verbs - Dependent or Independent clause?

Is "The way people write has changed" an independent clause or dependent clause? In any case please explain in detail. What is the subject, verb and object if there is or if there isn't. Thanks in advance.

terminology - What is the difference between a phrase and a clause?

What is the difference between a phrase and a clause? I tried looking this in dictionary but can not identify the difference. It would be great if I could get an example and formula of what makes a phrase and a clause.

Answer

The short answer: clauses contain a subject and its verb, while phrases do not. Note that phrases may contain nouns and verbals, but won't have the noun as the verb's actor.

The long answer: see this page from the University of Chicago which has several examples.

Usage of the definite articles with personal names

Could you tell me if the following sentence is correct or not? It seems to me that it is not correct because as I know, definite articles are never used with personal names. The only thing that I worry about is that I found this sentence on a website for learning English.

That evening, jack saw the Maria and Angela. They looked hungry so he offered them a hot meal.

Source pdf: http://www.cmlab.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~cathyp/eBooks/LearningEnglish/EnglishTown/Unit%20overview%20-%20Level%207%20Unit%204.pdf

Answer

As voxanimus noted, that use is incorrect.

The only correct use I can think of that works that way is when speaking of a well-known individual.

For example, in this exchange:

Dennis Ritchie is dead.

Not the Dennis Ritchie? dmr? The guy who developed C?

That instance of the would be emphasized so that it would be pronounced just like the pronoun thee, so /ðiː/ with a long, drawn-out vowel.

differences - “A person” versus “some person”

What is the difference between:

1. There is a person in the room.



2. There is some person in the room.

Answer

“A person” implies a singular person. A single person is in the room.

“Some person” is the same thing but goes a step further. It implies that the one person is somewhat unknown. It could be a girlfriend, or a violent robber, or something in-between.

“Some” implies an unknown. (e.g. "Some amount of money.", or "Some outcome." etc.

That's how I see it. Hope it helps.

grammaticality - "There's too many numbers" vs "There are too many numbers"

When people use plural nouns after the word "there's", for example:

There's too many numbers.

it makes me a bit frustrated. I try to correct it by using "There are," but it still happens sometimes to me (the "there's" situation). Do you think that there are is the correct usage option? People usually use there's, as I said.

Answer

If you want always to write, "There are too many damn fools on the Internet", then no one is stopping you. FWIW you have my blessing. But if you want to mount a crusade against what Marius calls the informal & casual "There's too many damn fools", then I think you have a job for life.

punctuation - Use of a hyphen when using a noun as an adjective

In my academic work (physics), I often use a noun as an adjective, and this seems to be a common practise to avoid long sentences. For instance sphere packing stands for packing made of spheres.

1. Is that correct? Is there a reason to avoid doing that?


2. What if I am given information about the spheres: they are soft spheres? I should talk about a soft-sphere packing, right?


3. Is the hyphen between soft and sphere mandatory, optional, or wrong? Is that always the case when an adjective-noun group becomes an adjective? References are appreciated!

Here are a few examples taken from my work. Some come from a plural, others from a singular. Please correct them if they are wrong.

• Soft-sphere packings (packings made of soft spheres)


• Infinite-dimensional limit (limit in which the dimension tends to infinity)


• Low-connectivity particles (particles having a low connectivity)


• Sparse-matrix methods (methods used with sparse matrices)


• Non-zero energy (energy not being zero)


• Non-zero-energy mode (mode having an energy that is not zero)

grammar - The difference between "given that" and "provided that" (CAE book reference)

I don't understand the difference between "given that" and "provided that".

The tour wasn't as pleasant as we thought it would be, given that the
coach broke down on the way.

[Source: CAE Book]

1. Why can't I use provided that in place of given that in the above sentence?





2. What's the difference between given that and provided that?

questions - Meaning of negation in embedded yes/no interrogatives

I suppose we can say that the meaning of

I asked him if he likes beer

is essentially identical to

I asked him: "Do you like beer?".

But what if I say:

I asked him if he didn't like beer

Is this question even grammatical and does it make sense at all? If yes then what direct question would it entail? Is it

I asked him: "Don't you like beer?"

Or

I asked him: "You don't like beer, do you?"

Answer

The basic form of the direct question would be

"Don't you like beer?"

and, while

"You don't like beer, do you?"

is semantically identical, we use it in a different context. The first question is one of surprise (if she seems not to) or affirmation (if you believe she does). The second question is looking for confirmation of your belief that the other person doesn't like beer, either personally or because you feel beer is just awful and all right-thinking people avoid it.

