Friday, February 28, 2014

meaning - Difference between "banner" and "flag"



What's the difference between the meaning of "banner" and the meaning of "flag"?


Answer



While the two terms are sometimes interchangeable, I would say that the usage would differ depending on the shape and purpose of the item in question.




A flag would typically be square or slightly oblong, as with the national flags of most countries. A banner tends to be more elongated, for example as you might see hung across a street during a parade. Flags tend to be attached by one side to a pole, whereas banners are typically attached at both ends, either fixed or on two poles. Furthermore, flags usually carry representative symbols or colours (e.g., chequered flag), whereas banners generally carry written messages (e.g., Happy Birthday Joe!)



On this basis few English speakers would refer to, say, the Union Jack as a banner. Likewise, Happy Birthday Joe! would not be called a flag.


grammar - "it seems" vs. "it seems that"

Is there a difference between using "it seems" and "it seems that"



For example:





"It seems that automatic restart is not happening now"



"It seems automatic restart is not happening now"




Which one is correct? Or are they both?

Thursday, February 27, 2014

grammar - Jon and I or Jon and me?

How do I know when to use Jon and I, or Jon and me? I can't really figure it out. I've tried to teach myself, but I just can't seem to do it. Will someone please help me figure this problem out?

pronouns - "You know more about this than me/I"











Which is correct?




You know more about this than me.




You know more about this than I.




The second sounds unnatural, but I think it is correct because a trailing know is implied.


Answer



My guess is both are correct. The first than is used as a preposition while the second one is used as a conjunction.



Note however, to me, the first sentence means you know more about this than you know about me while the second one means you know more about this than I know about this.


at which point I can shift from past perfect back to simple past?

Imagine I'm writing a story in past tense. Here come some questions:
SENTENCE 1:
"Tom simply couldn't imagine how different the world had been when his father was at Tom's age: there hadn't been fancy smart phones, people had appeared to be more altruistic, and the parents wouldn't have had to be worried about their kids being killed at school."



Many pulperfects are used. It looks very clunky to me. I suppose the readers would perfectly understand what I mean if I changed all the pulperfects to simple past, which could be:
"Tom simply couldn't imagine how different the world was when his father was at Tom's age: there weren't fancy smart phones, people appeared to be more altruistic, and the parents would have to be worried about their kids being killed at school."
Could anyone, especially native speakers, give me some advices? Do you think it's awkward? Or you think although it looks alright, it would convey different meanings?



My second question is about the back shift of subjunctive mood in reported speech.
SENTENCE 2 & 3

"Tom always said if he had lived in his father's time, he wouldn't have been able to survive for a week. His father always replied that he had used to say the same thing to Tom's grandpa."
Again, for me, they're very cumbersome. I'm not even sure if subjunctive sentences should shift back when they are reported. Can I just write:"Tom always said if he lived in his father's time, he wouldn't be able to survive for a week."?
Also, in the 3rd sentence, "had used to" sounds very awkward to me. Can I just write: "His father always replied that he used to say the same thing to Tom's grandpa."?



I've been confused by these grammatical questions, and they really put me off from writing stories in English. I'd really appreciate your advices.

grammar - "It is he" versus "it is him"




Which of these sentences is correct?




It is he I relate to most of all.





Or,




It is him I relate to most of all.




I believe that in neither of the two sentences do the words "him" or "he" act as a relative pronoun, for the simple reason that they are not relative pronouns. Instead, both sentences have an implicit relative pronoun. The case of he/him should depend on other considerations, such as, the proper case after the linking verb, "is".




It should be simply a matter of which is more correct,




It is he




Or,




It is him





My Latin education would have me pick the former. But my knowledge of colloquial English tells me that the phrase, "it was him", is commonly used. Thus, I do not know. I hope these words help explain my reasoning, without making my reader more confused. I would be interested to know what you grammar gurus think of my first two sentences. Which is correct?


Answer



'It is he' sounds very formal.



'It is him' is grammatically correct and is in common usage.



HE is used for subjects and predicate nominatives.




HIM is used for objects of preposition, direct objects and indirect objects.



You could rephrase the sentence: I relate to him most of all.


Wednesday, February 26, 2014

verbs - “if our photographer was” or “is” or “were”?


"Although you are more than welcome to take photos today, it would be appreciated if our photographer was/is/were given the best opportunity to photograph the happy couple."




Which one is correct, please?

Definite article required or not?

I am having difficulty deciding whether the definite article is required in the following sentence.




An indicator of a strong character is (the) person’s ability to compliment the achievements of others.


Tuesday, February 25, 2014

where - When and if to use "What are you at now?"?



I wonder if "What are you at now?" is correct grammatically to use, in this format and context.



Two concerns that I have:




Ending with "at"




  • I am not ending the question with the "at". However, I am not sure adding a "now" at the end does help or not. Will this still be a valid question to ask? Is it valid to end a question with "at"?



Context




  • I am using it to address a person's need to understand where they are standing with a problem. The closest that I could think of to ask was "Where are you now?". However, I think the "Where" question is more about the location and not the state of the person.




I know there is a very similar question asked at here. However, mine is different in a sense that there is now at the end.


Answer



ODO actually gives a relevant example, though it labels the usage informal:




be at informal



Be doing or trying to do.




‘what are you at there?’




But the definition is different, addressing an activity rather than a state. This is not used the same way as 'Where are you at now?' Compare the contrast between 'What are you doing now?' and 'How are you doing now?'


grammar - Ordering of proper nouns in a list



While co-editing a document, I was bothered by the list:




... Iran, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria ...




I remember being taught to order lists alphabetically if no other logical ordering exists. I proposed:





... Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen ...




Is my proposition "better" or am I just being a pedant?


Answer



I believe you were instructed correctly.
I see nothing in History, Geography, or Topography that places Yemen anywhere but out of place on this list.
I think I would certainly note for correction the order of this list. If there were an unstated reason for the current order, it should be the object of an edit by the author. If the author is not involved, then ordering the list alphabetically seems correct.
Alphabetizing lists serves a useful function by allowing a reader to find something on a list easier.


verbs - Proper to add tense to acronyms, abbreviations and initialisms



What is the correct way to pluralize an acronym? asked about pluralising acronyms, abbreviations and initialisms, but is there a standard way to add verb endings e.g. -ing and -ed (what are these called?), at least in informal English?




For example, which of these is/are best?




  1. I'm SMSing her.

  2. I'm SMS-ing her.

  3. I'm SMS'ing her.



I know I can rephrase it to "I'm sending her an SMS." but I wish to use SMS as a verb.




Similarly,




  1. He FUBARed.

  2. He FUBAR-ed.

  3. He FUBAR'ed.

  4. He FUBAR-d.

  5. He FUBAR'd.




In the latter set, as the verb is actually the F ("foul", or something more explicit) — the expanded sentence being "He fouled up beyond all recognition." — should it even be "He FedUBAR." or similar?


Answer



If you're using a non-verb acronym or initialism as a verb, you're already in the realm of jargon. If you're writing in a context where that's acceptable, you should add a simple "ed" or "ing" for a suffix unless you're going for a humorous effect. When acronyms are absorbed into the language, they may acquire verb forms; for example, the verb meaning "to produce a laser beam" is "lase," retroactively treating the acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation" as if it meant "something that 'lases.'"


Monday, February 24, 2014

grammatical number - Why do we use the article 'a' when referring to 100 items? But we don't use it when referring to any other plural count?

Edit Note:



This question has been linked to these questions about using an article before adjectives modifying numbers. This question here has nothing to do with adjectives at all:






The question



Why do we use the article 'a' when referring to 100, but not when referring to any other plural counting?



