This question has been bothering me for a while. It came up when I was reading Chapter 16 of "A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language."
How to explain the grammatical structure of the following four sentences?
"We knew him to be a spy."
"I saw her leave the room."
"I heard someone shouting."
"I got the watch repaired."
What category do the four non-finite clauses in boldface fall into? They do not seem to fall into any of relative, nominal, comparative and adverbial clauses.
I’ve been looking over what has been posted regarding the use of ’s.
I used to be a Technical Writer (years ago). The title of one of our training documents was Users’ Guide. Once, a coworker said every time he saw that title he expected users to start coming.
Never made any sense to me, but I have to admit that the majority of us didn't understand the use of s’ in place of ’s. What is the difference?
Can you explain why we say AN NHS provision but A National Health provision. Or A UFO but An UNIDENTIFIED Fly Object. Are there any rules regarding the use of A or An when using initials such as ! In business FME ? Thanks
Which of these sentences is correct?
Both are listed as correct in an English textbook - but is that really the truth?
EDIT: Thanks a lot for the quick replies — it's much appreciated. I'm not a native speaker but when I hear: "Here are Mrs. Johnson and her husband" it just sounds wrong. Doesn't it sound a lot better with "Here is Mrs. Johnson"?
Which sentence below is correct when using the past tense of "do"?
What I did to find out is that...
What I did to find out was that...
For countable nouns, both "Is there any x?" and "Are there any x?" are grammatical and correct.
But what nuance / connotation differences are there between them?
For example, if we're searching for a Chrome plugin to do something, what's the connotation difference between:
Is there any Chrome plugin to do this?
vs:
Are there any Chrome plugins to do this?
Related threads (which only increases the confusion):
Answer
With "is there any" it implies to me that the speaker is asking for one solution; a "magic bullet" type of Chrome plugin to use your example. They're asking for a particular solution; perhaps the "best" one.
With "are there any" it implies that the speaker is asking a more open-ended question and not looking for a one-size-fits-all solution, but will evaluate the suggestions.
I'm a German and our English teacher always told us not to use the German syntax in English. So here are a few examples to illustrate :
"What means this word?" -> correct : "What does that word mean?"
"Have we homework" -> correct :" "Do we have homework?"
That's how I've been taught at least.
I was reading the English version of 'Game of Thrones' today and one sentence is :
"What proof have we?"
Is this sentence correct? I assume it is, since it is a published book. However, if I apply that rule I learned, this would be the correct sentence:
"What proof do we have?"
Where lies the difference?
Answer
Your teacher hasn't led you too far astray, because "what proof do we have?" would also be correct, so they wouldn't have led into saying the wrong thing.
English does though sometimes use subject-verb inversion. It happens much more with auxiliaries than other verbs, and one use is in questions:
We have proof.
Have we proof?
We couldn't do that with other verbs, and so would need the do form:
We considered it.
*Considered we it.
Did we consider it?
But auxiliaries don't require this, even when the same verb is being used in a sense other than its auxiliary sense. Adding what we get "what proof have we?"
It's shorter and hence more emphatic than "what proof do we have?". It's also possible that the author's choice was influenced by the fact that earlier in English's history inversion was more common, so while this remains in modern use that may have led the writers to favour it for the work in question.
I am getting confused with usage of 's' with verb- consider following 2 sentences-
- I am the one who wants to stay with you.
- I am the one who want to stay with you.
According to me, first one is the correct usage, because, "the one who" is third person, and hence, the verb will get an 's'.
Would like to know what is the rule to be followed in such cases.
When should 'the' be pronounced 'thuh' and when 'thee'?
I heard that 'the' should be used as 'thee' before vowels and in some particular cases. All other cases should employ 'thuh'. What are the 'particular cases'?
And when is 'a' pronounced 'eh' and when 'uh'?
Answer
The 'thee' sound is used in front of words starting with a vowel sound (of which 'United States' is NOT one) such as 'apple', 'elephant', 'ink', 'orange', and 'ultrasound device'.
It is also used where one is called upon to distinguish a special instance of something. For example you might say to me 'I was speaking to Bill Clinton the other day'. Unsure of who you meant I might say 'Do you mean the (pronounced thee) Bill Clinton, who used to be President?' Or you could tell me that I had not spoken to the right person when reporting something, and I might reply 'I spoke to the (thee) very person who deals with such matters.
It works slightly differently with 'a'. (For this purpose you can ignore 'an'.) You say 'I saw a man breaking into that house', I reply 'Was it a (eh) man, or were there more than one? Or I could say 'Was it a (eh) man (meaning any man) or was it the one we suspect'.
This is a fine-tuned area of our language and one that is only perfected with much listening and practice, I fear.
I know the title sounds stupid, but this is one question that has left me stumped for quite some time. I hope to get an answer in this forum. If the answer is "I am the fourth son of my father", what should be the question?
In general, how do you ask questions with ordinal numbers?
Answer
I don't think you can ask that question directly. The conversation could go something like the following:
How many children does your father have? To which the answer could be three.
You could go on and say:
Which one are you? To which the answer could be I am the youngest, oldest, second, third, etc.
Now the last question might seem ambiguous if it's standing all by its own. But it would make sense once it's in context.
Let him do it because it's his baby.
Don't push this job on me because it's your baby, not mine.
This classic show car is his baby.
Hey baby, how are you doing today?
I understand that the speaker used the word baby to describe work in the first and second examples. The 3rd example is confusing me. How can a car be one's work? Please help improve my understanding.
I know the slang word baby means "a woman who is young", as in the last example, someone is talking to a woman/girl.
Answer
You've slightly misinterpreted the word baby in your first three examples. It means something in which one has invested time, interest, and emotion and for which one has a proprietary feeling. Speaking hyperbolically, it's as though the object of interest is like one's own child.
I thought I should add an example of the usage that didn't involve work- or job-related situations. This turned out not to be as easy as I thought. There's even a canonical political cartoon, showing Hoover turning over the problems of the Depression to Roosevelt in 1933, captioned "It's his 'baby' now":
But I finally found a story about a man who as a hobby, salvaged his car that had been in an accident, replacing the metal body with one made entirely of wood. From that story:
So, he started salvage [sic] spruce wood from construction sites, adding up
bit-by-bit to his truck every evening after work for about nine
months. So you can say it’s his baby now.
