apostrophe - Odd possessive form of a proper name: Why does Dryden write “Lord Nonsuch his” instead of “Lord Nonsuch’s” but “Bibber’s” instead of “Bibber his”?

While researching a question posed on EL&U, I came across this list of the characters in John Dryden’s The Wild Gallant (1663), from a 1735 collection of Dryden’s works:

DRAMATIS PERSONAE.

MEN.

Lord NONSUCH, an old rich humorous Lord.

...

BIBBER, a Taylor.

SETSTONE, a Jeweller.

WOMEN.

Lady CONSTANCE, Lord Nonsuch his Daughter.

Madam ISABELLA, her Cousin.

Mrs. BIBBER, the Taylor’s Wife.

I was struck by the fact that Mrs. Bibber is identified as “the Taylor’s Wife” while Lady Constance is described as “Lord Nonsuch his Daughter.” The chief difference that I see between the two is that “a Taylor” is a common noun (for the occupation of tailor), whereas “Lord Nonsuch” is a proper name.

In Act 1 Scene 1 of the play, a character named Failer repeats the formulation in a conversation with his fellow hanger-on Burr:

Failer. I gad we two have a constant Revenue out of him [Sir Timorous] : He would now be admitted Suitor to my Lady Constance Nonsuch, my Lord Nonsuch his Daughter ; our Neighbour here in Fleetstreet.

But less than a page later, this stage direction appears:

Enter Loveby and Boy ; followed by Frances, Bibber’s Wife.

Since Bibber is the tailor’s last name, it appears that Dryden is handling the two proper names by entirely different rules. Elsewhere in the play, Dryden has the character Loveby say “Call me at my Lord Nonsuch his house, and I’ll go with you,” and somewhat later he has some bailiffs say “We arrest you, Sir, at my Lord Nonsuch his Suit.” In contrast, Dryden has various characters refer to "Will Bibber's humour," "Madam Bibber's name," and "Mr. Bibber's name."

My question is, why does Dryden use these different forms to express a possessive: “Lord Nonsuch his” versus “Bibber’s”? Is “Lord Nonsuch his” a survival of an antiquated form that had died out by Dryden’s time except with regard to persons of eminence, or was it never common except in certain particular circumstances, or does some other circumstance explain the difference in treatment?

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I am aware of a book from 1576 by George Pettie titled A Petite Pallace of Pettie his Pleasure, contayning many pretie Hystories by him, set foorth in comely Colours, and most delightfully discoursed, where "Pettie his Pleasure" seems equivalent to "Pettie's Pleasure."

And Robert Dodsley, Theatrical Records: or, An Account of English Dramatic Authors and Their Works (1756) has this item among the entries for Shakespeare:

The whole Contentione betweene the two famouse Houses of Lancastre and Yorke, wythe the Tragical End of the good Duke Humphrey, Richarde Duke of Yorke and Henrie the 6th. In two Partes.

These two Plays are printed without a Date, but we are assured they must be acted about this Time ; for at the End of Romeo and Juliet, printed for Andrew Wise in 1597, is the following Advertisement. At the Shoppe of Andrew Wyse, Mr. William Shakespeare his Henrie the 6th. in two Parts, may be boughte. The 3d Part is printed in 1600, but we make no Doubt that it was printed before that Date, tho' the Edition is not in our Possession.

But here again the wording “Shakespeare his Henrie the 6th" is old (from 1597). I also note that editions of Dryden’s works from as early as 1808 change “Lord Nonsuch his” to “Lord Nonsuch’s”).

And likewise from The Private Diary of Mr. John Dee (1842), an entry dated December 12, 1587, lists several books burned on a table, including these:

the copy of the man of Badwise Conclusions for the Transmution of metalls ; and 40 leaves in 4°, intitled, Extractiones Dunstani, which he himself extracted and noted out of Dunstan his boke, and the very boke of Dunstan was but cast on the bed hard by from the table.

So "Pettie his Pleasure," “Shakespeare his Henrie the 6th," and "Dunstan his boke" were all used in the sixteenth century. But I can't explain from these instances the differential treatment in 1663 of "Lord Nonsuch his daughter" and "Bibber's wife."

american english - When do you exactly use a single quote and a double quotes?

He said that the car was "beautifully scratched."
He said that the car was "beautifully scratched".

Where should the full stop be?

1. He said that the car was "pretty."
   


2. He said that the car was 'pretty.'
   


3. He said that the car was "pretty".
   



4. He said that the car was 'pretty'.
   

The difference is in the placement of the full stop and usage of quotes.
Out of these four, which is correct?

nouns - Does word order make a difference here?

I was writing an essay and I wrote this particular sentence:

"No bought views"

then, while checking for grammatical errors, I thought that this sentence should be correct this way:

"No views bought"

But I couldn't explain myself, as a non-native English speaker, why the first sentence isn't correct, or if it is correct in some colloquial way.

When is dropping the definite (or indefinite) article permissible and why?

I seem to be obsessed with those today.

Okay, here goes:

From The Ballad of Reading Gaol, by Oscar Wilde:

And I and all the souls in pain,
Who tramped the other ring,
Forgot if we ourselves had done
A great or little thing,
And watched with gaze of dull amaze
The man who had to swing.

From The Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe:

Open here I flung the shutter,
when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he;
not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Most native speakers here would know these two poems by heart (and, I suspect, some non-native ones would too): we read them over and over and commit them to memory as kids. It would not therefore be immediately obvious to everyone that the articles are missing. But they are. How is this justified?

adjectives - Non-sea salt sulfate or non-sea-salt sulfate?

Atmospheric sea salt particles contain sulfate but also other sources of atmospheric sulfate exist. In scientific studies on particulate sulfate air pollution it is common to split between sulfate related to sea salt emissions and sulfate related to other sources. The sulfate from other sources is denoted as non-sea salt sulfate, non-sea-salt sulfate, and non-sea-salt-sulfate in the scientific literature. Thus, there is no consistent usage.

I assume that non(-)sea(-)salt is considered as adjective to sulfate. Therefore, non-sea-salt-sulfate is not correct. Based on answers to the question Pluralization rule for “five-year-old children”, “20 pound note”, “10 mile run” and on the answer Eleven-year-old boy rule. I would assume that non-sea-salt sulfate is the correct way of writing it. However, from my subjective feeling, non-sea salt sulfate is more commonly used.

My question is: Where do hyphens need to be placed in American English?

If there are differences in British English, I would be also interested in them.

Answer

If you were describing the salt, it would be sea salt or non-sea salt. As you're making the whole of non-sea salt into a compound adjective, (as a pendantic Brit) I agree with you & would say that the entire compound adjective should be hyphenated, for clarity amongst other reasons, hence I suggest non-sea-salt sulphate. It may be more 'ugly' but it's clearer and unmabiguous.

Of course, you could get round the problem by referring to sulphate from non-sea salt - but that rather dodges the question.

P.S. I'd written this answer before seeing either of WS2's comments - and hadn't even noticed that I was spelling sulphate differently from the questioner: I just automatically spelt it the 'right' way! :-)

grammaticality - What's the deal with exophoric pronoun references?

I have been reading about errors with exophoric pronoun references (the paper was mostly aimed at preparing one for a certain standardized test), and found the author saying "In the context of this test, exophoric pronouns are always incorrect." So I have two questions:

1) Just to make sure that I understand exophoric pronoun references correctly, I am wondering if something like

John went outside in the middle of the day. He found the weather to be calming and relaxing.

would be incorrect within the context of the standardized test? It looks very natural to me, but I think that's because in my native tongue such a reference is acceptable ("he" is exophoric here, am I right?)

