What part of speech are non-human "interjections" like "oink" and "bang"?

As a spin-off from this comment:

If a human exclaims something like "ouch!", I believe it's considered an interjection.

But if a pig exclaims "oink!", what is the part of speech?

And if a bell goes "bong!", what is the part of speech?

You could speak of "an oink" and "a bong" as nouns, but I mean in a context like

The man went "ouch!", the pig went "oink!" and the bell went "bong!"

Are interjections only for humans?

Answer

According to the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, "the general definition of interjection is that it is a category of words that do not combine with other words in integrated syntactic constructions, and have expressive rather than propositional meaning." It seems to me that oink and bong fit that definition. Onomatopoeia is not one of the parts of speech listed in CGEL or any other grammar I'm familiar with.

This is, of course, limited to actual words. Environmental sounds (i.e., those you hear directly from pigs and bells rather than human descriptions of pigs and bells) are not language, and cannot be assigned to any lexical category.

grammaticality - Complex compound adjective (adverbial phrase + participle)

A relative of mine and I have hit a brick wall in trying to agree on the grammaticality and stylistic suitability of one his sentences:

However, it proved incapable of jeopardizing the under-socialism-fortified proletariat and nation.

I cautioned him that very complex compound adjectives are an ungainly 20th-century construct and tried to recast the dubitable phrase as:

... the proletariat and the nation, which were fortified under socialism.

He wouldn't hear of it, because his savvy readers would allegedly find a whiz-clause there too explicative. They're all too well aware of the attribute, yet he insists on including it because of the rest of his readers (:sigh: :rolleyes:). So, I tried with this:

... the proletariat and the nation, both fortified under socialism.

Although whiz-deletion¹ doesn't call for a comma, I figured ", both" was necessary to secure the application of the attribute to both nouns, proletariat and nation.

All I got was a scoff in return. It still sounded too lecturing. Then we considered this:

... the proletariat and nation fortified under socialism.

He firmly holds that because the second definite article is omitted from the coordinated nouns, they're more congealed, so the attribute applies to both the proletariat and the nation. Well, I'm not so sure. Your thoughts on that?

Worst of all, after all the hubbub, he said he'd just go with his hyphenated version. But, disregarding the question of style, I'm only 99% sure² that adverbial phrase + participle is a grammatically valid construction at all (though the (never hyphenated) adverb + participle and the (always hyphenated) noun + participle I'm 100% sure are valid). I̲s̲ i̲t̲?

(And, if it is, are all the hyphens needed? I know they are in established expressions such as dyed-in-the-wool and in constructions such as The state set a 55-mile-an-hour limit.)

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1 John Lawler on whiz-deletion:

Interestingly, there is a codicil to Whiz-Deletion that applies when there is only one adjective left after deletion. The adjective has to be moved in front of the noun; it can't appear after it the way phrases can; conversely, phrases can't appear in front of the noun, but must follow it.

Bill is a man who is happy to see you.
Bill is a man happy to see you.
*Bill is a happy to see you man.

2 I've consulted The New Fowler's Modern English Usage, The Oxford Guide To English Usage, Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, and Penguin Dictionary of American English Usage and Style, and found either nothing or an insufficient coverage.

apostrophe - A Friend of Suzie's What?

One often hears this kind of construct: "Henry is a friend of Suzie's". I say that is grammatically incorrect. Yes or no?

articles - Do you use "a" or "an" before acronyms / initialisms?

99% of the time, I'm clear on when I should use "a" versus "an." There's one case, though, where people & references I respect disagree.

Which of the following would you precede with "a" or "an," and why?

• FAQ


• FUBAR


• SCUBA

[Note: I've read the questions "A historic..." or "An historic…"? and Use of "a" versus "an", but the rules given there don't necessarily apply here.]

---

[Edited to add]

Here's a shorter (and hopefully clearer) version of the question… In written English, which is correct (and why): "a FAQ" or "an FAQ"?

Some references with differing opinions:

Answer

It depends on whether the abbreviation is an acronym or an initialism. As "fubar" and "scuba" are usually pronounced as a word (making them acronyms), it would make sense to say "a fubar" and "a scuba diver". "FAQ" is a bit harder, because I have heard people say it like an initialism: "‹f›‹a›‹q›", while others pronounce it as an acronym /fæk/. Therefore, one should write either "a FAQ" or "an FAQ" depending on how that person pronounces it, ie, whether it is an acronym or an initialism.

grammatical number - "3-month retreat" or "3-months retreat"?

Which one is the correct (or more commonly used) form: "3-month retreat" or "3-months retreat"? How about "3-day" vs. "3-days" and "3-week" vs. "3-weeks" in the same context? (This is retreat as in meditation retreat and for U.S. English.)

Answer

In American English, you'd use the singular. So "3 day weekend" or "8 week course" or, yes, "3 month retreat".

grammar - Using "literary present" with past perfect

It's standard for scholars in the humanities to write about the contents of a book in the present tense, but write about the factual details of the book or author in the past tense. My question has to do with using the literary present to speak about what a book says and in the same sentence write about an event that happened prior to the author writing the book.

So, take, for example, the following sentence written in the past tense:

In his book, the author lamented the loss of the individual who had once been his closest friend.

When you write this sentence in literary present, does it become:

1. In his book, the author laments the loss of the individual who had once been his closest friend.

Or:

2. In his book, the author laments the loss of the individual who was once his closest friend.

?

In the first example, only the past tense "lamented" is converted to literary present, while the past perfect "had once been" remains the same. The problem here is that I was taught the past perfect is only used with the past tense. However, even in literary present, it's understood that "laments" refers to an action in the past. So, are both sentences grammatical?

Off the bat, neither of them strikes me as unnatural sounding, and both seem clear.

EDIT:

I dug up this example from Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy, which seems to match 1). And who am I to challenge Russell's grammar?

In this passage Hobbes shows an old-fashioned rationalism. Kepler had arrived at a general proposition.

punctuation - Dilemma over the possessive apostrophe

Punctuation question:

1. One of his friends house


2. One of his friend's house


3. One of his friends' house

Which is correct?

grammaticality - Are these garden path sentences grammatically correct?

Background

A garden path sentence is one that is exceptionally hard for the reader to parse. English is especially prone to this because it is an analytical language and so many words can be many different parts of speech. I read that as a person reads a sentence, he builds up a likely meaning for each word and a meaning for the whole sentence word by word, then if a "disambiguating word" appears that changes the meaning, he switches to the new meaning and continues. When the disambiguating word is far away from the ambiguous word, the sentence can be very difficult to understand.

The classic garden path sentence, as far as I am aware, is "The horse raced past the barn fell." The ambiguous word is raced and the disambiguating word is fell. For those who don't think this is a perfectly grammatical sentence, the meaning is the same as "The horse [that was] raced past the barn fell." Or perhaps more clearly using a different word, "The horse driven past the barn fell."

Before I ask my question, since these things are so cool (to me, anyway), here are a few more examples:

• The old man the boats.


• While Anna dressed the baby spit up on the bed.


• The man returned to his house was happy.


• Fat people eat accumulates.


• She told me a little white lie will come back to haunt me.


• We painted the wall with cracks.

The Question – My Own Garden Path Sentence

After enjoying these and many other garden path sentences I read about, I invented one of my own. Recently I told it to a friend, but he didn't really get my example garden path sentences (the horse, the old, and Anna) and argued that they and mine were not correct grammar. So I submit it to you for your analysis:

The men run through the arches screamed.

As explanation, the men were stabbed in the feet, possibly as a form of torture.

I swear I had several others I invented five to ten years ago, but I can't remember them. Perhaps I will invent some new ones.

Is that sentence correct grammar? As well as the others?

Feel free to edit my grammar. No comment necessary.

