the definite article in front of a noun that is followed by a defining clause

When we want to refer to a specific noun, we use the definite article 'the'. When the noun is followed by a defining clause, again we use the defining article 'the'. My question is why the following sentence does not have the article 'the'? The who-clause seems to require the article.

People who haven't got cars can't stop at these out-of-town stores

Moreover, if I want to refer to, say, some cookies that can be find at a particular store, should I say:

Rolo Cookies are cookies (that are) sold at Tesco.

or

Rolo Cookies are the cookies (that are) sold at Tesco?

Another example:

"Make that change" is a/the??? slogan written on the Oriflame eye shadow pallet.

Could someone explain why sentence #2 in the question is ungrammatical because there i is no explanation why the article is used: Use of article in front of product names

ellipsis - Why is the subject omitted in sentences like "Thought you'd never ask"?

• "Thought you'd never ask" is "I thought you'd never ask" with "I" omitted.




• "Hope this helps" is "I hope this helps" with "I" omitted.

In English grammar, normally every sentence should have a subject, right?

My first thought is that these two examples are so often used that they are like set phrases. But these are not really set phrases. You can alter the words after "thought" and "hope".

Another possible explanation is the tendency to drop the subject if it is the first person pronoun. It seems that in many languages, such as Spanish, Italian and Japanese, the first person subject is usually omitted. Maybe English is going the same way? (Not exactly the same, since in Italian, verb forms change according to the person, so the subject is not necessary to understand who one's referring to.)

And, apparently, such omission is more common in spoken English than in written English.

Are there more examples of such first person subject omission? How frequent is it?

Answer

This is due to a phenomenon that occurs in intimate conversational spoken English called "Conversational Deletion". It was discussed and exemplified quite thoroughly in a 1974 PhD dissertation in linguistics at the University of Michigan that I had the honor of directing.

Thrasher, Randolph H. Jr. 1974. Shouldn't Ignore These Strings: A Study of Conversational Deletion, Ph.D. Dissertation, Linguistics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

To quote:

• (1.16) Gotta go now.



• (1.17) See you next Tuesday.


• (1.18) Too bad about old Charlie.


• (1.19) No need to get upset about it.


• (1.20) Been in Ann Arbor long?


• (1.21) Ever get a chance to use your Dogrib?


• (1.22) Ever get to Japan, look me up.


• (1.23) Good thing we didn't run into anybody we know.


• (1.24) Last person I expected to meet was John.


• (1.25) Wife wants to go to the mountains this year.
  [all from Thrasher 1974 p.5]

"The phenomenon can be viewed as erosion of the beginning of sentences, deleting (some, but not all) articles, dummies, auxiliaries, possessives, conditional if, and [most relevantly for this discussion -jl] subject pronouns. But it only erodes up to a point, and only in some cases.

"Whatever is exposed (in sentence initial position) can be swept away. If erosion of the first element exposes another vulnerable element, this too may be eroded. The process continues until a hard (non-vulnerable) element is encountered." [ibidem p.9]

In general, exposed first-person subjects are vulnerable in statements, and second-person in questions, and any exposed pronoun is vulnerable if it is recoverable from later in the sentence.

• (3.2) Can't do it, can {I/you/he/she/they/we}? [ibidem p.59]

Let me reiterate that this phenomenon only occurs in speaking English, and in other informal communication systems like email and txting that work like speech. It is not good formal written style, except for reporting dialog in a story.

pronouns - can who be used as the informal form of whom?

In a grammar book, there were two examples used to clarify the difference
between who and whom, and to show that who can be used as the informal form
of whom, and there would be no difference in meaning. The examples were:

1. Bob is the young man whom she interviewed. (she interviewed whom/him)




2. Bob is the young man who she interviewed. (informal)

It's stated that the second sentence is informal, but our teacher insists
that in the second sentence Bob interviewed her (that is, the woman)!

Can anyone tell me which one is true? Is it just informal or does the
meaning change? Is the woman always the interviewer, or do the roles switch in the second sentence so that now he interviews her instead of vice versa?

Answer

Both sentences mean the same. The first is the sort of English used by purists, and the second is modern English, seen in daily usage.

Your teacher, without doubt, is wrong.

grammatical number - "Here is/are" followed by plural

• Here is the documents needed.



• Here are the documents needed.

Which is grammatically correct and why? My guess would be the second one because of the plural form.

Answer

Documents are plural, so the only correct usage is:

Here are the documents needed

This isn't an edge case, so it is simple. Compare

Here are the potatoes

and

Here is the sack of potatoes

Where the subject is plural, you use are and when it is singular you use is.

conditionals - If I were him, I would doubt if she (is/was/were?) serious about this relationship

Which one is correct?

1. If I were him, I would doubt if she is serious about this relationship.


2. If I were him, I would doubt if she was serious about this relationship.


3. If I were him, I would doubt if she were serious about this relationship.

I presume that (1) is definitely wrong but uncertain about (2) and (3). I see this sentence as a reported speech in the first conditional. My thought, "Is she serious about this relationship?", is reported by myself. Since it's reported, the tense should be shifted back according to the tense of the main clause, "I would doubt." The problem is that the "would" is resulted from a counter-factual hypothesis and without this hypothesized situation, the reported sentence, "Is she serious about this relationship?", wouldn't exist at all. That's why I'm bewildered by choosing (2) or (3).

Answer

Don’t get confused by the second if not being a conditional at all, but rather the version that means whether. Try changing your second if to either that or to whether for a clearer read.

That just puts off the decision of what tense/mood to use. The issue there is that whether clauses could indeed historically trigger the subjunctive in the verb they governed, whether it be present or past, in and by themselves.

Nowadays you invariably get indicative in the present, but people still waver about the subjunctive when back-shifting it. Both variations occur in the wild, no matter whether they are “right” or “wrong” — whatever that means. (But not “no matter whether they be” — nobody says that anymore.)

• I don’t know whether she is/she’s ready.


• I didn’t know whether she was ready.


• I didn’t know whether she were ready.

Given that, “If I were he, I would doubt that she were serious” does not lack for historical support, but it is a bit stuffy — a little bit for some, too much for others.

“If it were me, I’d doubt she was serious” is how most people would say it today, except in super-stuffy writing. You could even get by with a simpler “Me, I’d doubt she was serious.”

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For further reading with an historical perspective on all this and copious examples, I strongly recommend F. T. Visser’s monumental An Historical Syntax of the English Language, in two volumes, covers this simple matter in only around 250 pages of his second volume, treating with Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, the stuff between then and now, and Contemporary — or as Visser calls it, Present Day English.

Here is a Google Books link to Visser’s second volume, to the portion covering “modally marked forms” (nées subjunctives) in various circumstances. Start reading a hundred pages or more earlier than that point, though, back when it first starts.

You do have to get used to his peculiar terminology of modally marked forms, but his scholarship and examples are, well, exemplary. It really is FMTEYEWTK on the subjunctive in English.

apostrophe - Is "aren't you too old to be..." proper grammar?