A labor of love, with a play on the nine-month "gestation" period for the "baby."
Need help converting this sentence to passive voice:-
The students will assemble in the hall.
I think it should be:-
The hall will be assembled by the students.
But it sounds like students are building the hall by putting together some pieces.
Should I change it to assembled in by the students? Or something else?
Answer
I in comments wrote to John Lawler:
What, you don’t like “The students will go downtown for lunch” becoming “Downtown will be gone to by the students for lunch” much, eh? :-) Because such abominations do crop up from not-native speakers from time to time, I suspect nobody ever let them in on the joke in the first place.
And then to the asker:
You can't ever do passive inversion on intransitive verbs, including both yours and mine. If what I wrote sounds right to you, somebody has trained you wrong because it’s completely ungrammatical in English. You must have a transitive verb with a direct object to use passive inversion on so that you can invert subject and object. Intransitive verbs lack an object to use for the subject.
Also, homework is a mass noun not a count noun, so you can never say *a homework.
Consider the following sentence:
"Bob started to feel uneasy, as Alice was doing X."
What I want to express is that in the past, Bob started to feel uneasy.
Alice started doing X in the past and still is to this day.
Is the example sentence correct? Or "...IS Alice doing X"?
For a scientific publication - being written in present tense - how do I express this situation in correct English?
Is there any problem with this sentence? If any, how can I make it correct?
"Social Security Institution is in charge of, authorized and responsible for the collection of the Fund premiums, and the Agency for the performance of all other services and transactions within the scope of this article."
Did you hear the song?
Is this the correct expression, or should I say the following:
Did you listen to the song?
He studied all day long.
He -> Pronoun
studied -> verb (in past tense)
all -> ??
day -> noun ?
long -> adverb ?
I would like to know the part of speech that all is in this sentence. My train of thought: (all day) is a noun in combination. So all might be an adjective ?
I have come across this problem numerous times. I am unsure of why a comma is needed in phrases such as the one below — between the words "question" and "so."
Our goal is to have the best answers to every question, so if you see questions or answers that can be improved, you can edit them.
I know why the second comma is needed, but I am unaware of why the first comma is needed. Perhaps someone could be kind enough to answer my question and explain why the comma is needed?
There are terms that are used to describe something we like or dislike. For example, the term "nyctophilia" means loving or preferring the darkness.
Is there is a term that describes disliking sunset?
I have been confused for so long about the plural and singular forms of "people". I want to put an end to this confusion.
What is the difference between these following expressions, and is it correct to use these expressions in both their singular and plural forms?
"The German people are not warlike"
"The German people is not warlike"
(As in "The German people is no warlike nation. It is a soldierly one, which means it does not want a war but does not fear it....")
"People are funny"
"People is funny"
Here I suppose that "people is" referring to a population/community: "the German people is not warlike" = "the German population is not warlike" and "People is funny" = "population is funny".
Is this correct? If it is correct, then what does "people are" mean?
I see a ton of questions on hyphenated words, specifically, but nothing on the more general question how/when they're supposed to be used vs omitted. Another great answer gives some general rules on hyphens:
A hyphen is used to join words in a compound construction, or separate syllables of a word, like during a line break, or (self-evidently) a hyphenated name.
..but this leaves the greater question of when this "compound construction" should be used, open.
A common usage I see is "day-of-the-week" vs. "day of the week". Both of these seem correct, and are read out loud identically from what I can tell.
Some other common examples I've seen:
I see very little difference in meaning in the above phrases, both with and without the hyphens.
When should hyphens or dashes in multi-word (or is it multi word? or multiword?) phrases be used?
Answer
Compound constructions are oftend used/created when there is chance of ambiguity, in a way similar to how 'Let's eat grandpa' is put into its proper context by adding a comma between 'eat' and 'grandpa'.
For example, 'That is a friendly looking person' doesn't say much about how the person looks, only that he is friendly (for sake of the example assuming that 'looking person' is a thing).
'That is a friendly-looking person' says something about how the person looks, but it doesn't mean that person actually is friendly.
Use 'Can you get me the video-of-the-month', and everybody knows what you mean, at least conceptually speaking, but omit the hyphens, and the sentence just looks incomplete 'Can you get me the video of the month' (january, last august?).
'State of art technology' refers to the technology in (the making of) art, and the state that technology is in. 'State-of-the-art' means that something is the most modern, most advanced, etc, so a different meaning altogether.
Just like any other punctuation mark, hyphens have their uses, and the rules and guidelines you already found can help determine when they are best used in a text.
PS: Concerning 'multi-word'; some words are prefixed, while others are not. I can't promise that this site explains it all (if you haven't visted it already), but it does give some good background information on hyphenation.
I saw on the FDA website the following definition of cosmetics. What puzzles me is 'such term'. I have been taught that 'such' is used with singular nouns (e.g. such a book), plurals (e.g. such idiots), or uncountables (e.g. such nonsense).
(i) The term "cosmetic" means (1) articles intended to be rubbed, poured, sprinkled, or sprayed on, introduced into, or otherwise applied to the human body or any part thereof for cleansing, beautifying, promoting attractiveness, or altering the appearance, and (2) articles intended for use as a component of any such articles; except that such term shall not include soap.
If a term contains non-alphanumeric characters, when (if ever) should these characters be spelled out? For example:
C++ written as C Plus Plus
C# written as C-Sharp
If they are spelled out, what are the conventions regarding capitalization and hyphens (e.g. C Plus Plus or C-plus-plus)?
Answer
I hope I'm not stepping out of line, but since the comments contained several good answers, I thought it worthwhile to group them together into a properly credited answer. Currently it seems the community has found four reasons to spell out non-alphanumeric characters:
When you uncontract doesn't in "Why doesn't it work?" the not moves to "Why does it not work?"
This confuses me even more when I use a longer phrase instead of the pronoun it like below:
Why doesn't this simple code example work?
Why does the word order change when we use a contraction?
There were things his grandchildren, in turn, should know. Yet he hesitated. How do you tell your children they are progenies of the self-proclaimed inventor of Manhattan clam chowder? (The New York Times)
Oxford Dictionaries say "progeny" is a noun
treated as singular or plural, but on Internet I found a number of occurrences of "progenies" and, hence, a doubt arose to my mind: is it entirely wrong pluralize "progeny"?