Pace @MaddieS. you should never answer a negative question with a one-word answer. It's completely ambiguous whether that means you're negating the question or affirming it. You'll spend the next minute or two of the conversation in needless loop trying to figure out what was intended, which can be offputting when someone expects their logic or phrasing should have been straightforward. Instead, just answer the whole thing: "No, I don't", or "Yes, I don't like beer at all".

grammar - Dependent clause tense inheritance

Is it right to tell

1. Five years ago he already knew that two plus two equals four.

or

2. Five years ago he already knew that two plus two equaled four.

?

On English classes (I live in not English speaking country) we have learnt that if present clause is dependent to past one than it turns into past. However, I did not fully agree with it and gave (the top sentence above as) an example. It caused a lot of confusion.

In my country's official pre-university English exams (one of the previous years' variants) there is a text with tasks. One of the sentences is:

Nurse believed that fresh air and food ____ very important in fighting soldiers' diseases.
A. are
B. were
...

I was really surprised when I discovered that the right answer is B. were.

My logic is: when nurse dies, it won't become unimportant. That's why A. are should be right.

Could someone please help figuring it out?

Answer

If the condition expressed in the that-clause is still true, especially if it is a "general truth", it is okay to retain the present tense.

Five years ago he already knew that two plus two equals four

As of January 17, 2015, two plus two equals four, so I would see nothing wrong with this sentence.

Let me quote from Capital Community College Foundation's The Guide to Grammar and Writing's page on Sequence of Tenses:

As long as the main clause's verb is in neither the past nor the past perfect tense, the verb of the subordinate clause can be in any tense that conveys meaning accurately. When the main clause verb is in the past or past perfect, however, the verb in the subordinate clause must be in the past or past perfect. The exception to this rule is when the subordinate clause expresses what is commonly known as a general truth:

1. In the 1950s, English teachers still believed that a background in Latin is essential for an understanding of English.


2. Columbus somehow knew that the world is round.


3. Slaveowners widely understood that literacy among oppressed people is a dangerous thing.

Thinking that a background in Latin is essential for an understanding of English was considered a general truth in the 1950, although it is not considered as such in these days.

grammar - do anything vs do something

Which is correct?

Please let us know if we need to do anything about it.

or

Please let us know if we need to do something about it.

"No" when replying to a question

Say I'm having a conversation and somebody besides me asks "you didn't go to the movie", so usually I would say "no" even though they are correct.

Is there a name for this?
Any more information?

I'm in the USA if that helps

nouns - Joule Pronounced "Jowl"

In Linus Pauling's book, "General Chemistry", in one of the annotations in the first chapter, he writes the following about the word "joule": " Usually pronounced to rhyme with howl." I have not found any evidence to support this claim as every dictionary and reference I have found so far claims that joule is pronounced like "jewel". Is there any evidence to support Linus Pauling's pronunciation of joule as " Jowl" or was it some sort of jestful annotation used to add humor to his otherwise strictly factual book?

Edit: At the request of user @sumelic, I will append my question with another one. Was "Jowl" the colloquially accepted pronunciation in Linus Pauling's time, or was this the common pronunciation only in the scientific community of Pauling's time? Perhaps even a brief history of the etymology of joule might help shed light on this strange discrepancy in pronunciation.

Answer

A 1943 letter to the editor of the journal Nature suggests that the anglicized pronunciation of joule was accepted not only by many in the public, but by authorities for some time:

A century has passed since Joule read his paper on the relation between heat and work at the meeting of the British Association at Cork on August 26, 1843. It is unfortunate that a difference of opinion has arisen about the correct pronunciation of his name….

The “Oxford English Dictionary” gives dzaul as the pronunciation of the unit, where au represents the sound in the word loud. In “Webster’s New International Dictionary” (1911) is found the statement:

“The proper name is pronounced joul (ou as in out) and this is the correct pronunciation for the unit; but the incorrect jool [oo as in food] is very common especially in the United States”.

In “Chambers’s Technical Dictionary” (first published 1940) we find the contradictory statements

joule, jool (Phys.). A unit of energy equal to 107 ergs. (Named after F. [sic] P. Joule, 1918–89 ; name pronounced jowl.)

Kenyon & Scott's A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English, published a few years later, provides multiple pronunciations:

Joule: dʒaʊl, dʒul, dʒol | joule dʒaʊl, dʒul

As Pauling was born in 1901, it seems plausible that he learned to pronounce joule to rhyme with jowl, and that this pronunciation would have been accepted in some quarters— if not by all. People tend to pronounce names and terms as they learn then, without revisiting them, and that is true of scientists as much as anyone else.

A 2008 paper by JR Schwyter, Setting a standard: Early BBC language policy and the Advisory Committee on Spoken English, reports that "the Committee received 27 letters relating to the pronunciation of the last name Joule, as in James Prescott Joule, the scientist (19 January 1933)… In the light of such correspondence, the Committee (30 November 1933) decided on the pronunciation… ‘JOOL’*.