My reasoning is that aren't stands for are not so the sentence would read are not you too old to be... which is not proper grammar.

grammaticality - Which is correct: "There are not any employees" or "There is not any employee"?

Sometimes I see two variants of following sentence:

• "there are not any employees" in the department


• "there is not any employee" in the department

What is the correct sentence?

Answer

As long as you are referring to more than one subject, I would go with:

There are not any employees in the department.

For referring to a single instance, I would go with "there is no"

There is no employee in the department.

If the topic has no plural form (or is rarely used with a plural form), then I would consider "there isn't any":

"There isn't any water" = There is no water

grammaticality - I often use "is being" and "are being" in my sentences. Is it correct grammatically?

For example "lasers are being used to treat different skin conditions". It is a passive form without a subject. Please guide.

word choice - John, Valencia, and I (or me)?

Possible Duplicates:
Should I Put Myself Last (“me and you” vs “you and me”)?
When do I use “I” instead of “me?”
Who wants ice-cream?

When identifying people in a photo—for instance,

John, Valencia, and (I or me).

should I use ”I” or “me”? Which one is grammatically correct?

word choice - Is there an adjective that describes "no options"?

I've used the phrase "defeated for" in my writing, somewhat like this:

He was defeated for another country to flee to, and so he left for Australia.

which is supposed to mean "He had no choice of another country to flee to".

It seems to make some sense to me, but I appear to be the only person to use this phrase for such a purpose (A Google search returns nothing). Is there another more suitable adjective I can use in its place? I feel like there should be one, but I have no idea how to look for it.

Answer

In that example I might have said 'For the want of anywhere better, he fled to Australia'. Does that help?

pronunciation - Are there other words in American English that use the same vowel sound as the "as" in "Pasta"?

Obviously, pasta is a loanword, but generally loanwords are pronounced with the closest vowels which already exist in the language.

In American English, the "a" in pasta is the same vowel that I hear in RP British English words like "grass", "fast" and "arm". Which is strange, because that isn't how Americans pronounce words with a long a sound in RP such as "fast", "last" and "bath".

In British English, "pasta" has a short A. In my dialect, there is no trap-bath split, so I pronounce "pasta" the same as I would words such as "past" and "cast".

I asked in the original question if pasta had the same vowel as "lost" and "mop". The answer seems to have been no, but that it is the same vowel as father.

This is a little confusing, and I understand that most American accents have a "father-bother" merger, so it's confusing to me that pasta does share a vowel with father, but not with lost

In order to narrow it down, in terms of their vowels, how does the following list fit together in the majority of American Accents (I've grouped them based on my accent)

calm
father

bother
mop
lost
on

fast
pasta

(I've left out "caught" words, as I don't think it's relevant here, but if I'm wrong and should have chosen some different words, then please do correct me).

Answer

Most American speakers use more-or-less the vowel of RP (Received Pronunciation, the most common or standard "reference" British English accent) "grass", "fast" and "arm" in all of pasta, father, mop, don. But not lost; that has a different vowel in "GA" ("General American," the "standard" reference American accent). "Lost" and "mop" have different vowels in "General American" English due to a vowel change similar to the one that is responsible for the different vowels of "last" and "lap" in RP British English. "Pasta" and "father" have the same vowel as "mop," but not the same vowel as "lost" in GA.

The vowel in the word "father" is typically written /ɑː/ when transcribing British English, with a vowl length marker (ː) because British English is often analyzed as having phonological vowel length.

Vowel length is less important (or at least, less obvious) in the phonological system of American English, so usually it is just written /ɑ/ when transcribing American speech.

Of course, as with all IPA vowel symbols, this is a simplified representation of a variable set of actual vowel sounds.

Distribution of /ɑ/ in a typical American English accent

You can see some explanation in the Wikipedia article Pronunciation of English ⟨a⟩. Basically, /ɑ/ is usual in rhotic American English accents for father, before /r/ (also analyzed as a unitary rhotic vowel /ɑ˞/), and for the majority of speakers, in some words that historically had a "short o" such as lot. The exception is words like cloth and lost where "short o" ended up being changed to the "aw" vowel of thought.

Words like palm also historically had /ɑ/, but the common restoration of /l/ has caused some speakers to change the vowel to the thought vowel (/ɔ/).

american english - "student list" vs "students list"?

What is more accurate to say when writing a noun before a list?
"student list" or "students list"
(also "student group" vs "students group")

imperatives - Verbs like "go" and "come" which can be followed by another verb directly?

With most English verbs (apart from modals), if you want to put another verb after it, you have either put "to" in front of the verb or use the gerund (if such a construction is even acceptable). For example:

want to eat

like to run / like running

However, for a few verbs, this is not necessary:

Go fetch me some water.

Come eat some food.

Now, they don't necessarily have to be used in commands. For example, you could say

He needs to go fetch me some water.

They should come eat some food.

But in any case, those verbs cannot be used in the ordinary present tense:

*He goes fetch me some water.

*They come eat some food.

The first sentence is jarringly incorrect. The second sentence sounds unusual, albeit not as bad as the first, but it's probably still wrong.

It seems that these verbs can only be followed by another verb directly if the first verb is used in the infinitive or imperative. Can someone give a good linguistic explanation for why this is the case? Is there a name for this phenomenon? Are there any other examples of such verbs besides "come" and "go"?

syntactic analysis - Why is it that people have started to use an interrogative sentence form when not asking a question in American English?

I'm not sure if this is something recent, although I've been noticing it much more frequently now than say a couple of years ago. Many times people will make a statement, but will have it in an Interrogative form. For example, I recently saw this sentence online:

Consider what are the consequences of not being great in your home.

This was the sentence construction; however, I would have though it would be more like this:

Consider what the consequences of not being great in your home are.

All I did was move the verb, "are" to the end of the sentence.

Why is it that this happens? Is this a recent development in language, or is it that I'm just now noticing it? If I were to use this interrogative form, would it be commonly considered correct in a formal setting?

grammatical number - When is it correct to use "scissors" as a singular noun?

In the Oxford dictionary website, the following example for scissors is given:

A small suture scissors was used to "fish" for the deeply embedded
hair.

However I find weird that it treats scissors as singular, being a plural noun. Shouldn't it be Small suture scissors were used...?

Why is it correct to treat scissors as singular in that case (assuming it's indeed correct)?

Please note that I'm only interested in the use of the noun scissors, the ones that are used to cut, not any other meaning of the word. Thank you!

Answer

You can use scissors with a singular verb anytime you want. However, to prevent getting into arguments, you may wish to limit this usage to medical scissors. Or you can say 'if a scissors was good enough for Emily Brontë,
then it's good enough for me'.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) notes that using scissors with plural concord is "the usual form." However the same dictionary notes that scissors is also used with singular concord and does not describe this as dialectal or anything that might be considered non-standard. And examples range from 1565 to 2001, including:

1565 T. Cooper Thesaurus at Forfex A sisers, or sheares.

1847 E. Brontë Wuthering Heights I. ix. 164 Now, don't you think the lad would be handsomer cropped?.. Get me a scissors.