Answer
I agree that your citation sounds strange; at least, it does to my ear. Reading that I almost wonder whether the author hasn’t somehow conflated progeny and prodigy, since the latter’s plural form is unremarkable.
However, digging deeper, one finds that the OED entry for progeny, last updated in 2007, makes no mention one way or the other. It gives as its sense 1a
1a. Offspring, issue, children; descendants. Occas.: a child, a descendant; a family.
a definition that is already in the plural, but which admits a singular sense “occasionally”. Sense 1b is more figurative:
1b. fig. Spiritual, intellectual, or artistic descendants; successors; followers, disciples.
And is still plural, and gives this citation of progeny itself taking plural concordance:
- 1994 H. Bloom Western Canon ii. iii. 80
Dante’s progeny among the writers are his true canonizers.
However, down under sense 1d:
1d. The product of the breeding of animals or plants; the offspring of sexual or asexual reproduction. Now chiefly Agric. and Genetics.
We find that there is indeed an inflected plural version — progenies — given as an example:
- 1977 Crop Sci. 17 909/2
Twenty-one clones whose polycross progenies ranked high for rate of seedling emergence under field conditions or had high forage yield..were selected for this study.
So it appears that when dealing with people, progeny is taken as a plural with some use as a singular, but when used in a genetic sense, it can occasionally be taken as a count noun that inflects regularly.
When there are several plural nouns in a sequence, do they all take the plural form or does only the last noun take the plural e.g.,
The application is a precious instrument full of information, advices, curiosities and suggestions.
I decided to make sure that I know this important difference between American and British English, so I wrote what I have found out so far and I would be grateful to anyone who reads this and tells me whether I am wrong, or not.
In British English when people say to hospital or in hospital when talking about somebody being there as a patient they don't use the definite article : "I had to go to hospital", "She spent two weeks in hospital". And the meaning is that somebody was there as a patient.
If then for some other reasons British English speakers will use the definite article which will change the meaning itself, I noticed that, in American English, native speakers often use the the and if they need to show that somebody is in church to pray, in school as a student, in hospital as a patient, in prison as a prisoner, they use 'in' and not 'at'. Do American English speakers use 'at' like British English speakers use 'the' to give the sentences a different meaning?
Are my sentences correct? Do they show American English usage?
He is in the school. (enrolled as a student)
He is at the school. (for some different reasons)
He is in the hospital. (as a patient)
He is at the hospital. (visiting somebody)
He is in the church. (to pray)
He is at the church. (for some different reasons)
He is in the university. (as a student)
He is at the university. (not as a student)
He is in the college. (as a student)
He is at the college. (Not as a student)
He is in the prison. (as a prisoner)
He is at the prison. (not as a prisoner)
Please help, in this sentence is "a number" an attribute or the subject of the sentence?
Trying to understand what seems to be a very subtle difference in written and spoken English. Recently, I've seen articles that use 'to + gerund' and 'to + infinitive' in the exact same situations, especially when preceded by an independent clause with a subjective complement:
Editor's Corner: There is no silver bullet to solve homelessness
'There is no silver bullet' to solving N.D.'s worker shortage, officials say
These exist in relatively equal distribution on google, (16k for 'no silver bullet to solve' and 13k for 'no silver bullet to solving), and I'm having a tough time understanding syntactically what might be going on here.
I thought a good analogy might be the "I look forward to hear/hearing from you" mistake than many English language learners make, but this doesn't seem to be that same situation, both in the sense that to my native ears one doesn't sound much better than the other, and I'm not sure they're the same syntactically.
In my (probably misguided) syntactic reading of the first sentence ('There is no silver bullet to solve homelessness'), I think that 'to solve homelessness' is an infinitive clause acting as a prepositional phrase:
And therefore is syntactically similar to something like, "There's no wrong way to eat a Reese's." This, to me, seems correct. Does this seem on base? And if so, why do these two different approaches exist equally on the net? Is there any potential syntactic reading for 'to solving' that makes sense here?
Answer
The infinitive (or perhaps it should be analyzed as the subjunctive?) gives a sense of completion, while the gerund gives more of a sense of process. So "There is a new approach to solving homelessness" indicates that the approach will help work on the problem of homelessness, while "There is a new approach to solve homelessness" implies that it will successfully deal with homelessness. A further complication is that "silver bullet" is a metaphor (or, at least, I hope people aren't discussing literally solving homelessness with silver bullets), and there can be differences as to what people consider it a metaphor for. It's often used as a metaphor for something that completely takes care of something, which suggests the infinitive. If, however, it's used as a metaphor for a tool used in the process of doing something, rather than something that automatically gets one to one's end goal, that suggests the gerund.
Which one of these sentences is correct?
The number of students are increasing.
or
The number of students is increasing.
Initially I thought the first option wass correct, but later in the solution section of a book, the answer shown is that the sentence is with "is" not "are" is correct.
Am I correct, or is the book correct?
Answer
Here only the second can be correct, because the definite article means that "the number" refers to an exact number/group of students, which is singular.
However, were you to say "a number of students", this could be interpreted as "a few students" or "a couple of students", in which case you would say "are".
Like this:
The number of students is increasing. = The total count of students is getting bigger.
Versus
A number of students are complaining about the situation. = A couple of students are complaining about the situation.
This sentence is from a English textbook written by an English native speaker:
The show was one of the dullest we have ever seen
Because it used was, the sentence is talking about things in the past. Even if the show was still one of the dullest till now, the viewpoint is in the past, so shouldn’t we use had as follows?
The show was one of the dullest we had ever seen.
Did I misunderstood the grammar rule on tense consistency?
Answer
No, there is no reason to use "had" instead of "have," at least if this is the complete context.
The tenses are perfectly fine:
The show was: Naturally, the show has finished, and was in the past.
You can say "The show began (PAST) at 9:00," "The show starred (PAST) my uncle Bernard."
However, the status of the list of shows you have seen continues into the present (I have). For example, you say "I have (PRESENT) seen Hamilton twice," even though both viewings occurred in the past.
Try flipping it around, and reading this sentence by itself:
I have/*had seen six shows on Broadway, and this was one of the dullest.
On its own, had is incorrect here, unless you're saying it is no longer one of the dullest (because you've since seen a duller one).
Saying had implies the event in question (seeing) occurred before a referenced time before than the present, using regular past tense implies before the present.
For example, in the sentence I presented above, to say "had," the six shows would have to have occurred before you've seen your seventh show (an implicit second time reference).