Over the course of the twentieth century, it seems the "jewel" pronunciation came to predominate. Perhaps the BBC Radio influence helped. Perhaps it rose because it was the more prevalent American pronunciation (per Webster's as quoted above), and American physicists rose in both numbers and preeminence, especially in the nuclear age. Perhaps it is because, related to this, the American postwar tendency is not to anglicize pronunciations, and the fact that Joule was an Englishman may be lost on the public. It is hard to attribute shifts in pronunciation to any one cause or moment in history.

The current OED entry notes

Although some people of this name call themselves /dʒaʊl/ and others /dʒəʊl/ (D. Jones Everyman's Eng. Pronouncing Dict. (ed. 11, 1956), G. M. Miller BBC Pronouncing Dict. British Names (1971)), it is almost certain that J. P. Joule (and some at least of his relatives) used /dʒuːl/ . For evidence on this point see Nature (1943) CLII. 354, 418, 479, 602.

For what it's worth, this was the pronunciation given in its first edition—

Joule (dʒaul)

— immediately after the entry for Joul(e, obs. form of JOWL.

Use of definite article before "authority"

I cannot find the rule for using the definitive article with the word "authority", is it always necessary and what is the grammar rule that I need to know?

Are both these sentences OK or just the second sentence? And what difference does it make. The more I look, the more confused I become.

The teacher has authority to change the data
or

The teacher has the authority to change the data

grammar - "IS" or 'ARE' ? in this sentence

Please have a look at this sentence.

"Troy University International Partners is not accredited by SACS Commission on Colleges and the accreditation of Troy University does not extend to or include partner institutions or their students. "

"IS" or 'ARE' ?

I think ARE is correct because it is "Partners" , or partner.

Answer

Both are valid depending on how you classify the entity. If considered as a homologous, all enveloping group that contains all its constituents or is used in such a manner for being considered as a whole, then it can be classed as a singular entity, therefore "is" can be used.

On the other hand if it is more of an umbrella term encompassing members, which are disparate in location, functions etcetera, then the plural "are" can be used.

I was going to assume that the term partners is irrelevant like FumbleFingers commented, however, in this case it seems to refer to actual international partners so "are" is appropriate as my second paragraph points out.

grammaticality - Grammar Question: "have never read"

I am afraid I have never read Life of Pi, the novel by Yann Martel.

Is this sentence wrong? If not wrong, is it sloppy? To me it seems more appropriate to say:

I am afraid I never read Life of Pi, the novel by Yann Martel.

If neither is wrong, which is the better way of writing?

If possible, could you also contrast the inclusion/exclusion of "have" in the "have never" in the sentences below?

1. I have never read anything so stupid in my entire life.



2. I have never been to the USA.


3. I have never eaten at that restaurant.


4. I never read the books; I only attended the lectures.


5. I never lied.


6. I have never lied. [sentence seems wrong]

On a side note, would the sentence be improved if it is made less wordy?

I never read Yann Martel's Life of Pi.

Comparison error

Because of its innovativeness and its effective presentation, Mary's science project received more judges' votes at the exhibit than did Jim.

The "did Jim" part was incorrect, and I was kind of confused on how this is a comparison error?

Answer

You are comparing the votes received by their science projects.

would be the correct comparison

Word or phrase stronger than "most likely"?

Imagine this context:

After we replaced the monitor, everything was fixed. Therefor the monitor was most likely the source of the problem.

I feel like given the right context, "most likely" doesn't sound strong enough, if that's the right word to use.

If I am 100% confident, I will say:

He is wrong.

If I am 70-90% confident:

He is most likely wrong.

But if I am 99% sure, what is a word or phrase that can get that message across?

What is the rule for adjective order?

I remember being taught that the correct order of adjectives in English was something along the lines of "Opinion-Size-Age-Color-Material-Purpose."

However, it's been a long time and I'm pretty sure I've forgotten a few categories
(I think there were eight or nine). Can anyone fill them in?

Answer

I am re­mind­ed of how J.R.R. Tol­kien’s moth­er once fa­mous­ly
cor­rect­ed him at a very ear­ly age when he said ‘a green great drag­on’.
She told him that it had to be ‘a great green drag­on’, but when he asked
her why, she couldn’t an­swer, there­by start­ing him down the road of
puz­zling over mat­ters lin­guis­tic and philo­log­ic his whole life long.

This top­ic is one of con­tin­u­ing re­search. Sim­ply goog­ling for
‘ad­jec­tive or­der­ing re­stric­tions’ (AOR) or ‘ad­jec­tive hi­er­ar­chy’
can un­cov­er some fas­ci­nat­ing re­search in this area.

