grammatical number - What is the proper way to say possesive with "person X" and self?

I've never known what the proper way to use a sentence in which you and a specific person (as in you can't just say "our" because you want to specify who) possess something. Is it "Julie's and mine", "Mine and Julies", "Julie and my"...?

For instance,
"Julie and my favorite band is Eluveitie."

"That sandwich is Ben and mine."

They all sound a bit strange, which is the correct way to say this?

Answer

"Julie's and mine" and "mine and Julie's" (note apostrophe) are both correct for the predicate possessive form, "Julie's and my" for the simple possessive form.

"It was the kind of story that / where you had to be there." -- Are the relative words 'where' and 'that' interchangeable?

Consider this exchange:

A: Your story wasn't funny at all.
B: Maybe it was the kind of story where you had to be there.

I encountered something like that a few days ago, and wondered if the relative word where could be replaced with that:

^?Maybe it was the kind of story that you had to be there.

It sounded strange a bit, but I was reluctant to say it's wrong, because there are analogous examples where a that relative or bare relative could be used instead of a where relative clause:

• The place I went running was a few blocks away


• This is not the place I will die.


• It's pathetic to live in the place you grew up.


• If you would have told me a year ago that I'd be in the place that I am now, I would have been like, good joke.


• Why does poetry become the place that you can say it?

^{examples from COCA}

So, when is it possible to use the relative words that and where interchangeably?

grammaticality - Had been vs was

Now this is confusing... I wanna know the difference between the following sentences:

If you were there, I would see you.

If you had been there, I would have seen you.

What's the difference between 'were' and 'had been'? And could we use 'were' instead of 'had been' in the 2nd sentence?

Answer

Scenario #1 - It is the present (now) and you are not here:

"If you were there, I would see you."

Scenario #2 - In the past and you were not there

"If you had been there, I would have seen you."

Scenario #3 - In the future

"If you are here tomorrow, I will see you."

In the first two cases, are counter-factual

meaning - Question Regarding Possessives with ('s) and (of)

Question: Is the first one redundant and proper, or is it redundant and not necessarily correct?

(1) He is a friend of Doug's.

(2) He is a friend of Doug.

Answer

Patrick,

This is a grammatical issue I am curious about, as I have always used "of Doug's", not "of Doug" in such sentences. Your question has prompted me to do some more research.

Swan's Practical English Usage, 3rd ed. does not address the controversy but does give several 'double possessive' sentences, such as She's a friend of my father's so presumably he thinks double possessives are okay, at least in some contexts.

Grammar Girl provides a lengthy discussion of double possessives, and provides useful distinctions that explain when they are correct, when and how they could be avoided, and when they are a mistake. People may question her authority, but she does provide a useful breakdown and cites authoritative references.

Richard Nordquist, over at about.com's grammar page, comes down on the side of double possessives being correct, and gives several examples of their use in literature (Bronte, etc.) and an interesting summary of the history of this debate among grammarians.

In The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style, Bryon Garner surveys the pro and con arguments, and concludes that double possessives are fine except in awkward sentences like Many friends of Mr. Smith's, which should be reworded to Many of Mr. Smith's friends.

Having read all this, I have not changed my mind: He is a friend of Doug's is grammatically correct, and He is a friend of Doug is not. If He is a friend of mine is correct, and He is a friend of me is incorrect (which I definitely believe to be the case), then the same rules should apply to proper nouns to show possession in this construction.

I hope this at least gives you some food for thought.

semantics - Past or present tense in the clause of an -ing structure?

I have a question that, as the title suggests, relates to tense agreement between an -ing phrase and its subordinate clause.

I have seen other similar questions, such as
present/past tense in a subordinate clause and
Present tense in the narrative past tense, but I think my question is somewhat different.

Consider the sentence:

(1) John looks at the photo and remembers Maria telling him that she
loved him

and the sentence:

(2) John looks at the photo and remembers Maria telling him that she
loves him

Are they both grammatically correct [perhaps with (1) implying she doesn't love him anymore, whereas in (2) she still does], or is only (1) the grammatically correct one?

I have this instinctive feeling that only (1) is grammatically correct, but it would be a bit puzzling from a structural point of view, since we have a verb in present tense ("remembers") and an -ing clause. In other words, it's only a semantic element (the function of the verb "remember") that places the action in the past.

Any thoughts on the matter?

EDIT

I thought to start a bounty, so let me clarify the question further.

If it is grammatical to say:

John hears Maria telling him she loves him

is it also grammatical to say:

John remembers Maria telling him she loves him

or would we have to use she loved him instead. And if this is the case, can there be non-semantic reasons justifying the choice? In other words, is there anything besides the semantic function of the verb remember, referring to an action that occurred in the past, which dictates the past tense?

Answer

Are they both grammatically correct [perhaps with (1) implying she
doesn't love him anymore, whereas in (2) she still does], or is only
(1) the grammatically correct one?

Yes, they are both correct. The change of tense with loves/loved potentially alters the meaning, but this is perfectly fine in terms of grammar.

In each case, John remembers [NB: present tense] Maria telling him something. That "something" was a statement of fact (let's ignore the possibility that it may not have been true). Because he's remembering it, logically it must have happened in the past. At that time in the past, Maria told him X, but the choice of tense indicates whether the "X" is confined to that point in the past, or might have a continuing validity into the present.

Sentence (1) indicates that Maria loved John then, i.e. at the time she made the statement. However, we can't infer anything about more recent times. John is simply remembering a time when she verbalised her love. Maybe it was the first time she'd said it. Maybe there have been other times since when she has also said it. She may well still love him. On the other hand, maybe he knows that she no longer loves him. She may even be deceased, in which case the present tense would only work in a spiritual sense. In any case, the past tense simply locates her statement in the past, and doesn't enable us to infer anything beyond that.

Sentence (2), however, creates a dilemma. One interpretation is that she loves him in the narrative present. This seems pretty straight forward and needs no further explanation. The other interpretation is that we're being invited into the "historic present" of his memory of that event. It's as if the narrative of that event has changed to the present tense, the effect of which is to locate her statement in that time - the same as if the past tense had been used.

No doubt it's this ambiguity in sentence (2) that gives rise to a sense that using the present tense is not grammatically correct. In fact there's no problem with the grammar. It's just that we have to rely on further context to make sense of the currency of the love he's remembering being told about.

---

Regarding the edit and the additional argument:

1. there's no problem with the grammar, so this is a null argument; and


2. while a memory can only be located in the past, it's
   important not to overlook the semantic role of "telling". What Maria
   tells John can be either historic (past) or continuing (present).
   This is quite independent of whether John "hears" it or "remembers"
   it. For example, maybe Maria is reminding him that she did love him
   
   at some time in the past: "John hears Maria telling him she loved
   him."

word choice - Is there a correct gender-neutral singular pronoun ("his" vs. "her" vs. "their")?

Is there a pronoun I can use as a gender-neutral pronoun when referring back to a singular noun phrase?

Each student should save his questions until the end.
Each student should save her questions until the end.

Added 10/27/2019
We could use an answer from the transgender community. There are none amongst the first 23 answers. I know there's a term (in America), but i can't remember what it is.

Answer

Singular they enjoys a long history of usage in English and can be used here: "Each student should save their questions until the end."

However, “singular they” also enjoys a long history of criticism. If you are anxious about being criticized (for what is in fact a perfectly grammatical construction) I would advise rewording to avoid having to use a gender-neutral singular third-person pronoun.

