word choice - Which is more correct: "embodied by" or "embodied within"?

Which of the following seems more grammatically correct to you?

This subjectivity is embodied by the concept of qualia

This subjectivity is embodied within the concept of qualia

"Embodied within" seems to be more commonly used, but for some reason it doesn't sound quite right to me in this instance.

Answer

It depends on what you mean. Embody means either represent or make manifest an abstraction, like an idea or principle, i.e., literally to give a body, a concrete form to something:

The team embodies the spirit of winning.

Or transposed into the passive

The spirit of winning is embodied by the team.

Or it may mean to contain, as enclose within itself:

The country is adapting to the changes in national health insurance policy as embodied within the Affordable Care Act.

punctuation - Where to put the periods when using a parenthetical sentence?

I have two complete sentences; the second is in parentheses, essentially a comment on the first. Where do I place the periods? I would use this:

They played opera. (I covered my ears.)

Is this punctuation correct?

Answer

Punctuation within parentheses

If your parentheses enclose a sentence-within-a-sentence, don't use a period within the parentheses. Do, however, use a question mark or an exclamation point if it is called for.

Mother love (hers was fierce) ruined
the young boy's life.

They finally said (why couldn't they
have admitted it earlier?) that she
had been there.

The wedding reception (what a fiasco!)
ended abruptly.

If the parentheses enclose a complete sentence that stands alone, keep the period within the parentheses.

(Her father was the only one who
didn't attend.)

From Cliffsnotes

hyphenation - Is a hyphen or a dash longer?

Can anyone confirm if the hyphen or dash is longer? Which one is longer than the other and which one is the shorter?

grammaticality - The use of nominative "whom" (as in “persons whom it is foreseeable are likely to...”)

From page 48 of Law: A Very Short Introduction, by Raymond Wacks:

In other words, you owe a duty to persons whom it is foreseeable are likely to be harmed by your conduct.

To try to parse this, temporarily overlook 'it is foreseeable'. Then persons is the subject of the verb phrase are likely to be harmed. So according to this question,
should the relative pronoun for persons be who instead? Is my parse wrong?

Are the (deleted) comments right: that this style predominates in law texts?
If this is correct grammar, what is the general rule? Is it commonly used in other contexts?

grammatical number - what is the plural of "GPS"

Do I have several GPSs, or several GPSes, or something completely different? What is the rule to remember (will be useful later when I can have a GPS2, a GPST and maybe a GPSX too).

suffixes - Why does the preterite of verbs such as "deal", "feel" and "dream" have a devoiced dental suffix?

I am trying to explain the morphology of some irregular weak verbs. I could explain "leave-left" as the result of assimilation with v being originally intervocalic f, but I can't see the reason for the verbs as mentioned in the title. The only thing I notice is that they all have their stems ending in a liquid or a nasal. Any suggestions for this?

Possessive when using a title

Which is correct:

1. Mary Queen of Scots birthplace


2. Mary Queen of Scots' birthplace?

Answer

If you wish to make a possessive of a longer title — grammatically a noun phrase consisting of a noun and an appositive — you may attach an ’s to the end of the phrase. Since Scots is plural, however, you only add an apostrophe:

Their demands were equally uncompromising, including the restoration of traditional Catholic worship, the trial of Cecil, the release of the Duke of Norfolk and the recognition of Mary, Queen of Scots’ title to the throne. — J. Derek Holmes, Bernard W. Bickers, A Short History of the Catholic Church, 1984, 158.

The comma after Mary really shouldn’t be there.

A surprising number of publications grammatically reduce Mary’s sovereignty to a single Scottish subject:

These allies lost and Mary Queen of Scot's future was apparently to be the daughter-in-law of Henry VIII. — Gerard Lacey, The Legacy of the DeLacy, Lacey, Lacy Family 1066–1994, 1994, 88.

Needless to say, this is the wrong way to form a possessive of Queen of Scots.

Whether Mary Queen of Scots’ birthplace or (the) birthplace of Mary Queen of Scots is a better stylistic choice depends on how you’re using it in a sentence. If it’s clear you’re only talking about the ill-fated queen, you’d probably be better off with Mary’s birthplace or some such.

grammatical number - Should "riffraff", when used as a subject, be treated as a singular or a plural noun?

• riffraff (noun) people who are not respectable : people who have very low social status.

Merriam-Webster doesn't say anything about number. The Free Dictionary says it can sometimes function as a plural noun but doesn't explain when or how. Google books doesn't help much, there are several examples of it both as a singular and a plural noun.

1. In every period of transition this riffraff, which exists in every society, rises to the surface.




2. This riffraff are waiting for the cheap seats.

Looking at these two sentences, I can't find any structural difference that might lead one to use a singular or a plural verb. If one is writing a paper on social science and they want to use the word "riffraff", does it matter which verbal number is used?

Answer

I looked through the entry in the OED, and among all the senses of riff-raff applying to people I could not find a single example where the word had been used as the subject of a sentence. That is not to say that it couldn't be so used, but it provided no opportunity to determine whether it called for a singular or plural conjugation.

However one sense of riff-raff applies to worthless goods - trash. And there was an example of the subject in that category as follows:

2009 Eureka (Calif.) Times Standard (Nexis) 20 Feb. Now a days one
can easily tote their favorite records with them on a small
pocket-sized contraption and make no bother with the other riff-raff
that comes with the purchase of a CD.

As you can see it has been given a singular conjugation.

There was this one example, as regards people, where the word itself was given plural form:

2001 Ledger Disp. (Calif.) (Nexis) 4 Jan. 1 He conveniently left
out an entire gender, African and Native Americans, and most of the
rest who were considered riffraffs.

In conclusion I do not honestly think it matters in the least whether you make it singular or plural. Nobody is going to notice.

grammaticality - Is "five-yearly" an acceptable usage of an adverb of manner in British English?

Today's BBC News web page has this headline:

New era of five-yearly doctor checks starts

There's a word that means "five-yearly": quinquennial. It's probably too long for headline writers and too difficult for most readers, so I understand why it wasn't used, but shouldn't it have been five-year instead?

New era of five-year doctor checks starts

Answer

It is just my opinion, but it is a poorly written headline. It really makes it sound like you now need to visit the doctor five times per year instead of a doctor being appraised once every five years. I'm from Canada by the way. When I looked at it my first thought was five per year, but then my logical brain took over and said that the writer did a bad job right after reading it. And a check of the article confirms this. :)

grammar - You have to have "something"

I have a question. I was trying to find out if it's correct to say "you have to have", but I couldn't find an answer...I think people would normally use "you should have" or "you must have". In a guessing game, there weren't many options left, so in a hurry I used "have to have". Is it entirely wrong?

I'd really, really like to know the answer, in order to use proper grammar in the future.

Thank you very much. I really appreciate.

Answer

It is perfectly okay to say

In order to be a passably decent person you have to have a conscience.

meaning - What does "What are you into here?" mean?

I personally don't use this question in spoken language but I often see it in written language. I also frequently see that when someone asks this question, it elicits in turn the question "What do you mean?".

• Is this an ambiguous question?


• What are the different meanings of this question?


• It can depend on the context but in a casual conversation, does it
  usually mean "What are you interested in?" or can it mean "What are you up to?" also?


• What about sexual connotations?

---

I'm also not familiar with the usage in these contexts:

From the book "The Pillars of Solomon" By Jon Land:

Man: "What the hell is going on?" he demanded...
Woman: “I don't know what you're talking about.”
Man: “If you don't, you're a bigger fool than I am. What are you into here?”
Woman: “This is about the man I asked you to identify" she realized.
Man: His eyes blazed at her from driver' seat. "You're damn right it is, and somebody's going to catch hell for it!"
Man: "What are you — "
Woman: "You sent me to check out one of our own men!"

