What is the head noun in a noun 'and' noun phrase?

In a phrase like 'each has a different style and attitude' which is the head noun?

Is it right that the head noun can only ever be one word, so I couldn't say it was 'style and attitude'?

grammaticality - Is it grammatically correct to change tense in a sentence?

When writing a sentence, can I change from past-tense to present-tense in the middle of it? For example,

Joey realized that the ball is green.

or

Joey realized that the ball was green.

I am talking about a ball which is always green. The second example implies that the ball was green and that it may or may not still be green. However, Joey realizes it in the past. Is the first sentence grammatically correct?

Answer

The phenomenon you’re looking at is called sequence of tense. It is the topic of substantial research by linguists, but, in a nutshell, past tense matrix verbs (like realized) can take subordinate clauses with either past tense or present tense; however, the nature of the complement plays a substantial role in determining which, if either, is more appropriate.

Consider:

Ancient mariners realized that the earth isn’t/wasn’t flat, by watching how ships appeared mast first over the horizon.

In cases where the complement is permanently true, speakers generally feel quite comfortable with either past or present tense. Where, however, the complement clause reports something that was true around the time of the matrix event, the complement clause has to anchor its tense to the past tense matrix clause. Hence:

Last month, I walked into the room and saw that Mary was/??is asleep.

For events that last longer than the average bout of sleep (e.g., pregnancy), the present tense is more readily available. Hence, still using last month, you can say:

Mary’s husband only found out last month that she’s pregnant.

But, of course, if the pregnancy is over at the time of utterance, then, again, the past tense becomes obligatory:

Mary’s husband only found out ten months ago that she was/??is pregnant.

For permanent truths, however, like the earth’s not being flat, past tense in the subordinate clause does not imply that the earth has since ceased to be curved. For this reason, it is sometimes called a dummy past

grammaticality - Can predicative complements not be bare noun phrases in English? That is, are clauses such as “I am student” incorrect?

In Chapter 4 of the book A Student’s Introduction to English Grammar, written by Rodney Huddleston of the University of Queensland and Geoffrey K. Pullum of the University of Edinburgh and published by Cambridge University Press in 2005, it was stated that

A bare role NP [noun phrase] is a singular NP that is ‘bare’ in the sense of lacking the determiner which would elsewhere be required, and that denotes some kind of role, office, or position. A PC [predicative complement] can have the form of a bare role NP, but an O [object] can’t:

i  a.  She became the treasurer.   b.  She knew the treasurer.

ii  a.  She became treasurer.   b.  *She knew treasurer. [ungrammatical]

On the contrary, there is a question (Is this proper English: "I am student"?) I found here on StackExchange on the similar topic, in which the OP was wildly discredited, and the question was closed for lack of research.  I have the same problem, and here I am posting my research, which is also the origin of my question.  

Before I read this book, I also believed that it was wrong to say things like “I am student” without any determiner.  However, it became clear to me that apparently in numerous Indo-European languages, clauses like je suis étudiant (French) and Ich bin Student (German) are completely grammatical, whereas somehow the version with the determiner (je suis un étudiant or Ich bin ein Student) is less preferred, if not completely ungrammatical.  So, why, for some curious reasons, is it definitely deprecated, if not ungrammatical, to say things like “I am student” in English?  

Answer

The question seems to be, how does a non-native speaker determine whether a given noun is a "role" or if it has some titular sense (so that it can be used "bare")?

She became treasurer. [OK]

She became student. [not OK]

She became student of the month. [OK]

She became doctor. [not OK]

She became doctor to the king. [OK]

It was gateway to the rose garden. [not OK]

The city of St. Louis was Gateway to the West. [OK]

A role is typically occupied by one person or by a few, e.g. Assistant Vice President. Employee would not be considered a role because, in most contexts, an employee is one of many, even though we can imagine a small mom-and-pop candy store hiring only one employee. The operative condition: in most contexts, usually. In situations where there is usually only one such noun, there must be something special about the noun in order for it to be regarded as a role. (see the gateway example).

Student and doctor in the examples above are comparable to employee. They need something additional to identify them as particular student or doctor roles.

Clarification about passive

Doing some exercises about the passive transformation (rewrite sentences from active to passive), I came up against some problems.

The problem sentences are:

• Martin always wears casual clothes

I wrote:
Casual clothes are always worn by Martin.

But it's wrong. The author's book says: Not possible to rewrite the sentence. But I can't understand why.. If the sentence were: "Casual clothes are worn always by Martin", (maybe) I would change the meaning of the sentence.. It would seem like "Martin is the unique person wearing casual.."

• Most of the guests had left the hotel by midday.

My sentence: The hotel had been left by most of the guest by midday.

Author's opinion: Not possible to rewrite the sentence.
Again, I can't understand why...

• Some parents read to their children every night.

My answer: Not possible to rewrite the sentence, because no object of 'read' is given in the sentence, so it's intransitive.
Author's answer: Some children are read to by their parents.

I reviewed the examples in the book and

• They sent me a letter -> A letter was sent to me.
  But it's not my case, because here the verb has an obj.




• People shouted at the Prime Minister -> The Prime Minister was shouted at. Here the verb is intransitive (like in my case).. Do I have to conclude that if the verb is intransitive and it is followed by a preposition, I can always rewrite the sentence from active to passive?

(I'm studying on "First Certificate Language Practice, Vince - Heinemann")

(Additional question: Is 'casual clothes' singular or plural?)

grammaticality - "I and someone", "me and someone" or "I and someone we"

A friend of mine asked me for advice about an e-mail he was writing. There was a sentence like this:

I and my partners we are interested in investing in your product.

I figured it was wrong, so I suggested:

I and my partners are interested in investing in your product.

This looks grammatical to me but sounds strange. Also, I have seen a lot of people writing this:

Me and my partners we are interested in investing in your product.

which I believe is not grammatical.

So, which one of the options above is correct? Also, what would be a better choice of words?

Answer

"I and someone are interested" is grammatically correct. It is the convention in English that when you list several people including yourself, you put yourself last, so you really should say "Someone and I are interested." "Someone and I" is the subject of the sentence, so you should use the subjective case "I" rather than the objective "me". "Someone and I" clearly means two people, so you should use "are" and not "is". If it was "Someone or I ..." then you would use "is", because only one person is interested, either "someone" or "I".

It is not uncommon to hear people say "Me and someone are ...", but this is wrong because it's the wrong case. When an educated person hears "Me and Billy is going to the ball game", he immediately thinks this is either a child or a very uneducated person speaking.

"I and someone we ..." is incorrect because it is redundant. "We" is simply another way of saying "I and someone". It adds no new information to the sentence, and so there is no reason to include it. You can't just string together alternative ways of expressing the same idea: If you really need it for clarity or emphasis, you have to surround it with some additional words, like a "that is", or sometimes just punctuation that show its purpose in the sentence. You could say, "We, that is, Bob and I, are interested ..."

All that said, "I and someone" or "Someone and I" sounds strange to me, and I suspect most English speakers, because it is an unusual use of the word "someone". When "someone" is used in a list with identifiers of other people, we usually say "someone else". Like, "Bob and someone else are interested ..." rather than "Bob and someone are interested ..." (I have no idea why this is so; it's just the convention.) "Someone" without "else" is normally only used when it's the only person: "Someone is interesteed ..."

Is it possible to write a dependent clause without independent clause?

I want to explain my problems by the following sentences. The following sentences have been taken from Reader's Digest.