Some rewording strategies that can be employed:

• Use a plural noun: Students should save their questions until the end.


• Use the formal one: One should save one's questions until the end.


• Use his or her: Each student should save his or her questions until the end

---

OED References for “singular” they

Here for the benefit of those who lack access to its paywalled source are the full and complete operative senses from the Oxford English Dictionary. Per the OED the pronoun they has these specific subsenses for the various scenarios under discussion here:

2. In anaphoric reference to a singular noun or pronoun. 🗨

   
   
   

   ^{Use of they to refer to a singular antecedent has sometimes been considered erroneous.}

_{🗨 Dennis Baron • A brief history of singular ‘they’}

_{…But that’s nothing new. The Oxford English Dictionary traces singular they back to 1375, where it appears in the medieval romance William and the Werewolf. Except for the old-style language of that poem, its use of singular they to refer to an unnamed person seems very modern. Here’s the Middle English version: ‘Hastely hiȝed eche … þei neyȝþed so neiȝh… þere william & his worþi lef were liand i-fere.’ In modern English, that’s: ‘Each man hurried… till they drew near… where William and his darling were lying together.’…}

^{[4 September 2018]}

• 2a. With an antecedent that is grammatically singular, but refers collectively to the members of a group, or has universal reference (e.g. each person, everyone, nobody).

  
  
  

  ^{Sometimes, but not always, used to avoid having to specify the gender(s) of the individual(s) being referred to; cf. sense A. 2b.}

  
  
  

  [[citations ranging from 1350–2014 omitted]]

• 2b. With an antecedent referring to an individual generically or indefinitely (e.g. someone, a person, the student), used esp. so as to make a general reference to such an individual without specifying gender. Cf. ʜᴇ pron. 2b.

  
  
  

  ^{In the 21st century, other th– pronouns (and the possessive adjective their) are sometimes used to refer to a named individual, so as to avoid revealing or making an assumption about that person’s gender; cf. sense A. 2c, and quots. 2008 at ᴛʜᴇɪʀ adj. 2b, 2009 at ᴛʜᴇᴍ pron. 4b, 2009 at ᴛʜᴇᴍꜱᴇʟꜰ pron. 2b.}

  
  
  
  

  [[citations ranging from 1450–2010 omitted]]

• 2c. Used with reference to a person whose sense of personal identity does not correspond to conventional sex and gender distinctions, and who has typically asked to be referred to as they (rather than as he or she).

  
  
  
  

  [[citations ranging from 2009–2019 omitted]]

^{_{Copyright © 2019 Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.}}

Retrieved 2019-10-25 23:46:13 UTC, and shown here under the Fair Use Exception.

grammar - 'To solve' versus 'To solving'

Trying to understand what seems to be a very subtle difference in written and spoken English. Recently, I've seen articles that use 'to + gerund' and 'to + infinitive' in the exact same situations, especially when preceded by an independent clause with a subjective complement:

Editor's Corner: There is no silver bullet to solve homelessness

'There is no silver bullet' to solving N.D.'s worker shortage, officials say

These exist in relatively equal distribution on google, (16k for 'no silver bullet to solve' and 13k for 'no silver bullet to solving), and I'm having a tough time understanding syntactically what might be going on here.

I thought a good analogy might be the "I look forward to hear/hearing from you" mistake than many English language learners make, but this doesn't seem to be that same situation, both in the sense that to my native ears one doesn't sound much better than the other, and I'm not sure they're the same syntactically.

In my (probably misguided) syntactic reading of the first sentence ('There is no silver bullet to solve homelessness'), I think that 'to solve homelessness' is an infinitive clause acting as a prepositional phrase:

And therefore is syntactically similar to something like, "There's no wrong way to eat a Reese's." This, to me, seems correct. Does this seem on base? And if so, why do these two different approaches exist equally on the net? Is there any potential syntactic reading for 'to solving' that makes sense here?

Answer

The infinitive (or perhaps it should be analyzed as the subjunctive?) gives a sense of completion, while the gerund gives more of a sense of process. So "There is a new approach to solving homelessness" indicates that the approach will help work on the problem of homelessness, while "There is a new approach to solve homelessness" implies that it will successfully deal with homelessness. A further complication is that "silver bullet" is a metaphor (or, at least, I hope people aren't discussing literally solving homelessness with silver bullets), and there can be differences as to what people consider it a metaphor for. It's often used as a metaphor for something that completely takes care of something, which suggests the infinitive. If, however, it's used as a metaphor for a tool used in the process of doing something, rather than something that automatically gets one to one's end goal, that suggests the gerund.

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...).

Multiple relative clauses within subject?

I'm wondering what is the actual subject in this sentence:
"One of the countries she has visited that I have not is Canada."

To me, everything up until 'is' seems like the subject, but I can't find any information about relative clauses being found in a subject, other than in the case of a 'that' clause that comes first (e.g. That she should forget me so quickly was rather a shock).

If anyone could parse this sentence for me, I would greatly appreciate it! Thanks for your time.

Answer

Break the sentence apart by removing prepositions and supporting phrases.

One of the countries she has visited that I have not is Canada.

Then:

One of the countries she has visited is Canada.

Then:

One of the countries is Canada.

Then:

One is Canada.

Ta-da! The subject is technically "one". That's not terribly useful to an actual person, though, so you could say that the subject is "one [of the countries]".

word choice - Correct usage of was/were on the object of a sentence

On a Tuesday morning, which of these sentences is the better way to express that I already want it to be Friday?

I wish it were Friday.
I wish it was Friday.

Answer

The keyword you're looking for is not “future tense”, but “subjunctive mood”. The subjunctive mood in your case is “I wish it were Friday”, which conveys this meaning fully. It is to be noted, though, that the usage of this mood is decreasing, and it can be considered correct in all but formal environments to say “I wish it was Friday”.

expressions - "manieth", is it acknowledged?

I believed that there is no question word in English for making a question when you want know the X in sentences like "Barack Obama is the Xth president of the US.".

*Question words are words like "what", "who", "how many" and so on.

Then I came across this word "manieth", which does not seem to be in any dictionaries I have.
Is this even a word? If it is, how acknowledged is it?

Futhermore, if there is any word or expression that means the same thing as "manieth", I would like to know what it is.

word choice - Is there any difference between "my level of English" and "my standard of English"?

Is there any difference between both sentences? Are they synonyms? Is one better for formal speaking than the other?

Recently I was rejected in a job because

The standard of your written English is not at the level where you could write a report to our standard.

I'm trying to figure out what is the meaning of standard in that sentence, and I came across that standard also means level,

Answer

It's quite true that both level and standard can be regarded as synonymous. However, there is indeed a subtle difference between them.
Suppose there is a competition where there are ten levels (ten rounds; you can participate in a round only if you qualify in the preceding one). Now, there can be different players in each level. However, the standard of the players in each level differ. Agree? As in, the quality of players in each level are different. In level 8, there can be player who has just luckily cleared the seventh level. Also, there can be another player who plays extraordinarily well. This means, the standard of this player is way better than the former.
So this is where the difference between level and standard lies.
However, based on context, you can use either of them for the same purpose.

As regards to you being rejected from job, I think your boss just wanted to tell you that you don't write good English (according to him). Simple.

grammar - Should I use "in" or "of"?

