected?

I'm pretty sure it's "were" in both cases. That's what they taught me, I think.
I started to doubt when I saw a lot of "was", but it sounded like the typical intentional mistake used "stylistically". ("If I was a rich girl...")

Then I saw it some more and thought it came down to an American/British English difference (I was taught British, in theory, and most of what I read is American).

But that tower sentence came straight from "The Guardian"...

When do you use was and when do you use were?

Answer

The grammatical rule, if you want to be strict, is that in subjunctive clauses you always use were, therefore all of the following examples are correct:

If I were you, I'd definitely think this through.
If she were to know what you did, she'd be so angry!

However, some people break this rule, to me for reasons unknown. Either they are unaware of it (insufficient grammar on their side), or they are being informal, or non-native speakers who were never taught the rule.

Just use were in all cases and you're fine.

Also note that as FumbleFingers has correctly mentioned:

It's generally accepted that use of the subjunctive is declining, so
eventually it will disappear. Some publications will be ahead of the
curve, and there's no reason why The Guardian shouldn't be one of
them. As Colin says, many of us still make the formal/informal
distinction, but increasingly this is seen as just a matter of style,
rather than correctness.

comparatives - Usage and explanation of "no more ... than"

The spirited defense of 2 Live Crew was no more about defending the entire black community than the prosecution was about defending black women

The first part of the sentence is clear that "X is no more Y". However, after that part I am a little confused.

grammaticality - "You and me against the world" vs "You and I against the world"

I have heard the first sentence in a song and there are also other songs that go something like "Me against the world" and "Me against the music". Shouldn't it be "You and I against..." since the phrase "You and I" is the subject? Or is it not?

usage - When using "an" before a vowel sounds wrong

Consider the following sentence:
"This is a one-time deal" sounds right
"This is an one-time deal" sounds wrong

"One" is pronounced the same as "won", which wouldn't require an "an".

Is it proper/required to use the 'an' before a vowel rule when it just sounds wrong?

Answer

There is no rule that says you must use an before a vowel, only before a word that begins with a vowel sound and takes the indefinite article. University begins with a vowel but not a vowel sound, so it's always a university. The same is true for a one-time deal.

use of commas with conjunction reduction

I wimped out in answering this question, dropping the commas and going to parentheses in this sentence, because I was not sure of the placement/correctness of commas in this construction. Now I'd like to get clear on how to use commas in this sentence (without reformulating it...no moving "poems", for example), and why. I'm not even sure that conjunction reduction is what causes the awkwardness here...

Wimp version:

I like Lord Byron's (and also enjoy a number of Percy Shelley's) poems.

Now I'm asking, if you use the comma, do you use both commas? It looks mighty strange with "poems" out there by itself:

I like Lord Byron's, and also enjoy a number of Percy Shelley's, poems.

...Or is the comma even required? I don't like this, but is it correct?

I like Lord Byron's and also enjoy a number of Percy Shelley's poems.

Answer

I think your wimp-out answers your question. The phrase and also enjoy a number of Percy Shelley's is effectively a parenthetical and, as such, is set of by commas in lieu of parentheses.

The issue arises because the parenthetical shares an object with the main clause of the sentence. But sharing an object is not really different from sharing a subject, as parentheticals often do

I ate, and enjoyed, the numerous confections on display.

Ironically, you would not need the commas or parentheses if you reordered the sentence

I like Lord Byron's poems and also enjoy a number of Percy Shelley's.

american english - "If I go.." vs. "If I will go.." referring to the future

Which one is correct?

option 1: If I go there, I can meet her

or

option 2: If I will go there, I can meet her

I clearly remember, was told by English (not American) teacher that "If", "When" cannot be used with "will" in the above context. Though, I have seen few people in US saying like option 2

I do know that "If I would go there, I could meet her" is correct (or at least, think so).

Answer

This topic seems to come up with some frequency here.
Your teacher was overgeneralizing, I'm afraid.

It's not wrong to use will this way; it's just that it may not mean what you want it to mean. In the case you mention, it means that you are commenting on the possibility that you may be willing to go there, which sounds at least odd, and seems very unlikely to be what you intend to mean.

Briefly, will is not "the future tense"; will is a modal auxiliary verb. That means it's got complicated meanings.