As presented here, there is no second time reference, so without further context, it's odd, if not strictly ungrammatical, to use "had."
Of course, there are many ways to make it grammatical to say "had seen." But all these require expansion of the context beyond what was presented.
If you said "had," it would make it sound as if you've seen another, duller show. You could use it in a dialogue like this:
What did you think of Cats?
Well, until I saw Dogs, it was one of the dullest show I had ever seen.
See here that this adds a second time reference (when you saw Dogs), or you can do it as below:
At that point in my life, I had seen six shows on Broadway...
At a further education course for teachers, in Switzerland, (given by two native speakers of English), someone came up with the question of whether you could say "dislike doing something" and "dislike to do something", just as you can say "like doing something" and "like to do somehting".
The answer was you could not, and that it was a question of usage. Period!/Full stop!
Just learn this by heart and stop asking silly questions!
Will keeping your whys to yourself make you… wise?!
Answer
Of course, I don't think it will!
The difference of meaning between "to like doing something" and "to like to do something" is that the infinitive structure adds the idea of choice to the one of simply liking something. "I like skiing." versus "I like to ski in powder snow in the early morning.": the second sentence means that I like skiing and that, for my greater enjoyment, I choose to go and ski in the early morning when it has just snowed.
So, of course, if you dislike something, then you are not going to choose when or how you are going to do it for your greater enjoyment… that would be absurd!
There IS an explanation, see…
When referring to something, (electrical wires, in my case) and it is half white and half other color, do you put White or the other color first?
I want to describe the color of these wires as ONE word/phrase. They are all half white and half other color (orange, green, blue, brown, etc).
So would I say "Please grab that white-orange cable" or would I say "grab that orange-white cable"? I would imagine you put whichever color is more first, but the white and orange are equally divided. Not sure if what I'm saying makes sense...
It is a translation question and the right answer is
The women gives cookies to the kid.
I put an extra "the" before cookies and it is marked as a wrong answer. Would anyone care to give a detailed reason as to when to put article?
Unrelated side note: I can't believe after so many years studying English, I am still struggling with these basic questions..
I am teaching Intermediate Level English to exam students in Spain and I have been asked when is it correct to use contractions. I am of the understanding that, in an oral or written exam, it would be more appropriate to use the full form. However, my query is, would it be incorrect to use a contraction? Would they lose points?
The idiom "Don't shit/defecate where you eat" means:
One should not cause trouble in a place, group, or situation in which
one regularly finds oneself.
[Wiktionary]
I always understood what it literally means is you should not make a trouble in a place you regard as the most important place in your life.
If you watch this clip of the Big Bang Theory, it sounds like I don't understand the meaning of the idiom 100%.
Questions:
When did this idiom become popular? The word used in the idiom is not pleasant and I wonder when and how people started to use this idiom. (I believe its equivalent is used in Asia)
Is there any better replacement for it when you don't want to use the word "shit/defecate"?
Is Amy (the female) telling the truth or is it just a joke when she said "don't have a romantic relationship in the workplace." I don't see a strong correlation between the idiom and the romantic relationship in the workplace.
Answer
I don’t know about the history of it, but yes, it often means “don’t have a romantic relationship in the workplace”.
Alternatives without shit:
“Don’t soil your own nest”—true to the original, and not crude.
“Don’t dip your pen in company ink”—this seems more male-focused.
“Don’t get your meat where you get your bread”—neutral, but still a little crude. It uses meat as a euphemism for sex/romance, and bread as an idiom for money.
“Don’t get your sugar and your bread at the same store”—neutral, and more innocent. Sugar is sometimes used as a euphemism for love, romance, or kisses.
What's the meaning of principle in this definition of soul from Dictionary.com as in body and soul?
the principle of life, feeling, thought, and action in humans, regarded as a distinct entity separate from the body, and commonly held to be separable in existence from the body; the spiritual part of humans as distinct from the physical part.
Does principle in this context mean definition #7 of Google definition or does it mean something else that's not in this dictionary?
Answer
Actually, I could see #'s 6, 7 and 8 applying to the definition of "principle" as it relates to a component of a soul. It's more the context of the example that drives my answer, not just the definitions in abstract.
I often confuse these two things:
"I reached home" and "I have reached home".
Once my friend asked me, "Where are you? "
I messaged him: "I have reached home".
He told me not to use "have reached "...
reached = past tense, have reached = present perfect
Can someone please clear this doubt so that I don't make the mistake again.
Answer
If you were texting the message as you were getting home, or just after arriving home than it should be:
"I've reached home."
You use the present perfect because the time of the action is not specified and the important information is that your journey's over and you are now at home.
If you specified a time then you'd have had to use the preterite:
"I reached home a couple of minutes ago (at 10...)."
Or if you were in a sequence of events, e.g :
"I reached home and had somethingto eat."
I remember somebody correcting me once when I said, "Two and two makes four", since the conjunction and would imply the use of a plural verb. They would prefer I said:
Two and two make four.
I've been thinking about it and wondering if one or the other is correct, or if both are. It would seem that using the plural verb is grammatical. However, I've heard the singular verb being used more often and feel that it is correct. Is there some exception about using the singular verb in logical statements and mathematical formulae?
Answer
Singular and plural are both correct.
The singular form is also used because "two and two" is an arithmetic formula. The verb agreement in that case is with the formula as a single entity.
Two and two makes four.
Two plus two is four.
Four times four divided by two is
eight.
In your example in particular, Google indicates that the plural form occurs more often:
"two plus two make four" = 353K results
"two plus two makes four" = 77K results
And while Google hit counts are notoriously, the result is supported by Google Ngrams.
I wrote a sentence for our web site that was submitted for proofreading. The proofreader "corrected" my sentence. I asked how sure he was that he was correct and that I was incorrect. He explained that there are two schools of thought on what's correct and he chose his way as the right way.
I suggested that there were certainly two schools of thought: the right way and the wrong way.
School One:
There is a large number of companies.
School Two:
There are a large number of companies.
Can you tell me which is the correct school of thought and why?
Update. I think I should be able to reverse the sentence and still have it makes sense. When I attempt that, it works only with one of these sentences:
The number of companies is large.
The number of companies are large.
This suggests to me that the correct sentence uses "is". Does this make any difference?
