pronouns - "more robust than five years ago" vs. "more robust than it was five years ago"

This is from a question from GMAT.

The official correct answer is C. but I am wondering what is the difference between A and C. Both seem correct and clear to me.

10. A large rise in the number of housing starts in the coming year should boost new construction dollars by several billion dollars, ___________________.

(A) making the construction industry’s economic health much more robust than five years ago

(C) making the construction industry’s economic health much more robust than it was five years ago

adjectives - Indefinite articles used with plural nouns: It was AN amazing TWO DAYS

The indefinite article a(n), derives from the old English word an meaning "one". Generally this word only occurs in determiner function before noun phrases which are singular. However, there seem to be some cases where this determiner occurs before plural noun phrases. I say that, but actually these noun phrase seem so bizarre to me, in terms of their structure, that I'm not sure they're definitely noun phrases at all. Here are some examples:

• a full three months before we left


• an amazing two days


• an awkward ten minutes

Ignoring the article here for a moment, these noun phrases are odd because the adjective is occurring before the numeral. We would normally expect to see:

• three full months



• two amazing days


• ten awkward minutes

Even given the oddness of the word order in the original phrases, I can see no reason why the normally singular indefinite article is licensed here.

Can anybody give an account of the syntactic structure of these phrases, and/or explain why the semantically singular article is able to be used with such phrases - even if they compulsorily trigger plural verb agreement?

Here is an example of one of these instances which seems to demand a plural verb:

1. An amazing two million people attend every year.


2. *An amazing two million people attends every year. (ungrammatical)

Answer

A few old grammar rules

A great many, a good many, a few.—These are very incorrect and bad
phrazes; and the singular article can never be properly used with a

plural noun.

Since Few words on Many Subjects was published in 1831, English has seen quite a few changes. I don't know whether this rule was enforced at schools, but I did find another example lambasting the use of the indefinite article before many in front of a plural noun.

There is an extensive and growing error in the use of the adjectives good and many. It is not correct to say “a good many apples,” tho we may say “many good apples;” for, omitting the adjective good, we can not say “a many apples.” Neither is it correct to say “a great many persons;” for, “a great persons,” or “a many persons,” would be improper. It would be better to say, many apples; many persons, and omit the good and great. We do not hear of “a bad many,” or a “small many.” Why then say “a good or great many?” “The rushing of many waters;” “the influence of many minds,” are much more expressive than to add the words great and good.

^{Source: A grammar of the English language: Explained According to the Principles of Truth and Common Sense ... (1839)}

a/an + adjective + number + plural noun

The fact that native speakers were using the article "a" in front of adjectives and plural nouns in the 19th century, proves there is nothing new under the sun. Today the following sentences are perfectly grammatical.

1. He weighed a whopping twenty-five stones (350 lbs)


2. We spent a wonderful/fantastic/memorable three weeks in Greece


3. He had collected a good many books


4. She waited a full three minutes before speaking



5. It had been an exciting two years for Alice


6. Ted had an exhausting two days in Denver.


7. It costs a mere twenty dollars.

In sentence 3, “a great number of” could substitute “a good many”.

(a) He weighed twenty-five stones.
(b) We spent three weeks in Greece.
(c) He had collected many books.
(d) She waited three minutes before speaking
(e) Alice had experienced two exciting years.
(f) Ted had two exhausting days.
(g) It (only) costs twenty dollars

The sentences are only grammatical without the "a" and its "adjective"; take away only one of the two components, and the sentences become ungrammatical. The indefinite article modifies the adjective with the number. There has to be a number attached to the adjective in order for the sentence to be grammatical.

“She waited a full minutes before speaking” (NO)
“She waited a three minutes before speaking.” (NO)
“She waited a minutes before speaking” (NO)

The noun phrases take a plural noun and a plural verb after the singular a great /good many; or a/an + adjective + number; e.g.

A great many people in this country are worried about law-and-order
An astronomical 300,000 tons of apples were destroyed.
… an amazing 250,000 new neurones are added every minute.

In a great (or) good many people, “great” and “good” act like the adverb very, or really, they intensify the adjective many; i.e. “very many people” and “really a lot of people”.

The determiner many and a good many are listed in all the dictionaries I checked, but they offer no insights as to why this construction is acceptable.

many n. (used with a pl. verb)
1. The majority of the people; the masses: "The many fail, the one succeeds" (Tennyson).
2. A large indefinite number: A good many of the workers had the flu.
^{American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language}

man•y
3. a large or considerable number of persons or things: A good many of the beggars were blind.
^{Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, © 2010}

Rogermue in the comments, suggests that a great many is derived from the German noun Menge a word meaning "multitude".

An article in Language Log has this to say on this particular construction

Funky a

A couple of days ago, I took Roy Peter Clark to task for claiming that phrases like "a million dollars" show that the indefinite article a can be used with a plural head ("Slippery glamour", 7/4/2008). I observed that the structure is clearly [[a million] dollars], not [a [million dollars]]; that expressions like "a million" are just numbers, fitting into the normal syntactic slot where numbers go; and that million in this case is morphosyntactically singular.

In the comments, Russell Lee-Goldman pointed out that
There are, however, a few cases where it really looks like "a" is acting funky:

– He was there for a good seven years.
– An additional three people are required.
– A mere four nations recognize that standard.
– She collected an amazing and heretofore unprecedented forty million dollars.

[..examples taken from the web...]

But these examples seem to me to represent a generalization of the phenomenon on display in phrases like "a million dollars": English number-expressions have inherited from their partitive history a limited ability to act like singular noun phrases.
However, I'll admit that the constituent structure doesn't feel like

[ [a  ] ]

but rather feels like

[ [a ] [ ] ]

— for what little those feelings are worth

The article ends with an update and suggests reading two studies. The paper, A SINGULAR PLURAL, by Tania Ionin & Ora Matushansky, I believe would interest the OP a great deal.

articles - Should "an" be used before words beginning with "h"?

Should an be used before words beginning with 'h'? What about when the 'h' is silent and is followed by a vowel?

british english - 'to'-infinitive without the verb

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

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

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

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

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

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

So...

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

Answer

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

Etymology of "crossgrained" (perverse, untractable)

A secondary meaning of crossgrained is

"Perverse; untractable; contrary; difficult to deal with. (eg) She was none of your crossgrained, termagant, scolding jades. - Arbuthnot."

What is the etymology of this usage, and when was the word first so used?

Note, crossgrained most commonly means "Having the grain or fibers run diagonally, or more or less transversely and irregularly, so as to interfere with splitting or planing". That this is by far the most-common usage of the word can be seen via examples for crossgrained and cross grained from ngrams. ngrams also shows that the form crossgrained is used far more often than either of the forms cross grained or cross-grained; but neither wiktionary nor etymonline includes crossgrained.

Answer

The primary definition from the same source explains the metaphorical use as shown in the secondary.

"Having the grain or fibers run diagonally, or more or less transversely and irregularly, so as to interfere with splitting or planing."

"If the stuff proves crossgrained, . . . then you must turn your stuff to plane it the contrary way."

Both senses boil down to "difficult to deal with".

---

[see also:]
cross-grained
Adjective

(of timber) Having an irregular rather than a parallel grain.
(by extension) Difficult to deal with; contrary or troublesome.

Wiktionary defines the second meaning as 'by extension' if the basic sense.

---

[Edit-2] re: "and when was the word first so used?"

