Plural of numbers (as nouns)

I really tried to find an answer in Internet but turns out I've found two different answers for the same question: how do you say the plural of a number (used as noun)?

Let me elaborate:

Suppose I'm explaining to a child how to add (in Math). I'd say:

Four twos make an eight.

Or I could say:

Four two's make an eight.

On one webpage I found the first one to be correct. I asked to an online tutor about this and she told me the second one is correct. So, which one is correct? Is that a general rule? If the second one is correct, would that mean it applies to all numbers?

Answer

The first is correct:

Four twos make an eight.

It is good and right to say and write, "twos," in a situation like this, as with any number—following all the normal rules of adding "s" to make a noun plural... "fives", "twenties" (y -> i, +es), et cetera.

The apostrophe...

two's

...indicates a possessive, not a plural. That would be a different situation, such as if you were talking about the font the two was written in, "The two's serifs are larger in the Tex Gyre Schola font." Or, in Math, "The two's quotient can only be a one or a two if it is to be a whole number."

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Links (Grammarly):

gerunds - going + ing vs going + infinitive, when use which?

In the middle of a conversation I should use which of the follow sentences:

Tomorrow, I'm going climbing.

or

Tomorrow, I'm going to climb.

I did a deep search and I found these similar answers, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 , 8, 9. But none of them answer my question.

Also I know that there are three simple rules to use the gerund:

1. After certain verbs


2. When the word is the subject of a sentence or clause


3. Is used after a preposition

My point of view is:

We use to climb doing reference to the action itself. That I'm going to do that action and it's all. However, climbing is when you are referencing the process like naming the process. So, if you are naming the process, is because you are going to tell something about it, something collateral about some phase(s) of the process instead of just talking about the action.

For me, talking about process (-ing), is making a emphasize on time or phase(s) of that process. Am I correct?

Please, I would enjoy and prefer an answer that doesn't say that is how we use or is more common. Because, common action doesn't make it a correct action.

So, phrases like:

If this sounds confusing, just remember that 90% of the time, you will use a gerund as the subject or complement of a sentence.

will not help for me. Just logical answer about the verb or situation or...

punctuation - Reimplement or re-implement?

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

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

Edit:

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

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

Answer

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edit: Cater for re-examine

The same page mentions an additional Rule:

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

Example: ultra-ambitious semi-invalid re-elect

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

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

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

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

conjunctions - What does the complementizer "that" accomplish in terms of style?

I've always refrained from using words that weren't necessary to conform with grammar rules and didn't add to the meaning of a sentence. Being a fan of brevity, I don't use the complementizer that unless it is necessary for the sentence to be grammatical or it clears up an ambiguity within the sentence. But I've been told the complementizer that serves a stylistic purpose as well. Exactly what stylistic purpose it serves has always been a mystery to me. Whenever I ask someone, they respond with the frustrating answer "sometimes it sounds better". So what exactly is the stylistic end the complementizer that accomplishes?

For instance:

Raines said (that) this incident was "uncharacteristic of most interactions" between the U.S. and Iranian navies. CNN

Col. Steve Warren said (that) 10 senior ISIS leaders operating in both Iraq and Syria, "including several external attack planners," with designs on attacking western targets, had been killed in airstrikes. CNN

If the complementizer that were inserted into the above sentences, how would that affect the way the sentence is read?

This question is related to another question I asked yesterday,
Does using "that" to introduce a subordinate clause serve any other purpose but to eliminate ambiguity?

Answer

When the piece of text is read aloud, the word that marks the words that follow as reported speech. Consider your examples when read aloud without that - the words that follow "(that)" could be reported speech or direct quotes. In terms of style, that helps avoid this ambiguity.

The strong link between that and reported speech can sometimes also help provide some emotional distance between the messenger and the message. E.g., "Tom said you should go" vs "Tom said that you should go".

Gender neutral reflexive pronoun — equivalent to "himself" and "herself"

How would you refer to a gender neutral subject with a reflexive pronoun?

It is unbelievable how a perpetrator will cast oneself in the role of victim.

That does not seem right. Is there a better word other than "oneself"? I thought "oneself" would refer to the narrator. Here I try to refer to the subject.

Themselves: It is possible to use a 'singular they' for pronouns, but to say "themselves" surely can not be correct as a gender neutral reflexive pronoun? According to this article, it would only seem to make sense when qualified by a singular they.

Themself: "The form is not widely accepted in standard English" according to the Oxford dictionary.

It is unbelievable how they, as a perpetrator, will cast themselves in the role of victim.

I'd like to avoid making the sentence this complex.

Answer

This is just another version of the he/she, him/her dilemma: English lacks singular pronouns that include both genders. I like @drm65's approach to avoiding the problem. The other likely option is to specify both:

"himself or herself"

It is unbelievable how a perpetrator will cast himself or herself in the role of victim.

Or:

"him or herself"

It is unbelievable how a perpetrator will cast him or herself in the role of victim.

Update:

Another approach is to just choose a verb that isn't reflexive:

It is unbelievable how a perpetrator will play the role of victim.

That's not always possible or best, e.g. when you're trying to emphasize exactly that reflexive aspect of the issue. But play is obviously shorter and simpler than cast him or herself in the role of, so it's worth considering unless there's a good reason to use the wordier version.

grammatical number - "There is/are more than one". What's the difference?

While adding to an Answer to this question, I needed to use the above phrase, and I suddenly realised I was unsure whether to write "is" or "are".

• There is more than one way to skin a cat.




• If there are more than one species of cat, we will flay each species differently.

I don't think that second example above sounds quite right to me (disregarding the meaning - sorry!), but in my original Answer I felt "is" would have been even worse.

Is "are" always wrong here? If so, what exactly is the rationale? If not, is there a case where it's unquestionably preferred – and why is that?

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Note that in both the problematic Answer and my example attempting to mimic the same context more briefly, the writer doesn't know how many there are. There may be one, more, or even none.

Getting even more specific, the writer might have an opinion on how many there might be, and wish to convey his leanings by choice of verb form if language allows this to be done succinctly.

Answer

This question is more complex than it may appear. There seems to be consensus that a singular verb should be used in formal writing whenever the subject of a sentence is more than one [noun], or at least that this is (much) better than ?there are more than one. I subscribe to this.

It does not matter how many things the writer might expect there to be in reality: it is always if there is more than one species.

Nor does it matter what noun comes after one. It is always is; the word one forces a singular verb without apparent exception.

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But why does this at all surprise us?

We are puzzled by this construction because the subject does not agree with the verb—at least not if analyzed according to conventional grammar. Consider the following sentence:

There are more men in the room.

Is would be impossible. The sentence is easy enough to analyse:

• more men = subject


• are = finite verb

No problem there: subject and verb agree. More men is the subject, or at least the head of the subject.

There are more men than just John in the room.

The core of the syntax remains the same; the core of the subject is still more men. The addition than x is either an elliptical clause or a prepositional phrase that is part of the subject, depending on your model; in any case, than x is not what determines whether it is are or is. More men are is the core of the sentence.