"Ed tries to explain why he would want to keep a pile of records he never listens to. "It's just knowing that they're there. That I could listen to them if I wanted to" I reminded him that his turntable doesn't work. "So, actually you can't listen to them." Which reminds me. I pick up the turntable and put it on the designated throw away pile, which I had envisioned at the beginning of this undertaking as a towering, teetering mound engulfing most of our front entryway and portions of the pavement, but is in reality closer in size to the little is in reality closer in size to the little mounds of toenail parings Ed occasionally stacks up on the bedside table."

1) Read again "Which reminds me. I pick up the turntable and put it on the ..............". 'Which' indicates a dependent clause that can not express full sense without main clause. But there are no main clause. It seems that it is an independent clause. Please explain this fact. Would anybody like to give the link of other posts related to this kind of problem?

2) In "but is in reality closer in size ......." what is the subject of auxiliary verb 'is'? It seems that subject is far from 'is', and it will be found in the previous sentences of it. How to find it? If it is possible, please mention the links the post that are related to this problem. You may say some keywords with which I can be able to find the posts related to this problem.

How to answer this question? Yes or No

Sorry, if this question is naive.

If someone asks me,

"You didn't go to school today, right?"

If I did not, should I answer, Yes or No?

Similarly,

"You do not like eating fish, do you?"

If I do not like eating fish, should I say Yes or No?

Answer

No, I didn't go to school.
Yes, I went to school today.
You are right, I didn't.

grammar - Periods in quotes and how to end the sentence the quote lies in

If I am quoting someone in my writing, and I end their quote with a period, and the end of the quote is also the end of my sentence. How do I properly end the sentence? An example of this is in my last question:

For example, "The file is not updat(e)able.".

Here is another example:

The boss said, "If you don't get your work in by tomorrow, you're
fired.".

Is that how you properly end the sentence, or should I leave one of the periods out? If the latter, could you explain why?

Answer

For standard American English, omit the period at the end of the sentence and leave the one inside the quotation.

objects - Should I use "who" or "whom" as the only word in a sentence?

I understand that "who" is for the subject and "whom" is for the object. However, sometimes they are used as the only word in a sentence. For example:

Person 1: Yeah, he ate the entire cake.

Person 2: Who(m)?

Which form is correct? I can see it being short for both "Who is the person who ate the cake?" and "Whom are you talking about?"

Answer

In this example, it should definitely be who.

A single word question like that is typically seen, grammatically, as an ellipsis for a full-sentence version, as you say. But elided words/phrases are almost always things which have already just been said, so following “He ate the entire cake,” the natural ellipsis would be “Who [ate the entire cake]?”, not “Whom [are you talking about]?”.

Even in cases where it would make formal sense, though, “Whom?” is rarely used alone:

The tiger ate him up entirely!

Who?

“Whom did the tiger eat?” or “Ate whom?” sound fine to my ear (as do their equivalents with “who”), but “Whom?” alone sounds quite stiltedly pedantic. As ShreevatsaR has described very well, whom is — while not obsolete yet — certainly of limited use, and when in doubt, who is pretty much always an acceptable alternative nowadays, and is often more idiomatic.

adverbs - Adverbial form for a common swear word

Is shittly a word (and if so, how many t’s does it have?) or do I have to use shittily?

Answer

Shit (noun)

Shitty (adjective)

Generally, to make an adverb from an adjective like shitty, you change the -y to an -i and add -ly.

E.g.: prettily, cattily (bitchily), dottily (eccentric), grittily, knobbily, shabbily, etc.

Yes, it is a word.

shittily (ˈʃɪtɪlɪ) adverb (informal, rude): in a bad way; very badly

FYI: The word shit has a long and well-documented history. Anglo-Saxon leechdom books use scittan in reference to cattle having diarrhea. A Latin text from 1118 refers to "Lues animalium, quæ Anglice Scitta vocatur, Latine autem fluxus interaneorum dici potest." *

There are many examples of the verb from the 14th century [e.g., from 1387: "þey wolde ... make hem a pitte ... whan þey wolde schite ...; and whanne þey hadde i-schete þey wolde fille þe pitte agen." translated into ME: "they would... make them(selves) a pit...when (? where) they would shit; and when they had stat, they would fill the pit again."]

The noun is attested from the 16th century, both in reference to excrement and to contemptible people.

*roughly: Pay of animals, which in English is called Scitta, in Latin, however, one can say "the flow of her insides".

Capitalization of "you are here" on maps?

I understand that capitalization "rules," aside from capitalizing the beginning of a sentence and so forth, are less steadfast rules and are more (somewhat arbitrary in my opinion) style guidelines that differ across established styles, etc.

But so my question has to do with the "you are here" marker found in maps occasionally. Is there an established or preferred way to capitalize this phrase? When I google maps with this marker, I can't find any preference for this.

Some capitalize it like, "You are here," like this map:

Some capitalize it like, "You Are Here," like this map:

And then a lot of google results have all letters capitalized, seemingly in order to avoid the issue altogether.

I also found this picture, which while not a proper map is still a way of capitalizing I did not consider until I saw it, "You are Here."

I ask this question because I am checking the translation of a map and the capitalization style seems inconsistent on the legend, i.e. it starts capitalizing every word since there are like titles/items but then it only capitalizes the first word of each item. But then it has the icon for "you are here" in the legend too and for some reason my gut tells me that should stay as "You are here" as it is currently rendered, but now I'm confused if that will make it weird if the other words are all capitalized.

Answer

Summary: "You are here" is fine, if the rest of the legend follows this same capitalization scheme.

More generally, though capitalization is a stylistic issue, I do not know of any style guides that specifically address maps. As a general rule, there are two schemas for capitalization:

1. Title case: capitalize the first word and each subsequent major word in the title. The decision of which words are major is a stylistic choice. Generally, the only non-major words are short and common. Different style guides have different rules; some list parts of speech that qualify as major words, others have a requirement for length.




2. Sentence case: capitalize only the first word.

For your legend entry, title case would be rendered as "You are Here" or "You Are Here" depending on whether are is a major word. Sentence case would be rendered as "You are here". Thus, all three of the options you propose are correct according to some stylistic guidelines.

Sometimes, title and sentence case are mixed. For example, in APA style, high level titles and headings are rendered in title case, but low level headings are rendered in sentence case. I would consider legend entries "low level", so this is one rational to use sentence case.

As with most stylistic choices, consistency is very important. Pick a concrete capitalization scheme and apply it to each entry of the legend.

grammatical number - uncountable noun + and + uncountable noun

Which sounds better?

• There is water and butter in my fridge.




• There are water and butter in my fridge.

I think it should be: is.

But what if we said:

• How much flour and butter is needed to make a pizza?





• How much flour and butter are needed to make a pizza?

In that case, I think the plural verb: are, is the correct choice, which means (I think) there is a contradiction between both sentences.

translation - Shortest question to ask when you want to know whether the one you talk to is the eldest, second, third...or youngest child in his/her family.

I’ve always been asked by my Filipino friends how I should say the Filipino question “Pang-ilan ka sa magkakapatid?” in English.

You ask that question when you want to know whether someone is the eldest, second, third...or youngest child in the family. What’s the shortest way to ask such question without necessarily mentioning choices (eldest, second, etc.) as the Filipino question also does not mention the choices?

grammar - Clause Question

I was going through a reading and this construction confused the student:

“Will we be able to talk?” I asked, my eyes red and swollen from
crying, a balled up tissue squeezed tightly between my sweaty palms.

She understood the words; it was the construction that confused her. I could explain what it meant in that context, but I didn't have a good explanation for that construction, generally. So in the above example, how would you classify "my eyes red and swollen from crying, a balled up tissue squeezed tightly between my sweaty palms"? Is it an appositive? Some kind of relative clause? Something else? A noun phrase?

grammaticality - Are collective nouns always plural, or are certain ones singular?

