word choice - Make/take a photograph?

In English we say "take a photograph" whereas in some other languages one would say "make a photograph".

The French say "take" even though they "make" far more often than we do in English, and Germans say "make". The Spanish are also in the "take" camp, so it seems to be related to romance/germanic distinction, further afield, Russians say "make" (I think).

Some say that cameras steal your soul. Saying that a camera removes (one Spanish verb is literally "remove") rather than constructs the photograph seems to betray a very different philosophy and attitude to photography as a creative process.

So, how did we end up using "take" rather than "make"?

punctuation - Simultaneous comma and dash use

There are a lot of posts asking if it's okay to mix commas and dashes like this:

I walked my dog – who is nice, around the neighborhood.

And that's definitely not correct.

But what about the case of using the dash and comma simultaneously?

Which of these is correct?

I walked my dog, Frank – who is nice, around the neighborhood.

I walked my dog, Frank – who is nice – around the neighborhood.

EDIT:

The sentence contains incidental information within incidental information.

An appositive within an appositive. This is equivalent to:

I walked my dog [Frank (who is nice)] around the neighborhood.

However, when using dashes and commas, I've read I can't do this:

I walked my dog, Frank – who is nice –, around the neighborhood.

So, I have to close two, "brackets," with one punctuation mark: a dash or a comma.

The lack of a "closing" dash troubles me just as much as the lack of a "closing" comma.

punctuation - How to correctly use double quotation marks at the end of a sentence?

Group A:

1. This is so-called "Moon Cake." // The period is inside the double quatation marks




2. This is so-called "Moon Cake". // The period is outside the double quatation marks

I know the former is more standard-conforming in most publications; however, I think the latter is more intuitive and meaningful. Because the period is used to stop the whole sentence, rather than stop the phrase itself. I think the former is counter-intuitive, although the usage is standard-conforming.

Please consider another two sentences:

Group B:

1. She said: "I don't know."




2. She said: "I don't know".

It is obvious that the former is more meaningful than the latter, because the period is used to stop the whole sentence, and the double quatation marks are used as a quatation. This time, it is standard-conforming and intuitive.

What's your opinion?

Answer

You can use either, they're both correct, just choose one and stick to it. As long as your style is consistent, both versions are fine. This is one of the differences between American and British punctuation styles.

Americans tend to place punctuation within the quotation marks while the British tend to place it outside them. For example:

• British style

  
  
  
  

  
  

  "Yes," she said, "I would love some tea."

  
  




• American style

  
  
  

  
  

  "Yes", she said, "I would love some tea".

  
  

It is largely a personal choice though and different style guides have different opinions. For some more information on this and other differences between BrE and Ame punctuation styles see the links below:

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

Background:

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

For example: "one of them people"

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

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

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

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

Pronouns and demonstratives

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

---

Question(s):

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

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

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

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

Answer

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

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

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

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

---

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

pronunciation - What indefinite article ("a" or "an") should be used before "x"

I understand that the decision between "a" and "an" is generally based on what vowel sound the following word begins with.

In the case of "x" I am not sure, it could be either:

• An ehcks


• A ecks

meaning - Is "cause" instead of "because" becoming Standard English?

Nowadays, I'm seeing a drastic increase in usage of cause in place of because, especially in written English. People are in such a hurry, that a statement like below passes off like Standard English:

It rains cause clouds form in the sky, and that happens cause of water vapor, and vapor forms cause of trees and forests.

Is this particular use of cause in place of because in danger of getting into the Standard English Dictionary? Do you think it is correct?

Answer

Cause can be said in different forms, such as "the cause of the forming of clouds". In your case, cause is used like an abbreviation, which is 'cause. So, 'cause is technically an abbreviation.

Hope this answers your question :)

phrasing - Lingustic term for three consecutive synonyms used in a sentence?

If I recall correctly, in David Brin's "The Uplift War", a species called the Gubru frequently use sentences in which three consecutive synonyms appear to emphasize a topic--presumably a grammatical predisposition on the part of the race. Their language is translated into English (of course) for the reader and might read something like this: "This is terrible, disastrous, dreadful!" (This is an example, not a sentence appearing in the book.) I once stumbled upon an established term that described this triplet usage of consecutive synonyms--and wish I had committed it to paper (or memory). What word might this be?

meaning - Is there a difference between "dislike" and "don't like"?

A friend of mine for whom English is a second language told me that I am the only person he knows who uses the word "dislike", and asked me what the difference was from saying that I "don't like" something. I answered that they were the same, but that "dislike" might be more formal... but it occurred to me that I was not totally confident with this answer.

Is there a difference between "I dislike that" and "I don't like that" besides the former being more formal?

proper nouns - Use of definite article before phrases like Heathrow Airport, Hyde Park, Waterloo Station, Edgware Road and Parliament Square

In this related question (Definite article with proper nouns, titles followed by a common noun), the OP asks if it is grammatical to use the definite article before phrases like Advanced programming in Java whitepaper and Microsoft Office 2010 product. The accepted answer by @Kosmonaut was:

Yes, it is. This is because the "Advanced programming in Java"
whitepaper phrase forms a syntactic unit, with whitepaper as the head
of the unit. The definite article for a phrase always corresponds to
the head of the phrase, so using the definite (or indefinite) article
for these phrases makes perfect sense and is correct English.

My question is whether the same answer applies to phrases like Heathrow Airport, Hyde Park, Waterloo Station, Edgware Road and Parliament Square. I ask becase it seems to me that airport, park and station, etc. sound like they are part of the proper noun itself, and not simply a common noun. Moreover, I think the head of the unit in these cases would be the place name (first noun) and not the place type (second noun). If that's true, then I assume that no definite article should precede these phrases. Is that correct?

Answer

Alexg has got it right, in my view. However, since OP says he is waiting for someone to provide a generalized answer, here's mine.

It is hardly ever wrong to omit the article. "The Mall" is the name on the signs, so must be used: "Strand" (the formal name) is both awkward and confusing, so 'the Strand' is usual: most English towns have a few similar names.

Otherwise, there are many names that have developed from descriptions; 'London Road' is the classic example. Most towns in the Home Counties have a road that leads towards London, and refer to it as 'the London road'. Often, when street names were being given, it was named "London Road". In such a case, locals will often call it 'the London Road', while outsiders including the Post Office call it 'London Road'; I wouldn't say either was right or wrong. (Road is, in practice, the only term to which this applies: "the High Street" is usual, but so is "Church Lane is the high street in that village.")

Similar rules apply to stations, airports, roundabouts, etc. Bournemouth has a roundabout with a Frizzell office block, which everyone calls "the Frizzell roundabout". The council put up a sign saying "Frizzell Roundabout", so you can call it either. As far as I can see, all names with articles follow this rule: you can call what used to be Eastleigh Airport (the airport for Southampton) either "Southampton Airport" or "the Southampton airport". "The Southampton Airport" is not correct, but is an understandable mistake; if enough people use it, the name will change.