There is more than one man in the room.

Suddenly the verb changes. Has the core syntax of the sentence changed? No: for the sake of consistency, we must say more is the subject and is the finite verb. The phrase than x is still not the head of the subject, no more than in the first sentence (there are more men than just John). If more is the head, then it must be elliptical, since it is only an adjective: more of what? If we hypothetically supply the omitted noun, we get:

*There is more [men] than one man in the room.

There is no other word that we could fill in, though of course this is wrong: *there is more men is both unidiomatic in this register and in violation of the rule that subject and verb must agree.

Then what causes this singular is in there is more than one man? The phrase than x should not determine the number of the verb: and yet it does. That is why this construction is idiomatic, as opposed to regular: it violates the rule that subject and verb must agree. But it is by all means "correct". That is what idiom is: a widely accepted phrase that violates the regularity of our language. However some of us might like it to be, language is just never regular in all respects; this bit of idiom happens to have triumphed over regularity and is now the norm. Idiom must be judged case by case and often varies across registers and dialects.

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But could this disagreement of subject and verb be explained away by other factors? Let's see what I can come up with.

It could be that the somewhat fixed phrase there is is what does it. But that phrase could not explain singular is in this sentence:

More than one man is still in the house.

Could this is be explained by the immediate precedence of one man? It is conceivable that the singular number of one man leads us to an anacoluthon in the next word is: we see a singular number and noun, and we cannot resist the pressure of proceeding with a singular verb. But then this phenomenon should not occur if the verb came before the subject:

Not only has more than one man been seen near the power plant, but...

*Not only have more than one man been seen near the power plant, but

It seems clear that have would be wrong, even more so than in the previous sentence patterns. So whether the verb comes before or after doesn't matter.

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How can this oddity of disagreement be explained? If we look at it reductionistically, in terms of association and pattern recognition as they occur in the brain, I suspect that the word one exerts such an enormous influence on our perception of a sentence that it overrules more, despite the ordinarily forcing rule of agreement; it does so even despite the sense of multitude inherent in the phrase more than one man as a whole, which must always refer to multiple objects in reality. When we write one man, we have the image of one man at an irresistibly prominent place in our working memory. (Other, somewhat similar idioms exist, so I don't believe this to be a unique situation.)

grammar - "If you don't mind me asking" or "If you don't mind my asking"?

Which one is more appropriate - "If you don't mind me asking" or "If you don't mind my asking"?

I always thought that it was "If you don't mind me asking", but I recently heard "If you don't mind my asking" (more precisely, whilst watching True Detective, I heard "If you don't mind me asking" but the subtitles read "If you don't mind my asking").

Now, the latter makes sense if "asking" is referred to as a noun, but it sounds a little twisted.

Which one is the right one?

Thanks

Answer

You may say either one, though the meaning would slightly differ.

• "Me asking" is more protocolar with deference for your interlocutor ; it's the usual version.



• "My asking" - which is also OK - is just excusing your question, not your person expressing it. (I guess we would not use it before a king, even if we don't care of royalty as in the White House & Senate we hear "excuse my asking" in comittee or from the press. In Courts, the bench often shoots "my asking".)

infinitive vs gerund - proud to be & proud of being

I have the following two sentences which I would like to confirm the difference in meaning for.

• I am proud to be a nurse.



• I am proud of being a nurse.

I'm mainly wondering about the difference in the current status of the person saying such sentences.

The way I read it, 'I am proud to be a nurse' = I am a nurse now, and 'I am proud of being a nurse' = I was a nurse previously, but not anymore.

I'm looking for confirmation because of the use of 'being' in the second sentence and how that relates to time in this phrase.

Thank you.

Answer

I agree that there is a subtle difference between the two constructions, but I’m not so sure it’s necessarily what you’re thinking. Or at least, I’m not sure that it always works that way. I think it depends what kind of verb it is.

Consider these variants:

1. I am proud to be a nurse. (ongoing)


2. I am proud of being a nurse. (???)


3. I am proud of having been a nurse. (no longer)


4. I am proud that I was a nurse. (clearly no longer)



5. I am proud to have been a nurse. (clearly no longer)

Given those, I tend to view the second as being more like the first than like those following it here. I don’t necessarily see the second as being done with yet. This seems to remain true if the sentences are cast into the past tense.

5. She said that she was proud to be a nurse. (ongoing)


6. She said that she was proud of being a nurse. (???)


7. She said that she was proud of having been a nurse. (no longer)


8. She said that she was proud that she was a nurse. (???)



9. She said that she was proud that she had been a nurse. (clearly no longer)


10. She said that she was proud to have been a nurse. (clearly no longer)

In the last one, the past perfect aspect makes clear that at the time she was stating this, she wasn’t a nurse any longer.

The one thing that the ‑ing version provides that the infinitive lacks is a sense of the continuous aspect. The continuous version emphasizes the ongoing process not the the simple state or condition. The difference may be more obvious with active verbs. Compare:

11. I’m proud to call you my friend. (ongoing?)



12. I’m proud of calling you my friend. (???)


13. I’m proud that I called you my friend. (action complete)


14. I’m proud to have called you my friend. (action complete)

This time around, the version with the continuous aspect (12) seems less like the one immediately before it (11) more like those following it (13 and 14).

It may be that there’s some sort of subtle restriction in using the continuous/progressive aspect with the verb here. If so, it might be
the same ones that normally restricts the continuous aspect from being used
with abstract verbs or those related to possession or emotions.

15. I’m proud to belong someplace.


16. *I’m proud of belonging someplace.

That last one is at best questionable, and is probably ungrammatical.

This may be why active verbs feel different when used with the continuous aspect than other verbs do.

learning - "a" or "an" for words that don't start with vowels but sound like they're starting with a vowel

Is it correct to say or write an student or an store?

Answer

Always use an for words which sound like they start with a vowel, and always use a for words which sound like they start with a consonant. The rules for h are more complex, and it can be ok to use either.

The usage of the indefinite article preceding h are discussed here. In particular, look at nohat's response.

As for student and store, they should always be preceded with a and never with an, because they both start with the consonant /s/ when spoken.

Correct:

A student, a store

Incorrect:

An student, an store

grammatical number - What is the correct plural form of "offspring"?

What is the correct plural form of the word "offspring"?

From the dictionaries I have looked at, I am guessing it is just "offspring", but Dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster say "offsprings" is also acceptable.

offspring noun (plural offspring, offsprings)

Dictionary.com

offspring noun (plural offspring, offsprings)

Merriam-Webster

offspring noun (plural offspring)

Cambridge Dictionaries Online

offspring noun (plural offspring)

Oxford Dictionaries

Macquarie Dictionary and OED have no mention of the plural form.

The sentence I want to use the word in is:

...more long-legged frogs exist to generate long-legged [offspring(s)].

In this context "offspring" as a plural (without the "S") doesn't sound right.

Answer

From Google Books Ngram Viewer, Offspring is more common, in the past 200 years, so the negligible usage of Offsprings might be attributed to a few ignorant authors.