---

From the book "The Twelfth Insight: The Hour of Decision" By James Redfield:

I stopped and he stopped, and then I saw something familiar in his posture. It was Wil! When I got to him, he pulled me down and looked back at the Pub.

“What are you into here, my friend?” he asked in his customary half-humorous tone. “I don't know,” I blurted. “I saw several people watching me inside. What are you doing here, Wil?"

---

From the book "Reflection: Behind the Rain" By Robert Clayton Buick:

Waehauf returned to his station and called out his cocktail order in flawless Spanish. As he waited for his drink order, he turned and continued to stare me down. I continued to stare back at him, and with willing confrontation, I calmly asked him, “What's your problem Fat Guy, and what are you into here?” His face turned into a bright red flashing light and I could hear and his feel breath increase in rapid succession.

Does it mean "What are you doing here?" or "What are you pulling here?" in these contexts? Did this question gain a new meaning in these contexts?

grammar - Can a clause have more than one (in)direct object?

I am fairly convinced that any English clause (and it probably also counts for other languages, but I can't be sure about that) can only contain 1 subject, 1 direct object, and 1 indirect object. This seems lower-grade common knowledge to me, but I don't know if this is an official rule and I can't really find any linguistic authoritative source that says so. Is this indeed true? And if not, what would be a counterexample?

Obviously, a sentence can have a compound subject/object such as in:

John and Mary are walking down the street.

But in that case, I would argue that there is 1 subject that is "John and Mary".

What is the term for "‑ate" noun/verb pairs, and why can’t I find references to "hyphenate" used that way?

When you conjugate (verb, conjuGATE) things you get a conjugate (noun, conjuGIT).

When you precipitate (verb, ...TATE) a solution you get a precipitate (noun, ...TIT).

When you concentrate (verb, ...TRATE) something you get a concentrate (noun, often ...TRATE occasionally ...TRIT).

Is there a name for this category of words, where a verb ending with "ate" pronounced with a long A produces a noun ending with "ate" pronounced with [sometimes] a short I (or a short a/e/u in some dialects or for some specific words)?

And, as a followup, why can I find no reference or examples online of "hyphenate" being used as a noun to describe two words that have been hyphenated? There's an uncommon definition where it refers to the subject described by the hyphenated words, but that isn't the same as it referring to the words themselves. I’ve heard this term used many times in my life, often in the context of amateur fiction writers or college writing courses.

grammar - Can "a person" be used as plural?

Is it acceptable to write: A person can develop their talent. or a person can develop their uniqueness?

In this case the person is used as a general term, not a specific person.

adjectives - I found an unusual usage of adj, please tell me how it works

Following the terror attacks in London on July 7, 2005, the then Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted those responsible were motivated by an "evil ideology," ...

From CNN. It uses those responsible; I searched on the Internet and found out that responsible is not a noun but an adjective. Can anybody tell me how to use such an expression?

grammar - Sentences with coordinating conjunctions between two nouns omitted

There are sentences like this in many literature books:

He held a gun, a sword, a bible.

It is not a sentence, just a phrase.

They do not have word "and" and "but". I think those should be like these:

He held a gun, a sword, (and) a bible.

It is not a sentence, (but) just a phrase.

However, since those sentences give clarity and are better-sounding, I never thought they are grammatically incorrect. But I faced some challenging cases as I was trying to write those sentences, such as a sentence with omission of "and" and only two nouns.

He held a gun, a sword.

This sentence sounds so off to my ear that it is almost dreadful. But when I wrote a sentence with "but" omitted and only two nouns, it seemed fine to me.

It is not a sentence, just a phrase.

So, what is the rule that enables me to delete those coordinating conjunctions between two nouns, and how can I use correctly? Also, is it a formal way of writing?

ordinals - What will be the question for "he is my second son"

What will be the correct question to get an answer like "he is my second son". Here the actual answer is the word 'second', which denotes the order.

Can the phrase 'ordinal status' be used? Like "What is the ordinal status of Mr. Singh among the prime ministers of India"? Is this correct?

grammaticality - Simple Past and Present Perfect together

An original line from Stratfor's Decade Forecast: 2015-2025, published in February:

The world has been restructuring itself since 2008, when Russia invaded Georgia and the subprime financial crisis struck. Three patterns have emerged. First, the European Union entered a crisis that it could not solve and that has increased in intensity. We predict that the European Union will never return to its previous unity, and if it survives it will operate in a more limited and fragmented way in the next decade.

Why is simple past used first, and then present perfect but not simple past again? It seems to break grammar conventions for consistency of tense.

Answer

The simple past talks about a completed action at some point in the past, i.e., the time before right now. So mark a point on the timeline before right now, and that's when the European Union entered the crisis.

The second past is not quite so simple. The first relative clause "(that) it could not solve" modifies "crisis," and the modal verb "could" brings the aspect of possibility (or rather with "not," of impossibility). The past sense of "could not solve" tells us that given what we know now, once the European Union entered the crisis, it would turn out to be unfixable. So the meaning is that the European Union at some point in the past entered an unsolvable crisis.

The second relative clause "that has increased in intensity" also modifies "crisis" but its verb in the present perfect which contemplates not just a point in past time, but any past time up to right now. Since we can't talk about the crisis before it happened, this present perfect is about the time interval between the point the European Union entered the crisis up to the present time. And during that interval things have only gotten more intense.

grammatical number - What is the difference between a "singular noun" and a "plural noun treated as singular"?

I'd always thought that words like "physics" and "mathematics" were singular: after all, we say "physics is the study of…" etc. But apparently, according to the the comments on this question about "news", each of these words is actually a "plural noun [usually treated as singular]":

(highlighting/ellipsis added by me)
(NOAD = New Oxford American Dictionary)

One, Is this categorization valid? That is, is it correct to say, as the NOAD does, that these words are indeed plural (but treated as singular), rather than to say that they are singular? The accepted answer on that question, by user RegDwigнt, has a different analysis that speaks in terms of “news” being "uncountable", "used with singular verbs", and "etymologically, it used to be a plural form", and thereby carefully avoids addressing this issue, of whether these nouns are indeed plural-treated-as-singular. So my question remains.

Two, If so, what makes these words plural? Is it the fact that they end in s? (Surely "bus" is not plural?) Is it history? (Were they used as plural at some time? How far back in history does one go to decide whether a noun is singular or plural?) Is it the fact that they don't have any distinct forms treated as plural?

Most importantly, why do we even have a grammatical category of "plural nouns treated as singular"? What purpose does it serve, and how are such nouns functionally distinguishable from nouns that are actually singular? When/if the reason is history, is there a rationale for saying "plural nouns treated as singular" rather than "singular nouns that were formerly plural"?

Edit: My question isn't just about "-ics" words, but all words in the category "plural nouns treated as singular" (assuming that the category isn't just -ics words).

Edit 2: The image and part "One" of the question were added later; previously I took for granted that the categorization was valid.

British English plural verb for group noun in a contraction

I'm curious about the use of the famous British plural verb form with a group noun¹ in a contraction. The general custom for the plural is discussed here and here but those don't call out contractions.

England football fans are currently singing the following to the tune of September by Earth, Wind, and Fire:

Woah, England are in Russia,


Woah, drinking all your vodka,

Woah, England's going all the way!

Now, it's a football song, not high poetry, but note that in the above, the first line uses England are but the last line uses England's. Unless we magically decide that the first England is the team but the second England is the country, that's...interesting.

The plural contraction is really awkward:

• England're going all the way



• Family're hard work sometimes


• The group're on it

...and as we know, awkwardness tends to get smoothed out of language.^{[citation needed] ;-)}

Is this just a fudge to make the song's meter work? Or is it a deeper pattern to use the singular form in a contraction even when using the plural form otherwise, perhaps because of the awkwardness?

Sadly Google Ngrams won't let me look for England is going vs. England are going (and England is vs. England are is too general) and in any case, I'd be flooded with American English results. Trying to search Hansard, unfortunately Google Search treats the ' as a space.

