meaning - Can object complements make any difference to sentences?

I'm reading a grammar book, and I have some questions.

A.

• We ate the fish raw.


• I want Sue drunk.


• I prefer the music soft.


• I like coffee black.


• We drank the beer cold.

This type of sentence (Verb + Object + Object Complement) is in frequent use. Then the meanings are the same as the following?

• We ate the fish which was raw.


• We ate the fish while it was raw.


• We ate the raw fish.


• I prefer the soft music.



• I like black coffee.


• We drank the cold beer.


• We drank the beer while it was cold.


• We drank the beer which was cold.

I suspect there will be differences, but I can't catch them.

B.

Another type of sentence is as follows.

• 
  

  
  
  • I know that London is the capital of the U.K. (o)
  
  
  • I know London to be the capital of the U.K. (?)
  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  

  The book says the latter is not natural, but no reason for it.




• 
  

  
  
  • I believe that the rain is falling. (o)
  
  
  • I believe the rain to be falling. (?)
  
  

  
  

  
  
  

  Same here. The second is said not to be natural.





• 
  

  
  
  • I know Mary to be a Christian.
  
  
  • I believe John to be a man of interity.
  
  

  
  

  
  
  

  But these two are said to be acceptable. Why?




• 
  

  
  
  
  • I remember him to be tall and lank.
  
  
  • I remember him tall and lank.
  
  

  
  

  
  
  

  Could be there any difference, if any?




• 
  

  
  
  • I find that this chair is comfortable.
  
  
  • I find this chair to be comfortable.
  
  
  
  • I find this chair comfortable.
  
  

  
  

  
  
  

  It says each has a slightly difference nuance, but the contexts are not given. And I don't understand the explanation, perhaps because it was translated word for word into my mother tongue.




• 
  

  
  
  • If you look in the files, you'll find —
    
    
    
    • that she is Mexican. (o)
    
    
    
    • her to be Mexican. (?)
    
    
    • her Mexian. (?)
    
    
  
  

  
  

  
  
  

  This is very strange to me. Are all the sentences not acceptable?

C.

I'll type up some more sentences below.

• NBC announced Henry to be the winner.
  vs. "… Henry the winner."


• They report the sea level to be down considerably.
  vs. "… the sea level down considerably."


• He hates gin to be diluted.
  vs. "… gin diluted."


• The police want Bill to be alive.
  vs. "… Bill alive."


• Quick, get in here! Tommy needs his leg [set (o)/to be set (?)].



• Tommy needs his leg [to be set (o)/set (?)] eventually, but let's not rush things.

Answer

An interesting bunch of examples, and correctly grouped.
However, the three groups are not monophyletic. Briefly,

Group A is an example of what linguists call a "rule conspiracy", where a number of independently motivated processes "conspire" to produce a similar surface structure. Georgia Green discussed them in her paper [Green, Georgia M. (1970) 'How Abstract is Surface Structure?' CLS 6, 270-281].

What's come to be called the 'Green Conspiracy' includes such structures as

• I shot him dead.


• I buried him alive.


• I found him alive.


• I need him dead.

et cetera, with very different meanings.

The point, if any, is that there is a limited number of surface structures that English prefers, and there are many more different ways to get from meaning to one of them. I.e, these structures do not represent a single kind of meaning, but rather several. They are all, of course, regular (in much the ways suggested by the OP), but which rule gets used is arbitrary and idiomatic.

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EDIT: a little more about Green's paper, which seems to be difficult to find.
This is from a paper by Goldsmith and Huck commenting on the theories involved.

Green (1970), noting that a variety of different semantic structures could be associated with the same surface syntactic construction, argued that there must be a limited set of syntactic “target structures” into which the transformational rules map their
representations. The sentences She shot him dead and They buried him alive, she argued, both share the same superficial syntactic structure, but crucially differ semantically as to whether the adjective indicates a pre-existing state or a result. As she pointed out, “natural language syntax is free to utilize mechanisms by which a large and diverse set of logical and semantic relations are somehow squeezed into a small number of surface structures” (Green 1970:277). In that paper, she referred to such mechanisms as “conspiracies.”

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Group B is a conflation of several varieties of Raising and Equi,
with different kinds of tensed and untensed complement clauses.

Group C consists of several examples of the rule of to be-Deletion
(p.9 in the Transformation List).

grammatical number - " You can do a 10-minute warm up, 15 minutes of hills". Why "minute" is not in the plural at first?

I read the following the whole sentence: "You can do a 10-minute warm up, 15 minutes of hills, and a 5-minute cool-down"
When you write a mix number-time , you don't need plural?

How do American English and British English use the definite article differently?

I decided to make sure that I know this important difference between American and British English, so I wrote what I have found out so far and I would be grateful to anyone who reads this and tells me whether I am wrong, or not.

In British English when people say to hospital or in hospital when talking about somebody being there as a patient they don't use the definite article : "I had to go to hospital", "She spent two weeks in hospital". And the meaning is that somebody was there as a patient.

If then for some other reasons British English speakers will use the definite article which will change the meaning itself, I noticed that, in American English, native speakers often use the the and if they need to show that somebody is in church to pray, in school as a student, in hospital as a patient, in prison as a prisoner, they use 'in' and not 'at'. Do American English speakers use 'at' like British English speakers use 'the' to give the sentences a different meaning?

Are my sentences correct? Do they show American English usage?

• He is in the school. (enrolled as a student)




• He is at the school. (for some different reasons)




• He is in the hospital. (as a patient)





• He is at the hospital. (visiting somebody)




• He is in the church. (to pray)




• He is at the church. (for some different reasons)




• He is in the university. (as a student)




• He is at the university. (not as a student)




• He is in the college. (as a student)




• He is at the college. (Not as a student)




• He is in the prison. (as a prisoner)




• He is at the prison. (not as a prisoner)

verb agreement - present/past tense in a subordinate clause

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

So by this logic one can say the sentences like:

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

Obviously, with

Yesterday, John expressed that he likes ice cream.

there is no problem: this sentence is absolutely correct.

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

Yesterday, John said that he is hungry.

Is this correct?

Answer

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

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

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

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

That is why this sentence feels funny:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Answer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

negation - Why do positive and negative variants of the same question elicit the same answer?

In common American English usage, these two questions elicit the same response:

1. Do you have a ticket?


2. Don't you have a ticket?

These are the usual answers (I was going to say "possible answers" but I can think of a whole host of situations where one could get other answers, e.g. wake up someone in the middle of the night and ask it, the answer might easily be "I don't know" or "maybe" or "hey, just let me sleep!"... but that's neither here nor there... :-)

• Positive: "Yes" or "Yes, I do".


• Negative "No" or "No, I do not".

But consider this: the questions are logically equivalent to:

1. You have a ticket, right?


2. You do not have a ticket, right?

Here I am not so sure that a "Yes, that's right" response means the same thing to each question. (One could still, however, use "Yes, I do" as @F'x answer in How to answer a negative question without ambiguity? illustrates, to remain valid and unambiguous.)

(As a side note, it is interesting to compare the same question in Chinese, where one literally asks
"Do you have/not have a ticket?" and the common answers are:

• "[I] have"


• "[I] not have"

...which also removes the ambiguity... while at the same time straying from my original question:-)

So why can I rewrite the questions so that they are essentially equivalent yet expect different answers?

punctuation - How to punctuate a quote within a quote?