1909 Ophthalmol. 5 43 The scissors is inserted into the duct and the cut made as low down as possible.

You might notice this last usage is from the field of ophthalmology.

Google Books provides plenty of other examples of scissors being used with singular concord, including several instances in the medical field. For example:

With a scissors the surgical fascia is incised for 2-3 cm above the suprasternal notch, ...

and

With a scissors, divide the slip of the diaphragm that attaches to the posterior surface of the xiphoid, ...

From Manual of Pulmonary Surgery (Comprehensive Manuals of Surgical Specialties) by by E.W. Humphrey and D.L. McKeown (2012).

As in your example from the Oxford Dictionary online (borrowed from American Family Physician (link)) there are many uses of singular concord with regard to "medical scissors," but contemporary usage is not limited to this. But singular concord remains the "unusual form" (my quotes).

punctuation - Is Hyphen Really the Longer – line instead of the shorter dash - line?

I had a discussion with some people today on hyphen and dashes. They had concluded that hyphen, which is used to link two connecting words (book-bag) is the longer line – instead of the shorter line -, and that the shorter line is for the dash, which is used to continue an argument/show something within a passage.

Is this true? Is there really a difference between the line length in the hyphen and dash symbols? I had always thought that they were of the same length.

Supposedly:

• Hyphen : –


• Dash.... : -

(Dots used to space out to show the difference in length.)

grammar - Do reverse clauses with 'be/have/do' require 'that'?

I am looking at these sentences:

1. *The fool he is said this.*


2. *The job he has is hard.*


3. *The job he does is hard.*



4. *The suit he wears is black.*

The reverse clause #1 seems completely wrong to me. #2 and #3 look somewhat questionable, and #4 looks completely correct to me. However, adding that (The fool that he is said this.) seems to make it more correct in each case.

It seems like I would always prefer to use that for all be/have/do-based reverse clauses to make them right.

My questions are: Is there a rule that makes #1, #2, #3 wrong? Or, perhaps, they are all correct?

On a side note, I have never come across a book that would comprehensively describe and explain English grammar on a formal level. Books tend to go by example, and kind-of coach people to do it right only on an intuitive level.

grammar - What's wrong with "We hope you will find our Qualifications to be well-organized, concise, and most of all, to exceed your expectations."

Why is the following sentence grammatically incorrect?

We hope you will find our Qualifications to be well-organized, concise, and most of all, to exceed your expectations.

I've asked three grammar whiz friends and they have all told me "it just isn't right." I need reasons and rules! I wrote this sentence as a closing to a cover letter....

Answer

If you delete the most of all and rewrite it as a bulletted list, the problem becomes clear:

We hope you will find our Qualifications to be:

• well-organized


• concise


• to exceed your expectations

Your sentence treats well-organized, concise and to exceed your expectations as being in the same grammatical category. well-organized and concise are adjectives, but to exceed your expectations is an infinitive. to be to exceed your expectations is just wrong.

It was harder to spot before, because the most of all confused matters.

Also, qualifications should probably not be capitalized (although that depends on context).

phrase usage - This means that or This means

I'm currently reworking my technical report and was wondering which of the following wordings is correct. If both are correct, which one is the better one?

This means that the behavior of the cmd.exe is accessible [...].

This means the behavior of the cmd.exe is accesible [...].

Answer

Both are correct. I'd usually go for the first one because it's clearer, the brain has less work to do to parse the sentence. It could depend on the rest of the sentence though; if you have fifty thousand "that"s you might want to take a few out to improve the flow, or restructure the sentence entirely.

grammaticality - "Wrote it I did" Is this grammatical?

Are the following two examples grammatical?

1. Write it I have.


2. Wrote it I did.

Consider as possible contexts:

• They said that I have to write it, and write it I have. -- (for #1)


• They said that I wrote it, and wrote it I did. -- (for #2)

MAIN QUESTION: What reasons are there to think that examples #1 and #2 are grammatical or ungrammatical?

These two examples involve preposed verb phrases, which could be used as a form of topicalisation. But what I'm wondering about here is the grammar in relation to the forms of the verb WRITE.

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MINOR QUESTION: As a very small secondary concern, is a comma required after it in those two examples, and why or why not? (See the various comments by Curiousdannii below.)

Answer

Are the following two examples grammatical?

1. Write it I have.


2. Wrote it I did.

Consider as possible contexts:

• They said that I have to write it, and write it I have. -- (for #1)




• They said that I wrote it, and wrote it I did. -- (for #2)

ANSWER TO MAIN QUESTION: In the appropriate context, those two expressions (#1 and #2) would most likely be acceptable in informal or colloquial spoken English, and would be considered to be grammatical by many native English speakers--though, many speakers might consider the usage of "wrote" in #2 to be nonstandard for spoken and written English.

In each of the two sentences for the example contexts, the last coordinate clause has a preposed verb phrase (VP): the VP "write it" in #1, and the VP "wrote it" in #2. Both preposed VPs have verbs that have the identical shape of a verb used in an earlier clause in the sentence; and because of this, that could produce a rhetorical effect which would often be desired by the speaker.

For version #1 in its given context, there usually wouldn't be much doubt as to its grammaticality, since it would be considered to be grammatical in today's standard English according to the 2002 reference grammar CGEL.

For version #2 in its given context, it seems in my opinion to be acceptable, and it would probably be quite reasonable to consider it to be grammatical in today's informal English, and maybe even in today's standard English. But it might be a bit harder to present an iron-clad supporting argument for that position, because it seems that this specific type of construction isn't explicitly discussed in the general vetted grammar sources that are easily available, such as the 2002 reference grammar CGEL or the 1985 reference grammar by Quirk et al.

ANSWER TO MINOR QUESTION: Usually in those types of constructions, a comma is not used to separate the preposed element from the rest of the clause when that element is a complement (which it happens to be in the OP's two examples). Often it would be less acceptable, or even unacceptable, to use a comma in that situation.

Consider the original two examples:

• They said that I have to write it, and write it I have.



• They said that I wrote it, and wrote it I did.

and compare them to versions with a separating comma after the preposed element:

• They said that I have to write it, and write it, I have.


• They said that I wrote it, and wrote it, I did.

The original versions seem much better to me. In general, though, it will depend on the specific sentence and its context, and on the speaker or writer w.r.t. what they want to accomplish, as to whether or not the use of that kind of comma is acceptable.

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Note: Another answer post which has info related to the OP's grammar question is: “and build upon that, but build they have”: Should that 2nd “build” be “built”?

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LONG VERSION:

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INFORMATION PACKAGING:

The OP's examples are using information packaging constructions. These are constructions that have words and phrases that are not in their canonical or expected "normal" order. Often, these constructions will move elements (word or phrases or constituents) around. Usually there are more constraints and restrictions on these types of constructions, w.r.t. their level of acceptability in the contexts where they are used, than there are on more "normally ordered" constructions.