In her 2006 pa­per on “Ad­jec­tive Order­ing Re­stric­tions
Re­vis­it­ed” on pp
309–407 of the Pro­ceed­ings of the 25ᵗʰ West Coast Con­fer­ence on
For­mal Lin­guis­tics, Alex­an­dra Te­o­dor­es­cu writes:

Ad­jec­tive or­der­ing re­stric­tions (AOR) have been wide­ly dis­cussed,
but they are still not very well un­der­stood. For ex­am­ple, in
lan­guages like English pre­nom­i­nal ad­jec­tives are strict­ly or­dered.

…

For ex­am­ple, ad­jec­tives that de­note qual­i­ty have been ar­gued to
pre­cede ad­jec­tives con­vey­ing size, which in turn pre­cede ad­jec­tives
con­vey­ing shape, and so on, in all lan­guages (5). Sim­i­lar claims have
been made for oth­er ad­jec­tive types, and the re­spec­tive or­der­ing

re­stric­tions are giv­en in (6).

• (5) Qual­i­ty > Size > Shape > Color > Prov­e­nance [Sproat and Shih (1991)]




• (6) a. Posses­sive > Speak­er-ori­ent­ed > Sub­ject-ori­ent­ed >Man­ner/The­mat­ic [Cinque (1994)]




•        b. Value > Di­men­sion > Phys­i­cal prop­er­ty > Speed > Hu­man Propen­si­ty > Age > Color [Dixon (1982)]

See Teodor­es­cu’s bib­li­og­ra­phy to chase down re­lat­ed work. You

should al­so look for pa­pers that cite hers (Google Schol­ar finds 26 such
ci­ta­tions
to her work), like Lu­cas Cham­pi­on’s 2006 pa­per on “A Game-The­o­ret­ic
Ac­count of Ad­jec­tive Order­ing
Restric­tions”, which
starts off with the Tol­kien ex­am­ple.

Build­ing then on Cham­pi­on’s work is this English-lan­guage pa­per by
An­to­nia An­drout­so­pou­lou, Ma­nuel Es­pañol-Eche­va­rría, and Phil­ippe
Pré­vost en­ti­tled “On the Ac­qui­si­tion of the Prenom­i­nal Place­ment

of Eval­u­a­tive Ad­jec­tives in L2
Spanish”, from the 10ᵗʰ His­pan­ic Lin­guis­tics Sym­po­si­um in 2008. This one is in­ter­est­ing
be­cause it looks at how sec­ond-lan­guage learn­ers ac­quire an
un­der­stand­ing of ad­jec­tive or­der­ing when learn­ing a new lan­guage:

In this pa­per, we fur­ther in­ves­ti­gate knowl­edge of ad­jec­ti­val
or­der­ing re­stric­tions in for­eign lan­guage learn­ing, by fo­cus­ing on
L2 ac­qui­si­tion of eval­u­a­tive ad­jec­tives (EAs) in Span­ish by French
learn­ers.

The most re­cent pro­fes­sion­al pub­li­ca­tion I could find on this is­sue
is Katy Mc­Kin­ney-Bock­’s 2010 pa­per on “Ad­jec­tive Class­es and
Syn­tac­tic Or­der­ing
Re­stric­tions”,
in which she writes:

There is a lack of con­sen­sus in the lit­er­a­ture as to which

clas­si­fi­ca­tion of ad­jec­tives is di­rect­ly rel­e­vant for the
ob­served syn­tac­tic re­stric­tions on their or­der­ing. In this pa­per, I
ar­gue that ad­jec­tives are di­vid­ed in­to four class­es of rel­e­vance
for syn­tac­tic or­der­ing. I pro­pose that ad­jec­tive or­der­ing
re­stric­tions (AOR) are the re­sult of ad­jec­ti­val con­stit­u­ents
rais­ing or not rais­ing in the struc­ture as a con­se­quence of their
com­plex­i­ty, rather than stip­u­lat­ing that se­man­tic prop­er­ties
cor­re­late to syn­tac­tic heads.

and whose ex­tend­ed ab­stract reads:

I ar­gue there are four class­es of ad­jec­tives rel­e­vant to
syn­tac­tic or­der­ing: pred­ica­tive/in­ter­sec­tive,
pred­ica­tive/non-in­ter­sec­tive, non-pred­ica­tive, clas­si­fy­ing
(Sven­on­i­us 2008, Al­ex­i­a­dou et al 2007), and pre­vi­ous pro­pos­als
have not iden­ti­fied the rel­e­vant se­man­tic di­men­sions. Among the
prop­er­ties of grad­abil­i­ty, mass/count, and in­ter­sec­tiv­i­ty, on­ly
in­ter­sec­tiv­i­ty is syn­tac­ti­cal­ly rel­e­vant. The four class­es of

ad­jec­tives are mo­ti­vat­ed by the dis­tri­bu­tion of
or­dered/non-or­dered ad­jec­tives, scope ef­fects with cer­tain
ad­jec­tive-pairs, PP-mod­i­fi­ca­tion, N-drop­ping and com­par­a­tives
(Bouchard 2002, Hig­gin­both­am 1985, Ken­nedy 1999). DP struc­ture
in­volves 1) merg­ing the clas­si­fy­ing ad­jec­tive with pro­nounced N, 2)
merg­ing in­ter­sec­tive ad­jec­tives with N, 3) merg­ing
non-in­ter­sec­tive ad­jec­tives with a silent copy of N.