I'd say Microsoft have a way of bending the rules and I know that McLaren have won the championship. While this sounds strange, I believe it is correct English (sorry, I'm not native).

But when it's a small company, would you still use it this way? Is a company always plural, or are small companies singular? I.e., would you say Bakery Johnson makes fine bread or Bakery Johnson make fine bread? Is it My book seller, Woody's, have moved or is it has moved?

Answer

american-english

These company names are collective nouns. In general, in American English collective nouns almost always trigger singular verb agreement (after all, "Microsoft" is grammatically a singular noun, even if semantically it denotes an entity made up of many people). It is apparently much more common to use plural verb agreement in British English. It doesn't have anything to do with the size of the company.

Lots of good information here: Language Log on collective nouns, etc.

verbs - Being a representative for someone to/against (?) others

I'm currently writing a job applications for customer-centric jobs and I would like to say that "I'm looking forward to being a representative for the wishes and needs of a community of customers to / against - [I absolutely don't know] developers and product managers". Means: I want to advocate community's needs in discussions with others.

To clarify:
- The community of the web service has wishes and needs (for example a new button or a new feature)
- I'm the support guy between the community and the developers who are developing the web service
- Meaning: It is my job to communicate the community's wish for a new button to the developers. This is necessary because sometimes developers don't understand why a certain feature is needed so i have to act as a facilitator to make that clear.

All this is happening in one company: The company is offering one web service that has one community that is using this service, which engineered by a bunch of developers.

Do you know what I mean? Could you please give me a hint for the missing word?
Thanks in advance!
Florian

grammar - plural or singular in this sentence

1. The product and the scale have changed from a small prototype to many production units.




2. The product along with the scale has changed from a small prototype to many production units.

Can sentence-1 be seen as incorrect, perhaps semantically, because it uses plural "have" but applies to "a" small prototype?

The issue that the plural "the product and the scale" is being applied to a singular predicate noun of "a small prototype." While the subject (product and scale) is plural and agrees with the verb (have), it does not agree with the predicate noun (a small prototype).

names - Why is Tesco often pronounced Tesco's?

I have often heard members of the British public pronounce the name of the supermarket chain Tesco as "Tesco's" or "Tescos".

Thinking that it was formerly called "Tesco's", as many old British companies are, I looked up its history and learnt that it is a concatenation of the initials of its early tea supplier's name (T. E. Stockwell) and the first two letters of the founder's surname (Cohen), and was never called "Tesco's".

Is it because of confusion with other supermarkets such as Sainsbury's and Morrisons? If so, why have I not heard "Asda's", "Co-op's" or "SPAR's"?

Answer

As you will know, but as those living outside the UK may not, the names the supermarkets themselves use are Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Tesco, Asda, Co-op and SPAR. The first two are named after their founders, so the terminal ‘s’ indicates that it is, or once indicated that it was, Sainsbury’s shop and Morrison’s shop (and let’s leave aside for the moment why there’s an apostrophe in one and not in the other). Co-op is short for The Co-operative, so there’s no semantic reason why it should be known as Co-op’s. Similarly, SPAR, I believe, is an acronym, so equally SPAR's would make no sense. That leaves Tesco and Asda. If the first is sometimes called Tesco’s, that may well be by analogy with Sainsbury’s and Morrisons. That is not the oddity. The oddity is that Asda is not known as Asda’s. At least, it’s not as far as I know. Maybe in some quarters it is. If it’s not, perhaps it’s because it was a relatively late arrival and the name Asda was thought somehow to be inviolable.

You may know that the UK bookstore chain is changing its name from Waterstone’s to Waterstones. This has provoked outrage among the usual suspects. However, a company can choose to punctuate its trade name how it likes without regard to what is done elsewhere. Hence Sainsbury’s but Morrisons. There are three sensible and well-informed posts on the topic here, here and here.

word choice - "That" versus "which"

In the following sentence, are the words that and which interchangeable? In general, where to put that and where to put which?

The sentence:

At the end of this course, students will be able to

• Analyze circuits that function as filters.




• Analyze circuits which function as filters.

Answer

"That" and "which" are never interchangeable! The word "that" is used when the phrase that it starts can not be omitted from a sentence that contains it.

The word "which," which can be very useful, starts a phrase that can be omitted from a sentence without changing its meaning, and is almost always preceded by a comma.

Neither of your examples are complete sentences, but they can be illustrative:

He must analyze the circuits that function as filters.

Means that it is specifically those circuits that function as filters that it is he must analyze.

He must analyze circuits, which function as filters.

Means he will be analyzing circuits, and those circuits also happen to function as filters.

punctuation - Which singular names ending in “s” form possessives with only a bare apostrophe?

Many questions already ask about this topic (What is the correct possessive for nouns ending in "‑s"? , When did it become correct to add an “s” to a singular possessive already ending in “‑s”?, etc.) and their answers vary, but they always give exceptions to the apostrophe-s rule, for example:

6.24 The general rule for the possessive of nouns covers most proper nouns, including most names ending in sibilants."

Examples they give include Kansas’s, Ross’s land, and Jones’s reputation. Exceptions include Jesus’  and Moses’.

Which names does this apply to? Is the Aeneas’  form correct, or is it Aeneas’s instead?

Answer

The most useful rule — and the most general and the easiest to remember — is simply that you add ’s whenever you actually say an extra /əz/ at the end when forming the possessive, compared with how you say the non-possessive version. Let your own ear be your guide. That’s all there is to it. No fancy rules full of exceptions. Just your own ear (as a native speaker, mind you).

So words ending in unstressed /iːz/ are exempt, like for example this series’ end, that species’ demise, Mercedes’, Ramses’, Sophocles’, Socrates’, Achilles’, Diomedes’, Archimedes’, Eratosthenes’, Ulysses’. (But not trapeze’s, because that one is stressed! See how that works?)

But these days, not much else is. I say “in these days” because in previous ages, some people did not add another /əz/ if it already had one, and so wrote Jesus’ to indicate they did not say an extra /əz/ there compared with Jesus: both are just /ˈd͡ʒiːzəs/ However, most people today now say Jesus’s, because it has three syllables: /ˈd͡ʒiːzəsəz/.

Same with Moses’s with three syllables instead of the older Moses’ with just two. Note that things like Ross’ and Chaz’ are always wrong, because no one says those with only a single syllable. That is a common error.

So it’s your boss’s house, because it’s got an extra syllable when you say it. Similarly, all the Jameses I have ever personally known have had the extra /əz/ tacked on when you are talking about something of theirs, which means it is for those speakers James’s house, albeit all the Jameses’ houses, because nouns are only allowed one /əz/ inflection, not two.

In all cases, the best thing to do is let your own ear be your guide, because writing should represent speech. That means that if you say an extra /əz/ then you write ’s, but if you don’t say it, then you don’t write it. That’s why you from time to time see forms like for goodness’ sake or for conscience’ sake. Those are possessive, but have no extra syllable.

As for the specific case of Aeneas, in older writing you will find that because his name already ends in /əz/, people would suppress the extra one when they would form the possessive, like Aeneas’ escape from Troy. Note very carefully that that posits a three-syllable possessive when spoken. If when you yourself say it, however, it turns out that you would yourself use the four-syllable version as most people today now do, then it would have to be Aeneas’s escape from Troy.

But now you have three issississes in a row, which will certainly require careful elocution to pull off — especially if you don’t mean to sound like Gollum with his fisheses.

grammaticality - Why present perfect in "How many points have you scored this season"?

Normally we use the past simple instead of present perfect when an action happened at a specific time in the past and is not linked with the present.

Why is this sentence grammatically correct?

How many points have you scored this season?

Don't the words "this season" indicate a specific time here? Why can't I use past tense instead? As in, "How many points did you score this season?"