The two examples (the full sentences which provide some context) are:

• 1.b. They said that I have to write it, and [write it] I have. -- (for OP's #1)



• 2.b. They said that I wrote it, and [wrote it] I did. -- (for OP's #2)

Both of the OP's examples (#1.b and #2.b) are using the information packaging construction of complement preposing (2002 CGEL pages 1372-82). And more specifically, they are using VP preposing, which are the VPs "write it" and "wrote it". The following are the more normally ordered versions that would correspond to them:

• 1.c. They said that I have to write it, and I have [written it].


• 2.c. They said that I wrote it, and I did [write it].

Notice that the verbs in these two normally ordered versions use the grammatical "written" and "write": "written" is the past-participle verb form for the perfect construction ("have written"); and "write" is the plain form of a verb that heads the VP that is the complement for the matrix verb "did", where the verb "did" is the auxiliary verb "DO" (not the lexical verb "DO").

[Aside: Notice that there's usually another normally ordered version that would also correspond to #2.b which wouldn't use the auxiliary verb "DO": "They said that I wrote it, and I wrote it", which uses the preterite "wrote" instead of the expression "did write". But in this specific case, it doesn't seem to work for the given context.]

In general, there seems to be two factors at work here which are influencing the form that the preposed verb will be taking:

• One: the form that the verb would have if it was in the normally ordered construction.




• Two: the form that would more closely match the shape of the verb form that was used by an earlier use of the verb.

As to which form would be more preferable in a specific context, that would usually depend on the context and also on the speaker or writer as to the rhetorical effect that they are trying to accomplish.

Since the OP's two examples are involving two different types of construction (perfect vs auxiliary-DO), I'll split the discussion into two major parts. I'll first discuss the OP's #1 example which involves the perfect construction, since it should be the less controversial of the two. And then after that, I'll discuss the OP's #2 example which involves the auxiliary-DO construction.

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EXAMPLE #1: THE PERFECT CONSTRUCTION

• 1.b.i. They said that I have to write it, and [write it I have]. -- (OP's original #1)


• 1.b.ii. They said that I have to write it, and [written it I have].

In general, both versions are acceptable in today's standard English. But in this specific context, there would often be a preference for the first version (#1.b.i) which uses "write", and that was what was used in the OP's original #1 version:

• 1.b.i. They said that I have to write it, and [write it I have]. -- (OP's original #1)

The OP's use of the plain form "write" of the verb would probably often be preferred here (over the past-participle form "written") because the second "write" would then match the shape of the first "write" which was used in the previous clause, and that would give a rhetorical effect which would often be desirable by the speaker.

The two factors influencing the selection of the form of the preposed verb, w.r.t. "written" versus "write", are:

• One: the form that the verb would have if it was in the normally ordered construction -- for example #1, it is the past-participle "written".




• Two: the form that would more closely match the shape of the verb form that was used in an earlier use of the verb -- for example #1, the plain form "write", which had headed an infinitival clause located earlier in the example sentence.

As to which form would be more preferable, then, in general, that will depend on the context and on the speaker or writer as to the rhetorical effect that they are trying to accomplish.

This specific issue related to the perfect construction is discussed by the 2002 CGEL on page 1381 (a related excerpt is provided near the bottom of this answer post).

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EXAMPLE #2: THE AUXILIARY "DO" CONSTRUCTION

• 2.b.i. They said that I wrote it, and [wrote it I did]. -- (OP's original #2)


• 2.b.ii. They said that I wrote it, and [write it I did].

The OP's preterite verb form "wrote" might be preferred here (over the plain form "write") by some speakers because the second "wrote" would then match the shape of the first "wrote" which was used in the previous clause, and that would give a rhetorical effect which would often be desirable by the speaker. Though, some speakers might consider "wrote" to be ungrammatical here (i.e. nonstandard), and they might only consider "write" to be acceptable.

The two factors influencing the selection of the form of the preposed verb, w.r.t. "write" versus "wrote", are:

• One: the form that the verb would have if it was in the normally ordered construction -- for example #2, the plain form "write", which heads an infinitival clause.




• Two: the form that would more closely match the shape of the verb form that was used in an earlier use of the verb -- for example #2, the preterite "wrote", which was located earlier in the example sentence.

As to which form would be more preferable, then, in general, that will depend on the context and on the speaker or writer as to the rhetorical effect that they are trying to accomplish (and also on the register).

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GRAMMAR INFO FROM VETTED GRAMMAR SOURCES:

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The OP's two examples use complement preposing in their second clauses, where the preposed element is a verb phrase (VP). Usually the second clause will involve an auxiliary verb when the preposed element is a VP.

Here are some typical examples. The 2002 CGEL, page 1376:

• [11.i ] I've promised to help them [ and help them I will ].




• [11.ii ] It's odd that Diane should have said that, if [ say it she did ].

The preposed VP in [11.i ] is "help them", and in [11.ii ] it is "say it". Notice that the nucleus of the second clause in both examples ends with an auxiliary: "will" for [11.i ], and "did" for [11.ii ]:

• help them I will


• say it she did

where the nucleus of each of those clauses would be "I will" and "she did". (note: The nucleus of a clause is the rest of the clause that hadn't been preposed.)

Here are their corresponding versions that don't have the preposing:

• A.i. I've promised to help them and I will help them.


• A.ii. It's odd that Diane should have said that, if [ she said it ] / [ she did say it ].

But when the auxiliary verb is the perfect "have" and the preposed element is its complement, then both the past-participle form and the plain form of the verb are acceptable.

The 2002 CGEL page 1381:

Inflection with perfect have

A special issue arises when the preposed element is a complement of perfect have. Compare:

[25]

• i. He said he wouldn't tell them, [ but tell/told them he has ].




• ii. He denies he has told them, [ but tell/told them he has ].

Although have normally takes a past participle, it is the plain form of the verb that is preferred in [i ]. The past participle is preferred in [ii ], where it has been used in the preceding clause, but even here the plain form tell is acceptable.

---

NOTE: The 2002 CGEL is the 2002 reference grammar by Huddleston and Pullum (et al.), The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language.

Pages 1372-82 (2002 CGEL), which deal with complement preposing, are within chapter 16 "Information packaging" pages 1363-1447, and the major contributors to that chapter are Gregory Ward, Betty Birner, and Rodney Huddleston. Birner and Ward are the authors of the 1998 book Information Status and Noncanonical Word Order in English, and much of chapter 16 was based on their work.

NOTE: The 1985 Quirk et al. is the reference grammar by Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, Svartvik, A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language.

meaning - Difference between eloquent and articulate

Is there an intended difference between the words "eloquent" and "articulate," or are they simply two synonymous adjectives?

When I use the adjective "eloquent" I most often think of flowery, decorated, or crafted speaking. The individual puts effort into making their speaking more colorful or artistic. Whether they do this consciously or unconsciously is not relevant for my usage.