All modal auxiliaries like will or must have two kinds of meaning -- one logical (called "epistemic") meaning having to do with truth and probability, like

• He must be the person they mentioned.

and one social (called "deontic") meaning having to do with obligation and permission, like

• He must be home by midnight.

The reason why will is often called 'the future tense' in English classes is because it normally only uses its epistemic sense of "sposta", and that's close enough. But will also has a deontic sense of "wanna" that shows up in phrases like be willing to, will power, with a will, with the best will in the world, leave a will, etc.

What happens when you use will in a hypothetical clause is that such clauses only allow the deontic sense of will, so you wind up talking not about what's sposta happen, but about who wants to do what.

So it's perfectly OK to say

• If you will hand in your homework, I will grade it.



• Whether he will attend the concert is unknown.


• I'm not certain when he will sign it.

if you mean

• If you are willing to hand in your homework, I am willing to grade it.


• Whether he is willing to attend the concert is unknown.


• I'm not certain when he's going to get around to signing it.

But only for the deontic wanna sense, not for the usual epistemic sposta sense, of will.

Edit: I forgot to point out that this is a peculiarity of the interaction of two modals - the hypothetical clause construction and the modal auxiliary will. This is like having two strong magnetic fields together; their interactions can become, um, peculiar.

In this case some logicians might say that the deontic interpretation of will in hypotheticals is forced pragmatically because the sposta happen epistemic sense is already covered by the hypothetical construction, so using it again must mean the deontic sense. Maybe so; I'm not sure, personally.

etymology - Is there a word spelled with a silent B at the start?

My dad and I were playing a game in the car where we picked a letter and then each alternated saying a word that started with that letter. We did it with b, for example, it might go:

Dad: bath
me: ball
dad: buffalo
me: bank
etc.

As we were playing/debating the rules of our game, I noticed that there were no b-words that I could think of that started with a sound other than /b/. Whereas, for example, for words starting with the letter t, some of them begin with the sound /ð/ or /θ/ rather than /t/.

Am I missing some obvious contradictions to this 'rule'? Is there any sort of etymological explanation for this?

To clarify as requested by a comment:

I am looking for

1. A word that starts with a b that makes a sound other than /b/.


2. More broadly, whether or not there is an etymologically explained pattern among starting letters that shows whether or not there exists the non-phonetic sound at the beginning of a word for a certain letter (or the commonality of the existence of those cases).

From here I'm looking at which starting letters of words have a tendency to be pronounced non-phonetically.

Answer

There are English words that start with the letter B in spelling but that don't start with the "B sound" /b/ in speech, but not very many, and none of them is very common. An example is bdellium, from Greek, although Wiktionary indicates that some people use a "nonstandard" pronunciation /ˈb(ə)dɛliəm/ that does start with the sound /b/. (Compare the fairly common, but I would say nonstandard, pronunciation of yttrium as /jɪtriəm/ "yittrium" instead of /ɪtriəm/ "ittrium".)

The existence of complicated spellings in English is largely based on etymological factors, but there are too many to explain in one answer post on this site. There are a number of good books about the ways English spelling is related to English pronunciation; e.g. Dictionary of the British English Spelling System by Greg Brooks (despite the title, much in that book is relevant to any variety of English, and you can view it for free online.)

I would say that sound changes are one of the main things to consider as possible explanations for the patterns of present-day English spelling. For example, sound changes related to palatalization are responsible for the somewhat complex relationship between spellings like "c", "k", "ch", "g" and sounds like /k/, /s/, /tʃ/, /g/, /dʒ/. Not all of these sound changes occurred in English: the use of "g" as a spelling for the sound /dʒ/ (as in the word "gentle") is based on a French sound change that turned inherited /g/ sounds into /dʒ/ in certain contexts. (Modern French has further changed /dʒ/ into /ʒ/, but most English words of French origin are too old to have been affected by that French sound change.)

I can't think of any sound changes like this that have affected word-initial /b/ sounds in English or any language that has significantly influenced it. It's not impossible in principle for a sound change to affect word-initial /b/ and thereby complicate a language's spelling system: in Irish, the digraph "bh" is used to represent the consonant sounds /w/~/vˠ/ and /vʲ/, which developed from weakening of the "b sounds" /bˠ/ and /bʲ/ in certain contexts. As a result, certain types of words in Irish show alternation between initial "b" and "bh" depending on the grammatical context, such as bean "woman" (pronounced with /bʲ/) and an bhean "the woman" (pronounced with /vʲ/). (The "b/bh" alternation is one of several grammatical "consonant mutations" occurring in Irish words.)

grammaticality - Which one is grammatically correct: "one of the great" or "one of the greatest"?