Here's an example:





I saw a hundred birds today.




But when talking about other count that 100, we don't use 'a' because it's plural:





  • I saw ninety-nine birds today.

  • I saw two birds today.

  • I saw two thousand birds.


  • I saw seventy-five birds.




Is there a grammatical or historical explanation?

orthography - Space before apostrophe



In the 1928 Scribner’s (NY) edition of The Plays of J. M. Barrie, I’ve noticed an odd convention: where a contraction happens in middle of a word (e.g., “don’t” for “do n(o)t”), the apostrophe has the usual appearance. But when the contraction removes the entire first part of the word (e.g., “it’s” for “it (i)s” or “I’ll” for “I (wi)ll”), the typesetters consistently left the inter-word space there: not “it’s” or “I’ll” but “it␣’s” or “I␣’ll”:



Illustrative example




Answer




Was this standard usage a century ago, either in the U.S. or in Britain?





No. The vast majority of books of the period that don't follow that convention.




Is this the sort of authorial quirk (like the use of “sha’n’t” in Winnie the Pooh) which should be preserved in a reprinting?




Apparently not. Some writers have had general opinions on apostrophes that were either unusual or old-fashioned for their time (Lewis Carroll's and A A Milne's sha'n't vs George Bernard Shaw's shant *) and some broke from standard use for particular purposes (Joyce's Finnegans Wake and E E Cummings' "Buffalo Bill 's") but I haven't found anything to suggest that Barrie was unorthodox in this matter.




As a rule, the final decision on such matters lies with the editor or (historically) the printer. This remains true today, though modern digital formats mean that an editor might today decide to do minimal work on the document received in their email while in the past it would have been necessary to produce printing instructions from either a hand-written manuscript where spacing would be more arbitrary or from a type-written typescript where spacing would be limited by the technical limitations of typewriters.



While editors might defer to authors' wishes with greater or lesser amounts of screaming and hair-pulling involved (or to what they believe to be their wishes in the case of E E Cummings who many are still convinced liked to be called e e cummings), most of the time most writers are either happy enough if the result is something one could reasonably call "normal English punctuation" or else are consciously so far away from the norm that the editor has no choice but to follow them. Sometimes the author may not even know that a new edition is being prepared (not least if they aren't alive any more).



So our starting point would be to assume that this was a style decision by the publisher, not the author, unless we've a reason to suspect otherwise.



We can find further evidence of this edition of Edith Wharton's Sanctuary by the same publisher where we've an example of similar style used with would n’t and had n’t:



“You seem to take it very easily—I’m afraid my mother would n’t.” / “Your mother?” This produced the effect he had expected. / “You had n’t thought of her, I suppose? It would probably kill her.”




So, this seems to be a matter of Charles Scribner's Sons' style rather than of Barrie's.



Now, Hot Licks' turn of phrase in a comment on the question raises an interesting point:




…that bastion of linguistic propriety "The New Yorker"…




The truth is, The New Yorker is not, and never has been, a bastion of linguistic propriety when it comes to punctuation: They chose a policy on punctuation matters that was unusual, but defensible, at the time, and then they stuck with it even as the rest of the world became firmer in doing something else. The same applies to some of their spellings and spelling out of large numbers.




If we were to call something "linguistic propriety" it would mean insisting on something more "proper" than others. Some people might like the New Yorker's style (hey, I love me some diæreses) but one would need a particularly pig-headed sort of pedantry to not only insist that there was one true rule on whether reëlect has a diæresis or not, but that this one true rule said that it did, in the face of it being the more unusual spelling. Even the sort of person who spells the word diæresis isn't likely to claim that.



So, let us take the New Yorker as a data-point, showing that in 1925 there was a magazine that took an unusual stance on spelling and punctuation (they were as much against the hyphen in re-elect as they were in favour of the diæresis in reëlect) despite it not being the approach followed by the house styles of pretty much anyone else.



At the same time, let's consider that the exact way in which the apostrophe is used has changed over the course of its use in English.



Let us also consider that a regular driver in people's house styles is a wish to be logical. We can see what the typesetter was getting at with their it ’s in using the apostrophe to mark an elided i but not an elided space.



Let us also consider that punctuation generally has changed in printed English. The spacing around quotation marks, colons, semi-colons, question marks and exclamation marks have all changed in terms of what is normal, with the eighteenth century once favouring the likes of “ What should I ask ? ” rather than “What should I ask?”. At some point we were brought from that norm to our current norm by people who at the time were mavericks.




And let us finally consider that there are still matters where style-guides disagree with each other, along with idiosyncrasies that persist.



And with all that in mind, it seems likely that what we have here is a style in use in a particular publishing house, arrived at by the argument that it retains something of the pre-contracted words that other styles do not, which did not catch on, but which was a conscious style: If it was a blunder, someone would have pointed it out between the 1903 edition of Wharton I found and the 1928 edition of Barrie you found.



That said, their reasoning is not sound; it ’s does not do a good job of giving written form to the word it’s, because it suggests it's pronounced as two syllables.






*And indeed A A Milne's accounts of his young niece's writing style, though we should probably take his explanation that she was emulating Shaw in this regard with a pinch of salt.


Sunday, February 23, 2014

grammaticality - Is it acceptable to start a sentence with the preposition 'except' rather than 'except for'?

The sentence




Except the buildings built towards the end of his life, the buildings
erected in Istanbul can be assumed to be his.




was recently used in a question here.




I edited to replace 'except' with the compound preposition 'except for'. I'm very unhappy with the original, but don't like to assume my gut reactions are necessarily correct.



CDO gives:




Except or except for? from English Grammar Today



We often use except and except for as prepositions to mean ‘not
including’ or ‘excluding’. They are followed by a noun or noun phrase

or a wh-clause. Both except and except for are correct after a
noun:



I like all fruit except (for) oranges. (excluding oranges)



Except for Louisa, who’s away in Berlin this weekend, we’ll all be at
the party.



She likes going to most sports events, except cricket matches.





This shows the choice of 'Except for' to start a sentence-initial prepositional phrase, but does not go so far as to state that the choice of the simple preposition is incorrect.



The nearest (but really reversed) question I can find on ELU is essentially




Is "Are there any vegetables except for asparagus?" correct?




to which Peter Shor provides the tantalysing answer (with which I largely agree):





I think what's wrong is the "for". [I'd say 'very iffy' in all but some unusual contexts]



Are there any vegetables except asparagus?



The grammar of when to use "except for" and when to use "except" is
governed by [a] quite complex set of rules (often, you can use either).
There probably is a correct and complete description of how this works
somewhere on the internet, but I haven't found it, so I can't tell you

why you should use "except" here; but it just feels right.




Can authorities be found giving this correct and complete description of the complex set of rules governing when to use "except for" and when to use "except" , on the internet or elsewhere?

Saturday, February 22, 2014

articles - Why use "the" for oceans/seas/rivers etc. but not lakes?



Possibly two questions in here: Are these sentence constructions logical, and if they are, why are they different?




I swam across the Ocmulgee River.
I swam across the Pacific Ocean.
I swam across the Red Sea.
I swam across Lake Winnipeg.




I can't think of a way of phrasing the lake example while using an article with a proper noun. I thought at first it was because Lake Winnipeg is different; it's generic portion (the "Lake") comes first and the name of that body comes second, but I swam across Falls Lake is the same.




Yet the sentence I swam across the lake sounds right to me. ...Why?


Answer



I'd say you are correct about the placement of the generic word being the reason for using (or not using) 'the' , and all your examples are phrased correctly. Notice that 'Falls' is different also in that it is a plural.