I posted a photo that was very serene. I wrote as my heading:

The serenity of this speaks to me.

But I don't know if that's correct. Should I have instead said:

The serenity in this speaks to me.

I can't stop it from ruminating in my head.

grammar - "I wish there were," or "I wish there was," which sounds most natural?

Given the choice of these two, which sound most natural?

I wish there were something I could do for you.
I wish there was something I could do for you.

If both sound equally natural, I'd prefer the first.

Answer

There are two questions that need to be answered here.

First, is there still the slightest chance that there is something I can do for you? For example, I might think that there is probably nothing I can do for you, but I still need to think about it a bit before I can be sure. In that case, I'll say "I wish there was something I could do for you."

Second, how formal is the language you're using? If there is absolutely no chance that I can do anything for you, and I'm speaking formally, then I should say "I wish there were something I could do for you." If there's no chance at all that I can do anything for you, and I'm speaking in a neutral or informal register, then I can use either was or were.

punctuation - How should rhetorical questions be punctuated?

How would you punctuate the following sentence, and others like it? Are there any precedents, or applicable style guides?

The question is what are we going to do about it?

No rephrasing, please.

Answer

This is a direct question expressed within a declarative sentence that declares the question to be a question. We answered this last week. The sentence should be written one of two ways:

The question is, "What are we going to do about it?"

or

The question is: "What are we going to do about it?"

There are some other possibilities, but these are the two major contenders.

This is not a rhetorical question unless there is no answer or unless the answer has already been provided and you're not asking for a real answer. In any case, it doesn't affect the orthography or punctuation.

grammaticality - "He didn't know where New Jersey was"

I know the past tense carries the past tense in every dependent clause, but referring specifically to places or to things that are eternal, like the Earth, seems a bit weird and therefore we sometimes (I believe incorrectly) say

He didn't know that New Jersey was actually on the East Coast.

Because it still is. Or

He thought the Earth was round.

So is it square now?

Logically speaking, would you consider the use of past tense here a bit confusing in a day-to-day speech in these examples? Would you instinctively opt for using the present tense?

Answer

Both tenses are OK, but I believe the past tense is a bit more common: it may be somewhat contrary to logic, but it sounds better. Harmony of tenses (if that's what it's called) is a linguistic phenomenon that is not always very logical.

grammaticality - "...at the top or bottom" vs "...at the top or the bottom"

I'm a bit confused about the usage of "the" in a list. Even after reading this post, it's not clear to me which of the following is grammatically correct.

"Is the [object] at the top or bottom?"

"Is the [object] at the top or the bottom?"

Or should "at" be distributed as well? (In which case, it seems clear that "the" should appear twice.)

"Is the [object] at the top or at the bottom?"

grammar - "The people with whom you are talking" vs. "The people you are talking with"

Is it grammatically correct to say

"One of the disadvantages of chatrooms is that you do not know the people with whom you are talking"?

I think it is better to say "the people you are talking with" but I do not know if the first option would be possible.

Answer

‘The people with whom you are talking’ is formal bordering on the pompous. Your alternative is more appropriate for most occasions, but speakers of British English, at least, would be more likely to say ‘. . . is that you don’t know who you’re talking to’.

Past perfect or past simple in combination with present perfect?

Suppose I received a document from my colleague, studied it and then gave him feedback in a letter. How should I construct the following sentense?

I have examined the document you gave me and...

or it should be

I have examined the document you had given me and...

and just in case (though I hardly believe it is correct)

I have examined the document you have given me and...

From one point of view both he and I know when he gave me the document so one should use past simple. On the other hand past perfect might be used here to indicate that the moment he gave it to me occurred before I read it.

gerunds - How many parts of speech can a word be at the same time?

• ᴛʟᴅʀ: Is it ever possible for a sentence to have a word in it that is simultaneously more than one single part of speech in that sentence under the same parse and meaning?

  
  
  
  

  (For example, a few possible pairings from lexical categories commonly ascribed to English include noun+verb, verb+adjective, adjective+preposition, preposition+conjunction, conjunction+noun, and so on and so forth.)

My hunch is that the answer to my question is no, but I have heard the contrary proposition argued. So I would like to know definitively whether it can or that it cannot, preferably backed up with references and citations supporting whichever direction the answerer chooses to take on this one. If authorities differ, please explain the conflict.

BONUS: I’m especially looking into whether an “‑ing word” can ever be more than one of a noun, a verb, an adjective, or an adverb at the same time in the same sentence under the same parse and meaning. I don’t know, but I suspect that in this case

“There can be only one!”     ⸺Highlander

---

English is notorious for having words that can act as more than one part of speech depending on how you use them. This famous pair relies on flies and like each being a different part of speech in each sentence:

• Time flies^{[verb, singular]} like^{[preposition]} an arrow.


• Fruit flies^{[noun, plural]} like^{[verb, plural]} a banana.

That shows how flies can be either a verb or a noun and how like can be either a preposition or a verb.

Similarly, the word still can be noun, a verb, an adjective, or an adverb.

• You can still^[adverb] still^[verb] a still^[adjective] still^[noun].

Or here, using inflections characteristic of each class:

• Quickly stilling^{[verb, ‑ing]} bubbling stills^{[noun, plural]}
  still^[adverb] leaves them stiller^{[adjective, comparative]} than you’d like.

In all those examples, one can assign only a single part of speech to each word as it is used in a given sentence. Outside of a sentence, or at least of a broader syntactic context, it is often impossible to make any such assignment, since the same word has the potential to be two or more different parts of speech.

The ‑ing inflections of verbs are notorious for this property of being able to be several different parts of speech. In my previous example sentence, I used one as a verb (stilling) but another as an adjective (bubbling). These ‑ing words can also easily serve as nouns, as in savings accounts and in swimming competitions.

And I’m perfectly fine with all that.

The problem is that I’ve also been told, quite vociferously in fact, that whenever an ‑ing word in a noun or an adjective, it is also AT THE SAME TIME a verb as well!

I can find no evidence to support this proposition, and I have looked. Hard.

All the putative examples of these I’ve been able to locate seem to err by misparsing syntactic constituents. This is the same class of error as we so often see in sentences like “Give it to whoever is coming” where they mistakenly write whomever thinking that that word is the object of a preposition whereas in fact the object of the preposition is all of whoever is coming, not just whoever alone.

Here is my thinking:

• If it’s a noun, that means it must do noun things.


• If it’s a verb, that means it must do verb things.

So the easiest way I can think of to test whether something is one or the other or both is to apply various “does it do this-or-that noun thing?” and “does it this-or-that verb thing” tests, then tally the results to see whether there’s enough evidence for a clear answer either way.

In other words, to gather evidence I have taken a sentence alleged to have these ‑ing words that “are both nouns and verbs at the same time” and applied to them various syntactic tests. These are all simple syntactic tests that should either be true for verbs and false for nouns, or else the other way around. Then I have looked at the results of this evidence. I don’t mean to limit the tests applied, but I myself have used these sorts:

Noun Tests

• Nouns can be inflected for number.




• Nouns fit into a particular slot in the larger noun phrase, which includes such things as determiners and adjectives modifying that noun.




• Nouns phrases can be connected to other noun phrases with prepositions.




• Noun phrases accept the ’s clitic used to indicate possession. (This can look like another inflection when applied to just a noun alone.)

Verb tests

• Verbs fit in a larger verb phrase, which includes such things as adverbs.