Answer
Garner in Garner's Modern English Usage (2003) belongs to School Two. He writes (p559):
A. ... but a number of is quite correctly paired with a plural noun and a plural verb, as in there are a number of reasons ... .
This construction is correct because of the linguistic principle known as SYNESIS, which allows some constructions to control properties such as number according to their meaning rather than strict syntactical rules. Since the meaning of a number of things is many things (or several things), and since some things is plural, the verb must be plural. [...]
B. The number of. When the phrase is used with the definite article the, everything changes. Now, instead of talking about the multiple things, we're talking about the number itself, which is singular: the number of students planning to attend college is steadily rising.
After criticizing some whole category of blog posts as fake news, biased or undercover advertising, I was about to add:
That being said, I must admit that this one article is quite interesting.
Is this construct correct? Should I use "this article in particular" instead?
Answer
The construction "this one article" is grammatically correct. Its use gives emphasis to that specific article.
I currently can't think of a good reason grammatically; but there are plenty in terms of clear communication.
I know that I can say, I was determined to go back to college., And also that I can use a synonym, but I'd like to know if the above is correct and why/why not. I feel like one is an intent and one a decision, don't ask me why....
Man is a social animal.
This sentence is understandable, but has two problems:
Let’s ignore the second problem and try to fix only the first:
*Human is a social animal.
This is just wrong. But why? It’s exactly the same phrasing; the only change is that it now has a truly gender-neutral word instead of the pseudo-gender-neutral man. What’s wrong with that?
To truly render that phrase in modern English, you need to either pluralize it or recast it entirely:
Humans are social animals.
Humanity is a social species.
Somehow the “generic singular” which works with man does not work with human. Why not?
Answer
"The human being is a social animal."
(See relevant Google Ngram Viewer chart that confirms that this usage exists and seems to be more common than something like "The human is a social animal.")
"Man" in this construction just doesn't behave like a normal singular noun, so you can't substitute one. You have to use an ordinary singular noun phrase, and singular noun phrases in English usually have to include some determiner like the or a (the main exception I can think of is mass nouns like "water" or "grass"). In these kind of "generic singular" contexts, the definite article the is often used as the determiner of the singular noun.
It doesn't seem very unusual to me that the word "man" developed unique grammatical features like this. It has a very general meaning and words like this often undergo some degree of "grammaticalization". In German, "man" has become even more grammaticalized and is an indefinite pronoun. In French, the Latin noun homo "man" developed into the indefinite pronoun on, which subsequently gained a further grammatical use as a first-person plural pronoun.
I am not sure about the usage of infinitives in this sentence:
Finally, one of the accused confessed to have forged the director's
signature on the report.
Could anyone explain correct usage?
There are several questions here on quoting a question within a sentence, but most of them deal with the quote being at the end of the larger sentence. What if it's in the middle?
In many cultures, "How are you?" is often asked at the beginning of a conversation.
I can't really think of any other way to write this, except maybe to add a comma immediately after the quote, but having a question mark in the middle of a sentence just kind of niggles at me a bit. Is this correct?
Answer
That is the correct punctuation. The issue comes up in dialogue as well. If a character asks a question, then does something, it would be written like this: "What's for dinner?" John asked as he strode into the kitchen.
The question mark belongs to his question, and the period after 'kitchen' ends the entire sentence. The only clue (in your case) that the sentence isn't over, is that not only is the next character lower case, but also the clause hasn't even started yet. The intro phrase "In many cultures," is incomplete.
My fish's native habitat is rice fields.
My fish's native habitat are rice fields.
Which one is correct? I'm pretty sure it's the first, since 'is' modifies 'habitat,' but it still sounds weird...
Answer
It may sound weird, but it is still correct. Singular nouns take singular verbs. In this case, the singular noun is habitat. Thus, is is the correct form of the verb to be in this case.
My fish's native habitat is rice fields.
To make it sound more natural, you could reverse the order thus:
Rice fields are my fish's native habitat.
Look at this video at 1:09 (Source). The man said "carrots too" /ˈkærəts tuː/ but it sounds like he said /ˈkærət suː/. The /t/ got omitted completely.
However, I don't see people omit /t/ in "stamp" /stæmp/ (Source)
I have another example. The /t/ after /s/ got eliminated completely. See this video at 3:25 (Source): "...wasn't the best idea" "/..best aɪˈdɪə/" became "/..besaɪˈdɪə/".
So, when we see /st/,
can can omit the /t/? or
do we have any rule as to when we should omit /t/ from /st/ and when we should not?
Is it grammatically correct to say “I teach myself subject”?
Context: my girlfriend is Italian, and remarked that “I teach myself” has no meaningful equivalent in Italian — ordinarily they would use “to learn” to say “I’m learning”, where the learning is happening under one’s own effort, and not being taught by a second party. In English, I’d often say “I teach myself”.
She asked whether I’d use “I teach myself” in formal English and I genuinely don’t know. Is this considered grammatically correct?
Is it correct to say "This is too many "without a subject just like "This is too much"phrase?
The context might be a class growing in the number of its students this year.
Grammar rules say that hadn't is used for unreal past conditions, but why can't we use simple past negation instead of past perfect?
If I hadn't come to the meeting, it wouldn't have happened.
If I didn't come to the meeting, it wouldn't happen.
Does the second sentence also imply that "I did come, that's why it happened"?
What is the correct use of the verb in the following sentences:
In the first and second example, I think the question is Could you, so the rest of the sentence should be written in simple form. The second example follows this "rule", however, the first insists on adding another interrogative form in does a deputy coroner have.
In the third example I think that What kind is the question, but there is an additional interrogative form at the end.
Which one is correct?
Thank you!
What is the best way to punctuate a range of hyphenated numbers, e.g., sections 12-3 through 12-7?
EDIT: Just to reply to those who marked this as a duplicate, I really fail to see how the post that this question purportedly duplicates is responsive my question. I'm not expressing a misunderstanding of en-dashes and hyphens, but rather asking a question about preferred usage. In fact, the top answer (which I think is correct) suggests not using a dash or a hyphen at all.
"How many friends should I bring? "you can bring one…….maybe '1 1/2' friends." The question was "plural" so is answered in a "plural" form, but logically refers to "singular" (=1).
A single word that could refer to the (implied) integer between 1 and 2.
Is there any difference between:
-
and
-- or in some cases, a long dash
I have seen these two used lots of places but I really don't know the difference.
