Why can't we use helping verbs in positive sentences of present simple tense and past simple tense?
Such as:
She makes tea.
They went to the park.
If we convert them into negative or interrogative sentences, we use helping verb; but in case of other tenses we use helping verb in all formats of sentences i.e. positive, negative, and interrogative.
Let's say I have a sentence about a person who works for a company. I might say something along the lines of "Jim is an employee." In this sentence, "Jim" is effectively being assigned the role of "employee." Is there a technical term for what the word "employee" would be in the context of this sentence?
Answer
In "Jim is an employee," "employee" is a predicate noun.
From SIL International's glossary of linguistic terms:
A predicate noun is a noun (or noun phrase) that is used to predicate a description or identification of the subject.
English grammar often requires nouns to be accompanied by articles, and usually requires a predicate noun to be accompanied by an inflected form of the copular auxiliary "to be." The predicate noun along with these associated elements consistutes the predicate of the sentence ("is an employee"), which predicates, or says something about, the subject of the sentence ("Jim").
I had a confusion between Infinitive form of the verb and the base form of the verb. But this LINK explains the difference between infinitive and base form of the verb.
Base form:
be, have, hold, sleep, dream
Infinitive form:
to be, to have, to hold, to sleep, to dream
Can we write all helping verbs in infinitive form which are mentioned below:
I know these exists to be, to do, to have, but do others?
Answer
No, you have written all possible conjugations
No. Modal (Specifically Conditional) Verbs (pretty much the -oulds and their "relatives") do not have infinitive forms, because all usages of those verbs are the same (except for the modals that can be used for other purposes like to be and to have). The subject of the sentence does not change how those verbs are written at all.
This is also a case for a lot of English Verbs, not just the modals
English pretty much did away with subject conjugation (the only verb I can think of that has a conjugation for nearly every subject is the verb to be)
I want to write this sentence:
In a singleton pattern, a class's
constructor needs to be private
instead of public.
it is correct to write:
Does "–" between methods and documenting have any function in this sentence? What is it trying to say?
Moreover, multi-lingual texts, like vernacular works, have traditionally had strong affinities with realist methods – documenting speech forms as they are spoken – but avant-garde, musical, parodic, sci-fi, psychic-interiorist, artificial/invented, machine, and digital multilingual works have also long followed non- and anti-realist logics.
I know the facts about the incident, and I want to ask my friend: 'Did you know' or 'Do you know' about the incident?
Which version—'Did you know' or 'Do you know'—uses correct grammar?
In my Regional language 'Malayalam' there is a word 'എത്രാമത്തെ' (HOW MANY'TH) for asking question about position of a person in a list.
eg: Barack Obama is 'How many'th' American President ?
for the answer "Obama is 44th President of USA"
in english. Is there anything in English for this?
I was interested in the line “...most Americans use the word 'gay' now instead of 'homosexual'” in Maureen Dowd’s article titled “Happily Never After?” in today’s (April 2) New York Times:
I’m worried about how the justices can properly debate same-sex
marriage when some don’t even seem to realize that most Americans
use the word "gay" now instead of "homosexual"; when Chief Justice
John Roberts thinks gays are merely concerned with marriage as a
desirable "label," and when Justice Samuel Alito compares gay marriage
to cellphones.
When you say “instead of,” it gives me an impression that they are different things, for examples, “I use margarine instead of butter,” “They use acrylic panels instead of plate glass for windows” and "The new car uses aluminum instead of steel plate for the body."
However, when I checked Oxford English Dictionary, it renders “gay” as:
a.1 (of a person, especially a man) homosexual.
- relating to or used by homosexuals:
n. a homosexual, especially a man.
Also OALD defines Gay as:
a. (of people, especially men) sexually attracted to people of the
same sex. [Syn.] HOMOSEXUAL
Aren’t “gay” and “homosexual” the same thing except “gay” being applied to men?
What’s the difference between “gay” and “homosexual” other than gender attributes?
Answer
Both gay and homosexual can be used for both sexes, and they mean mostly the same thing; the differences are subtle.
Probably because the word lesbian exists as well, one is slightly more likely to refer to men when using the word gay; but note that it is very often also used for women. When used as a noun, gay seems to refer to men a bit more often than as an adjective, although it is still very often used to refer to both men and women. It rather depends on context. The word homosexual seems to be completely gender-neutral.
Gay is more informal: homosexual is more formal, and so it is more likely to be used in e.g. medicine and biology. As a consequence, using homosexual can sometimes sound a little bit as if you were describing patients, as if it were some mental illness. This effect is not very strong or ubiquitous, but it is sometimes there. It is stronger when used as a noun (an homosexual, homosexuals). Note that gay is currently in the process of being used more in formal contexts too.
The word homosexual is older. Because homosexuality was long treated as a disease or at least as undesirable, some of this old negativity still clings to the word homosexual, especially as a noun. It is as if you were referring to the past, although this effect, too, is not that strong.
I think this is also the reason why the word gay came to be used (around the 1960s? earlier?) to refer to homosexuals: they wanted a more positive-sounding word. You will find that most gays will mainly use gay, except in a scientific context; and even there, homosexual as a noun has become almost impossible. If you were to say homosexuals, and you weren't over 50 or a bit reactionary in general, I would think you were joking.
As the title indicates, these three forms of words/phrases can be quite confusing to me sometimes. When should they be written as one word ("boilinghot"), when should they be written in two words ("boiling hot"), and when should they be written as a hyphenated compound ("boiling-hot")? Does it make any difference which is used? There are other terms like this, such as blackboard/black board/black-board; swingman/swing man/swing-man etc.
Answer
In the first place, I've never seen boilinghot used.
As for the other two, there are different times for different uses. Only use the hyphen when it is a compound adjective
Let's speak of why the sea is boiling hot.
Let's speak of the boiling-hot sea.
@drm65 illustrates how Google NGrams may be misapplied. Searching for a hyphenated expression will cause it to flat-line unless you put a space between the hyphen and the words: e.g. "boiling hot,boiling - hot"
So while boiling hot appears to be used more often than boiling-hot, the latter's representation is not zero.
What's the difference between "shrouded with" and "covered with"? Any different hues of meaning here?
Answer
The difference is largely one of connotation. The verb to shroud derives from the noun shroud, which typically refers to a sheet used to cover the dead for burial in some religious traditions. Because of this association, when you say that something is shrouded with or shrouded in, it connotes an atmosphere of mystery, gloom, or the numinous.
Shrouded in also lends itself more readily to metaphorical usages. You might say that "The castle was shrouded in mist", but it would sound odd to say that "The castle was covered in mist".
I often encounter nouns that I hear of for the first time, and I can not determine which syllable to stress. Unfortunately, I can not find most of these nouns in dictionaries to check the stressed syllable. These nouns are most often proper nouns, brand names (food, drugs..), trademarks, names of foreign places, cities, rivers, people,... etc.
How can native speakers predict the stress position in such nouns (names they hear of for the first time)? What would you advise me to get the stress right in such words?
I need to make a poem in my English class, and I'm not sure if the way I used refraining in the last line of this stanza is correct. Could you check it out?