One last purely national point; in theory, you could refer to a railway terminus named 'Thingtown Central' as either "Central Station" or "the Central"; maybe this happens in the US. Britain has too many places like Exeter, where Exeter Central is a suburban halt, and the central station is Exeter St David's. (The explanation is historical.) So "the Central Station" would be highly ambiguous, and is never used.

grammar - Is it ok to write "as if it was"?

I just read this sentence and was wondering if it is okay to write it like this.

You can use your device worldwide, as if it was directly connected to your
PC.

Are there better alternatives for writing this sentence? Maybe:

You can use your device worldwide, just like it is directly connected to your
PC.

grammar - "The earthquake, along with its subsequent aftershocks, HAS/HAVE ..." - plural or singular subject?

Is a subject singular or plural with a modifying prepositional phrase that has plural objects?

Would it be "has" or "have" in this case:

The earthquake, along with its subsequent aftershocks, has/have created an atmosphere of panic among the city's residents.

Past subjunctive

In the following sentence (from here), is it grammatical to use subjunctive were instead of are?

As emphasized in a joke attributed to American philosopher Morris Raphael Cohen (1880–1947), logic texts had to be divided in two parts: in the first part, on deductive logic, unwarranted forms of inference (deductive fallacies) are exposed

Which one of the two moods sounds more natural after had to here?

Answer

The verb phrase “had to be di­vided” is not one of those whose
sub­or­di­nate clauses some­times take some­thing other than the
nor­mal in­dica­tive by some speak­ers and writ­ers and
oc­ca­sions.

Even if it were, there are no sub­or­di­nate
clauses here in your orig­i­nal.

That means what you are re­ally ask­ing about here is not mood but
tense; that is, whether the tense ought to use the nor­mally
in­flected present-ver­sus-pret­erite of be, so ei­ther the
plu­ral present are or else the plu­ral pret­erite were.

Per­haps it is both­er­ing you to see the present tense used later

in a sen­tence that first uses the pret­erite. If so, please see our
su­per-Fre­quently Asked Ques­tion en­ti­tled “He didn’t know where
New Jer­sey was”
along with its an­swers and those of its nearly four dozen linked
ques­tions.

But if you still want some­thing gov­erned by what has some­times
his­tor­i­cally been called the “sub­junc­tive” by the more, ahem,

di­achron­i­cally in­clined mor­phol­o­gists and syn­tac­ti­cians,
but viewed syn­chron­i­cally is ac­tu­ally just a form of modal
mark­ing us­ing a “zero”-modal (bare in­fini­tive) or else by us­ing an ex­plicit
one like should or must, then here’s what you have to do...

To get some­thing fancier so that it’s “mod­ally” marked, you
would need to use a spe­cial verb like pro­posed or sug­gested
or in­sisted in the main clause so that you could mod­ally mark
some other verb in a new sub­or­di­nate clause gov­erned by the
main clause.

---

Ex­am­ple 1

Either by us­ing the bare-in­fi­ni­tive mo­dal­ity:

As a joke, Amer­i­can phi­los­o­pher Mor­ris Raph­ael Co­hen
pro­posed that logic texts be di­vided in two parts:

1. the de­duc­tive part where un­war­ranted forms of in­fer­ence are ex­posed


2. the in­duc­tive part where un­war­ranted forms of in­fer­ence are en­dorsed

Or by pre­fix­ing that bare-in­fi­ni­tive with an ac­tual modal verb:

As a joke, Amer­i­can phi­los­o­pher Mor­ris Raph­ael Co­hen
pro­posed that logic texts should be di­vided in two parts:

1. the de­duc­tive part where un­war­ranted forms of in­fer­ence are ex­posed


2. the in­duc­tive part where un­war­ranted forms of in­fer­ence are en­dorsed

Ex­am­ple 2

Either by us­ing the bare-in­fi­ni­tive mo­dal­ity:

As a joke, Amer­i­can phi­los­o­pher Mor­ris Raph­ael Co­hen
pro­posed that un­war­ranted forms of in­fer­ence be
ex­posed in the first part on de­duc­tion, and that they
be en­dorsed in the sec­ond part on in­duc­tion.

Or by pre­fix­ing that bare-in­fi­ni­tive with an ac­tual modal verb:

As a joke, Amer­i­can phi­los­o­pher Mor­ris Raph­ael Co­hen
pro­posed that un­war­ranted forms of in­fer­ence should
be ex­posed in the first part on de­duc­tion, and that they
should be en­dorsed in the sec­ond part on in­duc­tion.

---

On the Ab­sence of a Past Sub­junc­tive in Pre­sent-Day English

As you see, even if the main clause is in the pret­erite, the
sub­or­di­nate one is modally marked using just the bare in­fini­tive, never by using the
pret­erite or in the spe­cial, un­real were form for the unique
case of be.

This is an­other rea­son why call­ing some­thing “past sub­junc­tive”
in Pre­sent-Day English strains cred­i­bil­ity: we do not change

be to were, nor spend to spent, just be­cause the gov­ern­ing
clause is in the preterite.

We sim­ply use the bare in­fin­i­tive in all such sub­or­di­nate clauses, ir­re­spec­tive of the tense of the main clause.

grammaticality - Can you use present tense and past tense in the same sentence?

In this sentence specifically:

We managed to talk and share ideas between us which taught me how to communicate well within a team and makes me feel confident in my ability to communicate with new groups of people.

I say "which taught me A and B" but both A and B are different tenses. It seems to make sense to me, because this one event "taught me" something and also "makes me feel" something continuously.

is this grammatically correct?

hyphenation - Are constructs such with a hyphen and slash (e.g. "on-/offline") common?

Are constructs using a slash combined with a hyphen to switch a prefix such as in "on-/offline" as a short-form of "online/offline" (or rather "on-line/off-line") which again stands for "online or offline" (which could be written as "on- or offline") something a native English speaker reader would understand right away?

Answer

It would be understood. However, this is a style issue. There are style manuals one may follow. I use the Chicago Manual of Style.

In formal writing, slashes and parentheses are frowned on; such as 24/7, (s)he, he/she, and/or and on/offline.

However, things having slashes or parentheses as a convention are alright: on/off switch, fractions, area codes, interpolations, etc.

Sentences with examples similar to yours should be rewritten to retain meaning. An additional problem is non-native speakers could be confused.

Try,

I am going online and offline as soon as I get home and find out where I'm at.

Documents can be printed either online or offline.

However, in less formal writing, you don't have to be too careful with style as long as your target audience understands your message.

Still, because online and offline are not hyphenated in modern dictionaries, you wouldn't hyphenate in your construction.

off/online or on/offline are accepted, but on-/offline looks awkward to me. A construction where the words in question would normally be hyphenated would be an exception: para-/ortho-oxygenated side chains

grammaticality - "A friend of Susan" vs. "a friend of Susan's"

I'm currently having hot debates with a friend of mine about which one is more natural and more grammatically correct:

• A friend of Susan


• A friend of Susan's

I vote for the first, but I don't have anything to prove I'm right.