2) How unwelcome are the exophoric references in general? Is it just this test being picky, or should I refrain from using them elsewhere?

Answer

In your example, the pronoun "he" that begins the second sentence is not exophoric. It is endophoric, because its referent is manifest in the text.

"In discourse in general, the third person pronouns may be either endophoric, referring to a noun phrase within the text, . . . or exophoric, referring to someone or something manifest to the participants from the situation or from their mutual knowledge ('Here he is,' for example, on seeing someone who both sender and receiver are expecting). . . . citation.

What your test instructions admonish you to do is to forego exophoric pronouns that may seem obvious to you but are not to others.

"They say cells never die; they only divide."

In the above sentence, they could be exophoric or endophoric. If it referred to scientists who did the research and wrote the paper (and therefore are referenced in it), it is endophoric. If it is a general statement about some unnamed scientists somewhere (or the elusive "they" who are responsible for all rumored activities), which the author assumes to be obvious to the reader, then it is exophoric. Just make sure you use pronouns that refer to real persons or things in your text.

Phrases similar to "what would you do?"

I'm looking for common phrases similar to "What would you do?" I'd like any phrase that signifies the call to action to make a difficult hypothetical decision. For example, "Take your pick" is a possible answer because it is a common phrase, but it doesn't work that well in context of making a difficult decision so it wouldn't work.

I know this is a really specific request, but ideally the phrase really captures the essence of difficult hypothetical decision, perhaps an ethical dilemma.
E.g. "Would you prefer a slow and mildly painful death, or a quick and very painful one? WHAT WOULD YOU DO?" (replacing what would you do with something else)

grammaticality - Is "must" ever grammatical as a past tense verb?

I have seen uses of must that appear to be in the simple past tense. Sometimes these seem grammatical, but sometimes not. Examples that help illustrate my confusion:

He knew he must go to New York - sounds fine to me.

He went to New York because he must - sounds questionable.

Because he must go to New York, he bought plane tickets - sounds completely ungrammatical.

He must go to New York - grammatical, but with no other verbs to provide context, can't interpret this as being past-tense.

My question: is this past-tense use of must ever acceptable? Is it only acceptable in certain contexts - if so, what are those contexts and why?

(Note - I'm not looking for had to. Have is a different verb, so had to expresses the same meaning as the past tense of must, but it itself is not the past tense of must.)

Answer

Rarely, must is used as a past tense. Belshazzar, by H. Rider Haggard, has we went because we must, in a prose style which is perhaps deliberately archaic to reflect the ancient Egyptian context.

In this odd snippet, If Thoreau went because he would, Hawthorne went because he must, one might say the author is "playing with language".

But here's Ralph Waldo Emerson with What he did, he did because he must. I would not wish to say Emerson doesn't know his own language.

From comments under @Henry's answer, it seems something quite odd has been going on. Many people will know the archaic present tense mote because Freemasons & such still say So mote it be in a "ritual" context. Bizarrely, the past tense "must" eclipsed "mote" for present tense usage. But in so doing, "must" somehow almost completely lost its ability to still be used as a past tense.

In spite of all the above, ordinary mortals in ordinary contexts today should stick with the standard position put forward by other answers. Use had to for the past tense.

pronouns - "Me and my wife" or "my wife and me"

Which is correct: me and my wife or my wife and me? The sentence in which this is used is

Ms. Smith informed me and my wife that she was afraid of being accosted.

pronouns - "...will divide the people (who/whom) most need to be brought together"

With a two-party system, our nation will divide the people (who/whom)
most need to be brought together.

Do I use who or whom for this sentence? I think that "people" is the direct object and warrants the use of "whom", but I want to make sure I'm right.

Subject-verb agreement. Subject is plural, but not really

Once again I have a line that I wrote for another site that has me a bit bugged.

Months in the freezer is going to pretty much eliminate any risk of consuming a live parasite.

Months is obviously plural, but I'm pretty sure that the line is correct as written.

How?

Or potentially, why not?

Answer

In this sentence, although the time period is a plural of months, we are talking about the single time period.

Three months in the freezer is a noun phrase, and because it is one time period it is singular, so using is is the correct. This is the same reason that we say ten years is a long time to wait instead of ten years are a long time to wait - ten years is a single time period.

grammar - The class is/are all working on a project together

The class is/are all working on a project together.

I am curious to know whether I can use both is and are in this sentence - with a small difference in meaning.

syntactic analysis - Is the word 'the' unnecessary in the English language?

Measuring the frequency of words in almost every English book or document (which is long enough) ends up ranking the word 'the' as the most used word. Is there any solid function the word 'the' plays in context of a sentence other than making the sentence "sound right"?

For example, let me strip-out the word 'the' from this question's title and the above paragraph:

Is word 'the' unnecessary in English language?

Measuring frequency of words in almost every English book or document (which is long enough) ends up ranking word 'the' as most used word. Is there any solid function word 'the' plays in context of a sentence other than making sentence "sound right"?

I believe, greater the frequency of a word used across all the books and documents in a language, lesser will be its requirement in determining the context of the subject being spoken. There is no specific example I could point out, in which the word 'the' actually plays a vital role in describing anything. So, why isn't this word removed from the English language? I'm asking this question because, I'm not able to understand the requirement of the word 'the' in sentences. Removing the word 'the' almost always never tends to change the meaning of the sentences.

Answer

Articles including "the" are necessary in English, not only because they are integral to the syntax and grammar that form the structure of the language, but also because they convey some important elements of meaning that are currently communicated briefly and efficiently through the use of articles.

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I am Indian just like you, and I can see where your question comes from. We Indians are used to understanding English without giving much importance to articles, not least because many Indians (not you and I) don't use them properly, and we learned to do without.

[Members please note: this Q is therefore not trivial or a duplicate but an outcome of how non-native speakers perceive the structure of the English language relative to its applied function.]

For many non-native English speakers like Chinese and Indians, the only function of the English language is often to convey some sort of literal meaning in communication:

I not going school today.

Father asked me go to bank and pay bill.

This is rudimentary English spoken/written without basic expertise, but we can infer the correct meaning most of the time, even if someone did not include the article a/ an/ the. However, articles serve some important functions to convey precise meanings that don't need to be guessed at:

Definite Article: the

The definite article is used before singular and plural nouns when the noun is specific or particular. "The" signals that the noun is definite, that it refers to a particular member of a group. For example:

"The dog that bit me ran away." Here, we're talking about a specific dog, the dog that bit me (...)

"I saw the elephant at the zoo." Here, we're talking about a specific noun. Probably there is only one elephant at the zoo.

Source: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/540/01/

Grammaticality is often the main consideration. To write the same sentences as "dog that bit me ran away" and "I saw elephant at zoo" would be considered ungrammatical and a sign of underdeveloped English skills, even if a competent English user did it thinking the article superfluous. That's because articles are part and parcel of the language, and expected in both speech and writing.

However, the definite article does convey special and important meaning when it picks a particular noun out of a group of similar nouns, or creates a sense of "the most fitting"/ "the absolute" which meaning would be lost by omitting "the": as in

Spain is the team to beat at this World Cup (the best of all teams)

Mahatmaji was the personification of human virtues (the absolute exemplar, among all people)

Kim is the man for the job (just the right man for the job!)

Maybe the meaning is clear in most cases without the use of "the." That doesn't mean that articles including "the" can be omitted without disrupting the formal structure of a language that has articles. Even the informal spoken form is influenced by this structure. This is the form the language has evolved into over centuries.