Why is the latter wrong?

Answer

When we ask "How many points have you scored this season?", it means that the season is still going on. It's like asking "How many points have you scored in this season so far?"

In the case of "How many points did you score...", the season has come to an end and is past. So it cannot be referred to as "this season". However, you can ask "How many points did you score (in the) last season?" and that will be grammatically correct.

contraction vs full form - appropriate usage of I am / I'm

I am trying to explain to someone why the following quote should use "I am" rather than "I'm":

I don't care how old I'm, I still like [media]

I feel that I am correct, but cannot recall the rule.

tenses - "I would give you all the help you needed" vs. "would need" vs. "need"

If you were ever in trouble, I would give you all the help you needed.

Can you explain the tense choice for the bolded verb?

How about "all the help you would need" or "all the help you need"?

writing style - "among them N, N, N"

I often see sentence structures like "..., among them N, N, and N."

His songs also became hits for others, among them “Nothing Compares 2 U” for Sinead O’Connor, “Manic Monday” for the Bangles and “I Feel for You” for Chaka Khan.

(http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/arts/music/prince-dead.html?_r=0)

As far as I know, this is not included in the typical 'gapping' category in which you can omit repeated verbs when the sentences are paralleled with 'and.' (You can omit 'and' as well.)

Can anyone explain what kind of grammatical rule is applied here? I cannot think of similar structures other than 'among them.'

I found that someone has already asked the exact same question before(Dropping of "was" from "A couple of ministers had to resign too, among them [was] Interior Minister Fouchet."), but it seems like it has remained unsolved.

Answer

If you look at the usage in context of the whole paragraph, it looks like the author used "among them, N, N, and N" as a style choice. The author is listing several items within different categories: Prince's songs that he himself performed that became hits, his songs with which other performers made hits, as well as movies, awards, albums, etc.

There's a lot going on in the paragraph, and as the author already employs a colon, a semi colon, and lots of commas, the use of "among them" seems to be the right tool for the job. I think the use of "among them" helps parallel "...songs...for....others" as in the listing's same structure of "...[name of Prince's song] ...for... [name of performer(s) who made the charts with a Prince cover]....

• "A seven-time Grammy winner, Prince had Top 10 hits like “Little Red Corvette,” “When Doves Cry,” “Let’s Go Crazy,” “Kiss” and “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World”; albums like “Dirty Mind,” “1999” and “Sign O’ the Times” were full-length statements. His songs also became hits for others, among them “Nothing Compares 2 U” for Sinead O’Connor, “Manic Monday” for the Bangles and “I Feel for You” for Chaka Khan. With the 1984 film and album “Purple Rain,” he told a fictionalized version of his own story: biracial, gifted, spectacularly ambitious. Its music won him an Academy Award, and the album sold more than 13 million copies in the United States alone." -

(From an even broader context, there may be the influence of some diplomacy involved here too - as is the wont of some music critics - some performers made the top of the charts only with his songs, or only after his songs got them there, while others were already megastars when they made Prince covers. The paralleling structure also has an implied equalizing, or perhaps an implied "range that ran the full gamut" meaning, i.e. "his songs were so good they were attractive to performers with proven prowess and his songs attracted performers who needed his material to make up for their own lacking..." For myself, there is no comparison of the "top chart"-ness ascribed to performers like "The Bangles" vis a vis the chance to cover a a Prince song, to a performer like Chaka Khan who can slay any song of her choosing, so the author's choice of "among them" to preface the list broadens the categorizing moreso than it does provide inclusive containment.)

The choice could be a stylization of ellipsis or apposition, but I think to defy a rule by stylizing it means the rule can't really be applied...right? In this case the application of a rule could be called more of a grammatical "guideline"...

What is the correct way to use infinitive after the verb "help": with or without "to"?

What is the correct way to use infinitive after the verb "help": with or without "to"?

For example:

Please, help me to understand this.

or:

Please, help me understand this.

Answer

The particle "to" is not wrong in this sentence, but it is unnecessary. I would recommend against using it.

The phrase "to understand" can be interpreted as a special case of the infinitive; a kind of future infinitive or impersonal future tense. In that context, the first sentence means, essentially, "please help me develop an understanding of this (in the future)". While that may be technically correct, it adds nothing to the meaning of the sentence.

To add some weight to my argument, the COCA lists 142 entries for "help me understand" versus only 18 for "help me to understand". The results are similar for other constructions involving "help me ..." versus "help me to ...".

I think that the confusion stems from the way you must use the infinitive in other cases, for example: "I want to understand this", or "I am trying to understand this". In these cases, the particle is an absolute neccesity.

the definite article in front of a noun that is followed by a defining clause

When we want to refer to a specific noun, we use the definite article 'the'. When the noun is followed by a defining clause, again we use the defining article 'the'. My question is why the following sentence does not have the article 'the'? The who-clause seems to require the article.

People who haven't got cars can't stop at these out-of-town stores

Moreover, if I want to refer to, say, some cookies that can be find at a particular store, should I say:

Rolo Cookies are cookies (that are) sold at Tesco.

or

Rolo Cookies are the cookies (that are) sold at Tesco?

Another example:

"Make that change" is a/the??? slogan written on the Oriflame eye shadow pallet.

Could someone explain why sentence #2 in the question is ungrammatical because there i is no explanation why the article is used: Use of article in front of product names

Choice between past tense and present tense?

Todd is asking Dan about his concept of slow travel. The below is part of Dan's reply.

Yeah, I mean especially maybe because I'm a blogger, we're always
seeking to define things in unique ways. And there’s a lot of terms
out there. There’s expat; people that have left their native country.
There’s backpacker, which is someone who tries to keep their cost very

low and they’re continually moving from place to place. There’s flash
packer, which is a term that means you still have income from
somewhere and you have more tech and toys, and you stay at maybe nicer
hotels.

But what I did was always a little bit different, which is I would go
and get long term leases or medium term leases at apartments. So I
would go and get a house or an apartment in a place for anywhere from
one to six months, and enjoy what it feels like to actually live
somewhere.And that to me is so exciting, you know. Although the

sights and everything are cool, and hanging out with tourists can be
fun, I much prefer to go down to the local café, open up my laptop,
talk to the people that are working there, and really get a sense for
what it’s like to live in a city. (From
http://www.elllo.org/english/1301/T1325-Dan-Slowtravel.htm)

At first the speaker is using the present tense (the entire first paragraph). Then he suddenly starts using the past tense(did, would go, would go), and then returns to the present tense again.

The speaker could well have said the following instead to keep the tense consistency.

But what I do is always a little bit different, which is I go and
get long term leases or medium term leases at apartments. So I go
and get a house or an apartment in a place for anywhere from one to
six months, and enjoy what it feels like to actually live somewhere.

I want to know why the speaker chooses the past tense over the present tense in the beginning of the second paragraph. Thanks for the comments and the answer which help me clarify my question.

differences - Is there a fraction prefix for “(one-)third”?

I am a mathematician, working with things called ¹⁄_k-regular polytopes, dubbed thus by Conway. For the case of k = 2, as in ½-regular, it is naturally pronounced and written half-regular.

However, I am now dealing with the ⅓‑regular case, and I’m surprised to find that saying third-regular doesn’t sound right at all!

After considering for a while, I realized that using ordinals to denote fractions here always sounds wrong, but that when there is a different word, it works. For instance, saying quarter-regular for ¼-regular sounds fine, but fourth-regular does not.

This leads to a couple of related questions. In my US-based usage, I would have assumed that quarter and fourth were perfect synonyms for describing fractions. For instance, I can say:

• The project is three-quarters complete.


• The project is three-fourths complete.


• A quarter of the people left.