• Verbs can accept complements, like direct objects if transitive.




• Verbs can be inflected in various ways, including for tense, aspect, number, and person.

The sentences we’re going to apply these tests to are these, which are reduced from this answer:

1. Running bulls is easy.

2. Running bulls are dangerous.

The conjecture to prove or disprove is that the word running is two or more parts of speech in either one of those two sentences alone. I already know that it is a different part of speech in sentence 1 as it is in sentence 2: it’s a verb in the first one and an adjective in the second one.

But I really think that that’s all it is. It isn’t also a noun in either of them. Just because running bulls is the subject of sentence 1 doesn’t mean that running is a noun; it can’t be a noun or it wouldn’t be able to take a direct object like is happening there. Only transitive verbs take direct objects; nouns never do.

Possible Origin of Confusion?

I think this confusion may stem from people being told that a complete sentence “must have a noun and a verb”, which isn’t a “real rule” in English. Rather, a sentence must have a subject and its predicate, and lots of things can be subjects other than just plain nouns alone, including clauses like “Running^{[verb, ‑ing]} bulls is hard” or “What they told^{[verb, past]} you is wrong”, where is hard and is wrong are the respective predicates and everything preceding those is each sentence’s respective subject as a clause. Neither running bulls nor what they told you is somehow a noun, since those are clauses. But they’re still subjects nonetheless, and we don’t need to pretend they’re nouns to make them be a subject. That’s the main argument for saying that running is somehow a noun there, and I can’t see it.

See my reasoning here for the application of noun tests and verb tests to these two sentences. I cannot come up with any way to make the running verb from sentence 1 also be a noun or an adjective in sentence 1, nor to make the running adjective from sentence 2 also be a noun or a verb in sentence 2.

It has been argued that you cannot use syntactic tests to determine the part of speech of a word, and that broader historic traditions of assigning these things allows them to be simultaneously multi-parted even when no syntactic test can find any such evidence. I do not pretend to understand those arguments, and I am not making them. I simply know no other way to do this than to apply syntactic tests.

Many answers on this site allege that ‑ing words used in non-finite verb clauses are not only verbs alone as their clause usage proves already but also “actually” nouns when said clauses are used substantively and also adjectives or adverbs when those clauses are used as adjuncts modifying something else.

I believe they mistake the verb clause as a syntactic constituent replaceable by nouns or adjectives/adverbs for those respective lexical categories. I think only the clauses can function as substantives or modifiers, but each word’s lexical class is still that of a verb alone.

Here are some examples that seems to suggest otherwise:

As well as:

So we end up telling people that things belong to two distinct and oppositional lexical categories at the same time. This is extremely confusing, so I’d like to find evidence that it does or does not ever occur, or even can.

So I again ask: is it ever possible for a sentence to have a word that’s simultaneously more than one single part of speech in that sentence (under the same parse and meaning)?

I’m particularly looking for whether an ‑ing word can ever be more than one of a noun, a verb, an adjective, or an adverb at the same time in the same sentence under the same parse and meaning.

Answer

ᴛʟ;ᴅʀ
Is it ever possible for a sentence to have a word in it
that is simultaneously more than one single part of speech
in that sentence, under the same parse and meaning?

So, if a grammatical English sentence contains a word A, can A be more than one POS?

Parts of speech are grammatical terms and have varying meanings for different grammarians.
Let's rule out quantum superposition of POS, so no Schrödinger's Gerund that's noun and verb.

There certainly are sentences where it's impossible to tell which of several possible categories a word falls into, like the first sentence below, where exhausted can be either a predicate adjective, as in the second sentence, or part of a passive construction, like the third one.

• I was exhausted.


• I was exhausted and the bed was soft; we suited each other well.


• I was exhausted by the irritable conversation and left early.

But that's not "in the same sentence". In the first sentence, there's just no way to know what the speaker intends about POS; it could be either one. And there's no way to know if one speaker might feel it was an adjective, but another speaker might think it was a participle. Or the same speaker might do both, to the same sentence, on different occasions.

So, the key word in the question is Simultaneously. And the answer to the question is No.

If anything in a parse changes from one POS to another, that makes it a different parse.
Thus, if A has two different POSs, they will occur in two different parses of the sentence.
And therefore the sentence can't simultaneously have two POSs in the same parse.

It is of course very easy to find sentences that have two interpretations; this is one way to make jokes, and certainly such ambiguity is common. But each interpretation represents a different parse. That's one of the purposes of parsing, in fact -- to distinguish ambiguous sentences and make their differences distinct. But that doesn't mean they're simultaneous, in any sense.

grammar - conditional mood, can the hypothetical entity be identified?

Does English grammar distinguish between a conditional sentence where the point of view is realistic, but the result is indeterminate; and one where the point of view is hypothetical, but the result is deteriminate?

Example 1: Suppose my neighbor is engaged to be married and we are talking about his up-coming wedding three weeks off.

What would you do if it rained like this on your wedding day?

We expect the wedding to happen as scheduled, but have utterly no opinions about the weather three weeks from now. Is the above sentence grammatically the best, or could it be improved by replacing rained by was raining, was to rain, were raining, or were to rain? Do any of these help to indicate a factual event subject to unpredictable weather?

Example 2: Suppose my neighbor has no plans to marry.

What would you do if you got married on a day like today?

Here, it is the wedding that is hypothetical, and we are specifying the weather. Can this mood be conveyed better with were getting, or were to get?

My searches for info on this yielded nothing. But the examples seem to show that there are sometimes more options in the first case.

Do any dialects purpose or repurpose auxiliary verbs to achieve this distinction?

Is there a pair of statements which applies to each example, but not the other?

apostrophe - What is the possessive form of “neither”?

I’m working on a worksheet and it’s telling me to make up a sentence using the possessive form of the indefinite pronoun neither. It says to use apostrophes on all these pronouns to make them possessive but neither’s doesn’t seem like a word I could properly use in a sentence.

Am I correct and what is the correct possessive form?

pronunciation - Spicket or spigot?

I recently was making a list and for the first time using a digital device, typed in what I grew up referring to an outdoor faucet 'spicket' as into my iPad.

My mother grew up in Utah and my father in. Nebraska, Utah, Wyoming and Idaho. Mom's parents in Salt Lake and Central Utah while Dad's parents in Tennessee and the Western states.

I looked up how to spell spicket and for the first time in my 35 year teaching career found again that I have been mispronouncing and misspelling a word.

I am wondering which parts of the country use spigot and who says spicket?

Who knew?

grammar - "...the depth of x, y, and z that currently overwhelm(s?) me."

Without having gone through what I have this year, I could not possible grasp the depth of love, gratitude, and individuality that currently overwhelm/overwhelms me.

I initially had overwhelm, but then had a friend go over the five-paragraph excerpt that this sentence was included in, and she claims it should be overwhelms. I see where she's coming from, but was wondering if somebody could persuade me fully, because right now I'm not so sure which sounds better. I suppose the question really boils down to whether it is the depth of the noun trio (singular) or the trio of nouns themselves (plural) that is doing the overwhelming?

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 ..."

differences - "To which extent?" vs. "To what extent?"

Is there a difference in meaning between "to which extent" and "to what extent"? Are they used in different geographical areas?

nouns - Translation of a German word: "Gutmensch"

The word "Gutmensch" consists of

• gut = good


• Mensch = human

Sounds like a compliment but actually the word is very insulting.