"The new encyclopædia; or, Universal dictionary of arts and sciences" (Google eBook) 1807 records: 2. Perverse; troublesome; vexatious.
It cites Hudibras, L'Estrange, apart from Arbuthnot (John Bull)

Arbuthnot (c1750,) seems to be the most typically cited reference for the figurative use of cross(-)grained. So we may infer that to be the earliest.

However, this 1734 reference is also interesting

What a crossgrained piece is man ? He will eat when he should not, and he will not eat when he should. When God said, " Eat not of this forbidden fruit," — then he will be sure to pearls before swine," Matt. vii. 6.

Use of the word "hypothesis"

So I was correcting an essay of my friend, and when I was reading the conclusion I read this:

This essay discussed how e-rating teachers by learners can help trainers to ameliorate their teaching strategies and can also provide inaccurate results. In my opinion, grading mentors online by students is a good hypothesis.

I was telling her that I believe that hypothesis is not a good use of the word in this context. For me "form of evaluation, "approach", or even "idea" are better words to use here. She argued that she was corrected by an English tutor and he didn't mention anything about the word "hypothesis" . I still think it is not accurate or well used. Any lights on this?

abbreviations - When using "HR" for Human Resources, should "a" or "an" be used in front of it in a sentence?

IS HR an acronym? Should "a" or "an" be used in front of it in a sentence, such as:
Do you have an HR question?

grammar - Why is this sentence incorrect? Why is this other sentence correct?

The answer to this GMAT question was not what I expected it to be.

Link to the forum page here.
Up until now, I was certain about two fundamental truths about grammar.

1. It is always possible to connect an independent clause to another independent clause by using an appropriate coordinating conjunction and adding a comma.


2. A list of two items should not have a comma between the two items unless absolutely necessary to avoid confusion.

Now that I have seen this question, I am stumped.
I thought the correct answer was A, but it turns out that the official answer was E. I believe A is correct and E is incorrect.
The reasons cited for A being incorrect and E being correct are the same: parallelism. A does not maintain parallelism between "listening" and "he prayed", while E maintains parallelism between "listening" and "praying". Given that this question and the official answer were supplied by an official GMAT test organization, I am inclined to believe this. But I do not find this explanation satisfactory.

It is to my understanding that you can always combine two independent clauses by using an appropriate coordinating conjunction and adding a comma.

She waved goodbye. He waved back.

We are free to combine the sentences like this.

She waved goodbye, and he waved back.

Back to the original question.

The dying old priest lay in his bed, listening to his disciples recite sermons he wrote years earlier. He prayed for salvation.

Here we have two independent clauses. The first independent clause ("The dying old priest lay in his bed, listening to his disciples recite sermons he wrote years earlier") uses a sentence structure that I have seen many times before where a present tense verb is used even while the main verb is in past tense to indicate that the two are happening at the same time. (For example, "He walked to the park, whistling all along the way.") For this reason, I do not doubt that it is a grammatically correct independent clause. I know the second sentence is a grammatically correct independent clause for obvious reasons.
Given that the two are independent clauses, and that the conjunction "and" is appropriate, we can combine them using the conjunction and a comma. Right?

The dying old priest lay in his bed, listening to his disciples recite sermons he wrote years earlier, and he prayed for salvation.

This gives us option A, which is apparently incorrect. But I do not understand why. The explanation cited for why answer A is incorrect is because of parallelism, but to my knowledge, parallelism does not apply here. We are only combining sentences using the most fundamental method of combining sentences: a coordinating conjunction and a comma. Parallelism is (again, to my knowledge) only applicable when you are creating a list. We would only be creating a list if there was not a comma before the "and".

The dying old priest lay in his bed, listening to his disciples recite sermons he wrote years earlier and he prayed for salvation.

If we remove the comma, we are creating a list and thus have to maintain parallelism.

The dying old priest lay in his bed, listening to his disciples recite sermons he wrote years earlier and praying for salvation.

This ALMOST gives us answer E, but in answer E there is an extra comma.

The dying old priest lay in his bed, listening to his disciples recite sermons he wrote years earlier, and praying for salvation.

Not only do I believe this sentence is incorrect because "Praying for salvation" is not an independent clause (and thus cannot be combined to another independent clause by using a conjunction and a comma), I also believe it is incorrect because you should not put a comma between the items in a list that only contains two items.

I believe this sentence is already obviously incorrect, but it will be more clear if we shorten it a little (but still keep the list of two items).

The dying old priest lay in his bed, listening to his disciples, and praying for salvation.

This appears to be incorrect for the same reason that we would never say

The girls were skipping, and hopping.

or

I went to the store and got milk, and eggs.

So I have multiple questions arising from this dilemma:

1) Does parallelism need to be followed if you are not creating a list and are only combining two independent clauses with a conjunction and a comma?

2) Is my assumption that the creation of a list depends on the presence of commas? (If there is no comma in "The dying old priest lay in his bed, listening to his disciples recite sermons he wrote years earlier and he prayed for salvation," we create a list and thus have to maintain parallelism. If there is a comma, we are not creating a list and can ignore parallelism.)

3) Is my fundamental truth of "It is always possible to connect an independent clause to another independent clause by using an appropriate coordinating conjunction and adding a comma" correct?

4) Is my fundamental truth of "A list of two items should not have a comma between the two items unless absolutely necessary to avoid confusion" correct?

tenses - "I didn't know you liked her" or "I didn't know you like her"

I have a friend who insists that

"I didn't know you like her"

is more correct than

"I didn't know you liked her"

if the liking is still taking place. But to my ear, only the latter sounds correct.

Which of the above (if any) is correct and why?

Answer

I have a friend who insists that

• 1.) "I didn't know you like her"

  
  
  

  is more correct than




• 2.) "I didn't know you liked her"

if the liking is still taking place. But to my ear, only the latter (#2) sounds correct.

Which of the above (if any) is correct and why?

*

Trust your ear. :)

Your ear knows. As in all things dealing with today's English, we native English speakers know what sounds right and what sounds wrong -- but it can be hard to explain the grammar of the why of it all.

Generally, your version #2 is the preferred version, for it is the speaker's knowing that is foregrounded, while the info of your liking her is backgrounded. That is, previously the speaker didn't know that you liked her, but now the speaker does know. And that is what version #2 is doing, foregrounding the speaker's knowing, and backgrounding the info of your liking her by backshifting the verb "like" into "liked".

(Version #1 would be used if, for some reason, the speaker wanted to foreground the info that you like the girl. But that is rather unlikely for the example sentence in the usual context.)

.

LONG VERSION: (Note: "preterite" == a past tense form of a verb)

The preterite has three main uses:

• past time,


• modal remoteness,


• backshifting.

Your example illustrates a backshifting use. Backshifting is often used in indirect reported speech, e.g. "Jill said she had too many commitments" when Jill's original utterance was "I have too many commitments" -- notice how Jill's present-tense "have" was backshifted into the preterite "had".

Backshifting in a subordinate clause can occur when either one of the following conditions is true:

• A.) The tense of the matrix clause is a type of past-tense.




• B.) The time of the matrix clause situation is in the past time sphere.

In your example:

• "I didn't know you like/liked her"

the matrix clause's verb is "did", which is a past tense verb form, and so, it fulfills the above #A. (The matrix clause also fulfills #B, in that the situation of the speaker not knowing was in the past time sphere.)

And so, a backshifted preterite can occur. But then there is the question of preference, and even the question of obligatory vs optional backshifting.