• A fourth of the people left.

But evidently, they are not as perfect as one might wish. Does the difference lie solely in whether or not the word can be used as a prefix?

For instance, saying a quarter-full glass sounds fine, while saying a fourth-full glass does not, because when pronounced out loud it sounds like you have four full glasses and are referencing the fourth of these. Are there other differences?

Is there a way to form such a prefix form for ⅓ or other cases?

I have imagined something like tertiarily regular,
but I don't think that really means what I want. Consider a tertiarily full glass: that doesn’t work for me. This answer
suggests tertile, but I don’t think that works here.

Tertile-regular certainly doesn’t sound very good.

Metric prefixes will work when available, like deciregular for ¹⁄₁₀ and centiregular for ¹⁄₁₀₀. Can these be extended beyond powers of ten?

This question
asks for a “quarter” equivalent for ¹⁄₉, with the answer that no such term exists. But it wasn’t focused on prefix forms.

grammatical number - Should I use a singular or plural verb in ", which VERB/VERBs"?

I have the following sentence, and I have a question about it. I’m wondering if there’s something so simple that I’m just overlooking it or whether there is some super-sophisticated tenet of grammar that I’ve not ever learned before.

Two other studies with follow-up times of five or six years revealed similar findings [104, 105], which suggests that physical activity can delay onset of dementia by elevation of the threshold to be exceeded before pathology is exhibited.

Question: I know that singular suggests is the right verb by the sound of it, not plural suggest despite the two studies, but what is the technical reason?

proper nouns - Company names, use of "have" and "has"

Should company names be followed by "has" or "have"? It depends on whether a company is treated as a singular proper-noun:

Samsung has gotten itself in a lot of trouble recently.

Or plural proper-noun:

Samsung have stated they don't imitate cooler products.

Are both acceptable?

Answer

A company is a collective entity. When referring to a company by name, it is the overall entity that is being referenced. It is treated as a single thing for the purpose of verb (and pronoun) agreement.

While there are other collectives that may, at times be treated as a plural to reflect the multiplicty of the participants in the activity or characteristic, even when a company is a conglomerate of many smaller companies, the name use is singular.

Time-Warner collects revenue from all of its subsidiaries.

adjectives - "Boys bicycle" vs. "boy's bicycle"

When describing, for example, a bicycle for boys as "a boys bicycle", should it be "boy's" or "boys"? The phrase is not implying ownership but the type of bicycle, in the same way as one for either sex might be described as unisex.

grammaticality - Is "How and why child is become criminal" proper English?

My friend is writing a paper for his Criminal Justice class and has asked me to take a look the the rough draft and point out any grammatical errors that I can spot.

The first thing that jumped at me was the subject of his paper: "How and why child is become criminal". I suggested that he instead write: "How and why a child becomes a criminal".

He told me that nothing was wrong with the way the subject is written. It has been submitted to and approved by his Professor, reviewed by his entire class and none pointed that out to him. He refered me to the Openheimer quote of the Bhagavad Gita and some Bible verses to support his point. Still I find it difficult to believe that this is the proper way to use the verb become in Modern English.

Answer

Provided that we accept the archaic is become as grammatical use of the present perfect—which I would not use for something so prosaic as a paper for a criminal justice course—there are still two problems with the proposed title: (1) present perfect is not right in this context for a paper title and (2) the subject noun phrase is not properly determined.

I am assuming that the paper is about the general principles by which children become criminals. For a title like this, you can’t use a past construction, such as the present perfect or the simple past. Generalities about how a process occurs must be described in the simple present tense, as this sentence does. If you use the past or present perfect, you necessarily are discussing a particular instance of something or a process which is no longer occurring: “How and why a child became criminal” or “How and why a child has become criminal” would have to describe a particular instance of a child becoming a criminal.

Second, the subject “child” is not determined. It would be fine as a plural—“children”—or with a determiner—“a child”. The original questioner’s suggestion to determine “criminal” as “a criminal” is fine, but so is leaving it as a simple adjective “criminal”. Any of the following would be grammatical:

1. How and why a child becomes a criminal


2. How and why a child becomes criminal



3. How and why children become criminal


4. How and why children become criminals

british english - "If something were" or "If something was" in the 2nd conditional?

I have the following sentence in the draft of my latest paper:

No arbitrage would be introduced if the project were traded.

Is this version correct? Or should it be:

No arbitrage would be introduced if the project was traded.

What are the rules here?

adverbs - Can "here" be an adjective?

• This book here is the one I was talking about.


• My brother here just bought a new car.

The two examples above have here following a noun. Most dictionaries say "here" is an adverb. I am wondering why it is used as an postnominal adjective in these two sentences.

You may explain that "here" is actually "in here". Then it makes sense. "In here", a prepositional phrase, can modify the noun. I would like to hear what you guys think.

grammaticality - Correct vs. incorrect usage of "there were + [number] noun + verb" patterns

I am having a problem figuring out what exactly makes the following sentences incorrect, and what is different in comparison with the correct sentences below. (I am not a native English speaker, but I believe these are incorrect. Correct me if I'm wrong.)

Incorrect:

• There were two data prepared


• There was a big group of people stayed
  for chatting


• There were four types of behavior prepared as follows


• There were XX% of visitors who did not comment

Correct:

• There were 10 sensors attached on ceiling


• There were typically multiple shops associated with the keyword

I live in Asia and I am often checking scientific papers for my colleagues, and I find them making this type of mistake very often. The above are all examples taken from papers I checked. I would like to explain the correct usage to my colleagues but I could not find an easy way to do it (besides simply saying something like "avoid using there were whenever you have a verb after the noun").

Can someone provide an explanation or point me to some page which explains the rules concerning this?

---

[An edit, proposed by the OP, but which was rejected in the review queue.]

EDIT: I am late to reply but many thanks to everyone who answered or commented! @FumbleFingers: Yes, I know there are other errors in the sentences, which are seemingly not relevant to my question. I had copied the examples exactly as they appeared in the papers before correcting them. But it is exactly some of these errors that could give an idea on how people misunderstand the usage of "there is/was" and what makes it hard to explain what is the correct usage. For example, sentence 3 can be changed to: 1. There were four types of behavior, which were prepared as follows, or 2. Four types of behavior were prepared as follows. But I couldn't come up with an easy to understand explanation why this is so. I think Jim's answer gives a simple way to explain the usage to my colleagues. So @Jim, thank you! (I would vote you up but don't have enough privileges...).

Commas, Conjunctions, and Clarity

In general, you should place a comma before a conjunction only if it links two independent clauses.

Sally bit her brother, and she smacked him on the head.

Sally ran to the ice cream truck and hit the driver.

Sometimes, a comma should also be used for clarity.

He thought she had lit a candle and started to cry.

He thought she had lit a candle, and started to cry.

My question is, should a comma be used for clarity after a conjunction when it's preceded by a list?

Our afternoons were spent baking cookies or cupcakes or visiting the bakery.

Our afternoons were spent baking cookies or cupcakes, or visiting the bakery.

Answer

The comma makes it clearer and helps avoid a garden path sentence. I would prefer the second sentence,

Our afternoons were spent baking cookies or cupcakes, or visiting the bakery.

A rewrite might make this clearer on first reading:

Our afternoons were spent either visiting the bakery or baking cookies and cupcakes.

In this rewrite, some parallelism is set up with the "either ... or" construct. The "cookies or cupcakes" was changed to "cookies and cupcakes"; this might not be as precise, but the reader would not be surprised if you only baked cookies that afternoon and skipped the cupcakes.

An even simpler rewrite:

Our afternoons were spent either visiting the bakery or baking at home.