Fi­nal­ly, if you’re look­ing for some­thing slight­ly less pro­fes­sion­al

— or at least, less aca­dem­ic — then in this blog
post­ing,
the wri­ter pos­its an or­der­ing of:

• eval­u­a­tion


• size


• shape


• con­di­tion


• hu­man pro­pen­si­ty



• age


• col­or


• ori­gin


• ma­te­ri­al


• at­trib­u­tive noun

And sum­ma­rizes with:

If there’s def­i­nite­ly a mean­ing dif­fer­ence be­tween dif­fer­ent
ad­jec­tive or­der­ings, let that de­ter­mine how you or­der them, and
don’t use com­mas. If you can’t find a mean­ing dif­fer­ence, don’t go
try­ing to force there to be one. In­stead, go by the
ad­jec­tive-or­der­ing hi­er­ar­chy, and don’t use com­mas. If more than
one ad­jec­tive has the same kind of mean­ing in the hi­er­ar­chy, then use
com­mas, or ands or buts if the ad­jec­tives have con­tras­tive mean­ings.

There’s a lot more out there on this top­ic.

punctuation - Multiple hyphens in a word

Is it allowed to have multiple hyphens in one word? I want to use the word semi-self-sustaining in the sentence

However, the ability to produce semi-self-sustaining stations is
possessed by up to a quarter of all nations.

Should we use semi-selfsustaining or avoid it by using partially self-sustaining?

Answer

In ‘The Penguin Guide to Punctuation’, R L Trask identifies three cases in which a hyphen is required after a prefix. One of them is where a prefix is added to a word which already contains a hyphen. His examples are non-bribe-taking politicians, his pre-globe-trotting days, non-stress-timed languages and an un-re-elected politician.

In your example, self-sustaining is a word which already contains a hyphen and to which you wish to add the prefix semi-. The resulting semi-self-sustaining is consistent with Trask’s advice.

adjectives - plural nouns: should I add "s" ending to both nouns?

I know I can say

what color of towel do you like?

And the same:

what towel color do you like?

I also know I can say the same about multiple colors:

what colors of towels do you like?

But I'm not sure if I should say:

what towels colors do you like?

or

what towel colors do you like?

grammaticality - What does "in which" mean in this sentence?

I'm unable to understand this sentence.

In which we try to explain why we consider artificial intelligence to
be a subject most worthy of study, and in which we try to decide what
exactly it is, this being a good thing to decide before embarking

In the above sentence, I have two questions:

1. What does in which mean here?




2. Why is it this being ... rather than this is in the last part?

Answer

Can't comment yet, but: There are two questions. The guidelines suggest focusing on one question. I'll try to answer, anyway, for the reputation.

That example sounds like the abstract of a research paper, in fact a book [0].
I deem the style rather colloquial (e.g. "we try", "good idea"), which is common for researchers who are not primarily linguists, I dare to say. Although, "in which" is aimed at a formal tone. (I doubt it's a parody, more like tradition or homage).

To start with "In which" draws a connection to the matter of the title. Here, it means as much as "here" ("in" denotes direction). This usage is highly idiomatic, because "which" normally introduces a subordinate clause, not a substantive clause. Comparison to "wherein" suggests we are dealing with an adverb, hence an adverbial clause.

The latter subordinate clause "this being a good idea" is superfluous, because we expect to be presented with positive work. However, repetition is a valid stylistic device.

Subordinate clauses don't require a verb. "being" is used as participle [1], so "is" is not directly an alternative. That construction is called Participle Clause and, because of the weak noun "this", Nominative Absolute [2]. Using "is" is possible, but it would turn the sub clause into a main clause, or require a connective like "because". Frankly, it's a contraction to keep the text shorter.

[0] Russel & Norvig: Introduction to AI: A Modern Approach

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participle

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_absolute

PS:

I don't think I understand this sentence completely

That's what English Language Learners SE is for; which is probably why perfectly good answers are posted as comments instead.

grammatical number - Should "Scientific research in general(,) and numerical mathematics in particular(,)" take singular or plural agreement?