Answer

A friend of Susan’s is a double genitive, which has been a feature of English grammar for centuries, and it is the normal alternative to one of Susan’s friends. Just as most people would say a friend of mine, rather than a friend of me, so a friend of Susan’s, rather than a friend of Susan, would be the natural choice in most contexts.

grammaticality - Should I put myself last? "me and my friends" vs. "my friends and me" or "my friends and I"

I've always been taught to put myself last when referring to myself in the same sentence as others but the usage of "me and..." seems to be everywhere these days. The misuse of the word "me" instead of "I" aside, is there some new rule I haven't heard of? Shouldn't we put ourselves last regardless of the "me"/"I" usage?

Examples of "correct" usage:

My friends and I went for some ice
cream. Did you see my friends and me
at the ice cream stand?

Examples of "incorrect" usage:

Me and my friends went for some ice
cream. Did you see me and my friends
at the ice cream stand?

Note: I was also taught that the only person who could put themselves first was the queen.

Answer

The difference between "I and my friends" and "my friends and I" is purely a matter of courtesy - they are both grammatically correct. I would tend to stick to the latter though, as it a) is more commonplace, b) is considered more polite, c) seems to flow better.

Indeed, your example of 'incorrect' usage is incorrect solely in that the first sentence uses the accusative (objective) pronoun me, when you actually need the nominative (subjective) pronoun 'I'. The second sentence of that example is correct, since the pronoun needs to be in the accusative, as the object. You seem to understand this though; this is just to clarify.

pronunciation vs spelling - Sounds of the letter a

How can I know, precisely, when to differentiate the sounds of the letter a, like in: apple and vault?

Answer

This is an extremely broad question, actually, and I doubt there can be a single, definite, comprehensive answer. I will try to provide a few quick-and-dirty rules of thumb, but be aware that you will probably find exceptions to every single one of them.

Also, as Colin Fine points out, note that things are not pronounced the same everywhere. For example, can't can be pronounced as /kaːnt/, /kɑːnt/, /kænt/, and /keənt/, depending on what variety of English we are talking about. As a second example, the vowels in Mary, marry, and merry sound identical in certain dialects but not in others.

All that being said, on to the rules of thumb.

First, the basics. Here are the Wiktionary usage notes for a:

In English, the letter a usually denotes the near-open front unrounded vowel (IPA: /æ/), as in pad, the open back unrounded vowel (IPA: /ɑː/) as in father, or, followed by another vowel, the diphthong /eɪ/, as in ace.

Now on to details, which I will be more adapting than quoting from the essay "Hou tu pranownse Inglish" by Mark Rosenfelder. Note that the order of the following rules of thumb is important. As the author puts it, "to pronounce a word, you go down the list of rules, seeing if each one in turn applies, and applying it if it does".

1. aught becomes /ɔt/ (daughter, caught, taught, naught)


2. ay is pronounced /eɪ/ (day, say)


3. al is pronounced /ɔl/ before r, s, a dental stop, or final ll
   (also, already, wall, bald, although), and sometimes before m (e.g. in almost, almighty; but there are many exceptions)


4. alk becomes /ɔk/ (walk), except initially (alkali, /ælk/)


5. a is pronounced "long", as /eɪ/, before an intervocalic consonant (rate, bake).



6. a is pronounced "short", as /æ/, before two consonants (battle, ladder) or
   before a final consonant (bat, dad, ram).


7. wa is pronounced /wɒ/ (UK) or /wɑ/ (US) before t, d, n, s (want, wander, swan, Rwanda, swat, wad, wasp), and as /wɔ/ before sh or tch (wash, squash, watch).


8. There is one thing not covered by the above: an unstressed a is often
   reduced to a schwa, /ə/, as in addition /əˈdɪʃn̩/ or anomaly /əˈnɒməlɪ/. However, as the author puts it, "the idea here is to predict pronunciations from the spelling, and the spelling doesn't indicate the stress". Once you hear a word, you know where the stress is, but then you also know how to pronounce any a in it anyway.


9. At this point, you are more or less safe to make the following substitutions:
   
   
   
   
   • eau = /o/
   
   
   • ai = /eɪ/
   
   
   
   • au, aw = /ɔ/
   
   
   • ea = /iː/
   
   
   • oa = /o/
   
   
   • ua = /juə/
   
   


10. a is reduced to /ə/ before final l (final, typical); a "short" a,
    as in /æ/, is reduced to /ə/ before a final n (human). "These rules don't apply
    to monosyllables (pal, can), nor to vowels that have already been assigned a
    particular value by an earlier rule (e.g. meal to /miːl/ by the [previous] rule).
    These rules could probably be refined; they don't apply to stressed finals, but again,
    
    the orthography doesn't indicate stress."


11. The suffix -able is reduced to /əbəl/ (lovable, usable, formable)


12. Any remaining final a is pronounced as /ə/.


13. war is pronounced /wɔː(r)/, except before a vowel (war, warlock, dwarf)


14. /æ/ before a double r becomes /e/ (marry; see disclaimer above)


15. /æ/ before any other r becomes /a/ (mark, star)

Again, these "rules" are only approximations, so take them with a grain of salt (also, I hope I haven't thrown in a few typos or copy-paste mistakes).

For further reading, see these questions:

grammar - "would always" in the main clause with present simple in conditional

I have two following examples:

I would always say thank you face to face when I get a present from someone because it's more personal.

If it's a family member I would always send a card.

Could anyone, please, explain to me the usage of "would always" in these examples? I understand the meaning of the sentences, but, first, I'm not exactly sure about shades of meaning. Second, I'd like to understand the underlying grammar rule.

As far as I understand the meaning they both the same meaning as regular zero conditional sentences would have:

I always say thank you face to face when I get a present ...

If it's a family member I always send a card.

It seems to me that these examples don't match any mixed conditionals pattern either because hypothetical meaning of "would"

I would say thank you if you did it for me.

like in (unreal present) second conditional doesn't fit in this case.

So my question is what connotation or shade of meaning "would" add in these two sentences? Would those examples still be correct if we left out "always"?

I tried searching web and different grammar books, I know about many different meanings of "would" but none of those seems to match the pattern.

Is it OK to omit the "there was" in the following sentence without changing its meaning?

Never in her life had she seen such shocking footage, not to mention two in one day. The experience had shaken her like nothing before. But there was
something else in them that had disturbed her. Something that still
lingered in her mind, like the afterimage of a picture she had overlooked.

I thought of omitting the "there was" in the sentence above:

But something else in them had disturbed her.

Is that grammatically correct? Does the meaning change?

Answer

The longer version emphasises the presence of ‘something else’. The shorter version emphasises her being disturbed.

grammaticality - "There is" vs. "there are" when contracted

Unless I am mistaken, when referring to a single thing or entity, one can say there is or there's (the contraction of the same). When referring to more than one of something, the correct wording is there are, however, I am not aware of an actual contraction of the latter, or there're.