I have been playing a typing game for a while now. The text starts with:

Aesop was one of the great Greek writers...

Is "one of the great" grammatically correct?

Answer

Aesop was one of the great Greek writers...

and

Aesop was one of the greatest Greek writers...

Are both grammatically correct and mean the same.

grammaticality - proper sentence structure - which is appropriate?

should I say:

"If you have questions, please contact me or Jeff"

or

"If you have questions, please contact Jeff or me (or I)"

word choice - 'We care for us' or 'We care about us'?

'We care for us'

or

'We care about us'?

What sentence is actually right? Maybe both sentences are good?

Answer

Neither sentence is actually correct. When the object of the preposition is the same as the subject in sentences such as these, the second pronoun must be changed to the reflexive. So the following are grammatically correct as far as the pronouns are concerned:

We care for ourselves.

We care about ourselves.

Both of these sentences are correct, but they mean different things. In the first sentence, you use the verb to care for, which means either "to think fondly of" or "to treat". In the second you say to care about, which means "to consider something important".

(There is an idiom under which it's possible to say We care about 'us', using "us" as a noun to refer to the partners in a romantic relationship. But I'm pretty sure this is not what you mean.)

grammaticality - What type of if-conditional is: “A shop offered us a reduction if we paid in cash.”?

What type of if-conditional is this sentence?

A shop offered us a reduction if we paid in cash.

As far as I know, the only right conditional sentences are these four:

Zero Conditional:

• A shop offer us a reduction if we pay in cash.

First Conditional:

• A shop will offer us a reduction if we pay in cash.

Second Conditional:

• A shop would offer us a reduction if we paid in cash.

Third Conditional:

• A shop would have offered us a reduction if we have paid in cash.

But I cannot tell which of those four it is.

grammar - Is "keep updated" proper usage of those words?

I'm far from being an English major, but I have a simple question. If someone were to say keep updated in a sentence, is that correct? I know the usage, tense, and other things matter, but is it incorrect to use those two words together?

If you were to suggest that someone keep updated [a statement], would that be correct?

I read another post here (which was similar), but it didn't say anything specific about "keep" or "updated" together.

Update: Thanks to a comment written in response to an answer below, a good example of this would be the sentence, “Whom should I keep updated about our progress?” (Is this correct?)

grammar - walk-through, walkthrough, or walk through?

Referring to something that means a step-by-step tutorial, which is the correct word / term ?

walk-through

walkthrough

walk through

I'm under the impression that the dash version "walk-through" is correct as that seems to be the most commonly used. Most spell checks flag "walkthrough" as not a word, so I'm pretty sure that's out. Most grammar checks to not seem to flag the spaced version "walk through", however, so I'm not 100% sure.

Thoughts on this?

-- EDIT --
Not sure why somebody linked to a post about "well-being" vs "wellbeing" clearly not the same word(s) I'm asking about.

Adjective order with dead & pregnant

I have just listened to a presentation to adjective order in my linguistics class, however, it failed to answer my question. Would an English speaker say "this is a dead pregnant cat" or "this is a pregnant dead cat."
Why would one be better than the other?

etymology - Is “No offense meant (taken)” well-accepted English expression?

I’ve seen the phrase “No offense taken” in the answers to the comments in EL&U site.
None of online Cambridge, Oxford and Merriam-Webster dictionary registers this usage, nor does Google Ngram.

However, I was able to find the definitions of both “No offense taken / meant” as “I am not offended [by what you said] / I did not mean to offend you,” in idioms.thefreedictionary.com and www.urbandictionary.com

Since what time around did these expressions come into currency? Are they a polite way of excusing? Can I use “No offense meant (taken)” in both colloquial conversation and formal meeting, for instance with the client advertiser in opposing their idea?

Answer

The OED’s earliest citation for no offence is from Shakespeare’s ‘Antony and Cleopatra’, where it appears as Take no offence. On its own it is first recorded in Henry Fielding’s ‘Tom Jones’, in 1749: No offence, I hope. The OED describes it as ‘colloquial’, so you will need to judge carefully when it is appropriate, whether with the sense 'no offence meant' or 'no offence taken'. If you have any doubt, it would be wise to use some other expression instead.