Your example sentence seems to me to be an illustration of where there would be a strong preference for a backshifted version. Your example seems very similar to,

• I thought it [was] mine.

which is discussed in the 2002 reference grammar by Huddleston and Pullum et al., The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CGEL), pages 157-8:

(c) Focus on original

If the focus is on the original utterance or belief, with a contrast between 'then' and 'now', this will favor the backshifted version:

• I thought it [was] mine. -- (backshifted)

One context of this is where it has just been established that it is mine: thought would here be strongly stressed, indicating a contrast between past thinking and present knowing (of the same proposition). Another context is where it has just been established (or claimed) that it is not mine: here the contrast is between what I thought in the past and what is known/claimed in the present. In either case the past time location of the thinking is foregrounded, focused, and this favors the backshifted version, preserving the original T-o: deictic is would hardly be possible here.

tenses - Is my usage of 'had been' correct?

I am writing a story in first person singular past tense...Is the following usage of 'had been' in the sentence correct.

Canab was a massively multiplayer online game designed and developed
by Digital Dreams which was started ten years back. It had been five
years that I was working as a game designer.

Answer

It is a passive voice but I use it all the time. My editors are fine with it. I use Grammarly and it doesn't like the passive aspect of the words however when I tried to change it to a non-passive the sentences sounded jerky.

Hope that helps.

verbs - Does "help" take the preposition "to"?

I've seen the verb "help" be used transitively and intransitively - in the latter case, followed by the preposition "to" - in various sentences. For example, these should have identical meaning:

I'll help you do it. / I'll help you to do it.
Jim helps run the shop. / Jim helps to run the shop.

Should it be used intransitively in this way, though? If we have a transitive version, doesn't it make sense to use that instead if we're using this verb with an infinitive? It also seems to me that using "help" intransitively in this way can lead to ambiguity; for example:

It helps to buy holidays.

... could mean that some previously stated thing helps with the process of buying holidays, or that buying holidays - in general - helps something. What would be the more likely meaning of the above sentence?

Answer

The to in all of the sentences above is not a preposition.

It's an infinitive complementizer, i.e, a meaningless word that introduces the verb in an infinitive clause complement, the same way the complementizer that introduces a tensed clause complement in

• I think that you're wrong.

Such complementizers are often deleted, though this depends on the matrix verb.

• I think you're wrong.

In the case of help, the to complementizer is optional for Object complements

• I helped her to pick out the presents.


• I helped her pick out the presents.

but required for Subject complements

• To buy bread daily helps me.


• *Buy bread daily helps me.

even when they're Extraposed and leave a Dummy it in subject position

• It helps me to buy bread daily.


• *It helps me buy bread daily.

However, if the it is not a dummy, and actually refers to some real thing, then the complement is an object complement, not a subject complement, and the to is optional.

• It (i.e, the bus line) helps me buy bread daily.

To avoid confusion, avoid ambiguous pronouns, and distinguish dummy it from referential it.

punctuation - Is it acceptable to use a single hyphen as a dash (as the BBC does)?

Is it acceptable to use a single hyphen as a dash (as the BBC does)?

Example from BBC News:

Venezuela - a major oil producer - has been heavily affected by the
fall in oil prices on international markets.

Usage of the idiom "to set the Thames on fire"

I wonder whether the idiom "to set the Thames on fire" is currently in use and universally understood. Will it be correctly understood outside the United Kingdom? Would it be correct to say "to set the Thames ablaze" ?

articles - Which is right and why: Why do people go (to zoos/to zoo/to the zoo)?

I couldn’t find these explanation of exactly how the rules of articles apply in questions like this:

• Why do people go to zoos?




• Why do people go to zoo?




• Why do people go to the zoo?

It’s not a question about a specific zoo, but about zoos in general.

The first variant sounds correct, but I’m not so sure about the second and third.

Are there scenarios in which both are acceptable, such as spoken English versus formal writing?

Answer

Why do people go to zoos is correct and would be my choice.

Why do people go to zoo is grammatically incorrect, because the singular "zoo" is missing an article.

Why do people go to the zoo is grammatically correct but a bit odd. Colloquially, the phrase "go to the zoo" does not imply any particular zoo; for example, the sentence "why does a person go to the zoo?" is perfectly correct. But with the plural subject "people", I think using "zoos" (plural) is more correct, unless you mean a group of people all going to the same zoo.

expressions - What's the verdict on "sooner than later"?

I have heard a lot of people say at work that we should do something "sooner than later." This grates against my native ear, but it seems fairly commonplace. I have always understood the expression to only make sense as "sooner rather than later."

I found this Word Reference Forum thread on the subject. One poster gave a very reasonable explanation why "sooner than later" is incorrect:

I think it should be "sooner rather than later".

There are two choices: one can do it sooner(A) or one can do it later(B). Each one refers to the doing of "it".
>For this choice:
I want this done A rather than B. (correct)

I want this done A than B. (incorrect)

The fact that the adjectives are comparatives and the construction uses "than" is what makes it tempting to remove the rather. Sooner than a specific time might work (adding in e.g. by 7pm), but sooner than (another comparative adjective) in my mind doesn't work.

However, consider:

I want this done quickly rather than slowly. (correct)

I want this done quickly than slowly. (incorrect)

I agree with him, but was also able to twist my brain around to give the phrase some kind of meaning and actually found myself suggesting ways it could be semi-correct. Here's what I wrote:

I came across this thread considering the same question myself. Below are two caveats to the excellent response by Julian Stewart, and the caveat to my caveats is that you will not find me saying "sooner than later."

It definitely makes sense to say:

"I'd like to walk faster rather than slower."

And it could make sense to say:

"I'd rather walk faster than (walk) slower."

"I'd rather walk fast than (walk) slow."

And therefore:

"I'd rather finish sooner than (finish) later."

Secondly, I can conceive in some convoluted way that "sooner than later" can be used to communicate exactly what it denotes: a point (or range of points) in time preceding the point (or range of points) described by 'later.' I know it's screwy, but it kind of makes sense.

I'd love to hear what you folks here have to say on the matter and see if anyone can make a compelling and definitive argument. I fear I might have put my brain in some alternate English reality in order to make the defense I did. Talk some sense into me please?

Answer

I just had what seems like an insight.

Many have brought up that some loose time reference is a necessary condition for the comparative words "sooner" and "later". I think that sooner rather than later becomes actually meaningful in the way if you consider that the implied time reference could actually be something such as:

...than expected

or

...than we might normally do

Thus: "We should get to this [sooner than we might normally do] rather than [later than we might normally do]."

The only possible way sooner than later makes any sense at all to me is in the very convoluted way I initially describe, which in this new paradigm would be a truncation of:

"We should get to this sooner than [later than we might normally do].

or simply, as some have suggested,

"We should get to this sooner than [later (some arbitrary point in the future)].

I don't quite buy the arguments that defend this, per John Lawler et al, because this seems like a completely pointless sentiment. Further, this interpretation does not use "sooner" and "later" in a comparative sense, though the full and apparently older phrase (with the use of "rather") does.

Of course, I concede all the previous statements about economy of words or an idiom being adopted in just the way that people like it best, which could be the more "catchy" phrasing. But if the question is about meaning, the answer is clear to me.

And I hope everyone else comes around sooner rather than later :)

prepositions - “provide X to someone” vs “provide X for someone”

I am confused by the different explanations in the following two dictionaries.

Macmillan says “provide A to B”, while The Free Dictionary says it is wrong and tells us not to say “provide A to B”, insisting that we not use any prepositions except FOR. That is why I am much confused.