All languages including French, Spanish, Hindi and Tamil have such words that look unnecessary from outside but are integral to the syntax and grammar when looked at "from inside." Articles like "the" are essential in English -- not necessarily to convey meaning (although the meaning they convey is often significant), but for being grammatical, and to preserve the structural integrity of the language. Rather more importantly it defines the language. To make this point more effectively I quote here Dan Bron's comment under the question:

It’s not that it’s impossible not to have them, of course, it’s that they’re “not useless” but more importantly “not English” without them. You’d be talking about some other language. Sure, we can imagine English without articles. And also without written vowels. And also without affixes, or as agglutinative, or whatever, but then you’re talking about another language, which will make it easier to talk about some things and harder to talk about others. It’s the Sorties paradox. Articles convey meaning and provide function in English, and no, you can’t have English without them.

How do you conjugate Early Modern English verbs (other than present tense)?

I was wondering how one might conjugate verbs in early modern English in various tenses. I am aware of the fact that for second person and third person singular specifically, the verb endings are -est and -eth respectively, but once you move away from simple present tense, it seems to get a bit trickier.

I recall reading somewhere that if you want to make a verb past simple, you add did between the noun and the verb. For example,

He ?dideth walk to the store.

As opposed to the modern English,

He walked to the store.

And as opposed to how I might say it:

He ?walkedeth to the store.

Unfortunately, I haven’t learned quite as much of English as others may, but I know enough to suspect that “He dideth walk to the store” might be a different tense entirely from “He walkedeth to the store”, at least in modern English.

I am an aspiring and amateur writer, and there is a character that speaks entirely in Early Modern English, and so the answer to this would be quite helpful.

Using "once upon a time" in a present tense sentence?

I work in a company that sells simple children's books. A customer complained that the book changes tense randomly, and they're right. This book was created years ago and needs updating to ensure it uses correct grammar.

The book starts out like this:

Once upon a time in a faraway land, Princess $Name$ lived in a
beautiful castle atop a high hill. She had a very busy schedule, each
day slightly different from the last.

That's fine, however on all subsequent pages, the text is written in present tense, like so:

On this particular morning, Princess $Name$ awakens to the sound of a
songbird singing outside her window.

The story is designed to work in present tense, so rewriting from present tense to past tense is not an option. I'd like to rewrite the first page so it's also in present tense, but I'm not sure how.

Does it make sense to use "once upon a time" in present tense? For instance:

Once upon a time in a faraway land, Princess $Name$ lives in a
beautiful castle atop a high hill. She has a very busy schedule, each
day slightly different from the last.

But that reads weirdly to me. Alternatively, if that doesn't work grammatically, is there another way to write "once upon a time" such that it sounds ok in a present tense sentence?

Answer

I don't think "Once upon a time" can work with the present tense. There's no present tense equivalent.

Why not start,

In a faraway land, in a beautiful palace atop a high hill [there]

lives a princess. Princess $Name$?

Or you could use the Middle Eastern "There is, there is not", though that too is usually in the past tense.

grammar - Using "and" twice in a list

About using and, I've learned it is usually used in lists, between the last two items. For example:

I like movies, traveling and going out with friends.

Please tell me if the use of and twice in this next example is correct. The first and is used between the last two items of the list, and the second is used to combine two things in the second part.

I am a software developer who has permanent residence, Bachelor degree and 4 years experience in .net for developing new software and doing enhancements in existing once.

Answer

Your usage is indeed entirely correct. "And" can be used in such a way.

Just note, that in a list, the second and last element of the list is separated by a comma, which I note in both of your examples, is lacking :

I like movies, traveling and going out with friends./A comma is needed between "traveling" and "and"

So, it should be:

I like movies, traveling, and going out with friends.

That's one way of preventing confusion from the "and's"

grammar - Identifying parts of a sentence

How do the bolded sections of the sentences below function grammatically? (taken from David McCullough's John Adams)

1. Philadelphia, the provincial capital of Pennsylvania on the western bank of the Delaware River, was a true eighteenth-century metropolis, the largest, wealthiest city in British America, and the most beautiful.

   
   
   

   
   

   It seems to me that "most beautiful" could be tacked onto the the string of adjectives ( the "largest, wealthiest") that precede it. Is there a name for this sort of construction, wherein the last item in a string of modifiers is pulled out and moved to the end?

   
   




2. Distilleries and breweries were thriving. Adams found the local beer so much to his liking that he temporarily abandoned his usual hard cider.

   
   
   
   

   
   

   I'm not sure what's modifying what here. I see the main clause, "Adams found the local beer," and the subordinate clause, "that he temporarily abandoned his usual hard cider," but what's going on the middle?

   
   

word usage - Difference between audience and audiences?

I've heard some people say the word audiences in conversation. How does audiences differ from audience and when do you use it?

word choice - "for which" vs. "for what"?

Q: What's the rule-of-thumb on "for which" vs. "for what" usage? I recently wrote the sentence:

"For which data is it appropriate to use method A instead of method B"

This seems right. But I can't articulate why "for what" seems wrong.

grammaticality - What is the subject of the sentence, "The term rules includes the following: "?

I am trying to determine if I should use the singular "includes" or the plural "include" depending on whether "term" or "rules" is the subject.

grammar - Is it "get" or "gets" in "Nobody move and nobody get(s) hurt"?

Which of these is correct?

• 1.) "Nobody move and nobody gets hurt."

or should it be,

• 2.) "Nobody move and nobody get hurt."

Here's some related info in wikipedia.

Answer

• 1.) "Nobody move and nobody gets hurt."




• 2.) "Nobody move and nobody get hurt."

Both of your examples are sentences that, although each one has the appearance of an "and" coordination of two main clauses, each sentence is actually interpreted as if it was a conditional construction ("if P then Q").

In this type of construction, the first clause in each sentence is an imperative clause, which happens in your examples to retain most of its directive force (for both sentences, it retains the directive force of "Nobody move!"). The second clause can be of various different clause types (e.g. declarative, imperative, interrogative, exclamative).

The construction involves an asymmetric "and" coordination, and the topic of asymmetric coordination is often not taught in grammar usage manuals, or in classrooms (high school or lower), or by "pop grammarians", or by online grammar sites -- although we native English speakers commonly use them, and uses of them can easily be found in print and spoken forms.

In the top part of my post, I'll deal with your #1 version. At the bottom of this post I'll address your #2 version.

= = = = PART A:

• 1.) "Nobody move and nobody gets hurt."

SHORT ANSWER: Version #1 is grammatical. The sentence is in the form of a coordination of an imperative clause and a declarative clause; and the sentence can be interpreted as a conditional ("If nobody moves, then nobody gets hurt"); and it seems that the full directive force of the imperative ("Nobody move!") is retained.

LONG ANSWER: Your sentence is in the form of a coordination of clauses: an imperative clause and a declarative clause. Your first clause is identical to what is in the 2002 CGEL, page 927, as an example of an imperative with a 3rd person subject:

• [7].i. Nobody move. -- [subject]

Also, CGEL also has this tidbit on that example:

Nobody in [7.i] is unambiguously subject because a vocative can't be negative, . . .

Your sentence, which is an asymmetric "and" coordination of an imperative clause with a declarative clause, can be interpreted as a conditional. Here's a related excerpt from CGEL, in "9.5 Imperatives interpreted as conditionals", page 937-8:

When an imperative is the first element in a clause-coordination, it is commonly interpreted as a conditional:

[39]

• i. Ask him about his business deals and he quickly changes the subject.