"I was the one who retreated from the rain,
And watched other children play in it from my home,
As I wished it would stop raining,
So I could stop refraining."
Answer
You need to refrain 'from' something - as refraining is about choosing Not to do - something. So you need to tell us what that 'something' is...
...which you have done - at the start of your poem - you 'retreated from the rain'. So yes, your use of 'refraining' is correct.
You could make it more obvious that you are 'refraining' ie choosing Not to do something, if you tweaked it like this, making the last 2 lines dialogue:
'I was the one who retreated from the rain,
And watched other children play in it from my home,
'Oh! How I wish it would stop raining,
So I could stop refraining!'
You could add 'dry' home - for emphasis or even 'safe dry home' - inference - boo! My parents kept me in!) in this example:
I was the one who retreated from the rain,
And watched other children play in it from my safe dry home,
'Oh! How I wish it would stop raining,
So I could stop refraining!'
But in the latter example, I'd use a different verb than retreated, like 'hid' because retreated sounds like your chosen action' not something your parents made you do. Hid is less... voluntary - caused by one's own fears, or parents' insistence.
Answering the question, Use of articles with adjectives, got me thinking. Why is the word "any" not classified as an article? We learn in grade school that the three English articles are "a", "an", and "the". Later on we learn that articles are part of a larger class called determiners.
Numerous dictionaries, including this one, declare any to be a pronoun and determiner. But look at this sequence:
a --> an --> any
(Should I drop the mic now? Nah, I'll continue in case any of you feel stubborn. 😉)
Whether you agree or not, think about the following:
I discern two differences with the accepted indefinite articles. The first is that any can also be a pronoun. Any of them will do. So what? The word a can also be a noun, the first letter of the Latin alphabet. Do we really need the second a of aardvark?
The second difference is that any can force the specific context mentioned in item #3. The (other) articles force a context as well, indefiniteness or definiteness. This is illustrated in the following conversation between two kids:
An ant bit me!
Which one?
I don't know, but it wasn't the one on your arm.
Damn! Any ants are too many. I don't want any ant to bite me.
I know, right? Let's go see if we can find a bandage.
In other words, a, an, any, and the all force contexts. That's sort of their point. So why is any the one left out?
I understand (and please correct me if I am wrong) that 'soon' simply means 'a short period of time'. With that in mind, I would like to relate a conversation I recently had with my wife.
"I gave the baby her medicine just before you came home," my wife told me.
"How soon before I came home, did you give the baby her medicine?" I asked her in response.
What I meant to ask was, what was that short period of time which had elapsed between these two events. According to her, this is incorrect because 'soon' can only refer to something which will occur in the future.
Which one of us is correct?
I want to see whether I could use the auxiliary verb once, instead of twice as in:
one who speaks articulately, will be both appreciated and known as an
"English expert."
or
one who speaks articulately, will both be appreciated and be known as an "English expert."
please help me and let me know which one is correct! thank you.
Answer
Yes, you can use a single auxiliary:
"I shall arise and go now;"
"But thy eternal summer shall not fade nor lose possession of that fair thou owest."
If Yeats and Shakespeare can do it, you can too.
However, I do not find either of your sentences to be flawless.
"One who speaks articulately will be both appreciated and known as an expert in English."
There is no need to separate the subject from the verb with a comma. And it is clearer to be explicit that the field of expertise is the English language without any possibility of implying that the expert is of English nationality.
"One who speaks articulately will both be appreciated and be known as an expert in English."
This addresses the same issues as in your first sentence, but gets "both ... and" parallel in the forms being paired.
As shown above, he misses someone mysterious, whoever that is, which
confirms to us that the feeling is not happiness nor depression, it is
emptiness.
It is a sentence from an essay my friend wrote, and I think putting "it is emptiness" without any coordinating conjunction would be seriously wrong, but he was saying things like independent clause and dependent clause so I could not quite get him. The one I suggested him was this:
As shown above, he misses someone mysterious, whoever that is, which
confirms to us that the feeling not happiness nor depression is actually
emptiness.
But he said it is not very grammatical. Which one of these sentences is correct then?
The following quotes are from the Wikipedia article.
It seems to me that they all use "they" for a generic person.
For example, in the Chesterfield's example: "If a person is born of a . . . gloomy temper . . . they cannot help it.",
"a person" appears to be singular but it represents any person.
It is essentially plural.
'Tis meet that some more audience than a mother, since nature makes them partial,
should o'erhear the speech."— Shakespeare, Hamlet (1599);
"If a person is born of a . . . gloomy temper . . . they cannot help it."— Chesterfield, Letter to his son (1759);
"Now nobody does anything well that they cannot help doing"— Ruskin, The Crown of Wild Olive (1866);
"Nobody in their senses would give sixpence on the strength of a promissory note of the kind."— Bagehot, The Liberal Magazine (1910);
"I would have every body marry if they can do it properly."— Austen, Mansfield Park (1814);
Caesar: "No, Cleopatra. No man goes to battle to be killed."
Cleopatra: "But they do get killed"
—Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra (1901);
"A person can't help their birth."— W. M. Thackeray, Vanity Fair (1848);
"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another . . ." —United States Declaration of Independence;
My question
Is the use of singular they in the following passage grammatically correct?
Someone was approaching my room.
I could see that they were alone judging from their footsteps.
They knocked on my door. I didn't answer. They knocked again. I still didn't answer so they left.
I have a problem with the phrase "face with" when it means "encounter" and is used in the sentence containing "which" in the below sentence:
"One of the significant tasks with which biological theorists are faced, is knowing the behavior of real biological systems."
Is the above sentence correct when we use "with " before "which"?
Answer
Yes, you can phrase it "with which biological theorists are faced" in lieu of "biological theorists are faced with." The latter is not ungrammatical, but some people have an issue with ending phrases with a preposition because there was a movement in English grammar to make English more like Latin and so not end phrases with prepositions, but that was never a rule and that stopped even being included in English grammar books as a suggestion in the 1960's.
Regardless, the way you've phrased it is also correct. Some might find it stilted, but that is the way you phrase it if you do not want to end with a preposition.
AS AN ASIDE:
The comma after "faced" is in error. The complete subject is "one of the significant tasks with which biological theorists are faced." By placing a comma after "faced," you are improperly separating the subject from its verb. It is tantamount to writing, "The sky, is blue." You would never do that. Neither should you put a comma after "faced" for the same reason.
Inspired by this earlier
question, I've realized
that we have no canonical question addressing the stranglely one-of-a-kind special
grammatical rules demanded by the verb wish of its subordinate clauses. This question seeks to
remedy that situation.
The verb wish has several related grammatical “quirks” when it comes to which tenses you are allowed to use (and not use) in any subordinate clauses it governs. Notice how with the verb think you can say either of
perfectly well, yet when switching to the verb wish you find that suddenly you cannot say either of
This shows that the verb wish has “special grammatical rules” about what tense you can put its subordinate clause into, “rules” that no other verb in common use in present-day English must adhere to.
How come?
For one thing, wish abhors the present tense in its subordinate clause completely.