Very common usage of Offspring vs negligible usage of Offsprings

Very common usage of Fish vs smaller (but not negligible) usage of fishes

Possible Explanation:
Fish and Fishes are both correct, but the singular is generally more common, and the ratio looks good. So we can consider that both are used normally.
Offspring is correct and is used commonly, while Offspings, being "wrong" in some sense, has negligible usage, and the ratio is "abnormally low". So we can consider that Offsprings should be avoided?

grammaticality - ... is done in agreement with xxx?

Background:

I'm writing a professional (technical) report in which I want to express the following in one simple sentence: The whole report is written based on a certain assumption, except one part that's based on a different assumption. (Let's say a battery has 10 Volts in parts of the report, and 12 Volts in another part). This means that one part of the report is "wrong". I want to express that the way I'm doing this has been "approved" by our client. The part in parentheses is just to illustrate the context.

(In most of the report 10V has been used. However, the voltage is actually 12V.
12V has been used in chapter 2 only.)

The usage of a different voltage in chapter xxx only, is done in
agreement with client name.

However, the last part of that sentence doesn't seem good to me. I think it's grammatically correct, but not something a native English speaking person would write. Can I say / write: "... is done in agreement with"?

Answer

What you currently have boils down to The usage is done. Usages generally aren't done, but they can be agreed upon.

The usage of a different voltage in chapter x only has been agreed with the client.

I wouldn't use a comma to separate "The usage" from "has been agreed". You could also lose only as that can be inferred from the context.

The distinction between usage and use might be commented upon.

usage
The way in which a word or phrase is normally and correctly used
Habitual or customary practice, especially as creating a right, obligation, or standard

use
The action of using something or the state of being used for a purpose

[Both ODO]

Usage is about the way something is used; use merely means that it has been used (this is evident in the title "English Language & Usage"). I would write the sentence as

The use of a different voltage in chapter x has been agreed with the client.

grammaticality - For as long "as" ... ? When is the last as not used? What are the rules?

For instance:

For as long as it takes...

but

For as long we have a future...

I know how to use them because I heard them being used, but I don't know whether there is a rule or not.

Answer

I don't know where you heard the second one, but it is incorrect. For as long as (or just as long as) is the only correct choice from your examples:

For as long as it takes...

For as long as we have a future...

As long as (see def. 37) is an idiom which has the following three meanngs:

a. provided that: As long as you can come by six, I'll be here.
b. seeing that; since: As long as you're going to the grocery anyway, buy me a pint of ice cream.
c. Also, so long as. during the time that; through the period that: As long as we were neighbors, they never invited us inside their house.

I'm assuming definition c for the two examples, but definition a also fits the second example. If that is the definition intended, then the for should be removed:

As long as we have a future...

grammatical person - How to avoid mixing past and present tense in narration?

I looked through the related questions, but I didn't find any concrete advice.

I understand that it's OK to do so. I'm not sure how common it is, but I'm a beginner writer and want to keep things as simple as possible. I can pick up that fancy stuff later.

To illustrate the problem, I'll use the following example, where first-person POV narration has present tense sandwiched between past tens in a single paragraph.

I wound through the corridors toward the center of Down 15. None of the elevators were nearby, so I bounded up the stairs three at a time. Stairwells in the core are just like stairwells on Earth—short little twenty-one-centimeter-high steps. It makes the tourists more comfortable. In areas that don’t get tourists, stairs are each a half meter high. That’s lunar gravity for you. Anyway, I hopped up the tourist stairs until I reached ground level. Walking up fifteen floors of stairwell probably sounds horrible, but it’s not that big a deal here. I wasn’t even winded.

From "Artemis" by Andy Weir

When I go through my texts, I see that I'm doing the same. I'm writing in first-person POV, past tense, but when it comes to descriptions (little info dumps) and the narrator's thoughts (comments) I often switch to present tense (without thinking).

The problem lies in the word "often". I don't do it consistently.
Also when I find a spot like that I start to think can I really do that? If in the above example the Moon was blown up by the end of the story, would it still make sense to talk about the stairwells in the present tense? It's just too complicated to deal with all these logical traps. I want to keep it simple.

I can't just search for present tense (such as "are") in the word processor. As we use the present tense in the dialogues.

Is a good copy editor the only option?

Or is there maybe some mind trick that one can use? Like maybe one needs to pretend and always keep in mind that a story is told by a person who is at his/her death bed, the events happened years ago, and the storyteller doesn't know anything about current state of affairs (what happened to all these people and places). Can a certain mindset break a habit?

Any other ideas?

Please advice.

Answer

How to avoid it?

By Being Meticulous. There is no shortcut. You, as the author, are responsible for every word choice in your story. Every single one.

It reads fine to me to have the present tense as presented in Weir's snippet, but it could be clearer.

In first person (past tense), a thought can either be italicized and immediate (in which case it becomes present tense) or not (and remains past tense.)

You are the God of this world you have written, and you are responsible to know every detail of your creation. So go through it. Sentence by sentence. Figure out which thoughts of your creation are passing surface thoughts, and which are intimate deep thoughts.

If that passage was mine, (which it isn't; I have a different world), I'd do it like this:

I wound through the corridors toward the center of Down 15. None of
the elevators were nearby, so I bounded up the stairs three at a time.
The stairwells in the core were just like stairwells on Earth—short
little twenty-one-centimeter-high steps. It made the tourists more
comfortable. In the areas that didn’t get tourists, stairs were each a half
meter high.

That’s lunar gravity for you, I thought.

Anyway, I hopped up the tourist stairs until I reached ground level.
Walking up fifteen floors of stairwell probably sounds horrible, but
it’s not that big a deal here. I wasn’t even winded.

Do you feel the movement into the character brain? You have this tool available to you. Don't overdo it--develop a feel for when you want a direct thought from a character. But you need to be obsessive about going through your story with a fine tooth comb and making conscious choices. There are multiple ways to write any passage.

word choice - Should I use "his/her" or "its"?

Possible Duplicates:
Gender neutral pronoun
Is it correct to use “their” instead of “his or her”?

I am writing software documentation. I have this issue: I am talking about a generic user of the software.
Should I say “his preferences”, “his/her preferences” or “its preferences”?

Answer

The links Reg supplied are good advice, but be aware that gender-neutral language used at length can start to become clunky and unnatural to the ear. One trick I have seen to avoid that problem is to assign genders to particular use cases. In your case, you might refer to a generic user using male pronouns, while an administrator gets female pronouns. Obviously this only works when you have a reasonably good mix of cases or relative importance.

grammar - Why is "herself" required in this particular sentence?

Why is a reflexive pronoun, i.e. herself, grammatically required in the following sentence?

• I gave Susie a picture of herself.

Compare with:

• I gave Susie a picture of her.

This sentence doesn't seem to be able to mean I gave Susie a picture of Susie. It means I gave her a picture of someone else.