As a native speaker, it seems perfectly fine to hear (and to use) there's in place of there are (at least for some examples, but I can't think of any that really don't work), but is this a valid grammatical usage?

e.g.

There are many ways this can be stated.

There's many ways this can be stated.

Am I wrong in accepting this? Should I try to break myself of this?

Answer

It's an informal usage, but many native speakers have no problem at all with constructions like...

There's two ways this can go.

...even though they would balk at the full form There is two ways this can go.

By traditional rules of grammar, obviously, it's "incorrect". But in the contracted form it's perfectly normal in informal speech. I don't think anyone would be pedantic enough to suggest you should get out of the habit of using a natural form you're quite comfortable with.

orthography - Is it "front-end", "frontend", or "front end"?

Which is correct?

1. front-end engineering



2. frontend engineering


3. front end engineering

I looked over http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/hyphens.asp, referenced in this answer, and I'm still not sure which to use.

Rule 1 under Hyphens Between Words says:

To check whether a compound noun is two words, one word, or

hyphenated, you may need to look it up in the dictionary. If you can't
find the word in the dictionary, treat the noun as separate words.

"Frontend" is not found at reference.com. "Front-end" and "front end" are both found, which "front end" as two words representing the software term, so I think this must be right. However...

Rule 1 under Hyphens With Prefixes says:

The current trend is to do away with unnecessary hyphens. Therefore,

attach most prefixes and suffixes onto root words without a hyphen.

I think that "frontend" qualifies under this rule. Compare that with "backend" and it sounds to me that "front" and "back" are prefixes to "end".

Also, the most common usage I've noticed is "frontend" as a single word when talking about software. Common usage has to count for something, right?

What's considered the final say here?

Answer

For the compound noun front + end it is front end:

Noun

front end (plural front ends)

1. (computing) that part of a hardware or software system that is closest to the user.

frontend and front-end are alternative forms.

The compound noun front + end + engineering may be another matter.

hyphenation - Why are open source and closed source usually not hyphenated? Should they be?

Typically, English writers do not hyphenate open source or closed source when referring to computer software.

Why is this?

Should they be hyphenated or is it best to not use hyphens for these terms?

Omitting articles in nouns - prepositions; after; to; before; from

Why is the indefinite article omitted here?

Could it be the definite article, but omitted? Like in the following case in an instruction:

Grasp drumstick. Place knife between thigh and body; cut through skin
to joint. Separate thigh and drumstick at joint.

All those omittions would normally have the definite article, but this doesn't seem plausible in my case.

Why is there no article here, too?

I've noticed that this happens only with the following prepositons:

before; after; from; to || day after day; from person to person; from teacher to student

My questions are: Why are the articles omitted in all those examples? Does it have something to do with comparisons? Is there any rule for this usage?

hyphenation - Why multiple length dashes (em, en, hyphen)?

I'm wondering why there are three different sizes (perhaps more?) for lines that separate characters? I understand the grammatical usage (or rather, I could look it up), but the benefit to readers is not clear to me.

Answer

hyphen "The short one"
Its diminutive size helps the reader to read the two words as a single word. Ideally, this would be visually invisible and the two words would be directly joined, but grammar rules don't agree.

en-dash "The mid-sized one"
The difference in appearance is important in order to signal to the reader that it should not be interpreted as a compound word.

em-dash "The long one"
The length of this dash is so significant that it causes a mental pause similar to a semi-colon.

---

If your reader can infer the meaning of the character from the context of the sentence, it is acceptable to simply use a hyphen in all of these cases. The acceptability here is strictly a reader-perception measure and not at all grammar-related. If you are writing a piece that requires strict adherence to a style guide, you should follow that.

On a personal note, I find that a trailing space is usually required when using a hyphen in place of an em-dash.

---

Fun side note: en-dash and em-dash are named after the glyphs to which their lengths should match. You can use this to help you remember which one is longer: an n is shorter than an m.

vocabulary - Word to make a distinction between license as a concept and a license held

What would you call a pilot's license as a concept, and what would you call a license that the pilot is actually holding in his hand?

For instance, a pilot may acquire a Private Pilot License (PPL). There is a series of requirements to obtaining this license. I consider this to be the concept of a PPL. When a pilot passes the test, he is issued the actual license, the one he can hold in his hand.

While the difference might be negligible, for the purpose of identifying concepts that make up the domain model in a software application, it would be highly preferable to have two separate words describing them.

I myself would call the concept a license, and the actual license an issuance, but since I am not a native speaker of English, I am not sure that this is correct.

Answer

I would consider the physical artifact a license and the fact of his being licensed as a licensure.

Why are indefinite singular third person pronouns treated as plurals?

It's always bugged me.
My research behind this question was rather shallow, so I apologize if it's a duplicates.

Thanks!

Edit, example:
Say you don't know who you are talking to on Reddit, you simply know -their- username. Is it just the way in English to call people when you don't know who -they- are? Thanks again!

Answer

In English there is no third person singular gender-neutral pronoun†. We must say "his or her", and so many people say "their" instead -- so many, in fact, that "their" should be entering the grammar and style books as a viable form, if it hasn't done so already.

†i.e. no marked form.

grammatical case - Whom should I say is calling?

Note, originally my question was "should I ask" instead of what I meant, which is "should I say". Sorry for the confusion.

If I do an internet search about:

Whom should/shall I say is calling.

I invariably get blogs and articles saying that this is incorrect, and probably a form of hypercorrection.

This question follows from a previous question based on an Oxford Living Dictionaries article about whom and who.

In the article it claims that in both:

• ✗ He is demanding £5,000 from the elderly woman whom has ruined his life.
  and
  


• ✗ Mr Reynolds is highly critical of journalists, whom just use labels to describe him.

the use of whom is wrong, and it should be who. This seems to be agreed to by the users that contributed to the previous question I linked.

However the Oxford Living Dictionaries also claims that the following two are incorrect:

• ✗ He is demanding £5,000 from the elderly woman whom he claims has ruined his life.




• ✗ Mr Reynolds is highly critical of journalists, whom he says just use labels to describe him.

However on these two examples the majority seemed to say that objection to using whom in the last two is an old prescriptivist objection, and to quote an answerer:

According to many respected grammarians, the article is incorrect ...

So:

• He is the person whom won the race.(Wrong)
  


• He is the person whom I say won the race.(Acceptable?)
  

In the second example whom appears to be both subject and object, however more particularly "whom" is the subject of "won the race", but the object of the whole clause seems "I say won the race". At least that's what I understood from the point.

If this is acceptable, then in the case of "Whom should I say is calling?" Doesn't the following apply:

• Whom is calling?(Wrong)
  


• Whom should I say is calling?(Acceptable?)
  

If we turn these questions into statements I think we get:

• He is calling.
  


• He is the person whom I should say is calling.
  or
  


• He is whom I should say is calling.
  