If your desire is to have a list and not confuse it with the alternatives, here is yet another rewrite:

Our afternoons were spent either visiting the bakery or baking cookies, cupcakes, or pies.

(Whether you use this form of listing of the Oxford comma or not, please be consistent throughout your writing. But that is another debate.)

Word order for subordinate questions

I know subordinate questions have no inversion. Should this sentence:

"Do you know what are the good things to do around here?"

be

1. "Do you know what the good things are to do around here?"

MS Word's grammar check gives me,

2. "Do you know what the good things to do around here are?"

But at least to my ear, the first seems the one most commonly said. Is the first one wrong? Which one is the best?

Is it a dependent clause?

A team of epidemiologists at the University of Pittsburgh, for example, wondered if woman could avoid the increase in weight and cholesterol levels often associated with menopause.

1. Is the clause that starts with 'if' a dependent clause?




2. If woman could avoid the increase in weight and cholesterol levels, I can not realize what would happen?




3. If woman could avoid the increase in weight and cholesterol levels, weight and cholesterol levels are associated with menopause. Is it right?

british english - "Merge a with b" and "Merge b with a" or "Merge b into a"

I might be having a dumb day but today after looking over my code I ran into a meaning issue with my own syntax, and the comments explaining that syntax...something I've never actually thought about until I decided I need to be clearer to myself, as this application gets larger and larger and I'm the only maintainer on this project...so here is the question.

If I were to say merge hash1 with hash2 what would that mean to you? Would it be more proper to simply say "merge hash2 into hash1" since this is what I actually mean? I'm not the the only one reading this so I want to be as clear as possible to people who aren't programmers what exactly is going on.

For anyone who wants elaboration on entities:
hash1 = {a: "default", b: "default", c: "default"}
hash2 = {a: "new", b: "new"}
Where in this case hash2 is being merged into hash1 so that hash2 overrides hash1.
For anyone who doesn't program, think of it as two lists, list2 merging into list1.

Answer

As a programmer (American) I agree you need to clarify your comments in the code. When I can't understand my own comments (and it has happened), I'm in big trouble.

I would expect merge A with B to give a result that contains all the elements of both A and B, but it doesn't tell me if the result is in A, B, or C. Merge A into B tells me that B will end up gaining anything from A that wasn't already in B.

In your specific case, I would say update hash1 with hash2 because you are modifying hash1 by ensuring that it contains the data from hash2.

It would probably be beneficial to use more than four words because someone else may eventually maintain the code and explicit comments will be greatly appreciated.

phrase requests - Colloquial alternatives to questions regarding the ordinals

I'm very well aware that this question is asked a myriad of times before but I want to know how one would phrase a question in every-day language to get the answer "n-th".

• What ordinal number reflects the position of you
  in the set of candidates?




• Where do you fall in order among all candidates?




• In the sequence of candidates, what is the position of yours?

These were suggested in the previous questions but they all sound very formal. Could one say "What place did you take in the exam?" Are there any other alternatives? How does "how manyth" sound to a native speaker?

Answer

"What was your ranking in your class?"

for additional clarification, you can also phrase it like this:

"What was your ranking in your class? (Ex. 1st, 2nd, 45th, etc.)"

conditionals - Tense agreement: If I have a chance... I would

Here is the example sentence my Japanese teacher who teaches English gave to her students:

1. If I have a chance to visit... I would like to visit...

This immediately struck me as odd. My instinct is to make both verbs past tense and say:

2. If I had the chance to visit... I would visit...

Then you have a conditional using the unreal past to describe a hypothetical situation.

Now, I assume the "would like to" is an attempt to make "want to" more formal. But my brain just doesn't like the present tense "have" and the past tense "would" put together.

My question is, is the first example sentence grammatical? And if it is grammatical, is the second sentence just more idiomatic?

grammar - What's the rule for writing sentences with parallel clauses?

I've sometimes seen very nicely written sentences that have 2 clauses: the first is a full sentence, while the second, which is supposed to have a similar structure, was shorten into a special structure. Something like this:

"A1 use B1 to do C1, and A2 B2 C2."

For example:

• "My brother goes to school by bus, and I by bicycle."


• "I'm going to the supermarket to buy a can of milk, and you the hardware store a hammer."

I'm not sure if these are even grammatically correct or not, but just to show what I mean.

Does this kind of sentence structure have a name? What are the rules?

Please forgive my English as I'm a non-native Engineering-based speaker.

EDITED: I've managed to find one sentence: "The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, [...]". Here, "and the storms their energy" was very nicely written. I'd like to know more about how to write such a sentence.

Answer

The sentences in your examples are examples of Zeugma, and reading that Wikipedia article will be a good start toward learning to write your own. This may inspire you to study rhetoric in general, including other forms of ellipsis and parallelism. A full course on the subject is well beyond the scope of this site, but I hope these pointers are of use.

grammar - Omitting repeated definite article

Is it grammatically correct to omit the second "the" in the sentence

The viscosity and the density of water characterize its speed.

and write instead

The viscosity and density of water characterize its speed?

Answer

Repeating the article can avoid ambiguity when adjectives get involved. "The black dog and cat" might mean "The black dog and the black cat" or "The black dog and the cat [of any colour]." "The black dog and the cat" clearly associates "black" only with the dog.

tenses - Quirks and limitations of Past Perfect

I know that English has two past tenses, when the second past (Pluperfect) is farther back in time then the other (Simple Past). Reading stories in English, I've discovered that many stories are narrated by the author in past, with present tenses used only in quotes to convey what a character utters. And if the author wants to narrate what happened before the normal point of reference, he uses Pluperfect. The author adds had before every verb (had given). After a series of such verbs, when I start to see normal verbs in the Past Simple (gave), I understand that the author has ended the digression in the double past and come back to his or her normal point in time.

The following is an example from The Giver (Lois Lowry). I have marked with [start] and [end] the passage when the author digresses in the double past.

It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened. No. Wrong word, Jonas thought. Frightened meant that deep, sickening feeling of something terrible about to happen. Frightened was the way [start] he had felt a year ago when an unidentified aircraft had overflown the community twice.

Instantly, obediently, Jonas had dropped his bike on its side on the path behind his family’s dwelling. He had run indoors and stayed there, alone. [end]

Now, thinking about the feeling of fear as he pedalled home along the river path, he remembered that moment of palpable, stomach-sinking terror when the aircraft had streaked above.

(The last verb had streaked is not the "double past", it tells us what has just happened and has its consequences in the point of reference.)

---

I have two general questions and one optional (*):

1) When an author digresses in the "double past", does he or she lose the possibility to distinguish which event happened before another? I mean, when you narrate in the present tense, you have three points in time (I don't include the future), when you narrate in past, you have 2 points in time. But in the double past, there is only one that you are in. In this case does the author have to rely only on the context and time expressions such as before and after?

2) When you change narration from the present to the past tense, Present Perfect and Past Simple assume the same form (as the last verb in the quoted passage). For example if in the present I say: "He has seen the plane and now is running away. The same plane attacked their village a year ago." When I put it in the past it becomes: "He had seen the plane and now was running away. The same plane had attacked their village a year ago." As you see, different tenses have assumed the same form. My question: Do I always have to rely on context to distinguish when an event has its consequences in the point of reference, and when it doesn't?

3*) Can you point out some ideas that can enhance my comprehension of the Past Perfect Tense?

orthography - "The species/species'/species's survival..."

Ok, I am really confused regarding apostrophe with the s and the end of the word. I have looked through multiple sites only to see multiple viewpoints. And, on tests they test it differently. So, can anyone help me with the following problem:

The only evidence of the species survival before its rediscovery at the end of the century was an unconfirmed recording.

Would it be species' or species's ?