I can't use my own instinct on this and am having trouble coming up with other examples to look for: I'm an English/American dual national who spent 30 years growing up in the U.S. reading British novels and watching British television on PBS, who's been back in the UK for 18 years. So my dialect is mid-Atlantic and horribly confused. :-)

---

¹ E.g. the team are vs. American English's the team is for nouns representing groups of people (roughly; there's lots of nuance).

Answer

It's just a fudge to make the meter work.

pronunciation of foreign cities

When I mentioned to friends I had recently been to Benalmadena in Spain, I was corrected on its pronunciation. I had chosen to pronounce it in an English way rather than in a Spanish pronunciation. After all, I wouldn't say Paris how a Frenchman would say it.

If I use the native pronunciation of a foreign city I might look pretentious. If on the other hand I use the English pronunciation, I might then get corrected with the alternative.

Which is the correct convention please?

Many thanks.

punctuation - How to punctuate a range of hyphenated numbers?

What is the best way to punctuate a range of hyphenated numbers, e.g., sections 12-3 through 12-7?

EDIT: Just to reply to those who marked this as a duplicate, I really fail to see how the post that this question purportedly duplicates is responsive my question. I'm not expressing a misunderstanding of en-dashes and hyphens, but rather asking a question about preferred usage. In fact, the top answer (which I think is correct) suggests not using a dash or a hyphen at all.

punctuation - To hyphenate or not?

As a non-native speaker of English and an engineer by training, I always get confused about hyphenation and almost always end up referring to Google every time I need to make that decision.

Does anybody know of a concise, comprehensive style guide to hyphenation that explains this rather complex issue, once and for all?

Answer

Asking for something that is both concise and comprehensive is, unfortunately, contradictory. The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th Edition devotes one full page (5 numbered sections, 6.38-42) to "general principles" of hyphenating compound words, but then also goes on to list a 13-page table of common forms, when to hyphenate them, when not to, and when to make exceptions to other parts of the table.

To summarize the relevant segments for you, though:

6.38: The trend in spelling compound words has been away from the use of hyphens; there seems to be a tendency to spell compounds solid [i.e. unhyphenated] as soon as acceptance warrants their being considered permanent compounds.

6.39: When a temporary compound is used as an adjective before a noun, it is often hyphenated to avoid misleading the reader. (e.g. "a fast sailing ship": is it a "ship that is sailing fast", in which case you should hyphenate it, or "a sailing ship that is fast", in which case you should leave it unhyphenated.)

6.40: Where the compound adjective follows the noun it modifies, there is usually little to no risk of ambiguity or hesitation, and the hyphen may be safely omitted. [There are, of course, exceptions to this, as in "her reply was thought provoking."]

6.41: [contrary to its earlier positions,] The University of Chicago Press now takes the position that the hyphen may be omitted in all cases where there is little or no risk of ambiguity or hesitation.

6.42: There are scores of other rules for spelling compound words, but many of them are all but useless because of the multitude of exceptions. See table 6.1 [that 13-page behemoth of a table mentioned above] for some of the more dependable rules.

meaning - What's the difference between "fake it ‘til you make it" and "fake it ‘til you become it"?

From an article titled How to Fake It ‘Til You Make It (Or Become It):

In 2012, [Amy Cuddy] gave a TED Talk on the topic, which went viral and has been watched over 34 million times. She talked about how body language affects how others see us, but also how it changes how we see ourselves. She believes that it’s possible to fake feelings of power until we truly feel more powerful. “Don’t fake it ‘til you make it. Fake it ‘til you become it,” she urged.

A Russian friend asked me to translate the meaning this last sentence, but after thinking about it I realized that I don't actually understand this sentence well enough to translate it. I don't really see what the distinction is between "faking it 'til you make it" and "faking it 'til you become it".

In both cases, it seems that the meaning is to pretend that you are confident about your competence for long enough to actually become confident about your competence. I can't see any meaningful difference, except that "make" rhymes with "fake" and thus sounds more catchy than "become", so it seems like the instruction above basically boils down to the nonsensical "Don't do X. Instead, do X."

What is the distinction between these two things, if any?

Is it correct to say "I write children books" (not possessive case)?

Although Children's books is what everybody says, I would like to understand why the genitive case is applied in such case.

If I write books for children, children is an adjective here; not the owners of my book! The word "children" just defines or characterizes the type of books I write. Therefore, it's an adjective.

So, I understand that genitive/possessive case ("I write children's book") is incorrect grammar.

My question is: is the genitive case here really accepted as right? If I use "I write children books" (following the grammar principle) as as I say "I write pets books" (books about pets, and not possessions of pets) - would I be incorrect? Why?

Why do we use the definite article in "the other"?

Why in the sentence "One suspect was a male youth, while the other was an adult man." we use 'the' before 'other'. I have to explain its function.

resources - What irregular verbs are there in Early Modern English?

Can anyone tell me, or direct me to a site where it would have a list of, irregular verbs in Early Modern English? I understand verbs such as "to be" or "to have", but how many more are there, and what are they?

I wonder this because I conjugate "can", and I know that it is "thou canst", but for some reason "he/she/it canneth" sounds really odd to me.

pronunciation - Isn't a “gonner” or “gonna” slang for a person about to die?

(I think this "blank" moment of mine is what is called in AmEng a brain fart, so be it)

Isn't ‘a gonner/gonna’ slang for a person who is about to die? It's said in situations where, potentially, someone risks getting themselves killed. Maybe children also use it when play acting. I'm sure there must be something similar but the dictionary entries tell me that ‘gonna’ is a contraction of "going to" and ‘gonner’ is not listed in The Free Dictionary.

For example:

If you do that (a dangerous thing) you're a gonner

I presume a gonna or a gonner (or something similar) is short for “a person who is going to die”.

Answer

Gonner is a rare spelling variant of goner.

Goner

TFD n. slang One that is ruined or doomed.
"I'm a goner if this plan doesn't work"

M-W n. someone or something that is going to die or that can no longer be used
"This old computer is a goner. We'll have to get a new one.
"

Wiktionary etymology: gone +‎ -er

"I don't give a fig" degrees of comparison

It's absolutely OK to say something like
"My liver pain bothers me more than my nose bleeding"

right?
But what about the opposite attitude. If I don't really care about something, can I compare it with not taking care about something else, for example:
"I don't give a fig about my HIV even more than about my caries"?
Is it correct from the language usage point of view? or "I don't give a fig" has the constant value which is not comparable?

Subject predicate inversion due to negation

I was reading about subject predicate inversion

inverted word-order... is also used in clauses introduced by a
negative or restrictive clause element. In the following example, the
initial element Not only is negative and is followed by inverted word
order: could congress declare...

(12) Not only could (v) Congress (S) declare (V) war but the states

were forbidden to engage in it without the consent of Congress.

I am struggling to intuitively apply this.

Can someone explain the rule? E.g. the former sounds wrong, but perhaps the latter inversion does less damage. Maybe not.

Is the sentence Not all my cigs lit a candidate for inversion in the first place? And why or why not?

• Not all my cigs lit -> Not all my lit cigs


• Not all my cigs lit burning straight -> Not all my lit cigs burning straight

Specifically could the phrase in bold be such an inversion (please ignore whether it is):

• Not all your light tongues talking aloud / could be profound

Do native speakers know the tenses?

Present simple, past continuous, future perfect, present perfect continuous etc.
These terms are used when English is taught to foreigners. All of them are from quite a neat chart 3×4 of tenses, which are studied thoroughly and separately, and then in speech.
I was wondering if native speakers students who study English use the same terms and approach. I got this idea after I'd read the book of English grammar, by British for the British. It is quite old, and maybe the approach is outdated too. It said there were two tenses, present and past. All the rest were just syntactical constructions for detailed meanings.

conjugation - Are there verbs that conjugate with the person in the simple past or simple future?

