What is the correct possessive of "the Lady with the Curved Nose"?

For example:

The Lady with the curved nose love letters

This question arises from the Doyle short story "Charles Augustus Milverton", in which a Lady, who is described as having a curved nose, shoots the story's namesake.

Do noun clauses need subjects?

"Homework is what I hate to do." "Homework is what makes me sad."

In the first sentence, "what I hate the most" is clearly a noun clause. It functions as a subject complement. And it begins with a subordinating conjunction (what), has a subject (I), and a predicate (hate).

In the second sentence, is "what makes me sad" a noun clause? Is it a clause at all?

It starts with a subordinating conjunction (what) and has a predicate (makes me sad), but what is the subject? Does what function as both a subordinating conjunction and subject?

Please help! lol

grammaticality - The simple sentence that broke me hard

Somehow, I'm very confused with how to make this sentence work. Would appreciate any help.

Should it be

You will learn what orders person A has made, as well as what things did person B keep in his mind while working on this.

or

You will learn what orders has person A made, as well as what things person B kept in his mind while working on this.

or something entirely else?

How to use pronouns correctly?

Choose the correct pronoun to complete the sentence.

No other boy in our neighborhood runs as fast as (he, him).

Choose the correct pronoun to complete the sentence.

Who could make spaghetti better than (she, her)?

Choose the correct pronoun to complete the sentence.

The book about the history of pencils was more interesting to you than to (he, him).

syntactic analysis - Using "the book" and the title of the book in a sentence

Which one of these is the right way to include both "the book" and the title of the book in a sentence:

• The book, Wuthering Heights, is worth a read.


• The book Wuthering Heights is worth a read.

If none of them are right, what is the right way to write such a sentence. I am trying to express the idea that there is a book named Wuthering Heights and that book is worth a read.

In general, I have this problem for other types of sentences too, e.g., title of songs, movie names, etc. For example, "The song, When you say nothing at all, was written by Paul Overstreet and Don Schlitz." Is there a grammar terminology or grammar concept that deals with introducing the type of object (book, song, etc.) and the title of the object, that I can look up to learn more about construction such sentences?

commas - Punctuation with block-quotes

How do I properly place a comma after a big block-quote? Let's say I have a sentence like this:

The author states: < a big quote goes here. >, therefore...

Since my sentence continues after the quote, it is sometimes necessary to put a comma or some other punctuation mark after the quote. However, sometimes the quote is inserted as a big block of text that is formatted in a special way (like on this site). How do I do it in this case? The following doesn't really seem right to me:

• The author states:

  
  
  

  
  

  Some big quote

  
  
  

  goes here.

  
  

  
  
  
  

  , therefore...

Answer

You can see just in this forum that sentences are not generally continued after block quotes.

However, it is explicitly stated in the MLA style guide that the sentence preceding a long quote set off by indentation should end with a colon, that the quotation should end with a period, and that the next sentence should continue at the normal indentation after the quotation.

The following shows this...

This is a block quote:

Indent this, then end the sentence with a period.

Continue afterward with another sentence.

adjectives - A "black, full beard" or a "full, black" one?

This is from the Hound of the Baskervilles , where in Chapter 5, one of the characters is referred to as having "a black, full beard"
and "a full, black beard" by two different people.

Which usage is right?

My confusion is whether the first description is good English in the first place. Or is it just Arthur Conan Doyle's literary licence? Further, most characters, including those using the descriptions above, speak good, Queen's English in the novel. This just makes me wonder all the more.

Answer

There is some flexibility in the ordering of attributive adjectives, but the authors of ‘An A-Z of English Grammar and Usage’ prefer the following:

Describing or expressing feeling

Size

Age

Colour

Defining

If we interpret ‘full’ as a description of size, this system would favour ‘a full, black beard’, as, indeed, would I. But, as Bill has suggested, this is not a matter of ‘good English’. The words are not Conan Doyle’s, but those of the characters he portrays, and he may have had good reasons for differentiating their speech in this way.

(Incidentally, ‘Queen’s English’ is not a term that linguists use. Given the difficulty of defining it, it is best avoided.)

uncountable nouns - Mixing countability; how to correctly say "there is plenty of rice, earthquakes and typhoons"?

In this question I wrote the following sentence, knowing full well that it has problems.

Where I live right now there is plenty of rice, earthquakes and typhoons.

Both earthquake and typhoon are countable nouns, while rice in this context is probably considered uncountable.

I could split this up into two sentences, or separate the rice from the other two within the sentence, for example: Where I live right now there are plenty of earthquakes and typhoons to go along with the rice although I'm sure someone else could find a more graceful way to do it.

There are some possibly helpful recommendations in this answer but I'm not sure how to apply them here.

But here I am asking if there is a way that I can keep the three nouns as close together as possible.

Answer

The OP asks: “But here I am asking if there is a way that I can keep the three nouns as close together as possible”

One sentence.

Earthquakes and typhoons are as plentiful as rice where I live.

grammar - Dative whom with accusative who

When I am not bound by a style that mandates otherwise, I like to use whom in dative constructions and who in accusative constructions (I am aware that English doesn't have a proper case system, but it is convenient for the purposes of this qn). Let's call this who/who/whom usage, matching nominative, accusative, and dative respectively. This appears to be moderately widespread, the death of whom notwithstanding. For an accusative example, consider Is there anyone who I could ask? vs. Is there anyone whom I could ask?

Are there authorities who explicitly recognise the possibility of differentiating between the accusative and dative constructions in this way? To document what I have looked at so far:

1. APA 6th stands by the old-fashioned who/whom/whom, saying "Use who as the subject of a verb and whom as the object of a verb or preposition" (3.20). Chicago 6th has a very similar formulation (5.63). The Economist style guide has a nice discussion explaining its identical prescription.


2. Butcher's and New Hart's Rules both say that grammar should be correct, but say little about what correct grammar consists of. I think MLA also doesn't prescribe on this point.


3. Fowler's 3rd articulates three rival views, namely that (i) who/whom/whom is moribund, stifling, or artifical, and who/who/who is the right usage, (ii) the righteous who/whom/whom should be defended against the slacker who/who/who, and (iii) who/whom/whom is appropriate for written language, but who/who/who for spoken language (from CGEL). Fowler's further talks about tricky issues about the use of who/whom as a relative pronoun vs. as an interrogative pronoun. Fowler's makes no prescription about this. Who/who/whom is defensible according to Fowler's reasoning, but the possibility of this usage is not discussed.

Bonus points to anyone finding relevant guidance from CGEL.

Answer

I'm not really sure what you mean by "dative" in English, as there isn't really an accusative/dative distinction - in situations where other languages might use a dative, either the accusative is used ("I gave him the book") or a preposition ("I gave the book to him"). However, the following might be helpful in articulating why "who" can be used, and may even sound better, where some insist on "whom" - whereas in other situations "whom" is still preferable:

To make my explanation clearer (at the expense of much precision, for which please forgive me) I'll refer to two "styles" of English - one very formal (in which the who/whom/whom prescribed by the style guides is compulsory), and one much more colloquial (in which who/who/who rules the roost, and "whom" is seldom if ever used). Very loosely speaking these correspond to English as it was both spoken and written in the past, and how it is most often spoken today; since trends in the written form often follow those in the spoken we might see current written English as being in a transition between the two.

Given all that, the sentence:

The man whom I saw yesterday was tall.

entirely follows the rules of the formal style, and is thus acceptable.

The man who I saw yesterday was tall.

entirely follows the rules of the more colloquial style, and is thus acceptable

However, the sentence

*The man to who I gave the ball yesterday was tall.

grates. This seems to be because it follows neither the rules of the formal style (which would have "to whom"), nor the colloquial style (which would instead have "The man I gave the ball to yesterday was tall", or a variant thereof), and is thus unacceptable in either. Similarly,

*The man whom I gave the ball to yesterday was tall.

also falls between both stools.