I've looked at the following page, but this type of usage doesn't seem to be covered there:

The answers there suggest that we use reflexive pronouns when the subject and object of the verb are the same entity. Herself isn't an object in the example above, and Susie is not a subject either. The syntax in this example seems to be entirely different.

Also, why is the following sentence not grammatical?

• I went there by me.

... as opposed to:

• I went there by myself.

This last example, of course, is perfectly fine. So the question here is why does this so-called 'idiomatic usage' contain a reflexive instead of a normal pronoun.

Lastly, why is a reflexive required in this imperative?

• Do it yourself.

Compare with:

• Do it you.

Note that yourself isn't an object in that first sentence. (It would be if the sentence was Watch yourself, for example. The object in the example, however, is it.)

What then are the grammatical rules that stipulate the use of reflexive pronouns in these examples?

Edit note

I've changed the order of the examples here to take the focus off the probable emphatic usage in the imperative (although I'm still interested in the grammar here). I've also added a third example, which highlights more clearly the two issues I am most interested in hearing about:

1. Examples where we need a reflexive pronoun, but the pronoun isn't the object of a verb.


2. Examples, where the antecedent, the original person or thing that the reflexive is duplicating, is not the subject of a verb.

Any answers with relevant observations and or research would be very gratefully received, whether they address the whole question, or just parts of it.

Observations about the imperative example

Although I'm most concerned with the photograph example, I hereby offer some observations about the imperative one. Some of the interesting comments below suggest that yourself here is an emphatic version of you. As RegEdit's answer points out, the example with yourself seems to be contrastive. The sentence with you, on the other hand, does not give the same reading. I wonder why that is?

I note in passing that yourself seems to be an adjunct ('adverbial') here. This makes it different from another emphatic use of pronouns, which is when a pronoun appears as the subject of an imperative:

• You do it!

I originally gave the imperative example for two reasons. Firstly, the reflexive pronoun here is obviously not the object of the verb. Secondly, however, I gave it because there is no antecedent word in this sentence which could be the subject of the verb, or, which represents the same person as yourself. I am curious as to whether the rules requiring reflexive pronouns in emphatic usages, are basically the same ones that require us to use them the rest of the time. In other words, I return to my original question: Why is a reflexive pronoun required in this case?

hyphenation - Should/can "native English speaker" be hyphenated?

Should/can "native English speaker" be hyphenated?

"Native English speaker" vs. "Native English-speaker"

tenses - Are these two sentences grammatically correct?

Assumption: Samantha is not living in Berlin anymore. (Wasn't mentioned)
Fact: The Berlin wall came down in the year 1989.

1. 'Samantha lived in Berlin for more than two years. In fact, she was living there when the Berlin wall came down.'


2. 'Samantha has lived in Berlin for more than two years. In fact, she was living there when the Berlin wall came down.'

Questions:

1. It is stated on the site where I came across this sentence that the former sentence is correct; however, as we don't know the specific time interval when Samantha was living in Berlin, shouldn't we use the present perfect tense?


2. Which sentence is correct, or are they both correct? If both, then which is 'more correct' (or more commonly used)


3. Also, without the assumption mentioned above, shouldn't we use the present perfect progressive tense, as we don't know if Samantha is still living in Berlin?

Answer

Without the assumption (or, even better, facts) I wouldn't use either sentence.

Unless you do know that she is still living in Berlin, the first sentence is arguably more common—but only because, after twenty-eight years, it's more likely that she's left Berlin than remained.

From a purely grammatical perspective, neither is right nor wrong—but, from a practical perspective, neither should be stated without sure knowledge.

Even the first, although technically correct, has some semantic difficulty unless it's assumed or known that she left at some point.

If you really don't know if she's still there or not, and you want to write a sentence that is the most accurate (regardless of her current living arrangement), I would suggest something simple like this:

Samantha had been living in Berlin when the Berlin wall came down.

It doesn't make any assumptions at all, and it's perfect correct no matter what the current facts are. (Assuming that it, itself, is a true statement.)

---

As noted in a comment (and caught by me in a revision) the information about Samantha having lived in Berlin for over two years doesn't indicate when those two years took place. (In other words, how long she'd been there when the wall came down.) So, I removed that from my simplified sentence.

grammaticality - Mixing past tenses in the same sentence

I have a question about violating verb tenses. I was taught that you can't use present perfect (or continuous) and past simple within a sentence. You either have to use present perfects (or continuous) with present perfects (or continuous), and past simples with past simples. But I've found this not to be true, so I'm a bit confused.

Here is an email one of my native American friends sent me.

Hey, it's been such a long time since we last emailed each other. Thanks for sending me an email! Getting that email was such a pleasant surprise, because I was just thinking how I've been wanting to send you an email as well.

What confuses me the most is the last part. How can you say that you were thinking about how you have been wanting to do something?

I was taught that this is wrong: "he has decided to go hiking, so I went hiking as well." But I'm assuming that my friend's email is correct, since he IS a native speaker.

So, this is what I'm thinking: I can't say present perfect (or continuous) + past simple, but I can say past simple + present perfect (or continuous).

This violates verb tenses:

"he has decided to go hiking, so I went hiking as well."

But this doesn't:

"I went hiking because he has decided to go hiking."

Are there instances where present perfect (or continuous) + past simple or vice versa is allowed and correct?

EDIT:

This is a difficult concept for me to grasp. But thank you for all your help, because I'm learning a lot. There are many sentences that don't make sense to me. I came across this sentence today:

"[I think this is inferred: During those days,] We've watched the movie many times. I really wanted this life to continue."

I'm not sure what the present perfect is doing here. I don't think it is being used for describing what a person has done before, like "I've seen that movie before". Why is it not simply "We watched the movie many times. [It was so good that] I really wanted this life to continue"?

Referring more than one proper noun

When we are referring more than one proper noun, then do we need to capitalize the first alphabet of it. For example: which one of the following is correct?

1) By Theorems 4.2 and 4.3, we can prove the following.

2) By theorems 4.2 and 4.3, we can prove the following.

american english - Is this letter censuring or just being sarcastic?

This is a letter by physicist Richard Feynman to his university's student newspaper. I am a non-native english speaker and I have trouble understanding in what spirit this letter was written them, is it just casual sarcasm, or condescension, or what?

Answer

None of the above. Feynman (one of my heroes, by the way) was being ironic: telling the newspaper staff that they had violated all the rules of professional journalism by

• being casual rather than stilted (using a candid photo instead of a stiff, posed shot; spelling "says" as "sez", which is bad English but accurate slang)


• being considerate and humble (apologizing for taking up Feynman's time, rather than assuming that the interview was more important than anything else he might be doing)


• being "clear, comprehensible, well-written and accurate" and not putting words in Feynman's mouth.

If you read Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman or What Do You Care What Other People Think? (both of which I highly recommend), you'll see that he had very little use for the self-importance of journalists, and much less patience for the innumerable interviews (especially after he won the Nobel Prize) in which he was constantly mis-quoted
and his scientific work mis-explained.