Please anyone tell me when we have to use "has been, have been , had been" and something started in past and still continuing is it possible to use has been ?
I always forget the rule about if something is possessive put 's at the end, for example "the sailor's hat". I know some people say to remember because it has a different meaning if it's plural (e.g. "the sailors hat" would mean there's multiple sailors owning the hat) but it also doesn't make sense if 's is expanded to it is (e.g. "the sailor is hat"). Does anyone have any advice on how to remember this?
I had to look it up and found this article which claims that if something has an s at the end already it is preferable to add 's (see note on rule 2). I was taught not to. Is it better to add a second s? For example Chris's golf clubs vs Chris' golf clubs.
Answer
I’m sure this is a duplicate question, but here’s something I wrote for a friend. If your noun is singular and ends in s then whether you add another s after the apostrophe is a matter of style, not grammar.
The London Underground has a station called St. James’s Park (after the Royal Park of that name). There is a stadium in Newcastle called St. James’ Park, which is pronounced like the Underground station.
Apostrophes are easy. Here’s a short summary which your teachers could have used. There isn’t even a test at the end. Note: I’m criticising the education you were given, not you for having suffered that.
Simple plurals never have an apostrophe, even if you’re a greengrocer.
- My lists are scattered all over the house.
- All the tomatoes are green.
- I was born in the 1960s.
- All MPs are [fill in something here].
Possessives do have an apostrophe. Write the noun, with its plural “s” if it’s a plural and then put an apostrophe, and add an s if necessary. You don’t need another s if you’ve already got one.
- The car’s owner ran off. (One car, then the apostrophe, then an s because you don’t already have one)
- My MP’s expenses are entirely above board. (One MP, apostrophe and s)
- The cats’ owner fed them. (More than one cat, then the apostrophe and you don’t need another s)
- The soldiers’ CO was awarded the DSM. (More than one soldier, apostrophe and no additional s)
- James’ book was blue. (One James, then the apostrophe, and you don’t need another s although you could add one because James is singular)
- The sheep’s wool was white. (One sheep, apostrophe, s)
- The sheep’s wool was white. (Two sheep, apostrophe, s)
Possessive pronouns don’t have an apostrophe.
- Their car
- The car is theirs.
- Its wheels are chrome.
- Your car is black.
- The black car is yours.
“It’s” only has an apostrophe when it’s a contraction of “it is”, and the apostrophe indicates a letter missed out, in much the same way as “don’t” for “do not” or “you’re” for “you are”. When it is a pronoun you want to make a possessive pronoun, remember the rule that possessive pronouns don’t have an apostrophe.
- It’s a car. Its wheels are chrome.
Simples :-)
One reason given for why possessives have an apostrophe is that they are actually contractions similar to “don’t/do not”. For example, there is a 16th century dance called “Lord Salsbury his Pavan”, which became shortened to “Lord Salsbury’s Pavan” because it’s easier to say. That’s why possessive pronouns like “theirs” and “your” have no apostrophe: they’re not contractions. This may or may not be correct — evolution of language is more complex than that — but it’s a handy way of remembering.
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:
and
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".
I have a sentence:
Ms.Cho relayed her concerns about the company's financial situation while she was having a meeting with the manager.
My friend reduced it:
Ms.Cho relayed her concerns about the company's financial situation having a meeting with the manager.
I think the word while cannot be omitted in this sentence, but he doesn't agree with me.
Is he right?
Please help me! thanks
Which would be correct?
What is your favorite song, and explain why? (I'm thinking this is right.)
What is your favorite
song, and explain why.
This could be written as, "What is your favorite song? Explain why." But that seems kind of clunky. Looking at similar questions on this site I see that maybe there isn't a great answer to this (or maybe that this question is more straight forward than what I was looking at). I dislike the Chicago Manual of Style format, so ideally one of the two choices above would be correct.
While speaking, when they want to highlight some difference, people often do it by stating where they come from.
Which of these phrases is correct:
I guess the second one is correct but I have also heard the first phrase too. That's why I am confused.
Here is a question I got:
Will the correct answer be
"Not only does Earth Day deserve a commemoration, but also our total dedication."
or
"Earth Day deserves not only a commemoration, but also our total dedication."?
Answer
"Earth Day deserves not only a commemoration, but also our total dedication."
This is correct here, since is perfectly maintains the parallelism. However, you have to remove the comma.
"Not only does Earth Day deserve a commemoration, but also our total dedication."
This breaks the parallelism, so it is incorrect. A better alternative would be "Not only does Earth Day deserve a commemoration, it deserves our total dedication".
If I were to ask the name of two people, should I say "What is the name of PersonA and PersonB?" because each person has only one name or "What are the names of PersonA or PersonB?" because I am asking for two names?
Answer
Pointing to the people and saying
What are their names?
would be the safest and easiest.
You have to have some way of indicating the people, after all, if you don't know their names, in order to ask for them. So one common conversational script goes like this:
This way A can imply that B mentioned the names, and pretend that they have slipped from memory, temporarily.
In the following example, is it appropriate to use a or an as the indefinite article, and why?
He ate __ green apple.
I know that in the case of just "apple", it would be "an apple," but I've heard conflicting answers for "green apple," where the noun is separated from the article by an adjective.
Also, which is more appropriate in this case:
He ate __ enormous Pop-Tart.
Answer
The question of "a" vs "an" is always decided by the pronunciation of the word that follows the article. Thus, various geographical regions that have different pronunciation rules may use a different article for the same word.
Words that begin with a vowel sound, such as "apple", "egg", or "hour" are preceded by "an".
All other words, such as "cake", "pie", and "user" (which begins with a y sound), are preceded by "a".
Except (as lifted from @Nohat's comment below) - The rules before "h" are a little tricky, but clear: if a word begins with an "h" sound and the first syllable is stressed (like "house"), then it never takes "an". If the first syllable is not stressed (like "historical") then it is possible to use "an". Some usage authorities would say you must use "an" in those cases, but Nohat is not one of those authorities. You find both "a" and "an" used before words like "historical".
So to answer your actual question:
He ate a green apple.
He ate an enormous Pop-Tart.
"Green" does not begin with a vowel sound, so we use "a".
"Enormous", on the other hand, does begin with a vowel sound, so we use "an".
Englishgrammar.org has an article discussing cases where an infinitive does not use the word "to." One case is with many causative verbs like "make" and "let."