Note that this is largely handwaving, rather than a rigorous argument, but it's interesting to note that studies have been performed in cultures exhibiting diglossia (i.e. using "high" and "low" variant forms of what by some definitions could be considered one language, in different contexts) where subjects were shown words or sentences combining features of the "low" and "high" variants. It was found that some of the features were only weakly associated with one variant or another, in the sense that (say) using one from the low variant in a sentence otherwise fully "high" would not render it unacceptable; however other features were "strong" in the sense that a sentence containing features strongly associated with "high" and others with "low" would definitely render the sentence unacceptable. It is possible that, on a much smaller scale, a similar phenomenon is going on here (though of course it would be very bold to assert that this is the case without much more rigorous research!)

grammaticality - How do you say x in x language? What's the English/Spanish word for x?

Is it correct to ask "how do you say 'tower' in Spanish?" or should we actually ask "what's the Spanish word for 'tower'?" Some people say that if I ask "how do you say..." the answer would be softly, loudly etc., as if how was functioning as an adverb of manner and that was its only function. So, the correct question would be "what's the Spanish word for..."

What do you think? is there any grammar rule that could help me understand the difference between these two questions?

word usage - How to pronounce fractions larger than a twentieth, where the last digit of the denominator is a 1 or a 2? i.e. one thirtieth is to 30 as _ is to 31

Disclaimer: I speak British English. I've noticed a lot of differences between the way Americans and Brits pronounce numbers.¹ Since the question concerns this, I thought it might be appropriate to draw attention to it case we inadvertently confuse each other. My question is not about these differences, I just wish to highlight them in case they cause confusion.

^{1. You seem to happily call a quarter "a fourth" sometimes,
we always call 131 "one hundred and thirty one",
we pronounce double digits in phone numbers like 12449 as "one two double four nine", and
I think we are much more likely to use expressions like "thirteen hundred" to mean 1300.}

---

Question

When talking about fractions, I have frequently heard

1/2    a half

1/3    a third
1/4    a quarter
1/8    an eighth
1/64   a sixty fourth
1/56   a fifty sixth

etc.

Essentially the rule seems to be that, except for "a whole", "a half", and "a quarter", the word matches the ordinal number; that is to say:

    Numeral       Ordinal         Fractional
    one           first           whole
    two           second          half
    three         third           third
    four          fourth          quarter
    five          fifth           fifth
    six           sixth           sixth
    fifty-seven   fifty-seventh   fifty-seventh

Even though ¹/₄ is a quarter, ¹/₆₄ is a sixty-fourth.

So what’s ¹/₆₂? A sixty-twoth? A sixty-second? Surely not a sixty-half!

I know that simply saying one over sixty-two can usually work, but I'm asking specifically for the word itself, i.e. if I divide a huge pizza into 21 pieces, what are the pieces? Other than baker’s twentieths.

Summary: Can anyone point me to any sources (whether style guides or common usage studies or anything else) that discuss the pronunciation of fractions; specifically one that discusses this separately from ordinal numbers, rather than how to form ordinal numbers in the first place.

Answer

You asked for sources.

• Americans pronounce fractions with denominators ending with 1, 2, 3, as in twenty-firsts, twenty-seconds, twenty-thirds. For confirmation, here is a definition from
  Merriam-Webster, one of the canonical American dictionaries.

thirty-second 2 : the quotient of a unit divided by 32 : one of 32 equal parts of anything thirty-second of the total>

The word thirty-twoth does not appear in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, no matter how you spell it. While a few people may use thirty-twoth, it's definitely non-standard.

• There is a difference when the denominator is 4. Americans use both fourths and quarters for one piece of something divided into four equal parts (except for hours, which are always quarter hours) while in the U.K., these are usually quarters.
  Oxford Dictionaries Online has

fourth 2. chiefly North American A quarter:
'nearly three fourths of that money is now gone'

Merriam-Webster has both

fourth : one of four equal parts of something
quarter : one of four equal parts of something

When and why we use double-genitive with respect to the word 'of'?

I wanted to know why and when to use double-genitive. So for example why can't we use 'I am a fan of YOU' instead of 'I am fan of YOURS'. This is so as using the word 'of' itself meant that the noun mentioned first (before 'of') already belongs to the second noun (after 'of'). For example, in 'I am a fan of YOU' , the word 'of', to me, already suggests that 'I am your fan' without using 'YOURS'. It is like if we use 'fan of YOURS', it meant like 'I am your fan that belongs to you'.

So why is it necessary to use the double-genitive here?

A similar question has been asked: Why use apostrophe-s to denote possession when using 'of'

But one of the answers said that it is optional to put apostrophe for the example given in the question except to clarify the meaning of the sentence. (This is a picture of Bill/Bill's) So, what are some examples that are compulsory to use the double-genitive?

For examples, is it:

1) 'fan of YOURS' or 'fan of YOU'?

2) 'The death of HIS is...' or 'The death of HIM is...'

3) 'friend of HER' or 'friend of HERS'

4) 'queen of England' or 'queen of England's'

---

On a side note, we say:

5) 'meaning of the WORD' instead of 'meaning of the WORD'S'

6) 'son of my FRIEND' instead of 'son of my FRIEND'S'

7) 'plays of Shakespeare' instead of 'plays of Shakespeare's'

8) 'city of Rome' instead of 'city of Rome's'

Overall, my question is why is it that we sometimes uses double-genitive and sometimes don't? Is it because of whether the noun before 'of' is an object or a person except in the case of 6)? If not, when do we use double-genitive and why? (in the event that the meaning of the sentence doesn't change regardless of it being double-genitive or not)

conjunctions - Why would you call "before" a preposition when it precedes a clause?

I'm new here & don't know all the etiquette & ins & outs, but I have a question about something posted in another thread.

Modern grammar, however, recognises that prepositions can take many different types of complement, or may take none at all. In the following examples we see prepositions which are taking different types of complement.

Let’s meet before the concert starts.

Let’s meet after the concert.

Take it out of the box.

I’ve never seen this before.

If you call "before" in "before the concert starts" is a preposition, what would you call "although" in "Although he didn't know the answer, he raised his hand"? I've been running "although" through my head, & I can't come up with an instance where it could precede a noun phrase. I'd call both "before" (as it's used here) & "although" subordinating conjunctions. If you don't call "before" a subordinating conjunction, what ties the two clauses ("Let's meet" & "the concert starts") together? If you tell me there's an understood "that," I hope you also tell me you're coming from a transformational grammar point of view. I'm old school & have hated transformational grammar since the day I met it!

(Also, I'd call the last use of "before" an adverb, but calling it an objectless preposition doesn't bother me nearly as much as calling the other one a preposition.)

phrase requests - Is there a more accurate way to describe "short vowels" and "long vowels"?

I was taught in primary school about "short vowels" vs "long vowels". Although it is a simplistic way to teach children, it is also inaccurate, because the sounds are different, not just longer and shorter. According to Wikipedia these names are a hangover from before the Great Vowel Shift.

Long vowels pre and post the Great Vowel Shift:

Spelling   < 1350   > 1600

a..e       /aː/     /eɪ/
e..e       /eː/     /iː/
ea         /ɛː/     /iː/
i..e       /iː/     /aɪ/
o..e       /ɔː/     /oʊ/
oo         /oː/     /uː/
u..e       /uː/     /aʊ/ (like the "ow" in "how", or the "ou" in "loud")

Today:

Letter     "Short"  "Long"
a          /æ/      /eɪ/
e          /ɛ/      /iː/
i          /ɪ/      /aɪ/
o          /ɒ/      /oʊ/
u          /ʌ/      /juː/

As you can see from the table the "long" and "short" forms of the vowel bear almost no relation to each other anymore. I was also taught as a child that each vowel has a single sound value, when there are actually multiple sound values for each letter. I once tried teaching an ESL student about long and short vowels and they immediately became so confused because the long sounds are not predictable from the short ones that I stopped calling them "long" and "short" at once.