Is this analagous to the other cases, and therefore saying "Whom should I say is calling?" is not incorrect?

I'm not sure what the answer is, but every every single result I saw about "Whom should/shall I say is calling?" have all said that it's incorrect and that it should be "Who", mainly because the "Who" is doing the calling and therefore the subject.

Who/whom shall I say is calling?

He is calling.

Who shall I say is calling?
englishessaywritingtips.com

Correct: Whom did you speak to earlier?
Correct: A man, whom I
have never seen before, was asking about you.
Incorrect: Whom
should I say is calling?
grammarly.com

On this usingenglish.com forum thread an English teacher calls it an instance of hypercorrection.
usingenglish.com

On this Quora question all the top answers say it should be "who".

In this sentence, "he" is the correct choice, so you would choose "who" for the question.
Quora question

I take it given all this information my instinct is wrong about this?

word choice - Can 'see' meaning 'meet' be used intransitively in the same way?

This sentence came up in a conversation with a friend...

What time are we going to see?

When I asked what it was we were going to see, he explained that he was using 'see' to mean 'meet'. So he was asking when we were going to meet... At that point a full blown argument started about the validity of using see for meet in this exact structure.

My question is... is this sentence structure with the intention of meaning MEET correct? can SEE ever be used to mean MEET in the exact way above? I am not asking about informal or spoken language or implied meanings. I want to know if this is a valid in a formal written communication.

Answer

No, you can't, not in the form your friend said, because see would need an object in this type of structure - otherwise, as you yourself noted, it's unclear what it is that you would be seeing. The sentence could be taken to mean either something like "what time will we see (on the clock/watch) when we look at it?" or some other unusual meaning that is far what your friend was actually going for.

You can, however, say What time are we going to see each other?, and this would be perfectly correct.

Note that What time are we going to meet? not only does not require the "each other" but in fact sounds bad with it, because "meet" already implies the "each other" meaning.

So, to recap: What time are we going to...

• meet - OK


• see - not ok


• see each other - OK


• meet each other - technically OK, but sounds a tad strange

questions - "Which" vs. "what" — what's the difference and when should you use one or the other?

Most of the time one or the other feels better, but every so often, "which" vs. "what" trips me up.

So, what's the exact difference and when should you use one or the other?

Answer

"Which" is more formal when asking a question that requires a choice between a number of items. You can use "What" if you want, though.

Generally speaking, you can replace the usage of "which" with "what" and be OK grammatically. It doesn't always work the other way around, however. There needs to be a context of choice. For example:

Which/What flavor of ice cream do you want?

• Either is fine, but "which" is better.

Which/What do you want for dessert?

• "Which" only works in the context of being presented with choices (e.g. a dessert cart right in front of you).

grammar - Use "a" or "an" in a sentence with parentheses?

Should I use "a" or "an" in a sentence like this:

There's just an (usually small, but) unbounded number...

or is it a bad style, anyway?

usage - The use of indefinite article with initials

Can you explain why we say AN NHS provision but A National Health provision. Or A UFO but An UNIDENTIFIED Fly Object. Are there any rules regarding the use of A or An when using initials such as ! In business FME ? Thanks

grammatical number - 'is' or 'are' in lists of counted nouns

Which of the following is correct?
Does the is/are depend on the total number of things in the list, or only on the thing immediately following the is/are?

There is 1 apple and 1 orange available.
There are 1 apple and 1 orange available.

Also, would it make a difference if one would put the is/are near the end, like so?

1 apple and 1 orange is available.
1 apple and 1 orange are available.

Answer

This one is right:

There is 1 apple and 1 orange available

This is wrong:

There are 1 apple and 1 orange available.

I would personally say

There is an apple and an orange available.

---

This is now wrong

1 apple and 1 orange is available

This is right (almost):

1 apple and 1 orange are available.

But again, I would say

An apple and an orange are available.

---

These are both correct:

There is an apple and 2 oranges available.
There are 2 apples and an orange available

So it depends on the number of objects the is/are is referring to first.

2 apples and an orange are available.
An apples and 2 oranges are available.

When it is at the end, it refers to the total number of objects.

prepositions - Meaning and usage of "be of"

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

Please let me know whether I can be of help.

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

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

Answer

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

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

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

be of relevance,
be of importance,

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

be of value,
be of benefit;

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

be of interest,

which means that something is interesting.

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

be of age,

which means that someone has reached adulthood.

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

grammar - "How...?" vs. "What ... like?"

In the Longman Dictionary of Common Errors you read "When you ask for or give a description of someone or something, use what ... like (NOT how): 'What's your new teacher like?'

But I sometimes hear people say things like "How is your new teacher?" as a way of asking someone to describe someone or something.

To me, the response to that question could be "She's fine", not a description of the teacher's appearance or behavior, since I think of it as a question about someone's health or life condition, e.g. if they are well or happy.

What about "How's the weather?" and "What's the weather like?" ? Do you see any difference?

Is it that the former is used to ask a question about if the whether is good or bad in a specific situation, and the latter to ask about the general weather conditions in a place? So one can say "What's the weather usually like in Toronto?" and the answer would be "Dry and cold." (I'm not really sure about the weather conditions there, though!), and "How's the weather today?" followed by the response "It's sunny today".

Or do they have the same meaning?

Answer

When asking for a description of something, you should use the construction "What ... like?"

However, how is a perfectly valid question. It just doesn't ask for a description.

How seeks to learn:

• In what manner or way; by what means: How does this machine work?


• In what state or condition: How is she today?


• To what extent, amount, or degree: How bad was it?


• For what reason or purpose; why: How is it that he left early?


• With what meaning: How should I take that remark?


• By what name: How is she called?


• By what measure; in what units: How do you sell this corn?

etc...

When you ask "How is your new teacher?", you are not asking for a description. Instead, you are asking about her state or condition. The answer would involve adjectives like good, sick, happy, etc.

When you ask "How's the weather?", again, you are technically not asking for a description, but its state or condition. For questions like these, the distinction between "description" and "state" is pedantic, and you shouldn't worry too much about them.

---

To be more thorough about the "weather" questions:

Asking these questions will almost always get you the same (or similar answer):

• How's the weather?


• What's the weather like?

For example, I live in Southern Oregon, and the weather today is foggy and cold, so I might respond "Foggy and cold." The first question may also solicit "Not great. Foggy and cold." (And this is because how is asking about condition or state, something that what doesn't ask.)

However, if I ask "How's the weather usually in Toronto?" I'm trying to get a sense of weather or not the weather is "good" or "bad" usually, which probably isn't that useful. Instead, I would ask "What's the weather usually like in Toronto?", which would get me a description of the usual weather in Toronto (much more useful).

grammaticality - "Don't you..." question

I'm studying English for 10 months. I suppose myself to know it quite well now. But I'm confused about one thing. I noticed that some of my English speaking friends sometimes ask

"Don't you tired/hungry/etc?"

Is this normal/grammatically correct to make such questions? Because I've googled by phrases and found quite a lot of examples of using such questions?