Edit: I have found the answer:



From Wikipedia:




In English, nouns must in most cases be preceded by an article that specifies the presence or absence of definiteness of the noun. The definite article is the in all cases other than generic references, which use the zero article (i.e., the absence of an article), while indefiniteness is expressed with a or an for singular nouns or the zero article for plural or non-count nouns.





From Monmouth University:




The definite article 'the' is used before both singular and plural nouns when the noun is specific. The names of geographic places are specific names and may require definite articles:
names of rivers, oceans, seas, geographical areas, deserts, forests, gulfs, peninsulas, groups of lakes (the Great Lakes), mountain ranges, and chains of islands.



No article is necessary before the following specific nouns:
Singular names of countries or territories, cities, towns, states, streets, lakes, bays, mountains, continents, islands, languages, sports, academic subjects.




nouns - time-sensitive documents, goods, articles or cargo


time-sensitive documents, goods, articles or cargo





In the phrase reproduced above, does it mean that only documents are time-sensitive or does time-sensitive apply to goods, articles and cargo as well?

hyphenation - When should com­pound words be writ­ten as one word, with hy­phens, or with spaces?




Some compound words are written without hyphens (nonaggression, nonbeliever), some with hyphens (well-intentioned), and others with spaces (post office).



Is there a rule or good guide as to which option should be used?


Answer



In English, there are three types of compound words:





  1. the closed form, in which the words are melded together, such as firefly, secondhand, softball, childlike, crosstown, redhead, keyboard, makeup, notebook;



  2. the hyphenated form, such as daughter-in-law, master-at-arms, over-the-counter, six-pack, six-year-old, mass-produced;


  3. and the open form, such as post office, real estate, middle class, full moon, half sister, attorney general.





For the most part, compound words that are created by adding a prefix are not hyphenated. For example, there are the words anteroom, extraordinary and coordinate. Some exceptions to this rule are (from the link above):





  1. compounds in which the second element is capitalized or a number:

    anti-Semitic, pre-1998, post-Freudian

  2. compounds which need hyphens to avoid confusion:
    un-ionized (as distinguished from unionized), co-op

  3. compounds in which a vowel would be repeated (especially to avoid confusion):
    co-op, semi-independent, anti-intellectual (but reestablish, reedit)

  4. compounds consisting of more than one word: (poster's note: these are phrasal adjectives)
    non-English-speaking, pre-Civil War

  5. compounds that would be difficult to read without a hyphen:
    pro-life, pro-choice, co-edited





Your original example of "well-intentioned" is also explained here:




The other time we must use hyphenation is to join a word to a past participle to create a single adjective preceding the noun it modifies: "a well-intentioned plan," for example, or "a horseshoe-shaped bar."




So, why isn't nonaggression hyphenated? It can be broken into non + aggression, so it is formed by adding a basic prefix onto the noun. In doing so, it breaks none of the exceptions to the rule: "aggression" is not capitalized, hyphenating the term doesn't avoid confusion, a vowel isn't repeated, the compound only consists of 2 words, and it is perfectly readable without a hyphen.


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











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



e.g.




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




Answer



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



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



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



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


Friday, February 21, 2014

semantics - How to analyze lightly varying senses of adjective *very*

Use of very as an adjective is (in my experience) most frequently attested in phrases like




...the very person I was looking for.





To use adjective very with the indefinite article sounds quite bizarre in this case:




?...a very person I was looking for.




But consider this sentence, where indefinite a is used:





Visualizing a very transformation of the master-slave relation, Thomas presses further: the slave is brother to the master, even doubly a brother.




OED treats the two uses as separate senses of the word, with the following definitions:






(first use):      With limitation (usually expressed by the or a possessive) to particular instances
(second use): Really or truly entitled to the name or designation



Here are two respective examples quoted in OED:




What would you say to me now, and I were your verie, verie Rosalind? (1616)

Thence we went into Queen Mary's room, and saw that beautiful portrait—that very queen and very woman. (1857)




Clearly, the difference in meaning between the two senses is quite light, and it seems to me like a kind of difference which is recurrent enough to have its own term. What is the proper term? Are there other English words having similarly related pairs of senses? And lastly, is OED jumping the gun in treating these as two senses? Could the difference in meaning instead be due to the choice of determiner?

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Why can't I use a regular modal verb here?

I have a question regarding the following question in a English grammar test:





Fill in the correct option in the blank:



What  ___  in order to get a permit to work in your country?



A) do I need to do
B) must I do




The correct answer (as per the key) is option A, but option B sounds fine to me.




Can anyone tell me why option A is better than option B?

grammar - What is the difference between those two sentences (grammatically and in meaning)?



  1. An inappropriate TV show for children should be banned on any type of channels.


  2. A TV show inappropriate for children should be banned on any type of channels.






It seems to me that there is a very subtle difference between these two sentences, but I do not completely understand it. What is the difference?



Also, as the structure of the noun phrase different, it makes me wonder if they use different grammar structure. Are those different in grammar structure, or are they just the same?

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

syntactic analysis - About the structure of ''There are/is''




I want to discuss the structure of ''There are/is''. First of all, what is the difference between:



There are three children.
and
Three children exist. Do they have the same meaning?



And secondly, In my native language, we would say that



''Üç çocuk vardır.''




''Üç çocuk'' = Three children,
''var'' = existence (something that exists, a being),
and ''dır'' is a copula.



So basically, this structure is not different from -for example- ''three children is a car''. ''a car'' and ''existence'' have the same function. But ın English, that structure that I have mentioned is confusing for me. I know that you are all used to it. Some can say ''What's the problem with that? It is just ''there are'' and ''there is.'' ''. I realize that I still did not ask a question. Well, let me try to ask a good one, I guess.



Normally, ''there'' means a place where I am not in that place. Is there any relevance between ''there'' that means a place where I am not in that place AND ''There'' that is used in the structure of ''There are/is''? What kind of structure is this? By the way, I am new in English. Please excuse my naive usage of language. What do you think about it?


Answer



I think you are referring to the 'existential there' (sometimes 'nonreferential there').




There's a useful link here:
https://www.thoughtco.com/existential-there-term-1690690


Monday, February 17, 2014

A word for the moment when you realise technology has outpaced you

Is there a word for that moment or age when you realise you can no longer keep up with technological advances?



As in: I just failed to work out how to pause a video on YouTube - I think I've hit 'that moment where technology has outpaced me'

How has using apostrophes in plurals caught on so?

I'm curious. How has wrongly inserting an apostrophe to indicate a plural noun become so widespread?



I was born in the 60s. Thirty years ago, in England at least, the only time you'd see it would be in greengrocers (Potato's 50p/lb - grrrr!). Now, it's everywhere. An extraordinary and increasing proportion of people seem to assume that it's required for almost every plural.



The thing is, it can't be laziness. It requires more effort, not less, to type the extra character, when in the majority of cases, an 's' is all you need.




How did it start? And how did it catch on?



Edit:



I should say, I've often suspected that it was originally a hypercorrection, like 'between you and I', also now widespread.



I suppose, that the more people see the construction, the more people that haven't either read widely (an increasing proportion of young people, I'd speculate) or been taught well, will assume it's correct and propagate it further. I suspect social media of contributing substantially to this process.



I think what I'm really asking, is, does anyone know of any actual evidence to support or refute these hypotheses?

punctuation - Should questions phrased as declarations end with a question mark?