• ii. Do that again and you'll regret it.




• iii. Persuade her to agree and I'll be forever in your debt.




• iv. Don't make him the center of attention and he gets in a huff.

Thus we understand "If you ask him about his business deals he quickly changes the subject", and so on. The examples illustrate the prototypical case, where the second clause is declarative and overtly linked to the imperative by and. The conditional interpretation derives from the implicative of consequence that is commonly conveyed by and -- compare I'll offer him a 10% discount and he's bound to take it. The first clause is usually positive, but it is just possible for it to be negative, as in [iv]; the form of the negative shows clearly that it is indeed the imperative construction that we are dealing with here.

(There's more neat info in there, but my fingers are tired.)

With the OP's example:

"Nobody move and nobody gets hurt."

the interpretation can be: "If nobody moves, then nobody gets hurt". Though, in the OP's example, it seems that the full directive force of the imperative ("Nobody move!") is retained.

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

= = = = PART B:

• 2.) "Nobody move and nobody get hurt."

Your version #2 seems to be pretty much kinda similar to your version #1, with the difference being that the 2nd coordinate is also an imperative clause.

That is: The sentence is in the form of a coordination of two imperative clauses; and the sentence can be interpreted as a conditional ("If nobody moves, then nobody gets hurt"); and it seems that the full directive force of the first imperative ("Nobody move!") is retained, while the directive force of the second imperative is lost.

Basically, everything else that I've mentioned in the above "Part A" also applies here. For your version #2, here's some related info from CGEL, in "Clause type of second coordinate", page 939:

The second clause can belong to other clause types than declarative; what is important is not the form but what the clause conveys:

[41]

• i. Invite one without the other and what a row there'll be. -- [exclamative]




• ii. Tell the truth and [who'll believe you / what'll they do]? -- [open interrogative]




• iii. Act in haste and repent at leisure. -- [imperative]

. . . In [iii] the second imperative indirectly conveys approximately "you'll regret it (for a long time)".

.

Hope this is what you were looking for.

capitalization - Should contractions like "'til" be capitalized in a title?

Should contractions like "'til" be capitalized in a title, when in the middle of a title? What if the "'til" is the first or last word? An example of this is the album "Dog Party - 'Til You're Mine" (Spotify capitalization; the album cover has it stylized in lowercase).

Answer

There is no contraction "'til."

There is the word "until." There is also the word "till." Both of those words as prepositions have a meaning in common. "Till" is not some bastardization of the word "until." Even William Shakespeare used the word "till":

JULIET: I will not fail. 'Tis twenty year till then. I have forgot
why I did call thee back. ROMEO: Let me stand here till thou

remember it.

-Romeo and Juliet (Act 2, scene 2)

So any title where you might feel inclined to use "'til" should use the actual word "till."

That said, in response to the general basis of your question, which asks what we do with the first letter of a word when it starts with an apostrophe because part of it has been contracted out and when it either starts a sentence or appears in a title, the answer is you capitalize it. The above quote by William Shakespeare provides an example of this with the word "'tis."

Another example of this is when "'cause," meaning "because," starts a sentence.

'Cause I don't wanna fall in love.

-Kristine W

A third example is found in the first line of the poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas":

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' the house...

tenses - direct speech vs. reported speech

I'm an English teacher. I have a question about REPORTED SPEECH - PAST SIMPLE

In the book that we use there are two similar direct questions but the answers are different. I am confused, can you help me?

DIRECT SPEECH

Ned: How old were you when you decided to become an astronaut?

Mr. Nash: I was 12 years old and I was in a physics class.

REPORTED SPEECH

Ned asked Mr.Nash how old he was when he decided ...

Mr. Nash said he had been 12 and he had been in a physics class.

Why did we use past simple in the first one then past perfect in the second?

Answer

The first example was quoting Mr. Nash. Those were his words. Per Wikipedia:

Direct or quoted speech is spoken or written text that reports speech

or thought in its original form phrased by the original speaker

The second example features, as it says, reported speech -- that is, the writer is telling what Mr. Nash said, not repeating his exact words. This is also called indirect speech. Per Wikipedia:

[indirect speech] is a means of expressing the content of statements,
questions or other utterances, without quoting them explicitly as is
done in direct speech.

Hope this helps.

grammar - Can't Or couldn't

My friend says to me : What did you tell him yesterday?

Me: I told him that I could do it when I was young and that I couldn't do it anymore because I'm old now.

Hi since I'm talking about something that I said in the past I changed Can to Could but I'm not sure If I should change Couldn't to can ( can't do it anymore) , should I keep couldn't and should it be I was old ? because it's something I said in the past so I'm not sure.

I read the other threads they're different from my question.

sentence patterns - Framing a question whose answer is an ordinal number

I am the third daughter (or son) of my parents.
OR
I am the third child of my parents

How should a question that is answered with the above sentences be framed?

Answer

'Among your sisters, where do you fall with respect to birth order?'

Is that what you're looking for?

Do I so often encounter simple past for past participle (e.g., “I have went,” “what was did to her”) because of where I am or when?

Since moving to small-town northern Minnesota (USA) two dozen years back to teach English, I have noticed a lot of instances in spoken language where the simple past is used in lieu of the past participle, as in the examples listed above. Of course this is only noticeable or an issue for such irregular verbs as have two different forms for simple past and past participle. As a SCUBA diver, I encounter the perfect formation “have dove” with particular frequency.

Since I had no previous experience of living in northern Minnesota before 1990, and not much experience of living anywhere else since (except Greece), I cannot tell whether this usage is more a function of where I am as an observer of spoken English, or when, though I tend to suspect the former.

For those who are curious, my adopted small city was recently used as a fictional location for the TV miniseries spinoff of the Coen brothers’ film Fargo, but as with the film, the dialect in the miniseries is rather a caricature. (The show was not filmed here, and in representing Bemidji as a town with a strip club and without a library it was wrong on both counts.) The local dialect does show at least one notable Germanic influence: upon sighting a pretty infant, locals will exclaim “Oh for cute!”—which for I am pretty sure is more closely cognate with the German intensifying prefix ver- than with the English preposition. Other historically likely other-language influences, besides the Germanic Scandinavian languages, would include Finnish (Finno-Ugric), Ojibwe (Algonquian), and French.

N.B. Ngram is hard to read on this, since hits for “was did” might well be such as “What exactly it was, did not matter in the least,” and similarly for other word sequences.

Avoiding the possessive form of words ending with "s"

This question deals with the proper possessive for words that end with s.

I am wondering how common it is to restructure a sentence as to avoid the awkward possessive form. For example:

I visited Paros' lighthouse.

appears less attractive than:

I visited the lighthouse of Paros.

I am particularly interested how this affects spoken English.

Answer

I think this kind of avoidance technique appears more often in written English, where people are unsure of how to mark possessives. In spoken English you constantly hear constructions like "Dennis's zucchini" and "Lois's sister" and "the buses' scheduled downtime", etc.

That said, I think the lighthouse of Pharos just sounds better than Pharos' lighthouse.

clauses - Describe a noun using "pronoun + verb" OR "-ing verb" after the noun

So I was trying to google this, but I have no idea how to describe my question. I tried a few different keywords and still couldn't find the answer.

Basically, I am wondering if there is any difference between this one:

I love studying mathematics, the subject that combines abstract theory with real world applications.

And this one

I love studying mathematics, the subject combining abstract theory with real world applications.

This might not be the best example but is the one that I can come up with right now. Are they grammatically correct? and is there any difference between them?