It describes someone who (for example)

• is not able to take criticism, since their cause is always just


• considers objective arguments as inconsiderate and hurtful


• instinctively tries to control any dispute and calm the situation


• suffers ostentatively at the slightest indignation


• scorns at dark humour

The list is not exhaustive, I'm just trying to convey the right frame of mind.

There is this sense of entitlement and an attitude like that of a teacher. If you argue with them, they will not listen but try to show you the error of your ways. If they are wrong, they will try to end the discussion with "it's not really that important, isn't it?".

A "Gutmensch" is not a bad person, they are perfectly normal people and can be found in any radio conversation and at most family meetings. But there is some trace of malice, some wickedness, or some almost undetectable twist of mind. This is the important part.

Let's say you dine with an activist of Greenpeace and the evening is completely filled with the fight against pollution. This person is definitely not a "Gutmensch", since he is genuinely concerned.

Or you invite a vegetarian who insists on not eating meat. Not a "Gutmensch". The person next to the vegetarian who starts the discussion about eating meat and won't accept any conclusion except "we should all stop eating meat", that's a "Gutmensch".

How would you translate this word (one of my favourites) to English ?

UPDATE:

Yes, I've tried to look up the word on my own. The results were:

• do-gooder


• goody two-shoes


• starry eyed idealist

and

good mind, this last one was actually marked as "abfällig" (derogatory)

None of those words felt like they were spot-on.
They don't feel right, because of various reasons, I'm trying to give my personal impression of each of those words:

• do-gooder : very plain, direct translation. I don't think I heard this before. Seems rather constructed to me.


• goody two-shoes : I definitely didn't hear this before


• starry eyed idealist : someone who is blinded by his ideals. The greenpeace activist from my example would probably be a starry eyed idealist. But that's not necessarily bad.


• good mind : the dictionary says this is derogatory. But it seems rather harmless to me.

Would you say "He is such a good mind" about one of your friends ? Sarcastically, I mean ? Seems like a harmless joke, only in a specific context I would consider this insulting. If you called one of your friends "Gutmensch", he would be severely injured.

I didn't post those results, since I didn't want to spoil the question. Usually if someone asks me "do you think X is an appropriate translation for ...", all I can think of is X. And I wanted to see if those terms come up on their own.

Answer

Moralist reproduces the good denotation of gutmensch with a similar dark connotation:

noun

1.0 A person who teaches or promotes morality.

1.1 A person given to moralizing.
_ODO

Almost everyone considers their own morality to be good. Most consider their moral judgments to be superior, or at least on par with the best, but in the modern mind, a moralist is often portrayed with an irrational moral opinion used unsympathetically to cajole and coerce others into conformity against their will.

John Dewey: An Intellectual Portrait, by Sidney Hook, reveals the positive denotation of one who constructs a superior moral framework:

To those who know him by his less technical writings, John Dewey
appears as a great moralist and educator.

In his introduction of The Unity of Plutarch's Work, Anastasios Nikolaidis used moralist with the dark connotations of irrationality and coercion:

These findings, however, do not entail that Plutarch was a crude
moralist who stigmatized deeds and conducts, meted out prescriptions
for correct ways of living or put forward ideal, and therefore
unattainable, patterns of behaviour.

Although the preacher from Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter was predominantly a hypocrite, he was primarily a moralist, who struggled against his own gutmenschlich qualities at the expense of his secret mistress, Hester Prynne:

The days of the far-off future would toil onward, still with the same burden for her to take up, and bear along with her, but never to fling down; for the accumulating days, and added years, would pile up their misery upon the heap of shame. Throughout them all, giving up her individuality, she would become the
general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in
which they might vivify and embody their images of women's frailty and
sinful passion. Thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast—at her, the child of honourable parents—at her, the mother of a babe that would hereafter be a woman—at her, who had once been innocent—as the figure, the body, the reality of sin. And over her grave, the infamy that she must carry thither would be her only monument.
_{Emphasis added}

grammar - How these clauses are co-ordinate?

In Wren and Martin, there are examples given in which "who" introduces a co-ordinate clause which thus can't be an adjective clause.How's this possible.

E.g

1)I met Mr. Joshi, who thereupon shook hands with me.

In this sentence isn't the clause "who thereupon.....me" telling us more about Mr. Joshi ?

2)He relaeased the bird, which at once flew away.

The same case here ? How it's a co-ordinate clause and not adjective clause ?

But look at this "This is the boy who broke the window". It's written in the book that here "who broke the window" is an adjective clause.Isn't same as the above two examples ?

grammatical case - Who vs. Whom for: "...Satan, who/whom everyone imagines with horns."

Possible Duplicates:
What is the correct usage of “whom”?
Using “who” and “whom”

I'm not sure what the clause is called, but it usually describes something (such as Satan). I would think it's "whom" because, in this context, everyone is imagining him with horns. They don't imagine he with horns. That's how I reason it, but it's confusing at times.

Thoughts?

What if it were: "...Satan, who/whom everyone imagines has horns"? Would you use "who" or "whom"?

american english - A/an hypothesis?

Is it a or an hypothesis? I am not a native speaker (and not very language talented) so I would appreciate any explanation/rules.

grammaticality - From the age or ages of fifteen to twenty-one?

Are both examples correct or is there only one way to write it?

The program is for people from the age of fifteen to twenty-one.

OR

The program is for people from the ages of fifteen to twenty-one.

To me ages (plural) makes sense because I am talking about more than one age but I am not sure if it's correct.

Answer

In your example, only the singular is possible. A range of ages ("from age 1 to age 2") starts at one age (singular) and ends at another. We can also talk about the period between a pair of ages (plural).

The expression "from the age of fifteen to the age of twenty-one" can be written without the second occurrence of "from the age of", as in your example.

During the period from the age of twenty to that of thirty, the
mortality was eight per cent.; from thirty to forty, thirteen and one-

tenth ; from forty to fifty, thirteen

From the age of twenty to the age of forty, Bessemer lived the life of
a journeyman inventor.

The law also imposed penalties on orbi, that is, married persons who
had no children (qui liberos non habent, Gaius, ii.111) from the age
of twenty-five to sixty in a man, and from the age of twenty to fifty
in a woman.

Every Frenchman therefore is a member of the army practically or
potentially from the age of twenty to the age of forty-five.

A man from the age of twenty to sixty shall pay twenty-five dollars;

It took me from the age of twenty to twenty six to finally realize I
could be a good husband to the woman I loved

Way back in 1908, Kreisler (in an interview) said in the October issue
of The Strad 'I am thirty-three now, and from the age of twenty to

twenty-seven I struggled

Sunglasses are one of the only pieces in a gentleman's wardrobe that
he can have from the age of twenty to sixty without having to change

Examples

grammaticality - there is a lot or there are a lot? over here or at here?

I am an English learner. While I was watching a documentary video, this caption really confused me a lot.

Is it correct to say there is a lot? I thought it is supposed to be there are a lot.

Also, what is the difference between over here and at here?

grammar - "Wasn't" vs "weren't"

Which one would be correct?

1. I wish it weren't raining today.


2. I wish it wasn't raining today.


3. I wish it were raining today.


4. I wish it was raining today.

Answer

The fact that you wish something was or wasn't true means you should use the indicative. You are stating that something is factually one way or another, and wishing for the situation to be reversed. So "I wish it wasn't raining today" and "I wish it was raining today" are how to express those concepts.