Here are some examples:

How to express possessive

If my pie is hot, and Lola's pie is hot. Can I say

"Lola and my's pies are hot"?

Or should it be

"Lola's and my pies are hot"?

These posts, "My wife and I's seafood collaboration dinner" and Yours vs. your's deal with possessive pronouns and the Saxon genitive, but do not address specifically the case illustrated here.

expressions - In anything but....meaning and usage

I am reading some documentation and cannot fully understand the meaning of 'In anything but..'

In anything but the smallest applications it makes sense to organize the service
definitions by moving them into one or more configuration files.

I have already read "However, this book is anything but" meaning, but it seems different to me. What do you think?

Answer

In anything but the smallest applications it makes sense to organize

The word but can mean except or other than.

but

conjunction

conjunction: but

2.

used to indicate the impossibility of anything other than what is

being stated. "one cannot but sympathize"

synonyms: (do) other than, otherwise than, except "one cannot but
sympathize"

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=but+definition&ie=&oe=
.

---

.

In anything other than the smallest applications it makes sense to organize

This means,

It makes sense to organize in all applications that are not very small.

All my friends in one place (verbless clause?)

This clip of the movie 'Goosebumps' starts with the character Slappy saying this:

1. All my friends in one place. I've never been so happy. I don't want this day to end. And it doesn't have to, as long as we get rid of Stine.

First, I'd like to know if "All my friends in one place" should be treated as a subordinate clause or not. If it should, then the transcript must be:

2. All my friends in one place, I've never been so happy. I don't want this day to end. And it doesn't have to, as long as we get rid of Stine.

Which of the two is correct?

If (1) is correct, then can a verbless clause be an independent clause?

According to this earlier question and answers, all the examples of verbless clauses are subordinate clauses, and verbless clauses are said to be limited to subordinate clauses.

I have also looked at CGEL (The Cambridge Grammar by Huddleston and Pullum), and all instances of 'verbless clause' there are limited to subordinate clauses, as well.

Is Slappy's sentence a legitimate verbless clause even in the form of (1)?

punctuation - Sentence with multiple 'and's: should I use an Oxford comma, and if so, where?

I have the following sentence:

I am a self-starter possessing excellent problem solving ability and outstanding coordination and communication skills.

Using the Oxford comma, what is the correct way to write it?

I am a self-starter possessing excellent problem solving ability, and outstanding coordination and communication skills.

I am a self-starter possessing excellent problem solving ability and outstanding coordination, and communication skills.

Answer

The serial comma only comes into play if you have an actual list, i.e. three or more items. You only have two:

excellent problem solving ability

and

outstanding coordination and communications skills

To see this, look at the nouns, not the phrases describing them: ability and skills are two things.

Within the phrase "outstanding coordination and communications skills", it is absolutely wrong to insert a comma before the "and". For the sentence as a whole, though, the issue isn't quite so clear-cut: it's not really a list, so adding a comma is unnecessary, but on the other hand, it can aid comprehension to group the adjectival phrases — basically, to make it clear that excellent problem solving goes with ability, while outstanding coordination and communications all go with skills.

meaning - "A number of students" vs. "the number of students"

From the grammatical view both are correct, but please explain the difference in meaning:

1. The number of students in the class is fifteen.


2. A number of students were late for class.

Answer

The number of students in the class is fifteen.

The verb is singular because it refers to 'the number'. The subject of this sentence is 'the number'. 'Of students' is a modifier of 'the number'

'A number of' means several, some.

Several students were late for class.

Some students were late for class.

A number of students were late for class.

The subject of these sentences is 'students', and 'some', 'several', 'a number of' are modifiers of 'students'. The verb agrees with the subject.

writing - Is it "a SSD" or "an SSD"?

Possible Duplicates:
an SQA or a SQA?
Do you use “a” or “an” before acronyms?

Since SSD (solid-state drive) is pronounced es-es-dee, I'm wondering whether one should write "an SSD" or "a SSD".
Saying "a SSD" out loud feels a bit off...

Answer

Definitely an SSD.

The use of a vs. an is always determined by pronunciation, not by spelling. You don’t even need to find acronyms to give examples where they disagree: one would always say/write a European, not *an European, and an honest man, not *a honest man.

The only case where there’s doubt is when pronunciation varies. For instance, with the acronym SCSI, computer professionals usually say “scuzzy”, but non-techies meeting it for the first time usually say “ess see ess eye”. So one might reasonably encounter either a SCSI cable or an SCSI cable, depending on the writer.

However, as you say, SSD is (as far as I know!) always pronounced letter-by-letter; so it’s definitely an SSD.

Rules for verb usage

I'm fairly new to the world of linguistics and this is my first post in this forum. I've been helping a friend to learn English and one of her questions has me stumped, even as a native speaker. She is confused about which verb forms to use. She understands all of the tenses and can create simple sentences in each tense, however she struggles with complex sentences and sentences where multiple verb forms are used. Is there a name for this field so I can do some further reading? Can anyone suggest any materials that explain the rules?

An example sentence that I found in an article online:

George Lucas had considered bringing Mark Hamill back as Luke Skywalker.

Upon seeing this sentence, my friend would probably ask why we use "bringing" instead of "brought" or "considered to bring"?

I'm sure there must be rules about which verbs should be used after one another. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Reported speech modal verbs could and might

I know that usually we don't change modal verbs in reported speech but i want to know if it is OK to change could for might as it doesn't change the meaning. I failed my English exam on this one question and my teacher says that I can pass if I can prove I'm right.

"I could be very rich when I'm 35." said Tom
Tom told me that he might be very rich when he's 35.

I don't see the problem as it means the same. The rules say that modals don't usually change, but they don't say that they never change.

Help needed urgently

word usage - Master to mister?

Why was Master weakened to Mister so as to address individual hominēs sapientēs and the English language lost the thou/you distinction while the Greek language kept both Kύριος intact and the Eσύ/Eσείς distinction?

Sir comes from Senex and I am not confortable with using Sir knowing it is a cognate with Senille.

Maybe a sociolinguistic approach would best explain this particular fact.

The Greeks most often earnestly use the plural Εσείς to address any adult(or even children older than 13 years old) that has not requested to quit formallities.

Correct usage of your

What is the correct usage of your in the following please: Attached for your and dan's review

word choice - I can run faster than _____. (1) him (2) he?

Consider the sentence "I can run faster than 15 miles per hour." Its meaning is clear and to my eyes obviously grammatically correct. Now let me present some variations that have given me trouble for a long time.

• I am faster than 15 miles per hour. – To me this is clearly incorrect. Directly comparing me to a speed doesn't seem right. We need to compare my speed to a speed, or me to another person.




• I can run faster than him. – Compared to the base sentence, there is a distinct shift in meaning of the comparison. While before I named a speed faster than which I can run, now I am naming a person. It doesn't seem quite right. I realize the parts of speech can change, but my initial objection is that "him" is not a speed.