Duplicate of:
What’s the difference between using single and double quotation marks/inverted commas?
How are embedded quotations used?
And:
When should end punctuation go inside quotes?
Is it correct to use “punctuation outside of the quotations”, or “inside?”

Let me know if this belongs on Writers.se. Furthermore, I have a strong feeling this has already been covered, but I wouldn’t know where, since I don’t know what to name this situation.

Moving on, I will express a dialogue like this:

A:  “What did he say to you?’

B1:  “He leaned close to me, and said in a gravely and drunken voice, “It’s not easy.” ”

Or would it be,

B2:  “He leaned close to me, and said in a gravely and drunken voice, ‘It’s not easy.’ ”

Or,

B3:  “He leaned close to me, and said in a gravely and drunken voice, “It’s not easy”.”

I’ve tried to be helpful (and probably failed), but let me know.

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?

grammar - copulation with uneven noun-phrases

One can use the copula to connect noun phrases of different number.

Example:

The conversational topic that kept us pleasantly chatting was the different Southern dialects in the US.

Here it sounds far clear that "is" should be singular. When the order of the NPs is reversed, it's a little less clear that "is" needs to become plural:

The different Southern dialects in the US was the conversational topic that kept us pleasantly chatting.

My question is, Is this simply an artifact of the order in which I came to this example, or is the ability to bundle multiplicities into singular entities behind this? And, do stylistics handbooks opine on the issue?

PS: I tried to do some searching around for information about this, but without knowing how to talk about copulation (e.g. are the actors of copulation called "copulands"?) it was difficult to get anything useful.

grammatical number - Singular or plural verb with "class of proteins"

Consider the following sentence:

This table outlines a class of proteins that primarily attack the

brain.

I am not sure whether to use attack or attacks. If attack refers to class then I should use attacks, but if it refers to proteins then I should use attack.

In this case, both versions might work. However, I am not sure about this.

can the pronoun I be use alone to answer a question who?

If I am asked, who is going to the wedding? can I just say "I"?

grammar - Would you mind me / my opening the window?

Would you mind me opening the window?

Would you mind my opening the window?

Who uses which form, and why? Is this a difference in dialect? A difference between formal and informal grammar?

grammatical number - Plural name apostrophe position

At my English lesson the native English speaker couldn’t tell what is correct and promised to search it for us!

He told us that if James is one person then we should write

James' Book

but if we had many James he didn't know to tell us what to write...

Any suggestions?

Answer

This is something that's not 100% settled in English orthography, so it tends to be set down in usage guides. For example, here's what the Chicago Manual of Style (14th Ed) has to say:

"6.24 The general rule for the possessive of nouns covers most proper nouns, including most names ending in sibilants."

Examples they give include Kansas's, Ross's land, and Jones's reputation. Exceptions include Jesus' and Moses'.

By this, it would seem reasonable that possessive of the plural would be James', as with common nouns.

Note that this is not the entire story, but might (?) be the relevant bits.

Omitting Relative Pronoun and verb "be"

Could someone please explain, why the pronoun and the verb "be" are omitted in the following sentence?

"it allows communication even for people far away from each other"

Shouldn't this sentence be "it allows communication even for people WHO ARE far away from each other"?

punctuation - Hyphens in "nationally top ranked"

In order to combine "nationally" and "top-ranked" would the resulting qualifier be written as "nationally-top-ranked" or "nationally top-ranked"?

Edit:
I do not immediately see the applicability of this question, because that particular question does not address the case of having more than three adjectives that, when written two at a time (two at-a-time?) would be hyphenated (e.g., nationally-ranked, top-ranked).

conjunction reduction - Grammar question, which statement would be correct?

Good morning, I am writing an essay on file compression and I have written this sentence and I am not sure whether the first or second version would be correct.

The statement is:

"Lossless compression is essential as files which require all data to be present, such as a financial report or a database[...]"

Would "such as a financial report or database" be grammatically correct, or would "such as a financial report or a database" be correct?

Thank you for your help!

grammar - Dropping of "was" from "A couple of ministers had to resign too, among them [was] Interior Minister Fouchet."

A couple of ministers had to resign too, among them Interior Minister
Fouchet.

I don't know what type of rule is used to delete needed "was" in this sentence. My opinion is that "was" should be used like this.

A couple of ministers had to resign too, (and) among them was
Interior Minister Fouchet.

Can someone tell me what rule is used to delete "was"? For example, be deletion, appositive, whiz deletion or etc?

personal pronouns - What do you say when you don't know someone's gender?

For example, I want to refer to someone on the internet, but I don't know this person's gender. Which personal-pronoun do I use? (as article I mean he, she, it, etc)

Answer

It's perfectly fine to use they in the singular sense. (Verbs are conjugated the same as they would be in the plural sense: "are they joking?", "did they break anything?".)

All the same, when the gender is not known, some authors prefer constructions like (s)he, he/she, he or she, she or he, etc., some prefer to stick with the masculine pronoun as default (he), others prefer to stick with the feminine pronoun for balance (she), some will alternate using he and she in their writing.

vowels - Why is the pronunciation of "Exodus" different from the spelling?

Why is Exodus pronounced like "Exidus"? Is there any historical reason for the "O" to be silent and "i" pronounced instead?

I understand from the comments that it is not "I", but a case of " O" not stressed. So to rephrase, how is this different from "exotic"?

As a foreign language speaker, I am interested to know if there are similar words like this?

Somehow Exodus doesn't fit with the generic pattern, I tend to say it with a stressed "O".

Plural possessive with compound subject

Which of the following is correct?

• John and Becky's knowledge


• John's and Becky's knowledge

meaning - "You took... and you..."

How would the grammar of this construction be analysed? I am trying to identify and define the difference between using this and the regular way of saying the same thing.

Examples:

• You took this place and you transformed it / You transformed this place


• You took that song and butchered it / You butchered that song


• You took my trust and abused it / You abused my trust


• Alcohol took my life and destroyed it / Alcohol destroyed my life


• The internet took society and transformed it / The Internet transformed society

Answer

It is a subtle difference. The word "take" is used in these sentences to mean taking ownership or taking responsibility. To take something and then do something to it implies that the taker has done the action intentionally, or is at least directly responsible for the outcome.

For example, it is possible to transform a place by simply being there, or by passing through, but to take a place and transform it suggests that something deliberate has been done in order to affect that transformation.

It gets a bit more complicated with non-living subjects such as Alcohol and The Internet, but the principle is the same:

The sentence "Alcohol destroyed my life" can be interpreted to mean: [The use of] alcohol destroyed my life. or Alcohol [abuse] destroyed my life, both of which leave the responsibility with the drinker.

The sentence "Alcohol took my life and destroyed it" explicitly personifies the alcohol (by making it the taker) and then assigns blame to it.

punctuation - Using hyphenated words in technical writing?

I always get confused when using hyphenated words in my research papers. Is there any specific rule for using hyphenated words? For example, which one of the following is the correct usage of co scheduling? One has smallcase s, while the other one has uppercase s. Is it just simply a taste of the writer? Google shows both the words along with coscheduling.

Co-scheduling or Co-Scheduling

Moreover, wikipedia tells that:

Certain prefixes (co-, pre-, mid-, de-, non-, anti-, etc.) may or may not be hyphenated.