We all know that verbs conjugate according to the person in the simple present, typically with the third person singular.

My question is: Are there verbs that change according to the person in the simple past or simple future tenses? Is "to be" the ONLY such example? (Was/Were)

Thank you

grammaticality - "Who wants ice-cream?" — Should I say "(not) I" or "(not) me"?

With the enthusiastic question of "Who wants ice-cream?", what is the more correct response?

1. (Not) I.



2. (Not) me.

Neither response is a sentence. The first response of "(not) I" sounds stuffy, like it should be followed with an indignant sniff. The second sounds like American idiom and acceptable for casual speech.

What do you say?

Answer

Generally speaking, in English, accusative (also known as “objective”) pronouns (like me) are the “default” form. That is, unless there is a specific syntactic rule requiring use of a different case, such as nominative (I), genitive (my/mine), or reflexive/intensive (myself), in English you use the accusative case.

In the syntactic context where a pronoun is not serving a role relative to an explicit verb, such as when it is the simple answer to a question, or if one is labeling something, such as a photo, accusative pronouns are standard. “Who wants to come?” “Me.” Nominative pronouns are impossible here—you cannot answer the question “Who wants to come?” with “I”, nor would anyone label a photo “I”.

This holds even if negated: “Who wants ice cream?” “Not me.”

If you want to use the highest register, most formal English, however, you should avoid the question of what case to use with pronouns standing alone, and use a complete sentence: “I do not want ice cream.”

grammar - What is the grammatical function of 'with the aid of' in the following sentence?

Reading this wiki article, it seems to me that 'with the aid of' in the following sentence is a prepositional object. I suspect I may be wrong and would like a simple explanation about the grammatical functions of 'with the aid of' in the following sentence:

With the aid of a physiotherapist, everything turned out fine.

• There's a similar thread here but it doesn't address my question about grammatical functions.

Answer

In the terminology of CGEL, with the aid of a physiotherapist is an adjunct (meaning, one can remove it and the sentence is still grammatical even when all the words in the remainder are taken in the vary same meanings they had before the removal). More precisely, it is an adjunct of means (as in, 'by what means' was something done). Other sources might call it an adverbial of manner. However it is called, it is realized by a preposition phrase (PP). The head of this PP is the preposition with, and the complement of this preposition is the noun phrase (NP) the aid of a physiotherapist. The whole PP is fronted, though it could also be placed at the end, as in Everything turned out fine with the aid of a physiotherapist.

Note that with the aid of is actually not a syntactical constituent of the sentence. The constituent structure is, rather, this: [With [the [aid [of [a physiotherapist] ] ]. As I said above, the whole thing is a PP whose head is with and whose complement is the NP the aid of a physiotherapist. That NP, in turn, is composed of the determiner the and the nominal aid of a physiotherapist. The head of the nominal is the noun aid. The nominal also has a post-head complement, which is the PP of a physiotherapist (it is a complement rather than a modifier because the head noun licences the particular preposition; aid here cannot be followed by just any PP, but only by PPs headed by a very restricted set of prepositions, such as of. For example, on would not work at all, regardless of what followed it). Finally, this final PP has a complement, the NP a physiotherapist, which consisits of a determiner, the indefinite article, and the nominal, which is the noun physiotherapist.

single word requests - Adjective describing possession by someone else

Is there any adjective in English that would describe a quality of belonging or being in the possession of someone else who is not the speaker?

In short, what adjective would you substitute for the words in bold below:

What's inside of this bag?

I don't know. This is not my bag.

or

What's inside of this bag?

I don't know. This bag is not mine.

or

Jack, don't touch that toy car.

Why?

Because that toy is not yours.

Answer

I'd probably use somebody else's.

grammar - Correct usage of "than" or "as" when comparing two things

I've found a cited example of incorrect usage in Bill Bryson's "Troublesome Words" which I don't understand because he doesn't explain it, and even going back to the source (Ernest Gowers' "Plain Words") doesn't help.

Apparently, the sentence "nearly twice as many people die under 20 in France THAN in Great Britain" is wrong because it should read "AS in Great Britain".

Could someone please tell me why this is wrong and, if so, explain how you know when to use "than" and when to use "as"? I'm driving myself mad second-guessing myself every time I use "than" in case I should be saying "as"! Thank you.

Past tense / present tense

I am not sure which one is correct in the following situation...

1. "The video I watched on Youtube yesterday WAS in Mandarin."
   OR


2. "The video I watched on Youtube yesterday IS in Mandarin. "

The video is in Mandarin no matter when I watch, but because it was yesterday, should I use past tense for the sentence? Thanks!

coordination - "...We can only lose, and our love become a funeral pyre." - distributed modal verb or subjunctive?

From The Doors, Light My Fire. The lines are:
"Try now, we can only lose
And our love become a funeral pyre."

I would never hold their lyrics up as great writing, but I have always wondered exactly what this means. My understanding is:

"Try now, we can only lose
And our love (can only) become a funeral pyre."

So using a conjunction to link a different subject and a different main verb sharing the same modal verb. Like, e.g.,

"The machine would stop and the bell ring." or
"I will go and he replace me."

Which don't sound like things anyone would say. I have, however, heard things like:

I need to nod my head and you to hit it. or
I want to eat and you to sleep.

Or is it a form of subjunctive? But it doesn't seem to fit any other example of a subjunctive.
As a native English speaker, for many years I just understood he was saying "...and our love (can only) become a funeral pyre," as in, that's the worst that could happen, which is better than not trying any sex or drugs at all. But I can't come up with a single other example of a conjunction being used to distribute a modal between two different subjects with two different main verbs.

word choice - Which is correct: "I loaned him some money" or " I lent him some money"?

My Webster's New world Dictionary does not contain the word "loaned" at all, but my Thesaurus does, and the word "lent" is the first synonym listed. My wife, who learned English as a second language and therefore often speaks it better than I do, insists "lent" is more correct than "loaned" as the past tense verb form. Which is more correct?

nouns - What word class/part of speech is " the doctor's " in " the doctor's office "?

I need to be able to identify the word classes/parts of speech of each word in a sentence such as:
"He walked into the doctor's office."
Is it a possessive determiner? A possessive adjective? A possessive noun?

This wikipedia page indicates (without reference) that it can be called a determiner: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possessive_determiner. I see the parallel with "The doctor called him; he walked into her office," where "her" - which is a possessive determiner - serves an almost identical function as "the doctor's". It's determining the specificity of the office, much like the determiners "the office" or (that office). However, most pages I've found on determiners don't mention this type of formation, and they present determiners as a closed word class (which logically can't include all cases of "[noun]'s").

"Doctor" in the sense referred to here is a noun, and the 's commonly shows possession, but in the case of "the doctor's office" the word "doctor's" isn't a noun in its own right, is it? Without the head noun "office", it doesn't signify any specific object, merely the quality of belonging (as in "the doctor's house", "the doctor's garden" etc).

As it's modifying/adding information about the office, is it an adjective in this case?

Does it depend on whether "the" is considered to be referring to the (specific) doctor or to the (specific) office?

Thanks for any help!

grammar - Should a noun after the determiner *their* take in the form of singular or of plural?

Should I say

Some people use the word "flat" to describe their phone when its battery is dead.

or

Some people use the word "flat" to describe their phones when their batteries are dead. (I wanted to use "their" here to refer to the phone's instead of the people's)

or

Some people use the word "flat" to describe their phones when their battery is dead. (I wanted to use "their" here to refer to the phone's instead of the people's)

Which one is grammatically correct and why?

Answer

From the comments, it appears that you want to refer to 'some people' for which the pronoun is obviously their) and 'their phones', but use a singular battery. Put like that, it is clear that you will have to rephrase, since there is no correct pronoun for both singular battery and plural phones.
Your first example is common, but you should be aware that 'singular they', though commonly used, is also commonly criticised. (e.g. here and here).