Essentially, he was thanking the interviewer for not being "professional", because he was sick and tired of professional interviews.

single word requests - What is the name for punctuation marks such as commas and periods that separate things like clauses or sentences?

When I'm editing people's writing, I recently started writing the comment "put an article here" rather than "put a 'the' or 'a' here".

Similarly, right now I have to put, "you need a comma or period here" ... is there one word that can encompass both 'comma' and 'period'? I don't want to put something so general like "you need a punctuation mark here"

grammatical number - is there limit on the integer allow to use `st`, `nd`, `rd` that ends with 1,2, and 3 accordingly?

I know we use st, nd, rd on numbers before 1, 2, and 3 accordingly... But at what point should the number stop using that.

For example, if we have a number extremely large like 100002, should we still do 100002nd?

Or maybe its up to only two digits?

I read this one btw, When were st, nd, rd, and th, first used

But It did not give the answer I want.

Thanks all!

Answer

It depends on the pronunciation. If you say "This is the one million and second time you told me" then you would write "1000002nd". Do not write "1000002th" unless you pronounce it "one million and twoth" (which is extremely nonstandard).

grammatical number - Are monetary values plural?

I want to say:

Those sixty dollars are gone

That sixty dollars is gone

The reason I ask is because I was originally typing:

Those $60 are gone

But that looks funny to me. Which is more correct?

Appositive with no definite article

Hans, head of a company that manufactures garden furniture, is announcing to his staff ....

Shouldn't it be the head of a company ...? Is that correct? Could you explain why we do not need a definite article here?

Answer

Certain phrases that function like titles can be used without the definite article in certain contexts. See Araucaria's answer to Why “be king”, not “be a king”?

This usage is most commonly encountered in predicative contexts (e.g. "He is president/President of the United States"), but it can also be found in appositives, as in your question. I suppose this could be explained in terms of the "whiz-deletion" analysis of appositive NPs: "Hans, head of a company that manufactures garden furniture" could be seen as being derived at some level from the longer phrase "Hans, who is head of a company that manufactures garden furniture".

This might not be categorized as an "appositive" construction

BillJ left a series of comments suggesting that "head of a company that manufactures garden furniture" should not be called an "appositive" because it does not work as a substitute for the subject "Hans". According to BillJ, it should be called a "supplementary NP" instead.

BillJ's comments seem to be based on some particular analysis/definition of "apposition" (summed up by the statement "An appositive NP must be capable of replacing the entire matrix NP"), but I don't know exactly what literature would discuss the arguments for using this definition/analysis. There seems to have been some debate about the syntax of appositives and related structures; Shoe left a helpful comment linking to a related discussion beneath this answer.

One article that seems relevant, but that I haven't been able to read yet, is "Nominal Apposition", by N. Burton-Roberts, 1975. From what I gather, Burton-Roberts reserves the term "appositive" for things that aren't derived from reduced relative clauses.

There may also be relevant information in "Appositional constructions", a 2011 thesis by Herman Heringa. I haven't finished reading it, but from what I've read so far, it looks like analyses that treat appositives as a type of reduced relative clause are not dead yet: Heringa says

O’Connor (2008) [...] argues that appositions underlyingly are non-restrictive relatives with a null relative pronoun as its subject.

(p. 14)

Heringa also discusses things that he calls "appositions" that lack an article (the examples are taken from Dutch, not English, but seem analogous to your example) on p. 78, and mentions that Doron, E. (1994) ‘The discourse function of appositives’ uses examples like this as part of an argument that "appositions behave as nominal predicates" (p. 76).

Whatever you call it, the structure in your quote is grammatical.

Can I use an explicit verb in a comparison clause?

It seems that I often write something like this:

The sizes of these datasets seem to grow faster than the processing power of computers does.

Now, a longish text I'd written was proofread (by a non-professional) and in every case the suggested correction was as follows:

The sizes of these datasets seem to grow faster than the processing power of computers.

(Yes – only the last word was deleted by the proofreader.)

Being a non-native user, I'd like to ask if the way of writing that I've adopted from who-knows-where is always wrong. (Personally, I feel that in some cases – too long sentences maybe – it clarifies my intention slightly.)

Answer

It's not wrong. It's just a stylistic thing, in that "does" doesn't add anything to the sentence, so it might as well be removed.

punctuation - Is a comma before a conjunction optional, or old? (not talking about lists)

I have been corrected several times recently for putting a comma before a conjunction in a sentence (splitting phrases, not items in a list). To each their own style guide, but my understanding was that (using 'and' as an example):

• in the prehistoric era, the rule was to always put a comma before 'and', no matter the context


• in the modern era, there are two schools of style about 'and', commas and the final item in a list (which I am not concerned with here)


• in the modern era, you may put a comma before 'and' in a non-list to emphasise, indicate a pause, tweak meaning, etc. So that:

We will fight them on the beaches and the landing grounds.

has a slightly different meaning to

We will fight them on the beaches, and the landing grounds.

...but both are valid.

Is this comma in fact optional, or always to be discarded? Have I half-learned a (possibly out-moded) style rule without realizing it?

Answer

The purpose of punctuation is to help the reader understand the grammatical structure of a sentence. In your example, the beaches and the landing grounds are equal complements of the preposition on. A comma after beaches would suggest that they were somehow not equal, and there is no reason to suppose that that is the case.

word order - What goes first: Sometimes, I bring X (1)'with me' (2)'to Y'?

1. Is one of the following constructions incorrect?




2. If not, do they differ semantically in any way, even if only mildly so?

   
   
   
   
   
   • Sometimes, I bring my lunch to work with me.
   
   
   • Sometimes, I bring my lunch with me to work
   
   

Usually, I prefer fewer words between 'to' and its complement. However, I don't actually know whether, or how, the arrangement of the words affects the meaning of the sentence or whether some people regard some common arrangements as incorrect.

Edit: Although, thinking about it now, 'I bring' entails 'with me'; perhaps I should just write Sometimes, I bring my lunch to work.

Thank you.

Answer

In the example you give, both phrases to work and with me are adverbial phrases modifying the verb bring. In this example, changing the word order does not create ambiguity, because neither phrase is likely to be misconstrued to refer to some other part of the sentence.

syntactic analysis - Identifying the subject of a complicated sentence

This sentence took me a lot of time to parse:

For migrant birds, which habitats are suitable during the non-breeding
season influences habitat availability, population resilience to
habitat loss, and ultimately survival.

_{(from Blackburn, E. and Cresswell, W. (2015), “Fine-scale habitat use during the non-breeding season suggests that winter habitat does not limit breeding populations of a declining long-distance Palearctic migrant”. Journal of Avian Biology, 46: 622–633. doi: 10.1111/jav.00738)}

Finally I figured out that the predicate is influences and the subject is hidden somewhere behind the "which. But is this correct English? What is the subject of this sentence then?

grammatical number - Why do we use plural for indefinite objects?

Building off another question I answered here, I couldn't justify why exactly we say:

I like to ride bicycles.

Instead of:

I like to ride a bicycle.