Could someone clarify this?

Answer

The problem here is that there is not one true answer. Google will display the various styles used, but there is not one correct one.

To determine the style that you should should use, do the following.

Look up the word in the standard dictionary you are supposed to use. (If there isn't a standard dictionary for your project, choose one). If the word is in the dictionary, use that spelling. If not, look up the hyphenation rules in the style manual you are supposed to use. (If there isn't a standard style manual for your project, choose one). Hyphenate the word according to those rules.

For questions of capitalization, you'll have to refer once again to the style manual. It should contain rules for capitalizing hyphenated words. But be aware, the capitalization rule for a hyphenated word in a title may differ from that at the beginning of a sentence.

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Example

Let's use your word, "co scheduling", and the rules from the Penn State Editorial Style Manual.

The manual specifies "Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, current edition" for spelling and hyphenation. In that dictionary there is no entry for a word co that would properly modify scheduling, which means that "co scheduling" is incorrect. There are also no entries for either co-scheduling or coscheduling, so we can't follow the dictionary's spelling.

There are entries for the prefix co- and the word scheduling. So the word must be formed by merging these two. We need to use the style manual to determine how to do that. The section on hyphens states: "Words formed with the prefix co should be hyphenated." So if you follow Penn State's rules, the word should be co-scheduling.

The Penn State manual is silent on the rules for capitalizing hyphenated words and refers users to the Chicago Manual of Style in that case. That manual states: "Do not capitalize the second element if (a) it is a participle modifying the first element or (b) both elements constitute a single word." Because co- is a prefix, that means co-scheduling is a single word, and therefore the capitalized form is Co-scheduling.

Separating alternatives using slash/stroke where the only difference is the length

I'm wondering about the usage of slash/stroke as a way of separating alternatives (perhaps it, in this sense, could be called a abbreviation of "or"?). If the alternatives are similar, but the second one is longer, then how would I write this as short as possible, with the smallest possible risk for confusion? Let me give you an example:

I have a card reader where you can insert a Memory Stick or a Memory Stick Pro. If I label the card reader with "MS/Pro", it could most certainly be interpreted as "either MS or Pro". Still, I want the label to be as short as possible.

Answer

There is a slight risk involved using a slash. While "or" is implicitly added while reading a sentence using slash, slash is used often enough in other contexts that it might require a reader to stop and repeat in order to get the proper meaning, which, if your priority is clarity, you should always avoid. However in order to reduce space, I can also see the necessity.

I would recommend only that if you were to use a slash in this instance, I would write "MS/MS Pro", since it isn't "MS" or "Pro" but "MS" or "MS Pro" as your two options. I see your dilemma, though surely you can have a label which holds "MS/MS Pro".

grammaticality - The Nissan manual or the Nissan's manual?

I would like to know which of the following sentences is correct and if possible, a source accompanying your answer. (Note: Only choose which sentence is correct as regards to the title, do not mind any mistakes you might find in the sentence.)

The Nissan manual is there to help you with any trouble you might have.

OR

The Nissan's manual is there to help you with any trouble you might have.

I do not think there is any difference, but preferably the answer follows British English rules.

Also, there is no specific Nissan, it is just in general.

Answer

If "Nissan" is referring to the company, the proper phrase is "The Nissan manual" as "Nissan" here is being used to modify "manual" (Which manual? The Nissan manual.). "The Nissan's manual" suggests that it is a manual belonging to "The Nissan"—that is, a manual for a specific car.

What exactly is the difference between "misinformation" and "disinformation"?

I have checked OALD. I looked up "disinformation" which according to dictionary means "false information that is given deliberately, especially by government organizations" and "Misinform" as a verb means "to give somebody wrong information about something". However, there is no explanation of the word "Misinformation" as a noun. What exactly is the difference between these two? I would like to know if there is any nuance between these two words or if they can be used interchangeably.

ordinals - How can I ask a question with the answer "I'm eating the fourth apple"?

Assume that there are 5 apples must be eaten by Jack. When you want to know about how many of the apples are eaten, you may ask Jack, 'how many apples have you eaten?'; But how can I ask the question to make Jack answers, 'I'm eating the fourth apple'?

...if to a reduced degree - meaning, usage

Even so, many of the original advantages of stored programs (such as enhanced security
and reduction in network traffic) still apply, if to a reduced degree. The use of
stored programs is still regarded as a “best practice” by many application developers
and architects.

Would the meaning of the sentence be the same, if I changed if to even if? To me, this particular usage of if looks strange.

Answer

Even if is more of an idiom, and while it would ALSO make sense there, the way the phrase is written now is fine.

changing the last bit of the sentence to "even if..." isn't really changing the meaning any more than changing it to "if only..." would.

passive voice - Sequence of tenses missing - not in Reported Speech

SITUATION: A year ago, my friend had some financial problems of which his relatives were aware.

Why do we say:

They believed he was in debt.

but:

He was believed to be in debt instead of: He was believed to have been in debt?

Or do we?

acronyms - Does the long form of an abbreviation go in quotes?

I am trying to use and introduce an abbreviation in a sentence. Example:

I worked with technologies such as Syntactically Awesome Stylesheets (Sass) while working on my project.

Does the "Syntactically Awesome Stylesheets" part need to be in quotes? It seems a bit out-of-place to me while using an acronym with such a peculiar long form.

Thanks

Answer

No. In conventional writing on technical subjects, we do not use quotes. However, you may want to check with the relevant style guide, if any.

subjunctive mood - Using the present tense to write about future events as future events

I'm an undergraduate student. Today, I was writing an email to my department's undergrad adviser to request a meeting to discuss what I will study next year. When I began to write the email, I wrote

Dear Dr. X,

Next year I complete the final year of my program.

When I read it aloud, it sounds right. However, I'm writing about an event in the future, and so I believe that I should have written

Dear Dr. X,

Next year I will complete the final year of my program.

However, the use of will seems to make the sentence more presumptuous.

I suspect that the first version is written subjunctively*. However, to the best of my knowledge, subjunctivesque constructions that resemble the first version are typically imperatives, and typically follow that. For example, 'It is required that she arrive before noon tomorrow.'

Is the first version grammatical. If so, why is it so; if not, why is not grammatical?

(Note: I asked this question in order to learn about English. I did not intend to ask for advice on what I should write in this email. Accordingly, I would prefer a answer that explicates the relevant grammatical, or linguistic, principles. Thank you.)

Answer

The first version is fine: see past questions (and their answers) regarding Simple Present for Future Actions and Present tense for future events for more information on the use of present tense in this way.

The notion that your second version is more presumptuous may arise somehow from the old shall/will usage distinction in the formation of the future. On that see When should I use “shall” versus “will”? Briefly, according to the old-fashioned distinction outlined in the 2nd (Ernest Gowers) edition of H. W. Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage, forming the first-person future with will implies special certainty and/or iron determination, shall being the default modal for first-person futures. (This was only ever a thing in British English, I think.)

Finally, to complete the final year of the program is to complete the program, right? So there is a possible opportunity to trim four words without loss of meaning.

pronouns - Why do people use "he/she" than "they"?

I often see in particular Americans use the words "he/she" (also sometimes "he or she") as a gender-neutral pronoun.