Your second is grammatical, but if there is a difference between 'the batteries belonging to the phones' and 'the batteries belonging to the people' (do you really think so?), then it is ambiguous, and cannot be rescued without changing the sentence: when the battery is dead or ...to describe phones with dead batteries would be common rephrasings.

Your third is simply bad English (mixing singular and plural), unless, unusually, all the phones (or, of course, all the people) share one battery.

imperatives - Independent clause with no subject

Like this "Read, write, and think", this is classified as independent clause but they contain verbs only. Is it possible to thave an Independent Clause with no subject?

conditionals - Simple past vs. past subjunctive in 'if' clauses

I understand the usage of the past subjunctive but I'm confused whether I should use it in these kind of cases, because it sounds so stilted when I say it:

'If I [had/were to have] money, I'd go to the shops'

'If we really [wanted/were to want] to, we could go'

As far as I know we should use the second option in both these cases because it is a past subjunctive+conditional clause, but they just sound wrong. I feel this is similar to:

If we [fell/were to fall] down the hill, we'd have a hard time getting back up'

In this case it feels like the 2nd one is right, and doesn't sounds stilted at all. Are both options acceptable?

Grammar question: "had been"

"In March 2014, I led a team of students to campaign against the way in which a society election at my university had been conducted."

In this sentence structure with a date at the front, is it correct to use "had been" in this way?

Answer

It's correct either with or without the opening.

I led a team of students to campaign against the way in which a society election at my university had been conducted.

In March 2014, I led a team ... in which a society election ... had been conducted.

During my 3rd year of studies, I led a team...

Those are all well-formed and comprehensible sentences.

test - Present continuous to discuss action's frequency

I saw the following on an ESL test:

John: How often …………… ?
Dave: He …………… at least five days a week.

a) does he exercise - swims
b) is he exercising - is swimming
c) is he exercising - swims
d) does he exercise - is swimming

I think both (a) and (b) are acceptable and the test isn't standard. Please correct me if I'm mistaken.

Answer

As a native speaker, I would expect ESL test questions to be blatantly obvious to me, such that all the wrong answers are clearly things that only non-native spakers would say. The question here doesn't meet my expectations. Obviously (a) is the most natural without context, but in the right context any of (b), (c), or (d) would be possible for native speakers in some situations.

J.R. gave this conceivable scenario for choice (c) in his comment on the question:

"Have you seen Paul lately?"
"No, why?" "He's looking really good!"
"Really? Lost a lot of weight?"
"Yeah."
"Wow. How often is he exercising?"
"He swims at least five days a week, I think. I'm always seeing him at the pool."
"Good, it's nice to hear about someone keeping their New Year's resolution for a change."

Alcas similarly gave a conceivable scenario for the "is swimming" choices (b) and (d):

"He only used to exercise once in a blue moon, but he's swimming at least five days a week now"

The question is faulty.

punctuation - Should I use a semicolon or a dash to connect two closely related sentences?

When you want to connect two closely related sentences, you can use a semicolon or a dash. (You can also use a dash for other kinds of non-sentential relations). How would you choose whether to use a semicolon or dash?

Answer

I don't think I was ever taught a clear-cut rule, and as a non-native speaker, I am probably spoiled to some extent by the usage of dashes in other languages. That being said, following nothing but my intuition I would use:

• a semicolon when the sentences express related, yet independent (especially grammatically independent) thoughts; they could well stand on their own, separated by a period.


• a dash when the second sentence backs up the first one, nails it down to something, restates or amplifies it, provides reasons or examples, or when the second sentence could not stand on its own "as is" for grammatical reasons.

I will try to demonstrate my point by rewording the notorious examples from The Oatmeal accordingly.

• My aunt had hairy knuckles; she loved to wash and comb them.


• My aunt had hairy knuckles — she suffered from hirsutism.


• When dinosaurs agree on something, they'll often high-five one another; dinosaurs are all about high-fives.


• When dinosaurs agree on something, they'll often high-five one another — they cannot talk and have to resort to gestures.


• I gnaw on old car tires; it strengthens my jaw so I'll be better conditioned for bear combat.


• I gnaw on old car tires — to strengthen my jaw so I'll be better conditioned for bear combat.

Again, this is just my two cents, and I'm only putting them in because the other answers so far seem to miss the point of your question by focusing on non-sentential relations and sometimes not even mentioning semicolons at all. I don't know whether my answer comes close to being correct or not, but I hope it will at least serve as a turning point for getting the discussion back on topic.

american english - Writing a proper sentence as a honor in a CV

Assume a student reaches rank 10 among 20 students in a final competition. The competition composes several steps and the initial number of participants is about 300,000, but only the first best 20 students are selected.
If this student wants to add this honor in his/her CV, what sentence properly describes this honor?
For example, these two following are my suggestions:
1) Ranked in top 20 students in Competition X (competition name is placed at X)

2) Ranked among the top 20 students in Competition X.

Answer

Here's my suggestion, especially if you don't want to specify the number of participants.

Format [verbose]:
Ranked in the top [X% of] [scale] [category] [type of contest], [name of contest].

Example:
Ranked in the top 0.1% of the national robotic engineering team competition, robolympics 2019.

Format [concise]:
Ranked in the top [X% of] [category] [type of contest], [name of contest].

Example:

Ranked in the top 0.1% of the robotics competition, robolympics 2019.

meaning - Is it more correct to say "repeat", or "resay"?

Telling a person to repeat something they have said sounds better to me, but is it more correct to ask them to resay what they said?

If I say something then resay it, then I have said it again. I don't peat, so why would I repeat? Do I peat? What does peat mean when referred to this way?

Which is better, repeat or resay?

Answer

First of all, "repeat" doesn't actually have a prefix. So, you aren't "peating" something again.
It's a word derived from French:

repeat
late 14c., from O.Fr. repeter "say or do again, get back, demand the return of" (13c.), from L. repetere "do or say again, attack again," from re- "again" + petere "go toward, seek, demand, attack" (see petition). Specific meaning "to take a course of education over again" is recorded from 1945, Amer.Eng. Related: Repeated; repeating. The noun is first recorded 1550s.

It has a prefix in Latin, but not in English.

As you can see, "repeat" can mean 'to do or say again', so "repeat" can be used to mean to 'resay'.

Interestingly, etymonline.com and dictionary.com both don't give records of 'resay'.

single word requests - Formal way of saying "blah blah blah" or "........" to indicate generic filler or omissions in a document when providing examples

In my specific case, I'm writing a tutorial on how to format a list of items. Now I would usually say etc. , but in my mind you can only use etc. following a statement, rather than proceeding it.

So I would be happy to when addressing how "thing1", "thing2" and "thing3" should be formatted, say that the finished product should look like:

{
thing1
thing2
thing3
etc.
}

But to my mind, when addressing things 24-26,

{
etc.
thing24
thing25
thing26
etc.
}

doesn't seem right.

Is there a short latin word or other more formal convention that fills the gap I'm looking for? Rather than resorting to:

{
blah blah blah
thing24
thing25
thing26
etc.
}

Which isn't that professional.

Of course in many cases it's possible to get around this by just not giving such an example, but this is interesting to me as a general question as well as to solve a specific problem.

nouns - Using "déjà vu" as an adjective

Usually, I use the word déjà vu as a noun, e.g. "sense of déjà vu aroused by an experience".

But the sentence sounds somewhat passive this way and less interesting and also long. I couldn't find an adjective form of the word déjà vu to make the sentence more active like "déjà vu'tic experience".

How can I make use of the word and yet form my sentence in a more active and impactful manner without having too many "by"'s and "of"'s?