This question is not a dublicate of "Singular or plural verb form where subject includes a 'parenthetical' element" since the latter discusses only compound subjects with "as well as".

---

Is the singular or the plural form correct?

Scientific research in general and numerical mathematics in particular is/are a team effort.

What about a version with commas?

Scientific research in general, and numerical mathematics in particular, is/are a team effort.

idioms - Why 'a friend of mine' is not 'my friend's friend'?

I have some questions about the expression "a friend of mine" and I'm quite confused with it. Actually I have found some threads about this topic but they don't hit my point. I'm not a native English speaker.

General people may interpret that "a friend of mine" is "one of my friends" but it sounds to me like "a friend of my friend" or "my friend's friend" who I may or may not know him/her. I was taught that "mine" is a possessive pronoun and it's used to replace the noun mentioned earlier; for example, This is Adèle's book so the book is hers.

1. Why "a friend of mine" is not "a friend of my friend"? And why "a daughter of mine" is not "my daughter's daughter" or "my grand daughter"?




2. Why we use "a friend of mine" instead of "a friend of me" to mean "my friend" but we use "a part of it" to mean "its part"? "Mine" is a possessive pronoun but "it" is an object pronoun.

I probably have read all things people trying to answer the questions but I still haven't found the comprehensive rules yet. Can anyone give the comprehensive rules for using the double-possessive form?

I myself may conclude that:
1. The double-possessive form is used when the personal subject pronoun is used.
2. If the noun indicating that the owner is a person or people, either the double-possessive form or the noun itself is used but slightly different in interpretation.

3. If the possesser is an animal, robot, or any inanimated objects; the objective pronoun or the noun itself should be used.

Anyway, is there any mistakes or leakages in those rules?

so I can say that:

a friend of mine = my friend
a computer of yours = your computer
a house if his = his house
a book of hers = her book
a school of ours = our school
a car of theirs = their car
a part of it (not a part of its) = its part
a shirt of Mary's = Mary's shirt (Mary has many shirts)
a shirt of Mary = Mary's shirt (Mary can either has only one shirt or many shirts)
a wing of a bird = a bird's wing
a leg of a robot = a robot's leg (one of the robot's leg)
an office of an engineer = an engineer's office (one of the or only office(s) of a certain engineer)
an enemy of France = France's enemy (one of France's enemies)

Is that correct?

Thank you for all of your answers. They are very helpful.

mathematics - Should I use hyphens with prefixes like "sub" and "semi"?

Some English texts, use the prefix sub put before a given proper word with "-" between them, for example sub-zero, while in the Mathematical contexts there is no such that "-", for example subgroup or subfield. The same story could be seen for semi. Which way for showing that is right or is better.

Answer

Whichever way is standard for a given word. As a general rule, the hyphen is more likely to be used in situations where you're expected to read "sub-" as a separate unit, and it gets lost when the entire compound word gets common enough to be perceived as an entity in and of itself.

As such, there can be migration from one to the other over time. For example, I'm pretty sure people are more likely to prefer "email" to "e-mail" than they were 10 or 15 years ago.

capitalization - Are chapter headings and other semantically smaller parts as the title capitalized?

I found the question Which words in a title should be capitalized? Regarding the number of answers votes and also according to my personal taste I like to capitalize titles. But what exactly are titles? Only the single main book title? What about other smaller semantic parts? Chapter headings, sub-chapter, ...

Answer

According to CMoS and APA (two popular style guides), some lower-level headings aren't capitalised in headline-style.

Chicago Manual of Style 16th edition (headings by level):

1. Centered, Boldface or Italic Type, Headline-style Capitalization


2. Centered, Regular Type, Headline-style Capitalization


3. Flush Left, Boldface or Italic Type, Headline-style Capitalization


4. Flush left, roman type, sentence-style capitalization


5. Run in at beginning of paragraph (no blank line after), boldface or italic type, sentence-style capitalization, terminal period.

APA (headings by level):

1. Centered, Boldface, Uppercase and Lowercase Headings


2. Left-aligned, Boldface, Uppercase and Lowercase Heading


3. Indented, boldface, lowercase heading with a period. Begin body text after the period.


4. Indented, boldface, italicized, lowercase heading with a period. Begin body text after the period.


5. Indented, italicized, lowercase heading with a period. Begin body text after the period.

grammar - Double possession dilemma: should I say “your” or “yours”?

What is the best way to say this?

Because of yours and the John Wichel Foundation’s grant we are able to continue our mission to serve all Texans with diabetes.

Should it be

Because of your and John Wichel Foundation's grant, we are able . . .
OR
Because of yours and the John Wichel Foundation's grant, we are able . . .