Answer

Here is how the example sentences are grammatical:

• The old man the boats.
  The old [people] [man/serve on] the boats




• While Anna dressed the baby spit up on the bed.
  While Anna [got] dressed, the baby spit up on the bed.





• The man returned to his house was happy.
  The man [who was returned to his house] was happy.




• Fat people eat accumulates.
  [The fat that people eat] accumulates




• She told me a little white lie will come back to haunt me.
  She told me [that] [a little white lie will come back to haunt me].




• We painted the wall with cracks.
  We painted the wall [that has] cracks.

syntax - What is and isn't a constituent, and how (whether?) can one argue that something is or isn't grammatical

Background

In CGEL on p. 1317, we find the following analysis of the sentence

[1] [Beauty] [as well as love] is redemptive.

They note that the singular is signifies that as well as is here not a coordinator (like it is in e.g. [Abstraction] [as well as impressionism] were Russian inventions.). In fact, CGEL says that in [1],

as well as does not form a constituent. This is evident from the fact that as well can occur on its own: compare Beauty is
redemptive and love is as well. In [1], then, the second as is a
preposition taking the NP love as its complement, and the whole PP
as love is an indirect complement in the AdvP as well as love.

This argument assumes that

[2] Beauty is redemptive and love is as well

is (for a lack of a better term---what is the right term, by the way?) a 'syntactic equivalent' of [1].

My question 1

Here is my initial attempt to formulate my question: what does the analysis used by CGEL say about

[3] ?He as well as they is going to L.A.

I'm putting the '?' because [3] sounds dubious to me. If [3] is to have any chance of being grammatical, as well as they must be interpretable as an AdvP (because if as well as is interpreted as a coordinator, then we need a plural verb: are going to L.A.). And if I'm following the reasoning in CGEL correctly, the AdvP interpretation would imply that [3] has the following 'syntactic equivalent':

[4] He is going to L.A. and they are as well.

This case is different from the one in CGEL because in [1], both beauty and love are singular, and so in the 'syntactic equivalent' [2] they both get the same (singular) form of the verb. In contrast, in [3] he is singular, but they is plural. So in [4] we must have the singular is for he, but the plural are for they. Given this difference, can we still say that [4] is a 'syntactic equivalent' of [3]? What is it that really matters when making this sort of an argument?

My question 2

What I would really want to do is present the following argument.

1. [4] is obviously grammatical.


2. [3] is a 'syntactic equivalent' of [4].


3. Therefore, [3] is grammatical.

I suspect that the answer is no---that there is no way to use grammar to predict whether some tricky sentence is grammatical or not. I would think that all you can do is this: once you already know (from analyzing corpora etc.) whether something is grammatical, then you can show that the reason for it being grammatical or not is that it does or doesn't conform to some rule of grammar. But 'rules of grammar' cannot help you with controversial cases. The only way is to know whether a controversial case is grammatical is to ask (a lot of) native speakers whether it sounds acceptable to them or not.

Is that correct?

Summary

To summarize, my questions are:

A. Is [3], in fact, grammatical?

B. In general, does the type of argument I presented above (1.-2.-3. in My question 2) work? In general, is that a legitimate way to argue
that something is grammatical? (Let's assume there are no idiomatic expressions 'anywhere near', i.e. that there are no relevant idioms that could complicate matters.)

C. This question is about whether it matters that both is and are are present in [4], but only is is present in [3]. Here I'm not really asking about the particular sentences [3] and [4], but rather about whether, when making the type of argument CGEL makes when it analyzes [1] with the help of [2], it would matter if the form of the verb in the 'syntactic equivalent' changes. Imagine there is a sentence kind of like [3], but indisputably grammatical, and also a corresponding sentence like [4]. Suppose that in the latter sentence there are both is and are, whereas in the former, there is only is. Does this fact, in and of itself, make it impossible to use the latter sentence for the purpose of syntactic analysis of the former (such as finding out whether something is a constituent of the former)? To put it another way: even if [3] isn't grammatical, imagine it were. Could in that case one use [4] to argue that as well as isn't a constituent of [3]? Or would this argument be invalidated by the fact that both is and are are present in [4], whereas only is is present in [3]?

What type of grammar construction is this

• She thinks herself able to best him in this argument.


• She thinks that she is able to best him in this argument.


• She thinks herself to be able to best him in this argument.

Are the first and the last sentence the same in meaning?

tenses - Past Perfect Confusion

In a book these two forms are acceptable:

Before a complete version of Louisa May Alcott's novel Little Women appeared in 1880, the book had been published in two separate volumes.

AND

Before a complete version of Louisa May Alcott's novel Little Women appeared in 1880, the book was published in two separate volumes.

I do not quite understand why both are acceptable. However I decided to just follow it. So I started working on other problems for practice and this is where all the confusion stems from.

By the time Pearl S. Buck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938, she was a best-selling author in the United States for nearly a decade.

So using the general rule for Past Perfect, I said had been. And that, it turns out, is correct. However, since I was bored, I thought: Why cannot it be was? Since the rule provided above accepts either the Simple Past or Past Perfect?

So, is there anyone who can confirm why, for the first example both the Simple Past & Past Perfect can be used without error? And also, why when we come to the second example "was" does not work?

Thank you for your help.

phrase usage - "I too" versus "me too"

I was talking to someone earlier today, and while trying to relate with them, I suddenly found myself trying to decide between "I too" and "me too". I can't quite grasp their differences.

As I understand it, "me too" is valid only on its own, in response to someone's statement.

Person 1: I absolutely love that new album

Person 2: Me too! Doesn't everyone?

Whereas, "I too" works (I believe) in both that scenario, as well as at (is that wording correct?) the beginning of a response phrase.

Person 3: I too, enjoy the album you mentioned.

Regardless of whether I am right or not, can someone please explain the mechanics behind this?

Answer

In modern English, we don't use nominative case Subjects when there isn't a tensed verb in that clause.

It is rare for [him to miss a class].

*It is rare for [he to miss a class]. (ungrammatical)

The proform too can stand in for a tensed verb phrase. However, because it is not actually a verb and therefore has no tense, we cannot use a nominative Subject with it:

• *I too! (ungrammatical)




• Me too! (grammatical)

Article 'a' altering the meaning of a phrase

Recently, at work, I had an argument with a colleague on the use of article 'a' in the sentence: "Active i is just 'a' little more than a smaller and cheaper Activa."

In the sentence, he meant that 'Activa i is nothing but a smaller and cheaper version of Activa'. He insists that adding 'just a' to the original sentence has changed the meaning.

I disagree: To me none of the two sentences convey the intended meaning.

Please help me sort out the confusion.

grammar - two and's when using "between"

I'm writing an introduction part for my research paper. I wrote a sentence that follows:

"The main concern of this study is to find out whether there is a relationship between gender and success and interest for different disciplines taught in the FLE department of METU"

In the sentence, I want to mean "gender" as being one part and "success and interest" being the other part. If I use two ands like this, it creates an ambiguity. How can I rewrite this?

grammar - Is "curious of" acceptable or even better than "curious about"?

Many speakers and internet writers seem to use "curious of" in place of "curious about". For example:

I am curious of what he thinks.

This is in spite of what seems to be, by the rules of grammar I can find, less correct than saying:

I am curious about what he thinks.

I have heard both forms uttered so much that there seems in fact a subtle difference in meaning between the two, but I may be imagining things.

Two questions--

1. Is "curious of" really any less correct than "curious about"?


2. Is "curious of" actually more appropriate for certain subjects or certain relationships, due to different connotations perhaps?

omissibility - commas/ omitting "which is"

In the passage below, shouldn't the writer have included which is before the word championed, since it is in a non-defining clause?