These are both grammatically forbidden:
It’s not even too keen on the past tense, either, since although
(1) becomes legal if you switch the subordinate clause’s present tense to the past:
Attempting this same thing with the subordinate clause in (2) still leaves the result ungrammatical:
Interestingly, (4) is even ungrammatical when we explicitly switch the
referenced time to the past:
This is a further unexplained special restriction on the tense of the subordinate clause, but this time even the past tense is blocked! Why can the past tense not be used in the subordinate clauses of (4) and (5) to make those grammatical, but can be — and does so — in (3)? How are those different?
All this appears to be true for other present-tense incarnations of wish
such as I have wished that. Then when you start moving into the past
tense with I wished that and I had wished that, the rules change
but even here its rules seem to remain peculiar to wish alone. (I leave those details for the answerers.)
How in the world did such a common verb as wish ever come to have such uncommon
— and apparently even unique — grammatical rules governing tense use in its
subordinate clause’s verb?
Do any other verbs work in this special way? Did they ever?
Is this something new or something old? Has it
always worked this way in English even before the Conquest, or did we
get it grafted onto us by the Norman French?
I’m especially looking for answers rooted in actual historical analysis, not “just because” handwaving that doesn’t address the construction’s history. You don’t have to go back to PIE
(unless you want to :), but I’d like for us to have answers whose explanations at least require
looking at this curiosity’s historical evolution.
The OED gives as sense 1a of the verb wish::
a. transitive. To have or feel a wish for; to desire.
The ordinary word for this; now always less emphatic than the synonyms covet, crave, long (for), yearn (for); in earlier use occasionally in the sense of these. Sometimes softened by could or should (would): cf. ᴄᴀɴ v.¹ 17, ꜱʜᴀʟʟ v. 19c, ᴡɪʟʟ v.¹ 40c; or strengthened before a subordinate clause (1b, 2c) by such phrases as to God, to goodness, to heaven.
(a) with simple object (in Old English usually in the genitive). Now dialect; superseded in standard English by wish for (see 2), or colloquial in certain contexts by want (ᴡᴀɴᴛ v. 10).
(b) with object clause with may or (formerly) present subjunctive, occasionally indicative: expressing a desire that the event may happen or that the fact may prove to be so, and often implying some want of confidence or fear of the opposite (now commonly expressed by hope: see ʜᴏᴘᴇ v. 3b). Also expressing a request (see 5).
(c) with object clause with past subjunctive (or indicative, e.g. was for were): expressing an unrealized or unrealizable desire (see also ᴡɪʟʟ v.¹ 46a), or in modern use sometimes a mild request (cf. 5). to wish to God: to wish intensely.
Here are just a few citations from sense 1a(c). The non-present-tense verbs in the subordinate clauses I have marked in bold.
- c1000 Ælfric Deut. xxxii. 29
Ic wisce ðæt hi wiston & undergeaton..hyra ende [L. utinam saperent].
- 1362 Langland Piers Plowman A. v. 92
Þenne I wussche hit weore myn.
- c1385 Chaucer Legend Good Women Thisbe. 755
Thys wall they woldyn threte And wysshe to god hyt were doun ybete.
- a1616 Shakespeare Macbeth (1623) ɪ. v. 24
That which rather thou do'st feare to doe, Then wishest should be vndone.
- 1817 Byron Let. 25 Mar. (1976) V. 188
Heigh ho! I wish I was drunk—but I have nothing but this d—d barley-water before me.
- 1832 Tennyson New Year's Eve iv, in Poems (new ed.) 96
I wish the snow would melt..I long to see a flower so.
Swapping in the present indicative there produces ungrammatical sentences the likes of which neither Chaucer nor Shakespeare, nor Byron or Tennyson, could ever have generated:
Those are just as ungrammatical now as they were then. No other surviving present-ense verb still forbids the present indicative in its subordinate clause.
Sense 5 seems close to this, and also has citations showing the avoidance of the present indicative:
In expressions of desire for something to be done by another, thus conveying a request; hence, to request, entreat; formerly sometimes, to bid, command:
- a. a thing or action (with various const. as in 1): cf. ᴅᴇꜱɪʀᴇ v. 5.
1875 B. Jowett tr. Plato Dialogues (ed. 2) I. 429
I wish that you would tell me about his death.
There’s also a much older, sixteenth-century citation that when rendered into modern spelling runs:
I wish rather and desire that in hope of bairns he take Margaret rather than Magdalen for his bedfellow.
That isn’t the same as the earlier examples involving would because here it takes a bare infinitive without a modal in what is sometimes called the “mandative subjunctive”, which is where a verb like demand, desire, require takes a subordinate clause whose verb is today in the bare infinitive (and used to be in the present subjunctive).
Answer
You asked quite a few questions. Here is an attempt at providing answers to a portion of them.
1. Is this something new or something old? Has it always worked this way in English even before the Conquest, or did we get it grafted onto us by the Norman French?
I am surprised you passed without comment OED's sense 1a(b) [with object clause with may or (formerly) present subjunctive, occasionally indicative], which is now pretty much obsolete but which includes such old but attested examples as I wish I suffer no prejudice by it (1661), I wish the house is not rob'd (1691), He is certainly bewitched: I wish the old hag upon the green has done him no mischief (1756), I wish we have not got King Stork, instead of King Log (1823). That's your answer to this particular set of questions: the highly specialized behavior of wish is relatively new. As recently as the first half of the 19th century, wish could take as complement a content clause in the present subjunctive or even indicative.
2. The first and second mystery.
I interpret these as asking what is the actual rule that can predict what sorts of finite complements to wish result in acceptable sentences.
As I said in the comments, and as others stated in their answers (a few said this after I did, though now I see that some have also said this before I did), the answer is that a finite complement of wish must convey modal remoteness. Grammatically, this means that a finite clause complement of wish must use ether the modal preterite or else the irrealis were (the latter is what some sources call the past subjunctive, but CGEL has an argument against that analysis, pp. 87-88). This is pretty much what CGEL says in various places. Thus, for instance, we need I wish she had eaten fish last night. In CGEL, the example [29iv] on p. 1003, #I wish [you passed your driving-test tomorrow], is marked (by the '#') as 'semantically or pragmatically anomalous'. CGEL says that
wish cannot be used with a 'pure' future, one where there is no present time involved: cases like this are still within the realm of hoping, so that instead of [iv] we would say I hope you pass your driving-test tomorrow.
3. Do any other verbs work in this special way?
Arguably, no. You can rephrase this as the following questions: 1. in what sorts of constructions do we find modal preterite and irrealis content clauses? 2. Are there any verbs other than wish that appear (when taking a finite clause complement) only in such constructions?
CGEL lists four kinds of constructions where we find modal preterite and irrealis content clauses (pp. 1003-1004): (a) remote conditionals, (b) complement to wish, (c) would rather/sooner/as soon (also prefer, as a marginal possibility), and (d) it be time. However, (c) allows the subjunctive (I'd rather it be sooner (source)), while (d) allows both the subjunctive (it is time he see that he has earned that right (source), it is time he submit his letter on no confidence (source)) and the present tense (It is time he enters into the twenty-first century or disappears. (source)); see also here. True, even in (c) and (d), the subjunctive and/or the present tense are much less frequently used than the modal preterite and irrealis, but they are nevertheless used at least sometimes. Thus, none of the other possibilities are as specialized as wish when it comes to what kind of finite-clause complements they can take.