It's a double possessive with the word your. No matter how I write it, it doesn't sound right.

orthography - Space before apostrophe

In the 1928 Scribner’s (NY) edition of The Plays of J. M. Barrie, I’ve noticed an odd convention: where a contraction happens in middle of a word (e.g., “don’t” for “do n(o)t”), the apostrophe has the usual appearance. But when the contraction removes the entire first part of the word (e.g., “it’s” for “it (i)s” or “I’ll” for “I (wi)ll”), the typesetters consistently left the inter-word space there: not “it’s” or “I’ll” but “it␣’s” or “I␣’ll”:

Answer

Was this standard usage a century ago, either in the U.S. or in Britain?

No. The vast majority of books of the period that don't follow that convention.

Is this the sort of authorial quirk (like the use of “sha’n’t” in Winnie the Pooh) which should be preserved in a reprinting?

Apparently not. Some writers have had general opinions on apostrophes that were either unusual or old-fashioned for their time (Lewis Carroll's and A A Milne's sha'n't vs George Bernard Shaw's shant *) and some broke from standard use for particular purposes (Joyce's Finnegans Wake and E E Cummings' "Buffalo Bill 's") but I haven't found anything to suggest that Barrie was unorthodox in this matter.

As a rule, the final decision on such matters lies with the editor or (historically) the printer. This remains true today, though modern digital formats mean that an editor might today decide to do minimal work on the document received in their email while in the past it would have been necessary to produce printing instructions from either a hand-written manuscript where spacing would be more arbitrary or from a type-written typescript where spacing would be limited by the technical limitations of typewriters.

While editors might defer to authors' wishes with greater or lesser amounts of screaming and hair-pulling involved (or to what they believe to be their wishes in the case of E E Cummings who many are still convinced liked to be called e e cummings), most of the time most writers are either happy enough if the result is something one could reasonably call "normal English punctuation" or else are consciously so far away from the norm that the editor has no choice but to follow them. Sometimes the author may not even know that a new edition is being prepared (not least if they aren't alive any more).

So our starting point would be to assume that this was a style decision by the publisher, not the author, unless we've a reason to suspect otherwise.

We can find further evidence of this edition of Edith Wharton's Sanctuary by the same publisher where we've an example of similar style used with would n’t and had n’t:

So, this seems to be a matter of Charles Scribner's Sons' style rather than of Barrie's.

Now, Hot Licks' turn of phrase in a comment on the question raises an interesting point:

…that bastion of linguistic propriety "The New Yorker"…

The truth is, The New Yorker is not, and never has been, a bastion of linguistic propriety when it comes to punctuation: They chose a policy on punctuation matters that was unusual, but defensible, at the time, and then they stuck with it even as the rest of the world became firmer in doing something else. The same applies to some of their spellings and spelling out of large numbers.

If we were to call something "linguistic propriety" it would mean insisting on something more "proper" than others. Some people might like the New Yorker's style (hey, I love me some diæreses) but one would need a particularly pig-headed sort of pedantry to not only insist that there was one true rule on whether reëlect has a diæresis or not, but that this one true rule said that it did, in the face of it being the more unusual spelling. Even the sort of person who spells the word diæresis isn't likely to claim that.

So, let us take the New Yorker as a data-point, showing that in 1925 there was a magazine that took an unusual stance on spelling and punctuation (they were as much against the hyphen in re-elect as they were in favour of the diæresis in reëlect) despite it not being the approach followed by the house styles of pretty much anyone else.

At the same time, let's consider that the exact way in which the apostrophe is used has changed over the course of its use in English.

Let us also consider that a regular driver in people's house styles is a wish to be logical. We can see what the typesetter was getting at with their it ’s in using the apostrophe to mark an elided i but not an elided space.

Let us also consider that punctuation generally has changed in printed English. The spacing around quotation marks, colons, semi-colons, question marks and exclamation marks have all changed in terms of what is normal, with the eighteenth century once favouring the likes of “ What should I ask ? ” rather than “What should I ask?”. At some point we were brought from that norm to our current norm by people who at the time were mavericks.

And let us finally consider that there are still matters where style-guides disagree with each other, along with idiosyncrasies that persist.

And with all that in mind, it seems likely that what we have here is a style in use in a particular publishing house, arrived at by the argument that it retains something of the pre-contracted words that other styles do not, which did not catch on, but which was a conscious style: If it was a blunder, someone would have pointed it out between the 1903 edition of Wharton I found and the 1928 edition of Barrie you found.

That said, their reasoning is not sound; it ’s does not do a good job of giving written form to the word it’s, because it suggests it's pronounced as two syllables.

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*And indeed A A Milne's accounts of his young niece's writing style, though we should probably take his explanation that she was emulating Shaw in this regard with a pinch of salt.

should one invert syntax for the verb "do" in a comparison?