I can somewhat understand teaching children this way; getting them used to the sounds each combination of letters frequently makes is more important to their reading skills than getting the terminology spot on. When they're older, it's not worth going back and correcting the terminology. In fact, it could even be confusing.

Since the current description is over 400 years old and doesn't apply to English as it's spoken today (except that diphthongs are usually sounded for longer than monophthongs), what is an accurate way of describing these two groups of vowels that could be taught equally well to young native speakers as well as adult ESL learners?

grammar - Verb and adjective usage

Since adjectives are used to describe nouns, can verbs be used to describe nouns as well?

For example:

Two men standing with clenched fists are US athletes.

Here fist is a noun and to describe a noun, an adjective is used. In this case the adjective should be clenched but the dictionary shows that clenched is a verb.

So does that mean that verbs are also used to describe nouns?

word choice - "____ and me" versus "____ and I"

Possible Duplicates:
When do I use “I” instead of “me?”
Which is correct, “you and I” or “you and me”?

While reading an article from a certain newspaper this morning on grammar pet peeves, I noticed one that I had never heard of before, concerning the usage of "me" vs. "I." The examples were something like: "The pool amazed my friend and me"; and "My friend and I were amazed by the fireworks." I have never, ever heard of using "____ and me," but the writer of this article believes that when using the passive, it should be "____ and me." Is this correct?

nouns - Does word order make a difference here?

I was writing an essay and I wrote this particular sentence:

"No bought views"

then, while checking for grammatical errors, I thought that this sentence should be correct this way:

"No views bought"

But I couldn't explain myself, as a non-native English speaker, why the first sentence isn't correct, or if it is correct in some colloquial way.

hyphenation - Sub edge, sub-edge or subedge?

In fields like geometry and numerical methods for solving differential equations we often use words like sub-face and sub-edge, referring to parts of a geometrical object. For instance, a cube has 6 faces and 12 edges. It is often necessary to refer to parts of these objects as sub-edges and sub-faces.. In the academic literature, all three forms ("sub edge", "sub-edge", and "subedge") are in use.. What would be the correct/preferred form to use?

(The word "sub-edge" cannot be found in the Oxford Dictionary, whereas "subface", can be found meaning "The undersurface of a rock formation", which is not the meaning of subface I was looking for..)

See also:
Should I use hyphens with prefixes like “sub” and “semi”?

Answer

"Sub-edge".

"Sub edge" is simply incorrect ("sub" is not its own word - at least not one you want to use in this context). It can sometimes be hard to tell (eg, "subtend" v. "sub-tend"), but when in doubt about a compound word (especially a rare or technical one), it's usually better to hyphenate.

Complicated Possessive?

Is "Daddy, me and the dog's favourite activity" correct?

Cos Because technically it's "Daddy, the dog and me's favourite activity", right?

grammatical number - “Price of goods” vs “Prices of goods”

I was just asked, in referring to the sentence: “The price of goods in big cities is usually higher than in small cities,” if it’s okay to swap “price of goods” for “prices of goods.” I said that goods is a singular group, and prices would only be acceptable if you put a modifying adjective that breaks the singular group into multiple groups such as “the prices of various goods in big cities,” but now I’m starting to wonder if that’s correct.

Is this an it-cleft with bare infinitive?

   "Actually, we didn't get lost," the tall one says. "We
ran away."
   "Not running away so much as just

stumbling onto this spot and deciding to stay put," the brawny one
adds. "That's different from getting lost."
   "Not
just anybody can find this place," the tall soldier says. "But we did,
and now you have too. It was a stroke of luck--for us, at least."
   "If we hadn't found this spot, they would've shipped us
overseas," the brawny one ex-plains. "Over there it was kill or be
killed. That wasn't for us. I'm a farmer, originally, and my buddy
here just graduated from college. Neither one of us wants to kill
anybody. And being killed's even worse. Kind of obvious, I'd
say."
   "How 'bout you?" the tall one asks me. "Would
you like to kill anybody, or be killed?"
(Kafka on the Shore, tr.

by Philip Gabriel)

Why does the first phrase have bare infinitive?
(If the first be an it-cleft, CGEL says the type is normally inadmissible (p.1422), and Bas Aarts also says in his book to infinitives are allowable not in it-cleft but only in pseudo-cleft.)

Answer

The first phrase is not an it-cleft, which is clear from the complete lack of a subordinating clause. An it-cleft is it + be + X[usually NP] + subordinate clause

it + was + the fall from the cliff + that killed him

Note that an it-cleft does not have a to-infinitive.

kill or be killed is an idiomatic phrase, a single lexical unit sometimes called a Siamese Twin, that describes a situation. The first phrase is actually a simple declarative sentence "It was X" describing a situation or state.

It was crowded

It was dangerous

It was noisy

It was do or die

It was kill or be killed

The second phrase is part of a question, asking "Would you like to X?" As it is asking about a like, it has a to-infinitive.

Would you like to eat?

Would you like to sleep?

Would you like to kill?

To-infinitives are commonly used when talking about thoughts or feelings:

He chose/wanted/decided/liked/hated/expected/hoped/etc to shoot his enemy

etymology - The origin of the verb "has" (the verb "have" for third-singular person)

From what I know, in Simple Present, all verbs are followed by -s/es if the subject is a third-singular person. Such as makes, matches, buys, and studies.

I also know that if the verb is have, it becomes has if the subject is a third-singular person. And I'm wondering why it doesn't simply become haves, just like other verbs.

She has a book.

Why not: She haves a book.

So, my question is, what is the origin of the use of the verb has? I'm guessing euphony has something to do with it, but I need to support my guess.

Answer

As demanded in the comments, Silenius comment as answer:

Seems like the "-th" ending was supplanted by "-s" . Here's a relevant passage: "There is some evidence that verbs written with this [-th] ending in Early Modern English were pronounced as if they ended in -s, which was common in speech before becoming common in writing" [en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/-eth]. This would mean "hath" shifts to "has". – Silenus

grammar - Which is correct, I or me?

Which is correct?

The photo shows my kids and me at the party.

The photo shows my kids and I at the party

Another one: Which is correct?

This is Jean and I at the swimming pool.

This is Jean and me at the swimming pool.

expressions - Should one use "an" or an "a" before an acronym beginning with the letter H?

Consider the sentence:

He offered to be an HSC.

vs:

He offered to be a HSC.

In the example above, HSC stands for Health Service Consultant. If one were saying the sentence aloud, one would say an HSC because an obviously proceeds the spoken letter H, but the H actually represents the word Health, at which point the sentence should perhaps read a HSC because one would obviously say a Health Service Consultant. If one considers what the letter H actually stands for, in a strange way, both versions could perhaps appear to be incorrect depending on whether the acronym is viewed by the reader solely as a contraction or as its real meaning.

I would surmise that an HSC would be the more correct grammar, but I'd like opinion.

word choice - It's raining today or it's rainy today?

When you're writing a diary, you might start with "It's sunny today" or "It's cloudy today." When it comes to rain, which should it be?

It's rainy today.
It's raining today.

It may be raining at the very moment when you wrote down the words "It's raining today," but not necessarily the whole day. So which one is more proper in this case?

pronunciation - Foreign name usage in conversation

I’m English and confused. Is jalapeno spoken with the sound ‘jal’ or ‘hal’? ‘Hal’ is how Spanish people pronounce it, but I’m English. If the answer’s ‘hal’, do I say I’m going to ‘Paree’ instead of Paris? Do we pronounce differently based on a Person’s name, Country/City or food?

pronouns - Possessive for a third person and a first person

Bob and I are working on a project. I want to refer to "Bob's work" and "my work" collectively, without referring to Bob and myself collectively. (This will be the first reference to Bob and myself in my writing.)