For an inappropriate use, see here.

grammatical number - I am so confused by, for example, "People love their life or lives."

I am always confused by these tricky-in my opinion-ones as below.

For example,

1. People love their life or lives.


2. Girls always love their boyfriend or boyfriends.


3. People think of their college or colleges as an enjoyable place or enjoyable places.

My point is that every time I come across such things, I am not sure about whether an objective or a complement has to be plural, every time the subject is plural. Actually, in the ex1 sentence, I think both of them are what I have seen before. However, the rest 2 sentences are not so sure if I let them be singular. In the ex2, every girl has one boyfriend-IN MOST CASES. Also, in the ex3, everyone attends one college.

In that sense, since the subjects are plural, should the objectives or the compliment be pluralized? Or, is it okay if I leave them single as the ex1 sentence? The problem is, though, if I leave them singular they sound like they have ONE boyfriend to share or they go to the same college. It sounds weird to me. Is it just me or is this incorrect?

Answer

For sentence one:

Look at it like this, 'He loves his life' and 'She loves her life' are obviously correct.

Now, when we we say 'People love their _ .', we can mean two things:

1. They love their own lives (separate lives) .


2. They love the life that they are having together or share.

Example:

• 'Software developers love their life' would mean that software developers love the life of software development.


• 'Software developers love their lives' would mean that the group of software developers you are talking about, love their own individual lives.

Word order: "dear my lord" in Shakespeare

I'm revisiting my old question [#167151]. The original question was about the word order: “dear my love” or “my dear love”. I hold a position that we say “my dear love”.

But when I was saying a prayer yesterday, I heard myself say “dear my lord”, and it just sounded smooth to my ear. I looked up the phrase and I found it in Hamlet by Shakespeare. That made me think, what was in my mind when I asked the former question.

The linked site above for Hamlet lists line-by-line translations into modern English and the page shows the following dialogue in Act 3, Scene 2, Page 2:

[Shakespeare] CLAUDIUS: Thanks, dear my lord.

[Translation] CLAUDIUS: Thanks, my dear lord.

And my question here is not about which order is correct. Instead I wonder: If the word order was turned the other way around, when did the change occur, and why did it happen?

Answer

In general, the form appears to always have been "my dear X". It is now (unless you're writing a letter), and it was before Shakespeare's time. This can be seen in examples from Middle English, from this entry in the Middle English Dictionary (emphasis added):

And dele A-mong my Frendes · and my deore children.
_{The vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman (c1390)}

Luke it be done and delte to my dere pople
_{Morte Arthur (c1440)}

My dere sonne, I ȝef vp my sowle ynto þi hondes
_{Mirk's Festial (a1500)}

There are also examples of "my dear X" in Shakespeare's works, as can be seen here. So why "dear my X"? Hot Licks suggests that we "[c]onsider that "m'lord" is a title". I did find some evidence that "dear my lord/lady" was used by others, e.g. here and here (but neither of these are particularly close to Shakespeare's time).

However, the bigger problem with this theory is that Shakespeare uses "dear my X" when "my X" is not a title (e.g. "dear my brother"), as you can see here. Looking into this, I found a possible explanation:

Shakespeare occasionally uses a peculiar idiomatic phraseology similar to that employed in the Italian language. He sometimes thus transposes the adjective and the pronoun in a phrase.
_{The Shakespeare Key}

The book gives many examples of this, including "dear my brother", "dear my lord", "gentle my lord", and "good my glass".

possessives - When can two pronouns being compared in a sentence be of different types?

I came across a sentence today -

He resents your being more popular than he is

I always thought that while comparing two pronouns they should always be of the same type, like,

She is taller than he (is)

or

I care for him more than her

I understand that the first sentence that I mentioned is correct but the moment you take out the is in the end, my perception begins to change.

He resents your being more popular than he doesn't sound right to my ears.

Shouldn't this sentence, then, be -

He resents your being more popular than his

What rule is being followed here?

Edit: The question that this one has been marked as a possible duplicate of pertains to gerunds and the usage of possessive pronouns with them while my question is regarding comparison between two possessive pronouns in a sentence. Only the sentence used as example in both the questions is same but the questions asked are entirely different.