In seeking to describe the origins of theater, one must rely primarily on speculation, since there is little concrete evidence on which to draw. The most widely accepted theory, championed by anthropologists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, envisions theater as emerging out of myth and ritual. The process perceived by these anthropologists may be summarized briefly.

Use of conditional tense/sujunctive mood

I am discussing with a friend (over email) the pros and cons of various interview styles. At some point in the email I write:

"Ideally the candidate will demonstrate X."

Then in the next sentence I want to describe, by comparison, what action by the candidate would not be ideal. I was initially tempted to write:

"What would be bad would be if the candidate did Y"

but the bold-text "would be" sounds wrong as used here. Instead I feel I should write something like:

What would be bad is if the candidate did Y"

because I'm saying that [the action that would be bad] = Y, as opposed to [the action that would be bad] would be Y. In other words, I know that the action Y would be bad.

Neither phrase sounds perfect though. I would appreciate any explanation of a 'correct' phrasing! Also I am from the UK, but living in the US so I am interested in usage in each place (if there is a difference). Finally, I apologize if I have mis-tagged this question - it seems to me to be a question about use of either the conditional tense or the subjunctive mood, but this could be wrong.

Changing meaning of osmosis to mean symbiosis

Recently, I thought I caught an autocorrect-type error in a discussion of an important (English) press release from a French company. The quote is about the latest Volvo Ocean Racer V60 for team Charal.

"The Charaaal [sic] came out of construction this Tuesday, August 21, 2018 in port-LA-Forêt.
In the presence of all the teams involved - the Charal sailing team, its partner Charal,
the architects of vplp, the teams teams - until no more training than a united group which, behind the doors of cdk technologies, worked hard during Almost 12 months in perfect osmosis.

This appears to be a quote from Jérémie Beyou, the new boat's skipper. Presumably translated from French.

I thought this was pretty funny since osmosis, when talking about boats, means only one thing to me — gel coat blistering, a sort of hull degradation cancer.

When I mentioned this on a boater's forum, I got some responses saying it is the normal way to say it in French, and is also used this way in English in Australia.

[...] But auto correct strikes again? From the first link - "worked hard during Almost 12 months in perfect osmosis." I'm pretty sure that's not what they meant to say. (me)

"En parfaite osmose" is a French common expression to describe the functioning of a team and I think the best translation is "in perfect harmony". (Dolfiman)

Erm, so what do the French attribute gelcoat blistering to? Really, someone ought to clue them in that osmosis has basically one literal meaning in English, and any metaphorical extensions are both informal and off the mark. Symbiosis has the metaphorical sense they want and isn't informal, but it still sounds a bit off, and isn't all that common either. (me)

I can confirm you that "osmose" is also the french name for osmosis as regard its first meaning. And osmosis of GRP hull is also a matter of concern, here is a complete overview of the subject by Gerard Boulant, a full time expert on this issue, you can click on each blue texts to have the pdf of all the chapters :{snip} (Dolfiman)

Down here in Oz we use osmosis in the French way. (CT249)

So has osmosis begun to take over the metaphorical space that used to be owned by Symbiosis? None of the dictionaries I checked mentioned this meaning.

2 : a cooperative relationship (as between two persons or groups)

"Symbiosis." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 14 Sept. 2018.

Some examples of working in osmosis that I found —

2) State of affairs, brainstorming and prospecting

Our studies help understand the past to better visualize the future,

while accompanying you during your entire thought process:

grasping the brand’s patrimony, heritage and functioning crossing the
fundamentals with our knowledge of trends, markets and competition
working in osmosis with our clients, we aim to provide made-to-measure, unique work

http://www.edelkoort.com/consulting/

LE QUOTIDIEN, May 2010

Performing this score for the first time, the Luxembourg Philharmonic
Orchestra were led by the baton of the energetic Benjamin Pope....a
conductor working in osmosis with the dancers....

http://www.benpope.com/Site/Reviews.html

We have described strategic planning as a proactive and dynamic process, directed toward the culture of change working in osmosis
with its environment. It goes without saying that the process includes a determined and effective implementation.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4a8a/0fc080533322c23ecd7af2ec2d2b3fc56d9f.pdf

grammaticality - Mixing contracted and uncontracted phrases in the same sentence

Is there anything wrong with mixing contracted with uncontracted phrases in the same sentence?

Examples:

I'm not sure it is possible.

("I'm" is contracted, but "it is" is not).

I am not sure it's possible.

("I am" is not contracted, but "it's" is).

I know that it is not grammatically incorrect. But is it not recommended? Or is there any other reason to not use it?

Answer

Is there anything wrong with mixing contracted with uncontracted phrases in the same sentence?

No, there isn't. You can freely write a word contracting it, and write another one without to contract it.
As reported by Mr. Shiny and New, sometimes a word is written without to contract it to put emphasize on it.

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

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

• abbreviation: a shortened form of a word or phrase


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


• Initialism: an abbreviation consisting of initial letters pronounced separately


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

^{All definitions provided by Oxford Dictionaries Online}

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

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

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

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

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

Answer

It could be characterized as a rebus

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

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

[Wikipedia]

In particular, the Encyclopaedia Britannica states

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

....

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

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

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

What's the difference between the two:

• What materials do they prefer working with?



• What materials do they prefer to work with?

capitalization - Why is quixotic not Quixotic (a proper adjective)?

Adjectives derived from proper nouns are known as proper adjectives, and are capitalized:

A piece of writing could be Shakespearean, not shakespearean.
A person may be Canadian, not canadian.

Even Chrome's spellchecker sees these as correct and incorrect.

However, quixotic is written in lower case, despite coming from the name of the character Don Quixote. Similarly, draconian laws are named for Draco, a particularly brutal senator from ancient Athens.

Does anyone know the reasoning behind some proper adjectives not being capitalized in common usage?

Answer

In a comment posted years ago to the question Why is "biblical" the only proper adjective to not use upper case? I listed some other exceptions to the general rule that the first letter of an adjective derived from a proper name is normally capitalized. Only the letters q, w, x, and y did not yield an example (for some reason, I failed to notice quixotic):

arabesque, byzantine, caesarean, draconian, epicurean, faradic, galvanic, herculean, italic, jesuitical, kabbalistic, lilliputian, mercurial, nazi, oedipal, pyrrhic, rubenesque, spartan, terpsichorean, utopian, voltaic, and zephyrous

Why do these exceptions occur? The not-very-satisfactory answer seems to be that common usage determines whether an adjective based on a proper name is initial-capped or lowercased. Dictionaries provide their spelling preferences based on what amount to the found objects of preponderant real-world usage in each case; and thenceforth, real-world usage (to the extent that it is influenced by people who look things up in dictionaries) tends to reflect the dictionary treatment. The very circularity of the process makes it extremely difficult to determine where and when the critical decision regarding initial cap versus all lowercase got made.

I don't see how else to explain why Oedipal is usually initial-capped when it refers to the mythical character Oedipus (as in "Oedipal resistance to fate") but usually lowercased when it refers to Freud's Oedipus complex (as in "oedipal feelings"), although the complex is explicitly named after Oedipus.

Bryan Garner, Garner's Modern American Usage, second edition (2003) concludes that trying to explain exceptions to the normal rules about what gets capitalized and what doesn't is a fool's game:

There is simply no way to reason out why Stone Age is capitalized but space age is usually not, why October is capitalized but autumn is not, why in scientific names the genus is capitalized but the species is not—even when the species name is derived from a proper name {Rhinolophus philippinensis}.

Ultimately, capitalization conventions rest on strong general tendencies tempered by exceptions that are neither consistent nor explicable.

meaning - What is "Web Copy" and why does everyone refer to it without an article?

I recently read a blog post that talks about "Web Copy".