I want the water to run
*I want the water run
I make the water run.
*I make the water to run.
It is also the case with "perception" verbs.
I see the water run.
I hear the water run.
The site describes "help" as a special case that can be followed by an infinitive either with or without "to."
She helps me stand.
She helps me to stand.
My question, essentially, is why "help" is a special case that can either ellipse the "to" or not, and what the semantic implications of that choice are?
My hunch is that since one category of other verbs that do not require a "to" infinitive are causative, the choice of whether or not to include "to" has a semantic bearing on whether the subject in the sentence is perceived as a causal agent.
So in the example, "she helps me [to] stand," we would infer from the inclusion of "to" that the subject (she) is less of a causal agent than when "to" is excluded.
It seems possible that there are no broadly applicable implications from the inclusion or exclusion of "to" in an infinitive following "help," that perhaps it is an aberration by way of etymology or coincidence, but I've been unable to find sources that analyze the case beyond identifying it as an outlier.
At first glance, sentence 1 below seems more correct because there are two subjects. However, something seems more natural about sentence 2. Maybe there is something abbreviated, elliptical, or adverbial in sentence 2.
In sentences of this structure, should the verb be singular or plural?
Not only a book, but also a pencil are on the table
Not only a book, but also a pencil is on the table.
Answer
The correct word should be is.
You wouldn't normally say "a book are on the table" or "a pencil are on the table". Since you did not make a list of nouns or use any plural nouns, the verb should remain singular.
I'm not a native English speaker, but I like the language and want to learn all about it. I'm also an active world builder and I made a few species/ races, but I'm having trouble to see what is the multitude form of the species/ race names.
Here are the names of my created species:
Hryll, Anari, Korth, Quarth
So I understand a person can say 'I'm a Hryll' or Anari and so on. But what if I want to point to their people as a whole. Can I still say 'The Hryll are...' or do I need to turn it into Hryllian or something.
I couldn't find any rules on this because I don't really know what the name is of what I mean/ I'm looking for.
Answer
Geth (Mass Effect), Qunari (Dragon Age Inquisition), Draenei (World of Warcraft) all follow the rule where both the noun, adjective and collective name are the same.
That doesn't mean it's required to be like that (you can make different derivations if you want), but that usage is accepted if the name is derived from another language (not spoken by the people referencing them).
The term 'pronoun' itself causes plenty of confusion.
Its etymology suggests that a pronoun somehow stands for a noun:
mid-15c., from pro- and noun; modeled on Middle French pronom, from Latin pronomen, from pro "in place of" + nomen "name, noun" (see name (n.)). A loan-translation of Greek antonymia.
A pronoun, however, doesn't stand for a noun but a noun phrase (NP), as stated in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language by Huddleston, Rodney; Pullum, Geoffrey (CGEL) (Page 1461):
The traditional term ‘pronoun’ is based on the idea that words of this
class ‘stand for’ nouns. Traditional grammar does not work with a
constituent structure model like that assumed in this book, and hence
does not draw the distinction we do between nouns and NPs. When
adapted to the present framework, therefore, the traditional idea is
that pronouns are words that ‘stand for’ NPs.
But this, being "the traditional idea", doesn't mean it's safe to say that pronouns stand for NPs, either.
Firstly, pronouns such as what, who, I, and you do not stand for any NPs or even any thing, because some such pronouns "[fall] outside the scope of anaphora," as CGEL puts it. For example, none of these pronouns stands for anything:
What do you want?
Who is he? (Looking at a man.)
I love you.
Secondly, pronouns such as "it" can stand for clauses:
If he was disappointed by her response he did not show it. [pro-clause] (CGEL page 1463)
At this point, I wonder how continuing to use the term 'pronoun' can be anything but confusing. But CGEL wants to keep the term:
In the present grammar we retain the traditional category of pronoun,
but introduce a further category based on the idea of ‘standing for’ –
the category of pro-form.
The literal and obvious meaning arising from the term is so incongruous with what the term purports to refer to that it seriously hinders our understanding of what pronouns actually are.
What I agree with CGEL is that a pronoun is a noun because it acts like one, e.g., acting as a subject, an object, and a predicative complement in a clause, and acting as a head of an NP. And a couple of previous questions received answers agreeing that it is a noun:
Pronouns: a word class or a subclass of nouns?
Now, if pronouns are to belong to nouns, between common nouns and proper nouns, pronouns seem closer to proper nouns than to common nouns in the sense that they don't take any determiners or, in most cases, any dependents.
Also, while some proper nouns such as America and England refer to the the same thing regardless of context, other proper nouns such as Jones and Mom can refer to different things depending on context. If we call the latter proper nouns ad hoc proper nouns, can we not use the same term for pronouns or at least consider them as such?
Is it correct to say
Tsunami coupling in the code 'helps determine' human casualty
i.e., is use of multiple verbs consecutively correct?
Also, is it 'help determine' or 'helps determine'?
Answer
The two verbs reference different things: helps relates to 'Tsunami coupling' here, while determine relates to an abstract "one"; moreover, there's a to elided in the sentence as well. Read it as:
Tsunami coupling in the code helps (one) (to) determine human casuality.
The verbs there are not actually adjacent. Even if they were, that would hardly matter since they are unrelated.
The sentence is grammatically correct.
meta: If you still find the structure a little complicated, you may want to ask the question on ell.stackexchange.com
I'm looking for an adjective that means "full of integrity." I can only think of 'integruous' which is 100% made up. I regularly seek for this word when trying to identify people as having integrity, or decisions being made with integrity. For use in a sentence such as "She is a/n 'integrous' woman." Or "If you want to be more highly respected, ensure that your actions are 'integruous.'"
In this post, I am asking for constituency tests to assist me in writing exercises about phrasal verbs for non-native speakers of English. I respectfully ask that only native speakers answer the questions in this post.
Some background --- I am from the U.S. I am currently working as a private English tutor in Brazil. A common request from my students is an explanation of phrasal verbs. I have looked at a variety of materials on the subject, and have been thoroughly dissatisfied with all of them. The materials are either extremely superficial (read: dodging the issue) or so verbose that my students would be terrified. None of them state how they decided what is a phrasal verb and what is not with any clarity. One book by a respected publisher actually listed verbs that take both a direct and an indirect object as phrasal verbs.