Should a question masquerading as a declaration—like, "I wonder if you have any suggestions?"—end with a question mark or a period?

word choice - "Quick question" vs. "short question"



Which one would you prefer: "quick question" or "short question" for a question that you know is simple and will only take a moment to answer? Or maybe "simple question"? The problem I have with "quick question" is that I don't think a question may be "quick", because it is not moving anywhere.


Answer



What any of us might prefer is immaterial. A short question is one that contains only a few words. A quick question is one which the questioner hopes, perhaps unrealistically, can be readily dealt with. Quick has many meanings, and they are certainly not limited to describing a fast-moving object.


Sunday, February 16, 2014

tenses - Please help me understand when to use -ing on a verb

There are two questions I'm struggling with.




(1) That I have little interest in art is not the fault of my parents,
taking me to art exhibits and galleries from the time I was ten years old.





Why is the "taking" wrong? I'm guessing it has to be "who have taken" because of "from the time I was ten years old" but I still don't understand why it's wrong to say "taking." The word "parents" comes right before the comma so it shouldn't be an ambiguous modifier. After all, wouldn't it be correct to say the following:




Taking me to art exhibits and galleries from the time I was ten years
old, my parents are not at fault for my having little interest in art.




My next question:





(2A) Though she missed her old friend, Sharon was generally happy at
her new school, having much smaller classes than her previous
school.



(2B) Though she missed her old friend, Sharon was generally happy at
her new school: it had much smaller classes than her previous
school.





I know why (2B) is correct, but I don't understand why (2A) is incorrect. The modifier "having much smaller classes than her previous school" is correctly describing "her new school" so what exactly is the problem?



Thanks in advance!

grammaticality - My grandma believed that the Sun "revolves" or "revolved" around the Earth?

We all know that universal statements are always in present tense. For example,





My grandma did not believe that the Earth revolves around the Sun.




Here, though the sentence is in past tense, Earth revolves around the Sun remains in simple present tense.



But in case of a false belief that is contrary to a universal truth, does the above rule apply similarly? For example,




My grandma believed that the Sun revolves around the Earth.





Will this sentence be taken as grammatically correct? Shouldn't it be "My grandma believed that the Sun revolved around the Earth"?

Saturday, February 15, 2014

grammar - Must I use "their" or "them" in the following instance

Which of the following is correct?




In the case of "their" being granted a bond the deal will go through.



or:



In the case of "them" being granted a bond the deal will go through.

"That" deletion, or is oxforddictionaries.com wrong?

Oxforddictionaries.com have given the following title to one of their articles:




Nine words you didn't know had offensive origins



Of course, I'm not in a position to question the competence of the editors, and the title of the post is a mere provocation, but... can someone, please, parse it for me? IMHO the sentence in full is:



The nine words that, you didn't know, had offensive origins



The "you didn't..." part would be then a non restrictive clause and it could be omitted, and the "that" would not be a conjunction between "words" and "you" but between "words" and "had". Therfore, it shouldn't have been omitted. Right?...



(Funny thing, though. If I were to say it myself without giving it too much thought, I'd of course go with "Nine words you didn't know had offensive origins", because it just sounds right to me. But the question is - isn't the accepted usage in this case grammatically "flawed" in a way?

grammatical number - "[adjective] and [adjective] [noun]" -- Should the noun be singular or plural?



In a scientific paper I submitted, a reviewer suggested that I change the sentence




The operation just substitutes "(m, l)" with "m" on both the sender and the receiver side.





to




The operation just substitutes "(m, l)" with "m" on both the sender and the receiver sides.




by changing the last word from singular to plural.




There is only one sender side and only one receiver side, so my intuition tells me to use the former version, since




  • one would clearly write "...both the sender side and the receiver side" and

  • I'd also write "The green and the blue box are standing on the table" (instead of "boxes").



However, I failed to find a grammatical rule for this, and English is not my main language. Is the reviewer right? And why?


Answer



The first sentence features ellipsis, that is, the omission of elements which are recoverable from the linguistic context or the situation. A full version would be on both the sender side and the receiver side. Once we reach the end of the sentence we can recover side and place it in our minds after sender. That’s not too difficult to do because the missing element occurs within a few words. However, some readers might be uncomfortable in performing that little bit of linguistic gymnastics, and that is presumably what the reviewer felt.




The answer to your question is that both sentences are grammatical, and both convey the same meaning. If you think your readers might have difficulty with the omission of side after sender, then use the version that uses the plural: on both the sender and the receiver sides. Alternatively, use the full version of the ellipted form with the singular: on both the sender side and the receiver side.


meaning - Present perfect vs present perfect continuous for past unfinished actions relevant to the present

John has stood there for 5 hours.




vs



John has been standing there for 5 hours.



Is there any difference in meaning between the two sentences? Both actions are unfinished. Both are relevant to the present (John is tired and sweaty and hungry). Are there situations where we'd prefer using one tense over the other?

Friday, February 14, 2014

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











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




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




or





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




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



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


Answer



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







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



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






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




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



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


grammar - Usage of some with plural nouns

Please, help me understand the grammar behind "some" and "zero article".



As I know, we use zero article with plurals in the same cases when we use indefinite articles with singular -




  • making general reference

  • making mention for the first time




On the internet I couldn't find that "zero article + plural" is used while talking about something for the first time. Instead I could only find the rule that it is used for general reference.
Is it so?



Here is an example:



"(Some ?) Computers were brought to me. They were expensive"



Would it be correct to say without "Some"? I understand that this is not a very natural thing to say, but from the position of grammar can it be used for the first mention? I assume that the listener has not heard about me buying any computers.




I also read that "Some" is an analog of a/an for plural, maybe this is why I couldn't find the rule of using zero article for first mention - "some" should be used instead?



What do you think about these questions?



Thanks.

grammar - Is "not actual" in "potential, not actual harm" an adjective phrase or an adverbial phrase?



I think this affects comma placement, right?



If it's an adjective phrase modifying harm, then I think it would be:





"potential, not actual harm"




If it's an adverb phrase modifying potential (by saying it another way, kind of like an appositive, but with an adjective instead of a noun), then I think it would be:




"potential, not actual, harm"





Saying potential another way is really the reason to put not actual in there in the first place, so treating not actual as an adverbial phrase seems to make more sense purpose-wise. Another way of thinking about not actual as an adverbial phrase might be:




"potential (and by that I mean not actual) harm"




However, I'm not really sure, especially since not actual certainly makes sense as an adjective modifying harm, which seems simpler. If a phrase could be seen as modifying an adjective or a noun, maybe for simplicity it should just be seen as modifying the noun?



I guess my possibly crazy-sounding hypothesis is that it's in the middle on some kind of spectrum between adjective and adverb and we should do some kind of primary purpose test to determine which one it is for comma placement? (I can picture English teachers everywhere cringing at that suggestion...) I think this is basically what I was thinking above when I suggested it might be an adverbial phrase. (The mental picture of cringing English teachers everywhere is why I think that suggestion might be wrong.)




Of course, this could be avoided altogether by just saying:




"potential harm, not actual harm"




But that's no fun. :)



So what do you think? Adjective phrase or adverbial phrase?


Answer




This is an example of hypozeugma in which two phrases (here "potential" and "not actual") are associated syntactically with a single following word (here "harm"). This is rhetorical shorthand for




potential harm [and] not actual harm




This makes actual an adjectival modifier of harm. To get an adverbial modifier for potential, you'd have to say




a not actually potential harm





which is redundant since something that's only potential is not actual.