This is grammatically incorrect (the sentence "he/she" makes no grammatical sense), it's clumsy, it's long (two syllables), and, to be a bit pedantic, it doesn't even solve the problem of gender bias, because why is it "he/she" and not "she/he"?

On the other hand, we have the perfectly viable alternative of using "they". It's short, it's grammatically correct, it's completely neutral, it just works.

So why do so many speakers use the clumsy "he/she" rather than the elegant "they"?

grammaticality - Is the successive use of "to" in any sentence grammatically correct?

I am wondering whether there is any correct use of "to" successively, one after another, in any English sentence.

Here is an example:

Our team is too accustomed to following the process everyone is used to to change anything now.

The sentence sounds clunky and I've rewritten it:

The process our team is used to has been followed for too long to change anything now.

Better. But, is a sentence written like the original given incorrect, or just ugly and nonetheless correct?

Given how language evolves, I could see someone concluding that because it is ugly, it is wrong (or will be.) I'll clarify a bit further for this case and ask, "Would such a sentence written with successive 'to' be likely to get deductions in a college level English course?"

EDIT: I would consider correct to mean that it must be generally acceptable in all but the strictest standards of academic writing (e.g. Scientific Research papers, Master or Doctoral Thesis.)

Answer

Repetitive words like this, if used appropriately, are considered to be grammatically correct—however, they can look awkward. Some people (I am one) will always rewrite a sentence so that no word is used twice in a row.

I'm more used to seeing had had constructions; to to was new to me.

Incidentally, I think your sentence would still make exactly the same sense if the "doubled" part were simply removed:

Our team is too accustomed to following the process to change anything now.

Even if the double words weren't your concern, such rephrasing could simplify it by avoiding redundancy. (Which is just another style consideration, and certainly not necessary.)

For a more detailed discussion of the acceptability of doubled words (and their stylistic awkwardness), the blog post "When Are Double Words OK?" is a good reference.

Whether you would be marked down or not for using double words would depend on if it were a grammar course or a writing course—and, if a writing course, what the particular instructor's criteria were.

make sure + subjunctive

I'm wondering if "make sure" can take the subjunctive mood of a verb. Take this sentence for example:

Loki would be disappointed in me if I did not make sure this was the
true casket.

What if I said:

Loki would be disappointed in me if I did not make sure this were the
true casket.

There surely is a feeling of uncertainty, it could, hypothetically, not be the real casket, that's why he has to "make sure", although I'll be the first one to admit it sounds weird, but most constructions with the subjunctive sound weird.

Is the Latin abbreviation "f" (folio) commonly used in page ranges?

When citing from an inclusive range of two consecutive pages such as pages 25 and 26, one can write

25–26

or

25f

I know this is a question of style, but I am having little luck with Google on this one. Is one much more common than the other? Is f only used with pages, or with lines of a poem and other references as well? Are there any rules which allow both to be used in different circumstances? Does CMoS have anything to say about this?

I am also aware of ff, but unlike f, there is no equivalent for “25ff” other than the strange-looking “25–” (no upper limit).

Answer

According to the MLA Style Manual^✲ , 3d ed., 8.4, f./ff. after a page or line number means “and the following page(s) or line(s)”, but the abbreviation is “no longer recommended”; explicit page numbers are called for, e.g. 25-26. (Note that MLA now also deprecates use of p. and pp.)

Folio (abbreviated fol., but again, the abbreviation is “no longer recommended”) designates either a book published in the bifolium format (each full sheet of paper folded once to produce four pages) or a leaf of a manuscript or book.

MLA does not provide a citation format for unpaginated MSS or books; traditionally, this is done by folio number followed by r (for recto, the front or right-hand page of the leaf) or v (for verso, the back or left-hand page of the leaf), thus: 12v-13r.

EDIT, to ameliorate the provinicialism of the foregoing:
^✲ MLA, the Modern Language Association, is the leading professional association of US scholars in critical and historical studies of modern languages, and its Style Manual is followed by most publishers in those fields.

grammaticality - Should I use the singular or plural verb in mathematical formulae ("Two and two make/makes four")?

I remember somebody correcting me once when I said, "Two and two makes four", since the conjunction and would imply the use of a plural verb. They would prefer I said:

Two and two make four.

I've been thinking about it and wondering if one or the other is correct, or if both are. It would seem that using the plural verb is grammatical. However, I've heard the singular verb being used more often and feel that it is correct. Is there some exception about using the singular verb in logical statements and mathematical formulae?

Answer

Singular and plural are both correct.

The singular form is also used because "two and two" is an arithmetic formula. The verb agreement in that case is with the formula as a single entity.

• Two and two makes four.




• Two plus two is four.




• Four times four divided by two is
  eight.

In your example in particular, Google indicates that the plural form occurs more often:

"two plus two make four" = 353K results
"two plus two makes four" = 77K results

And while Google hit counts are notoriously, the result is supported by Google Ngrams.

grammaticality - "Is called" + article?

What is the best way to define a new object by using "Something is called [name]"? I have seen all three posibilities, that is:

1. Fruit of this tree is called apple.


2. Fruit of this tree is called an apple.


3. Fruit of this tree is called the apple.

Which ones are correct and which is the most natural one?

grammatical number - Plural and singular items in the same list

Which is correct? The list contains a plural item, but it also contains singular items. So would I use "are" in this sentence?

1. "An applicant with an undergraduate degree in business is supposed to qualify for the one-year program if their grades, resume, and GMAT score are good enough."




2. "An applicant with an undergraduate degree in business is supposed to qualify for the one-year program if their grades, resume, and GMAT score is good enough."

grammar - Confusing syntax in sentences with indirect object complements

Some verbs produce unambiguous syntax when used with an indirect object.

    I brought a toy to Katy. --> I brought Katy a toy.

    I bought flowers for my wife. --> I bought my wife flowers.

Neither of these sentence complements can be interpreted as a single noun phrase or object complement.

But if we use a pronoun instead of a proper noun we sometimes produce ambiguous syntax.

    I brought a toy to her. --> I brought her a toy.

    I bought flowers for her. --> I bought her flowers.

The first sentence is not ambiguous because her a toy is not a sensible phrase, but her flowers is easily interpreted as a noun phrase (poss dt + n) that functions as the single direct object of the verb. Two possible interpretations with very different meanings.

Furthermore, BBC Learn English lists keep as a verb that can be used with OCi/OCd syntax but I can't seem to find a sentence that isn't ambiguous.

1. I kept the money for you. --> I kept you the money.


2. I keep the keys for the manager. --> *I keep the manager the keys.


3. I keep secrets for her. --> I keep her secrets.


4. I keep secrets for Jill --> *I keep Jill secrets.

Sentences 2 & 4 produce nonsense, and sentence 3 produces ambiguous syntax, where the OCi and OCd merge into a single noun phrase. Sentence 1 seems to work but it feels very awkward to me. But all of these sentences follow the rule of having a beneficiary or recipient of the action using to or for adverbial complement in the standard form.

So what's going on here? Does keep belong on this list or not?

negation - When a negative question is asked, what is the grammatically correct way to answer?

When a negative question is asked, what is the grammatically correct way to answer? If someone asks you Didn't you come by car today?, what is the correct answer?

grammatical number - "A total of 10 babies is..." vs. "a total of 10 babies are..." vs. "Ten babies in total are..."

Which one is the correct one?