If you were trying to imply something contrary to fact, then were would be the way to go.

If I were you, I wouldn't be wishing it wasn't raining: rain is good for your garden.

Edit: Because Stan Rogers, whose opinion I respect, has weighed in with the polar opposite viewpoint from mine, I feel obliged to elaborate.

Morton S. Freeman, writing in A Treasury for Word Lovers, elaborates on a parallel idea using if clauses:

Some people have a mistaken belief that a clause beginning with if must always be in the subjunctive mood, reflecting doubtful fulfillment of the condition or a condition contrary to fact. This is not so. A clause introduced by if may express a simple condition relating to the past and take the indicative form of the verb. For example, in "If Allan was there, he was drunk," the if clause introduces a supposition, hence a verb in the indicative mood. And so with the sentences "If Curran was absent, he was probably out of town" and "If I was long-winded, I'm sorry." None of the examples imply doubt or suggest circumstance contrary to fact, as in "If I were President, I wouldn't pardon him." [Emphasis added.]

I think you can see the parallel here. Far from indicating a circumstance contrary to fact, the "I wish" construction is lamenting an actual fact. So subjunctive mood is not called for.

meaning - Function of "too" in the phrase "so too" or "so, too,"

I just ran into this sentence in an online article:

But as the App Store’s fortunes rose, so too did the iPhone’s, and later the iPad’s.

If I were editing that sentence, I would remove the too on the theory that it doesn't add anything to the sentence's meaning beyond what so provides. On the other hand, the phrase "so too" (or "so, too,") is quite common in everyday speech and writing, and it may be idiomatic for some speakers and writers. Site searches for "so too" and "so, too," reveal that these terms appear a total of 25 times on EL&U pages—mostly in answers, and mostly by extremely well-informed answerers.

If we think of so in the quoted example as meaning "in a like manner" and too as meaning "in addition," it seems to me that the sense of too is embedded in the sense of so, since Event B can't happen in a like manner to Event A unless it is happening in addition to Event A. But perhaps I'm overthinking this and the main point of too is simply to emphasize the also-ness of Event B.

Here's my question: Is the too after so in sentences like the one quoted above superfluous to the sense of the sentence, or does it contribute a shade of meaning that I may not be recognizing?

word order - Position of prepositions in questions and clauses

I would like to know if there is any rule to know where prepositions should be placed in questions or clauses.

For example, I have heard many sentences and some of them put the preposition in the start and others in the end, but I don't know if there's any rule for this or any recommendation.

Where are you from?

Who are you talking to?

To whom are you talking?

He's the person I was speaking to.

He's the person to whom I was speaking.

This is the place from where you should start.

grammaticality - “Have you heard?” vs “Did you hear?” and “Sally broke/has broken her leg”

Earlier today I had a private lesson with an Italian student—intermediate level, who has been studying the present perfect vs. past simple tense. His teacher had given him an exercise where a list of Italian phrases had to be translated into English. One of the sentences was the following:

Hai sentito che Sally si è rotta una gamba?

It looks deceivingly simple to translate (for a native speaker) but I found myself with five versions, all of which I am certain are idiomatic and grammatical.

1. Have you heard that Sally broke her leg?


2. Have you heard that Sally's broken her leg?


3. Have you heard about Sally breaking her leg?


4. Did you hear that Sally broke her leg?



5. Did you hear that Sally's broken her leg?

The actual moment when Sally broke her leg happened at a specific time in the past, hence the past simple seems to me appropriate but we also say, Sally's broken her leg to express an action that occurred in the past but whose consequences are still felt in the present so...

• Which sentence tells the reader that Sally's leg is still broken?


• Which tense is more appropriate; the present perfect, Have you heard? Or the past simple Did you hear? Both sound acceptable to me. How is the meaning affected?


• Is it preferable for both verbs to be in the same tense? Why or why not?


• Ignoring the Italian translation and focussing on the five sentences, how would you interpret each one? Do they mean the same?

---

EDIT ^{(updated September 1 2014)}
Let me explain, more fully, why I posted this question. There was an Italian phrase which had to be translated (the first line in a short exchange) the rest of the dialogue was easy enough for my student and I to translate but he had difficulties with this first line.

In the exchange we learn that Sally broke her leg while skiing.

A: Have you heard/Did you hear... etc.
B: How did it happen?
A: She was skiing when she fell.

When I thought carefully about how the first sentence could be translated, I came up with five versions. I had a problem explaining to myself why they all sounded equally valid to me, in fairness sentence number 3 sounded the weakest candidate to me because it seems that the news of Sally's accident is very recent and conveys greater intensity.

As I tried to explain earlier, I was wondering how switching the past simple with the present perfect might change the meaning of the first line. If I say: Sally broke her leg, I might be thinking about the precise moment when this accident occurred. The event is established in the past and cannot be repeated. If I say: Sally has broken her leg it is plausible that her leg is still broken, seeing as a broken leg takes about a month to heal, and I am concerned with the results of that action which are felt in the present i.e. Sally now has her leg in a plaster/She cannot walk properly/She is currently injured, etc.

If the first verb is in the past simple, Did you hear...? does it affect how I write the rest of the sentence? Is Have you heard...? more colloquial?

Finally, I am NOT asking about translation, nor how to use the present perfect or the past simple.

Answer

To indicate that Sally's leg is still broken, stay away from the past tense (your examples #1 and #4). If you use the past tense the leg could still be broken, but past tense doesn't indicate that fact. If I say "Sally broke her leg yesterday" maybe you can guess it probably is still broken but if I say "Sally broke her leg 6 months ago" there's a good chance it's healed by now and past tense gives you no indication of whether it is still broken.

Similarly, to indicate that Sally's leg is still broken, stay away from the participial phrase form (your example #3). Especially in this context, a sentence starting, "have you heard", there is no indication that the action being described is still happening. If I ask you "have you heard about the mariner shooting the albatross?" you should not conclude that the mariner is still shooting the albatross. It could have happened a really long time ago!

The present perfect form (your examples #2 and #5) indicates that something happened in the very recent past so for something that takes as long to heal as a broken leg it should reasonably indicate that the leg is still broken, but to be absolutely clear have you considered the present tense? For instance, "Sally's leg is broken" or "Sally has a broken leg?" Because in that case there would be no doubt that Sally's leg is still broken!

If you say "did you hear" (past tense) it means did you hear at some point in the past? If you say "have you heard" (present perfect) it means did you hear at some point in the recent past? Both mean the same thing in this case.

There is no need for the sentence verb to be the same tense as the verb used in the gerund phrase (that Sally..). I can say, for instance, "I know that you wrote this question." The sentence verb tense should be appropriate for the sentence action and the gerund verb tense should be appropriate for the gerund action.

Note I've included a couple of sources that present perfect implies recent events since one comment on another answer claimed this isn't true. My understanding is there are 3 basic uses for present perfect: experience up to present (often with the word "ever"), recent past, and a recent journey. A broken leg would normally not be experience up to the present when combined with "did you hear" or "have you heard" (who says "did you hear I have broken my leg" if they are referring to their medical history from childhood?) so the choices are recent past or a recent trip. A recent trip doesn't make sense. So that leaves recent past.