Answer

Déjà vu is a word borrowed from French, a look into the dictionaries gives only one form, that is Déjà vu. It's a noun and seems there is no adjective form for this word. A little googling lead to this link which gives elaborate information on this word

http://sixthsensereader.org/about-the-book/abcderium-index/deja-vu/

Here it's said that the original use of the word was in adjective sense.

"Déjà vu crosswords, a little bit too Déjà vu for me"

By the above examples your sentence can be written as " Déjà vu experience". This is just like the way we use good, bad etc as adjectives ( Good experience , bad experience etc)

pronunciation - /i/ sound before "ng" and "nk"

I'm a substitute teacher and recently was teaching a kindergarten class about long i sound. They were crossing out words without long i, circling words with long i. One of the words was ink. I told them no, listen , we don't say i nk (say it with a long i to see what I mean) and they crossed it out. Later, looking at the teacher's edition, it had ink circled. I thought it was just a mistake then I saw that an ink bottle was actually used as an example in the book for the long i sound. I thought something was terribly wrong so I looked it up in the dictionary—it shows i in ink as a long i sound (I looked at many dictionaries, all were the same). This can't be right, but I'm wondering if it's one if those things that's just been accepted and not questioned. Or if it's a category that hasn't been explored yet as needing a separate sound to clarify, like words with r-controlled vowels. Any comments on this would be extremely helpful.

Edit:

I realized I made a mistake with my original post and used long I all the way through. I meant to say that in ink, think, pink, thing, ring, king, etc., in other words, words ending in "nk" and "ng", the "i" is usually pronounced more like a long e sound, like e in meet. At least, that is how I have always pronounced it and heard it pronounced. I'm from California so this could be regional, but I've never heard it pronounced with a short i like in it. Fumblefingers listed words in which a short i occurs, including ink, pink, bit, fit. I definitely hear short i in bit and fit, sounds the same. In ink and pink, i does not sound the same to me, nor have I heard people say it with the same i sound as in bit. Unless the i is getting so quickly blended into the "ng" that it is almost ignored, in which case it should have a special sound category like we teach r-controlled vowels. The pronunciation rules could be very different between the US and the UK .

nouns - Is there a word for "people who are computer illiterate"?

Just as there is "computerate" to describe those who show familiarity with, and ability to use computers, is there a word to describe the opposite, those who are computer illiterate? The word I'm looking for includes both those who have access to computers but, for some reason, choose to keep away from them, and those who can read and write but have never seen a computer in their entire lives. I'm not looking for insulting or pejorative terms.

Answer

Computer illiterate may be the best phrase for itself, but if something less potentially pejorative is wanted, perhaps novice would suffice, as in novice computer user or computer novice.

nov·ice noun \ˈnä-vəs\
: a person who has just started learning or doing something

: a new member of a religious group who is preparing to become a nun or a monk

Note: I included the second definition as a comment on the sensibilities involved in mastering various levels of information and computer technology.

relative pronouns - "To ensure" vs. "To ensure that" + subject + predicate

Is any of these two sentences incorrect:

-(without that): "To ensure the voters are not influenced by mass-media, the campaign will end 7 days before the elections take place."

-(with that): "To ensure that the voters are not influenced by mass-media, the campaign will end 7 days before the elections take place."

Is the presence of that mandatory?

Answer

I agree with both the previous commentators. WS2 is correct in saying that the relative pronoun here 'that' is frequently elided. I share Hot Licks's view that inclusion of 'that' is stylistically preferable.

word choice - Difference between "can" and "may"

Which is correct if I want to request for a pen?

• Can I have your pen please?


• May I have your pen please?

Answer

Can primarily expresses possibility and ability and, secondarily, permission. May expresses primarily possibility and, secondarily, permision and volition. In seeking permission, as in your examples, the use of may is much more formal and polite than can and is used rather less.

However, both 'Can I have your pen please?' and 'May I have your pen please?' are blunt ways of making a request. In practice, a native speaker, at least of British English, is much more likely to say something like 'You don't happen to have a pen I could borrow, do you?'

grammaticality - "I and others" or "others and I"?

I have traditionally learned that a first-person pronoun should always come last in a list, e.g.

Bob and I found this to be interesting.

However, it sounds awkward to me when this rule is used with 'others':

A couple others and I found this to be interesting.

I would be more inclined to go with:

I and a couple others found this to be interesting.

Which sentence is (more) grammatically correct?

Answer

They are all grammatical. Whether or not you put yourself first is a matter of etiquette.

Why is there a comma at the end of this Sentence?

Why is there a comma after palate in the sentence below?

Many dairy foods come in low-fat version, and though not all of them may be pleasing to the palate, some are.

Answer

This is one of the usage of comma.

From Purdue OWL:

Use a comma near the end of a sentence to separate contrasted coordinate elements or to indicate a distinct pause or shift

Reference: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/owlprint/607/

Singular subject followed by verb without "s"

This is the sentence I wish to construct:

When the show finishes, someone remind the ice-cream man to start
picking up the garbage.

The verb in question is "remind". Should it be "remind" or "reminds"?

I have a hunch that it should be "remind". If so, why is the subject and verb not in agreement? (Normally "someone reminds" is considered correct.)

Is there a grammatical term to describe this type of usage? Any reference would be helpful too.

Thanks

Answer

It depends. Is it meant to be issuing a directive? If so, your example would be correct ("someone" + infinitive).

However, if it is stating what happens, then you would have to use "reminds" ("someone" + he/she/it form of "remind") since the pronoun "someone" describes an "it"; an unknown/unspecified person.

word order - where to place *further* , *considering further*

As the closing sentence of a cover letter for an application I would like to write the sentence

I would appreciate your further considering my application and remain...

but is this correct, or should I rather place the word further differently?
The options are

1. I would appreciate your considering my application further and remain...


2. I would appreciate your considering further my application and remain...

Thank you in advance.

Answer

Since you said "ongoing", as an adjective, further could be used in the sense 'additional.'

The meeting ended without any plans for further discussions.

       I would appreciate your considering my application further.... 

In the same vein, you could use further in your sentence, however, in my opinion a better construction will be:

I would appreciate your further consideration of my application
or

As @Joe states, 'I appreciate your consideration of my application
Further discussion

grammatical number - What is the proper way to write the plural of a single letter? (another apostrophe question)

When writing (a blog post, script, etc..) what is the proper way to indicate two or more instances of a single letter? For instance, in Monty Python's Bookshop Sketch:

C: I wonder if you might have a copy of "Rarnaby Budge"?

P: No, as I say, we're right out of Edmund Wells!

C: No, not Edmund Wells - Charles Dikkens.

P: (pause - eagerly) Charles Dickens??

C: Yes.

P: (excitedly) You mean "Barnaby Rudge"!

C: No, "Rarnaby Budge" by Charles Dikkens. That's Dikkens with two Ks, the
well-known Dutch author.

P: (slight pause) No, well we don't have "Rarnaby Budge" by Charles Dikkens
with two Ks, the well-known Dutch author, and perhaps to save time I
should add that we don't have "Karnaby Fudge" by Darles Chickens, or
"Farmer of Sludge" by Marles Pickens, or even "Stickwick Stapers" by Farles

Wickens with four M's and a silent Q!!!!! Why don't you try W. H. Smith's?

C: Ah did, They sent me here.

I had always believed that plural never uses an apostrophe before the 's' (it's only used for possession), but I have rarely seen in written material the format "four Ms". (On a side note, whoever wrote this transcript also used "two Ks".)

On a side note, and perhaps this should be a separate question, if a Compact Disc is a CD, then two Compact Discs would be two CDs right? (I see "CD's" written everywhere)

Answer

The Chicago Manual of Style, one of the more widely used style guides in the United States, says:

Capital letters used as words, numerals used as nouns, and abbreviations usually form the plural by adding s. To aid comprehension, lowercase letters form the plural with an apostrophe and an s.