How do I do this, without resorting to the ungainly "Bob's and my work"?

Answer

You could transpose the words to "...work done by Bob and me" or "...work Bob and I did."

Hyphenation of non-combat-related injury

As I understand it, we are to hyphenate phrases which consist of several adjectives strung together to form a single thought. I would, therefore, assume "non-combat-related injury" is the proper hyphenation of the phrase. "Non-combat" should be hyphenated, without question, but should the hyphen exist between "combat" and "related"? Normally I would assume so, but attempting to Google it, I find that most of the top hits suggest "non-combat related injury" is standard. It sounds like it is a related injury (!?) of the non-combat variety (umm...), but apparently, it's standard.

I was just going to run with it until I realized I also had to use the phrase "combat-related injury" wherein the hyphen does, commonly, come between combat and related - as expected.

Should I stick to the standard hyphenation ("non-combat related injury") or try to smooth things over grammatically by saying "non-combat-related injury"? Or am I overthinking it? Or am I missing something obvious?

Answer

Let's overthink this together.

The basic structure is non- + X, meaning “not X”; and X in this case is the hyphenated “combat-related”; argal, non-combat-related. So your initial instinct was (to my mind) correct.

But as you realize, that’s not a very happy result. What you’re trying to do is to distinguish injuries which are “related to combat” from those which are “not related to combat”. By taking “combat-related” rather than “related to combat” as your base form, you’re essentially locking yourself into a structure in which further hyphenation must give rise to an ambiguity: does non- apply to combat or to combat-related — or possibly only to related?

When that happens to me I take it as a sign that I’m treating the syntax as if it were a mathematical formula instead of an organism. I’m trying to push the language in a direction it’s not designed to go. So I look for a way to rewrite. I see several options:

1. combat-related injury / combat-unrelated injury ... unambiguous, but not to my ear English.


2. combat injury / non-combat injury ... acceptable (what does -related add to your discussion?), but may not suit the context—for instance, you may be dealing with a DoD-defined category named “combat-related”.


3. combat-related injury / injury, not combat-related ... truly awful, but at one time pretty much the US Armed Forces standard


4. combat-related injury / other injury ... the bureaucratic throw-your-hands-in-the-air solution.


5. CR injury / non-CR injury or even NCR injury ... ugly, but if your publisher buys in it saves typing, so somebody wins something.



6. combat-related injury / injury not related to combat ... ponderous, but unambiguous.

My vote would be 2 if it will fly, 6 if it won't—and *combat-related / not combat-related if you're dealing with DoD rules.

How to respond to negative questions (adjectives)?

My friend got me this question:

When somebody asks, "Is it not available?"

Should I say:

(1) "Yes, it is not available." OR
(2) "No, it is not available."?

I know it would be better to use the word unavailable. I checked out another question titled "How to answer a negative question without ambiguity?" But it isn't about adjectives so I'm starting a new question. Thank you!

verbs - Grammatical function of 'shuffling' in 'He came shuffling out'

Here are examples of usage:

Almost immediately Mr Bartletop came shuffling out. (source)

I started violently when she came shuffling out. (source)

She stood in the court as the Germans came shuffling out. (source)

What is the grammatical function of shuffling? I can't seem to locate any category that clearly fits.

Update: It turns out that this sort of thing has indeed been studied, but apparently only relatively recently (2008). Having said that, there were precursors to it, e.g. in Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik (QGLS), as I will explain below.

Here is a Master's thesis in which the author describes a pattern called

Path Verb plus Manner of Motion Verb in the Ing-Form.

This, apparently, should be distinguished from certain participle clauses, as explained here:

There exists an overlap between participle clauses and the sentences
containing a path verb + a verb in the ing-form. The following
sentences illustrate the difference between the construction ‘a path

verb plus a verb in the ing-form’ and the participle clause:

(26) When her mother died, Black Irene gave out such a
blood-curdling scream in the middle of the night that we all woke up
with a jump. My son went running to Irene's house to see what was the
matter.

(27) Any junkie or Bowery red-eye comes limping down the street,
then five sombre fatboys with baseball bats and axe-handles stride out
of the nearest trattoria.

(28) People kept pouring in; the women would come in chatting and
laughing, then as soon as they saw the mourners they’d break into loud
wails […].

(29) One Sunday he entered the chapel shouting and screaming and
cursing and woke the snoring congregation.

In sentences (26) and (27), the verbs in the ing-form clearly define
the way of movement. On the other hand, the ing verbs in sentences

(28) and (29) are participial clauses denoting simultaneous actions.
In the following chapters, it will be emphasized that especially with
the ‘a path verb plus a manner verb denoting a non-kinetic type of
activity’ construction it is sometimes difficult to draw a clear line
between these two phenomena because the borderline is sometimes very
thin.

As has already been pointed out, the possible disputability of some of
the examples of the pattern under consideration is more common in the
case of non-kinetic verbs.

(30) Meanwhile, the two boys went on their way laughing.

Example (30) presents one of the borderline examples between the
VVingPP construction and participle clauses. But this example should
be labelled as participle clause because, according to Goldberg (2006,
51), the directional complement should follow the verb in the
progressive form.

(31) “Help, help! I can’t get down,” I hollered. Soon my rescuers

arrived jostling, pushing, laughing, joking.

Also example (31) represents a case of participle clause because the
path verb is followed by a series of non-motion verbs instead of just
one. However, it is still possible to say that non-motion verbs depict
the way the movement is carried out and that they do not merely
represent simultaneous actions.

The text continues with the discussion of 'Path Verb plus Manner of Motion Verb in the Ing-Form' per se:

As has been mentioned earlier, this specific sub-type of the
construction may be found in Kudrnáčová’s (2008) publication in
chapter ‘The Dissociation of a Change of Location and the Manner of
its Execution’. Kudrnáčová uses here the sentence John came running
to the store to illustrate the structure of this construction.

“Although the motion per se (expressed in the path verb) and its
manner (expressed in the manner of motion verb) are each given a

separate expression, the prepositional phrase specifies the direction
of both the movement expressed in the path verb and the movement
expressed in the manner of motion verb” (Kudrnáčová 2008, 48). This
statement is valid when the manner of motion verb is used in purely
kinetic such as in the following sentence:

(32) Then a few days later, the other girl, Sally, came dancing
across the playground and said she’d just got hers back.

This example shows that Sally both ‘came across the playground’ and

‘danced across the playground’, which proves that “both path verb and
manner of motion verb in the ing-form form an integral part of the
directed motion event in question. These two components represent a
compact unit” (Kudrnáčová 2008, 48). This characteristic proves that
Goldberg’s VVingPP construction does not fully correspond with this
sub-type of construction because Goldberg (2006, 51) claims that “the
directional is an argument of the main verb, not of the second verb”
(Goldberg 2006, 51). This claim brings the VVingPP construction closer
to the second sub-type of the construction and will be analysed later
in the course of this thesis.

As has been mentioned in the first part of this thesis, the
reader’s/listener’s perception of the sentence differs in accordance
with the use of a path verb or a manner of motion verb. Their use in
combination “enables the speaker to present the mere fact of the
change of location [in telic
events] as having a
processual character” (Kudrnáčová 2008, 50). At the same time, the use
of this construction helps the encoder to achieve more vivid
presentation of the movement because the attention of the decoder is

focused both on the change of location and on the way it is achieved.
It is true, however, that the path verb serves mostly as an indicator
of the direction (in versus out of, to versus from the defined point
etc.) and the specific information about the motion is conveyed in the
ing-verb.