• I can run faster than he. – This seems most correct to me, but still somehow feels objectionable. Is this in fact the correct way to say it? And if so, is it proper as is or need I say "... faster than he can" or even "... faster than he can run?"




• I am faster than him. – With "am" instead of "can run" it now seems slightly more correct. But is it?




• I am faster than he. – I'm in doubt here. It doesn't seem wrong to me to say, "I am faster than he is" or even "I am faster than he is fast." (Though I suppose that is a given since I could hardly properly compare to some other category as in "I am faster than he is smart.")




• My speed is faster than his. – Hmm. This seems more proper as "my speed is greater than his."

So which of these constructions is correct and which is incorrect? Is there a general rule that I can follow?

UPDATE

The scholarly article Syntactic isomorphism and non-isomorphism under ellipsis may be of great interest to some readers!

Once we accept that the elided constituent and its antecedent can differ in form, it becomes reasonable to ask how large this difference can be. The answer in Rooth (1992), Fiengo and May (1994), Chung et al. (1995) and subsequent work is that the wiggle room is actually quite small: the elided constituent and its antecedent are allowed to differ only in the realization of inflectional morphology. Other than that, both constituents have to be syntactically and lexically isomorphic.

Answer

You find both accusative pronouns (me/him/her/them) and nominative pronouns (I/he/she/they) in this syntactic position in standard English. The forms with the nominal genitive pronouns (mine/yours/hers etc.) are a red herring because they stand for something possessed rather than the person themself.

The traditional rule for comparison with a person is that you must use nominative. However, according to my research, accusative is more common.

I searched the Corpus of Contemporary American English for this syntactic structure, followed by a comma or a period to ensure we are not looking for cases like faster than he is, with a verb following the pronoun, in which case nominative is obligatory.

There were 1046 results for the accusative pronouns and 450 for nominative pronouns, more than 2 to 1 in favor of accusative pronouns—the “traditionally wrong” form. Both forms are standard, so my advice to a writer choosing between these forms is to consider that the “traditionally correct” form is unimpeachably correct but a bit formal. Choose the form that best matches tone and formality level of your writing.

For the curious, the queries looked like this:

[jjr*] than me|him|her|us|them .|,
[jjr*] than I|he|she|we|they .|,

where[jjr*] means any comparative adjective.

Update 2011-05-23

Using the new Google Book Corpus search, I was able to construct a Google ngrams-like graph comparing these usages over time, using these two queries: accusative, nominative:

As you can see, until the late 1980s, the formal usage was more common than the informal usage. Since then, however, accusative has very rapidly eclipsed nominative, even in this corpus, which represents professionally published works.

grammar - Verb do + verb to be + ing form

What are the correct tenses to use in the following sentence between gerund and infinitive?

What I do at this point is ____ home and _____ dinner.

Should I write:

• What I do at this point is going home and having dinner



• What I do at this point is go home and have dinner


• What I do at this point is going home and have dinner


• What I do at this point is go home and having dinner

If not clear enough, the specific concern of the question is: after the form "What I do at this point is..." what is the correct tense to use, gerund or infinitive? And then in the following "and" clause, what is the correct tense to use, gerund or infinitive?

Related questions, but none fitting the case:

Other references, more fitting:

grammaticality - unassigned vs non-assigned

We are developing modules in a ticket assignment system and most of the labels are in French. Someone has translated the label for unassigned tickets to "Non-Assigned" in English. I'm not sure this is correct, can you please advise if I should have them change it to Unassigned? I think that sounds a lot better... "Unassigned" tickets vs "Non-Assigned" tickets.

Thanks for your help,
Patricia

"a" vs "an" before parenthesis: which indefinite article should I use when adding parentheses before the subject?

I want to write a remark in parenthesis between an indefinite article and the rest of the subject. If I didn't write this clarification then using the "a" article would be correct; however for the clarification alone "an" should be used.

Which one of the following examples is correct? Both sound weird to my ears.

This experiment used an (arguably small) set of data.

This experiment used a (arguably small) set of data.

grammatical number - “group have” vs “group has”

Do you say:

That group has dogs

or

That group have dogs

I'm not too sure which one is right. I'm just confused because I'm not sure whether the word, group, is plural or not

single word requests - What are "people in a conversation" called in English?

Currently I am trying to develop a mail software and I want to find the right word (if it exists) for people who are in a conversation. It is not contact list or mail list. It should be a word for the people.

So, what is it called in English? Is there any word for these people?

Answer

Per existing answers, in practice, participants may be the best fit for OP's exact context.

But more generally, a conversation consists of conversants, language exchanged between the agents, agreements reached by the agents, and a memory that keeps track of all the agreements.

modal verbs - Is "should" ever used as past tense of "shall"?

Looking at the dictionary, I read that should has origin as past tense of shall. In the modern English, is should ever used as past tense of shall?

ORIGIN Old English sceolde: past of shall.

Answer

should is the preterite form of the modal verb whose present form is shall. As such, should can be (and is still) used in the past tense, in places where shall would be used in the present tense.

Two examples:

• “It is time, we shall proceed” can be reported as “he said it was time, we should proceed”.


• “I think it shall be okay” and “I thought it should be okay”

Other modal verbs that follow the same pattern are will/would, may/might and can/could.

grammar - Counting nouns using "slew" and the grammatical implications

Just having a lively debate with a content writer over whether we should say

There are a slew of reasons...

or

There is a slew of reasons...

Read this article which suggests that different words are treated differently in this situation, so I'm wondering if slew would behave more like number, as in, There are a number of reasons, or if it would be more like group, as in There is a group of people that believe....

Any thoughts on how one can decide for a word like slew?

Possible duplicate of:
a number of vendors is/are?
Is the sentence "There is a large number of labourers who want to migrate to Japan for work." correct?

grammaticality - Use of "a user" as the antedecent of "they"

Is it correct to say "The list of reports a user will see may depend on the permissions group(s) they are in."?

I have asked the writer to change the text to say "users" to match "they", but he is resisting.

possessives - Analyzing 'genitive/accusative + V-ing phrase (gerund-participle phrase)' as different constructions

(1) I regretted [his leaving the firm].

(2) I regretted [him leaving the firm].

(3) I regretted [leaving the firm].

(4) He didn’t bother [giving me a copy].

Regarding the above sentences The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Page 1190) has this to say:

If (1) and (2) are analysed as quite different constructions, with only (2) a clause, then which of the constructions would (3) belong to?

This problem would be particularly difficult to resolve with those gerund-participials where it is not possible to include an NP before the verb, as in (4). We avoid these problems by treating the optionality of the initial NP as simply a matter of the optionality of subjects in non-finite clauses.

Here, CGEL is basically arguing that the bracketed construction in (1) is no less a non-finite clause (with his as its subject) than that in (2) is (with him as its subject).

So, CGEL is basing this argument on the presumption that the bracketed portion in (2) is a non-finite clause. But I wonder why that has to be the case.