However, when I use the adjective "articulate" I think of someone who simply has a strong understanding and usage of a language. They are clear and easy to understand. Their words are proper and correct, but not necessarily the most flowing or "fun" to read or listen to.

So one can be articulate but not eloquent, in my opinion. I suppose that one can also be eloquent but not truly articulate, but I feel this is very rare for having the ability to craft a sentence for a certain effect more-or-less requires a fairly strong grasp of the intended language.

Is this particular variance in usage a common thing among English speakers, or am I just weird?

Answer

I think your understanding is definitely on the right track. In my view, "eloquent" is stronger and even more favorable connotatively than "articulate." Eloquent almost implies a talent at "elocution," the practice of oration or formal discourse, i.e., speaking well or convincingly in the manner of e.g. Cicero. Articulate implies the ability to elucidate one's thoughts clearly and succinctly but doesn't imply as much of a natural talent at speaking or persuading as "eloquent."

modal verbs - Conditionals in the future

My colleague and I have a hot discussion about which is correct.

My version is:

If you don't fix the bug I will send you a patch.

and his one is:

I would send you a patch if you don't fix the problem.

Discussion context is: there is a bug in a project. I will send a patch in case that it will not be fixed this evening.

I've written mine following academic definitions of "future conditionals" and my colleague's version looks unnatural for me. So who is right? If neither - what would be a correct sentence?

Answer

Yours is the correct option, but not because of clause order. The main difference is that you use if ... then I will, and your friend uses I would... if.

Both the following are correct:

If you don't fix the bug I will send you a patch.

I will send you a patch if you don't fix the bug.

However, replacing the will with would makes either one incorrect, since the do in don't refers to an event which is likely to happen (known as First Conditional) and would refers to an event which is not likely to happen (known as Second Conditional). Since you are referring to events which are likely to happen, you should use don't and will. Otherwise you would use didn't and were.

grammaticality - “is like” , “are like” comparison between singular and plural

So I had a debate with a friend, where that friend is of the opinion that you can't compare singular entities with plural ones

Eg : Women are like a magnet, always attractive! (Just an example)
Women - Plural
A magnet - Singular

is wrong according to my friend.

Whereas, I think the above is right. The only thing that should matter grammatically is, using "is like" or "are like" based on which is used first, Singular or Plural.

Eg: The above sentence if Singular entity is used first should be -

"A magnet is like women, always attractive!"

Am I right in the above two sentences?
I'm also looking for sources which can validate this usage. Thanks.

word choice - "Prefer to do something" vs. "prefer doing something"

What's the difference between the two:

• What materials do they prefer working with?


• What materials do they prefer to work with?

meaning - Question Regarding Possessives with ('s) and (of)

Question: Is the first one redundant and proper, or is it redundant and not necessarily correct?

(1) He is a friend of Doug's.

(2) He is a friend of Doug.

Answer

Patrick,

This is a grammatical issue I am curious about, as I have always used "of Doug's", not "of Doug" in such sentences. Your question has prompted me to do some more research.

Swan's Practical English Usage, 3rd ed. does not address the controversy but does give several 'double possessive' sentences, such as She's a friend of my father's so presumably he thinks double possessives are okay, at least in some contexts.

Grammar Girl provides a lengthy discussion of double possessives, and provides useful distinctions that explain when they are correct, when and how they could be avoided, and when they are a mistake. People may question her authority, but she does provide a useful breakdown and cites authoritative references.

Richard Nordquist, over at about.com's grammar page, comes down on the side of double possessives being correct, and gives several examples of their use in literature (Bronte, etc.) and an interesting summary of the history of this debate among grammarians.

In The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style, Bryon Garner surveys the pro and con arguments, and concludes that double possessives are fine except in awkward sentences like Many friends of Mr. Smith's, which should be reworded to Many of Mr. Smith's friends.

Having read all this, I have not changed my mind: He is a friend of Doug's is grammatically correct, and He is a friend of Doug is not. If He is a friend of mine is correct, and He is a friend of me is incorrect (which I definitely believe to be the case), then the same rules should apply to proper nouns to show possession in this construction.

I hope this at least gives you some food for thought.

grammatical number - What is the correct possessive for nouns ending in "‑s"?

What is the possessive of a noun ending in ‑s? Are these both right, or is the second one wrong?

1. the boys' books




2. the boss' car

Answer

Your example sentences confuse two different problems.

For nouns that are plural (such as "boys"), the possessive is formed in writing by adding an apostrophe after the plural -s. This is pronounced the same as the plural and the singular possessive:

The boys' books [boys' sounds like boys]

For singular nouns that end in -s, the possessive is formed by adding -'s, just as with other nouns. This is pronounced as if the spelling were es:

The boss's car [boss's sounds like bosses]

There is a partial exception for proper names that end in s. These names sometimes form their possessive by simply adding an apostrophe, and without changing their pronunciation:

Confucius' sayings

Jesus' teachings

However, this doesn't apply if the name ends with a letter other than s, even if it's pronounced with an s. These names form their possessive as normal:

Marx's theories

In the opposite case of a name which ends in a silent s, the possessive is usually formed by adding an apostrophe in writing, but the apostrophe causes the silent s to be pronounced:

Camus' novels [the final -s in Camus is not silent here]

meaning - Where did the expression, "I can't win for losing" come from and what does it mean

I was thinking this expression the other day when it seemed that the odds were stacked against me.

I thought, why do I use the words, "can't win for losing"?

What it that actually mean?

Where did saying that come from and how do those words equate to "the odds are stacked against me"?

Which is a more clear-cut expression?

grammatical number - Either of two [subject]s was/were?

Is it correct to use "were" or "was" in the following?

whenever either of two somethings [were/was] applied [...]

Answer

it's contentious, but I would lean towards "was", since it is acting up the individual "either".

american english - Why are "creature" and "creative" pronounced differently?

Both the words "creature" and creative" share "creat" in common so they should be pronounced same, right? So why is there a difference?

According to these links "creature" is pronounced as "kree-cher" whereas "creative" is pronounced as "kree-ey-tiv", why "ey" added in next than in the first.

Is there any rule to remember where to use "ey" and where not to?

Answer

This is just a weird facet of modern English pronunciation. I don't know any particularly good explanation or mnemonic. "Creature" and "creative" are actually both pronounced somewhat irregularly/unpredictably, although in different ways (in "creature", the sequence "ea" is pronounced in an unexpected way, and in "creative", the stress is placed in an unexpected place).

Some background material: the digraph "ea" is often used in English to represent a single vowel sound, and its etymological origin in these contexts is usually a single vowel sound or diphthong: e.g. "beak" from French bec, "bean" from Old English bēan (Old English "ea" was a diphthong, not a sequence of two separate vowels), "treat" from Old French tretier, traitier (modern French "traiter").