So: Dikkens with two Ks, but mind your p's and q's. (And always CDs, unless you're talking about something the CD owns.)

sentence - is it compulsory to use "his/her" and "he/she" to refer to a person or just "he" and "his" is enough?

Let see this sentence:

a person needs to change his / her mind so that he /she can become good.

or a person needs to change his mind so that he can become good

is the second one incorrect?

I've never seen anyone write like this a person needs to change her mind so that she can become good

Answer

"They" used to be the common gender neutral singular pronoun, and still is colloquially, but English lacks a universally accepted word for this. Here are some contenders.

Someone left their phone behind.
This is common in speech, but avoid it in formal writing because "their" is not truly singular. It is the most gender neutral of these options because it isn't gender binary.

Someone left his phone behind.
I would not go so far as to say that it is offensive to default to the masculine pronoun, but is is a bit insensitive. This still has widespread acceptance, but it's definitely losing popularity.

Someone left her phone behind.
In an effort to draw attention to the peculiarity of using a masculine pronoun for an unknown individual, some people do the same with feminine pronouns. This is often meant to make you pause to reconsider your preconceptions, and people also use it as a reminder to themselves.

Someone left his/her phone behind.
A little jarring, but singular and neutral. Also consider her/his if you want to make people pause.

Someone left his or her phone behind.
This blends in better with text and speech than the slash, is grammatically correct, and is more politically correct than just "his."

punctuation - How to punctuate a quoted rhetorical interrogative sentence that ends a declarative sentence?

Below is the sentence I am writing. I am not sure whether I should just end it with an interrogation mark within the quotes, with a period within the quotes, no in-quote punctuation except interrogation mark, or a period outside the quotation marks.

Those of you without any experience with drug or alcohol addiction are probably reading this scratching your heads thinking, “WTF is this guy talking about, if their problem is not drugs or alcohol how can they be classified as an addict or an alcoholic and why do they consistently abuse drugs or alcohol. How is that not their problem when they can't hold down a job or take their kids to school because they're always under the ...
... influence?”.
... influence?”
... influence”.
... influence.”
... influence”?

Which alternative should I use?

What is the pronunciation of the possessive words that already end in s?

My name is Greg — this is Greg 's post.

If my name ended with an 's', I am aware of the proper apostrophe usage (James → James'), but how should this be pronounced?

Phonetically, am I Jameses best friend or James best friend?

Answer

James' [z] best friend

sounds better. If this is the right form, then according to this thread, [z] would apply:

In the suffix -(e)s, indicative of the plural of a noun, the possessive case of a noun, or the 3rd. person singular past tense of a verb, the -s is read:

• voiceless, [s], when it comes after a voiceless consonant...

  
  
  

  
  

  cats, tracks, boots, walks, etc.

  
  
  




• and voiced, [z], when it comes after a voiced consonant or a vowel.

  
  
  

  
  

  dogs, cars, skies, keys, days, etc.

  
  

Is it correct to say "I write children books" (not possessive case)?

Although Children's books is what everybody says, I would like to understand why the genitive case is applied in such case.

If I write books for children, children is an adjective here; not the owners of my book! The word "children" just defines or characterizes the type of books I write. Therefore, it's an adjective.

So, I understand that genitive/possessive case ("I write children's book") is incorrect grammar.

My question is: is the genitive case here really accepted as right? If I use "I write children books" (following the grammar principle) as as I say "I write pets books" (books about pets, and not possessions of pets) - would I be incorrect? Why?

possessives - Genitive without apostrophe or s?

I have to translate the title of my college work and I can't decide whether it is correct to say "Colleagues rating system" or "Colleagues' rating system", because I have often seen examples where genitive/possessive is used without apostrophe or character 's' appended to the noun. Unfortunately I have failed to find any resources for this so as a non-native speaker I must ask for your help!

How it really is? Is it possible to omit apostrophe or s in genitive?

conjunctions - Usage of that with additional information about the subject

My objective is to combine following two sentences:

A. I assume you have access to the books that you were mentioning.

B. I assume you have those books in digital format.

Possibility 1: I assume you have access to the books (in digital format) that you were mentioning.
I thought of removing double brackets but I think “that” should immediately follow “books”.

Possibility 2: I assume you have access to the books that you were mentioning in digital format. This also doesn't look good.

I think in this case there is an additional information about books - that they are in digital format.

Is there a suitable way to combine both of the above sentences?

Answer

To say, I assume, you have the books or you have access to those books is not very different.

So, "I assume that you have in digital format those books you were mentioning about" or "I assume that you have access in digital format to those books you were mentioning about" will do.

Amount of data or number of data?

The question of whether "data" is plural or not has been asked many times, and won't be repeated here. For this question, take data as a plural noun or mass noun.

Is data a countable noun? Do I have a large number of data, or a large amount of data? If I'm experiencing information overload, do I need fewer data or less data?

The use of the definite article "The"

The two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow, moonlit lane.
           — Chapter 1 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: The Dark Lord

According to this web site, English native speakers use the definite article in front of a noun when they believe the hearer/reader knows exactly what they are referring to. But the sentence above is the very first sentence in Harry Potter and the Deathly hallows. We don't know anything about the two men and the narrow, moonlit lane.

I looked up the use of the definite article on books and the Internet. But I couldn't find out why the definite article is used in front of that nouns.

Could you explain why the definite article is used?

Answer

It is true that "English native speakers use the definite article in front of a noun when they believe the hearer/reader knows exactly what they are referring to". For example: I went to a party last night. The party was boring, but I enjoyed the fireworks.

In this case the definite article in the second sentence is being used to refer back to the party introduced in the first sentence. This type of reference is called anaphoric.

But the definite article can also be used as a forward-looking (or cataphoric) reference. And this is how it is being used in the Harry Potter text.

This passage from Discourse Analysis For Language Teachers (p42) has the following explanation:

Forward-looking or cataphoric reference often involves pronouns but it
can involve other reference items too, such as the definite article.

The author cites two examples from Newsweek:

... which underline the most characteristic function of cataphoric
reference: to engage and hold the reader's attention with a 'read on
and find out' message. In news stories and literature, examples of

cataphoric reference are often found in the opening sentences of the
text.

The definite article in "the narrow, moonlit lane" has a similar function, namely to entice us to read on and discover the exact setting of this particular lane. Contrast Rowling's sentence with one using articles according to the 'rules' of the web site you refer to:

Two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in a narrow,
moonlit lane.

It is clear how very much better Rowling's version is.

punctuation - Hyphenation or blending

Are there any rules when to write a set of two (or more) words or abbreviations forming a name of some entity as separate, when to hyphenate, and when to stick them together?

These are my findings with ngram:

• bitwise, bit-wise, but never bit wise


• sci-fi, but never sci fi, or scifi


• wastelands (increasingly frequent), waste lands (dying out), never waste-lands


• fanfiction or fan fiction, but almost never fan-fiction, but



• fanfic, never fan fic or fan-fic


• read-only or read only, rarely readonly


• twofold (frequently), two-fold (rarely), two fold (minimal)


• bittersweet (rise), bitter-sweet (decline), bitter sweet (minimal), but...


• sour-sweet (frequent), sour sweet (less frequent), soursweet (even less frequent)


• all-nighter (dominant), allnighter (infrequent), all nighter (somewhat less frequent)


• cross-country (gaining), crosscountry and cross country (about equal, not infrequent)


• overnight (rise), over night (same as overnight until 1920, then drops to 0), very rare over-night.

In particular, if I'm coining a new blend, which rules should I follow when deciding which of these three forms to give it?

Answer

The rule is that there are no rules. But, there are some general trends....

Before English lost the genitive case, the first noun would have been declined in the genitive to represent that it owns or modifies the second noun. We actually still see some compound words with a remnant of the Old English genitive. For example, the -s- in Doomsday is declining doom into the genitive. That would be the end of the story for that word, but we don't have a genitive case anymore, so things get a little more convoluted.