I have never heard of this term before, so I did some searching around. I'm still not sure what the meaning of this is.

What bugs me is that everyone who uses it refers to it without the use of an indefinite or definite article before. For example, in the blog post mentioned, the author says "How do you learn to write web copy?" instead of "How do you learn to write a web copy?". Other places use it in this 'proper noun' usage (though it isn't capitalized).

Can someone please define the term and explain why there is no article?

archaicisms - Reason why tantalium became obsolete

A search in google clearly shows that the word tantalum is the correct spelling of the word and is widely used today. What made me curious was this Wikipedia entry wrote:

Previously known as tantalium...

So, I searched when this word come into usage. A search to google Ngrams shows this:

This clearly shows that a spike in the usage of the word tantalium in around 1802 which is about when 'tantalum' was discovered. Then slowly into the future closer to modern times, tantalium is now classified as obsolete.

I have a few questions relating to this:

1) Why is tantalium obsolete and made tantalum surpass it?

2) There is a spike in usage of the word tantalium just after the discovery of this metal. Could the word originally be named tantalium?

3) There was a small amount of usage of the word tantalum in 1747 and 1754, well before the discovery of such metal. What could be the cause of this?

capitalization - Is it proper to capitalize "its" in a title?

For instance, say a book is titled "Genesis and Its Interpretations". Is it correct to capitalize "its" in the title?

syntactic analysis - Identifying the sentence structure. Is this sentence a compound sentence?

I am trying to determine the sentence structure of the sentence:

Along with every other devoted Aussie trackydack dagger, I beg the federal government to ban these abhorrent, foreign "cuffs" and bring back the loose, flaccid Aussie leg-hole we know and love.

I believe that this text is a compound sentence, whereas my Teacher believes that it is a complex sentence and the majority of my class believes that it is a compound-complex sentence.

Assistance and an explanation would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

grammar - Which one is correct - " There is only us here" or "There are only us here"

Temporary reopen note:

The linked-to question is about the verb agreeing with the grammatical number of the first item in a list in a there is/are sentence. However there is no list in this question here. Even if there were, us would seem to be plural here, so there is no good explanation of why is may be preferable to are.

You can see the linked-to question here:

The Original Question

I am dubious between these two ways of referring to two people in a place or in an area.

Example:

John: Ok folks, I am going to let you here waiting for the manager to come. It is going to take some minutes until he makes it here.

Josh: Ok, thank you.

Mathew: Alright.

Josh: Hum... Now, there is/are only us here.

Is there any reason why is or are is preferable here?

pronouns - "Me" or "I" in one-word answers

I've just read a couple of questions concerning the proper usage of the pronouns "I" and "me" in sentences like:

John and I went fishing

It seems clear and obvious to me, that when the pronoun is the subject of the sentence, we should use the subject pronoun.

My question concerns a different context, though. I'm curious as to which pronoun is correct when used in a short, one-word answer? So, when we hear a question like "Who wants to go fishing tomorrow?", should the answer be:

Me!

or

I!

My intuition tells me it should be the former, but I don't really know why.
Is there any underlying rule in English, that dictates which pronoun - subject or object - should be used in the above-mentioned context?

apostrophe - 90s kids or 90's kids or 90s' kids or '90s kids

I have been checking on which of these is grammatically correct. Should we use "90s kids" or "90's kids" or "90s' kids" or "'90s kids"? I checked on many forums and platforms like Reddit, Oxford, and many others. People discuss 90s kids and 90's kids and '90s kids, but no one talks about 90s' kids which I think is most appropriate as we use s' for plurals. Here is my research:

Oxford Dictionaries: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/punctuation/apostrophe

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/3ir72f/90s_vs_90s_which_one_is_correct/

Some even say that it should be written '90s as we are omitting 19 from 1990. So what do you all think?

Starting and ending with prepositions

Is the usage of in and into in the adverb phrase redundant?

"In every competition that you get into, you have to do your best."

I know that it would be better to just say "In every competition, you have to do your best." But I was just wondering whether my usage was acceptable.

grammar - Inversion in "only [adverb] have they"

I have seen this construction quite often:

Online ads have been around since the dawn of the Web, but only in
recent years have they become the rapturous life dream of Silicon
Valley.

What is the rule there?. When your sentence doesn't start with pronoun + verb, invert them as verb + pronoun?. I know it sounds awkward but is it possible (grammatically correct) to use something similar to:

Online ads have been around since the dawn of the Web, but only in
recent years they have become...

And in any case, does this only work with have (or has)? Maybe it works fine with 'had' but I can't think of an example right now.

Answer

Switching around the normal word order is called inversion, and this specific type is called subject-auxiliary inversion. Wikipedia has a list of usages of subject-auxiliary inversion, including interrogative constructions (e.g. Did you eat?), but the following is the declarative section:

Declarative sentences with negative elements (i.e. never or not) are formed. See also Negative inversion.

• Example #1: Never again shall I watch that opera!


• Example #2: Not since childhood did she eat cotton candy.

Declarative sentences with restrictive elements (i.e. only or so) are formed.

• Example #1: Only on Fridays does he go to the bar.


• Example #2: So hard did she work that she overslept the next day.


• Example #3: So did I.

I found a blog called Practice English which has a laudably comprehensive post on the topic of inversion:

In statement it is usual for the verb to follow the subject, but sometimes this word order is reversed.

We can refer to this as inversion. There are two main types of inversion:

• when the verb comes before the subject (optional inversion)

In the doorway stood her father. (or …her father stood.)

• when the auxiliary comes before the subject and the rest of the verb
  phrase follows the subject (inversion is usually necessary)

Rarely had he seen such a sunset. (not Rarely he had seen…)

Inversion brings about fronting, the re-ordering of information in a sentence
to give emphasis in a particular place. Often this causes an element to be
postponed until later in the sentence, focusing attention on it.

• Inversion after negative adverbials

When we begin a sentence with a negative adverb or adverbial phrase,
we sometimes have to change the usual word order of subject and
verb (often using an auxiliary verb) because we want to emphasise
the meaning of the adverb. We use inversion when we move a negative adverb
which modifies the verb (never, nowhere, not only, hardly etc.) to the beginning

of a sentence. For example:

I had never seen so many people in one room. (= normal word order)

Never had I seen so many people in one room. (= inversion)

There are adverbs and adverbial expressions with a negative,
restrictive or emphatic meaning, which are followed by inversion
when placed first in a sentence. The most common adverbs ad adverbial
expressions with negative, restrictive or emphatic meaning that are

followed be inversion are:

Seldom, Rarely, Little, Nowhere, Nor even one, In no way
Scarcely/Hardly/Barely … when, No sooner … than, Not only … but (also)
On no occasion/account/condition, In/Under no circumstances
Only after, Only later, Only once, Only in this way, Only by,
Only then, Only when, Only if, Not till/until, Never, Never
before, Not since, Neither/Not/So, Well (formal) etc:

This is only the first 15% or so. Though not the highest quality of writing (it contains a few typos, etc), IMO it represents the contexts of proper inversion admirably well and staggeringly comprehensively.

The only real (albeit minor) disagreement I have seen that I have with it involves the following:

We can put the verb before the subject when we use adverbs expressing
direction of movement, such as along, away, back, down, in, off, out, up with verbs such as come, fly, go. This pattern is found
particularly in narrative, to mark a change in events:

The door opened and in came the doctor. (less formally …and the doctor came in)

As soon as I let go of the string, up went the balloon, high into the sky. (less formally …the balloon went up)

Just when I thought I’d have to walk home, along came Miguel and he gave me a lift. (less formally …Miguel came along and gave me …)

As far as I have seen, it's not necessarily formal to say in came the doctor - in fact, the doctor came in seems more consistent with a formal context. (It also could be that the author meant to say less informally, and if so, I'd have agreed completely).

etymology - Might the word "hushpuppy" be a corruption of a Native American word?