There were precursors to this study. For example,

The existence of the phrases of ‘they came running’ type is also
briefly mentioned in QGLS in sub-chapters 8.28 and 8.29 (pp. 506-507),
which deal with adjuncts. They mention not only motion verbs come and
go but also non-motion verbs sit and stand. They state that:

“This is particularly noticeable in the case of certain verbs of broad
meaning in respect of posture or motion: sit, stand, come, go. These
can take an obligatory adjunct of respect in the form of an –ing
clause, with consequent weakening of the primary meaning of the main
verb” (Quirk et al, 1985, 506).

As examples for these three verbs they provide the following
sentences:

(10) He stood waiting (patiently).

(11) She sat reading (to the children).

(12) They went hurrying (breathlessly).

(13) She came running (in great haste).

The above seems to be about as detailed a discussion as we are likely to find...

Previous guesses

For what it's worth, here are some other things that came to mind, which I'm leaving for completeness:

1. Shuffling as a direct object (or possibly a verb phrase complement) of a catenative verb

The idea here is that came (out) is a catenative verb, and shuffling its object, or, possibly, its verb phrase complement. From Wikipedia:

Catenative verbs are verbs which can be followed within the same
clause by another verb. This second subordinated verb can be in either
the infinitive (both full and bare) or gerund forms. An example
appears in the sentence He deserves to win the cup, where "deserve"
is a catenative verb which can be followed directly by another verb,
in this case a to-infinitive construction.

Some catenative verbs are used in the passive voice followed by an
infinitive: You are forbidden to smoke in here.

These verbs are called "catenative" because of their ability to form
chains in catenative constructions. For example: We need to go to the
tennis court to help Jim to get some practice before the game.

(Note that the name catenative comes from Latin catena, meaning 'chain'.)

There is indeed some positive evidence for come being catenative here. In QGLS, on p. 146, they make the following comment:

Unlike main verb constructions such as expect (to), want (to), and
attempt (to), catenative constructions are in no way syntactically related to transitive verb constructions in which the verb is followed
by a direct object or prepositional object (cf 16.268, 16.38).
Compare:

John appeared to attack the burglar.
John attempted to attack the burglar.

But:

*John appeared an attack on the burglar.
John attempted an attack on the burglar.

Let's try with come:

John came talking over the phone.
John attempted talking over the phone.

*John came a talk over the phone.
John attempted a talk over the phone.

So, this is an indication that the relationship between come (OK, without out in these cases) and the -ing participle is not one of an action verb and a direct object. This does support the theory that come functions like a catenative verb here.

On the other hand, there are also some problems with this theory.

One problem is that the relevant examples in QGLS (on p. 147) seem somewhat different from our case:

The girl started (out)/kept (on)/went on working.

Why different? Well, first of all, it seems that in these cases, one can't put the out (or on) to the end:

The girl started working out.

?The girl kept/went working on.

The example with started completely changes in meaning, whereas the examples with kept and went now look dubious. (Don't they? One might ask, What about keep on looking and keep looking on? Well, note that these aren't simple rewrites of each other, because on in the latter no longer belongs to keep, but instead to looking: 'looking on'. Indeed, you can say keep on looking on.)

In contrast,

He came out shuffling


and

He came shuffling out

both seem fine, and both seem to mean the same thing, and out in both seems to be associated with came.

Secondly, in the examples from QGLS, the participle seems to be pretty much required: if you do say

The girl started (out)/kept (on)/went on

to me, at least, this sounds like an ellipsis.

In contrast,

He came out

works just fine without shuffling or anything else.

Another problem is that, although come does appear in lists of catenative verbs (like this one), it is listed as requiring a bare infinitive in such usage. I suppose this refers to imperative, as in come eat? But then what about She came to eat?

Despite all these problems, so far, this theory where come out functions as a catenative verb seems more promising than the rest, to which I now turn.

2. Shuffling as an adverbial phrase (AdvP)

First of all, many sources (e.g. CGEL) will tell you that the head of an AdvP must be an adverb (which shuffling is not). Second, shuffling doesn't behave the same way an actual adverb like slowly does: compare

Slowly, a man came out

A man slowly came out

A man came slowly out

A man came out slowly,

which are all grammatical, with

?Shuffling, a man came out

?A man shuffling came out

A man came shuffling out

A man came out shuffling,

where the first two are dubious at best (the second is perhaps akin to "a man on fire came out"), and anyway in them, shuffling refers to man, not came. In contrast, in the examples of slowly, that word always refers to came.

So, shuffling does not seem to be an AdvP.

3. Shuffling as a complement of came

Here I have the mind an analog of the following pattern in QGLS (p. 1206), which they call Object + -ing participle complementation. This pattern is relevant to verbs of perception (feel, hear, notice,...), verbs of encounter (catch, discover, find, leave), and two verbs of coercive meaning (get and have). The perception verbs can also come with the bare infinitive, though the meaning changes somewhat. Example:

Tim watched Bill mend/mending the lamp.

The -ing predication can normally be omitted without radically altering the meaning:

I saw him lying on the beach. [entails: I saw him]

The problem, of course, is that there is no object in come out shuffling. And I was unable to find a pattern in QGLS that matches come out shuffling exactly.

Moreover, I'm not sure if shuffling is really a complement of come, or just a modifier.

4. Shuffling as an elliptical clause

Some sources (e.g. this one, in Sec. 43.e) say that a sentence like

I saw the elephant roller-skating

should be understood not in terms of roller-skating complementing saw (like QGLS suggests), but rather in terms of being an elliptical clause, e.g of this sentence:

I saw the elephant: it was roller-skating.

The fact that this treatment contradicts the one in QGLS is already worrisome. However, if it is accepted, then I suppose that He came out shuffling could be understood as the elliptical phrase arising from something like

He came out; he was shuffling.

But in all honesty, this story with elliptical clauses sounds like a stretch.

First of all, if this really is an instance of an ellipsis, there should be strong, explicit arguments for that conclusion.

Second, QGLS gives five characteristics of ellipses (pp. 884-887):

To distinguish ellipsis from other kinds of omission, it is important
to emphasise the principle of VERBATIM RECOVERABILITY that applies to
ellipsis; that is, the actual word(s) whose meaning is understood or
implied must be recoverable. Even so, like those of so many other

grammatical categories, the boundaries of ellipsis are unclear, and
it is best to recognize different degrees of 'strength' in the
identification of examples of ellipsis. To be ellipsis in the
strictest sense, an example must satisfy all the criteria specified
[below]:

i. The ellipted words are precisely recoverable;
ii. The elliptical construction is grammatically 'defective';
iii. The insertion of the missing words results in a grammatical sentence
(with the same meaning as the original sentence;
iv. The missing word(s) are textually recoverable, and;
v. are present in the text in exactly the same form.

Looking at these, we see that none of them really apply to our case.

For starters, note that in the alleged reconstruction,

He came out; he was shuffling

we had to exchange the order of out and shuffling; this runs afoul of iii. Further, was is not present in the text at all; this violates iv. and v. Next, arguable, the following reconstruction is just as good:

He came out, and he was shuffling

which violates i. Finally, it's not at all obvious that our initial sentence is grammatically 'defective'; this violates ii.

5. Shuffle as an instance of semantic implication

QGLS recognizes other kinds of omission, e.g. "sematic implication" (p. 884). They give two examples of that:

i. Frankly, he is very stupid, about which they say, "The disjunct frankly implies a comment by the speaker on the way he is
speaking. But there is no one set of missing words that can be
supplied. We can expand frankly to (among many forms) I am speaking frankly when I say . . . or If I may put it frankly I would tell you....

ii. He's drunk, because I saw him staggering, for which " it is difficult to pin down in exact words what has been omitted," as any of the following could work: He's drunk, and I claim this because I saw him staggering, or and I know, or and I am sure of it, or and I am convinced of it, or and the proof is that...