There are two men named Bill Bass. I want to write the following two sentences. I want the two sentences below to refer to both of them, as plural, not possessive. Is this correct?
I think this should be the Bill Bass' Memorial Picnic. That way it can be a memorial to both Bill Bass'
Answer
No hard and fast rule may be possible to state, but generally, a name ending in s takes -es for the plural and where required, the apostrophe comes thereafter.
cf. "the Joneses"
I think this should be the Bill Basses' Memorial Picnic. That way it can be a memorial to both Bill Basses.
''Pascal attempted the experiment of
seeing whether, with the aid of the most incisive knowledge,
everyone could not be brought to despair: the experiment miscarried,
to his twofold despair.''
Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality
By Friedrich Nietzsche
What exactly does the phrase from above mean? That Pascal tried to find out if he, somehow, could stop people from despairing, or if he could get all of them to despair?
Which one is grammatically correct? Can we use the relative clause in the past tense, when the main clause is in the present?
Close relatives and friends who moved to other countries, are no longer resorted to spend their money on international calls.
Close relatives and friends who have moved to other countries, are no longer resorted to spend their money on international calls.
Consider the following sentence:
The labour-intensive and time-intensive part starts tomorrow.
I want to write this without rewriting the word "intensive."
Is this the correct way to do it?
The labour- and time-intensive part starts tomorrow.
Note the hyphen hanging after the word labour. Or should there be no hyphen after labour? Can anyone point me to a reference that talks about this?
Answer
Fowler recommends that you leave out the hyphen after labour there, because it is not strictly needed for comprehension. I don't have a reference on hand, but it is no doubt in his Dictionary of Modern English Usage, a highly respected style book.
In the following sentence, how would I indicate possession if the word "business'" were replaced by the name of the business: like "Fry's" or "Wendy's"?
Some business' employees are happy.
It seems strange to say that Wendy's employees are happy, since I'm referring to the business, and not just Wendy.
First, I check that my native language is not English, and the problem described below met on one of the exams.
With this sentence:
"The most important news is that my parents [...] a new restaurant a few
weeks ago."
Is the correct tense to use the Present Perfect (have opened) or Past Simple (opened)?
I know that the word "ago" but rather that time Past Simple, but is it also possible to use the present perfect in some cases?
I would be grateful for clarification.
Answer
The present perfect tense, as you asked about, is when Event 1 (your parents opening a restaurant) happened at an unspecified time before Event 2 (your present conversation).
The reason that there is obfuscation and confusion is because of "a few weeks ago".
If you had just stated "The most important news is that my parents have opened a restaurant.", it would be clear that the perfect tense is appropriate because Event 1 was completed at an undisclosed time before Event 2.
"a few weeks ago" adds definiteness, but not exactness.
For example, if you stated "My parents opened a restaurant two weeks ago.", it is clear that you could not use the perfect tense with a definite time.
That being said, it is my opinion that you giving a time frame for when the restaurant opened has removed the indefiniteness of time, and you should not be using the perfect tense.
Have a nice day.
Hearing the usual greeting on a train, I started wondering if there is already an established alternative to "Ladies and Gentlemen" that is applicable beyond the male/female classification. (For example, job adverts now often include m/w/x to take the third gender into account. Apologies if I used any of the gender related terms not perfectly correctly.)
PS: in response to a comment, let me perhaps restrict the scope to a term that can be used in formal settings.
I am having problem understanding what the following sentence means exactly:
Bill's and my car had to be towed last night.
I can't quite figure out why the possessive is used in Bill's and what it means.
I was helping a friend proofread one of her essays on the short story The Lottery. She had written this sentence:
I think the lottery used to have a specific reason and represent something in the society.
I changed the sentence to
I think the lottery used to have a specific reason and represented something in the society.
I thought that, because 'used to' was not directly preceding 'represent', it should be changed to past tense. But after thinking on it for a while, I am just not sure. I can't seem to find a definitive answer and the question left all of my friends conflicted.
Answer
The sentences come from different base forms (leaving off decorations like "I think", etc):
and
The words in parentheses get deleted by conjunction reduction. Either sentence will work.
The only meaning difference between them is that the first one presupposes that it no longer represents anything in the society (because used to asserts a past affirmative and presupposes a present negative), while the second one simply asserts the past affirmative and leaves it at that.
This is rather like the difference between although and even if.
I was reading a letter I got from an old friend, back in 1998, and at a certain point she wrote:
"Our period of greatest prosperity were those eleven years when Thatcher was in office."
Is this correct, or just acceptable? In speech and in writing?
Answer
The answer to your question is that "were" is incorrect and unacceptable here. The subject is singular and consequently it needs a singular verb. It is not acceptable to use a plural verb here even in casual speech, which isn't to say it wouldn't be understood, it would just not be grammatically correct.
For sure there are alternative plural subjects you could use. For example:
Our years of greatest prosperity were those eleven when ...
Our times of greatest prosperity were those eleven years when...
There are cases when it is less clear. For example: "The football team is running on the field" or "the football team are running on the field." Here whether you consider the team a group or a bunch of individuals tends to be different for different dialects and contexts. However, there are no dialects or context where "were" is appropriate for "period."
BTW, with regards to "data/dataum" and similarly "die/dice" this is a change in language over time. Datum and die have become rarely used and are dying out, so that the putatively plural forms have become uncountable nouns in common parlance. Not everyone will agree with this assessment, it is contextually dependent, and in some circumstances the difference is still adhered to. However, I think many people would agree that that is the direction the language is going with these words, notwithstanding the argument as to how far they have gone or how fast they are going.
Wiktionary on data and Wiktionary on dice list both as uncountable as one meaning, though the plural meaning is also indicated.
Given a sentence like:
I couldn’t not help him right?
I was wondering if that sentence was grammatically correct, and even if it is, what better way is there to rephrase it? Because as it stands, it’s “I could not not help. . . .” and it doesn’t seem grammatically correct although it may be.
I know newspapers use short syntax to get attention of the readers but can we use the bold form is it grammaticaly correct?
And in the 4th example normally does it need 'about' after 'backs off' and an s for Obama's birth claim ?
1.Hillary Clinton to return to campaign trail Thursday
2.Barack Obama, Bill Clinton To Fill In For Hillary Clinton
3.Hillary Clinton to Address Millennial Voters During Campaign Event
in Philadelphia
4.Trump finally backs off Obama birth claim
I'm looking for an adjective that describes the fact that a ship is sailing at sea. Much as "afoot" describes a person being in the state of walking. I was hoping "asail" would be a word, but can't find it from Google.
The word would replace the square brackets in the following example:
In Plato's ship of state metaphor, a ship is [sailing at sea], helmed by a captain ...
I'm new to the template, so please forgive my ignorance of this community's parlance, formalities.
I'd imagine that many here have seen the construction:
"Adjective + Article + Noun," as in "so fine a person," or "that fine a person."
My question pertains to the possibility of a "Adjective + Plural Noun" construction, as in "They weren't THAT GOOD REVIEWS," or, "They weren't THAT GOOD PEOPLE."