I have always doubted the traditional explanation of the origin of the word "hushpuppy" since the word sounds like a borrowing from a Native American language. The 'explanation' that it comes from someone frying up a dollop of cornbread batter to quiet the dogs sounds like folk etymology.

.                     .    (image courtesy of Wikipedia)

The practice of making bread from ground maize comes from Native Americans, after all, so it is not a stretch to think that a form of Native American bread might have retained a Native American name, possibly in a corrupted form.

Are there any Native American linguists in this group who might shed some light on this subject?

grammaticality - When is it appropriate to end a sentence in a preposition?

Like many others, I commonly find myself ending a sentence with a preposition. Yes, it makes me cringe. I usually rewrite the sentence, but sometimes (in emails) I just live with it. To, with... you know who you are.

Should I keep fighting myself on this one, or is it okay in some circumstances?

Answer

A preposition is a perfectly reasonable word to end a sentence with. Admonitions against doing so are not something anyone needs pay heed to. It's the kind of made-up rule that is not based on the reality of the language and anguish over doing it is something no writer need suffer from. And if you don't believe me, look it up.

Which preposition to use with diagnosis?

The sentence is: "It has been 2 years since my diagnosis of/with cancer".

Which is correct, "diagnosis of" or "diagnosis with" cancer? The meaning i want is: "It has been 2 years since I was diagnosed with cancer."

My impression is that "diagnosis of" implies the speaker is the person who performed the diagnosis (i.e. the doctor), while "diagnosis with" implies the speaker was the person who was diagnosed (i.e. the patient).

Thanks,

american english - Problem understanding " must"

From the book : English Grammar and Exercises by L. R. H. Chapman, book 4:

"must is a defective verb, with only this one part, which is used to speak about the present time or a near future, as in these sentences: I must answer this letter at once; I must get up early tomorrow."

But then it is used in the both following examples with the past tense.

I really don't understand. Could you explain, please?

"After dinner Mr. Drew told the girls that he must leave
the hotel for a few hours."
(The Haunted Bridge by Carolyn Keene)

"The chimes of a clock warned Nancy that she must return
to the car to meet her father. "

(The Message in the Hollow Oak by Carolyn Keene)

orthography - Plural of The Letter S

In a previous question here What is the proper way to write the plural of a single letter? (another apostrophe question) someone asked what the plural of a letter is. The answer given was for uppercase letters use a lower case S with no apostrophe, but for lower case letters use an apostrophe for clarification.

What about when using the letter S? In either case, having Ss or s's looks odd. Would the plural be Ses or S's?

And when using uppercase letters that can become a word, such as Is and As, is no apostrophe okay or should an apostrophe be added for clarification?

This may be marked as duplicate for Plural of an initialism that ends with the letter S or similar questions concerning acronyms ending in S, but I believe this is different because I am asking about the letter itself, not an acronym.

Modal verb without auxiliary verb

I'm used to seeing modal verbs followed by auxiliary verbs, like this:

I should have been reading.

However, I've heard people say things like:

I'm glad you did or I wouldn't met you.

I knew we shouldn't trusted him.

Is this construction without the auxiliary informal?

Is there a difference if I rewrite those sentences as:

I'm glad you did or I wouldn't have met you.

I knew we shouldn't have trusted him.

syntax - What's the difference between - and -- in a phrase?

When do I put a - in a sentence? Is it a more powerful comma? With a bigger pause?

grammar - What job don't students like very much?

I need to have my English students read a pie chart containing information about jobs. One of the questions I wrote is:

"What job don't students like very much?"

(They are expected to read the chart and say "doctor," which was voted by two students only).

Now, is that question grammatically correct? I just find it awkward. I know there are more natural options, but that is the wording I need for non-native 6th graders. Thanks in advance! I apologize if you find this question too silly.

Answer

I think it's ok but maybe move the "not" and change "what" to "which"

Which of the jobs do students not like very much?

or perhaps better

Which of the jobs do students like the least?

Eplanation:

Removing the contraction "don't" to "do not" becomes "do not students like" which sounds wrong. It's very yoda speak.

"Which" is preferable to "What". It's not an open-ended question. They are being asked to select from a range of answers so "which" is more appropriate.

"Not like very much" vs "like the least". I think the latter is more accurate for the question. It is asking for THE least whereas the former could answer with a selection.

What tense to use when reporting something which has never been true or never happened?

The report said that years ago city planners had planned to build a facility that turns salt water into fresh water, but financial woes made that impossible.

In this sentence should turned be used instead of turns?

Completed action in the past lead to an ongoing action - which tense to use?

I am a bit confused about the proper tense for the following situation. I try to make an example:

A couple of weeks ago I talked to someone. We have not talked or communicated in any way again since then. So this action is completed and lies in the past.

This talk lead to an action that takes place right now. So it is ongoing and in the present. Which form is grammatically correct:

1. After a talk with Y, I write this sentence.


2. After having a talk with Y, I write this sentence.


3. After a talk with Y, I am writing this sentence.


4. After having a talk with Y, I am writing this sentence.

or even

5. After having had a talk with Y, I write / am writing this sentence.


6. After I had a talk with Y, I write / am writing this sentence.

Thank you very much in advance for your answer!

Answer

That unqualified use of after will always make people think it means directly after, so all of those are more confusing than things that are more explicit:

• I talked with X a few weeks back, but am only just now writing about it.


• Having talked with X a couple weeks ago, I’m now writing about what I learned then.

You can also use had in many narrative styles:

• I had talked with X about all this two week ago; now I’m finally getting around to writing about what I learned during our talk.

One or two apostrophes for two subjects in the possessive case?

Which is correct: [Bonus question: should there be a question mark here instead of a colon?]

The book contains Marx and Engels' theories about the nature of
society and politics.

or

The book contains Marx's and Engels' theories about the nature of
society and politics

It seems to me that the former is more common, but I am confused here since the latter seems more logical to me (and matches what you would see in my native language Icelandic).

Comma sense: Grammar and Usage Case

Working on a sentence that's bothering me:

After a few minutes, a thin blue-eyed girl, wearing black stockings and wrapped tightly in a silver mink, kicked over the can with her white tennis shoe.

1. It feels like it should be written without commas but I don't like how it reads—it feels unclear. But I don't know if putting commas there is grammatically correct. Is it?

I also thought about writing it with an em dash, which I think is grammatically correct, but stylistically it calls too much attention to it:

...a thin blue-eyed girl—wearing black stockings and wrapped tightly in a silver mink—kicked over...

So, is it grammatically correct with or without the commas?

2. Should there be a comma between thin and blue-eyed? I tried the test of reversing it: ...a blue-eyed thin girl... which doesn't sound right, so I figured no comma based on the rules for compound adjectives, but I'm still not sure.

Thanks!

possessives - Jenkins' vs Jenkins's vs Jenkins'es

While my question applies to Jenkins (software) which was named after Jenkins named meant to evoke a feel of English butler, there is a historical precent:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Jenkins'_Ear

Wikipedia article has Jenkins' in the title and Jenkins's in reference to historical book.

However modern grammar rules seem to imply that correct possessive form in modern English would be Jenkins'es.

So what is correct? Or are several options acceptable?

Answer

Names ending in s get their apostrophe welded on at the end. The correct answer is Jenkins'.

Noting occasional stray errors in a Wikipedia page that otherwise gets it correct, or how people say it aloud, is interesting but beside the point. The rule is simple and has nothing to do with how people say things out loud (written English is not subjugate to this year's crop of mis-speech.)

grammar - Is article and auxiliary verb omission in modern English an emerging phenomenon?