Which of the two is GRAMMATICALLY correct in the States and Britain regardless of whether it is used or not in daily life? And could you suggest any authentic sources about this?

• We provide legal advice and services to our clients. (Macmillan)




• The animals provide food for their young. (TFD)
  Be Careful!
  Don't use any preposition except for in sentences like these.
  Don't say, for example 'The animals provide food to their young'.

grammar - Proper use of the conjunction "whether"

I've come across several different ways of using the conjunction whether.

First, the terse version:

"Jon was deciding whether to go outside."

That sentence sounds incomplete to me, because it's missing the "or part" (implied by context). When I read it out loud, I think to myself that the sentence should have been written like this:

"Jon was deciding whether to go outside or not."

But I keep seeing it used in both ways. I've also seen it used like this (similar to the above):

"Jon was deciding whether to go outside, or stay inside."

Like this, in the middle of the sentence:

"Jon was deciding whether or not to go outside."

That sentence structure doesn't sound right to me.

And, lastly, like this:

"Jon was deciding whether to go outside, or if he should
stay inside."

This is the most comfortable to read to me, but it feels a bit too verbose.

Are all the above sentences grammatically correct, and do they all have the same meaning?

Answer

The standard usage is:

whether this or that

where this and that are both phrases/clauses that should be parallel.

The second clause is commonly elliptical if it's the negation of the first.

So:

whether he likes it or he does not like it.

becomes

whether he likes it or not.

Of the examples you gave, "Whether to go outside, or if he should stay inside" isn't considered standard because it is not parallel. It should be "whether to go outside or stay inside". Also, "Whether or not to go outside" isn't standard, it should be "whether to go outside or not".

Including a comma at the end of a list before a dependent clause

I have this sentence on my resume:

Develop the front-end of a platform using HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap to connect people and systems

Is there a comma after Bootstrap? I wanted to elaborate on the reason for building the application rather than simply listing the programming languages I used.

Answer

If the platform uses HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap to connect people and systems, I can't see any advantage to introducing a pause before "using"—and you certainly wouldn't gain anything by putting a comma after "Bootstrap." That is, the minimally punctuated sentence

Develop the front end of a platform using HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap to connect people and systems.

conveys the intended meaning just fine.

On the other hand, if you developed the front end of a platform to connect people and systems, and you accomplished this by using HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap, you might well want to use some sort of punctuation—paired commas, open and close parentheses, or paired em dashes—to break out the phrase "using HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap," to indicate that the phrase constitutes an independent clause in the larger sentence. That is,

Develop the front end of a platform, using HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap, to connect people and systems.

or

Develop the front end of a platform (using HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap) to connect people and systems.

or

Develop the front end of a platform—using HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap—to connect people and systems.

would convey the intended meaning in this second scenario.

punctuation - Do I need an apostrophe in "These trees’ roots"?

Do I need an apostrophe in "These trees’ roots"?

For example,

"Wow!!! These trees' roots are so long!"

In this example the speaker can see both roots and the trees themselves.

Answer

Yes, you need the apostrophe. -s' denotes possession of some thing or things by multiple owners. The roots belong to the trees; the trees own the roots. Therefore, the roots are the trees' roots.

word order - "I you already know": is this proper English?

I found this sentence in Terry Pratchett's "Interesting Times": (*)

“Great wizard,” said Butterfly, bowing. “I you already know, but these two are Lotus Blossom and Three Yoked Oxen, other members of our cadre. [...]”

It's certainly not the usual word order, but there's clearly emphasis on “I” and that often can reason about alterations like that. A word-for-word translation into my native language (Czech) works perfectly. Moreover I believe if it was like

“I already know you, but these two [...]”

the “other two” could in principle at first be perceived like a substitution for the object rather than the subject, turning the thing into a garden path sentence.

Note: At least I assume that “I” is the subject and “you” the object, as in “I already know you, but these two don't”.

What makes me unsure is that this is in a part of the story where the speaking character intentionally switches between a flawless language and some sort of pidgin English for the purpose of disguise. It's not clear to me which is the case right here.

(*) An e-book edition so sorry for a missing page reference.

Answer

It's not correct according to traditional grammar

It might depend on what you mean by "proper English". Based on the context, I'm assuming the clause is meant to express the same idea as "You already know me."

The traditional prescriptivist answer would be that the quoted sentence is not "proper English". This kind of word order (Object-Subject-Verb, or OSV) can be used for emphasis, but changing word order like this isn't supposed to change the form of the pronoun, which still functions as the object of the clause. So "Me you already know" would be correct in "proper English", which makes "I you already know" incorrect—from a certain (not uncommon) viewpoint.

You could stop here. The rest of my answer will be about why I'm hesitant to say that it is incorrect/improper regardless of viewpoint: I'm not sure based on the context that Pratchett intended for it to sound incorrect, and there is some attested variation in the usage of I and me that certain linguists view as falling inside the boundaries of standard English. The quoted sentence certainly shows a very marginal usage of I, but I feel like it could be related in some way to the less marginal areas of variation that I discuss below. And even if we just categorize the usage as improper, I'm interested in the question of why I might have been used here.

Actual usage of I and me is somewhat variable in some contexts

In traditional grammar, I and me are described as the "nominative case" and "accusative case" forms of the first-person singular pronoun. "Nominative" and "accusative" is terminology derived from the grammatical description of Greek and Latin, in which many nouns and adjective have distinct forms for these two "cases". Modern English is descended from a language with cases that worked similarly to those of Latin, but in present-day English, the original distinction between "nominative case" and "accusative case" is only visible on some of the pronouns. (Actually, the modern English "accusative case" represents a merger of the Old English accusative case and dative case, but that's an additional complication that's not relevant to your question.) Because of the way English has developed, linguists have questioned the applicability of the traditional terminology and concepts to modern English grammar.

The use of the remaining distinct pronoun forms has also changed over time. In some contexts, we see a certain amount of variability between the two forms, despite the prescriptive tendency to identify one form as "correct" and the other as "incorrect".

One area where such variation is well-known is coordination. According to prescriptive rules, it is incorrect to use ...and I in place of ...and me, but it still sounds OK to many English speakers to use I here. This use of I is common enough that some linguists argue that it is an established variant usage within the range of Standard English. See F.E.'s answer to Between you and (“me” or “I”)?, which cites the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CGEL) by Huddleston and Pullum and also mentions less common constructions that CGEL calls "hypercorrections".

Another context where we see some variability is before a relative clause that has who as the subject: it is possible to see ...I(,) who being used in place of me(,) who.

I haven't read about variability in sentences like the one that you quote, but to my ear, the use of I in this context seems similar to its use in the other contexts that I discussed above. The unusual word order makes the use of I not sound particularly jarring to me, but other people might have different reactions.

I know of a possibly related example of unexpected "nominative case" on a fronted pronominal object (but with "incorrect" usage of he in place of him) in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (unlike the Pratchett sentence that you quote, the Austen sentence also contains one of the environments I mentioned above, as who follows the pronoun):

He, who had always inspired in herself a respect which almost overcame her affection, she now saw the object of open pleasantry.

(Chapter 61)

I first saw the Austen sentence brought up in a related question and its comments: Why the use of objective form?

It doesn't strike me as a very plausible "pidgin English" form

I wouldn't think that an author would be likely to use "I" instead of "me" as a way of characterizing a pidgin form of English. The usual stereotype would be that such a speaker would instead use "me" instead of "I" (e.g. "me no see them" for "I didn't see them").