This sounds stilted at best and at worst, wrong. Do these sentences require the addition of an "Article + Singular Noun + Of" between the adjective and plural noun, as in "They weren't that good A GROUP OF people"?
Thank you to all who can shed light on the matter. I'm still a high school student and am acquiring the tools necessary to analyze problems like this one.
In the case of the proper noun Ross, which of the following would be correct?
Is there a pronoun I can use as a gender-neutral pronoun when referring back to a singular noun phrase?
Each student should save his questions until the end.
Each student should save her questions until the end.
Added 10/27/2019
We could use an answer from the transgender community. There are none amongst the first 23 answers. I know there's a term (in America), but i can't remember what it is.
Answer
Singular they enjoys a long history of usage in English and can be used here: "Each student should save their questions until the end."
However, “singular they” also enjoys a long history of criticism. If you are anxious about being criticized (for what is in fact a perfectly grammatical construction) I would advise rewording to avoid having to use a gender-neutral singular third-person pronoun.
Some rewording strategies that can be employed:
Here for the benefit of those who lack access to its paywalled source are the full and complete operative senses from the Oxford English Dictionary. Per the OED the pronoun they has these specific subsenses for the various scenarios under discussion here:
In anaphoric reference to a singular noun or pronoun. 🗨
Use of they to refer to a singular antecedent has sometimes been considered erroneous.
🗨 Dennis Baron • A brief history of singular ‘they’
…But that’s nothing new. The Oxford English Dictionary traces singular they back to 1375, where it appears in the medieval romance William and the Werewolf. Except for the old-style language of that poem, its use of singular they to refer to an unnamed person seems very modern. Here’s the Middle English version: ‘Hastely hiȝed eche … þei neyȝþed so neiȝh… þere william & his worþi lef were liand i-fere.’ In modern English, that’s: ‘Each man hurried… till they drew near… where William and his darling were lying together.’…
[4 September 2018]
2a. With an antecedent that is grammatically singular, but refers collectively to the members of a group, or has universal reference (e.g. each person, everyone, nobody).
Sometimes, but not always, used to avoid having to specify the gender(s) of the individual(s) being referred to; cf. sense A. 2b.
[[citations ranging from 1350–2014 omitted]]
2b. With an antecedent referring to an individual generically or indefinitely (e.g. someone, a person, the student), used esp. so as to make a general reference to such an individual without specifying gender. Cf. ʜᴇ pron. 2b.
In the 21st century, other th– pronouns (and the possessive adjective their) are sometimes used to refer to a named individual, so as to avoid revealing or making an assumption about that person’s gender; cf. sense A. 2c, and quots. 2008 at ᴛʜᴇɪʀ adj. 2b, 2009 at ᴛʜᴇᴍ pron. 4b, 2009 at ᴛʜᴇᴍꜱᴇʟꜰ pron. 2b.
[[citations ranging from 1450–2010 omitted]]
2c. Used with reference to a person whose sense of personal identity does not correspond to conventional sex and gender distinctions, and who has typically asked to be referred to as they (rather than as he or she).
[[citations ranging from 2009–2019 omitted]]
Copyright © 2019 Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
Retrieved 2019-10-25 23:46:13 UTC, and shown here under the Fair Use Exception.
I never hear "scissor" or "pant" or "jean". It's always "scissors", "pants", and "jeans", respectively. Are they considered plural?
Answer
Yes, these words only have a plural form and require the verb in the plural. A list of such words would be very long and, to mention just a few:
- glasses (spectacles)
- trousers
- binoculars
- tweezers
- pajamas, pyjamas
- knickers
- clothes
- belongings
but beware of "maths" and "aerobics" which are always singular.
For a complete list, follow the links:
Which is correct.
Dan thought it would make sense for me and Val to attend training.
OR
Dan thought it would make sense for Val and I to attend training.
Please explain the difference between "valued" and "valuable" when talking about goods. Which of them should be used to indicate intangible value and which to indicate price? For example, if a product is very useful and inexpensive, is it "valued" or "valuable"?
Answer
Valuable means something is likely to be valued by a lot of people.
Valued means it's definitely already valued by some people.
If a product is inexpensive, it may be valued by those who own it, but it can hardly be valuable.
In the song "We are the world" by Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie, there are these lyrics:
"We are the world,
We are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
So, let's start giving
There's a choice we're making
We're saving our own lives
It's true we'll make a better day
Just you and me"
Should the last line be "you and I"? Because the meaning is "you and I will make a better day".
Actually Michael Jackson asked this same question in the recording session, and someone (likely Quincy Jones) told him to sing "you and me". Is there any principal reason for this choice of words?
Answer
Grammatically speaking, you and I is correct, but clearly the wording was changed to make the song sound better. Try imagining the song with the word I instead of me and you'll get what I mean.
I know that, in the context of radio buttons (the options are limited and they choose one), I should use which. For example, Which is your favorite color?
( ) blue
( ) green
( ) red
I also suspect that for an unlimited text box, the correct option is what. For example, What is your favorite color? ________________
My instinct tells me that the same is true for checkboxes. For example, What colors do you prefer?
[ ] blue
[ ] green
[ ] red
When they can select multiple answers, I should use What colors do you prefer?, not Which colors do you prefer?, right?
The context is an Internet platform to which http requests are sent. In a sentence like this:
The system behaves differently when users' requests increase.
what is the correct usage of user request terminology?
I have the following doubts:
when users' requests vs when the users' requests)user request expression but often I found the user's request expression.user requests and users requests both valid? If so are they interchangeable or are there some differences?Answer
1) The definite article is not necessary in these kinds of contexts. In documentation of this sort, you'll see both "a user makes a request" and "the user makes a request," since you're speaking of a hypothetical user. Of course, if you defined a narrower subset of users and were speaking about them, you'd need the direct article: "Users can log in and after they've done so, the users can view their account."
2) It's optional, and to my ear, sounds worse. I prefer "user requests," which puts the focus a little more on the request than on the user (and the system performs differently because of the requests, not because of the users). It's a subtle distinction, though.
3) "Users requests" is not a form that you would ordinarily see, but it's grammatically valid. Users requests would be the plural of users request. A users request would be a single request that is made by a group of users (for instance, a group of users vote on which request they want to make), or more likely, it might be a request for multiple users - i.e. not a request made by the users, but a request made by someone who wanted users.
Remember that attributive nouns, like the adjectives they resemble, or function as, are not pluralized, unlike some other languages.
One user request => two user requests NOT two users requests
One mouse trap => two mouse traps NOT two mice traps
Also note that some attributive nouns are always plural.
One sales manager => two sales managers
One singles bar => two singles bars
What determines whether an attribute noun should be plural or singular? Unfortunately, it seems there's no clear answer. This article is insightful: "Why isn’t it a gumsballs machine?"
Thank you for initiating the opportunity for Bob and me to talk.
(writers' and teachers' wages)
or
(writers and teachers' wages)
writers and teachers are both plural
When you have multiple nouns, and all those nouns own the same thing, do you put the apostrophe showing possesion in all the nouns or just the last noun?
Answer
According to The Grammar Bible by Michael Strumpf (page 29), in a section on "Possessive Case":
Sometimes possession is shared by several nouns. In these cases, just make the last word in the series possessive.