I am obviously not talking about newspaper headlines etc. in this question.

I tried looking it up online but wasn't able to find much. In many instances of spoken English (and, probably, making its way into written English as well), I notice people omit articles where they grammatically shouldn't.

An example from Daredevil which I just watched and remembered I've had this question for a while: "Kid's half an idiot! – It's the other half that counts." I'm positive you know what I'm getting at here. One could say "Dude is built like a tank" when the dude in question has been addressed already (and technically should have a "the" preceding it).
I have an intuition that the longer the phrase is, the less natural the omission sounds. For example, it's harder for me to imagine a phrase like "Dude flipped the table like it was made out of carton" without wanting to slap a "the" at the beginning.

I swear I've heard someone say "less you know about this, the better."

And finally, something that is probably the most widespread: dropping auxiliary verbs. It is so normal to ask a question like "sleep well?", meaning "did you sleep well?".

Yet, I cannot find any articles on this topic, and sometimes it makes me question whether I'm mishearing things. Yet, it is so widespread, there is no doubt it is a real phenomenon.

Is it a new phenomenon? Has anything like this happened before, either in English or in other languages? Are there any particular rules governing it?

Notes:

grammar - Definite and indefinite articles when introducing a person

No article is used when introducing a person.

This ended terribly for Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi; eight years after giving up his nuclear program, the US intervened against him in the Libyan civil war.

A definite article is used when introducing a person.

Thomas Homan, the acting director for ICE, said the first instance is if parents could not prove family ties to the minor.

An indefinite article is used when introducing a person.

Also running in the primary are labor organizer Valerie Ervin, state Sen. Richard S. Madaleno, tech entrepreneur Alec Ross, lawyer Jim Shea and Krish Vignarajah, a former policy director for Michelle Obama.

Does the article difference depend on the sentence structure? Or is there a rule that dictates when to use a definite or indefinite article when introducing a person in writing.

Thank you in advance.

prepositions - Prepositional phrases on the internet

Is there any online dictionary or database of prepositional phrases? What I would like is to enter e. g. "justification" and it would give me: "justification to somebody", "justification of something", and other possibilities (optionally with description of the meaning of each phrase).

I found this website http://www.englishpage.com/prepositions/verb_preposition.html. This is almost what I want, but it contains only few examples. I am looking for more complete list. Maybe some online dictionary might provide me with what I want, but dictionary.reference.com, which I use, does not list prepositional phrases with words (right?).

Answer

You're asking about Government in Linguistics, right? I think the best way (and maybe the only one, even if I'm not aware of such lists available for English since it's not really a Case-based language) is to study each verb on its own.

But try searching these keywords: government verbs, etc.

Don't confuse this with Phrasal Verbs, which are something slightly different:
"Government" in Linguistics means what "case" the verb governs, while a Phrasal verb is a verb which, put together with a preposition, usually, changes its meaning!

For example:

To find = Who? What?

The verb "to find" here governs an accusative case, which usually means Direct Object. You find someone/something not "prep. + someone/something".

But if you say:

To find out = What? (edit: there exists also "to find someone out" but even here the meaning slightly changes, although this wasn't the point.)

Here "to find out" doesn't mean "to find something outside" (I'm making it an extreme example to make it clearer), but means to discover.

articles - As the mother of a child or As a mother of a child

May I know which one of these is the correct answer.

1. As the mother of a child


2. As a mother of a child

I have seen both phrases used. However, a child only has one mother, therefore I believe the phrase "As the mother of a child " is correct. However, I have seen both phrases used in many newspaper articles. May I know the difference?

Similarly, these two phrases are also used. However, a football club only has one manager. Therefore, why do people use the second phrase.

1. He is the manager of a football club.


2. He is a manager of a football club.

differences - Can one explain the different distributions of the Saxon and the analytic (Norman) (periphrastic, 'of') genitive

I gave a quick answer to part of this question which had not been covered by previous answers, trying to clarify the reason you would say time of decoding but not decoding’s time. I said it was ’s usually indicates possession, but of course there were several counterexamples that would have occurred to me after a moment’s consideration, and these where helpfully supplied:

• Britain’s climate



• two days’ time


• a day’s work


• the sun’s rays

I am still of a mind to say that possession of some sort is what allows the ’s. Even though the sun does not have title to its rays, they do belong to the sun. Now, at the risk of duplicating the original question and/or being pigheaded, I am curious as to why time of decoding but not decoding’s time is correct, if not for the reason I gave.

Answer

In The New Fowler's Modern English Usage, the late Burchfield offered a guide to the use of possessive s and of with inanimate nouns. It is the most comprehensive and well founded stylistic advice I could find on the subject. He had worked on the Oxford English Dictionary and knew a lot about language and style. A summary:

A noun that is possessive or preceded by of modifies another noun: in my mother's bed / the bed of my mother, bed is the head noun, modified by my mother's / of my mother. Usually, inanimate modifier nouns should be preceded by "of"; but there are many possible exceptions, some of which are given here.

1. An important exception is the so called thematic genitive: if a noun has gained strong topical value, because it is central in a discussion or description, it may get the possessive s.

   
   
   

   
   

   
   
   • That is a beautiful teapot. And those teacups must be Meissen. Notice the teapot's ornate lid and slender figure.
   
   

   
   




2. Nouns defining a specific quantity of time or space, as used in many semi-fixed expressions, may get the possessive s.

   
   
   
   

   
   

   
   

   • A day's work

   
   

   • A hair's breadth

   
   

   
   




3. Words modifying the word sake.

   
   
   

   
   
   

   
   
   • For heaven's sake
   
   

   
   




4. Words modifying the word edge.

   
   
   

   
   

   
   
   • The cliff's edge
   
   

   
   
   




5. Words for a ship or boat (and probably other vehicles; these could be classified as thematic genitives, or as cases of personification: see 1 and 7, and compare the use of she for vessels).

   
   
   

   
   

   
   

   • The ship's crew

   
   

   • The plane's left wing

   
   

   • The train's front car

   
   

   
   





6. Other fixed expressions, usually monosyllabic nouns.

   
   
   

   
   

   
   

   • Out of harm's way

   
   

   • The sun's rays

   
   

   
   




7. A personified inanimate noun; i.e. whenever a thing is invested with a will or the ability to act (this exception is an addition of my own). This is related to the use of she for certain countries and vehicles.

   
   
   
   

   
   

   
   

   • Britain's might

   
   

   • Fear's claws

   
   

   
   

The pronoun its is by definition reserved for inanimate objects and hence universally possible. The use of whose with inanimate objects appears to be much less restricted than the possessive s, perhaps because relative clauses always express elaboration on a central theme (thematic genitive). This is not surprising, since the essence of a pronoun is that it refers to existing information, i.e. it is highly topical.

---

The relevant passages from Burchfield:

For inanimate nouns, and particularly for such nouns consisting of more than one syllable, the of-construction is customary (e.g. the roof of the church, not the church's roof: the resolution of the problem, not the problem's resolution).

...

There is general agreement that the non-personal genitive is frequently used with nouns of time (e.g. the day's routine, an hour's drive) and space (e.g. the journey's end, a stone's throw, at arm's length). It is also often used before sake (e.g. for pity's sake, for old times' sake), and in a number of fixed expressions (e.g. at death's door, out of harm's way, in his mind's eye). Jespersen noted the prevalence of 's genitives before the word edge (the cliff's edge, the water's edge, the pavement's edge, etc.). He also noted that ship, boat, and vessel tend to turn up with an 's genitive when we might expect of (the ship's provisions, the boat's gangway, etc.).