The spelling and pronunciation of "creature" appears at first glance to fit this pattern, but actually, the "ea" in "creature" doesn't come from a historical monophthong or diphthong. It comes from two vowels in hiatus (the OED says "< Anglo-Norman creatur, Anglo-Norman and Old French criature, Anglo-Norman and Old French, Middle French creature (French créature)").

Regarding the pronunciation, the OED says

The stem vowel appears to have shown some variation in early modern English, but generally to have shown the reflex of Middle English open ē; the different developments of this sound in different regional varieties of English largely account for the variation in the stem vowel which is found subsequently. (There is also very limited evidence for a trisyllabic pronunciation in early modern English, on the same pattern as creation n.) critter n. shows a variant with shortening of the stem vowel after raising to /iː/. The realization of the second syllable varied in Middle English and early modern English according to whether this syllable showed secondary stress; pronunciations of the type /ˈkriːtʃə/ ultimately reflect pronunciations with secondary stress, while pronunciations of the type /ˈkriːtə/ ultimately reflect pronunciations without such secondary stress. Compare forms at nature n., pasture n., etc.

In trisyllabic or polysyllabic words taken from French, stress often seems to move "back" from the final syllable in an alternating fashion. I'll give an example: the word "relative", from French relatif/relative, is thought to have been pronounced with stress on the final syllable in the past (the modern French pronunciation sounds to an English ear like it has final stress). The present-day stress on the first syllable in English can be explained as a strengthening of an originally secondary stress on the first syllable. Alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables is known to be a tendency in English pronunciation: for example, compare the pronunciation of "prohibit", where the first syllable has no secondary stress because it immediately precedes a stressed syllable, to that of "prohibition", which seems to have secondary stress on the first syllable.

Anyway, the alternating-stress explanation is a bit hypothetical, but we can verify that many trisyllables and polysyllables from French are currently pronounced with stress on the third-to-last or "antepenultimate" syllable. (There are classes of regular or predictable exceptions to this stress pattern, like words with a "heavy" consonant cluster after the second-to-last syllable, e.g. "collective" or "deceptive".)

Creative

"Creative" is an unpredictable exception to the general tendency towards antepenultimate stress in words of this type: there is no obvious explanation for its penult stress that I know of (it only has a single consonant after the stressed syllable).

It seems likely that "creative" has a stressed, "long" vowel in the second-to-last syllable in part due to influence from the verb "create". Word-final stress is somewhat regular in certain types of disyllabic verbs. (See this question for notes on the pronunciation of other adjectives ending in -ative: Is there a rule for the position of the accent (stressed sound) in words ending with -ative?)

It may also be related to the use of penult stress in the noun "creator": note that all speakers use this stress pattern for this word, while some other nouns ending in "-ator" like "narrator" and "dictator" may be pronounced with antepenultimate stress.

Creature

According to the alternating-stress/antepenultimate stress principle (which, as mentioned, doesn't always accurately predict the position of stress in modern English), the word "creature" would have been expected to be pronounced something like /ˈkriːətʃər/. However, in a sequence of a stressed vowel immediately followed by unstressed schwa, like [iːə], it's relatively easy for the schwa to be lost. That seems to have happened here. It's also possible that the disyllabic pronunciation was strengthened by the many words spelled with "ea" representing a monophthong, including the now-rhyming "feature" from Old French feture, faiture.

indefinite articles - Why is it "an yearly"?

In the book The Wealth of Nations, (Adam Smith, 1776), the words an yearly are used. Why was this an exception to the indefinite article rules?

Chapter VI, Book I:

At the rate of ten per cent therefore, the undertaker of the one will expect an yearly profit of about one hundred pounds only...

Answer

At first I thought OP had just found a bad transcription. The copy I just picked up from Pennsylvania State University says a yearly, as you would expect (ditto gutenberg.org).

Thanks to @D Krueger for ferreting out Google Books scanned copy of the 1778 edition, which has an yearly.

A few centuries before Adam Smith, the indefinite article was always an. As Wikipedia says, 'an' and 'a' are modern forms of the Old English 'an', which in Anglian dialects was the number 'one'.

I can't say for sure if Adam Smith himself actually wrote an, or if it was a well-intentioned typesetter preparing the text of those early editions. At that time I suspect neither version would have been universally recognised as "correct", though there's no doubt a was far more common even then. Here's an NGram for an yearly showing a marked increase in frequency of occurrence starting around the time Smith's book was published, and petering out over the next few decades.

I think an yearly [income, etc.] would be likely to occur more often in legal texts, which are always more prone to archaicisms even today.
It's possible Smith or someone else involved in the printing process thought that using an archaic/legalese form added a touch of gravitas to the work.

word usage - Would it be grammatically correct to say "You're" instead of "You are"?

Example: If someone says they're wrong and they're right, so someone corrects them, telling them they're right, they deny it again, can you say "You're" instead of "You are"

verbs - "Suppose we have a collection of blog posts where each document was/is a post"

I found this in a book:

Suppose we have a collection of blog posts where each document was a post.

Shouldn't it be:

Suppose we have a collection of blog posts where each document is a post.

Or is it correct as it is?

prepositions - In the year 2016, in the year of 2016, of the year 2016?

In the phrase,

On Saturday the twenty-third day of April, in the year two thousand and sixteen.

Is it more correct to say

1. "in the year two thousand and sixteen"

or

2. "in the year of two thousand and sixteen"

or

3. "of the year two thousand and sixteen"

grammaticality - Reported speech - questions

In the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language; Huddleston and Pullum 2002, they make the following qualifying comment:

... reported speech covers the reporting of spoken and written text but also that of unpoken thought. (p. 1023 - bold H&P's)

We can immediately see from this excerpt that reported speech is being used as a technical term to represent a particular linguistic phenomenon, not as a literal interpretation of the two words 'reported' and 'speech'. This is demonstrated by the fact that reported speech is given by these authors to include not only written text, but also unspoken thoughts.

In comments on this thread: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/205730/what-exactly-is-reported-speech-does-it-really-exist-and-how-do-you-recognise it is proposed by various commentators that to be reported speech, there must first be some speech or thought to be reported. Reported speech, it is claimed, is a report 'of what someone else said' (italics original).

However in their section on indirect reported speech (p.1024), two of the first examples of indirect reported speech given by CaGEL are:

• Did she say if I'll be invited?

and

• Will I be invited, did she say?

Now the answer to both of these example questions (which are the same question framed in two different ways), may well be: "No, she didn't". One thing, for certain, is that the person producing the 'reported speech' here has no knowledge of the original spoken text at all. In fact, they don't even know if there even was such a text in the first place. There may very well have been none.

So, on the basis of the views given by the commentators on the linked-to thread, which do not seem altogether unreasonable (with the caveat that the views are not unreasonable if based on either established practice or authoritative sources), this should not be classed as reported speech. There is no known original speech being reported.

My question is, are the two examples above, examples of reported speech? If so, what are the specific criteria for reported speech which are satisfied by the two examples. I have not been able to find any such criteria in CaGEL. If these are not examples of reported speech, which criteria of reported speech do they fail to meet? - and what authoritative sources can be referred to, to back up this point of view?