"We use the present perfect simple with action verbs to emphasise the
completion of an event in the recent past." Cambridge Dictionaries
Online
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/grammar/british-grammar/present-perfect-simple-or-present-perfect-continuous

"The present perfect is often used to express recent events that
affect the present moment." About.com
http://esl.about.com/od/grammarstructures/ig/Tenses-Chart/presperf2.htm

"we often use the present perfect for recent events" wordpress.com
http://englishprojectoxford.wordpress.com/2013/10/24/present-perfect/

grammar - How do you make the possessive form with "He and I"-style subjects?

Despite being a native speaker of American English, I cannot find a construction that sounds natural when trying to form a possessive from coordinated subjects including a first person pronoun, like "He and I" or "My brother and I." If it's "You and I," I can just use "our." But what is the proper way to form a possessive in these other instances?

The cat which belongs to my brother and me ran away.

• ? My brother and I's cat ran away.


• * My brother's and my cat ran away.


• */? Me and my brother's cat ran away.

Oddly enough, the one which sounds the most natural to me (and which I hear most often in natural speech, is the last: "me and my brother's." My hypothesis is that this is used to avoid the issue with the first-person possessive form, but that could very well be wrong.

However, I'm not sure this is the best answer, either, as it introduces some pretty bad ambiguity in some places.

A person who is a friend to both my brother and me got married yesterday.

• */? Me and my brother's friend got married yesterday.

I think you can see the obvious problem.

What is the proper way to possessivize coordinated first-/third-person subjects?

Edit: I would much prefer an answer which does not require rephrasing the entire sentence.

verbs - a number of children has gone to school or have gone to school

Please help, in this sentence is "a number" an attribute or the subject of the sentence?

verbs - What does “Watch the plain clothes” account for in terms of “Cheap liquor nationalism”?

International Herald Tribune (September 30) introduced a commentary of Japanese novelist, Haruki Murakami who is regarded as a favorite for this year’s Nobel Prize in literature on Japan’s dispute with China over the territorial issues of the Senkaku Islands, which appeared in the Asahi Newspaper on September 28. Murakami wrote:

After your drunken rampage you are left with nothing but an awful
headache the next morning. We must be careful about politicians and

polemicists who lavish us with this cheap liquor and fan this kind of
rampage.

After the analogy of ‘Cheap liquor’ of nationalism, the writer, Marc McDonald adds:

Put another way, by the possible Nobel laureate Mr. Bob Dylan: “Keep
a clean nose / Watch the plain clothes / You don’t need a weatherman /
To know which way the wind blows.

I can understand 'just literally' the implication of “Keep a clean nose. You don’t need a weatherman. To know which way the wind blows.” But I don’t understand what “Watch the plain clothes” implies?

To me, the line, “Keep a clean nose and so on” doesn’t relate to cheap liquor nationalism at all, thanks to the lack of my imagination.

I think this is a lyric of Bob Dylan’s popular song, but I’m curious to know how it comes that “Cheap liquor of nationalism” could be paraphrased or accounted for by “Keep a clean nose / Watch the plain clothes / You don’t need a weatherman / To know which way the wind blows.”?

Answer

Yoichi, I wonder if, when you read "plain clothes," you thought of ordinary clothes, as opposed to fashionable attire.

I think Dylan was referring instead to plain clothes police officers, meaning those who don't wear a uniform. That, coupled with keep a clean nose, essentially means, "stay out of trouble," as does much of the rest of that song, with mention of the springtime arrests ordered by the district attorney, and getting bailed out of prison. Of course, Dylan made it rhyme better than I just did.

As to how this all relates to the dispute over the islands, I think the author is simply saying that it's easy to let your emotions get the best of you, and land into serious trouble, over something that is rather petty in the larger scheme of things. Better to just keep your wits about you.

questions - What is the correct subject-verb agreement for chemical quantities expressed in moles?

I'm currently editing some chemistry test questions, and I have several sentences like the following:

• What is the total number of moles of HCl produced when 3 moles of hydrogen is completely consumed?


• How many moles of hydrogen are consumed in this reaction?

I originally flagged "are" in the latter sentence to be changed to "is" in order to be consistent, but intuition is leading me to doubt this. Does the "How many..." construction of the sentence make "moles" dictate agreement in this case?

I suspect that "How many..." contextually sets the expectation that the subject is a count noun ("moles" in this case), whereas in cases like the first sentence, there is no clear contextual indication whether the subject is a count or mass noun. Does anyone know if there is a clear rule for cases like this? If not, would you stick with "are" in the second sentence or change it to "is"?

Answer

Moles are units, and English allows the use of 'is' with units.

Three hours is not enough to finish the task.

You have to 'are' when the units are referred to as individuals and not as a total amount.

The next three miles of the Paradise Trail are the most beautiful of the entire hike.

However, 'how many' requires an 'are', whereas 'how much' requires 'is'.

How many moles of hydrogen are consumed in this reaction?
How much hydrogen (in moles) is consumed in this reaction?

This is because 'how much' is always used with mass nouns and thus takes 'is', while 'how many' is always used with countable nouns and thus takes 'are'.

grammaticality - Which Sunday do you prefer, if Sunday is OK with you?

Which Sunday do you prefer, if Sunday is OK with you?

Is the above sentence grammatically correct and natural? I'd like answers both from BrE and AmE speakers.

Sorry for my short, abrupt question. I do have my own opinion about this issue, but I'm remaining silent on purpose in order not to mislead you into saying things in favor of my potentially preconceived ideas.

By the way, I've asked the same question elsewhere as well. It's not that I don't trust the answerers there. It's just that the English learners around me may not trust me as a reliable source of information about the English language. I've been giving them my answer but they probably need confirmation from multiple sources.

Please note I'm not asking you to proofread the text. I wanted to ask you if the usage of the second "Sunday" is grammatically correct, idiomatic and natural. I was thinking that the usage of the second "Sunday" was wrong. It sounds unnatural. It is because, to me, it seems that if the speaker wants to ask whether there is any Sunday the other person is available, then (if he has to use this structure at all) he has to say "if a Sunday is OK with you" (with an indefinite article in it).

Thank you very much for your time.

punctuation - Can you end a multi-sentence quotation with a comma?

This is correct:

"Rats," he said.

But this looks wrong to me:

"I left the oven on. Rats," he said.

I can't find any rules about whether you can end a quotation with a comma when there are periods inside the quotation. How would you write the second sentence?

nouns - Politics: singular or plural?

Which is correct, "politics is out of scope" or "politics are out of scope?"

Answer

The correct form is:

Politics is out of scope.

Politics, like mathematics, linguistics, economics, and other domains ending in -ics, is syntactically singular.

present perfect vs simple past - I've just bought vs. I just bought vs. I bought

I bought an English grammar book 3 weeks ago. Is it correct to use any of the following sentences interchangeably to tell my friend that I bought the book, or is there a difference in meaning between each sentence?

1. I've just bought a book on English grammar, and it looks pretty good.


2. I just bought a book on English grammar, and it looks pretty good.


3. I bought a book on English grammar, and it looks pretty good.

grammaticality - Should I put myself last? "me and my friends" vs. "my friends and me" or "my friends and I"

I've always been taught to put myself last when referring to myself in the same sentence as others but the usage of "me and..." seems to be everywhere these days. The misuse of the word "me" instead of "I" aside, is there some new rule I haven't heard of? Shouldn't we put ourselves last regardless of the "me"/"I" usage?

Examples of "correct" usage:

My friends and I went for some ice
cream. Did you see my friends and me
at the ice cream stand?