(This could be anything: "climb mountains", "fly helicopters", etc.)

Both of these forms should refer to some generic, indeterminate bicycle object. But we can't ride more than one at a time, nor do we mean to say that we like to ride them one after the other, so how does the plural form work here?

Even though the second example looks like a valid construction, it just doesn't sound right. I suspect it's because the indefinite article "a" adds something when used in this sense, instead of just meaning to say "a bicycle" in the generic sense, it implies:

I like to ride a (particular kind of bicycle).

However, "I like to ride my bicycle" works. Is it because "my" makes it less generic, or just because it means "the one that is mine"? So why does the indeterminate "a" not work in the same construction?

(The only sense where "a" seems to fit is when using the conditional: I would like to ride a bicycle. But again, this has a slightly different meaning than I would like to ride bicycles, in the general sense.)

How should I understand what's happening in these constructions?

Answer

The reason I like to ride a bicycle doesn't work is because the singular indefinite article implies there's just one particular bicycle you like riding.

When you say I like to ride bicycles there's an implied plural indefinite article there, but we discarded that word centuries ago. We're so used to not using it we don't even notice it's not there.

Even though the article is missing, we understand as if it were there; we don't suppose OP likes riding more than one bicycle at a time - he likes riding [some, most, many, all, any] bicycles.

I think the success of this usage encourages us to discard the singular definite article in various related contexts. So I like to play the piano, is increasingly giving way to I like to play piano (even more noticeably with the more modern I like to play guitar).

punctuation - Commas after introductory pieces of information

I got confused by the sentence:

An investigation took place,and five months later Dan was exonerated and returned to active duty.

I wonder whether a comma may(or should) be inserted after the word "later"

capitalization - Title for student organization

I'm updating the website for my student organization. Link. Officially, we are the Texas A&M University Student Branch of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

The banner at the top has the title of the national organization, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a subtitle describing this organization:

A Professional Society for Aerospace Engineering (a)

1. Shouldn't the P and S be lowercase?

A professional society for Aerospace Engineering (b)

I vaguely remember reading in elementary school that the last word of a title should begin with a capital letter, so Engineering. If engineering is capitalized, then Aerospace should be capitalized as well, otherwise the title would look weird. However, I then feel that the resulting subtitle b looks funny. Is it funny or am I just used to capitalizing letters?

2. Also, which is the correct abbreviation of our title: AIAA-TAMU, TAMU-AIAA, or neither? I would like to learn the rules behind your logic.

--An engineering student who cares about grammar (except for any mistakes in this post. It's late and I'm tired)

Answer

There's no firm rule. Consider looking at a style book for your own college. If you don't know what that is, ask someone at, eg., the college newspaper.

Personally I would "A professional society for aerospace engineering" (or indeed aerospace industry) because I loathe excess capitals.

Note that - very simply - there is absolutely no reason, at all, for capitals in that sentence; any more than say this sentence.

A "subtitle" is nothing more than a sentence.

(By all means, you could note that for example, highway billboards often have all caps .. DRINK MILLER BEER. And maybe just a design matter it should be all caps. But that's sort of, not English you know, that's a design issue. Like, sure, maybe it should be done in a circle like a stamp ... whatever.)

If it's a sentence, it has no caps.

"I vaguely remember reading in elementary school..." that was complete crap, forget it.

TAMU-AIAA versus AIAA-TAMU. If this is your official name: "Texas A&M University Student Branch of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics" - official meaning it appears thus on some sort of government document, or any similar "registration" document - then the best choice is exactly that order.

So, TAMU-AIAA.

orthography - Is IOU an abbreviation, an acronym, or an initialism?

IOU stands for I owe you and we pronounce each letter separately. But how do we classify that construction"?

• abbreviation: a shortened form of a word or phrase


• acronym: an abbreviation formed from the initial letters of other words and pronounced as a word


• Initialism: an abbreviation consisting of initial letters pronounced separately


• back-formation: a word that is formed from an existing word which looks as though it is a derivative, typically by removal of a suffix

^{All definitions provided by Oxford Dictionaries Online}

It can't be an abbreviation because there is no shortening, clipping or back-formation. Take for example phone which is an abbreviation of telephone, or edit which is a back-formation of editorship and editor. I would argue that abbreviations are words that have been shortened, a faster way of writing or saying something. Another example would be Prof for professor.

It can't be an acronym because we don't pronounce IOU as one word, whereas we do with NATO and RAM.

It can't be an initialism because if it was, it should be written as IOY (I Owe You)

Other examples that spring to mind is CU for see you and YRU for why are you, where initialism would dictate that the proper forms be SY and WAY.

How do linguists define this structure? Is there a more specific term than abbreviation?

Answer

It could be characterized as a rebus

a riddle or puzzle made up of letters, pictures, or symbols whose names sound like the parts or syllables of a word or phrase [Merriam-Webster]

While a rebus often contains images, letters being used to represent syllables is common.

[Wikipedia]

In particular, the Encyclopaedia Britannica states

Literary rebuses use letters, numbers, musical notes, or specially placed words to make sentences. Complex rebuses combine pictures and letters. Rebuses may convey direct meanings, especially to inform or instruct illiterate people; or they may deliberately conceal meanings, to inform only the initiated or to puzzle and amuse.

....

A familiar English rebus is the debtor’s “IOU,” for “I owe you.”

If you wanted to be more precise in defining it, you could say alphabetic rebus.

grammar - Existential sentence...in the passive voice?

Now, a friend over the internet wanted me to explain the passive voice to him. He began by providing his story's "readability statistics" of Microsoft Word, which said that 7% of his sentences were passive. Luckily, this story was at my disposal, so I investigated whether the statistic was correct or not. Then I came to this sentence:

There was something placed on the table...

First off, existential sentences are "newish" to me, but I believe that to be one. I also believe it's passive, but I'm unsure. I made several google searches, with only one outside of google books (the book was probably too advanced for me) talking about it. Now the reason that I think that is passive is the same reason why the person made that post (but in reverse). When turned into a nonexistential sentence it is passive (EDIT: I've been notified that the nonexistential sentence doesn't correspond to was placed but rather had been placed):

Something had been placed on the table [by X]...

Although, another reading could be that it isn't passive. Placed on the table may be seen as a (past) participial phrase modifying something. This interpretation seems untenable to me.

So am I right to think that this is a passive existential sentence?

Answer

This is an example of Whiz deletion. The sentence is short for:

• There was something which had been placed on the table...

The relative pronoun which and the past perfect form of BE (had been) have been omitted. This is a type of reduced relative clause. For more info on Whiz deletion see this post of John Lawler's on Whiz deletion, and also visit the link therein.

The upshot of this is that your sentence is not a passive 'existential' sentence. It is a case of an 'existential' sentence containing a relative clause. The relative clause is modifying the noun something, and this clause does indeed contain a passive.

Hope this helps!

grammatical number - "There Is"/"There are" depends on plurality of the first list element or not?

It seems I put a stick in the anthill at ELL.