Comparing it to other errors in the speaker's English

I Googled the book passage glanced at the area near the sentence that you quoted. So far, I didn't see any errors in Butterfly's sentences: maybe you could add a quote showing that?

Lotus Blossom is depicted as making the following kinds of grammatical errors in English ("Morporkian") sentences:

• incorrect verb agreement: "Then it are true", "Rincewind, he say . . . Goodbyeeeeeeeee—",




• incorrect use of singular forms: "Indeed, I am all ear"

Unfortunately, what I've seen so far doesn't seem much use in answering your question.

Update: sentence production errors and commas

I talked above about the possibility that this usage could be related to other, better-attested variation in the use of I and me. There is fairly good evidence that in some contexts such as ...and I, the prescriptively incorrect use of I is used frequently enough by some speakers to constitute a pattern of usage rather than a one-off slip of the tongue or pen.

But it's harder to find examples of I being used in contexts like "I you already know...." In previous drafts of this answer, I neglected to talk about the possibility that the use of "I" in this sentence is some form of production error, where Pratchett inadvertently used a form that actually wasn't grammatical at all for him. A typo is unlikely, but it could be an error in putting the sentence together based on mental interference from other sentences with similar meaning. It's not incredibly rare for speakers to produce sentences that are syntactically malformed for that reason, although this is less expected in written text.

I think some comments have indicated possible sources of interference that could have caused Pratchett to inadvertently produce an ungrammatical sentence:

• The second clause in the sentence has a copular structure: "these two are Lotus Blossom and Three Yoked Oxen". In anticipation of this, "I" might have been used in the first clause, as if it had a parallel structure along the lines of "I am..." (Joshua Taylor's comment is I think making this point).




• Kate Bunting pointed out that the clearly grammatical "I am already known to you" would have the same meaning. Possibly, "I you already know" comes from blending the two grammatical sentences "I am already known to you" and "Me you already know".

Some other comments have suggested that a comma might improve the acceptability of the sentence, although I can't think of any reason why that would be the case (zwol, and also BruceWayne, if I'm reading the latter comment correctly).

word choice - Does "the same number of people" behave as singular or plural?

This hurts my eyes to read it and my ears to say it, but the writer stands by item #43

About the same number of people was awarded bachelor's degrees in 2010 as filed for personal bankruptcy (1.6 million).

Is the subject in this sentence singular or plural?

Answer

The heading for paragraph 7 of Harbrace College Handbook, Chapter 6a states,

When regarded as a unit, collective nouns, as well as noun phrases denoting quantity, take singular verbs.
. . .
The number is singular; a number is plural.
"The number of students was small." [The number is taken as a unit.]
"A number of students were taking tests." [A number refers to individuals.]

Their examples indicate that it's different depending on if the number is taken as a unit or refers to individuals. In your case I think it's individuals and should use the plural.

What data or which data?

I want to ask, what/which data different model combinations are using, so do I have to say:

Which data is used by the model combinations?

or:

What data is used by the model combinations?

etymology - Did the non-standard pronunciation of “gold” as "goold" come from an Old English sound change?

John Walker in his Critical Pronunciation Dictionary (1791) transcribes the pronunciation of the word “gold” as

go¹ld, or go²o²ld

which in modern transcription equates to /goʊld/ or /guːld/.

He says

It is much to be regretted that the second sound of this word is grown much more frequent than the first. It is not easy to guess at the cause of this unmeaning deviation from the general rule, but the effect is to empoverish the sound of the language, and to add to its irregularities. It has not, however, like some other words, irrecoverably lost its true pronunciation. Rhyme still claims its right to the long open o, as in bold, cold, fold, &c.

This made me think of an old post by Janus Bahs Jacquet that describes a late Old English sound change of vowel lengthening before homorganic clusters of voiced consonants, including ld (this is why “wild” and “mild” are currently pronounced with “long i”), and I wondered if this could be the origin of /guːld/: Old English /gold/ being lengthened to /goːld/, which after the Great Vowel Shift would be /guːld/.

However, I found little supporting evidence for this idea. Walker evidently thinks the /uː/ pronunciation was recent in his time (although he could be wrong about this).

But on the other hand, I found a book English as we speak it in Ireland by Patrick Weston Joyce (1910) that says

Such words as old, cold, hold are pronounced by the Irish people ould, cowld, hould (or howlt); gold is sounded goold and ford foord. I once heard an old Wicklow woman say of some very rich people 'why these people could ait goold.' These are all survivals of the old English way of pronouncing such words.

Maybe "survivals of the old English way" here just refers to survivals from Walker's time, not from significantly before. It is interesting however that "ford" also shows this vowel since it also had /o/ before a homorganic voiced consonant cluster in Old English.

The OED says of gold:

Forms:  Also ME guold, ME–15 golde, (ME gowlde), 17–18 Sc. and north. dial. gowd.

Etymology: Common Germanic: Old English gold

It doesn’t seem to record any attested Middle English spelling with “oo,” although it’s true that vowel doubling was only inconsistently applied in Middle English to mark vowel length.

I also cannot find any clear examples of other words where Old English short “o” corresponds to modern English /uː/ due to lengthening before homorganic consonants, although I looked through the Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary for Old English words containing “ong,” “omb,” “ond,” "ord" or “old”.

The unclear examples that I found were the following:

• with -old: mo(u)ld seems similar to gold: it also had “o” in Old English, and the OED says it was spelled with “oo” at some times in the past. But like “gold,” the current standard pronunciation has /oʊ/ rather than /uː/. Bold = “a dwelling” from OE bold is now archaic, but was spelled “boold” at one point in the past. “Fold” = “the earth” (from OE folde) shows no signs of having ever been pronounced with /uː/, but it is not a very common word.




• with -ord: ford, mentioned in the Joyce quote above. Board, which has some historical spellings like boord and bourd that hint at /uː/. Hoard, which like board has some spellings like hoord. (The modern pronunciation of these words is an unclear indicator of their original vowel because before /r/, original /uː/ is often conflated with /o/ due to lowering changes, as in whore and floor). Word, which shows a completely different development that may be related to the initial /w/.




• with -ong: among comes from Old English on gemange or the phonetic variant on gemonge. The development of the vowel to /ʌ/ seems very unclear to me. It apparently was pronounced with a“short o” sound as the spelling suggests in at least some accents of Early Modern English (John Hart's pronunciation of English (1569-1570), by Otto Jespersen 1907); it seems to me this could either be retained from the “o” variant of Old English, or be derived from the “a” variant via lengthening followed by shortening: /ɑ/ > /ɑː/ > /ɔː/ > /ɒ/. I at one point had the idea that the /ʌ/ pronunciation might come from /o/ > /oː/ > /uː/ > /u/, but there seems to be no evidence for that.

The fact that the letter after the vowel is “l” in particular could be relevant, since vocalization of /l/ to /w/ is a common sound change both historically and currently in English, but I have never heard of a sound change/ol/ > /owl/ > /uːl/ occuring in any other words.

So I find myself stumped, and now I’d like to learn if anyone else knows more about the historical pronunciation of “gold” as “goold” that Walker and Joyce record (and the pronunciation of "ford" as "foord" mentioned by Joyce). Is it as inexplicable and random as Walker makes it out to be, or are there any similar sound changes or historical details that can explain it? Is it related to the fact that "gold" and "old" had different vowels in Old English, as I initially thought, or is this just a coincidence? Do any accents still have it today?