1. A total of 10 babies is sleeping. (A)


2. A total of 10 babies are sleeping. (B)


3. Ten babies in total are sleeping. (C)

For me, both (A) and (C) are correct. But (B) is also used in speech.

Answer

(B) is perfectly correct in either American or British English. Take a look at this example from the Cambridge Dictionaries Online:

A total of 21 horses were entered for the race.

(C) is also correct, as ten babies is explicitly plural, and should thus take the plural are.

(A) is not correct because the collective noun total should always be treated in the plural sense when

1. it is explicitly used with the word, number, or the word, number, is implied (in a strict sense*),


2. the items being counted are identified/clarified/specified, AND


3. the size of the number is given.

In the following examples, all conditions are satisfied:

• A total of number of 3500 students were at the seminar. [Plural]



• A total [number] of 11 shells are in my possession. [Plural]

In this example, conditions (1) and (2) are satisfied, but condition (3) isn't:

• The total number of students in attendance was unbelievably large. [Singular]

In the first sentence of this example, only condition (3) is satisfied, while none of the conditions is satisfied in the second sentence:

• My total is 11. Theirs is much higher. [Singular]

Finally, in this case, condition (1) is not satisfied:

• 'How many pennies do we now have?' 'The current total is 22.' [Singular]

Thus, total should be treated as singular whenever these conditions are not satisfied at the same time. (This rule should not be applied with the construction There is/are.)

The agreement between nouns (collective, in this case) and verbs is called concord and much has been published on its often confusing rules of usage. The most interesting and informative article I found in the course of answering this question, was "Concord", by Marianne Drennan. (It is of South African origin, so it is likely closer to British English but, excellent article nonetheless.)

Also of note is the pronounced difference in the treatment of collective nouns between British and American English. Some collective nouns are mostly treated as singular in American English but often considered plural in British English. Two quick examples are team and family. See this note on grammar at Oxford Dictionaries Online for more information on this phenomenon. The treatment of total, however, transcends this analysis for the most part. Consider, however, another interesting example provided, in part, by the asker (@xport):

• There are ten babies. [Universally correct]


• There are ten babies in total. [Universally correct]


• There are a total of ten babies. [Plural. British?]


• There is a total of ten babies. [Singular. American?]

I'm not sure if the British/American analysis holds here, as one would find both forms (there is/there are) widely used. There are certainly sounds better, but some would argue that there is is more correct, because, strictly speaking, total by itself should be a singular noun. ("Says who?" others may counter!) Consider this, though:

There is/are a total number of ten babies. [?!]

I will not comment on this. Suffice it to say that this worrisome situation can always be avoided.

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**in a strict sense* since the word, total, always involves a number, anyway. Try to see if you can insert the word number into your sentence (if it isn't already there) without losing the intended meaning. If this can be done, then it means the word, number is implied.

Plural forms for large numbers

What is the correct way to say:

There are in total 485 devices spread over 46 accounts.

or

There is a total of 485 devices spread over 46 accounts.

etymology - Where did the "art" in "Our Father who art in Heaven" go?

What happened to the art in "Our Father who art in Heaven"? And why is it art, and not is?

Answer

Art was the second person singular form of the verb "to be" in older versions of English. Over the centuries, it eventually became are (along with the disappearance of the -st suffix across all 2nd person singular verb forms). Is, on the other hand, would be the 3rd person singular form.

The reason are is used instead of is is because the prayer is speaking directly to "Our Father": i.e. "You, who are in Heaven".

british english - 'to'-infinitive without the verb

I seem to recall reading somewhere that using a to-infinitive with the actual verb omitted (because it's clear from context) — as in

He asked me to go, but I don't want to. (1)

— is fine in American but not in British English. Brits, or so the story went, append do:

He asked me to go, but I don't want to do. (2)

I know that the above is true about American English, my native dialect: we can use (1). My question concerns British English.

Googling finds that the above (that (1) is wrong in British English) is not correct in such generality. For example, "can't be arsed to if" has fifteen-odd results, while "can't be arsed to do if" has but one, and it's not in the form of (2).

So...

Did I imagine the rule I stated above? Or is it restricted to particular sentences (or verbs or something)? Or is it correct as stated but outdated? Or what?

Answer

I find that this different in use of "do" between British and US English is more common with auxiliary verbs, not infinitives: "I didn't take the garbage out, but I (should have/should have done)." Then again, I'm not British. I may have interpreted this incorrectly.

grammar - Cohesion of verb and adjective

In an e-learning course, I've stumbled upon a sentence that makes me think. In order to understand the sentence, you may require the following information.

To highlight a folder its status can be changed to active via an operation, which is called set active. Only one folder can be active at a time. If the function is called on another folder this new folder is active, and the former is no longer active. There is no inactive. Think of being active as being highlighted.

The course then said:

In order to achieve [...] please set active the folder.

Whereas I would have gone with:

Please set the folder active.

Can you elaborate on the grammatical rules determining which version is right and why it is right, also why the other one is wrong, if somehow there are more rules to it.

I'm not interested in alternative phrasings (e.g. set the status to active, call the set active operation, etc.). I want to know the rules involved in the inflection of the term set active, or a generalization on combinations of terms consisting of a verb and an adjective (if possible, that is).

Answer

As I understand it:
- the status is called active (or inactive?)
- the function is called set active

The basic problem is that the two status & function names are not compatible.

What is the opposite function called?:
- is it a different function called set inactive; or
- is it the same set active function being called in reverse?
If different, that's fine; but if it's the same function then the terminology is nonsense.
Presented differently:
- if the status values are active / inactive, then the function should be called set status;
- if the function is called set active, then the status values should be called on / off.

But, to answer your direct questions:
- "please set active the folder" is ungrammatical;
- "Please set the folder active" might be acceptable, but sounds awkward.
- I would have used "Please set the folder to active", but that doesn't use the function name.

An internet search shows various function names such as SetActive. It also shows many uses of the phrase "set active" - but usually followed by a noun, e.g. "set active partition".

I would suggest that "set active" is not normally used for a binary choice (on/off or active/inactive), but where there may be multiple choices; for example: which one of several partitions should be set as the active partition?

In conclusion, I would suggest that "set active" is not a standard phrase or standard verb-adjective combination in (non-technical) English. Hence the two words would be treated separately - one as a verb, and the other as an unrelated adjective.

There are therefore no special 'grammatical rules' relating to this word combination. Typically, in standard non-technical English, one might use expressions such as:
- set [noun X] as / to active
- activate [noun X]
- set the status of [noun X] to active
- set Partition F as the active partition.

I realise that this does not directly answer your question about "the rules involved in the inflection of the term set active", but that's because it is not grammatically a standard idiomatic expression.

After third person pronouns: verbs with or without “-s”? (special case involving “if”)

I don't know what's going on with me lately. I've never had this question before and it was never an issue for me while writing something but two weeks ago I started to think about whether I should use verbs with or without -s after third person pronouns.

First, let's analyze an example in the first person:

I don't wanna do this, but if I do, would you leave me alone?

In this example, "If I do" isn't in the present tense because I'm not saying I do something, I'm saying I could do.

Now the problem comes. Let's analyze this same sentence in the third person:

She doesn't wanna do this, but if she DO, would you leave her alone?

Again this is not the present tense. I'm saying she could DO and not she DOES.