Bounty assigned by outside party, two lengthy, reference-citing answers, one "-1" (awarded the bounty), one "-2", two others scored "0" and "-2" respectively, the answers suggesting one or the other is correct, 73 comments and no consensus so far - and me, as the asker, lost without a clue what to think of the answers anymore - this is no longer "Learners' Level" question, so I thought I'd bring it here and hear what the experts have to say.

---

Original question:

An edit was suggested to my sentence.

There was were an orange, some grapes, two apples and a small pile of cherries on the plate.

In my native language plurality of the verb always follows plurality of the first element on the list. There were an orange,... sounds awkward to me, no matter what follows up. My simple solution was reordering:

There were some grapes, an orange, two apples and a small pile of cherries on the plate.

But that's not the first time I faced this situation and I'd like to know what the rules of grammar say about that - was my editor overzealous or am I trying to copy rules of my language that don't apply in English?

---

Someone linked a related question for negatives, where the situation is more clear-cut ("There is no..."). Same applies to connection with "or" apparently, per accepted answer there. Still, nothing for "and".

It seems there is a consensus that in that if the verb goes after the list, it will be plural.

an orange, some grapes, two apples and a small pile of cherries were on the plate.

There doesn't seem to be clear consensus for:

On the plate { was | were } an orange, some grapes, two apples and a small pile of cherries

Adding more to the confusion is the abbreviated form: "There's"

One last note. In North America, at least, there is a widespread use of using a singular form like "there is" and "there was", without regard for the subject item or items, and this "there is" is often shortened to "there's":

There's three apples on the table!

Could you please clarify this mess?

Answer

‘The Cambridge Guide to English Usage’ deals with this pragmatically, as with much else:

Existential there couples with either singular or plural verbs (there
is / there are, according to the following noun phrase) . . . This

formal agreement is strictly maintained in academic writing. But in
narrative and everyday writing, there is and especially there’s is
found even with plural nouns . . . In conversation the combination of
there’s with a plural noun is in fact more common than there are,
according to the 'Longman Grammar' . . . Negative statements also seem
to attract there’s . . . When a compound subject follows, there’s
rather than there are is selected . . .

In such cases both formal and proximity agreement help to select the
singular verb. These various uses of there’s with plural (or

notionally plural) noun phrases show how the structure is working its
way into the standard. It seems to be evolving into a fixed phrase,
rather like the French C’est . . . serving the needs of the ongoing
discourse rather than the grammar of the sentence.

word choice - What’s wrong with “… enforce that …”

The following sentence seems grammatically incorrect to me as a native English speaker (should be ensure, not enforce):

People then create laws to enforce that these regulations are being followed.

That said, I can’t quite figure out what is wrong with it. Ensure and enforce are both verbs, and are often grammatically interchangeable with one another.

1. Is there something grammatically wrong with the given sentence, or is it just a strange wording?




2. What exactly is wrong with it?

Answer

Ensure and enforce are indeed similar in that they are both transitive (i.e. they take a direct object), but not all transitive verbs are equal. Enforce only takes a noun or noun phrase (such as the rules) as its direct object, while ensure is more versatile (from a grammatical standpoint): while it can take a noun or noun phrase, it can also take a content clause (also called complement clause or that-clause; such as that the rules are followed) as its object. This has been established by usage and convention, and it is rare to see enforce paired with that. In this case, convention dictates the grammatical constraints, and therefore it is grammatically incorrect to use a that-clause as the object of certain verbs (such as enforce). Ngrams shows relative usages:

As you mention, you could replace enforce with ensure:

People then create laws to ensure that these regulations are being followed.

Or, if you want to keep the strength of enforce, you would need to change the direct object from a content clause to a noun phrase:

People then create laws to enforce these regulations.

grammatical number - Is this correct: "Our listeners are what make X"?

I listen to a podcast that I like, but every episodes ends with

Our listeners are what make [podcast name] possible.

which makes me cringe a little each time I hear it. Is it just me, or is the sentence wrong? And if so, what is the correct form - should both verbs be singular?
And is there a difference between UK and US usage? (The podcast is based in the USA).

I found a similar question, but it does not apply exactly (and the one it links to only discusses cases where the sentence stars with a time interval).

Thank you.

Answer

"Our listeners are what make our podcast possible" is grammatical. (But it took a little while for me to figure that out; thank you to everyone else who left comments and answers!) Like you, I felt uncomfortable with it after you brought it up, and I'll discuss the reasons for that below, but they are based on semantics rather than purely on the grammatical structure.

As a subject, "our listeners" triggers plural agreement on the corresponding verb in all varieties of English that I know of. In this sentence, that verb is "are." It isn't anything like a collective noun: collective nouns, such as "collection" or "group," are singular in form (morphology) but plural in meaning. But "listeners" is clearly plural in form, as it has the plural suffix -s. As you said, the answers to the question about 'Is it “5–6 weeks are a lot of time” or “5–6 weeks is a lot of time”?' only say it is possible to use singular verbs with nominally-plural subjects that are "quantities or measurements" (usually "of time, money, distance, weight"). There is no measurement involved in the noun phrase "our listeners," so I don't think it's natural to use a singular verb with it.

So that's what I'd say about the first verb in the sentence. But the verb "make/makes" is part of a later, distinct relative clause whose subject is the word "what." So to figure out which to use between "make" and "makes," we need to determine whether "what" is singular or plural here.

This is a tricky question, since relative pronouns always have one form, but can take different types of agreement depending on the situation.
A relevant situation that I have just thought of is the transparency of the relative pronoun "who" to person agreement, discussed in the following post: "You who is" OR "you who are". I think that I would not use person agreement in sentences like "Our listeners are what make [podcast name] possible." Here's what I mean. To simplify matters, assume we're talking to a single person, "Sally." I would say

Sally, you are what makes [podcast name] possible.

rather than

Sally, you are what make [podcast name] possible.

In fact, a Google Ngram search turns up no examples of the structure "you are what make"; "you are what makes" is attested, although rarely, and only consistently after the 1980s.

On the other hand, as FumbleFingers has discussed, it is true that "these are what make" is more frequent in the Google corpus than "these are what makes," and also, "they are what make" is more frequent than "they are what makes."

My interpretation of this is that in constructions like this with "what," the verb after "what" does not have to agree with the subject of the preceding clause.

However, it evidently can inflect for plurality. It does seem this is an exception to the default situation where "what" triggers singular agreement on a following verb. The English Forums explanation that FumbleFingers linked to in a comment
gives examples where a plural verb can/must be used if the complement includes a plural noun phrase (such as "What they desperately want are clothes and shelter"), but the relevant clause in the sentence you're asking about ("what make/makes [podcast name] possible") doesn't have a plural noun phrase complement. FumbleFingers' grammarphobia link also doesn't seem to cover sentences of this exact type. But perhaps it could simply be considered the inversion of "What make [podcast name] possible are our viewers," which is a sentence whose form is discussed (and confirmed to be grammatical) in the grammarphobia article. However, it doesn't seem safe to assume that we can invert the sentence and leave the verb the same.