Answer

"Goold" does seem to be the regular result of lengthening of Old English /o/ before /ld/.

Jespersen (1909) says "goold" developed regularly

I got around to reading Otto Jespersen's Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles, Part I: Sounds and Spellings (1909), and I have found it very helpful so far. I found that Jespersen discusses the development of this word and seems to agree with my speculation that /uːld/ was a natural, rather than an unpredictable development from Old English /old/ (contrary to Walker's characterization of the word as having lost its "true pronunciation" because of an "unmeaning deviation from the general rule").

Jespersen argues that the current pronunciation /goʊld/ developed from short forms used in compound words and other derivatives. (This explanation is similar to a common explanation for the unexpectedly short vowel /ɪ/ in the noun "wind".) Just as goose with /uː/ (from earlier [oː]) gives us the compound goshawk with /ɒ/ (from earlier [o]), "gold" [goːld] is supposed to have developed a shortened form [gold].

In gold OE o lengthened should give ME /o˙/ and Mod [u˙]: this is, indeed, a form frequently given by the authorities of the preceding centuries; but in compounds, like goldsmith, etc., /o/ would remain short, and /ol/ regularly becomes /oul/, thus accounting for the present pronunciation (10.33); Shakespeare rimes the word (Merch. II. 7.66) with told, sold, behold, all of them old /ɔ˙/-words; [Elphinston] 1787 had /u˙/;

[Johnston] 1764 and [Walker] 1775 and 1791 have both pronunciations[...]

(§4.222, p. 119)

Jespersen also compares it to two other words that I didn't mention in my question, should and would (§3.521, p. 91). While these are pronounced with /ʊ/ today, it seems plausible that this developed from earlier /uː/. However, the phonological development of these words from Old and Middle English to early Modern English looks a little complicated, and Jespersen doesn't give any explanation, so I'm not entirely sure of the correctness of the comparison (one difference from gold is that the final dental in should and would is the past-tense suffix).

"Foord" may be another (the only other?) good example

I also found a source that backs up the idea of ford as an example of the same kind of lengthening. In a review article, Peter Kitson cites Gillis Kristensson (A Survey of Middle English Dialects 1290–1350..., 2002) as saying that only a small number of words that had o in Old English developed Middle English spellings with ou (Kristensson p. 66). Kitson says "More than half of them are Gould(e) for ‘gold’, most of the rest Fourd(e) for ‘ford’". Although Kristensson apparently doesn't specify the quality of the long vowel in these words, Kitson says " I think there is no doubt [...] that ū is the vowel actually meant by these spellings" and points out that "The two main words are ones for which pronunciations with it are known to have existed later in English; they survive in the surnames Gould and Foorde" (p. 140).

There seems to be no definite evidence for lengthening in ong

Jespersen does also talk about "ong" /ʌng/, although I'm not sure whether his analysis is considered correct today (it seems rather tentative). Jespersen doesn't actually think "ng" caused a preceding vowel to lengthen: although he acknowledges that the "usual theory" explains OE ang [*ɑng] > Mod ong [ɔŋ~ɒŋ] via [ɑ] > [ɑː] > [ɔː] > [ɔ] (> [ɒ]), he thinks the lengthening step is unnecessary and prefers to simply postulate [ɑŋg] > [oŋg]. (§3.511, p. 90)

He attributes the vowel in "among" to the influence of the preceding labial consonant, comparing it to words like murder < OE morðor (n.), myrðran (v.) and the many words spelled with "wo" like word, worse, worm etc.

We have also /u/, now [ʌ], between /m/
and /n/: among, -st OE ongemang ([Hart] 1569 and [Gill] 1621

with o), mongrel, formerly also spelt mungril, probably
from the same stem, and monger OE mangere ([Gill] 1621
kosterd-munger), while OE ang after other consonants has
become /oŋ/, now [ɔŋ]: long, song, throng. Cf. PE [A] in
month, etc.

(§3.43, p. 84)

grammar - Periods in quotes and how to end the sentence the quote lies in

If I am quoting someone in my writing, and I end their quote with a period, and the end of the quote is also the end of my sentence. How do I properly end the sentence? An example of this is in my last question:

For example, "The file is not updat(e)able.".

Here is another example:

The boss said, "If you don't get your work in by tomorrow, you're
fired.".

Is that how you properly end the sentence, or should I leave one of the periods out? If the latter, could you explain why?

Answer

For standard American English, omit the period at the end of the sentence and leave the one inside the quotation.

pronunciation - -ing vs -in' ending

I wonder if the "g" in the -ing forms is pronounced. When I hear it it seems as if it's not pronounced sometimes or just slightly, though sometimes I've been told that I should pronounce "g" for example in "meeting" just to avoid saying "mitten".

So how should I pronounce "-ing"?

Sometimes -ing is written in an informal way as -in' such as:

taking

takin'

Is the letter "g" in each case pronounced differently?

Answer

The 'g' in -ing is never pronounced. What is pronounced is the velar nasal consonant represented in IPA as [ŋ]. In some dialects, this is replaced by the alveolar nasal consonant represented in IPA as [n]. This is the phonetics that the -in' ending represents.

The difference between [ŋg] and just [ŋ] can be heard in the difference between the words finger and singer.

You should never use a [g] in meeting. Use [ŋ] (which is usually represented in English spelling as 'ng') and not [n], [ŋg], or [ng].

The local dialect in several regions of the U.S., and apparently in parts of Britain as well, uses [ɪn] rather than [ɪŋ] for the suffix -ing. This is sometimes spelled -in'. The people speaking these dialects can pronounce the consonant [ŋ] just fine; for example, singin' would be pronounced [sɪŋɪn]. For more information on this, see this dialect blog posting.

grammaticality - Is it correct to use the past simple with 'Since'?

Is it correct to use the past simple with 'Since'?

For example:

I didn't see him since 1990.

I wouldn't say that as a native speaker but would always use the present perfect:

I haven't seen him since 1990.

Answer

Past tense denotes the completed state as of now. So it is not possible to use "since" as it implies uncompleted period (as of now).

punctuation - Can a word be contracted twice (e.g. "I'ven't")?

I've seen a contraction of two words. I can't see why it wouldn't've been possible to have been contracted twice. Is it possible and how should it be punctuated?

Update: Ok, to sum up the answers so far

• This appears in spoken British and American English


• It is from one of the lower registers of English


• Even if spoken this way sometimes, it isn't really written as a double contraction, except as written speech in fiction.


• And from my own googling in Wiktionary, it appears most written forms are old British words, often nautical like fo'c'sle.

Answer

This is not the highest register, but you may hear it in speech. Native speakers tend to slur words together and leave out sounds even if they wouldn't write that way.

Double contractions are not used in writing. They may be grammatically correct, but a professor would not allow you to use them in an essay. Typically, even single contractions are avoided in formal writing.

grammar - How much not better than average is enough?

This is adapted from a silly conversation I had about a baseball player. It set me wondering how to describe this sort of wordplay linguistically.

HIM: Do we leave Jay in center?
HER: He's pretty good.
HIM: Better than average maybe.
HER: Not much better than average ...
HIM: Better than not much better than average, I think ...
HER: But not so much better than average that he's much better than average ...
HIM: Enough better than average.
HER: Exactly.

Typography in writing, representing prosody in speech, make it easy enough to sort out what's going on here. But how do you explain it in terms of a linguistic which confines itself to what is verbally expressed?

• How does “traditional” grammar analyze and describe these shifts in scope?