Another one:

The project she presented was a mess. If she FAIL with another one she'll be fired.

I'm not saying she FAILS, I'm saying she could FAIL.

Do you guys understand what my question is? I don't have problem in using verbs in the present tense like "She works very hard". The problem is when the verb isn't in the present tense and it's preceded by a third person pronoun.

So, which is the correct form? Which of these two variants should I say, and why?

1. The project she presented was a mess. If she FAIL with another one she'll be fired.




2. The project she presented was a mess. If she FAILS with another one she'll be fired.

Answer

TLDR: The if part of present conditionals never takes a subjunctive form in present-day English, only an indicative one. You’re incorrectly trying to apply Portuguese rules for conditionals in English, but English does not work like Portuguese!

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The examples you have presented are not grammatical in present day English because if clauses like the ones you’ve shown take a tensed verb:

The project she presented was a mess. If she *fail with another one she'll be fired.

That is ungrammatical. It needs to be like this:

The project she presented was a mess. If she fails with another one she'll be fired.

In the English of a far more ancient vintage than you will ever casually come across, we did at one point use a present subjunctive inflection there, and later an untensed infinitive, but that was long ago and for the most part far away.

• _{WARNING: To illustrate why this is wrong in a way the original poster can best understand it, I below show contrasting examples of the same sort of conditional in English and Portuguese. I also demonstrate that English has changed in its treatment of these over the best few hundred year, but that Portuguese has not. Lastly, I show that Spanish practice has split off from following the Portuguese practice to following the English one during that same period.}

You seem to be attempting to “calque” Portuguese conditionals into English. Portuguese employs for these a special form which the Portuguese call the futuro do conjuctivo (future conjunctive) and the Brazilians futuro do subjuntivo (future subjunctive). These are not indicative forms in Portuguese the way they are in English and in Spanish:

• EN: If she fails at another project, she’ll be fired. —present indicative


• PT: Se ela falhar em outro projeto, (ela) será demitida. —future subjunctive


• ES: Si (ella) falla en otro proyecto, será despedida. —present indicative

The Portuguese would obviously* read ela falha not ela falhar there if it were in the indicative not the subjunctive, but this is not supposed to be indicative in Portuguese the way it is supposed to be in English. You’re trying to do the same thing in English, calquing the Portuguese conditional forms into English in ways that don’t make sense to native speakers of English. You should use the indicative in English here, just as speakers of your sister language Spanish now also do.

_{* “Obvious” to thee and to me, but probably to few other readers here.}

Of Boys and Bulls: What happens when your raging bull gravely injures your neighbor

Once upon a time when the language was young, English actually did use a “modally marked form” (call it subjunctive if you must) there in its if clauses, but no longer. By way of example, please consider the following Early Modern English from the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible published in 1611. There we read for verse 29 from Exodus 21:

• [KJV] If an ox gore a man or a woman, that they die: then the ox shall be surely stoned, and his flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner of the ox shall be quit.

That’s what you’re trying to do, but we don’t do that any longer in English. Here’s how that same verse runs in the so-called “King James Version 2000” (KJV2000) translation:

• [KJV2000] If an ox gores a man or a woman, that they die: then the ox shall be surely stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner of the ox shall be clear.

So instead of “if an ox gore” in the Early Modern English, we now say “if an ox gores”. If you try to use the English of 400 years ago, particularly in ordinary conversation, most people will be confused and few will understand you correctly. They’ll think you’re making a mistake — which you would be. It would be just like speaking Portuguese today the way it was spoken back when Camõens wrote Os Lusíadas in the Sixteenth Century. You’d just confuse people.

For cultural comparison, here’s how that verse was translated into the Portuguese of its day by Antônio Pereira de Figueiredo a couple hundred years ago:

• [Pereira] Se hum touro ferir com as suas pontas hum homem, ou huma mulher, e elles morrerem isso, apedrejar-se-ha o touro, e não se lhe comerá a carne; mas o dono o touro será innocente.

Even though that uses the same inflections of its verbs as Modern Portuguese uses, it sure is funny to read and funny to say, isn’t it? The style of speaking and the words chosen have changed considerably as you will see when you compare what you have just now read above with two versions in Modern Portuguese (where the touro has become a boi :) as follows:

• [O Livro] Se um boi escornear um homem ou uma mulher, tirando­lhe a vida, o boi terá de ser apedrejado e não comerá a sua carne. Mas o dono do animal não será culpado de nada.




• [NVI-PT] Se um boi chifrar um homem ou uma mulher, causando-lhe a morte, o boi terá que ser apedrejado até a morte, e a sua carne não poderá ser comida. Mas o dono do boi será absolvido.

So unlike English, Portuguese still uses a subjunctive there just as it did hundreds of years ago. But English does not. The English loss of the subjunctive there parallels the loss of the subjunctive in Spanish over the same period. Here’s how it ran in the Reina-Valera Antigua translation back when Spanish still used the future subjunctive for this sort of if clauses:

• [RVA] Si un buey acorneare hombre ó mujer, y de resultas muriere, el buey será apedreado, y no se comerá su carne; mas el dueño del buey será absuelto.

Even though that old sort of Spanish should be especially easy for Portuguese speakers to read because of its old words and old verb forms, people today no more talk that way in Spanish than they do in English. The Modern Spanish translation in the Castilian NIV runs:

• [CST] Si un toro cornea y mata a un hombre o a una mujer, se matará al toro a pedradas y no se comerá su carne. En tal caso, no se hará responsable al dueño del toro.

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If as a Portuguese speaker you are going to speak English (or even Spanish) in a way that makes sense to native speakers of those other languages, you must shed your Lusophonic sensibilities about how present conditionals work and use only indicative forms not subjunctive ones in the if parts of these sorts of conditionals.

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Postscript on calques and calquing

When you calque something from one language to another, you translate its original so literally that it risks losing its sense in the new language. Wiktionary says that a calque is:

A word or phrase in a language formed by word-for-word or morpheme-by-morpheme translation of a word in another language.

The Portuguese Wikipedia entry for that word starts out:

Em linguística, e mais precisamente em lexicologia, etimologia e linguística comparada, chama-se calque, calco ou decalque a um procedimento de formação de palavras que consiste em cunhar novos termos mediante a tradução de vocábulos estrangeiros e conforme as estruturas da língua de origem. É um tipo de empréstimo léxico particular, no qual o termo emprestado foi traduzido literalmente de uma língua para a outra, considerando mais a forma do que a ideia.

possessives - "Your and my [something]" vs "Yours and my..."

Prompted by comments against this question, I'd like some help figuring out why some people (myself included) prefer yours over the apparently more logical/grammatically consistent your in this kind of sentence...

Yours and my native languages have co-existed for hundreds of years.

Google Books has Your:Yours ratios for languages:2:2, parents:9:10, houses:4:2. That's a very small sample size, admittedly - but even without anything like that, I know my own usage. So I'm not really interested in being told which is correct, except insofar as this has a bearing on my question itself - why do some people, (including some "careful speakers", which I don't necessarily claim to be) use the apparently incorrect form?

EDIT: It may be important to note (as @Gnawme guessed without it being explicitly stated in the first version of this question) that I personally would use singular language in the above. It was just too difficult to search Google Books for that particular distinction, so I said nothing about it.