If the usage is contrasting and emphatic, then a single comma is appropriate. If, on the other hand, the usage is that of an aside (with the meaning of your parenthetical "and by that I mean"), then both commas are the way to go.


prepositions - Meaning and usage of “be of”




As I'm preparing my GMAT test, I see the "be of" structure very frequently.
for example




By 1940, the pilot Jacqueline Cochran held seventeen official national and international speed records, earned at a time when aviation was still so new that many of the planes she flew were of dangerously experimental design.




This really bothers me as it contradicts the conclusion from the post
Meaning and usage of "be of", because in GMAT writings the "be of" looks very flexible. I find it's very difficult to understand sometime, but I know these are really fine and efficient writings.




I guess my question was, in this case, can you get rid of the "of" and what the usage of it here?
If I take off the "of" here, does it modify the meaning of this sentence?




By 1940, the pilot Jacqueline Cochran held seventeen official national and international speed records, earned at a time when aviation was still so new that many of the planes she flew were dangerously experimental design.



Answer



This is a different phemomenon from the one discussed in the "Meaning and usage of "be of" post. That one describes a set of idiomatic predicate prepositional phrases -- be of assistance/service/use/help -- that have special pragmatic uses.



This phenomenon is a headless relative clause that happens to have a prepositional phrase. If you put back all the stuff that has been left out and unwind the transformations you get something like





  • ... the planes that she flew were planes that were of dangerously experimental design.



That-deletion results in




  • ... the planes she flew ...




and Whiz-deletion results in




  • ... the planes she flew were planes of dangerously experimental design.



And, since planes just occurred a few words back, it gets deleted here, producing a headless relative clause meaning "[ones that are] of dangerously experimental design".
These are all optional, and unordered, and independent, like most syntax.




English deletes a lot of stuff from relative clauses, producing sentences that look like other sentences with very different uses and conventions.


Thursday, February 13, 2014

word choice - How can I ask, "Why did you send me this link?" in a polite way?



The context is I told someone I'm looking for meetups in my area to network with certain people and this person sent me a link that does not seem relevant at all. How do I ask, "Why did you send me this link?" in a polite way?



If I didn't care, I'd just ignore the link, but the reason I want to ask the question is because maybe they understand a way to use the resource in a way that I don't. I'd be doing myself a disservice by not learning that.


Answer




"I've taken a look at the link you sent me, but there must be something about it that I missed. What was it that you were particularly wanting to draw my attention to there?"




grammatical number - When can you pluralize uncountable nouns?



I have a two part question, the second depending on the answer of the first. I don't know if that is frowned upon, but I'm not sure how else to ask.



Foil is an uncountable noun so it is not pluralized, but is it correct to use the plural when referring to several kinds of foils? Just like fish is plural but some people refer to several species of fish as fishes?




For example,




That company makes aluminum foils




Meaning, they make many kinds of foils out of aluminum



If this is OK, then why is





"organic and inorganic matters"




wrong but




"organic and inorganic matter"





right?



There are several kinds of matter being referred to. It seems to be following the same rule.


Answer



Many nouns which are normally uncountable are potentially countable in certain contexts. It’s a matter not so much of grammar as of the nature of the object to which the noun refers. There can clearly be different kinds of foil, and that makes it possible to speak of foils. Matter is a concept that that lends itself less well to pluralisation, but the Corpus of Contemporary American English has this record:




A 1992 study estimated that CSOs release between four and fourteen
billion pounds of solids and organic matters on a yearly basis

nationwide.




Organic and inorganic matters might in some contexts be an unwise formulation, because it could be taken to mean ‘organic and inorganic topics’.



David Crystal comments on the pluralisation of uncountable nouns in the latest post on his blog.


comparisons - What is the difference between "history" and "log"?



In computer science, "log" is often used over "history" when keeping track of events (see /log and .log in Unix filesystems, and "git log" with the Git version control system). I can see that "log" is shorter, so that is one advantage over "history". However with "history" there is less confusion because it does not have a second meaning, as far as I could tell. Whereas "log" is also used in mathematics.




  1. What is the difference between "history" and "log"?

  2. When to use "log" over "history"?


  3. When to use "history" over "log"?

  4. Why is "log" often used in computer science?


Answer



The word log originated from its usage in 'Ship Log Book', which originally referred to the book for recording readings from the 'Chip Log' (apparatus containing an actual wooden log, giving it the name).



The usage of word log thus is more accurate when used for maintaining well defined records in a more or less scientific way to potentially derive specific information in the future like ship's speed or investigating issues in computer software.



A log does captures historical information but lacks narrative and is generally very specific in its scope.




In computer science it makes sense to use the word log because computer logs keep track of well defined(and formatted in most instances) events and related information.



I hope this helps.


grammar - Is "curious if" improper to use compared to alternatives such as "curious as to" or "curious whether"?

Consider the following line, which I've heard this particular construction frequently:





"I’m curious if other people feel like I do."




The construct specifically is that of using "I'm curious if" to preface something that the speaker is curious about.



I was recently told by someone that this is improper English, as it implies a conditional - that is, "If other people feel like I do, then I am curious". The proper way suggested was "I'm curious as to whether other people feel like I do."



I can see where it's coming from, at least that the former can be read in that fashion and that the latter is unambiguous. However, is it actually improper or logically incorrect?




Prior to asking this question, I did a quick check on this site - there were at the time 48 instances where users used the phrase "I am curious if (some situation is true)", while there were 46 instances where users used the phrase "I am curious as to (whether something is true, where the rule works in this fashion, etc.)". So they both look equally used, and the users using them ranged from new users to reaching the 20k reputation level, so it struck me as not something about being improper English. Rather, it struck that if anything it might be considered maybe a colloquialism or otherwise casual lingo.

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

water with a definite article or without one



The sentence below comes from Word Smart II: How to Build a More Educated Vocabulary.





Fathoming, at sea, is measuring the depth of the water, usually by dropping a weighted line over the side of a boat. On land, to fathom is to do the rough figurative equivalent of measuring the depth of water.




Why the 1st sentence says 'the depth of the water' in contrast to 'the depth of water' in the last. Is there no difference in any way or is there any implication I don't know about?


Answer



In the first instance, the depth of the water is the depth of the specific medium below the boat. A boat also floats on water, but this would not refer to the physical body of water on which the boat sits but rather the generic medium that keeps the boat afloat. If the boat floats on the water, we better know which exact river, lake or sea the writer is talking about.



In the second instance, the use of the verb (to fathom) is figurative, and the imagined measurement is not of a specific body of water but rather of the generic medium 'water'.




Similarly, while we drink water to quench our thirst (the generic liquid), when there's a pitcher of water (generic) sitting on a table but out of reach, we ask our neighbour to "please pass the water" (the specific thing).


grammaticality - Thank You for inviting Steve and {me/I}?

When writing a thank you note from a husband and wife, is it correct to write the note as...




"Thank you for inviting Steve and me to your home for the birthday celebration."





Or is it,




"Thank you for inviting Steve and I"?




This seems so simple but yet I get stumped every time :/

Word or phrase for multilingual pun/word play




The question is about multilingual jokes or puns, and if there is a word for them in English. Some examples:



A German-English friend sometimes says Senkfuss instead of “thank you.” Senkfuss means “flat foot” in German, but the joke is that it sounds a little like “thank you” said with a German accent.



A French-English family I used to know would say “quel smell!” The French quel and the English “smell” rhyme, and put together, if you understand both languages, they mean “what a smell!”



In this documentary, Hélène Cixous describes how her non-German-speaking father used to say in French, en dessous du bras (“under the arm”) in reply to a question to which he did not know the answer. Under the arm, you would find Schweiss (sweat in German), which to HC’s father’s untrained ear, might have sounded like the German Ich weiss nicht (I don’t know).