America and Canada's timber resources are dwindling
Thomas and French's discovery shocked the world.
Leslie and Eric's lasagna is to die for.
These sentences all contain nouns that show joint ownership. In the first sentence, the resources belong to America and Canada. In the second sentence, the discovery belongs to both Thomas and French. In the third sentence, the lasagna belongs to both Eric and Leslie.
To show individual ownership, apply the possessive sign to each item in the series.
America's and Canada's timber resources are dwindling
Thomas's and French's discoveries shocked the world. [Note: I personally would have used Thomas' instead of Thomas's.]
Leslie's and Eric's lasagnas are to die for.
In these examples, each noun has individual ownership of resources, of a discovery, or of a lasagna. These things are not shared.
In your example, if you followed the above advice, you would write either: The writers and teachers' wages were stagnant. Or The writers' and teachers' wages were stagnant. It depends on if you consider the ownership of wages joint or individual. I would actually recommend rewording this anyway: The wages of the writers and teachers were stagnant.
"One of the benefits of this is that it will eliminate gym anxiety if you have any because you are with someone whom you trust."
Which of the following is grammatical when giving someone something they want?
- I hope this could help you.
- I hope it can help you.
- Hoped this may help you.
A: Is Mr. Bob at home?
B: Sorry, he isn't at home. He___to Hong Kong for vacation?
A. went
B. has gone
C. is going
Which one is correct answer? and why it is not the other ones?
Take the following amount:
$ 12.54
I am looking for a term that describes the separation of dollars and cents. Of course there is a term that describes the character that does the job which most people would call decimal or period.
Another example:
John, Adams, Male
This is a small comma-separated list of values. In this case, a comma separates the values "John", "Adams", and "Male". The comma is also called a delimiter.
Is there a term that describes the decimal point as a separator?
Is it a separator?
Answer
In general terms, the radix point separates the integer part of a number from its fractional part. In base 10, the radix point is more commonly called the decimal point.
Someone wrote to me as follows.
(a) If the lava comes down as far as this, we will evacuate these houses.
(b) If the lava will come down as far as this, we will evacuate these houses.
Syntactically, both (a) and (b) are correct.
But semantically, (a) is not understandable because if the lava ( from the volcano ) comes down as far as THIS, it will be too late to evacuate THESE houses.
So if the lava WILL ( = is likely to ) come down as far as this, we must evacuate these houses immediately.
I think interpreting (a) as the person does is unnatural.
I would like to know native English speakers' opinions.
A similar(but different) question was asked here(https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/60972/if-the-lava-will-come-down-as-far-as-this-we-will-evacuate-these-houses).
EDIT(21 July 2015)
Perhaps explaining the backgound of my question might help.
We were discussing which sentence is correct, (a) or (b).
I think (a) is correct and (b) is incorrect,
because there is the following grammar rule. http://www.englishcafe.jp/englishcollege/etense2/e1-2-4.html "In the time and the conditional clauses, both of the present tense and the past tense are used, but "will" and "shall" is usually not used even if it means the simple future. It is inevitable that the present tense is used instead."
However some people say that there are exceptions that we use "will" in if-clauses.
Practical English Usage §260 If … will
We normally use a present tense with if (and most other conjunctions) to refer to the future.
I’ll phone you if I have time. (NOT … if I will have time.)
But in certain situations we use if … will.
1 results
We use will with if to talk about what will happen because of possible future actions – to mean ‘if this will be the later result’. Compare:
–
I’ll give you ￡100 if I win the lottery. (Winning the lottery is a condition – it must happen first.)
I’ll give you ￡100 if it’ll help you to go on holiday. (The holiday is a result – it follows the gift of money.)
–
We’ll go home now if you get the car. (condition)
We’ll go home now if it will make you feel better. (result)
2 ‘If it is true now that …’
We use will with if when we are saying ‘if it is true now that …’ or ‘if we know now that …’.
If Ann won’t be here on Thursday, we’d better cancel the meeting.
If prices will really come down in a few months, I’m not going to buy one now.
3 indirect questions: I don’t know if …
We can use will after if in indirect questions.
I don’t know if I’ll be ready in time. (NOT … if I’m ready in time.)
4 polite requests
We can use if + will in polite requests. In this case, will is not a future auxiliary; it means ‘are willing to’.
If you will come this way, I’ll show you your room.
If your mother will fill in this form, I’ll prepare her ticket.
Would can be used to make a request even more polite.
If you would come this way …
5 insistence
Stressed will can be used after if to suggest insistence.
If you WILL eat so much, it’s not surprising you feel ill.
EDIT 2(21 July 2015)
Some people say it all depends on context.
They say (a) may be incorrect and (b) may be correct depending on context. But I cannot imagine such a case.
As I know, there is no difference in meaning between the following two sentences.
- It is not important for you to eat good food.
- It is not important that you eat good food.
But I believe that there is a little difference between the two sentences at least because
the letters in them are different.
Does anybody know the difference?
I don't really know what to call it but basically there are two forms that I have seen across different texts:
My being here obviously upsets him.
Me being here obviously upsets him.
My taking interest in her research has had fantastic effects.
Me taking interest in her research has had fantastic effects.
Your coming here is quite disturbing
You coming here is quite disturbing
Please forgive my being aggressive.
Please forgive me being aggressive.
I think I must have seen the latter more often but in my head the former makes more sense.
In Michael Swan's "Practical English Usage", he states in section 16.1:
Many verbs besides auxiliaries can be followed by forms of other verbs
(or by structures including other verbs). This can happen, for
example, if we talk about our attitude to an action: the first verb
describes the attitude and the second refers to the action. The second
verb structure is often rather like the direct object of the first
verb.
Additionally he gives the following examples:
I hope to see you soon.
I enjoy playing cards.
I saw that she was crying.
What confuses me is the part "rather like the direct object".
If I'm not mistaken
the non-finite clause "to see you soon" is the object of the verb "hope"
the non-finite clause "playing cards" is the object of the verb "enjoy".
the nominal clause "that she was crying" is the object of the verb "saw".
Why does Swan consider those structures as "rather like direct objects" instead of "direct objects"? Do grammarians use other terms for those structures or is it possible that Swan uses the term "direct object" only for noun phrases, but not for finite/non-finite clauses?
Edit:
I have checked how the term "object" is defined in "A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language" by Quirk, Svartvik and Leech:
10.7 Object: direct and indirect
...
(a) FORM
Like the subject, the object is normally a noun phrase or a nominal
clause.
15.3 Nominal clauses
Nominal claues (clauses approximating in function to noun phrases)
fall into six major categories:
that-clauses (15.4)
...
to-infinitive clauses (15.10 f)
-ing clauses (15.12 ff)
...
15.4 That-clauses:
Nominal that-clauses may function as:
...
direct object: I noticed that he spoke English with an Australian
accent.
...
15.10 To-infinitive clauses:
Nominal to-infinitive clauses may function as:
...
direct object: He likes to relax.
...
15.12 -ing clauses:
Nominal -ing clauses may function as:
...
direct object: He enjoys playing practical jokes.
...