In 1988 Noel Osselton demonstrated that the somewhat unexpected types the soil's productivity and the painting's disappearance (as well as others) represent a legitimate class of what he called thematic genitives. When a noun that cannot 'possess' is of central interest in a particular context, it tends to acquire the power to 'possess', and is therefore expressed as an 's genitive.

One major genitival area remains virtually untransformable into 's genitives. Only the of-construction is appropriate for partitive genitives: e.g. a glass of water cannot be re-expressed as a water's glass, and try converting a dose of salts.

I tested these rules against my files and found them largely in accord with my own evidence. The great majority of 's genitives still occur with
animate nouns. ... It does seem from the evidence available to me that the 's genitive for inanimate nouns is commoner now than it was a century ago[.]

The verb "to get" + particle ...?

In the phrase "to get all crazy" am I correct when I say that the "all crazy" is a particle phrase? Example:

I'm up for tonight's party. I'm going to get all crazy.

grammar - have worked vs had worked

I have worked here for five years.
I had worked here for five years.
I worked here for five years.

Which one is gramatically correct.
Does the first sentence mean that he worked here and is still working?
And the 2nd and 3rd indicate something happened in past. And when to use these. Is there any difference between these two?

commas - How should I punctuate around quotes where the punctuation required by the quote interferes with the punctuation of the sentence?

The American convention in quotations is (typically) to place punctuation inside quoted text. But I always run into situations where the punctuation of the quote interferes with the punctuation of the sentence. How would you punctuate this (American, non technical)?

When my friends ask, "What do you want for your birthday?", I never know how to respond.

It seems odd to place the last comma outside the quote simply because of the question mark. Is that the preferred (i.e. most often accepted) standard?

Answer

The British put them outside the quotes, which seems much more logical.

The American style is to put the punctuation inside the quotes. The American version is often known as "Typesetter's Quotes".

As you can see, I go with the British version, at least in informal writing.

Interesting fact: They are called typesetter's quotes because when typesetters were laying out the typesetting blocks putting the small blocks for punctuation inside the quotes made the layout more stable and less prone to shift around. That's probably why it seems so illogical, it was done for mechanical reasons, not linguistic reasons.

"Was" or "were" in subjunctive clauses

I'm not a native english speaker, so even though I'm decently proficient at it, I don't really "know the rules" sometimes, and this is one that's been confusing me for a long time.

Which one is correct in each sentence?

If the movement [was/were] to continue uncorrected, the tower would
one day topple.

If I [was/were] rich, I would buy a yacht.

NOTE: I care not only about the case of "I", but also "she", "them", "it", etc, as in the example of the tower. Would it be any different if instead of the tower, it'd be me who'd topple if uncorrected?

I'm pretty sure it's "were" in both cases. That's what they taught me, I think.
I started to doubt when I saw a lot of "was", but it sounded like the typical intentional mistake used "stylistically". ("If I was a rich girl...")

Then I saw it some more and thought it came down to an American/British English difference (I was taught British, in theory, and most of what I read is American).

But that tower sentence came straight from "The Guardian"...

When do you use was and when do you use were?

Answer

The grammatical rule, if you want to be strict, is that in subjunctive clauses you always use were, therefore all of the following examples are correct:

If I were you, I'd definitely think this through.
If she were to know what you did, she'd be so angry!

However, some people break this rule, to me for reasons unknown. Either they are unaware of it (insufficient grammar on their side), or they are being informal, or non-native speakers who were never taught the rule.

Just use were in all cases and you're fine.

Also note that as FumbleFingers has correctly mentioned:

It's generally accepted that use of the subjunctive is declining, so
eventually it will disappear. Some publications will be ahead of the
curve, and there's no reason why The Guardian shouldn't be one of
them. As Colin says, many of us still make the formal/informal
distinction, but increasingly this is seen as just a matter of style,

rather than correctness.

grammar - "Than I" or "Than Myself"

Which is grammatically correct?

My friends seem to be having more fun than I, Me, Myself, and Them

Also,

Good people are always ready to help those who are not as fortunate as Theirs, Them, They, Us

Answer

For the first sentence:

• Me is the most natural choice: My friends seem to be having more fun than me.




• I in this context would be old fashioned and sits uncomfortably with a modern phrase like having fun. (It would be more natural in something like Is there more pitiable a wretch than I?, where both the choice of words and the sentiment itself are old fashioned.)




• Myself is odd here. American English seems to make more use of reflexives, but generally for second person, I think, that is, substituting yourself for you. My guess is that this indirectness may be something of a politeness strategy. If so, then even these dialects might resist use of myself here (no need to be polite to yourself).




• Them is of course fine, but it would not refer back to you, the speaker. It would refer to some other salient group.

For the second sentence:

• The most common pronouns here would be them or themselves. (There's a dialect split here, but I can't recall the details.)




• Oddly, they doesn't sound old fashioned here to me, just wrong. I feel it needs to be followed by are (not as fortunate as they are). Maybe other native speakers can weigh in here.




• Theirs is out. It's a possessive pronoun, and, so, would give the sentence meaning that good people help people less fortunate than something previously mentioned that they possess.




• Finally, us is fine, but it implies that you are not one of the good people and that good people use your standard of living as the benchmark for their altruism. If you want to say that, that's your business ;-)

Participle phrase or participle clause? For my students please

I've looked at other answers, but am still confused - so please don't shoot me down (as tends to happen here) - but rather help if you can for the sake of my little learners. I have to teach a class on this in two days and I suspect that the text provided for me is wrong:

Walking to school, I spotted a car driving erratically toward me.

I would say that "Walking to school" is a participle phrase as it has no subject, but my text says that it is a participle clause. How can it be a clause when there is no subject at that beginning end of the sentence? I've read of implied subjects - i.e. the person walking and the person spotting are one and the same here. Does that count?

Again, sorry if this is an obvious question to some, but you folks here know heaps and I want to give my little guys accurate info, which is truly hard when it comes to clauses!

Participle clauses with past participles

I have read many times that "participle clauses with past participles have a passive meaning" but I came across this sentence which made me confused.Is this sentence grammatically correct?

Attached to a mother that only a son could love, Jerry, the newborn,
suckling pig, felt a profound attraction to ugliness come over him.

I asked this question because the participle clause in this sentence sounds in active voice for me.If I rewrite the sentence it could be :

Jerry attached to a mother that only a son could love. Jerry, the
newborn, suckling pig, felt a profound attraction to ugliness come
over him.

I assume the verb attach is transitive and used in active voice here but Jerry is supposed to be the object of the participle clause in this sentence, not the subject again.

So for me right sentence could be :

Attached by a mother that only a son could love, Jerry, the newborn,
suckling pig, felt a profound attraction to ugliness come over him.

Answer

In this sentence, "Attached to a mother that only a son could love" means that Jerry IS ATTACHED TO the mother that only a son could love. So in fact, alas, neither of your rewrites is correct.

word choice - What are the differences in meaning among 'aid', 'assist', 'help', and 'facilitate'?

Intro

The words aid, assist, help, and facilitate are all closely related. What do you believe the differences among them might be? My best attempt to make the differences explicit follows.

My Attempt

• Aid, in modern English, is more appropriate for non-human help


• Assist, would be help for something that someone could do themselves but because of the assistance is able to do that thing more efficiently, profitably, effectively, etc.


• Help, is the most generic term and can refer to any sort of support.


• Facilitate, is help that is necessary for a thing to be done or that improves the utility of that thing to such a degree that it would not be worth doing but for the facilitation. In as much as facilitates is a word that refers to help that is necessary for a thing to be done, the word differs from 'enabling' in that the facilitating thing is not the only thing that could facilitate the thing in question. Whereas, the thing in question could not happen without the things that enable it to happen. E.g. In the 17th century, lumberjacks enabled logging companies to fell trees and convert them to logs, while rivers facilitated the transport of the logs to their buyers. Without the lumberjacks, the trees could not have been felled, but its conceivable they could have been transported without the river, albeit much less efficiently.