Thanks a lot.

grammar - "Changes would not be reflected" vs. "Changes will not be reflected"

Following Martha's advise I am splitting up a question Compound sentences, the punctuation and mooore.

1. When I describe consequences of some actions one can take, what form of the verb "will" should I use?


2. If both are generally allowed, how do they change the meaning?

Consider the following sentence:

Changes [will/would] not be reflected in the tree structure until the node is manually toggled.

To understand the context, suppose one have performed actions that indirectly affect a tree structure. In an amicable way, these changes should be reflected in the structure. But they would not for some reason, and one must take an additional action for them to appear.

The problem is that I don't know whether these action have been taken by anyone or whether anyone will ever perform them. It's just about that such actions exist.

Answer

See here for a definition of the difference between "will" and "would":

Will is a definite statement, which means that you use it when you are certain that the future action is going to take place.

Would is an English modal verb and has many different uses, which include: invitations, requests, asking permission, talking about preferences and making arrangements.

So in your case, let me make an example:

If you were writing a requirements analysis, use "would". You are requesting a certain behavior.

If you are writing a user manual or describing existing functionality, the consequence of the action is implemented and definite. Therefore use will.

orthography - /u/ and /uː/ in pronunciation

What is the regularity of appearance of /uː/ and /u/ (or /ʊ/ in RP)? How can I be most sure deducing from spelling alone, that, say, "ooze" is pronounced /uːz/ and "wool" as /wul/? I know that English vowels are peculiar, but I don't want to look up the pronunciation of words in the dictionary that often.

Answer

Unfortunately, the occurrence of /u/ vs /ʊ/ is a little arbitrary, in particular because the /u/ vowel occurs in words coming from a number of sources. There are even a few words where either vowel is possible (e.g. "room", "broom", "toothpick"), though /u/ is possibly becoming more predominant in these cases.

However, here are some rules of thumb:

• /ʊ/ is generally only spelt 'u' or 'ou', or 'oo' especially in a few "basic" monosyllabic words ("book", "good", "wood", "wool" but also a few others e.g. "soot")


• if you have some other letter combination ('ui', 'eu', 'ew' etc) you therefore know it can't be /ʊ/ (there are very very occasional exceptions to this, e.g. "Worcester" has /ʊ/ as the first vowel);



• similarly, if you have 'oo' in a "non basic" word, it's probably /u/;


• /ʊ/ isn't ordinarily the final vowel of a word, so e.g. in "who", "do", "woo", "moo" etc the vowel cannot be /ʊ/;


• this extends to declined forms of such words, so e.g. -ed and -ing endings directly after the vowel will generally be an indication that the vowel is /u/ (cf. "wood" vs "wooed");


• though this doesn't affect many words, /ʊ/ doesn't readily occur at the beginning of a word, so in "ooze", "oodle(s)", "ooh!", "oops!" you will generally have /u/, though it's true there is some variation with the 'onomatopoeic exclamations';


• words similar to (because they are derived from) French words tend to have /u/, e.g. "soup", "route" [for UK speakers], "group" etc;


• word-final "-oon" that derives from French "-on" will also generally have /u/ (cf "balloon").

There is also a little idiolectal variation as I mentioned, and in Scotland, the two vowels are often neutralised by some speakers, so e.g. "full"/"fool", "pull"/"pool" are pronounced with the same vowel.

P.S. You can generally assume that /u/ and /u:/ are basically the "same vowel". Like vowels in general, /u/ will be lengthened before a syllable-final voiced consonant, so e.g. in "use" the noun [jus] it will be shorter than in "use" the verb [ju:z]. But this is essentially the same phenomenon as in e.g. "piece" [pis] vs "peas" [pi:z], or "sent" [sɛnt] vs "send" [sɛ:nd] etc.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

calm
father

bother
mop
lost
on

fast
pasta

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

Answer

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

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

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

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

Distribution of /ɑ/ in a typical American English accent

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

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

grammar - "a" or "an" ubiquitous?

I am unsure whether to use "a" or "an" in the following sentence:

Video games have become a/an ubiquitous part of American culture.

For me, saying the two sentences out loud makes "an" seem like the right choice but Microsoft Word proofing disagrees.

Answer

This isn't straightforward. In my version of English, I would say 'a ubiquitous'. It seems that the grammar checkers in MS Word agree -- both in US and UK English.

However, take a look at this ngram of published works.

Google ngram: a ubiquitous,an ubiquitous

You can see that a changeover occurred in the late 1880s but both versions survive up to the present day.

expressions - Is the phrase "and, when time" correct?

I've been discussing with a few people about a certain phrase in a piece of co-authored writing that bugs me. I can't put my finger on it, but half of us think the phrase is correct, the other think it is incorrect.

Context:

The workers have been trained on how to continue the construction, and, when time, man the structure.

It's evident what is trying to be said with the phrase, but the "and, when time" part sticks out and feels wrong. The ones who think it is incorrect suggest the following tweak.

Tweak:

The workers have been trained on how to continue the construction, and, when the time comes, to man the structure.

Is gender-neutral language the norm for academic writing ? If so, when did this start?

Most texts I read on linguistics and translation studies seem to use gender-neutral language (e.g. 'he or she/his or her', 'they/their'for people of unknown gender). Is this the dominant trend for academic writing in general (or even for the fields I mention)? If so, when did it start?

I'd really appreciate it if someone could point me to some published research on this topic.

Edited to add: My question is different from 'Is there a correct gender-neutral, singular pronoun (“his” versus “her” versus “their”)?' in that it does not seek a prescriptive answer (a recommendation on how to write), but rather a descriptive one (a reference to a survey on how language is actually being used in the fields I mentioned).

questions - can we point o an animal and "what animal is this ? or which animal is this? which one is correct?

I just wanted to know if its gramatically correct to say what animal is this? or which animal I this?

etymology - Why are you saying something "for" yourself when your parent asks you what you have to say for yourself?

I was listening to a podcast today and heard someone mockingly ask the guest "Well, what do you have to say for yourself?". The conversation spun off in some other direction, but I momentarily expected the comedian being interviewed to pivot on the question and head into absurd grammar-land: "Who else would I say something for?"

Which made me wonder: why are we asked to say something for ourselves when we are having an explanation demanded of us? I can't think of any other expression where we say things for someone except when we are literally speaking for those with no voice: but clearly I have a voice myself. So why am I speaking for myself? How could it be otherwise?

Where did this idiom originate? Is it implying something in its formulation that isn't part of its current accepted meaning? I can't find much in my various searches, as Google returns only lots of people being interrogated and a hit on ell asking about "what have you got to say for yourself" vs "what do you have to say for yourself", without asking about the oddity of the idiom itself.

The closest thing I've found is a Google hit for a PDF paper implying that the phrase may somehow be related to the legal right against self-incrimination. But that seems very odd to me as an origin for an extremely common idiom.

Answer

"for" can mean "on behalf of". It is not much of a stretch to use this to mean "what do you have to say in defense of yourself", particular if voiced with strong inflection, as if challenging. The implication is "I dare you to not defend yourself; you have been accused". But it's not really an idiomatic formation, it's just one of the dozens of meanings of "for".

word choice - When to use "If I was" vs. "If I were"?

1. If I was...


2. If I were...

When is it correct to use "If I was" vs. "If I were" in standard English?

Answer

SYNOPSIS: Sometimes it must be “if I was”, but at other times it can be “if I were” — and for some speakers in those cases, perhaps even must be “if I were” in their idiolect.