But somehow shuffling seems much more intergated into He came shuffling out than the frankly and because I saw him staggering are into their respective sentences. One piece of evidence for this is that offsetting shuffling with commas looks weird: He came, shuffling, out. In contrast, in the QGLS examples, it is weird without the commas; even if it's rewritten as He is, frankly, very stupid, you'd still want those commas. So again our sentence doesn't seem to fit very well to the pattern described in QGLS.

A few extra observations

Finally, notice that certain other verbs are possible here, in addition to come (out), for example

He emerged shuffling.

He arrived shuffling.

Moreover, all this is very similar to the usage in the well-known idiom

He came out swinging.

In conclusion

So far, the correct analysis of the grammar of the word shuffling in the sentence He came shuffling out seems to be in terms of a construction called 'Path Verb plus Manner of Motion Verb in the Ing-Form'. This construction is not at all a part of standard grammar, since it appears to have only been studied relatively recently.

If anyone has a different opinion, I would very much appreciate hearing about it!

grammar - How to punctuate a sentence ending in a code block on

A lot of time when I'm writing a Programming Puzzles & Code Golf challenge, I need to incorporate multiline blocks of code

like

this

into my sentences.

Many times, it's simplest to have them at the very end of a sentence. For example, this scenario is easy to envision:

If the input is 1, the output of your program should be

sample output 1

If the input is 2, the output of your program should be

sample output 2

The problem is that there are supposed to be two complete sentences here, but there are no periods!

One obvious solution is to add periods after the code blocks:

If the input is 1, the output of your program should be

sample output 1

. If the input is 2, the output of your program should be

sample output 2

.

But this just looks weird.

Another solution is to add 'this:' after the 'be', and forgo the periods:

If the input is 1, the output of your program should be this:

sample output 1

If the input is 2, the output of your program should be this:

sample output 2

(I don't think it's grammatically correct to just put the colon after 'be' but I may be wrong.)

This seems more complete, but is still rather awkward with the 'this'es, and won't always work if the sentence is more complex. e.g.

The program

example code A

runs better than

example code B

[comma?] but both are worse than

example code C

[period?]

So what's the best way to do this - specifically on where it's impossible to put a period directly after a code block?

grammatical number - Verb agreement in "[adjective] and [adjective] [noun]" constructions

Context: I am writing a short text to explain the main differences between Spanish passive sentences with "ser" and "estar", one of which is verb choice: sometimes the adjectival form should be chosen, and sometimes the participle form should. Those are generally the same, but sometimes they differ. The problematic sentence goes like:

Some examples where the participle and the adjectival form differ are: [and a list follows]

In a previous post, it was explained that the noun (form) can be either in singular or plural. Because the noun was a general thing, I decided to go with the singular form, but then a verb followed (differ). Now, my question is:

• Should the verb be conjugated in third person singular (differs) or plural (differ)?

Common sense tells me that it should be a plural (since there are two forms), but "differ" after "form" doesn't sound right (or does it?). I know I could just change form to forms, but I would like to keep it singular. Besides, I really am interested in knowing how the verb should be conjugated in this kind of phrases when the noun is to be kept in singular.

Answer

When you say

where the participle and the adjectival form differ

you've chosen a rhetorical device called prozeugma, which means that preceding phrases (here, "the participle" and "the adjectival") govern a single following word (here, "form"). What this means is

where the participle form and the adjectival form differ

As you've noted, the choice of the number of form belongs to the author, and you've chosen the singular. You could have chosen not to use prozeugma, and instead written the plural forms, making "participle and adjectival" a single compound modifier.

But no matter which choice you make, you still have a compound subject, two things that differ from each other, which makes two differences, one from each point of view. That requires a plural verb, namely differ. It's true that the singular noun form might be slightly jarring next to the plural verb differ, but grammatically it's the plural subject that matters.

It is possible to use the singular differs, but you'll have to rephrase so that the verb is governed by a singular subject:

where the participle form differs from the adjectival form

Of course it's still true the other way around, but grammatically, you speak to only the one difference, so the verb must be singular.

grammatical number - Apostrophe in “beginners guide”

In the phrase beginners guide to …, where should the apostrophe go?

1. Beginner’s Guide to […]


2. Beginners’ Guide to […]

In my particular case, this is the title for a presentation so there are multiple beginners that are being addressed.

Answer

If your intention is to address each member of the audience directly, I suggest you prefix the phrase with an appropriate article, as in:

A Beginner's Guide to Shoe Hurling

or

The Beginner's Guide to Shoe Hurling

The use of the apostrophe before s seems more apt in this context.

Although:

Beginners' Guide to Shoe Hurling

is also grammatically correct, but would make your presentation sound impersonal.

grammar - Definite article with plural nouns

Are there cases where the definite article is used with a plural noun, or is it a rule that the definite article is never used with the plural of a word?

Answer

The definite article can be used with a plural noun just as it can with a singular noun.

The boys are here.

How to use articles? When to use "a", "an", "the"?

Can anyone explain to me when and where to use articles? I always get confused with the usage of a, an, the.

with/without + verbless clause

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Page 1266-67) has this section:

10 Verbless clauses

We confine our attention here to verbless clauses in dependent or supplement functions comparable to those realised by non-finite clauses, as described in the main part of the chapter.

(a) Complement to with and without

[1] i They were standing against the wall [with their hands above their heads].

ii They were wandering around [without any clothes on].

...

The [boldfaced] clauses have subject + predicate structure, but with no verb in the predicate. With and without do not license finite complements, but non-finites are found in addition to the verbless forms (see §8.3 above).

...

With is semantically similar to have, and without to not have: [i–ii], for example, entail They had their hands above their heads, They didn’t have any clothes on.

CGEL is saying the boldfaced portions after with/without are verbless clauses. In [i], their hands is the subject, and above their hands the predicate. In [ii], any clothes is the subject, and on the predicate.

As suggested by CGEL, with/without can be replaced with having/not having as follows:

(1) They were standing against the wall [having their hands above their heads].

(2) They were wandering around [not having any clothes on].

Here, can you say that having and not having take verbless clauses as complements?

Are their hands above their heads and any clothes on verbless clauses?

If not, why do you consider the same construction as verbless clauses when they're complements to with/without?

grammatical number - Can "is" be used with plural nouns?

I'm creating a short slogan describing a website's functions. The website consists of a photos storage function plus discussion boards. This is an attempt to put it shortly:

Example.com is photos plus discussions

Is it correct? Particularly, I'm not sure using "is" with plural nouns is correct.

Answer

The answer to this lies in a bit of 'language algebra.'

First of all, Example.com is singular.

Therefore, you must use the verb is when describing its state of being.

In this example, photos plus discussions is also singular - not in the sense that it is only one thing, but in the sense that it represents a singular idea. Think of it this way:

5 = (2 + 3)

One way to put this mathematical statement into words would be to say

Five is two plus three.

In this illustration, five is singular, and therefore two plus three is also singular in the sense that it is a singular representation of the combination (or sum) of two parts which make up the subject, five. It can be written or said both ways:

Five is (two plus three).

(Two plus three) is five.

Therefore,

Example.com is (photos plus discussions).

However, a better way to write this would be

Example.com is a combination of photos and discussions.

This makes it absolutely clear and eliminates any possibility of confusion or syntactic awkwardness. You may also replace is with consists of for further clarity, although this isn't absolutely necessary. I would leave it as is for the sake of simplicity, but it's up to you.

Hope this helps!

grammar - this is/was the best meal I have ever had/had had

We are currently discussingq with my colleagues what the correct grammar would be in this context: you have just finished a meal and want to say it was/has been the best meal you ever had. What tenses would be used here?

This was the best meal I have ever had. - some say past simple should not be mixed present perfect like this and would choose past perfect.

Answer

If the meal is finished, then was, not has been. If it is continuing, then has been (so far), not was.

(However, what constitutes the "meal" experience/event? Is it over as soon as the last bite of food is swallowed? Is it over after everyone has left the table?)