A couple of us have been trying figure this out.
Two parties have a conflict in a form of a proven betrayal that has come to an impasse so both remained conflicted. Then one party extends what appears to be an olive branch along the lines of "you have your view, I have mine. Let's just look forward". This is done with the knowledge that the other party will not be civil unless the conditions of the impasse are lifted allowing for the party that attempted to appease, albeit insincerely, to say 'I have tried but its the other person not wanting to be friends so I wash my hands of this problem.'
My friends and I have used 'Clear the air', 'Bury the hatchet', 'Sweep it under the rug' but it doesn't meet all the criteria stated. Does anyone know.
Answer
What you want is something along the lines of "Let's agree to forgive ourselves my trespasses"—but I don't know of any idiom in English that expresses that particular sense of mutual magnanimity toward one party's misbehavior. The closest one may be let bygone be bygones, which Christine Ammer, The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, second edition (2012) defines as follows:
let bygones be bygones What's done is done; don't worry about the past, especially past errors or grievances. For example, Bill and Tom shook hands and agreed to let bygones be bygones. {First half of 1600s}
Although this expression is neutral as to where fault lay in the original source of conflict, it doesn't require that both parties have been at least somewhat at fault. Still there is an implication that the grievances were not all on one side. More strongly suggestive of fault on both sides is forgive and forget (often anachronistically expressed as "forget and forgive"), which Ammer defines as follows:
forgive and forget Both pardon and hold no resentment concerning a past event. For example, After Meg and Mary decided to forgive and forget their differences, they became good friends. This phrase dates from the 1300s and was a proverb by the mid-1500s.
In effect, the offending person in your scenario is telling the offended person, "Get over it." Here is Ammer's entry for that idiom:
get over ... 2. Recover from, as in I just got over the flu, or I hope the children get over their parents' divorce quickly. {c. 1700} This usage sometimes appears as get over it, as on a bumper sticker following the 1992 presidential election: "Bush Lost, Get Over It."
The flippancy of the bumper sticker example is perhaps even more annoyingly evident in a situation where a person at fault seems impatient for a return to the status quo ante, as though forgiveness were a right claimable under some sort of ethical statute of limitations.
I'm trying to check the correctness of translation of some university courses from my native language to English... Is it correct to spell "web development" with hyphen?
I'm quite sure that "Web Development" is correct. Is "Ruby on Rails Web-development" correct, too?
While I remember coming across "web-..." in adjectives (for example, "web-based"), I don't remember any cases of spelling "web" with hyphen in nouns...
Answer
Web-development is incorrect.
Hyphenated adjectives are used when they qualify a noun.
like Web-based Frameworks
Web Development has evolved to be an umbrella term and hence should be treated as a non hyphenated noun
Possible Duplicates:
“A user” or “an user”?
Use of “a” versus “an”
If I remember correctly back to my school days, the rule is to use "a" if the next word starts with a consonant, or "an" if the next word is a vowel.
For example:
If the above is correct, then why does this sentence sound wrong...?
Answer
When a word begins with a u, sometimes it a acquires what linguists call a "y-glide": a pronunciation that makes it sound like it begins with a "y":
And so on.
Now think of words you pronounce that begin with "y": a youth, a yew — you wouldn't say "an youth" or "an yew".
So we say "a user" but "an understanding" — just that simple.
As a native speaker, this sounds correct:
There are a number of cows in that field.
whilst this sounds totally wrong:
There is a number of cows in the field.
But arguably the second form might be technically correct, because "a" indicates "a number" is singular.
Some examples support this hypothesis: "There is a collection of cows in that field."
Whilst others contradict it: "There are a lot of cows in that field."
Can you confirm which is correct, and is there a good justification which can be generalised to other situations?
Are these questions grammatically correct?
or it is not allowed to use have and has (in this situation) to make a question?
Answer
They are perfectly grammatical. That is, they are too grammatical, using an inverted word order to form a question rather than a "do" form. They have become set phrases.
There is nothing wrong with the set phrases "Have you no shame?" and "Have you no money?" but "Has he a friend?" certainly sounds odd. Normally this set form is used with "no", and "Has he no friends?" would be fine.
In normal speech, "Don't you have any money?" and "Does he have any friends?" would be used.
Funnily enough, food is often used metaphorically to describe someone's eccentricity or level of sanity.
We have nuts
- Slang. a foolish, silly, or eccentric person. an insane person; psychotic. adj.
"crazy," 1846, e.g. to be off one's nut, "be insane," (1860), from earlier be nutts upon "be very fond of" (1785) Meaning "crazy person, crank" is attested from 1903, (British form nutter first attested 1958; nut-case is from 1959)
adjective 1. (postpositive) ( Brit) a slang word for insane. Also, he was plain crackers [1928+; formed with the British suffix -ers, like bonkers, preggers, etc]
adjective Eccentric; odd; nutty, weird (1930s+ Teenagers)
Slang. a crazy or eccentric person; meaning "lunatic person" is first attested 1952.
adj. "crazy," 1968; esp in the phrase go bananas, earlier (1935) it was noted as an underworld
slang term for "sexually perverted." Crazy; nuts: I could see that my calm was driving him bananas (1970s+)
[from the idiomatic expression] to drive somebody bananas
and cupcake
noun An eccentric person; nutball: regarding puppeteers as kind of
weird cupcakes who play with dolls / the publishing cupcake who nailed
you on the couch and then fired you (1970s+)
And yet I couldn't come up with any beverages, meat, or vegetables to add to that list. Why are baked "bread" products and fruits more commonly associated with eccentricity or madness? Are there any other foods I can add to this list? Are there any forgotten or archaic food words that describe a person's sanity?
P.S. Please add references/backup/sources with your answers. Thanks!
Source: All definitions taken from Dictionary.com
EDIT: Related to origins of nuts meaning madness is a question entitled
How did the phrase “Are you nuts” come about?
Answer
The reason why many fruit-related terms are associated with craziness is that most of these slang terms were previously related to homosexuality. In the early 20th century homosexuality was considered a mental illness, as a result this led to a shift in meaning that continued until the 1960s.
By the 1930s both fruit and fruitcake terms are seen as not only negative but also to mean male homosexual, although probably not universally. It should be noted that LGBT people were widely diagnosed as diseased with the potential for being cured, thus were regularly "treated" with castration, lobotomies, pudic nerve surgery, and electroshock treatment so transferring the meaning of fruitcake, nutty, to someone who is deemed insane, or crazy, may have seemed rational at the time and many apparently believed that LGBT people were mentally unsound. In the United States, psychiatric institutions ("mental hospitals") where many of these procedures were carried out were called fruitcake factories while in 1960s Australia they were called fruit factories.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_%28slang%29
Homosexuality was associated with fruits because of the effeminacy of homosexuals, thus softness. Fruits are soft also and there you go. You can refer to Cassell's Dictionary of Slang (By Jonathon Green) for the origins of fruit-themed slang terms with connotations of homosexuality:
As you can see below, fruitcake had the meaning of eccentric person first but gained the meaning of crazy in US slang after gaining the connotation of homosexual man. It must be the craziest food because it contains both fruits and nuts. Hence, you can define the craziest person as "nutty as a fruitcake" and even "nuttier than a fruitcake".