This question seems to indicate that if a relative pronoun such as "what" starts a "free relative clause," the word "what" does not have to agree in plurality with the preceding noun "listeners." From what I can tell, it is a free relative clause in your sentence (I'm not even sure if bound relative clauses with "what" are possible in standard English; they usually use other relative pronouns such as "which" or "who"). This would mean that it's grammatically possible to treat "what" as either singular or plural; it appears that speakers usually do treat "what" as plural in this grammatical context (judging from the NGram that Fumblefingers has provided).

However, even if a plural verb is more commonly chosen, it does seem to be possible for "what" to be taken as singular here and get singular verb agreement. FumbleFinger's ngram link indicates that a notable minority of speakers take this option in the Google Books corpus, and I think the evident opacity of the structure in modern usage to personal agreement (as shown in sentences using the pronoun "you") provides some analogical support to the idea that it can be opaque to number agreement as well. When I first read your post, my reaction was that I would say "Our listeners are what makes our podcast possible."

Here are some other example sentences where I would use a singular verb rather than agreeing with the plural subject of the main clause:

• They are what is wrong with this place.


• They are all that makes my life worth living.

Different speakers may have different intuitions about this, however.

Maybe a good way to think of it is this: just as you could say "our viewers are the thing that makes our podcast great," you could also say "our viewers are the things that make our podcast great." Both are grammatically correct, although they may have slightly different shades of meaning. And since "what" can be plural or singular, it can mean either "the thing that" or "the things that."

An interesting point besides this: despite the fact that I would use a singular "makes" in the OP's sentence, I agree that only plural "make" is appropriate in a sentence like

Blue grass pastures, fields of clover; These are what make Mansfield

grow.

–"What Makes Mansfield Grow," from Around Mansfield by the Mansfield Historical Society

This is because I would not be comfortable saying "Blue grass pastures, fields of clover; These are the thing that makes Mansfield grow." Semantically, these are not one thing, or even one type of thing.

syntactic analysis - Parallel structure with a negative

Would this sentence follow the rules of parallel structure?

In order to improve your country, you should take care of the environment, avoid throwing litter, help society, and don't use plastic.

I could make this sentence better by changing the last part to "avoid using plastic", but I was wondering if the above sentence is correct in its original form.

Answer

Here is the parallel structure at work:

✘ In order to improve your country, you should take care of the environment, ^{you should} avoid throwing litter, ^{you should} help society, and ^{you should} don't use plastic.

Assuming you want to maintain a parallel structure, the sentence is incorrect because of this:

✘ You should don't use plastic.

---

However you rephrase the final list item, it should be in a manner that makes it grammatical with a you should ___ plastic structure.

Your own suggestion would be fine. As would some others:

✔ You should avoid using plastic.
✔ You should stop using plastic.
✔ You should not use plastic.

history - Origin of the irregular contraction of "not"

All the contractions seem to follow some sort of logic: they place the mark between the words, and leave only the part of the sound that is predominantly heard ("I will" -> "I'll", "you have" -> "you've"). But with "not", the mark is placed right in the middle of the word (like in "does not"-> "doesn't" ), leaving the "n" attached to the previous word.

Is this an historical accident (and if it is, how it was born?), or does it have some (may be phonetic) explanation?

questions - Meaning of negation in embedded yes/no interrogatives

I suppose we can say that the meaning of

I asked him if he likes beer

is essentially identical to

I asked him: "Do you like beer?".

But what if I say:

I asked him if he didn't like beer

Is this question even grammatical and does it make sense at all? If yes then what direct question would it entail? Is it

I asked him: "Don't you like beer?"

Or

I asked him: "You don't like beer, do you?"

Answer

The basic form of the direct question would be

"Don't you like beer?"

and, while

"You don't like beer, do you?"

is semantically identical, we use it in a different context. The first question is one of surprise (if she seems not to) or affirmation (if you believe she does). The second question is looking for confirmation of your belief that the other person doesn't like beer, either personally or because you feel beer is just awful and all right-thinking people avoid it.

Pace @MaddieS. you should never answer a negative question with a one-word answer. It's completely ambiguous whether that means you're negating the question or affirming it. You'll spend the next minute or two of the conversation in needless loop trying to figure out what was intended, which can be offputting when someone expects their logic or phrasing should have been straightforward. Instead, just answer the whole thing: "No, I don't", or "Yes, I don't like beer at all".

grammar - Why do we use the base form of verbs instead of the past form in past tense questions?

In regard to this answer, my question is similar but that answer is not clear. I want to know why we use base form of verb, e.g. 'go' to form the past tense instead of past form such as 'went'?

Question: Did you go to a bank? (Why we use 'go' here, rather than 'went'?)
Answer: I went to a bank.

Am I confusing verb forms with tenses? Please note that I'm not a native speaker so some clarification or reference on this would be helpful.

Answer

The rule is that there is at most one tense marker in each clause.

There may be no tense markers, as in the gerund clause going to the Moon or the infinitive clause to go to the Moon; but there can't be more than one.

• In I visited the bank the single (past) tense marker is the -ed in visited.




• In I did visit the bank the single (past) tense marker is the did (instead of do or does).

It's spread out this way because Question Formation, Negative Formation, and a number of other syntactic rules all require there to be a first auxiliary verb; and if there is no auxiliary verb (i.e, if there is only one verb) in the clause, then they all require Do-Support to provide that auxiliary verb.

Finally, the rules of English grammar require that the single tense marker goes on the first auxiliary verb, or on the main verb if there is no auxiliary verb. That's why it was on the single main verb before Do-Support; but afterwards, it has to go on the new auxiliary verb, which becomes did.

Silly, I know, but that's English syntax for you.

grammar - Definite article with plural nouns

Are there cases where the definite article is used with a plural noun, or is it a rule that the definite article is never used with the plural of a word?

Answer

The definite article can be used with a plural noun just as it can with a singular noun.

The boys are here.

grammar - use of "to" after "helping one"

What is correct:

helping one to accomplish the dreams?

OR

helping one accomplish the dreams?

The question I have is about the use of to in the first sentence?

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

time-sensitive documents, goods, articles or cargo

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

Should "two" as a pronoun be spelled out in AMA style?

In AMA style, numerals are used for 1 through 9, but "one," when used as a pronoun, is spelled out. Easy enough. But now I'm looking at a sentence that says this:

Drug A enhances the performance of Drug B when the two are used in combination.

A colleague of mine changed "two" to "2," but I'm not sure that's right. "The two" seems to be synonymous with "(the) both," which is a pronoun.

Given all this, would "the two" be spelled out according to the same rule by which "one" is spelled out?

Answer

Your two should be spelled out. I cannot imagine any style editor anywhere demanding a numeral there. It's not a cardinal number in that context.

Use words to express numbers that occur at the beginning of a
sentence, title, subtitle, or heading; for common fractions; for
accepted usage and numbers used as pronouns;...

AMA Manual of Style: A Guide for Authors and Editors (10th edition)