Apparently, such problems are easily resolved by recourse to readily available resources, but I have not been very successful. Any help or genuine insights, therefore, would be greatly appreciated!

Answer

The specific criterion for the syntactic construction called reported speech (or indirect speech or indirect reported speech) that is satisfied by the two questions (Did she say if I'll be invited? and Will I be invited, did she say?) is that both contain the reporting verb "say" - either in the matrix clause or in what the CGEL (p1204) calls a "parenthetical, a kind of supplement".

Assuming that John is the asker of the question, he could rephrase it in direct speech as: Did she say: "John will be invited?"

The Oxford Dictionary Of English Grammar, in its entry on reported speech (p361), states: "Reported speech is the same as indirect speech." The ODEG continues: "When we report speech we can use an introductory reporting verb (e.g. say, tell). This is the usual meaning of the term."

In its separate entry on indirect speech the ODEG (p214) states: "The term indirect speech is often used loosely to cover the reporting of thoughts, using an introductory verb of thinking."

The Cambridge Grammar Of English (Carter & McCarthy, p805) extends the scope of indirect speech to include utterances that use a noun phrase:

Speech reports, both direct and indirect, are most commonly made with
reporting clauses containing verbs such as ask, say and tell with a

reported clause. There are also other, more indirect ways in which
people's speech can be reported, by using nouns such as argument,
comment, complaint, observation, remark to refer to someone's words.

• I didn't like his comment that we were spending too much money.


• Their biggest complaint was that the room was too small.

---

The following extract from Yule's discussion of the topic in Explaining English Grammar is more relevant as an answer to the OP's original question about what can be regarded as reported speech (which was closed for reasons unclear to me).

Yule (p274) focuses on the semantic differences between direct and indirect speech, noting that:

The effect of backshift in tense (in indirect speech) creates a sense
of 'more remote' ... This effect makes the indirect speech forms more
like a narrative account of an event ('telling') and distinct from the

dramatic presentation of the event marked by the direct speech forms
('showing').

Yule goes on to introduce a third category that he calls "Summarized reports", in which there is a even greater remoteness between what was said and what is reported.

The functional distinction between the dramatic nature of direct
speech and the narrative effect of indirect speech is made more
extreme when the structure associated with indirect speech is used to

summarize a speaking event as a way of reporting it. The difference
between what was actually said, as in [8a], and how it was reported,
as in [8b], can be quite large.

• [8] a. "I am waiting here for you. Where are you? You're never on
  time!"


• b. He complained about her being late.

The summarized report in [8b] creates an even greater distance between
the speaking event and the reporting event. It also results in much
greater control being taken by the reporter for the interpretation of
the speaking event. There is, then, a conceptual distinction between
the three types of reporting formats in English (Direct Speech,
Indirect Speech, Summarized Report).

Yule differentiates between the words typically used in the three "quotative frames". For direct speech the quotatative frame includes verbs "which indicate the speaker's manner of expression (e.g. cry, exclaim, gasp), voice quality (e.g. mutter, scream, whisper), and type of emotion (e.g. giggle laugh, sob). It can also include adverbs (e.g. angrily, brightly, cautiously).

The quotative frame in indirect speech tends to include verbs "which indicate the purpose of the utterance (e.g. admit, agree,deny,explain, promise, repsond, suggest). Such verbs present an interpretation by the reporter of the speech act being performed.

The quotative frame in summarized reports includes verbs such as "chat, describe, gossip, speak, talk".

grammatical number - What would be the possessive of "Defendants Smith"?

In a legal pleading, we had described several defendants, collectively, as "Defendants Smith". How do I create a possessive for that? Is it "Defendants Smiths' argument" or is it "Defendants Smith's argument"? (Is the possessive for a singular descriptor of a group a singular or plural?)

Thank you!

phrases - An antonym for 'sought-after'

Whenever describing something that is seldom looked for or desired I often verbalise it with "ill sought after" without hesitating.

_{(ignore that ill is its own word, the trouble I'm having writing it in the question..is the question)}
However, I went to write an email with this phrase and no matter how I wrote it it looked really odd.

ilsought after? I don't think that's a word, maybe I could coin it with a cheeky hyphen
il-sought after? Seems like I'm only negating sought, not the whole phrase
il-sought-after? No, no, I need help now.

So, is there a different prefix I'm supposed to be using? Should sought after be hyphenated? Is there already a phrase that already means this I'm forgetting? _{(I really like 'sought after', though..)}

Answer

You can simply use "unsought" as an adjective instead.

The product was not sought-after by customers.

The product was unsought by customers.

grammar - Is it correct to write a noun once while listing two related (verbs) activities?

For instance, in the sentence:

Without adding new items and modifying existing items.

Would it be correct to completely remove the first reference to the noun items? as in:

Without adding new and modifying existing items.

It sounds wrong. Is the only correct alternative replacing the explicit noun with an implicit reference as in:

Without adding new items and modifying existing ones.

Is there a more elegant way to avoid writing the explicit noun twice in this sentence?

I read this: Mixing adjective and noun enumerations but did not find it very useful.

Answer

I think that the addition of a comma would help

Without adding new, or modifying existing items.

The comma introduces a slight pause that suggests the missing, but implied items.

You will note that I substituted or for and. While the context is not provided, your example seems to suggest neither of the two conditions will occur. If you were to use and, it might be ambiguous and could be taken to mean neither would happen or that the concurrence of both would not happen.

abbreviations - Should "days" be abbreviated when in the context of other abbreviated words?

When writing "1 week 3 days," if week is abbreviated to wk., should days also be abbreviated? If so, what should it be abbreviated to?

Answer

The abbreviation for day is "d".

2wk 3d

This abbreviation is rarely used, however is considered acceptable in certain contexts, one being when used in conjunction with other time abbreviations.

comparatives - Position of "than"

Which of the following sentence structures is correct, or sounds better?

1. They grow at a faster rate up to three years after treatment than comparable plants.





2. They grow at a faster rate than comparable plants up to three years after treatment.

Thanks.

What type of question is "He's right behind me, isn't he?"

This sort of question He's right behind me, isn't he? is popular on comedy TV shows.

It's usually said by somebody just after they've been poking fun or talking badly about someone to group of other people. The group of people are all laughing at the butt of the joke/abuse and then fall silent. At this point the ringleader notices that the group has gone quiet and asks He's [the person being made fun of] is right behind me, isn't he?

It's not exactly a rhetorical question because the ringleader doesn't know for sure but they are very confident that the answer is yes.

I am asking if there is an English grammatical or linguistic categorization for this type of question. I'm not asking about the use of this type of question on TV or film or stage.

I now know what a tag question is, and this is a tag question but I would like to know if it also another type of question

It is very close to a rhetorical question but it isn't because it does matter what the person being asked replies.

I don't think it's a leading question because it's not really encouraging anyone to give either a yes or no answer that suits the person asking the question.