I turned to the academic literature on phrasal verbs. There is plenty of discussion and controversy, but for the purposes of my exercises I chose to follow the strategy outlined in Clayton Darwin and Loretta Gray's article "Going after the Phrasal Verb: An Alternative Approach to Classification" (TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 1).
Following Darwin and Gray's strategy has proved helpful for nearly all of the verbs that I want to cover. However, there are a few that I am uncertain about. Below I have written some sentences based on their strategy, with the name of the test after each item. Please indicate your judgment of the sentence. Thank you in advance for your help.
A. I figured on $1000 for my vacation and on $500 for my cell phone. (particle repetition test)
B. On how much was he figuring? (fronting test)
C. What was the amount of money on which she was figuring? (relative clause test)
D. Mary figured and bet on a good turnout for the event. (verb insertion test)
E. A thief broke into my car and into my house. (particle repetition test)
F. Into what building did the thief break? (fronting test)
G. A thief broke silently into our building. (adverb insertion)
I wanted to know why and when to use double-genitive. So for example why can't we use 'I am a fan of YOU' instead of 'I am fan of YOURS'. This is so as using the word 'of' itself meant that the noun mentioned first (before 'of') already belongs to the second noun (after 'of'). For example, in 'I am a fan of YOU' , the word 'of', to me, already suggests that 'I am your fan' without using 'YOURS'. It is like if we use 'fan of YOURS', it meant like 'I am your fan that belongs to you'.
So why is it necessary to use the double-genitive here?
A similar question has been asked: Why use apostrophe-s to denote possession when using 'of'
But one of the answers said that it is optional to put apostrophe for the example given in the question except to clarify the meaning of the sentence. (This is a picture of Bill/Bill's) So, what are some examples that are compulsory to use the double-genitive?
For examples, is it:
1) 'fan of YOURS' or 'fan of YOU'?
2) 'The death of HIS is...' or 'The death of HIM is...'
3) 'friend of HER' or 'friend of HERS'
4) 'queen of England' or 'queen of England's'
On a side note, we say:
5) 'meaning of the WORD' instead of 'meaning of the WORD'S'
6) 'son of my FRIEND' instead of 'son of my FRIEND'S'
7) 'plays of Shakespeare' instead of 'plays of Shakespeare's'
8) 'city of Rome' instead of 'city of Rome's'
Overall, my question is why is it that we sometimes uses double-genitive and sometimes don't? Is it because of whether the noun before 'of' is an object or a person except in the case of 6)? If not, when do we use double-genitive and why? (in the event that the meaning of the sentence doesn't change regardless of it being double-genitive or not)
It would be great if someone could explain this sentence structure to me:
"Why is it that you don't like me?"
I don't understand how all of the components come together.
What is the link between it and that?
Is "that you don't like me" a relative clause that modifies "it"?
Is "it" the subject?
Thank you in advance.
(EDITED minimally 5 hours after posting, to apply corrections in terminology suggested by members in comments -- the original question was "is 'infant child' grammatically correct?")
Infant is one of my favorite words, and I also like the term "infant child" which is found quite commonly on Google search. However the common definition of 'infant' is 'child, very young' and the medical definition of 'infant' is 'child aged below 1 year.' The word 'child' is implicit within the meaning of 'infant'. This seems to be an example of redundancy which English language teachers and textbooks generally advise students to avoid. In that case, Is it all right to use the term "infant child" in writing? (If not, why is it found used on websites and even by the media?)
Examples:
http://creativeplayrooms.com/infant-child-care-programs/
http://www.srhc.com/clinical_services/infant_child_development_program.php
Answer
A dictionary is your best friend here...
child (Oxford)
A young human being below the age of puberty or below the legal age of
majority.
The age of majority, in the UK and USA, is 18 (except for a few states in America) courtesy of Wikipedia:
Alabama (19),
Colorado (21),
Mississippi (21),
Nebraska (19),
Puerto
Rico (21)
puberty: (Oxford)
The period during which adolescents reach sexual maturity and become
capable of reproduction.
What does this mean in terms of age? From NHS.uk:
The average age for girls to begin puberty is 11, while for boys the
average age is 12. But there’s no set timetable, so don’t worry if
your child reaches puberty before or after their friends. It’s
completely normal for puberty to begin at any point from the ages of 8
to 14. The process takes about four years overall.
So, child refers to any human being up to at least approximately eight years old, but conventionally up to about 11-12 or depending on who you are talking to and their personal opinions regarding the use of the word, all the way up to eighteen years old (the age of majority).
On the other hand: -
infant (Oxford)
A very young child or baby.
Note the use of the word 'baby', or very young. An infant isn't just a young child, it's a very young child, not much older than a baby.
So there you have it, yes it's perfectly fine to use the phrase infant child.
Infant is modifying child, such that it is clear the child you are speaking of is a baby or a very young child.
Regarding the grammatical construction this is very basic English. The phrase is working the same way chicken soup, works for instance. Chiken is modifying soup, like infant is modifying child.
The first noun is termed a noun adjunct, attributive noun, or noun modifier:
In grammar, a noun adjunct or attributive noun or noun (pre)modifier
is an optional noun that modifies another noun; it is a noun
functioning as a pre-modifier in a noun phrase. For example, in the
phrase "chicken soup" the noun adjunct "chicken" modifies the noun
"soup".
You can read more about noun modifiers, on the associated Wikipedia page.
I'm having a devil of a time trying to determine how to punctuate an embedded quoted question within a declarative sentence. A comma is used to introduce the quote, but things get hairy at the end of the quote.
When Ms. Peremptory asked, "Are you ever going to be ready?" I was unable to respond.
Is this situation best handled with no closing comma? Placement in any of the possible spaces between the closing "y" in "ready" and the subject of the sentence produces visually confounding -- though possibly grammatically correct -- results.
One a comedy show, one of the comedians was a female who was black and from the UK. The host introduced her as a the first black, female, British comedian he has had on the show.
On a package of salmon, the label read Smoked Norwegian Steelhead Salmon. (There were no commas because it was a package—commas are necessary in prose though right?)
When using multiple, consecutive adjectives for a noun, is there a rule of thumb (or even hard and fast rule) for ordering of the adjectives? A reasonable theory is that it should go from least to most specific, but since English tends to do things in reverse, it would go the other way around. That fits for the salmon, but not the comedienne’s list, yet both feel natural.