Answer

The OED’s definition 3 of yours is ‘Used instead of your before another possessive, etc. qualifying the same noun. Now rare or obsolete.’ An illustrative citation is Joseph Addison’s from 1710, ‘I suppose you know, that I obeyed your's, and the Bishop of Clogher's commands.’ (Note the apostrophe, incidentally.)

As you have said, the written record tells us nothing about what occurs in speech. 'Yours and my . . .’ may occur as frequently as you suggest, but I think we're at least as likely to hear
‘my . . . and yours’ or ‘your . . . and mine’ or ‘our . . .' Or 'your and my . . .' or 'my or your . . .'

parts of speech - In “…displaying your name” is ‘displaying’ a gerund or a participle?

I've learned so far that a Gerund can be used in 6 cases: Subject, Object, Subject complement, Object complement, Object of preposition and Object of possessive.

Participles are used as adjectives, such as; falling monkey, burning building, etc. A participle must modify something in the sentence.

In this sentence:

My phone will ring displaying your name

can someone please explain whether displaying is a gerund or a participle? I can neither put it in any of the 6 gerund categories nor can I get how it is modifying anything in the sentence.

Answer

It is only your phone that can display a name, and so it is clearly your phone that this participial phrase is modifying. However, when a participial phrase is separated from the word it modifies, it requires a comma:

My phone will ring, displaying your name.

Still, this sentence seems problematic to me because, even as it modifies the noun, it bears no relation to what the main clause is saying about the phone. For example, it makes sense to say that

My phone will light up, displaying your name

because the lighting up of a phone is what allows a phone to display a name.

Likewise,

My phone will ring, sounding a lovely Mozart melody

makes sense because the ring and the melody are clearly related.

Personally, I would phrase your sentence in this way:

My phone will ring and display your number.

Different tense in explaining scientific fact

In the following sentence:

"Studies show that the polar ice ______(reduce) by 9.8% every 10 years since 1978."

In the blank we should write the corresponding tense of reduce.

At the first sight I thought it is "is reduced", because I think it is a basic scientific fact, which is quite widely accepted. Perhaps "is reducing" is also acceptable; is there a difference in meaning between the two?

But my friend asks me if "has reduced", "has been reducing", and "has been reduced" are also grammatically correct, or if they express some subtlety different meaning.

I can't tell the difference or "right or wrong" of these options. Can anyone help?

Thanks in advance!

Answer

Reference verb tables

"Studies show that the polar ice ______(reduce) by 9.8% every 10 years
since 1978."

I would use "has reduced". Per the verb table reference, the present perfect arises from a combination of the present tense "studies show" and the perfect aspect that expresses a past event "reduction every 10 years" that has present consequences.

• "has reduced": correct


• "has been reducing": This is 'Present perfect continuous' and shows that something started in the past and has continued up until now. In order to use this, the sentence would need to read "The polar ice has been reducing continuously". This does not connect a past event to the present tense, this describes a past event that is continuing right now. The sentence focus is entirely on the event, bring it from the past, continuously to the present.


• "has been reduced": check the verb tables, this isn't grammatical at all. This is some horrible hybrid between Present perfect continuous and Past perfect continuous. This would work if you consider the verb table for "to be" and use "reduced" as an adjective to describe the noun "ice", but even in this context it is very final. The ice has been reduced, end of story.

adjectives - the number of boys in the class is fewer than that of girls- correct or not?

The number of boys- countable or uncountable? I'm confused with this sir.

Gerund or infinitive / Difference in meaning

In my classes, the subject of gerunds and infinitives comes up. Students find this a confusing and frustrating subject. They accept that one can say "I like watching movies," or "I like to watch movies," but they will usually ask, "Which one should I use?" This question makes sense. I have seen most teachers answer this by saying "It doesn't matter, they both mean th same thing. Pick one that you like and use it."

I feel that there is a difference and that as native English speakers we intuitively know the difference and will choose the expression that conveys our meaning.

Sometimes, I feel that this choice is language mirroring. If someone asks you "What do you like doing," you will probably answer with the gerund, "I like watching." If they ask "What do you like to do," you will probably answer "I like to watch."

However, if you say to someone "Tell me about your interests," the person is free to answer, and some will give the gerund version and others will give the infinitive version.

My feeling is that infinitives express potential and gerunds express active things. If you say "I like to watch TV." it means that this is something you like but don't really do it that much. If you say "I like watching TV." it is probably something you do a lot. On the flip side, you could also interpret "I like watching TV." as you like the activity but it doesn't mean you do it. "I like mountain climbing," doesn't necessarily mean that I do it, have done it, or will do it.

What are your thoughts on this matter?

Answer

The verbs where you have a choice between gerund or to-infinitive is very limited, a handful I would say. Actually there is no difference whether you say I like cooking/I like to cook. But I assume the "cooking" is more frequent as you refer to a general kind of activity.

Comment added to this post
The to-infinitive has noun character. The "to" might have been the neutre form of the definite article , but gender was given up very early in English. As the gerund has verbal and noun character English has two possibilities for verb +object. The to-infinitive as object is more frequent, in some cases the speakers prefer the gerund. That is more a convential thing and a problem for learners, because there is no simple rule for gerunds in object-position.

pronouns - 'The Queen That Never Was' or 'The Queen Who Never Was'?

A documentary drama about the American Wallis Simpson (the influence upon Edward VIII causing him to abdicate the throne of England on 10th December 1936) is titled 'Wallis : The Queen That Never Was'.

The piece is written and directed by Paul Olding, a British writer and director.

Immediately I saw the title, I paused as I would have expected it to say 'who never was', since Wallis Simpson was a person and the usual pronoun regarding persons is 'who', not 'that'.

It is true there is a mixture of concepts, here.

The title is not questioning the historic existence of the person, but is stating that she never became Queen of England. So the title is stating something about the office of Queen. That office was never upon that historic person.

In which case the title of the piece actually means 'The Woman who never became Queen'. And in that case, one would not say :

The Woman That Never Became Queen

but rather :

The Woman Who Never Became Queen

Should not the pronoun be 'who' in this particular case ?

---

Edit : The Ngram suggested in @Peter Shor 's answer is interesting and I have added 'a/the woman who// a/the woman that' which shows a significantly greater modern weighting for 'the woman who' and an even greater modern weighting for 'a woman who', which is notable for with the indefinite article the phrase, supposedly, becomes less 'specific'.

Ngram additonal.

Edit: The suggested duplicate does not answer my question as this situation is specific to the mixed concept of person and office and it is clear from answers and comments, thus far, that the language is changing in regard, especially, to the use of 'that' and 'who' in relation to women, as can be seen from the Ngram.

I believe that this question has highlighted something interesting happening within the language and I believe that the subject is worth pursuing further.

american english - Is it correct to say "I studied the book with Mr.XXX as my mentor/tutor/teacher"?

I wonder if it is correct to say the following to mean Mr.XXX was my mentor and helped me in learning the book. Could you suggest a better equivalent for what I am trying to say? To explain it better, I've taken a course and Mr.XXX is the teacher and the book (called YY, for example) is my course book.

I studied the book with Mr.XXX as my mentor/tutor/teacher.

How do American English and British English use the definite article differently?

I decided to make sure that I know this important difference between American and British English, so I wrote what I have found out so far and I would be grateful to anyone who reads this and tells me whether I am wrong, or not.