• Are these terms and concepts readily understood by, say, high-school students or moderately advanced EFL students?


• Does any “modern” grammar afford better terms and concepts?

grammaticality - Can I use the "ll" contraction with proper names?

Can I contract "will" as "ll" when preceded by a proper name? For example:

John will visit you tomorrow

John'll visit you tomorrow

I am inclined to think this is not acceptable in standard English. It's also not pretty when spoken. In which case, is this construction valid in any dialect?

Why am I asking this? (some people seem to care): I'm translating a game I originally wrote in Japanese, into English. I have a native English speaker taking care of the dialogue, and a construction similar to the one I wrote above appeared on the text he sent me to check.

I'm not a native English speaker, so even though I have probably heard that contraction a handful of times in my life, I would like to know if it is correct English.

It also happens that my native English speaker is from Texas, so it occurred to me that this is probably common in the Texan dialect of English. I have never been to Texas, so I have no idea if this is right.

Answer

Short answer: yes. It'll be understood, and if it's seen as a mistake, it'd be one of register rather than of grammar.

Longer answer: contractions are informal by nature, so if you're asking about formal written English, then any contraction is frowned upon, whether it's "it's", "you're", or "John'll".

So we're clearly talking about less-than-formal English, where the rules (such as they are) get fuzzy.

• In spoken English, contractions are totally fair game. In fact, you really have to pay attention to even notice whether someone said "I am" or "I'm". The difference between "John will" and "John'll" is a bit more audible, but it's still perfectly fine to say the latter rather than the former.





• In written English, the contractions you choose to use, or not use, determine the level of informality. In this sense, "John'll" is a bit more informal than "you're", but there are very few contexts where the latter would be acceptable while the former wouldn't be.

Bottom line is, in an informal context such as a video game, usage such as "John'll" simply adds to the colloquial, informal nature of the dialogue/narration. It is not, in and of itself, a mistake.

grammar - "Which exams is he taking?" or "Which exams are he taking?"

There is a set of exams (e.g. SAT subject tests, AP exams, etc.), and a (male) student is necessarily taking more than one of those exams. My friend knows which ones he's taking, so I'm asking him which ones. Which sentence is correct?

"Which exams is he taking?"

or

"Which exams are he taking?"

Both sound weird to me, especially the second (even though I believe that is technically the correct one).

I would appreciate if somebody could help tag this question properly.

Answer

In order to decide which of the two sentences is correct, you need to understand the syntax:

• the subject is he,


• the object is which exams,


• the main verb is take combined with the auxiliary be.

The number of the verb depends on the number of the subject. Since the subject is singular ("he"), the verb is also singular.

So one may say, "He is taking exams in two subjects this year." And the correct form of the question would be, "Which exams is he taking?"

grammaticality - "You just can't" vs. "you can't just "

I'm a bit confused about this. Which expression is correct?

You can't just do that.

or

You just can't do that.

I'm trying to say:

You can't just bash an ideology because of what someone has said/done.

Answer

As with only, one should exercise care in carefully placing just. In your sentence, you want:

• You can’t bash an ideology just because of what someone has said/done.

Because you want to be perfectly clear that just applies to because.

In the original pair of question, this one:

• You can’t just do that.

Applies just to do, whereas this one:

• You just can’t do that.

Applies just to can’t.

pronunciation - How paragraph numbers are read

I'd be glad if someone could tell me how numbers like "2.3.4.5.6" are read (pronounced)? "Two dot three dot four..." or "two three four" or maybe "two point three point four"?

Answer

The generally accepted and correct pronunciation of 2.3.4.5.6 would be:

Two point three point four point five point six.

The term point comes from full point as used as a punctuation mark or full stop. From Oxford English Dictionary (OED):

point, n.1

a. A full stop (in full, full point);

grammar - Referring to an object previously mentioned in the sentence

I wish to know, if the bellow sentence is grammatically correct and where I can find more information on forming such sentences

Can you share with me the coordinates of the measuring station, who's
data you sent me last week?

Context: Last week a friend of mine sent me some data and asked me to analyse it. Now I wish to know the coordinates, but I'm not sure, if by using who in the sentence, I am referring to the measuring station in the correct manner (is it a he, a she, or an it).

Answer

Drop the comma and use "whose":

Can you share with me the coordinates of the measuring station whose data you sent me last week?

"Whose" is the possessive form of "who", while "who's" is a contraction of "who is".

Besides that, your sentence is both correct and idiomatic.

Are there standard words for representing pronunciation?

I have come across a number of questions on the site recently where someone asks how something is pronounced. Someone will give a sample word to illustrate the pronunciation (e.g., a rhyming word for a vowel sound or one in which the relevant consonant sounds the same). Someone else will point out regional variations where the pronunciation is very different, so the sample word is useless as a "universal" example.

An illustration: There was recently a discussion about Mary/merry/marry/Murray pronunciation. I commented about "marry" rhyming with "Barry". Someone pointed out that in some places, "Barry" rhymes with "berry", if I remember correctly. So I offered "Sally" as an example of the "a" sound, just guessing that there isn't much variation in pronunciation.

There was another recent question about "gin" vs. "jean", and tchrist commented, using "fleece" and "kit" as examples. Those seem like pretty safe word choices. Were they good guesses or are those "standard" words that are known to have pretty universal pronunciations?

Most people are not familiar with the letter-like codes used to document pronunciation in places like dictionaries. I assume that there must be a reference to those symbols that says [X] is pronounced like the [Y] in [WXYZ]. The choices for the WXYZ words must be words where at least the relevant portion of the word is universally pronounced the same.

Is there a collection of such "WXYZ" words that can serve as universal examples of what I mean as to how a vowel or consonant sounds?

Answer

"Fleece" and "kit" are part of the Wells "lexical sets." They have been used somewhat as a standard in some discussions about vowel sounds in different dialects, but of course they also have their limitations—Well's use of "palm" doesn't work for American English speakers who have /ɔl/ or /ɔ/ in this word, and the words "cure" and "tour" have different vowels for me and some other speakers (my pronunciation of "cure" sounds to me like it rhymes, or at least almost rhymes, with "fur", but I can't use my "cure" vowel in words like "tour" or "poor").

Wells's lexical sets are based on two artificial standard "reference dialects," "GA/General American" and "RP/Received Pronunciation".

Wells wrote a blog post in 2010 ("lexical sets") where he explains some of the thinking behind his choice of words:

I wanted words that could never be mistaken for other words, no matter what accent you pronounced them in.

Although FLEECE is not the commonest of words, it cannot be mistaken for a word with some other vowel; whereas beat, say, if we had chosen it instead, would have been subject to the drawback that one man’s pronunciation of beat may sound like another’s pronunciation of bait or bit. As far as possible the keywords have been chosen so as to end in a voiceless alveolar or dental consonant…

though that was not always possible.

The least satisfactory keyword is PALM, and its set is also fairly incoherent. Amy says she prefers to replace it with FATHER, which is fine up to a point: but not if we are discussing Hiberno-English, where father often has not the expected aː of Armagh, Karachi, Java etc but the ɔː of THOUGHT.

grammar - Is there a singular-plural conflict in the song title "Terror Couple Kill Colonel"?

I'm not English-speaking, and I'm wondering about the title of the song by band Bauhaus - "Terror Couple Kill Colonel"

"Kill" implies a singular subject, yet couple refers to multiple subjects. Why is it not "killed" or "kills"?

grammaticality - Do things use apostrophe for indicating possessive?