Question

What do you think are the differences among aid, assist, help, and facilitate?

grammar - Which preposition is correct here?

• on September 29 2014


• in September 29 2014

I know with months, we should use in, and with days, we should use on. However I find the American way in writing the month before the day in dates to be confusing. Should we use on here because we are referring to a day or should we use in because it immediately precedes a month? On seems more appropriate to me here, but since I am not a native speaker I thought I should ask.

What part of speech is “there” when used in “There is (blah blah)”?

What part of speech is there in the sentence “There is a book on the table?”

Also, while typing it out, another question pops up vis-à-vis punctuation. In my complete first sentence above, I ended it with a question mark since my main sentence is a question. The quote is not a question, but it looks like it because of the question mark. Is this the right way to punctuate?

Answer

The phrase "there is" indicates the presence of the object of the sentence, without making the object the subject. The similar sentence "A book is on the table" would mean the same thing but restructures the statement to have a subject. Usually, when using the indefinite article "a", the statement will more often use "there is" to emphasize the presence of the book over the book itself.

The construct comes from the French term "il y a", literally translated as "that there has" but thought of by native French speakers as identical to "there is" (except conjugated using "avoir" instead of "etre"). As this shows, "there" basically replaces "il y" ("that there") from the French and so takes the place of the pronoun.

As for punctuation at the end of a sentence containing a quote, there are a lot of conflicting rules regarding punctuation in quotes. In American English, the rules are as follows:

• if the quote is not a complete, structured sentence, the punctuation should always be placed outside of the quote. (The defendant said that his actions were "lawful and appropriate".)


• if the quote and statement both end in a "forceful" punctuation (? or !), the punctuation should be placed outside the quote. (Why did the defendant say "Why are you questioning me"?) - this is the correct use of punctuation for your specific case.


• If the quote ends in "forceful" punctuation but the statement does not, use both punctuation marks, and place them inside and outside the quotes as appropriate. (When asked about his involvement, the defendant cried "I will not be interrogated by you!".)


• If neither the quote nor the statement are "forceful" (they'd both end in periods), and the quotation is a complete, properly structured statement, the punctuation goes inside the quotation marks in American English. In British English, traditionally the punctuation still goes outside, but American influence in English writing currently makes it about 50-50. (When asked about his actions, the defendant said, "what I did was lawful and appropriate to the situation.")

grammatical number - Pluralization of names

If I were to use the sentence "There are lots of John Smiths" in the world, would that be the correct use for saying that there are a lot of people named John Smith in the world?

I don't think there should be an apostrophe as that would imply ownership of something.

If my first example is correct, then what would you do if the name referenced already ended with an 's'?

Answer

In order to pluralize a name, this guide says:

There are really just two rules to remember, whether you’re pluralizing a given (first) name or a surname (last name):

1. If the name ends in s, sh, ch, x or z, add es.


2. In every other case, add s.

Similarly, there are two fundamental no-no’s:

Never change a y to ies when pluralizing a name; and
Never, ever use apostrophes!

Examples:

Incorrect:

• The Flaherty’s live here.


• The Flaherties live here.

Correct:

• The Flahertys live here.


• Sandra’s two favorite boyfriends are Charleses.


• There are seven Joneses in Stuart’s little black book—three of them Jennifers.


• The Hopkinses are coming over for dinner tonight.

So your instinct is correct -- do not use an apostrophe as that indicates possession. Your first example would be:

There are a lot of John Smiths in the world.

orthography - Is there an equivalent of diaeresis, but for consonants?

I know that diaeresis is used to show that two adjacent vowels are not a diphthong but should be pronounced separately, as in naïve or Zoë. Is there an equivalent mark or format in current or historical use that shows that a pair of consonants that usually form a digraph (e.g. "sh" or "th") should be read separately?

Cases where a word is is made up of identifiable parts are easy to deal with. One can do nothing and rely on the reader's understanding of the separate morphemes (e.g. knighthood) or with true compounds one can put in a hyphen, e.g. pot-hook.

However there is more of a problem when transcribing a word or personal name that comes from an unfamiliar foreign language (so the reader is unlikely to know its spelling conventions), is not a compound, and yet contains a syllable ending with "s" or "t" immediately followed by a syllable beginning with "h", or or another easily misread combination.

Right now I can't think of any words either from English or a from a foreign language which present this problem, but among all the vast multitude of proper names and languages in the world that sometimes need to be written in English it must sometimes occur. It also would come up in transcribing fictional constructed languages so as to sound "alien" yet still be easily readable. In fact my question here was inspired by this question on Writers , in which it was asked how to represent words from a fictional language that would be likely to be mispronounced in English.

Inserting a hyphen into a word that is a single unit of meaning seems wrong. Inserting an apostrophe might be better, but an apostrophe suggests either a glottal stop or the marking of omitted letters, neither of which might be present. I seem to recall once seeing a full stop placed between letters to show this but that might have been a quirk of an individual writer. Use of the International Phonetic Alphabet, explanations in brackets, or asterisks all disrupt the flow of reading.

Is there an existing convention or a better solution?

Added later: Some real life examples of words whose pronunciation would be clearer with a consonantal diaeresis:
- posthumous
- shorthand
- Mathias (German proper name)
- Kuthumi (name of a nineteenth century Indian mystic)

- methemoglobin / methaemoglobin / methæmoglobin (medical term, in which the prefix "met" means "change in")
- Ishak (Arabic proper name).
In practice with the exception of the occasional hyphen these words seem to have no orthographic device to mark the correct pronunciation, thus answering my question in the negative, unless there are counter-examples I haven't yet met.

Answer

Maybe you are asking for a diacritic.

How about this for example?

knightḧood

Other symbols that may be useful:

ḥ

ḫ

You can find their specifications at http://graphemica.com

If you are writing a scholarly article, all you have to do is define what it means before the main text.

Definition of diacritic in English: noun

A sign, such as an accent or cedilla, which when written above or
below a letter indicates a difference in pronunciation from the same
letter when unmarked or differently marked.

Oxford Dictionaries

syntactic analysis - Length of English sentences in comparison to German ones

Today I've heard that when writing an English text, I should try not to use too long sentences.

Not because they are easier to write without grammatical mistakes, but because it'd be typical for the English language to prefer shorter sentences over long, nestled sub-sentences.

Being a German native speaker, this took me by surprise. When writing German texts, I always try to connect sentences, and prefer one with a sub-sentence over two separated sentences.

Unfortunately, I got this advice without a reference to a specific example where I might have used a sentence that's too long, so I can only ask this question in general.

verbs - Should I use present tense or past tense?

Should I use present tense (spans) or past tense (spanned) in the following example?

"Dr X's service in providing data to the community {spans | spanned} across mission X (2003), mission Y (2008-present), and mission Z (2015-present)"

Answer

Do you mean to suggest that Dr. X is still providing data? In that case
use the present perfect progressive, to express an action that began in the past and which is still ongoing:

He has been singing at church on Sundays for years.

In a situation like this, neither the simple present nor the simple past works:

He sings at church on Sundays for years (or since 2001)

is non-sensical, and

He sang at church since 2003 to the present

indicates that, as of today, his singing days are over.

But I think the verb choice you've made here is not the best. "Span" means to bridge or to cross, as in "an arch spanned the stream." So, span across is redundant, and the sentence is otherwise not idiomatic, to my ear at least. I would recast the entire thing:

Dr X has been providing data to the community since 2003, beginning
with mission X and extending through mission Y (2008-present) and

mission Z (2015-present)