---

Sentences with the subordinating conjunction if normally contain two
clauses, each with its own subject and verb. The question asks what to do
about the past-tense be verb in the “if” clause.

Unfortunately, as it’s currently worded the question can have no answer that is
simultaneously all of short, complete, and correct. That’s because it doesn’t
provide enough context to know which one of many possible cases actually
applies here. I must therefore cover them all.

---

David Maule in his 1988 EFL paper titled ‘Sorry, if he comes, I go’: teaching

conditionals
suggested that English conditionals be broadly classified as one of four
types depending on whether their outcomes were real vs. unreal and
past vs. non-past. (Maule classifies these
based on their “then” part not on their “if” part, and as we shall see,
this is a useful way to organize them.)

• Class A: real non-past


• Class B: real past



• Class C: unreal non-past


• Class D: unreal past

Maule discovered that most English conditionals do not fit into the
narrow models typically presented to EFL students learning English.

Christian Jones and Daniel Waller built on Maule’s work with their own EFL paper in 2010,
If only it were true: the problem with the four
conditionals.

The authors sampled a random assortment of conditionals from the British
National Corpus and classified each as being one of Maule’s four categories
listed above. They discovered that the real cases contained patterns in
both the past and the non-past that appeared very frequently in real
English, but which are rarely taught to learners.

The Reals

The class B “real past” cases fit into three patterns:

1. If + present simple, past continuous


2. If + present simple, past simple


3. If + past simple, past simple

Of those three, the final pattern of having past simple in both
clauses was by far the most common of the three. The sample
provided for that case was:

... if you wanted^[real] to know the answer ... you had^[real] to keep zapping from channel to channel.

Converting that into the first person singular to align with the asker’s question gives us:

If I wanted^[real] to know the answer, I had^[real] to keep zapping from channel to channel.

And it just one step more to swap out want for be:

If I was^[real] interested in knowing the answer, I had^[real] to keep zapping from channel to channel.

So here we discover the first of what shall prove to be several answers to
the asker’s question:

You use If I was in the “if” part when the “then” part is in the simple past.

These are always conditionals from Maule’s
class B. It would not be grammatical to use “If I were” there.

These “real past” cases happen all the time in real speech and real
writing, as Jones and Waller prove.

Consider this arrangement:

If she was^[real] already home when he got there, then she took^[real] the bus.

That’s a real past case on both sides, and it would be ungrammatical to use
“If she were” to attempt to mean the same thing. You can also use a modal perfect in the consequent along with that past simple in the “if” part:

If she was^[real] already home when he got there, then she must have taken the bus.

If she was^[real] already home when he got there, then she will have taken the bus.

Those are all real cases, and you know by the “then” part.

The Unreals

For Class C, the unreal non-pasts, there are many example patterns
provided, but the most common case by far uses “if” with past simple or
with a modal, then some modal in the consequent.

One provided example there is:

... I’d give it a good hiding if it didn’t behave.

However, there are many other Class C patterns, such as:

... if we could get three or four items, that would be very nice.

... if two members of staff happen to fall in love and decide to marry it would be churlish to be appointing blame.

The thing about using the past simple in something like “If it didn’t” is
that without looking further along in the sentence, this alone is not
enough to reveal whether it’s a Class B type that will take a real
consequent or whether it’s a Class C type that will take an unreal one.

“If only it were true”, “I wish it were true”

Because we use the simple past tense in English for real and unreal conditionals, you normally cannot know whether it’s the unreal case until you hit the “then” portion. But in one unique yet common case, you can, and that is when a singular subject is governing the verb be in the past. That’s because the unreal case uses were no matter whether singular or plural.

So we could say:

If a staff member were to fall in love, it would be churlish to assign blame.

That’s a Class C conditional because the “then” part has a would be in it. But you already knew it was going to be a hypothetical case when you saw the “If a staff member were” in the first half.

Recasting that into the first person singular provides the second answer
to the asker’s question:

If I were to fall in love, it would be churlish to blame me for it.

This special, modally marked form of be is used only for an unreal
hypothetical. It is a relic of the Old English past subjunctive, and it was once used for far more than we use it today.

Here alone can you detect through the morphology of the verb
that it is anything other than the past simple. This is a Class C
conditional because it has an unreal non-past in its consequent: “would be
churlish”

You cannot go wrong by using were for hypotheticals like this, as it has
been the preferred use for centuries, particularly but not exclusively in America. Many careful writers still choose to
observe this distinction: you need but read some recent issue of The Economist magazine from the UK to find plenty of examples of this. Indeed,
English teachers at American schools have been known to mark various hypothetical uses of was as “wrong”, saying that it “should” be were.

Optional were in Class C conditionals

However, you should not flinch if — nay, when — you hear someone say
“If I was... I would...” as a Class C conditional in casual speech. This sometimes happens even in educated
speakers and writers, so you should not make anything of it. Some writers prefer not to do that, but unless the person complaining is your English teacher, you shouldn’t let it get to you. (Yes, this is ungrammatical for some people. For others, it is not.)

It could be that those writers or speakers using “If I was...would” in their conditionals have
chosen not to convey the nuance, or perhaps did not consider
such a distinction meaningful in their own speech. Some are even

unaware that the distinction exists.

Because of the redundancy in language where the would in the “then” part gives it away, it’s not really needed anyway; everyone will still know what you mean.

These forms are still unreal cases even when they aren’t modally marked as unreal, singular were. Because in all cases except for this unique case of was/were you cannot ever morphologically distinguish a real case from an unreal one in English, you have to decide whether it’s unreal by looking at the “then” part, not the “if” part (at least, not reliably).

That means you need to train yourself to tell the real case:

If she was^[real] already home when he got there, then she took^[real] the bus.

From the unreal case:

If she were^[unreal] already home when he got there, he wouldn’t have^[unreal] to run pick her up himself.

Even when the unreal case uses the past simple not unreal past in the “if” part the way some speakers do:

If she was^{[“unreal”]} already home when he got there, he wouldn’t have^[unreal] to run pick her up himself.

That last example above is real in form but it is still unreal in sense because of the would. Some writers disapprove of that style of using was for a hypothetical, but it’s not uncommon, especially in speech.

Moreover, you cannot somehow make it be “less hypothetical” merely by using “was...would”; that’s just as hypothetical as “were...would” for the reasons already stated.

One final common construction uses past perfect in the “if” part and a modal perfect in the “then” part:

If she had been^[unreal] already home when he got there, he wouldn’t have had^[unreal] to run pick her up himself.

Although that’s a common way to set up a unreal case with perfects on both sides, there are many other ways, including using a non-perfect unreal past in the “if”:

If she were^[unreal] already home when he got there, he wouldn’t have had^[unreal] to run pick her up himself.

Yes, it’s somehow “unbalanced” with respect to the perfect aspect, but English doesn’t have an obligatory sequence-of-tenses rule like some languages do, and we often use a simple past instead of a perfect one because it’s...simpler that way.

There is one relatively uncommon place where you pretty much do have to use were not was in a conditional, and that is when you use inversion to forgo the word if altogether:

Were^[unreal] there any other way, we would have^[unreal] found it.

That’s the same as saying:

If there were^[unreal] any other way, we would have^[unreal] found it.

or even as saying:

If there had been^[unreal] any other way, we would have^[unreal] found it.

But that last one lends itself to an inverted version:

Had there been^[unreal] any other way, we would have^[unreal] found it.

The subject–verb inversion is something of a stealth conditional because it doesn’t use the word if. The inversion alone is enough to signal that it’s what used to be called a “subjunctive” use (back when English had an actual subjunctive). It doesn’t have to use be, but if you do use be for it, you should certainly use were. Other verbs in the past tense work the same, with the inversion signalling the conditional:

Had^[unreal] they but asked, we would have^[unreal] gladly told them.