Which sounds better:

When Canadians do initiate conversations, they tend to be more reserved than Americans do.

When Canadians do initiate conversations, they tend to be more reserved than do Americans.

Answer

Okay. I'm going to remove the first do in each statement, and come back to it later.

When Canadians initiate conversations, they tend to be more reserved than Americans do.

When Canadians initiate conversations, they tend to be more reserved than do Americans.

Both read fine, but which is stronger? There's an interesting thing happening in the second, which we can see if we rewrite them to not use do-support:

When Canadians initiate conversations, they tend to be more reserved than Americans tend to be.

We can't actually do that with the other one and come out with the same meaning, the closest I can get is:

When Canadians initiate conversations, they tend to be more reserved than is the tendency of Americans.

Which is more than a simple, direct rewrite. Indeed, it's quite different, indeed.

The interesting thing about the second of the first sentences, is that we have the verb before the subject. Much of the time, this plain won't work in English. Some of the time, it'll be understandable, but sound pretty weird, or match some archaic constructions.

Here though it's a mild, but very pleasing example of hyperbaton, and it leads to the sentence ending on one of the groups we are interested in, rather than the relatively weak do. (The reason it's mild, is that verb-subject is nowhere near as rare with do, be, have and a few other verbs as it is with most, so it's arguably not really hyperbaton at all).

Now, let's consider StoneyB's suggestion from the comments, but again with my edit:

When Canadians initiate conversations, they tend to be more reserved than Americans are.

When Canadians initiate conversations, they tend to be more reserved than are Americans.

Okay, here rather than using do to match the earlier verb phrase, we use are to match the to be in that earlier phrase, and hence evoke it.

And it pretty much matches, as far as that mild hyperbaton goes. Again, I prefer the second.

I still prefer the do form to the are form. Partly, at least, this is because it could be seen as matching how reserved Canadians tend to be in a given situations, with how reserved Americans are generally. It's one of those mild ambiguities where I wouldn't actually misinterpret it that way, but it does weaken the impact. (We could also leave out the are and have "...tend to be more reserved than Americans", but that has the same issue even more strongly).

Okay, now to go back to having the first do in there:

When Canadians do initiate conversations, they tend to be more reserved than do Americans.

When I first read the two sentences, they seemed wrong to me, and the reason was that I was matching the do at the end to the do near the beginning. Now, that was a misreading, and when I read them again more carefully, I realised the meaning. Still, even now it reads to me like that repetition—even of such a weak word as do can be—is deliberate and meaningful, and I trip over it mentally. (Incidentally, I found that effect even worse with the other sentence suggested).

Now, presumably that do is there for a good reason. At a guess, an earlier statement is saying that Canadians don't often initiate conversations, with this sentence addressing the exception to that. It's a good reason to have do in there; the last thing you want is the reader to react with "why are you talking about Canadians initiating conversations, you just said they don't!"

But I do still find that repetition to be a bit of a burr.

So, if you can remove that do without causing problems in the wider context, I would recommend:

When Canadians initiate conversations, they tend to be more reserved than do Americans.

If however that seems contradictory in the context, I'd recommend:

When Canadians do initiate conversations, they tend to be more reserved than are Americans.

Again though, this is offering an opinion of effect, which is subjective.

The more general answer to the more general question, "Should one invert syntax for the verb “do” in a comparison?" is that you can, but you don't have to, and while I may favour it in this case, others may disagree, and I may disagree myself with another example. "So baby talk to me, Like do lovers" just wouldn't work as well as "So baby talk to me, Like lovers do".

ordinals - What will be the question for "he is my second son"

What will be the correct question to get an answer like "he is my second son". Here the actual answer is the word 'second', which denotes the order.

Can the phrase 'ordinal status' be used? Like "What is the ordinal status of Mr. Singh among the prime ministers of India"? Is this correct?

grammar - Using "it's" vs. using "it is" at the end of a sentence

Why is it that the following sounds incorrect:

"Would she know where it's?"

But this sounds fine:

"Would she know where it is?"

Answer

Because you don't contract away a stressed syllable. It's counter to the very nature of contraction.

See also the answer to Is there some rule against ending a sentence with the contraction "It's"?

punctuation - How do I correctly punctuate this sentence?

How would you punctuate this sentence:

"People who are tired, physically, mentally, or emotionally, need the energy that they can get from your magnetism."

Should I use a colon after "tired" and a semi-colon after "emotionally"? Or are commas sufficient?

grammar - What is it called when someone says "like" or "alright"

I was talking with my friend and neither of us could think of the word for when someone says something similar to "And, like, we were totally, like, going to do this one thing."

To add to it, as requested, there are people that say things like "So, alright, this is what we're gonna' do, alright. First we need to (insert something here), alright."