---

There is a lot of advice on the internet about how to use possessive S with names such as the following:

Per APA Style, the answer is that the possessive of a singular name is formed by adding an apostrophe and an s, even when the name ends in s (see p. 96 in the sixth edition of the Publication Manual). Therefore, in the example above, the correct usage would be “Adams’s (2013) work.” Although this presentation may look awkward to some writers, the rule for forming the possessive does not change just because the name ends in s.

However, it is important to note the following exception to this rule: You should use an apostrophe only with the singular form of names ending in unpronounced s (see p. 97 in the Publication Manual). Therefore, if you were writing a paper about the philosopher Descartes, to form the possessive with his name, you would need to just add an apostrophe (e.g., Descartes’ theory).

To help illustrate these guidelines, let’s look at a few more examples of properly formatted possessives:

Sigmund Freud’s method

Jesus’s disciples

Charles Dickens’s novels

Socrates’s life

François Rabelais’ writings (note that Rabelais ends with an unpronounced s)

However, the word species in the sentence above is not a name. The case with species does not seem to be a normal case like dog's or dogs' or even on a par with bus's or buses'. It's difficult to put ones finger on why, though.

Answer

The online Chicago Manual of Style (both 16th and 17th editions) states:

When the singular form of a noun ending in s is the same as the plural (i.e., the plural is uninflected), the possessives of both are formed by the addition of an apostrophe only. If ambiguity threatens, use of to avoid the possessive.

And gives the following examples:

politics’ true meaning
economics’ forerunners
this species’ first record (or, better, the first record of this species)

This is section 7.19 of the 16th edition and 7.20 of the 17th edition (2017).

Obviously this differs to my comments saying that the CMOS says species's, which I took on faith from a third party website.

However, in speaking, despite remarks by others, I'm not sure I would rule out saying the species's survival (with the extra syllable) just to clarify that I'm talking about the possessive form of the word. This is my opinion only.

grammatical number - "A total of 10 babies is..." vs. "a total of 10 babies are..." vs. "Ten babies in total are..."

Which one is the correct one?

1. A total of 10 babies is sleeping. (A)


2. A total of 10 babies are sleeping. (B)


3. Ten babies in total are sleeping. (C)

For me, both (A) and (C) are correct. But (B) is also used in speech.

Answer

(B) is perfectly correct in either American or British English. Take a look at this example from the Cambridge Dictionaries Online:

A total of 21 horses were entered for the race.

(C) is also correct, as ten babies is explicitly plural, and should thus take the plural are.

(A) is not correct because the collective noun total should always be treated in the plural sense when

1. it is explicitly used with the word, number, or the word, number, is implied (in a strict sense*),


2. the items being counted are identified/clarified/specified, AND


3. the size of the number is given.

In the following examples, all conditions are satisfied:

• A total of number of 3500 students were at the seminar. [Plural]


• A total [number] of 11 shells are in my possession. [Plural]

In this example, conditions (1) and (2) are satisfied, but condition (3) isn't:

• The total number of students in attendance was unbelievably large. [Singular]

In the first sentence of this example, only condition (3) is satisfied, while none of the conditions is satisfied in the second sentence:

• My total is 11. Theirs is much higher. [Singular]

Finally, in this case, condition (1) is not satisfied:

• 'How many pennies do we now have?' 'The current total is 22.' [Singular]

Thus, total should be treated as singular whenever these conditions are not satisfied at the same time. (This rule should not be applied with the construction There is/are.)

The agreement between nouns (collective, in this case) and verbs is called concord and much has been published on its often confusing rules of usage. The most interesting and informative article I found in the course of answering this question, was "Concord", by Marianne Drennan. (It is of South African origin, so it is likely closer to British English but, excellent article nonetheless.)

Also of note is the pronounced difference in the treatment of collective nouns between British and American English. Some collective nouns are mostly treated as singular in American English but often considered plural in British English. Two quick examples are team and family. See this note on grammar at Oxford Dictionaries Online for more information on this phenomenon. The treatment of total, however, transcends this analysis for the most part. Consider, however, another interesting example provided, in part, by the asker (@xport):

• There are ten babies. [Universally correct]


• There are ten babies in total. [Universally correct]


• There are a total of ten babies. [Plural. British?]


• There is a total of ten babies. [Singular. American?]

I'm not sure if the British/American analysis holds here, as one would find both forms (there is/there are) widely used. There are certainly sounds better, but some would argue that there is is more correct, because, strictly speaking, total by itself should be a singular noun. ("Says who?" others may counter!) Consider this, though:

There is/are a total number of ten babies. [?!]

I will not comment on this. Suffice it to say that this worrisome situation can always be avoided.

---

**in a strict sense* since the word, total, always involves a number, anyway. Try to see if you can insert the word number into your sentence (if it isn't already there) without losing the intended meaning. If this can be done, then it means the word, number is implied.

grammar - Is this a proper use of a semicolon and the word "whom"?

PCAs are usually assigned to an individual with a physical, mental, behavioral, or emotional handicap; whom they work with throughout the year.

Is this sentence grammatically correct? I know that semicolons are sometimes used when you have a list at the beginning of the sentence, to prevent confusion. Is that accurate?

Also, would "who" or "whom" be proper in this usage? I thought it would be "whom" because it's referring to the person who is helped, not the person who is helping, but I am not completely sure.

Answer

No, you don’t want a semi-colon there. A comma will do. Whom is grammatical, but so, too, would who be in an informal context.

grammar - Why can I contract *across* a word, skipping the word in the middle?

I wrote this sentence:

Why wouldn't it be valid?

--and I realized that without the contraction it becomes:

Why would it not be valid?

As opposed to "why would not it be valid," as the contraction would imply.

What's going on here? Why can I contract across the middle word this way? Or, to put it the other way, why can't I "de-contract" this without moving the not over by a word?

Answer

Even though the standard term for these combinations of an auxiliary + -n't is "contractions", grammatically they act like single, indivisible words*; rather than like two words slurred together (though that was evidently their historical origin). This single word is a auxiliary, so it goes in the normal position for an auxiliary in an interrogative sentence: after the question-word and before the subject.

Why wouldn't it be valid?
Question word - auxiliary - subject - [rest of sentence]



When you use "would not," on the other hand, you have two words: the auxiliary "would", and the distinct word "not" (a word that doesn't fit very well into the general part-of-speech categories). The auxiliary again goes into the normal position for an auxiliary. The word "not" has its own, different rules for where it goes in a sentence.

Why would it not be valid?
Question word - auxiliary - subject - [rest of sentence]


*In fact, some linguists think the negative suffix in these words is best analyzed as an inflection in modern English, like the suffix "-s" used in third person.

meaning - Do "to infinitives" used with adjectives, such as "anxious", "unwilling", etc. indicate purpose?

"To infinitives" are often used as adjectives and adverbs to indicate purpose.

I have something to eat.

He came to play.

When we use "to infinitives" with adjectives like anxious and unwilling, are they said to indicate purpose, or do they indicate something else?

He was anxious to play.

He was unwilling to play.

This building is built to last.

Wikipedia's description says that "to infinitives" modify adjectives, but it doesn't say how it modifies the adjective. There seems to be a difference between a sentence like "he was unwilling to play" and "it is tall to reach fruit" in how the infinitives modifies, but if we say the infinitive in the first sentence does not indicate purpose, then I'm not sure what we would say it indicates. For example, when a "to infinitive" indicates purpose, it can be reworded to "in order to" or "for the purpose of" but I'm not sure how I would reword sentences like "he was anxious to play" or "he was unwilling to play."

Which is correct? Present perfect or simple past?

Which of these two is correct? Present perfect or simple past? The more I look at it the more I can't decide:

I've fallen in love with seafood around the time I found your channel.

or:

I fell in love with seafood around the time I found your channel.