You’ll find this “subjunctive inversion” style in formal writing, but very rarely if ever in extemporaneous, casual speaking. That’s because inversion isn’t all that normal, so it’s a marked form. Consider how stiffly formal this Steven Brust quote mentioned in this answer sounds:

To be more precise, and state the matter in its simplest form, we believe that were^[unreal] any of the events in the previous volume of such a nature that they could be omitted without severe damage to the narrative, we should have omitted^[unreal] them to begin with.

        ― The Lord of Castle Black, by Steven Brust

There instead of writing out the conditional the long way with “if any were”, to be more formal Brust wrote it with inversion: “were any”. (He’s also playing on the modal duality of should, but that’s something else again.)

If you ever get the chance to read English literature from a couple centuries ago or better, you might even come upon conditional inversion used with the bare infinitive in what has historically been called a “present subjunctive” use:

Be ye^[unreal] man or mouse, still shall ye say nothing!

That’s using inversion to skip the if, as though it were:

If ye be^[unreal] man or mouse, still shall ye say nothing!

Nobody talks that way anymore, and nobody writes that way anymore, either, not unless they intend to represent the speech of centuries long past. Instead we’d just say:

No matter whether you are a man or a mouse, you still will say nothing!

---

Further Reading

I have related answers here:

is it a gerund or a participle?

i can't distinguish a gerund and participle so i need your help..

Growing things in the garden

if this sentence is the title of a book, is "growing" a gerund or a participle?

I saw you dancing
in this sentence is "dancing" a gerund or a participle?

i want to know which one is right and the reason the other one is wrong.
my english may be rude and bad but please understand. thank you!

which is your favourite game /what is your favourite game

I want to know the difference between what and which, and between who and which

For example :

what is your favourite game / which is your favourite game

punctuation - Use of hyphens when writing repeated compound words that have common parts

In my native language, Norwegian, one uses hyphens when stating two or more copulated compound words that has common parts (words). In a thesis I'm working on, should I write

test specimens, test setups and test results

or could I write (like in Norwegian)

test specimens, -setups and -results?

grammar - "Name and I" or "name and me" when they are neither the object nor subject?

There have been many questions on this exchange about when to use phrases such as "John and I" vs. "John and me". The answer seems to be you that you use "John and I" when they are the subject of the verb and "John and me" when they are the object of the verb. However, sometimes it isn't so clear. For example, consider the following sentence

"A collaboration, between John and I, would lead to
close friendship"

In this sentence, I think the subject is the actual collaboration (not John and I) and the object is the friendship. So what is the proper usage in this case, where "John and I" is neither the subject nor the object?

Obviously this question is not a duplicate of any question asking about the use of "you" and "I" that doesn't contain rules for special prepositions such as "between".

grammar - Conventions for parenthetical inclusion of articles

Somewhat related: "A/An" preceding a parenthetical statement

When writing mathematics, one sometimes wants to write things like

x is not contained in (the closure of) the space Y.

The typical interpretation of this is that the statement holds whether or not the parenthetical statement is read. In this case, x would be contained neither in the space Y nor in the closure of the space Y.

One could also shift the parentheses:

x is not contained in the (closure of the) space Y.

Is there any convention as to which is better writing? I suspect that the first is preferred. It has the advantage that reading the parenthetical phrase does not change the referencing of articles to nouns. Of course, this implies that if the articles were different the second construction would not be an option. The second construction seems quite a bit stranger, but I have seen both in writing and occasionally the second one really did seem better in context.

Is there any strict convention on which should be used, or is it acceptable to choose based on stylistic concerns?

Admittedly I don't know of any context outside of mathematics where one would write a phrase like the ones I have quoted. It may be that this is entirely inappropriate use of parentheses in standard English; if this is the case feel free to close the question.

Answer

I would prefer the first: in this case it seems better for the reader to be left with a preposition to remember than an article.

Here is a more extreme but similar case:

"finding (an integrated version of) a formula "

is better than

"finding an (integrated version of a) formula"

but better still would be to leave out the parentheses altogether.

possessives - Bayes' Theorem or Bayes's Theorem? (Similarly, Charles' Law or Charles's Law?)

Which one is correct?
I thought the latter would be correct but apparently the former is always used; why?

Edit:

Another (confusing) example: Charles'(s?) law

word choice - Do you "buy on" or "buy from" online webshops?

Some sites use the prase "buy on example.com" when they link to products using some affiliate program. For me "buy from example.com" sounds better since you're going to follow that link to example.com and buy the product from them.

What would be the reason to use on?

Answer

On specifies the location, while from specifies who the seller was.

You can buy a product on the street or on my site. You can buy a product from me or from Amazon.

grammar - Term for "there" support?

I am currently learning German on Duolingo and one of the phrases for translation is "There is oil on the shirts" which in German comes out as "Oil is on the shirts" which works just as well in English. The addition of "there" in the English phrase reminds me of "do" support in questions: "Does he eat?" vs "He eats?" or "Eats he?" in some other languages.

What is the name of the grammatical feature using "there"?

punctuation - How to punctuate a quote within a quote?

Duplicate of:
What’s the difference between using single and double quotation marks/inverted commas?
How are embedded quotations used?
And:
When should end punctuation go inside quotes?
Is it correct to use “punctuation outside of the quotations”, or “inside?”

Let me know if this belongs on Writers.se. Furthermore, I have a strong feeling this has already been covered, but I wouldn’t know where, since I don’t know what to name this situation.

Moving on, I will express a dialogue like this:

A:  “What did he say to you?’

B1:  “He leaned close to me, and said in a gravely and drunken voice, “It’s not easy.” ”

Or would it be,

B2:  “He leaned close to me, and said in a gravely and drunken voice, ‘It’s not easy.’ ”

Or,

B3:  “He leaned close to me, and said in a gravely and drunken voice, “It’s not easy”.”

I’ve tried to be helpful (and probably failed), but let me know.

grammar - Is the word "that" overused?

Is it wrong or in bad form to constantly use the word "that" when it can be omitted?

1. The test that she took was so difficult that she began to sweat.


2. The test she took was so difficult she began to sweat.

I find myself writing more along the style of 1., but for some reason, I feel like it's not good form. Is there a grammar principle to confirm or refute this intuition?

Answer

Generally, the use of that is optional: neither its use nor its omission are bad style. However, when you are using it everywhere, all the time, that can be too much. The same applies to omitting it everywhere—the more so because its omission can sometimes cause ambiguity.

Of your example sentences, I'd say the first one is OK; I think I'd leave out the first that, but that would be only a minor improvement. Tastes may vary on this. If there had been three thats close together, I'd say it would usually be best to omit one, unless all three were required for clarity; but in that case it might be better to recast or split the sentence.

The second sentence is perhaps acceptable to some, but I'd put a that after difficult. Omitting it twice in a row makes the sentence a bit harder to parse, though it's still not the end of the world. Given the choice, I think one usually omits the that of relative clauses (the chair that I saw) and of reported speech (he said that he'd come) sooner than the that of so ... that, though it is still possible there. I'd write your sentence like this:

The test she took was so difficult
that she began to sweat.

Note that we usually omit that more often in speech; there intonation resolves some of the ambiguity that might otherwise ensue. I'd probably omit both thats in speech.

verbs - When must a gerund be preceded by a possessive pronoun as opposed to an accusative one?