Examples of "incorrect" usage:

Me and my friends went for some ice
cream. Did you see me and my friends
at the ice cream stand?

Note: I was also taught that the only person who could put themselves first was the queen.

Answer

The difference between "I and my friends" and "my friends and I" is purely a matter of courtesy - they are both grammatically correct. I would tend to stick to the latter though, as it a) is more commonplace, b) is considered more polite, c) seems to flow better.

Indeed, your example of 'incorrect' usage is incorrect solely in that the first sentence uses the accusative (objective) pronoun me, when you actually need the nominative (subjective) pronoun 'I'. The second sentence of that example is correct, since the pronoun needs to be in the accusative, as the object. You seem to understand this though; this is just to clarify.

meaning - Is there any difference between "has gone" and "went" in this context?

Is there any difference between these two sentences?

Mirek went to Europe on business.
Mirek has gone to Europe on business.

Answer

When using the present perfect "has/have gone", the implication is that he has not returned and is still in Europe. With simple past tense, there is no such indication: he may still be in Europe or he might have returned.

Incidentally, you would normally use "Mirek went to Europe on business." when the time of the action is understood between both speakers, so the context might indicate whether he is in Europe or back where he came from.

grammaticality - I can make it, I will leave. What's the precedence and ambiguity?

Here's a scenario. I am confounded when after a discussion with a friend, they arrive at my place on Saturday, here's the transcript.

her: I can make it on Saturday.

me: Ok, see you then anytime!

her: I will leave on Monday.

me: Ok.

her: Booked!

--- time passes ---

her: Where were you on Saturday?

me: I thought you where leaving on Monday.

her: I told you I would be there on Saturday!

So she thought she would come on Saturday, and stay until Monday.
I thought she meant that she would leave to arrive here on Monday.

Is either or both or none of us grammatically correct with our arrival date, why?

What is the correct precedence of "can" and "will" in this context?
Where is the ambiguity that lead to two different interpretations?

---

Some interesting insights from #English

smgs: "Modals aren't that simple"

mun: "[Can/Will Precedence?] I just read the passage in chronological order and interpreted it as [offer/assert arrival date] [offer/assert departure date]"

Answer

In spite of knowing the warnings against making assumptions, I'm going to base my answer on the following assumptions:

1 - That if she had said "Booked" and nothing more after you enthusiastically responded "Ok, see you then [Saturday] anytime!" you would have interpreted this to mean that she was arriving on Saturday;

2 - That your "specifying" that "anytime [on Saturday]" would be fine for her arrival meant that the time of her arrival was a fact that you deemed important enough to discuss; and

3 - That you knew that she was not planning on both arriving and departing on the same day, be it Saturday or Monday.

With these assumptions in mind, I agree with the other answers given so far that the scenario you present totally justifies her belief/interpretation that she would arrive at the destination [at anytime] on Saturday, stay there for two nights, and then depart from it on Monday.

Regarding assumption #1, you apparently interpreted, as she did, the "make it" to mean "arrive at the destination," which is the normal, perhaps even the only interpretation of "make it" in this part of the exchange (whereas your later interpretation of "leaving" to also mean "arrive at the destination" [after "leaving" the point of departure], is not, however, the normal interpretation of "leaving" in this or any other scenario, and your rather convoluted interpretation of "leaving" was, IMO, the SOLE source of confusion and ambiguity in this exchange).

Regarding assumption #2, in your simple "OK" response to her "leaving" on Monday you failed to make any mention or inquiry about what her "arrival" time on Monday would be, which was inconsistent with your having been so careful to let her know that "anytime" would be great on Saturday and which supports her interpretation of the total exchange.

Regarding assumption #3, if you knew that she would not be leaving the destination on the same day as her arrival at it, it seems that you would have expressed at least some interest as to how long she was planning to stay and your failure to do so further supports your would-be guest's interpretation of the total exchange.

I really don't see any ambiguity arising because of "will" taking precedence over "can" unless you can honestly say that the entire mess could have been totally avoided if she had simply started the exchange with "I'll (be able to) make it on Saturday" instead of "I can make it on Saturday."

Usage of Indefinite Article

I am wondering whether both of the following sentences are acceptable:

(A) Only water bottles with "caps" are allowed in this area.
(B) Only water bottles with "a" cap are allowed in this area.

If I want to emphasize the importance of having A CAP on the bottles brought into the area, would it be acceptable to put "A" instead of "CAPS"?

Please advise.

Thank you

grammatical number - How do I correctly pluralize acronyms?

Possible Duplicates:
What is the correct way to pluralize an acronym?
Plural form of the acronym LASER

I was just writing an email asking a supervisor about downloading multiple dynamic-link library files. The acronym for these is DLL, and the full spelling, dynamic-link library, is never used. How would this be pluralized, because normally I would just add an s, but DLLs is difficult to understand. Sometimes I add an apostrophe to make it DLL's, but I know this isn't grammatically correct. So my question is, how do I make the acronym DLL (and acronyms in general) plural?

Answer

"DLLs" is fine. Just capitalize the acronym (it's actually an initialism which makes capitalization even more appropriate/necessary) but leave the plural letters lowercase.

grammar - Using "in other words" before asking a question

The second sentence in the text below is puzzling me.

Do you think the process is complicated enough that users will need screenshots? In other words, could plain text instructions do the job?

Does this work? This sentence doesn't start as a question, but it ends that way. Should there be a colon instead of a comma?

prepositions - "[...] up with which I will not put."

Okay, I'm probably being a bit slow here, but I don't quite understand this story:

Supposedly an editor had clumsily rearranged one of Churchill’s sentences to avoid ending it in a preposition, and the Prime Minister, very proud of his style, scribbled this note in reply: “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.”

I mean, it made me laugh, but that was mostly because of how stupid it sounded, not because I actually understand what's going on here. Anyone care to explain it? In particular, which are the prepositions?

Answer

• This is the sort of English I will not put up with.

"With" is a preposition (and it's "wrong" to end a sentence with one.)

• This is the sort of English with which I will not put up.

"Up" is still a preposition, so we gotta change it again.

• This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.

And there we have Churchill's response.

(PS. I am ignoring whether it's actually his response, or his altered response, or what have you, and focusing on the initial question. :) )

grammaticality - "Due to" at the beginning of a sentence

I tried to say this:

Due to it will have less features than the actual standard system, the performance will be better.

Basically, I used a sentence after due to, and one of my English friends said it does not make sense and is not grammatically correct.

What is wrong with using due to at the beginning of a sentence?

Answer

The problem is not that you used due to at the beginning of a sentence. The problem is that due to must be followed by a nominal phrase, since to is a preposition and prepositions are (almost) always followed by nominal phrases. For this reason, you need to use a verbal noun or a gerund after to:

Due to having less features than an actual standard system, the performance will be better.

grammar - Is "thank you to..." Correct

I often read "thank you to people who..." And "thank you to everyone..." On facebook.

I think it should be "thanks to people..." And thanks to everyone".

What do you think?

grammatical number - How do you make a word like "parent(s)" possessive?

"Please submit your and your parent(s)' federal tax returns." Is the possessive of "parent(s)'" correctly formatted in that sentence? I know the apostrophe comes before the "s" for just parent singular, and it would come after the "s" for parents plural, but what if I don't know if it is one or two parents, and therefore want to use the (s)?