These are all correct:

• That was the best apple I have ever eaten. (you've finished it)



• That was the best apple I ever ate. (you finished it)




• This is the best party I have ever attended. (you're still partying)




• This is the best apple I have ever eaten. (you have not finished it)

grammar - Must a coordinating clause always have a subject?

E.g.,

(1) You are getting yourselves into a very dangerous situation; get out of there at once.

The imperative following the first clause has an implied subject, so would this mean it is a coordinating clause? If the above sentence was coordinated with so, would that change the status of the clause?

(2) You should wear a suit, a clean shirt and a tie for the interview, and be punctual.

Is and be punctual a coordinating clause?

(3) Worcester is a very sought after porcelain, and is regarded as the finest of the period by many experts.

The following clause of this sentence contains a passive structure with an implied subject, so does this make it a full coordinating clause? How would the status of the sentence change if by many experts were omitted?

grammar - Past subjunctive Vs. Present Subjunctive

The verb be is the only one that has a past subjunctive form. In some cases, be, as a subjunctive, retains its present form even if the sentence is in the past tense.

Example:

Present: It is essential that she be present.

Past: It was essential that she be present.

However, in other cases, namely, conditional sentences and subordinating conjunctions, we use the past form of the subjunctive

Example:

If there were a death penalty for corporations, Enron may have earned
it.

So two questions here:

1. Is there a reason the subjunctive be remains in its present form in some past
   tense constructs, yet is converted to the past form were in some
   others?


2. And if we use the were-subjunctive to express contrary-to-the-fact
   clauses, then why Shakespeare said this?

If music be the food of love, play on.

contractions - Whatever happened to "eyeglasses", "facial tissues", and "video game consoles"?

Now-a-days, we tend to ask:"Have you seen my glasses anywhere?" "Do you have any spare tissues to lend me?" and "How many consoles do you own?"

It's just quicker to say and any native speaker will understand, despite the (possible) ambiguity of these terms; e.g., Where are my glasses? could be interpreted as Where are my drinking vessels? But in real life, this never happens.

Essentially, I have three questions:

• When did the shortened names; glasses, tissues and consoles first appear and took over from their longer named "parents"?




• Is there a name for this type of noun which originally began as a compound word (sometimes joined by a hyphen) and was eventually reduced to a single-word?




• Are there any other compound nouns which have dropped one or more lexemes but still retain their original meanings?

NB: I am not referring to portmanteau words which are neologisms made by blending two words together such as smoke and fog to obtain smog. Neither would I consider them to be contractions because there is no omission of internal letters for example; gov't, govt, gov and dep't or dept. I can only think of "shortened" which fits the bill but can also stand for contractions; unless I am mistaken.

Despite skimming through the relevant Wikipedia pages, I found no explanation or references as to why, (although I think that is easily explained) or when, these names were shortened and became more popular.

Source Wikipedia: eyeglasses; facial tissues; video game consoles.

EDIT: In my original title I had included "tissue paper" but as several users have commented, tissue paper is used for wrapping delicate objects whereas tissues normally sold in boxes are commonly referred to as facial tissues, especially in the US.

grammar - "On which to unload those most unbelievable yet haunting of fairy-tales"

I met the following line: "of listening ears on which to unload those most unbelievable yet haunting of fairy-tales" in the novel Waterland, written by Graham Swift.

I began, having recognized in my young but by no means carefree class the contagious symptoms of fear: ‘Once upon a time …’

Children, who will inherit the world. Children to whom, throughout history, stories have been told, chiefly but not always at bedtime, in order to quell restless thoughts; whose need of stories is matched only by the need adults have of children to tell stories to, of receptacles for their stock of fairy-tales, of listening ears on which to unload those most unbelievable yet haunting of fairy-tales, their own lives; children – they are going to separate you and me. Lewis has seen to it. Forgive this emotion. I do not deserve your protestations. (We need our Cricky and all that stuff of his.) I do not expect you to understand that after thirty-two years I have rolled you all into one and now I know the agonies of a mother robbed of her child.… But listen, listen. Your history teacher wishes to give you the complete and final version …

And since a fairy-tale must have a setting, a setting which, like the settings of all good fairy-tales, must be both palpable and unreal, let me tell you

Below, is the line which has prompted me to ask the following questions.

"whose need of stories is matched only by the need adults have of children to tell stories to, of receptacles for their stock of fairy-tales, of listening ears on which to unload those most unbelievable yet haunting of fairy-tales, their own lives"

1. Does the sentence “... of listening ears on which to unload those most unbelievable yet haunting of fairy-tales ...” mean: "The adult have the need to unload those most unbelievable yet haunting of fairy-tales on the listening ears"?




2. Does the word yet mean "used for emphasizing that someone or something is even bigger, better, worse, more etc than someone or something else" in yet haunting of fairy-tales?





3. Is the word haunting an adjective?




4. Does the word haunting mean "sad or beautiful in a way that is difficult to forget"




5. Does the word "of" in “haunting of fairy-tales” have the same meaning as the word "of" in the sentence "It is very nice of you to say that"?




6. Does the word "of" in "haunting of fairy-tales" mean "used to indicate that someone has behaved in a specified way"?

Thanks a lot for everyone's help in advance.

subjunctive mood - Why is "should" used in this phrase?

In a Catholic mass, this phrase is said:

Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.

As a non-native English speaker, I find the use of should a bit odd. Notice the subjunctive is also used in other languages, for instance, Latin:

Dómine, non sum dignus, ut intres sub tectum meum, sed tantum dic verbo et sanábitur ánima mea.

and Spanish:

Señor, no soy digno de que entres en mi casa, pero una palabra tuya bastará para sanarme

However, "should" sounds too strong for me. In Spanish (my native language), should is said as "deber" or "tener" (so "should enter" can be translated as "debas entrar"), which is much stronger that the term actually used in Spanish ("entres").

I imagine the use of "should" is correct, but I don't understand exactly why. To me, a softer "might" sounds better. Can anyone explain?

grammar - Should I capitalize a word at the beginning of a sentence with a slash?

Sorry about the badly written title. Basically, I have this sentence:

Clicking/Tapping on the icons brings up the DNA selection menu.

Should tapping be capitalized in this situation?

How do you conjugate Early Modern English verbs (other than present tense)?

I was wondering how one might conjugate verbs in early modern English in various tenses. I am aware of the fact that for second person and third person singular specifically, the verb endings are -est and -eth respectively, but once you move away from simple present tense, it seems to get a bit trickier.

I recall reading somewhere that if you want to make a verb past simple, you add did between the noun and the verb. For example,

He ?dideth walk to the store.

As opposed to the modern English,

He walked to the store.

And as opposed to how I might say it:

He ?walkedeth to the store.

Unfortunately, I haven’t learned quite as much of English as others may, but I know enough to suspect that “He dideth walk to the store” might be a different tense entirely from “He walkedeth to the store”, at least in modern English.

I am an aspiring and amateur writer, and there is a character that speaks entirely in Early Modern English, and so the answer to this would be quite helpful.

grammatical number - "Her whole family IS/ARE biologists"?

I'm not sure whether to put is (number agreeing with the singular her whole family) or are (number agreeing with plural biologists) in this sentence:

Her whole family is/are biologists.

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After some more searching, it seems to make it correct, the whole would need to be removed.

Based on this other question, I think "Her family are biologists." is technically correct but "All of her family are biologists sounds better."

Still not certain.

Answer

I would use "are" in this context, even though the word "family" could go either way. Even so, I think that "are" is more suitable because you are labelling multiple people as biologists.

However, the sentence could be worded in a better way, like:
1) Everyone in her family is a biologist.
2) All of her family members are biologists.

That way, there is less confusion with verb agreement. Either way, it is good to know that either "are" and "is" can be used with the unit "family".

word choice - What preposition to use when fitting data?

Do we fit data with, by, or as a linear function?