My question is: what category of question is this?

Answer

The answer to what type if question this is, in the sense that you are asking it, depends on how much information related to the answer the asker has.

If the asker has little information then this can be considered a closed, factual question.

If the asker has enough information that he should be able to surmise the answer this could be a rhetorical question.

Using the example above of a sitcom, if the speaker is speaking to one other person, and that person's face suddenly looks surprised while looking in a direction behind the speaker, that's probably not enough information to make the question rhetorical, so it's a simple closed, factual question.

If, on the other hand, the person listening puts one hand over his mouth, and with the other points rapidly over the speaker's shoulder, or, alternatively, if the person being spoken about let's out a loud "harrumph" then either of these could be enough information to make the question rhetorical.

meaning - What does the perfect infinitive mean?

I came across a sentence recently: Before I turn 40, I want to have written a book.

Could someone explain to me what does it actually mean?

I'd rather say: Before I turn 40, I want to write a book. but I'm not native speaker.

I understand the meaning of the perfect infinitive in sentences below:

If I had known you were coming I would have baked a cake.

Someone must have broken the window and climbed in

but I can't grasp the difference between:

Before I turn 40, I want to have written a book vs Before I turn 40, I want to write a book

Thanks for any help
Marcel

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)

phrases - Word Combination question

Certain words are often used in a fixed combination. As an example consider the phrase - 'hardly......when' as used in the sentence - "Hardly had I entered the room when the light went out." For clarity consider another example - "No sooner did the teacher go out than the pupils started playing."

What should be the combination for -
1) Rarely...
2) Never before...

Also, can anyone provide me any links where I can find more of such combinations?

grammar - Using "required" in sentences

In the following sentence, I do not know if the preposition "for" after "required" is correct. I think I can use "to" after "required", but I do not know which one is more grammatically correct? Please help me out with this issue. Thanks!

Solving the mentioned problems can contribute to finding key answers required for enabling this technology.

grammar - I recommend your reading this question

I remember that we have learnt a structure, what has always been really strange to me. We can say that "I recommend to do something" However in the strange structure we can say something like(I am not sure): "I suggest you(/your) not being here". So it is built up:

[object] [verb] [indirect object] [gerund]

I am not sure that it was exactly like this, but I am eager to find out how it is called, when to use it and if I can use with all kinds of verbs. I hope your figuring this out.

Answer

I recommend that you read first about the so-called 'simple catenative' structures in English ( http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:English_catenative_verbs ), and then check on the 'complex catenative' construction (Huddleston & Pullum).

There has been an extensive debate on the actual cases involving recommend as the 'lead' (catenating) verb at http://www.wordwizard.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=21740 . Complex catenation:

recommend somebody to do something: We'd recommend you to book your
flight early.

is licensed by oxfordlearnersdictionaries

but the structure using a that-clause ( We'd recommend that you book your flight early. ) sounds far more idiomatic to me. We'd advise you to book your flight early. is, on the other hand, totally idiomatic.

We recommend your (gerund) is quite a common construction, arguably catenative (how 'verby' are gerunds?) (that they are quite 'nouny' is indicated by the fact that 'your', 'her' etc are often used with them):

We do recommend your leaving the gauze over the surgery site... (Google)

Article - "a" or "the" or plural for countable nouns?

I think a countable noun are usually of the following 3 forms:

• the + countable noun (single form)


• a + countable noun (single form)


• countable noun (plural form)

I am confused about which to pick for the following sentence. Should it be

The map is usually a crucial prerequisite for location services.

OR

A map is usually a crucial prerequisite for location services.

OR

Maps are usually a crucial prerequisite for location services.

Answer

The definite article, the indefinite article and the zero article can all be used when a noun phrase makes generic reference, that is, when it refers to a whole class, rather than just one or more instances of the class. In some contexts, just one of the three is appropriate, but all three sentences in your example can, to adapt the words of the ‘Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English’, be understood to express a general truth about the class of things called maps.

In the second part of each sentence, you need to change ‘for location services’ to ‘for the location of services’ or ‘for locating services’.

synonyms - Difference between yare and nimble?

Based on the definitions, yare¹ seems like a subset of nimble, that is to say, anytime you could use yare¹, you could use nimble¹ instead, but nimble² and nimble³ are clearly (I think) distinct from yare¹. So when would you ever use yare¹ specifically over nimble¹?

Also, I think what is adding to my confusion is that the "archaic" yare³ definition includes nimble as a synonym.

I am of course not conidering yare² (or really even yare³) in the context of this question, just yare¹.

---

From dictionary.com:

Yare

1. quick; agile; lively.


2. (of a ship) quick to the helm; easily handled or maneuvered.


3. Archaic.
   ready; prepared.
   nimble; quick.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/yare

Nimble

1. quick and light in movement; moving with ease; agile; active; rapid:
   nimble feet.



2. quick to understand, think, devise, etc.:
   a nimble mind.


3. cleverly contrived:
   a story with a nimble plot.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/nimble

also want to include where I came across the weird word in the first place:
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=yare

grammaticality - Is there some rule against ending a sentence with the contraction "it's"?

I heard this lyric in a song the other day and it just sounded so wrong that I assumed it must be incorrect grammar, but I can't find any specific prohibition that applies.

That's what it's.

That rolls off your tongue with the grace of a moose in a tutu, but I can't figure out why.

There is clearly no problem with ending other sentences with a contraction. These sound fine.

I thought I could, but I can't.
Stop touching that, it will fall off if you don't.
You say that the sky is green, but it isn't.

Also, it sounds just fine if you remove the contraction:

That's what it is.

So what's up with this construction? Should it be avoided?

Answer

This is covered in the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CGEL), as it turns out, in Chapter 18, “Inflection Morphology and Related Matters”, section 6, “Phonological reduction and liaison”.

The form ’s, representing either has or is, along with ’m (am), ’re (are), ’ve (have), ’ll (will), and ’d (had or would) are called clitics, and they are a variant of what are known as weak forms of words, which are pronunciations of words like a, have, from, you, etc. (about fifty in total) with a reduced vowel, such as schwa.

In the discussion of weak and strong forms, CGEL points out that there are certain grammatical contexts that require strong forms, and one of those contexts is something called stranding, where the object of a phrase is preposed (moved before the phrase). These are examples they give of stranding requiring strong forms:

a. Who did you give it [to __ ]?
b. We’ll help you if we [can __].
c. They want me to resign, but I don’t intend [to __].

In each of these cases, the word in the brackets has a weak form, but it cannot be used in this context because its object has been stranded. Of course, in written English, there is no difference between weak and strong forms—it’s only a spoken difference—but clitics are distinguished in written English, and the restriction on weak forms also extends to clitics. (There are additional restrictions on clitics, but they are not relevant to this discussion).

So, thus we can say that the second is in the sentence It is what it [is __] cannot be reduced to either a weak form or to a clitic because of the restriction to strong forms in cases of syntactic stranding.