PROBLEM of CGEL's APPROACH

CGEL's approach cannot explain the potential semantic difference between (1) and (2), as explained in Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage (as quoted in this Language Log):

The accusative pronoun is used when it is meant to be emphasized.

Because CGEL's approach analyzes (1) and (2) as the same construction only with some difference in register (formal vs. informal), I think it fails to accommodate the semantic difference shown above.

SUGGESTED APPROACH

What if we considered the verb 'regret' as taking two complements in (2), one being him and the other being leaving the firm, where the former is construed as the semantic--but not syntactic--subject of the latter?

In this approach, him in (2) would be a raised object of the verb 'regret', whereas the verb 'regret' in (1) would be analyzed as taking only one complement, a non-finite clause shown in the bracketed portion.

Then, (1) and (2) would be "analysed as quite different constructions".

This way, there would be no "problem" analyzing (3) or (4).

More importantly, the suggested analysis treats (1) and (2) as different constructions, thereby possibly accommodating the semantic difference quoted in the Language Log (shown above).

QUESTION

I'd like to know what others think of this suggested approach vis-à-vis CGEL's, and if any existing grammar employs something like the suggested approach.

commas - Punctuation with block-quotes

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

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

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

• The author states:

  
  
  

  
  

  Some big quote

  
  
  

  goes here.

  
  

  
  
  

  , therefore...

Answer

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

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

The following shows this...

This is a block quote:

Indent this, then end the sentence with a period.

Continue afterward with another sentence.

Direct object and indirect object in the sentence "Bill promised Mary to fix her car."

In the following sentence

Bill promised Mary to fix her car.

Maybe I can write this sentence like this:

Bill promised Mary (for Bill) to fix her car.

Bill is the subject of the verb fix, and also the verb promised. So, promised will have two objects: Mary and the clause (for Bill) to fix her car, one is the direct object and the other is the indirect object.

Which is the direct object and Which is the indirect object? Why? (By the way, I don't know if it is right to analyse this sentence in this way.)

Answer

Promise is a very troublesome verb, syntactically speaking.

Most bitransitive communicational verbs, like tell, order, or ask, take infinitive complements with B-Equi from the Indirect Object, thus:

• Su told/ordered/asked IO [(for IO) to VP], as in
  They told him to prune the peaches.
  She ordered him to leave immediately.
  I asked her to stop by after church.

These cases are prototype examples of B-Equi, which means that the Indirect Object of the main clause is also understood to be the Subject of the infinitive clause.
They did the telling to him, while he did the pruning. Etc.

With promise, however, the pattern breaks:

• Su promised IO [(for Su) to VP], as in
  She promised me to leave right after she talked to Bill.
  I promised her to take out the garbage.

Here, She did the promising, and she was to do the leaving. In other words, it's the Subject of promise that is understood to be the subject of its infinitive, and not its Indirect Object, as in the prototype cases. This is the pattern for A-Equi, where there is no Indirect Object, as in

• She promised to be home before 11.


• She wanted to be home before 11.


• She tried to be home before 11.


• She managed to be home before 11.

In these A-Equi cases, She is the subject of both the main clause and the infinitive.

It feels like promise is less bitransitive than performative. Performative verbs require an audience, and promise, in particular, requires someone (even if only oneself) to attend to the promise. But that's taken for granted, just like the audiences for say, or swear, or claim, or any other performative verb. The identity of the audience of performative verbs normally need not be expressed in the sentence; this allows promise to be more comfortable with A-Equi and without an indirect object.

Promise also feels more comfortable with a that-complement, when an indirect object is present:

• I promised her that I would trim the magnolias after school tomorrow.


• I promised her to trim the magnolias after school tomorrow.

In a tensed clause, of course, subjects are required and aren't deleted, so no reference problem arises.

grammar - Are we not allowed to use reflexive pronouns to refer to their fellow objects?

I would like to know whether the following sentence is ambiguous or not in a way that "himself" could either refer to "the man" or "the boy":

"The man told the boy different things about himself."

I'm thinking that I should use "him" to refer to "the boy" and that "himself" could only refer to "the man" since I've read that reflexive pronouns could only refer to their antecedent subjects, but I'm not quite sure about this.

Thanks in advance!

grammar - A or an before slash phrase? A or an before parenthetical phrase equivalent to slash phrase?

The other question only asks about parenthetical phrases, not slash phrases.

The other question's parenthetical phrase (answer(s) explained that it's not really a parenthetical phrase) is a separate word. Mine is an intra-word parenthetical prefix. That's different!

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Extreme votes on a post often indicates that there was a(n) (dis)agreement.

When you see spam on , you should cast a(n) upvote/flag.

The ship traveled across a(n) sea/ocean.

The first example's parenthetical thingymajigger is equivalent to the slash phrase "agreement/disagreement."

What's the correct singular indefinite article to use before slash phrase (this/that) and parenthetical phrases ((a)sexual, (de)criminalize)?

Answer

Such constructions are a matter of style, so there is no single "correct" way of dealing with them.

If I refer to The Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed.), 6.95:

Parentheses—stronger than a comma and similar to the dash—are used to set off material from the surrounding text. Like dashes but unlike commas, parentheses can set off text that has no grammatical relationship to the rest of the sentence.

Although I'm somewhat familiar with what you're doing with the parentheses in your examples, I believe that Chicago, at least, would not recommend putting text inside of parentheses that actually does have some kind of grammatical relationship with the rest of a sentence—especially if doing so causes awkwardness.

In general, you should write sentences in such a way that if the parenthetical information were removed, the surrounding text would be completely unaffected. (In other words, the grammar used outside the parentheses should be completely unaffected by the text inside the parentheses.)

As for slashes, here is Chicago, 6.106:

A slash most commonly signifies alternatives. In certain contexts it is a convenient (if somewhat informal) shorthand for or. It is also used for alternative spellings or names. Where one or more of the terms separated by slashes is an open compound, a space before and after the slash can make the text more legible.

      he/she
      his/her
      and/or
      Hercules/Heracles
      Margaret/Meg/Maggie
      World War I / First World War

Although it doesn't specifically mention its stance on grammar around slashes, I suspect Chicago would say that, as they are just shorthand for longer (and more formal) constructions, if their use causes a problem, then use a longer construction instead.

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In other words, when such constructions become grammatically awkward, I suspect the "proper" thing to do is to rephrase rather than to look for a specific rule of grammar (which likely doesn't exist).

For example:

Extreme votes on a post often indicated that there was an agreement or disagreement.

When you see spam on , you should case an upvote or flag.

They ship traveled across a sea or ocean.

On the other hand, if you are using a style guide that does say what to do in such circumstances, then follow its advice.

grammatical number - "BookList" or "booksList?"

Possible Duplicates:
“User accounts” or “users account?”
Is it correct to say “lesson count” or “lessons count”?

I'm wondering whether or not I should use a plural form noun with a collection name. For example, which one is correct, bookList or booksList (obviously they are variables in a programming language)?