I was recently reading this very interesting post here:

When is a gerund supposed to be preceded by a possessive adjective/determiner?

In this thread, it is argued persuasively that we could use either his or him interchangeably in front of a gerund. However, this does not seem to me to be true. For instance, consider the following example:

• His continuous meddling was starting to bother me.

It appears that only a possessive will do here and an accusative is completely ungrammatical (in the true meaning of the word):

• *Him continuous meddling was starting to bother me.

An accusative also seems to give rather dubious results in the following examples too. Compare:

• The senate characterized their sinking of the flagship as rash and excessive.

... with the completely ungrammatical:

• *The senate characterized them sinking of the flagship as rash and excessive.

So, it seems that we cannot just freely exchange the accusative and possessive pronouns that occur before gerunds.

My questions therefore are:

1. When must a gerund be preceded by a possessive pronoun as opposed to an accusative one?




2. Are these gerunds, and if not why not?

grammaticality - Shortest correct sentence in English- use of contractions

I often hear people saying that "I am" is the shortest sentence in the English language. I know that there are also discussions about sentences using the imperative mood such as "Go." that would be shorter, but my question is this:

Why would we (the people saying "I am" is a full sentence) not accept "I'm" as a complete sentence? Is there some unwritten rule about contractions that says "I'm" wouldn't be correct?

Answer

In English, any clause has one mandatory stress slot: there must be at least one element that has stress (optionally more than one). That slot lies in the predicate of the clause, which must always be stressed. The subject (which stands outside the predicate) can receive stress, but does not necessarily have to, and even when it does receive stress, the predicate retains its stress.

Within the predicate, a verb that has one or more complements of a certain type (a generic object [i.e., one without an article], an adverbial phrase, a predicative expression, etc.) is unstressed (or at most secondarily stressed) unless it is emphasised for effect. In such a case, the predicate’s only stressed element(s) is/are the complement(s) that is/are considered most important.

Conversely, if the verb either does not have any compliments or has a non-generic object (i.e., an object with an article, a proper noun, etc.), it is stressed. Any following complements can also be stressed, but they do not have to be.

So for example (using the IPA character “ˈ” before a word to indicate stress, and the entirely ad hoc notation “ˣ” to specifically denote lack of stress):

He ˈran.
He ˣran ˈhome.
He ˈran a ˈmile.
He ˣran ˈfast.

As mentioned above, complements also include predicative expressions like subject and object complements—like what you have in ‘to be’ phrases. These follow the same rules (note that the distinction between generic and non-generic elements goes only for objects, not for predicative expressions):

He ˣis a ˈman.
He ˣis ˈgood.

Now very importantly: a stressed syllable cannot be syncopated. Only unstressed (or sometimes secondarily stressed) syllables can be syncopated away, leaving contractions in their wake. Of course, when you contract something, you are removing a syllable, and if that syllable is stressed, where would the stress go when you remove it? There has to be a stress somewhere.

As such, the following is possible:

He ˣis my ˈfather --> He’s my ˈfather.
I ˣcan ˈtell you ˈwhy --> I c’n ˈtell y’ ˈwhy.

– because the elements that are syncopated (is in the first, can and you in the second) are both unstressed. The following, however, is impossible, because here we’ve emphasised (= stressed) the verbs. Emphasising an element reduces other elements nearby to lose their stress entirely—it’s basically overriding the ‘natural’ assignment of stress—and the emphasised verbs end up being the only elements that carry any stress. If you syncopate those away, the stress would disappear entirely from the clause, which is not possible:

But he ˈis my ˣfather --> †But ˣhe’s my ˣfather.
I ˈcan tell you ˌwhy --> †I ˣc’n tell y’ ˣwhy.

Now recall that the predicate must be stressed. In a case like “I am” (with nothing more following the verb), where the verb has no complements at all, there is only one element that can be used to fill this stress slot: the verb itself, which is thus automatically stressed. And since the verb is stressed, it cannot be syncopated or contracted: that would remove the mandatory stress slot altogether, which is not an option.

Identifying the main clause and subordinate clauses

I’m preparing for my exam and in one of the practice questions i have to identify the main clause, subordinate clause/s and the subject,predicate and/or adverbials. the sentence is:

"The Mausoleum has an interesting place in Greek history because it was a building that was not dedicated to the gods".

i thought the main clause could be "The Mausoleum has an interesting place in Greek history"

with "because" being the subordinating conjunction.

but I'm really struggling to identify the subordinate clause/s. is there 1 or 2? what type of clause is it and what would the subject and predicate be?

thanks in advanced

grammaticality - Do idioms pose an exception to normal definite and indefinite article usage?

I found this phrase in my biology textbook (emphasis added):

...in relation to Earth's history, 100,000 years or even a million years is the blink of an eye.

The part of the phrase in question is the word "the" in italics. In this context, doesn't it make more sense to use the indefinite article "a" instead of the definite article "the", since there can be more than one "blink of an eye"? Is "a blink of an eye" incorrect in this context? Are idioms like this exceptions to normal definite and indefinite article usage, even though the literal meaning of the idiom makes better sense otherwise?

Answer

As has been pointed out, the overwhelming form of the idiom is the blink of an eye. So there's no issue of correctness involved. The questioner, however, had some specific questions that deserve attention, since they suggest some underlying grammatical misunderstandings.
Specifically,

In this context, doesn't it make more sense to use the indefinite article "a" instead of the definite article "the", since there can be more than one "blink of an eye"?

This is not a function of the definite article in many situations. For instance,

• We dialed the wrong number,


• *We dialed a wrong number

even though there is only one right number, and millions of wrong ones, the idiom is always the wrong number. It's natural to native speakers, and always surprises us when we first notice it.

Articles, like other syntactic particles, don't really have any dependable meaning; they're just a convenient set of labels to attach to just about any set of things we might want to distinguish from one another. They have lots of syntactic functions, though: for instance, a predicate count noun has to have an article, as well as some form of be:

• This is copper. (predicate mass noun)


• He is a doctor. (predicate count noun)


• *He is doctor.


• He is the doctor.

Only the first two sentences above are predicate noun constructions. The third is ungrammatical; and the fourth is an equative construction, with the doctor referring to some previously mentioned doctor (or, alternatively, to some social role he is acting out), but not necessarily predicating Doctorhood of him.

Is "a blink of an eye" incorrect in this context?

No, it's just rare. This question's been answered.

However, one should be careful about using the term "correct" in talking about grammar, especially English grammar, which is mostly syntax, and most especially when dealing with syntactic phenomena like articles.

Most ideas about "correctness" (and those are scare quotes) come from vague generalizations, while a great deal of fact is actually known about article usage in English. There are dozens of special uses for articles -- an applied linguist once told me he'd counted more than sixty -- and they mostly don't make much sense at all.

Why, for instance, is it The University of Michigan and not *The Michigan State University? Or The Missouri River and The Nile River, but not *The Lake Superior or *The Loon Lake?

Are idioms like this exceptions to normal definite and indefinite article usage, even though the literal meaning of the idiom makes better sense otherwise?

No, not really. There is no "normal definite and indefinite article usage" in terms of "making sense", which is a semantic concept involving meaning, not a syntactic concept involving grammar. Grammar has nothing to do with making sense; grammar has to do with constructions and how they are used.

Moral: Don't confuse names with descriptions. What's called "the definite article" isn't necessarily more "definite" (and note what a slippery concept that is :-) than anything else; it's just one more syntactic marker, like the to that marks an infinitive, or the to that marks the direct object of listen, and it's no more meaningful by itself.