There are thousands of these jokes that require a knowledge of two or more languages to make sense. In my observation they tend to arise within families or small communities where the knowledge of multiple languages is shared.




Is there a name in English for this kind of multilingual word play? I Googled “multilingual puns” and “multilingual word games” without a lot of success, neither in finding a more concise or descriptive term or phrase, nor in actually finding more of what I’m talking about.



(I know extra questions are discouraged -- and this part'll get shot down for being off-topic -- but if anyone knows of any sites where these jokes are shared, I would be very much indebted to you if you could leave the addresses in the comments!).


Answer



Interlingual pun seems to be quite common in Google search results.


Tuesday, February 11, 2014

syntactic analysis - what's the structure of a sentence




The issue was, and still is, hotly debated at the grass roots level,
with children coming to our schools speaking more than 200 languages.




In the above sentence, I guess the subject is "issue" and the predicate is "was/is".

"hotly debated at the grass roots level" is used to embellish "issue". And I'm
confused by "with children coming to our schools speaking more than 200 languages".
Is the object "with children coming to our schools speaking more than 200 languages"?


Answer



No. As usual, this sentence has been done many things to, and needs to be unwound.



There's one main clause, in skeleton form




  • The issue was debated




and also a subordinate gerund clause that's the object of an adverbial preposition with




  • (with) children coming to our schools speaking more than 200 languages



which itself contains yet another adverbial gerund clause, this time with A-Equi





  • (children) speaking more than 200 languages



OK. Now, back to the main clause, which is a Passive clause, via Conjunction Reduction from




  • Indef debated the issue hotly at the grass roots level and
    Indef still debates the issue hotly at the grass roots level




So the structure of the sentence is what's visible on the surface. Just like the structure of an iceberg.


expressions - Grammaticality of "I was not alive"



I have been corrected twice in the sentence




I was not alive, at that point in time.




We were having a discussion involving life in the 1980s, and at some point I said I was not alive so I would not know. Someone corrected me saying the correct way of saying it is I was not born at point in time.




To me it seems perfectly grammatically correct to say I was not alive, for it is a true statement. It seems to me that saying I was not alive means that I was dead before, which then turns it into a philosophical argument.




I was not alive at the point in time.




This seems to be equally valid with I was not born or I did not exist.



Is it just context or it is just the way we say it just because? Am I correct to keep saying I was not alive?


Answer




You might want to remove the comma so that it reads, "I was not alive at that point in time." Other than that, there appears to be nothing grammatically wrong.



The argument is likely a philosophical one at heart, due to the ambiguous definition of when we "become alive," if we inherit the liveliness of our parents, etc.



If you want to avoid didactism and mantra, suggest that you weren't born at that point. A sentence like "I wasn't born yet" does suffice, since you are conveying the same sentiment without giving anyone the ability to inject their philosophy into an argument.


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.








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".


grammaticality - Is "I just spent all my money" grammatically incorrect?




Lyircs of Free by Natalia Kills:




I'm free



I just spent all my money




but I rocked that like it don't cost a thing




Shouldn't it be "I've just spent all my money"? As far as I remember, our English told us to use Present Prefect in such case because of the just.


Answer



American English tends to use the past tense in places where British English uses the present perfect construction, and this may be one such place. But in any case, the lyrics of popular music are not always written in Standard English and will consequently conform to a different set of grammatical rules.


word choice - "I", "me" and "myself"








What is correct?
We are a family of four: my father, my mother, my brother and me.
or
We are a family of four: my father, my mother, my brother and I.
or
We are a family of four: my father, my mother, my brother and myself.

syntactic analysis - Is it acceptable to start a sentence with an adverb of frequency?

Daily the company sells millions of chocolate bars.



The sentence sounds really odd to me but is it wrong?

idioms - Ways to ensure the interlocutor understands you



What are the best ways to ask an interlocutor whether he understands you in different circumstances (formal conversation, informal talk)?




What are the best ways to answer such questions meaning "I understand," "I understand and agree," and "I don't understand"?



What are the best ways to let the speaker know that you understand him and/or agree , or you don't understand when you were not asked?


Answer



Interlocutor is a word that is rarely used in ordinary conversations.




What are the best ways to ask interlocutor whether he understands you in different circumstances (formal conversation, informal talk)?





It depends on the circumstances, an interviewer might take a more authoritative tone, an interviewee might choose a more submissive or respectful tone



Formal: "Am I being clear?"
Informal: "Does that make sense?" or "Yes?"




What are the best ways to answer such questions meaning 1) I understand, 2) I understand and agree, 3) I don't understand.




There are many ways and what is "best" depends on context - relationship, mood, circumstances.




1) "I understand."
2) "Yes."
3) "Pardon?" (informal, polite) or "what on earth are you talking about?" (informal)
"Sorry, I don't understand, could you please explain." (more formal, respectful) or ...




What are the best ways to let speaker know that you understand him and/or agree or don't understand when you was not asked?





Say "I don't understand you", "I agree" or "I don't understand". In the first or last case, simply insert "Sorry, " at the start to increase the politeness level.


grammar - I didn't know he IS/WAS

I didn't know he was/is such a good person.



Which is correct in the above sentence. Is/was and why ?



(Assume the person is still alive and is still a good person)

Sunday, February 9, 2014

meaning - What does "wil(d)in'" mean?

In Rihanna's song "FourFiveSeconds", this line is sung in the chorus:




Now I'm four, five seconds from wilin'...




I searched on Google for the definition of "wilin'" and got this:





wildin' (also wilin') verb



to have fun, act crazy with a group of friends




Source: Online Slang Dictionary



Whilst this definition sounds accurate, I would like to know if there are any other meanings.




Also, how common is "wildin'" in spoken American English, and in what dialect or culture?

word choice - Which form would be correct: cyber security, cyber-security or cybersecurity?

I want to stop changing my mind, I've used all three of the forms cyber security, cyber-security or cybersecurity at different times. There have been previous discussions on this (e.g. here and here) and I'm looking for a reasoned recommendation. I know there is never a simple answer in language due to the constant evolution of speech, but a reasoned consensus should be possible. Don't waste time on what cyber means, concentrate of the usage form. Why not the cybersecurity form, common in the America's, yet tagged as a misspelled in my UK version of Microsoft Word. The cyber security form is common in Europe yet I come across many documents in which both versions, and all three versions are used interchangeably. My preference would be to use the hyphen form to strengthen the specific computer/software related version of security. The single word form seems incorrect since I can think of no other security word without a hyphenated prefix (self-security is a rare hyphenated example). Other types of security are separated words, e.g. information security, financial security, physical security. Usage without the hyphen makes sense in other forms, e.g. cyberphobia. Let's see the consensus :)

punctuation - Reimplement or re-implement?




Which form is correct (or more correct): reimplement or re-implement?




And to extend the question a little bit, are there any rules concerning both, e.g. re-scan or rescan, re-evaluation or reevaluation?



Edit:



The primary question is if both versions are correct (or which one is more correct from the English grammar's point of view). I know that both are in use, it's easy to do Google search for example to find out that "reimplement" is even more widely used than "re-implement". But in that case, why LibreOffice marks "reimplement" as incorrect? Is the construction informal? Incorrect? Because clearly is quite popular.



The second part of the question is somehow answered by the other question pointed to in the comment, e.g. I may use the hyphen if that makes the meaning more clear (which doesn't apply to this case IMHO).


Answer



Thanks for all the answers, but I found what I was looking for in the Hyphens with the Prefix re article:





Rule: Use the hyphen with the prefix re only when re means again AND omitting the hyphen would cause confusion with another word.