In British English when people say to hospital or in hospital when talking about somebody being there as a patient they don't use the definite article : "I had to go to hospital", "She spent two weeks in hospital". And the meaning is that somebody was there as a patient.

If then for some other reasons British English speakers will use the definite article which will change the meaning itself, I noticed that, in American English, native speakers often use the the and if they need to show that somebody is in church to pray, in school as a student, in hospital as a patient, in prison as a prisoner, they use 'in' and not 'at'. Do American English speakers use 'at' like British English speakers use 'the' to give the sentences a different meaning?

Are my sentences correct? Do they show American English usage?

• He is in the school. (enrolled as a student)




• He is at the school. (for some different reasons)




• He is in the hospital. (as a patient)




• He is at the hospital. (visiting somebody)




• He is in the church. (to pray)




• He is at the church. (for some different reasons)





• He is in the university. (as a student)




• He is at the university. (not as a student)




• He is in the college. (as a student)




• He is at the college. (Not as a student)




• He is in the prison. (as a prisoner)




• He is at the prison. (not as a prisoner)

nouns - What are set of words word like "crocodiles" and "alligators", and "turtle" and "tortoise" called?

There are times when various words can both be used to describe one particular kind of animal. The animal one word specifies is a bit different from the other(s), but in most cases there's plenty of overlap and few know the little things about them that differentiates them.

1. 
   

   crocodile and alligator

   
   




2. 
   
   

   turtle and tortoise

   
   




3. 
   

   shrimp/prawn and lobster

   
   




4. 
   

   crab, lobster, and crayfish

   
   

EDIT: I know, the examples are a bit confusing. I wrote this in a hurry, thinking that I'll edit it later on (which I have done). The species/catagory these words fall into is the same.

grammatical number - Is "audience" singular or plural?

I want to use 'audience' in the following sentence. In what form should I use it? Is it a singular or plural noun?

How the audience demotivate players in the NBA.

How the audience demotivates players in the NBA.

Answer

Singular if you want to emphasise its homogeneity, plural if you want to emphasise its component parts.

single word requests - What kind of abbreviations are "Bee Gees", "Eminem", etc?

The "Bee Gees" is actually a stylised expansion of the initials BGs, which in turn refers to initials of Barry Gibb, DJ Bill Gates and Bill Goode (or simply means Brothers Gibb).

"Eminem" comes from M&M, initials of Marshall Mathers.

Similarly, "Emcee" from pronunciation of M.C., abbreviation of master of ceremonies, a noun phrase attested from the 1660s.

In my place I see a lot of companies titled similarly, PeeKays (from initials PK), CeePee electronics, Kay Pee Em tours and travels etc.

Now, my username NVZ is an initialism. What if I expand it into En Vee Zee?

What is this type of naming called?

I don't think it's simply an acronym, or an initialism.

Answer

If you say it aloud, then it's just an initialism. If you proceed to spell it out with complete syllables, rather than letters, i thought at first you could say it's a "phonetically spelled initialism". On the other hand, "phonetically spelled" may suggest that a phonetic alphabet should be used, ie one in which the symbols represent specific sounds, unlike the more flexible regular alphabet.

So, perhaps the best reference is sensational spelling, in which a word is deliberately misspelled for effect. This is commonly used in branding to give an impression of uniqueness, and, perhaps more importantly, to allow the trademarking of the term. ("Blu-ray", "Mortal Kombat" etc - see "Sensational spelling" on Wikipedia)

So, i think you could call it a sensationally spelled initialism.

grammar - "if it were possible" vs "if it was possible"

" If it were possible, and it were possible to do..."

that sounds wrong, shouldn't we have was after it?

grammar - How do you casually describe in English a possession of thing(s) belonging to/shared by two people?

Neither of the following sounds quite "right" to me:

• This is the book of Kelly and I. (Maybe valid but still sounds too rigid)


• This book is of Kelly and mine's. (I know, sounds the weirdest)



• This is mine and Kelly's book.


• This book, Kelly and I own it.

In my native language (Indonesian) we have a phrase or a way of saying this without sounding weird or overly formal. Do you use any of the above at all, or is there any different sentence pattern for describing this kind of situation?

grammatical person - How to avoid mixing past and present tense in narration?

I looked through the related questions, but I didn't find any concrete advice.

I understand that it's OK to do so. I'm not sure how common it is, but I'm a beginner writer and want to keep things as simple as possible. I can pick up that fancy stuff later.

To illustrate the problem, I'll use the following example, where first-person POV narration has present tense sandwiched between past tens in a single paragraph.

I wound through the corridors toward the center of Down 15. None of the elevators were nearby, so I bounded up the stairs three at a time. Stairwells in the core are just like stairwells on Earth—short little twenty-one-centimeter-high steps. It makes the tourists more comfortable. In areas that don’t get tourists, stairs are each a half meter high. That’s lunar gravity for you. Anyway, I hopped up the tourist stairs until I reached ground level. Walking up fifteen floors of stairwell probably sounds horrible, but it’s not that big a deal here. I wasn’t even winded.

From "Artemis" by Andy Weir

When I go through my texts, I see that I'm doing the same. I'm writing in first-person POV, past tense, but when it comes to descriptions (little info dumps) and the narrator's thoughts (comments) I often switch to present tense (without thinking).

The problem lies in the word "often". I don't do it consistently.
Also when I find a spot like that I start to think can I really do that? If in the above example the Moon was blown up by the end of the story, would it still make sense to talk about the stairwells in the present tense? It's just too complicated to deal with all these logical traps. I want to keep it simple.

I can't just search for present tense (such as "are") in the word processor. As we use the present tense in the dialogues.

Is a good copy editor the only option?

Or is there maybe some mind trick that one can use? Like maybe one needs to pretend and always keep in mind that a story is told by a person who is at his/her death bed, the events happened years ago, and the storyteller doesn't know anything about current state of affairs (what happened to all these people and places). Can a certain mindset break a habit?

Any other ideas?

Please advice.

Answer

How to avoid it?

By Being Meticulous. There is no shortcut. You, as the author, are responsible for every word choice in your story. Every single one.

It reads fine to me to have the present tense as presented in Weir's snippet, but it could be clearer.

In first person (past tense), a thought can either be italicized and immediate (in which case it becomes present tense) or not (and remains past tense.)

You are the God of this world you have written, and you are responsible to know every detail of your creation. So go through it. Sentence by sentence. Figure out which thoughts of your creation are passing surface thoughts, and which are intimate deep thoughts.

If that passage was mine, (which it isn't; I have a different world), I'd do it like this:

I wound through the corridors toward the center of Down 15. None of
the elevators were nearby, so I bounded up the stairs three at a time.
The stairwells in the core were just like stairwells on Earth—short

little twenty-one-centimeter-high steps. It made the tourists more
comfortable. In the areas that didn’t get tourists, stairs were each a half
meter high.

That’s lunar gravity for you, I thought.

Anyway, I hopped up the tourist stairs until I reached ground level.
Walking up fifteen floors of stairwell probably sounds horrible, but
it’s not that big a deal here. I wasn’t even winded.

Do you feel the movement into the character brain? You have this tool available to you. Don't overdo it--develop a feel for when you want a direct thought from a character. But you need to be obsessive about going through your story with a fine tooth comb and making conscious choices. There are multiple ways to write any passage.