I also could use when instead of "around the time" but I think that changes the premise of the situation. I'd appreciate a little help!

Answer

Let's replace around the time I found your channel with yesterday, as those phrases are grammatically interchangeable (the "around your time" is just an approximation; it could also be replaced with "in approximately 400BC").

I've fallen in love with seafood yesterday. I've fallen in love with seafood in approximately 400BC.

I fell in love with seafood yesterday. I fell in love with seafood in approximately 400BC.

Don't let the length of the phrase "around the time I found your channel" fool you. It's still a fixed point in time, making your second sentence grammatically correct.

Compare:

I've fallen in love now that I've seen your show.

vs:

I fell in love around the time I saw your show.

grammar - "Who" versus "whom" with multiple verbs

Which of these phrases is more correct?

The man who I know to be unhappy

The man whom I know to be unhappy

Is one of the verbs in the phrase more important, thus determining the noun case, or is something else happening with the particular combination of verbs? (The man whom I know is valid but the man to be unhappy isn't; the tense must be specified as in the man who is unhappy.)

Answer

In this instance, the pronoun "who" is the object of the verb "know". So you want to use objective case whom.

terminology - What is a small tent kind of shop on the side of the road called?

What is a small tent kind of shop on the side of the road called?

It can sell stuff like newspapers, snacks, coffee, and other small things. The only two things that come to mind are "a hot dog stand" and "street vendor" (though the latter is the person). So, I was wondering what other words for it may be?

In my language it's called a kiosk or simply a van, whether it's immovable or on the wheels, but from what I've googled, the pictures say it's not the same thing in English.

Here is what I want to know the name for:

Answer

pushcart

A type of cart with wheels that you manually push.

Dictionary.com says the term is primarily used in the US and in Canada

mainly US and Canadian a handcart, typically having two wheels and a canvas roof, used esp by street vendors. Also called: barrow

Wikipedia suggests that it is typically known as a food cart

A food cart is a mobile kitchen set up on the street to prepare and sell street food to passers-by. Food carts are often found in cities worldwide selling food of every kind.

Food carts come in two basic styles.

• One allows the vendor to sit or stand inside and serve food through a window.




• In the other, the vendor stands next to the cart, while all the room in the cart is used for storage and to house the cooking machinery, usually a grilling surface.



• Some food carts are towed by another vehicle, while some are pushed by a human or animal.

It can also be simply called a food stall with wheels, or a vendor cart

A hot dog cart

If the food cart is part of a vehicle, it is called a foodtruck

usage - Is "humble myself" idiomatically sound?

When a member posted a grammatically correct question today for scrutiny, I replied in 'comments,'

No mistake, but only bemused grammarians and humble myself!

Now I wonder: is "humble myself" a grammatically or idiomatically sound way to refer to oneself in an expression of personal modesty? My father says it all the time, as in

"the only Ph.D holder in this august audience is humble myself."

I could not find this expression on google search, which is dominated by the religious verb "to humble oneself/yourself/myself (before the Lord)" -- that is why I am asking this question here.

Two kind senior members replied in the same comments section:

@EnglishStudent: to me, "my humble self" sounds more natural. But in "the only Ph.D holder in this august audience is humble myself/my humble self" it looks like false modesty. – sumelic

@English Student: I've read "my humble self" in British literature, but it sounds very old-fashioned. I've never heard "humble myself" in the way you are using it (native speaker of US English here, mainly BosWash corridor) -- but I would not be confused if I heard it. – ab2

My father says it is an old-fashioned courtly British way of referring to oneself, whether with real or false modesty (and in the case of the Ph.D, some real sarcasm, because none of the other so-called luminaries at a particular conference had a doctorate, except for "humble himself!") -- he learnt his English in newly post-independent India, mainly by reading his medical textbooks and British literature.

It may well have become an archaic expression.

What I want to know is whether you experts at EL & U have heard it before, and can say if it is idiomatically sound?

Answer

Your father probably has a charming way with words, and although "humble myself" as he uses it is idiosyncratic, not idiomatic, he has not stretched English to its elastic limit -- to use the term from your bio. He should continue using this phrase, because it pleases him and no doubt his listeners.

idiosyncratic, from Dictionary.com:

pertaining to the nature of idiosyncrasy, or something peculiar to an
individual: The best minds are idiosyncratic and unpredictable as
they follow the course of scientific discovery

grammatical number - "occur" vs "occurs" with a singular collective noun

I wrote:

The ability to guarantee that a batch of writes occurs together.

One reviewer wanted to change that to occur.

I'm not sure if this is my idiom (Australian of U.K. origin) vs American or if I'm wrong.

I regarded batch of writes as a singular collective noun.

This English Club reference and others suggest using a plural verb with collective noun is less common in American English.

edit

To clarify, the sentence is in a book about programming computer databases and the full sentence is much longer, possibly too long!

Those three operations are all we need; everything else is sugar on top (or maybe something a bit more nutritious, like the ability to guarantee that a batch of writes occurs together).

Answer

You are correct. It should be occurs because you are talking about a batch. Now, a batch of what? That is something else.

grammatical number - Plural nouns in nominal compounds

I wonder whether there are rules or guidelines regarding plural nouns in nominal compounds. For example a compound university students list. If there are many lists and many universities is it grammatically correct to say universities students lists? Must all elements be in the plural form or can some be left in singular, even though the meaning is plural? I've seen an expression universities student lists; is it correct?

Answer

There is a cross-linguistic principle that words incorporated into compounds tend to lose any inflections (I remember an article in Language in the 80's - probably, from the index, one of the articles in Vol 62 No 1, but I haven't a copy to hand).

So in English, the norm is that nouns incorporated into compounds do not take a plural ending. Where they do, this is usually because the singular form would be ambiguous, often because there is a homophonous adjective. An example I recall is "solid modelling" - the company I worked for in the 80's used this phrase (in the UK, hence the spelling of "modelling"), but other vendors preferred "solids modeling", presumably because they thought that "solid modelling" might be a solid kind of modelling, as opposed to the modelling of solids.

What possessive forms are used for mutual 1st person ownership?

I want to talk to someone about the house that my wife and I own. Saying, for example, "My wife's and my house is awesome," sounds a bit funny to me. What's the best way to express this?

Clarification

I'm asking specifically about the grammar of multiple nouns in possessive form. I'm particularly curious if it's possible to do this with a first-person pronoun (me). I am capable of rephrasing this in other ways - my question is not how to express the idea, but about this particular grammatical construction, if it is even legal.

Answer

As far as I know, most style guides advise against this and say there is no acceptable solution without rephrasing the sentence, as most answers here have rightly done.

If the second possessor had been a noun, you could have stuck the possessive onto the second noun only. Note that this applies only if both possessors possess the same house together:

my sister and her husband's house

This is what the Chicago Manual of Style seems to suggest. I'd rephrase that too, though.

pronouns - How to tell if "which" refers to subject or object of main clause?

I have not been able to find a satisfactory answer regarding rules about this issue. What I have heard are lots of opinions:

Here is a picture of my house, which I like very much.

Here is a picture of my house that I like very much.

In the second example, that clearly refers to the subject of the main clause, since we could omit it and it would still mean the same thing:

Here is a picture of my house I like very much.

In the first example, is there any rule about what which refers to? There is some ambiguity otherwise.

Answer

There's ambiguity when you try to analyze a sentence devoid of any communicative context. But since language is "quite often" used for communication, other things serve to help disambiguate; such as perceived speaker's intention, the topic of the discourse, the intended function of the sentence. If they don't, you can always ask your interlocutor whether he is referring to the picture or to the house.