The article then provides some examples (which I am not copying here).



In other words, "reimplement" is the grammatically correct version because there is no other meaning associated with the word "reimplement" and therefore the use of hyphen is not necessary.



This somehow confirms why there is more results in favor of "reimplement" than "re-implement" on Google - the later (less correct, if not incorrect) form is probably a result of the confusion around the usage of hyphen with re.




This is of course based on the assumption that the article is trustful.



Edit: Cater for re-examine



The same page mentions an additional Rule:




Rule 3. For clarity, many writers hyphenate prefixes ending in a vowel
when the root word begins with the same letter.




Example: ultra-ambitious semi-invalid re-elect




http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/hyphens.asp


prepositions - be expected from vs. be expected by

Would you let me know the difference between the following sentences?





  1. The company’s third loan payment is expected from ABC Bank on Friday.

  2. The company’s third loan payment is expected by ABC Bank on Friday.

  3. The third loan payment is expected from the company on Friday.





I think #2 and #3 have almost the same meaning, but I can't understand #1.
I don't know why 'from' is used in #1. #2 and #3 is much more clear than #1.
(Sorry, there is no context, so please make up some contexts for the above sentences.)

grammar - word order of "become," "sufficiently", "advanced" in this sentence



So this is still a mystery to me. Can someone help me please? This is the question:





It was only when electric motors ______________ to become portable
that vacuum cleaners became common household items.



1) became advanced sufficiently



2) sufficiently became advanced



3) had sufficiently become advanced



4) had become sufficiently advanced





And please tell me why the 3 wrong answers are wrong. Also, can we put an adverb like "sufficiently" between "had" and "become"? Does the answer to the last question only apply to this sentence or is it always like that?
And one last thing, please choose one of the answers given. This was a test, so no other answers were available.


Answer



The fourth one is the correct one.
Reasoning:
First of all, let us focus on why the fourth alternative is the correct choice. In the sentence, we are talking about the order of two events in which the second occurred after the first one had already happened because the second event was conducive only due to the happening of the first one. Hence, we need to use past perfect tense here leading to the cancellation of the first two options.



Now the question is about "advanced sufficiently" or "sufficiently advanced". Here we are trying to focus on the word "advanced" since if the electric motors hadn't become advanced, we wouldn't have seen portable vacuum cleaners. In order to focus the word "advanced", we need to put the adverb "sufficiently" just before it (since we are interested in the advancement of the technology).




P.S.: The third law of British science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke states: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws)


pronouns - Sentence: use of is/are with you yourself



Can't seem to figure this one out:




Of course, it is more difficult to analyze those signs if you yourself is/are stressed beyond belief.




Both seem to sound wrong (or maybe I'm overworking). Removing yourself solves it; yet I'd like to still keep the emphasis. As far as I'm concerned, the double pronoun is perfectly fine to use, and also is present in different languages: German "Sie selbst"; Russian "вы сами"; Latvian "jūs paši"; etc.



Answer



It's are.



You goes with are and the emphatic yourself (or yourselves if plural) doesn't change that.




Of course, it is more difficult to analyze those signs if you yourself are stressed beyond belief.



Saturday, February 8, 2014

british english - Orwell: "A glimmer [is] one who watches vacant motor-cars." What does this mean?

Title is a quote from Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London. In this section he goes through a bunch of London slang terms and what they mean, but I don't understand his definition. What does it mean to watch vacant motor-cars? The only thing I can think of is someone who you pay when you park who makes sure nobody steals your car when it's gone. But how does that work? What assurance does the driver have that the person watching won't just leave or steal the car themselves?

grammar - word order of "become," "sufficiently", "advanced" in this sentence



So this is still a mystery to me. Can someone help me please? This is the question:





It was only when electric motors ______________ to become portable
that vacuum cleaners became common household items.



1) became advanced sufficiently



2) sufficiently became advanced



3) had sufficiently become advanced




4) had become sufficiently advanced




And please tell me why the 3 wrong answers are wrong. Also, can we put an adverb like "sufficiently" between "had" and "become"? Does the answer to the last question only apply to this sentence or is it always like that?
And one last thing, please choose one of the answers given. This was a test, so no other answers were available.


Answer



The fourth one is the correct one.
Reasoning:
First of all, let us focus on why the fourth alternative is the correct choice. In the sentence, we are talking about the order of two events in which the second occurred after the first one had already happened because the second event was conducive only due to the happening of the first one. Hence, we need to use past perfect tense here leading to the cancellation of the first two options.




Now the question is about "advanced sufficiently" or "sufficiently advanced". Here we are trying to focus on the word "advanced" since if the electric motors hadn't become advanced, we wouldn't have seen portable vacuum cleaners. In order to focus the word "advanced", we need to put the adverb "sufficiently" just before it (since we are interested in the advancement of the technology).



P.S.: The third law of British science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke states: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws)


participles - Participial clause?



On ELL a user has asked how to parse the emphasized -ing form in this sentence from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone:




Harry swung at it with the bat to stop it from breaking his nose, and sent it zigzagging away into the air.




I am puzzled how to answer.




Zigzagging could be taken as an adjectival participle modifying it; certainly if you delete zigzagging you're left with away into the air as the ordinary complement demanded by send: you send something somewhere.



But that isn't how the semantics work for me. Send here seems to me to be a causative and zigzag a non-finite verb, which could be paraphrased with an infinitive:




He sent it zigzagging away into the air = He caused it to zigzag away into the air.
He sent him riding away to London. = He caused him to ride away to London.
He sent him packing. = He caused him to pack [i.e., to hurry away].




Thus it zigzagging away seems to me to be a full clause. But I have not found any formal description of subordinate clauses employing the -ing form where the clause does not act as a nominal, and that is clearly not the case here: ordinary NP complements to sent are Direct Objects and Indirect Objects.




So how do Modern Grammars analyze this construction, by what tests do they establish this analysis, and what do they call the construction?


Answer



McCawley doesn't say much about it, as far as I can see, but it appears to be a variety of the complex of serial verb constructions around motion verbs and their inchoatives and causatives, like the various serial verb constructions mentioned in this freshman grammar exam question (#4, restricted to come and go):




  • Bill went and dug some clams. (go and + V)

  • He asked us to come eat the clams. (come + V)

  • He said “Come and get it!” (come and + V)

  • We’re going to go eat them. (go + V)


  • We'll go swimming afterwards. (go + V-ing)

  • We'll come strolling in late tonight. (come + V-ing)



But there are lots more verbs that cause motion, and motion has a number of verb-like properties, so this construction complex gets much broader in scope. E.g,




Harry swung at it with the bat
to stop it from breaking his nose,
and






  • went muttering curses out the door

  • came lurching out the door

  • brought her shuddering back to consciousness

  • plucked it screaming out of the air

  • sent it zigzagging away into the air

  • tossed it spinning down the stairs

  • dropped it unmoving into the cauldron




There are a number of possibilities here:
the initial verb part of the serial verb may be




  • an intransitive motion verb (go, come)

  • a transitive causative/inchoative of a motion verb (respectively: take, bring)

  • a transitive verb that entails some kind of induced motion (pluck, send, toss, drop, etc.)



while the gerund part normally describes some property of





  • the motion induced by the verb (lurching, zigzagging, spinning), or

  • the object or person caused to move (muttering, shuddering, screaming, unmoving)



In either case, it is the moving object that functions as subject of the gerund constituent and displays the property; one may give it several different kinds of PS, but I'd treat these more or less the same way I treat phrasal verbs, as a discontinuous construction with two parts that share the semantic load, subject to easy idiomatization and extension to many metaphors.


pronouns - Is naming the first person last proper grammar or just proper manners?