Banana also meant homosexual in the past:
But the phrase go bananas is said to be originated from zoos. Monkeys in the zoo go wild when they see bananas coming. Below is excerpt from the book Food: A Dictionary of Literal and Nonliteral Terms (By Robert Allen Palmatier):
Cupcake is not necessarily related to fruits but it connoted homosexuality also in the 1970s:
Though, in the case of "nuts", people were actually crazy for the food and the food became crazy. People were nuts about nuts.
In the late 19th century, the British used "nuts" as slang for something they found enjoyable: (This usage may have originated in an old cliché—"sweet as a nut.") Being nuts on something meant you really liked it, but so did being "crazy on something." It's possible that "nuts" became a synonym for "crazy" because of this similarity.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2006/04/what_makes_nuts_so_crazy.html
Crackers is a bit different and trickier though. It seems it is derived from cracked and it shares the same meaning with other similar terms: crackerbarrel, cracko, cracky:
cracked adj. 1. [17C+] insane, crazy, eccentric; thus cracked about/on, obsessed with, infatuated with (cf. CRACKED IN THE FILBERT phr.; CRACKERBARREL adj.; crackers adj.; cracko adj.; cracky adj.).
It might be associated with mental breakdown and thus, falling to pieces. It seems it shares the same or similar roots with craze:
From Middle English crasen (“to crush, break, break to pieces, shatter, craze”), from Old Norse *krasa (“to shatter”). Cognate with Danish krase (“to crack, crackle”), Swedish krasa (“to crack, crackle”), Norwegian krasa (“to shatter, crush”), Icelandic krasa (“to crackle”).
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/craze
Etymonline says that it is still used in its original sense in crazy quilt:
Original sense preserved in crazy quilt pattern and in reference to cracking in pottery glazing (1815). Mental sense (by 1620s) perhaps comes via transferred sense of "be diseased or deformed" (mid-15c.), or it might be an image.
It is used in the phrase drive someone crackers also. Below is excerpt from the book Food: A Dictionary of Literal and Nonliteral Terms (By Robert Allen Palmatier):
Programmer here. I am confused with the usage of the term "She/he" when referring a prementioned and undefined user. Below is a sentence found from MSDN magazine:
"When the user decides to create a new customer, she must fill in the data entry form in Figure 2."
I myself use the term "She/he" is this context, since without mentioning both can be regarded as gender discrimination, and placing 'she' before 'he' is respecting the ladies.
So, can I just use 'She' in this context, that will save some typing.
Answer
Most people, until recently, preferred the use of masculine pronoun. But with the rise of female writers, feminist literatures, and feminist movements, the trend has changed dramatically, with many writers inclined toward the use of feminine gender.
That said, the use of he/she is a bit awkward and is better avoided. From the other two, it doesn't matter which one to choose as long as you are consistent.
Which is correct?
A certificate is a statement that states who is entitled.
A certificate is a statement that states whom is entitled.
Is who a subject?
The takes either a singular or a plural subject. A/an only takes the singular.
When we pluralize a noun preceded by an indefinite article, we simply drop the article (sometimes replacing it with some). Why is this?
3 years later:
Whilst on a separate goose-chase, I came across Greg Carlson's 1977 paper A Unified Analysis of the English Bare Plural, which addresses this issue in refreshing detail. It does not answer my question etymologically, but it substantiates the premise that the so-called null determiner is ambiguous:
ABSTRACT. It is argued that the English ‘bare plural’ (an NP with plural head that lacks a
determiner), in spite of its apparently diverse possibilities of interpretation, is optimally represented in the grammar as a unified phenomenon. The chief distinction to be dealt with is that between the ‘generic’ use of the bare plural (as in ‘Dogs bark’) and its existential or ‘indefinite plural’ use (as in ‘He threw oranges at Alice’). ‘Ihe difference between these uses is not to be accounted for by an ambiguity in the NP itself, but rather by explicating how the context of the sentence acts on the bare plural to give rise to this distinction. A brief analysis is sketched in which bare plurals are treated in all instances as proper names of kinds of things. A subsidiary argument is that the null determiner is not to be regarded as the plural of the indefinite article a.
The primary distinction is summed up in these examples:
Weeds grow refers to all weeds, or weeds in general. It is not equivalent to Some weeds grow.
Weeds grow in my garden refers to some weeds, and is equivalent to Some weeds grow in my garden.
I understand that context is often sufficient to determine the scope of the noun without a plural indefinite article1 - but that applies to the singular indefinite article a/an as well. In fact, it seems that a/an is even more redundant, since both Dog barks and Dog barks in my garden are equally indefinite, not generic.
1Carlson 2001 is further germane analysis. In here, he gives examples of sentences for which context is not sufficient to determine the scope of the null determiner. For instance, I only excluded old ladies can mean I excluded all old ladies (generic), or that all those whom I excluded happen to have been old ladies (indefinite - some old ladies may have gotten in after all).
Answer
In most languages indefinite articles stem from that language's word for one. For instance in French un, or in German ein, In Italian and Spanish uno or in Portuguese um.
English is no exception: an was derived from one. Note that an was the original indefinite article; the shorter a came later when the final "n" was dropped before consonants.
In some of the languages I mentioned above, the plural form of the indefinite articles is simply formed by applying the noun plural inflection: unos/unas or uns/umas.
In others, such as German and Italian, there is no plural form to the indefinite article. Italian use the partitive article degli/delle as a substitute and this is probably also the origin of the French plural form des.
For some reason English did not go through this last step either. To understand why we need to go back to the way Old English solved the problem.
In Old English adjectives have a different declension depending on whether the noun they qualify is determined or not.
"The glad man" reads
se glæd guma
whereas, "a happy man" is:
glæda guma
As one can see, only the adjective changes.
For one given adjective, you could therefore have different inflections depending on:
- the noun gender (masculine, feminine, neuter)
- the noun being singular or plural
- the four cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative)
- whether the reference is definite or indefinite.
So that the same adjective would have to follow either the "definite" declension or one of three "indefinite" declensions.
þa glædan guman
Edit
The theory I'm trying to check (community please feel free to edit) is that in various languages (Icelandic for a language very close to Old English or Romanian) the article is added as a suffix to the noun. Then it often "detaches" and passes in front of the noun. Icelandic is half way through for the definite article in that matter.
As for the Old English indefinite article, my conjecture is that the process never went through for a number of possible reasons:
- The "loss of inflection" of early Middle English won the race
- The plural of "an" was not easy to evolve at that time (the Romance "-s" plural had not imposed itself yet).
But the need is still there, just as in any other language where a specific word emerged for the plural indefinite article. This gap is filled by placeholders such as some or a number of.
Most linguist agree that Proto Indo European did not use articles.
Latin does not have any kind of article, and Ancient Greek arguably had no indefinite article either - it was using something very much like present-day English some (τις - "a certain"). And I believe that Old German did not have any article either.
It is a very remarkable fact that articles appeared in many modern Indo European languages in a largely mutually independent yet very similar manner. My feeling is that their emergence compensates for the gradual loss of inflection in these languages. But then present-day German is a powerful counterexample...