Answer

None of those: we fit data to a function. See the usage throughout Wolfram Alpha, for example.

grammatical number - Is it common for place names to lose their possessive apostrophe?

On a road trip, my wife and I drove by Kings Dominion. We debated whether this should in actuality be King’s Dominion. It seemed that it ought to be possessive, or possibly plural possessive.

Upon doing a little more research we found the origin of the Kings Dominion name. To quote the wikipedia article:

The park was named after its sister park, Kings Island in Kings Mills, Ohio, which opened in 1972.

Which leads to the question: Is it typical in the English language for a place name to lose the possessive in English? If so, I wonder why that should be so.

Answer

Interestingly, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names has a longstanding policy dating back to 1890 to discourage the use of possessive forms and especially apostrophes in place names. This is discussed in their FAQ (question 18):

I have heard that the use of the apostrophe “s”, such as Pike’s Peak (Pikes Peak in the database) to show possession is not allowed in geographic names, so why are there many such entries in the GNIS Database?
Since its inception in 1890, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names has discouraged the use of the possessive form—the genitive apostrophe and the “s”. The possessive form using an “s” is allowed, but the apostrophe is almost always removed. The Board's archives contain no indication of the reason for this policy.

The USBGN’s editorial guidelines expand on the matter:

Apostrophes suggesting possession or association are not to be used within the body of a
proper geographic name (Henrys Fork: not Henry's Fork). The word or words that form a
geographic name change their connotative function and together become a single
denotative unit. They change from words having specific dictionary meaning to fixed
labels used to refer to geographic entities. The need to imply possession or association no

longer exists. Thus, we write " Jamestown" instead of " James' town" or even
"Richardsons Creek" instead of " Richard's son's creek." The whole name can be made
possessive or associative with an apostrophe at the end as in " Rogers Point's rocky
shore." Apostrophes may be used within the body of a geographic name to denote a
missing letter ( Lake O' the Woods) or when they normally exist in a surname used as
part of a geographic name (O'Malley Hollow).

So, the official name of U.S. places, even when it has a genitive s, never has an apostrophe, by fiat of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, which is a part of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

Edit:

In Australia, a similar board—Committee for Geographical Names in Australasia—has made a similar ruling about apostrophes in place names:

4.12. GENITIVE APOSTROPHE
In all cases of place names containing an element that has historically been written with a final -’s or -s’, the apostrophe is to be deleted, e.g. Howes Valley, Rushcutters Bay, Ladys Pass. This is to facilitate the consistent matching and retrieval of placenames in database systems such as those used by the emergency services.

I don’t know about any official rule in Britain, but the tendency is widespread there. The Wikipedia article about apostrophes mentions these:

There is a tendency to drop apostrophes in many commonly used names such as St Annes, St Johns Lane, and so on.
In 2009 a resident in Royal Tunbridge Wells was accused of vandalism after he painted apostrophes on road signs that had incorrectly spelt St John's Close as St Johns Close.

The second sentence there includes a link to this article about a man in England who decided that the tradition of excluding apostrophes from place names should be reversed by painting in apostrophes onto public signs, and was (correctly, IMHO) branded a vandal. If I were the reporter for that story, I would not have been so forgiving and deferential to what the perpetrator considered to be “correct English”.

coordinating conjunctions - The number of is singular or plural

I suppose 'the number of' is followed by a singular, but what about the following sentence where they are two subjects:

Both the number of entries and exits is/are high.

prepositions - Meaning and usage of "be of"

I see such sentences all the time and I'd like to learn more about their grammatical structure (e.g. how they are described in grammatical terms), their meaning and how to use them in different contexts.

Please let me know whether I can be of help.

The part that I am interested in learning about is be of.

There is a similar question here but the questioner was asking only whether it was correct or not, but I would like to learn the meaning more broadly as I described in my opening sentence.

Answer

As far as I can tell, there are only a limited number of nouns that work with "be of". I would classify them as idioms. I am listing the most common ones I can think of, where commonness is judged by Google Ngrams. I have grouped them into sets of near synonyms. There are

be of use,
be of help,
be of aid,
be of service,
be of assistance;

these idioms mean that something/someone can be used, can help, can aid, can serve, or can assist. There are also

be of relevance,
be of importance,

which mean that something is relevant to/important for the current subject of discussion.
Also,

be of value,
be of benefit;

these mean that something is valuable, usually with respect to the current subject of discussion. Also

be of interest,

which means that something is interesting.

And for a slightly different "be of" idiom, there is

be of age,

which means that someone has reached adulthood.

If you are learning English, it should be fairly easy to figure out what one of these constructions means. But I would suggest that if you use this construction, you should treat it like an idiom, and memorize the specific phrase(s) you want to use. Many nouns describing attributes, like "security" or "tact", cannot be used with "be of". (Google books gives a few instances for "be of security"; it seems to have been used occasionally in the 19th century, but it sounds very strange today.)

punctuation - Period before or after quotation mark?

If there is a quote at the end of a sentence, does the period of the quote go before or after the end quotation mark? And if the quote is ended by a question mark does it replace the period that would be at the end of the main sentence?

singular they - What is a proper gender-neutral form of himself or herself

I am thinking "themself" is a very old deprecated way of saying this. What would be more proper?

An example would be:

One does not simply build Rome themself.

It just seems awkward with "themself."

Answer

Singular they is a usage hallowed by time, and, since reflexive pronouns are inflected on both the pronoun root and the -self/-selves reflexive suffix (e.g, my[sg]-self[sg] vs our[pl]-selves[pl]), the correct reflexive for singular they is themself.

Dictionaries, by the way, are not reliable sources for grammar, just as grammars are not reliable sources for lexical meaning.

grammatical number - Usage of double plural

Here we have the plural in the end:

"communication technology services"

Here we have two plurals(quite common in google):

"communications technology services"

Eventually, we could have three plurals =)

"communications technologies services"

When should we use more than one plural to describe this?

Use of commas for such that followed by two sentences

Consider the sentence

The sun shines such that it is warm and water evaporates.

The two parts of the sentence "it is warm" and "water evaporates" are independent sentences and a comma should be placed between them.

The sun shines such that it is warm, and water evaporates.

But this reads like

The sun shines such that it is warm. Water evaporates.

I would like to convey that both "it is warm" and "water evaporates" are a consequence of the sun shining without ending up with an extremely long sentence. What's the best way to rephrase this?

'An' or 'a' when followed by information between commas

In the following sentence, I'm unsure whether to use ‘an’ or ‘a’.

..primarily meant as a, albeit large, donation.

On the one hand ‘an’ sounds more appropriate when read, as the vowel beginning to ‘albeit’ suggests.
Alternatively, one might say ‘a’ is correct; is a sentence not supposed to make perfect sense with the word between the commas removed. If so, it must be just an ‘a’.

I'm tilting towards the latter, even though it sounds odd. Please enlighten me.

Answer

Are you stuck with this very awkward sentence construction? Since you are questioning what article to use, I suspect you are not. Therefore, I suggest that you change the sentence construction:

     ....primarily meant as a donation, albeit a large one.

That gets you around all of your problems.

american english - Sequence of tenses when we express certainty

I beg your pardon but I have a doubt about this sentence:

"They failed to believe their eyes as they realized their world is
just an experiment"

So, if we are following a correct sequence of tense, we should use the past tense in both verbs. However, in the second clause we express certainty so the present simple ("is") appears appropriate.
Is that correct?
Thanks!

grammar - When is it okay to not use a comma before an 'and' or 'or' followed by an independent clause?

I punched him and he cried.

or

I punched him, and he cried.

Are both acceptable? Is one better than the other? Personally, I like the first one best, as it better shows the cause/effect relationship of the two clauses, but I am not confident that it is gramatically correct.

He told me to do it or I would have to leave.

or

He told me to do it, or I would have to leave.