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?