If someone owns something I would say: Mom's car.

But if the owner is not a person, does it actually own it according to English rules or common usage? Which phrase is right?

• The house windows.


• The house's windows.


• The windows of the house. (Or something like that.)

(Feel free to modify this question so it would be clear for other people.)

Answer

The second and third phrases are correct:

The house's windows
The windows of the house

There is no requirement in the English language that possessors be people, and it's extremely common for inanimate objects to be used with the possessive 's. There is very little difference between the version that uses 's and the version that uses of.

Related: Is using the possessive "'s" correct in "the car's antenna"?

punctuation - Is there an "Oxford semicolon"?

I must admit that I don't use semicolon lists very often. (In some instances, I probably should have.) I will also admit that I'm neither-here-nor-there with the use of an Oxford comma. Sometimes I use it and sometimes I don't, depending on how clear I think my sentence is without it. (I suppose I default to not using it, as is (ironically) the British/Australian custom.)

But I couldn't seem to find a definitive answer on this site for whether there is a semicolon version of the Oxford comma. That is, in Commonwealth English, do semicolon lists go:

Blah blah blah; so and so; and yada yada yada

or:

Blah blah blah; so and so and yada yada yada

or (in the case of potential ambiguity?):

Blah blah blah; so and so, and yada yada yada

I found these two sources, one British and one presumably American.

bristol.ac.uk (British)

In complicated lists.

The semicolon can be used to sort out a complicated list containing
many items, many of which themselves contain commas.

Have a look at this example:

In the meeting today we have Professor Wilson, University of Barnsley,
Dr Watson, University of Barrow in Furness, Colonel Custard,
Metropolitan Police and Dr Mable Syrup, Genius General, University of
Otago, New Zealand.

In a situation such as this, only the mighty semicolon can unravel the
mess.

In the meeting today we have Professor Wilson, University of Barnsley;
Dr Watson, University of Barrow in Furness; Colonel Custard,
Metropolitan Police and Dr Mable Syrup, Genius General, University of
Otago, New Zealand.

^ As seen, no ; and is used.

grammar-monster.com (American)

Look at this list:

• John


• Simon


• Toby

This list would be written like this: John, Simon, and Toby.

Now look at this list:

• John, the baker


• Simon, the policeman


• Toby, the architect

This list would be written like this: John, the baker; Simon, the
policeman; and Toby, the architect.

^ As seen, ; and is used.

Furthermore, the British example lacks an Oxford comma in the non-semicolon list, and the American example contains an Oxford comma in the non-semicolon list.

grammar - Is the following use of "nonetheless" correct?

I was so down and unmotivated, nonetheless, that even thinking about
getting up the chair seemed like a tedious and burdensome task.

I'm having my doubts because at first I used however, and know, well, I'm not very sure anymore.

Answer

nonetheless is most often used as a replacement for however, in spite of or despite that so it doesn't sit well in your sentence.

For nonetheless to be useful in your sentence, the second part really has to be in opposition to the first as in I was so down and unmotivated, nonetheless, I clambered on to the chair with the spriteliness of a chimp.

Or a preceding sentence is in opposition such as I'd just won the lottery but I was so down and unmotivated nonetheless.

so much so would work better in your sentence.

I was so down and unmotivated, so much so, that even thinking about getting up the chair seemed like a tedious and burdensome task.

Is it correct to use "punctuation outside of the quotations", or "inside?"

Or is it region specific? I was always taught that when ending a quotation, that punctuation remains inside of the quote.

I think he said, "we should go to the store."

Are you sure he said, "we should go to the store?"

As opposed to:

I think he said, "we should go to the store". Are you sure he said, "we should go to the store"?

This is just an arbitrary example off of the top of my head, and it's hard for me to come up with an example for the second usage because it looks completely wrong to me.

I actually got into a small argument with my girlfriend earlier this year because she uses something similar to the second example, and said that's how she was taught (which is why I ask if it's region-specific.)

Anyway, is there a correct usage for ending a quotation with punctuation?

Answer

In American English, commas and periods go inside the quotation marks. Semi-colons, question marks and exclamation marks go inside the quotation marks only if they're part of the quotation. E.g.,

"What time is it?" he asked.

Did he really say, "I don't care"?

So your example should be the following:

I think he said, "we should go to the store." Are you sure he said, "we should go to the store"?

Is there a list of words that don't need their own letters in an acronym?

When building an acronym, there are occasionally small words that can "slip through the cracks". For example, U.S.A actually stands for United States of America. NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The word 'the' is another one that is left out here and there.

Is there a definitive list of words that are allowed to be left out of acronyms? Is it all just subjective and a case-to-case basis? I'm asking because I'm currently working on an acronym, and I don't think the word "with" requires it's own letter.

Answer

I don't think there is any definitive ruling on this. If you're building an acronym, then you decide to include or not include stop words. The objective should be to make the acronym more memorable or easier to say. I've reversed engineered acronyms for IT systems and I may or may not include stop words. Whatever works.

Is this that-clause for set comparison or a relative?

[i] It was lucky that Harry had tea with Hagrid to look forward to,
because the Potions lesson turned out to be the worst thing that had

happened to him so far.

–– Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

[ii] a. Ed made the most mistakes of them all.
b. It sold for the highest price ever paid for a Cezanne.

–– CGEL, p.1101

[ii] is called set comparison, for “one member is picked out as being

at the top of the scale. In [ii] the set is identified by the NP them
all: the comparison is between the members of this set with respect to
how many mistakes they each made, with Ed ranked at the top of the
scale. It is possible to omit the PP of them all, in which case the
set being compared is identified contextually. In [iib] the comparison
is between the prices paid for painting by Cezanne, and again one is
picked out as being at the top of the scale - CGEL,1102”.

It seems like [i] is a kind of the set comparison, but I’m not sure for [i] has that-clause that could be understood as a relative one. Is the that-clause a set one or a relative?

Answer

At first blush, it seems that your example sentence involves both an integrated relative clause and a set comparison.

(For relative clause: another member has already addressed that.)

For "set comparison": The set is "the things that had happened to him so far", and a member of that set is "the Potions lesson" which also happens to be the worst member of that set with respect to the attribute of badness.

In other words, the "Portions lesson" is being, or has been, compared to all the other "things" that had happened to him. Thus, a set comparison is being made in that example sentence.

politeness - How to ask a knowledge question without causing offence?

By "knowledge question", I mean any sort of question intended to check whether the listener already knows the answer or not. For example:

• Are you familiar with how an operating system works?


• Do you know how to vote?

Unfortunately, in certain contexts, these sorts of questions can cause offence because those being asked either

A: Don't know the subject but feel it is common knowledge and so they should know about it

B: Do know the subject and feel they are being patronized

This creates a problem because it is often difficult to tell which way a person is going to go in taking offence, especially if you don't know them very well. Therefore, I can't simply modify the question to "Of course you are familiar with how an operating system works, right?" as this will comfort B but offend A. Similarly, skipping the question entirely will comfort A but offend B.

I work in technical support and usually deal with this situation beginning any conversation with a short script explaining that I try not to assume any knowledge on the part of those I am talking to and that they should ask me to skip stuff if I am going too slowly. I think this is quite clumsy, however, and not always appropriate in less formal situations so I am wondering if there is a way to ask this kind of question more neutrally.

Answer

I would ask the question in this way: "How familiar are you with X?".

Asking "Are you familiar with X?" suggests that the answer is either yes or no, while my question is "accepting" to all levels of understanding.