I cringe when someone does not follow the rule of naming the first person last:




Who went to the party?
- Me, Bobby, Sally, and Joe.




This is surprisingly common in informal spoken American English. I admit have a strong cultural bias against this practice. My native language is Spanish and listeners in informal situations often reply with el burro por delante (the donkey in front) to correct the speaker.



Another post (Which of these sentences use the correct grammar?) partially covers this topic but the answers do not conclude whether it is proper grammar or just proper manners.



Answer



It's a matter of style, or manners, if you will. Grammatically, all of the following are equally fine:





  • Jack and I went to the store.

  • I and Jack went to the store.

  • I and that stupid moron went to the store.




Friday, February 7, 2014

word order - When may adjectives precede determiners? (E.g. too difficult a task)



The expression too difficult a task sounds a little pompous, but it doesn't sound ungrammatical. According to my folk-beliefs about English grammar, determiners precede adjectives. However, the expression too difficult a task seems to controvert that belief.



Additionally, the expression too difficult of a task seems grammatical too.




  1. Under what conditions may determiners precede adjectives?

  2. Are there conditions under which too difficult of a task would be a more grammatical expression than too difficult a task would be?




(This question does not ask what the question “How big of a problem” vs. “how big a problem” asks. That question does not pertain to determiners.)


Answer



This construction seems to require a modifier that makes a comparison, such as too, (not) as, more, equally, less. Intensifiers which don't have this quality don't seem to do it: *very difficult a task doesn't seem to work.



The construction with of is recent, and traditionalists don't regard it as grammatical. But it is clearly grammatical for some people (though not for me). I think it is predominently American, and I'm sure that it arose because of the unusualness of the traditional construction.


grammatical number - Does the plural include the singular?



Does the plural include the singular? And if so, in what sort of cases?



This question has arisen because of the example sentence below.




Amendment shall be permitted only in cases of:
1. deletion of claims
2. correction of error



My co-worker, who is not a native speaker of English, insists that if only one error is corrected (or if only one claim is deleted), then amendment will not be permitted. Is this the necessary interpretation?



Is there a specific name for this issue? And if plural does include the singular, what are some less legalistic examples that can be used to explain that the plural form is not necessarily, well, plural?


Answer



There are a few issues that seem to be in play.




In most cases, a reference to plurals in rules also includes the singular. And vice versa.




In the event of errors, accommodation will be made.




While the plural is used, most readers would believe that this applied to a single error as well as multiple errors. Similarly




In the event of error, accommodation will be made.





It means the same thing.



Sometimes, to make clear that both singular and plural circumstances apply, parenthetical plurals are used.




In the event of error(s), accommodation will be made.





This makes it explicit that both singular and plural problems will be adjusted for.



I am not aware of a term that names this characteristic (or conundrum).



As you have suggested, this is a problem often faced in legal drafting (which you wish to avoid). To ensure clarity, many contracts say something that means "plural words can cover singular events and singular words can cover plural events."



To convey this simply you could say




Amendment shall be permitted only in cases of: 1. deletion of one or more claims 2. correction of one or more errors.





Your example also raises another issue. It lists two conditions:





  1. deletion of claims 2. correction of error





There is some ambiguity as to whether these conditions are conjunctive or disjunctive as written. Does it mean




when there is both 1. deletion of one or more claims AND 2. correction of one or more errors




or does it mean




when there is either 1. deletion of one or more claims OR 2. correction of one or more errors, BUT NOT BOTH





or does it mean




when there is either 1. deletion of one or more claims OR 2. correction of one or more errors, OR BOTH




You need to clarify whether you mean






    1. AND 2.



    1. BUT NOT 2.



    1. AND/OR 2.




pronunciation - What are the historical justifications for first-syllable stress in the word “orthoepy”?



Funnily enough, the word orthoepy (or orthoëpy) meaning “(the study of) correct (or standard) pronunciation” has no single established correct pronunciation: it may be stressed on either the first or the second syllable (there is also variation in the pronunciation of the vowel in the penult syllable).




I’m curious about how the variant with stress on the first syllable originated, and how it has been justified by the orthoepists who have favored it. (A Wordnik blog post by Charles Harrington Elster, the author of “The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations”, seems to say that he favors the first-syllable stress only because “authorities have ... long countenanced” it and because he thinks it better emphasizes the root “ortho”; this seems like a lame explanation to me.)



The earliest source I am familar with that describes this pronunciation is John Walker’s Critical Pronouncing Dictionary (1824). Walker says it is accented on the first (pre-antepenult) syllable, citing Elphinston and Nares (p. 429). It’s not clear from his respelling system whether he means for the penult syllable to have secondary stress and a long vowel (/i:/) or no stress and a reduced vowel /ɪ/, as Walker seems to transcribe both of these sounds as e².



In an earlier section about general principles of stress placement in compounds derived from Greek he gives the following odd justification for this stress pattern: “Orthoëpy, having no consonant in the antepenultimate syllable, naturally throws its accent on the first” (p. 54).



I don’t understand why this seemed “natural” to Walker. Walker loved analogies; are there any other Greek compound words where this happens that I’ve missed? I actually can only think of counterexamples, such as psychiatry.



In fact, I wasn’t able to find any other Greek-derived or Latinate words of any type ending in "V.VCy" that had stress earlier than the antepenult. There are a lot of words like sponta’neity with antepenult stress on a vowel in an open syllable. I did find polyploidy, haploidy, diploidy but in these words the “oi” is pronounced as a diphthong rather than as two vowels in hiatus, so they don’t really seem to have the same structure. (I also found the words breviary and zedoary, but I disregarded these as they end in the suffix “-ary” < Latin “-arium/-aria/-arius” and words with this suffix tend to follow different principles of stress).




I realize this question may seem to be a matter of opinion. But, I don’t actually want an answer that describes your preferred pronunciation. I want to learn facts relevant to the pronunciation of this word, in particular:




  • whether there are any words that back up Walker’s idea that antepenultimate syllables that don’t have a consonant after them are less likely to be stressed


  • whether any of Walker’s contemporaries or precursors gave a different explanation for why this word is, or should be stressed on the first syllable.




I don’t think these are matters of opinion. 
Also, note that this is not a duplicate of either of my previous questions about the position of stress in specific other words, Why does "stigmata" [often] have penult stress? and Can the stress pattern of "uroboros/ouroboros" be explained by any principle, or is it random? Those questions were just open-ended “why is this word stressed this way” questions; in this question I’m specifically focusing on the two points listed above (if there are any analogous words with the same stress pattern, and whether anyone discussing the pronunciation of this word in the past gave another justification than the ones Walker and Elster give).


Answer




Looking at words beginning with ortho- there seem to be two possible pronunciations:




/ɔːrˈθɒ-/ as in orthogonal or orthography,
/ˈɔːrθə-/ as in orthodox or orthodontist,




where the second pronunciation has primary or secondary stress on the first syllable.



But in English phonology, the vowel /ɒ/ must be followed by a consonant, so the first pronunciation is ruled out for orthoepy. This is presumably what Walker meant when he said “Orthoëpy, having no consonant in the antepenultimate syllable, naturally throws its accent on the first” (1822).




You could also pronounce orthoepy /ɔːrˈθoʊ.iː.pi/. This seems to be what Robert Nares meant when he said that "the accented vowel is long in the antepenultima" (1782). However, there aren't any other words where ortho- is pronounced this way. I suspect this discouraged people from using it.