English has 3 forms for compound words:

• The open form, where the compound word is separated by a space.


• The apltly named hyphenated form, where a hyphen is used as the delimeter.


• The closed form, where the words are merged with no delimeter.

The general trend is that a word starts open, becomes hyphenated, and eventually, the any delimeter that was there is removed to make the closed form.

But as I said, the rules are: There are no rules. There can be any combination of these stages in existence for the same compound word leading many to wonder, which one is more correct?. Stages can also be skipped entirely, starting out hyphenated or going from open form to closed form directly, And, still, there is yet another exception to be made for the common prefixes we have taken from Latin/Greek, those are almost never hyphenated. For example telephone, a recently invented word, was never tele-phone. But even then, there are exceptions. Some of which are mentioned here.

I'm sure a few minutes of thought and more rules can be posited and then more exceptions to those rules found. Your best bet is just to follow the most common spelling of a word on a case-by-case basis. By the time it changes and people start questioning your spelling, you'll be long since dead.

Proper punctuation and quotation marks when 2 separate quotations

“It doesn’t have to be a huge event to make a difference, Jones said. “Any kind of activity-related event that can include a fundraising component can be directed toward charity.”

verbs - Is there a real word that means "pre-enact"?

Most of us are familiar with the word "re-enact."

re-enact |ˌrēəˈnakt|

verb [ with obj. ]

act out (a past event): bombers were gathered together to re-enact the historic first air attack.

A historical movie might include a re-enactment of the American Civil War, while a fictional movie about the future might include a "pre-enactment" of World War III.

A pre-enactment would be an enactment (the process of acting something out) of something that has not yet happened but one hopes, suspects, or knows will happen. Just as re-enactments are flawed and don't perfectly represent what they intend to, pre-enactments may have missing details or variations from what actually will happen.

This word would be different from "practice" or "rehearsal" because it's not the precursor to a performance. Rather it is the precursor to an actual event that would occur normally but which may be represented by a pre-enactment.

One example involves rituals performed by religious groups—they may pre-enact a reception into heaven or a ceremony that is to take place after death. They do this while still living, even though they believe such an event will occur regardless of their pre-enactment.

Another example is of a couple (probably in a cheesy romantic comedy) that has recently fallen madly in love. They're so caught up that they pre-enact their marriage ceremony, albeit without a few key people and the necessary wardrobe.

However, "pre-enact" doesn't appear to be a widely used word. Is there a similar word that means to act out a future event? If not, is it acceptable to use "pre-enact" despite it not being found in most dictionaries, not even Wiktionary?

Answer

I'll just stick with "pre-enact." As sumelic noted, using common prefixes, suffixes, and roots will help people understand at least the intended meaning of a word. Its use isn't widespread, but I've made up many words before that made much less sense than this one.

terminology - The use of conjunction "and" to avoid repetition

I apologize if my question seems trivial for people who study literature and English language in depth.

My question is basically related to the following statements:

1. The existence of X


2. The convergence of X to Y

Here, X and Y are nouns. So I would like to ask the following questions:

1. Assuming I combine statement 1 and statement 2, when I write "The existence of X and the convergence of X to Y" seems to be redundant. So, is this grammatically correct?



2. Now, if I reduce repeated words to obtain "The existence and the convergence of X to Y", does it automatically mean X satisfies both statement 1 and statement 2 in general English language?

I apologize if my question is out of context or the way I phrase my question to be strange since I come from mathematical background and English is not my native language.

Thank you very much! Any comment is much appreciated!

Answer

The short answer is only if the existence of Y is also established. When you link two nouns with a conjunction like this, they both apply to what follows.

pronunciation - how do you pronounce URL?

When pronouncing URL, I say (roughly) "you-are-ell." A colleague insists that (roughly) "earl" is more common. Is there a widely accepted pronunciation? Within the computer world or without?

Answer

Merriam-Webster's entry for 'URL' agrees with you. So do those at Oxforddictionaries.com, Cambridgedictionaries.com and Macmillandictionary.com. Netlingo is agnostic, giving both pronunciations.

(That's not to say that the pronunciation 'earl' is wrong, but on a cursory look at the evidence it does seem to be less prevalent than the one which spells out the initials.)

I'm not aware that non-techies and those who work with computers in a professional capacity pronounce the term differently.

word choice - What is correct in this case, "probable" or "probably"?

I usually don't have trouble distinguishing when I should use an adjective and when an adverb. But today I wrote a sentence, and wasn't sure — actually, the longer I looked at it, the longer both variants looked wrong.

The sentence was about baking, and it said:

While it is best to use a recipe designed for a big batch, using a multiplied by three small-batch recipe is no more probable to fail than using the small-batch recipe for a single small batch.

While there is probably a way to state the whole idea more clearly, what nags me is the probable. It qualifies using, and using is, of course, a form of the verb "to use" (my English classes are too far in the past to be able to name the form). So maybe it should be the adverb probably, because it is qualifying a verb.

But this is not what my intuition says, and after years of being exposed to almost always grammatically correct English, I have learned to trust my language intuition. Maybe in this case I am mixing it up with the grammar rules for some other language, but I feel that probable and not probably is correct here. Which, of course, is contrary to the rule above. My best explanation is that the phrase "using X" is describing a process, not an action, and is therefore somehow a replacement for a noun, and "using X is no more probable to fail than" is correct for the same reason that "the option of using X is no more probable to fail than...", but this could be just a poor rationalization of my already formed opinion.

So which form is correct, and why?

Answer

In the following sentence:

While it is best to use a recipe designed for a big batch, using a multiplied by three small-batch recipe is no more probable to fail than using the small-batch recipe for a single small batch,

probable is the head of the adjectival phrase, probable to fail, which qualifies the noun phrase using a ... small-batch recipe, whose head is the gerund (noun), using.

hyphenation - Dictating hyphen or dash over the phone

How should I dictate hyphen in email address or url over the phone ?

My email is gabriel hyphen glenn at gmail dot com

My email is gabriel dash glenn at gmail dot com

Answer

The short answer is: it doesn't matter. The listener will probably type the same thing in either case.

But what's the difference between a hyphen and a dash, anyway?

First of all, there are three lengths of what are all more or less dashes: hyphen (-), en dash (–), and em dash (—) ...

The hyphen connects two things that are intimately related, usually words that function together as a single concept or work together as a joint modifier (e.g., tie-in, toll-free call, two-thirds).

The en dash connects things that are related to each other by distance, as in the May–September issue of a magazine; it’s not a May-September issue, because June, July, and August are also ostensibly included in this range...

The em dash has several uses. It allows, in a manner similar to parentheses, an additional thought to be added within a sentence by sort of breaking away from that sentence—as I’ve done here...Em dashes also substitute for something missing. For example, in a bibliographic list, rather than repeating the same author over and over again, three consecutive em dashes (also known as a 3-em dash) stand in for the author’s name. In interrupted speech, one or two em dashes may be used: “I wasn’t trying to imply——”

https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/HyphensEnDashesEmDashes/faq0002.html

According to this common definition, the punctuation in an email address would probably be a hyphen, since it's used to connect the related parts of the "local-part" of your address. However, email addresses aren't proper English words, and they use symbols in uncommon ways. If a period is the punctuation mark that denotes the end of a sentence, then the . in firstname.lastname is not a period.

So maybe what we really want to know is what's the name of the symbol in the email address.

According to the Internet Engineering Task Force, the "local-part" of an email address can only contain numbers, Roman letters and these additional characters: !#$%&'*+-/=?^_`{|}~ (RFC 2822)

In ASCII (which is the character set that RFC cares about), that symbol is called "hyphen-minus" (because it's meant to represent a hyphen and a minus sign). So if you wanted to be really careful, you could say, "gabriel hyphen-minus glenn," but since most people don't really know ASCII that well, this isn't advisable.