grammaticality - Is it necessary to add "a" before the noun in this sentence?

Consider the sentence fragment:

...as Business Development Representative, I would...

If Business Development Representative describes a role occupied by a single person (for example, "as President" instead of "as a President" or "as CEO" instead of "as a CEO"), is an "a" required to precede the noun so it reads:

...as a Business Development Representative, I would...

There is just one Business Development Representative.

Answer

You should drop the article:

[1] ...as Business Development Representative, I would...

is exactly like

[2] ...as President/treasurer/secretary/chair/[...], I would...

Even though President (like treasurer, secretary, chair, etc.) is a count noun† in the singular, and such nouns normally require a determiner, examples like [1] and [2] are exceptional.

^{†Business Development Representative is not a single noun, but rather what CGEL calls a nominal. (In linguistics more broadly it would often be called an NP', pronounced "NP-bar"; see e.g. here.) However, the head of that nominal is a count noun in the singular, representative, so the whole nominal therefore normally requires a determiner. In general, in what follows, everything stated about President, treasurer etc. applies also to Business Development Representative.}

As far as why in examples like [1] and [2] we drop the article, there are two points—one about semantics, and one about syntax.

Semantically, President (treasurer, chair, etc.) refers to a 'unique role' held by a person in a particular situation. This means that the determiner should normally be dropped, provided the gramamtical function of President (and this is the syntactic point) is either that of a predicative complement or of a predicative oblique. In [2], President functions as a the latter, a complement of the preposition as, where the whose as phrase functions as a marked predicative complement.

In particular, a bare role NP cannot function as a subject or an object. You cannot say *Treasurer has resigned or *She questioned treasurer; you'd need some determiners, e.g. Our treasurer has resigned and She questioned the treasurer.

Discussion

Here is the relevant section from Collins COBUILD English Guides: Articles (pp. 51-52):

6.14 Special roles

Some nouns can refer to a special, unique role held by a person in a particular situation (for example, a government or business). When they are used like this, you can leave out the definite article.

...when he was President.
It was nearly 40 years before she became Queen.
...Mr John Hume, leader of the Social and Democratic Labour Party.

It would be unnatural to leave in the definite article and say 'when he was the President' or 'she became the Queen', although you can leave it in when the noun is followed by 'of'. Some words commonly used in this way are:

author                  chairman             king                          queen
best man             chairperson         leader                       secretary
boss                      director                manager                  treasurer
captain                 goalkeeper          president
centre forward    head                     prime minister

The context is very important. In a gang, one person can be 'leader'; in a football team, one person can be 'captain', 'centre forward', or 'goalkeeper'; at a wedding one person can be 'best man'; in a country one person can be 'king', 'queen', 'president', or 'prime minister'. Many other nouns can be used in this way in a particular context.

Note that when you are talking about a person rather than describing someone's role you need an article.

The President had issued a sympathetic reply.
The Queen then abandoned the project.

In

...as President I would...

we have a singular count noun, President, appearing without a determinative. This is a highly exceptional situiation, which is subject to some syntactical constraints.
CGEL analzyes President in [1] as bare role NP (noun phrase). Here is a relevant passage (p. 328):

Also included in the category of NP are bare role NPs such as president, deputy leader of the party—bare in the sense that they do not contain a determiner. These qualify as NPs by virtue of occurring as the predicative complements of verbs like be, become, appoint, elect, but singular NPs of this kind are exceptional in that they cannot occur as subjects or objects, where a determiner such as the definite article the is required:

[8]   i  I'd like to be president.                                        [predicative complement]
       ii  I'd like to meet *president/the president.                                     [object]

In more detail (p. 253):

The crucial syntactic property of PC [predicative complement] is that it can have the form either of an AdjP [adjective phrase] or of a bare role NP (a count singular with no determiner, such as President of the Republic, treasurer, etc.). Usually it can have the form of an ordinary NP [noun phrase] too, but what distinguishes PC from O [object] is the admissibility of an AdjP or bare role NP.

[5]            PREDICATIVE COMPLEMENT                                   OBJECT
             i  a.  He seemed a nice guy/nice.           b.  He met a nice guy/*nice.
            ii  a.  I consider it bad advice/bad.         b.  I gave her bad advice/*bad.
          iii  a.  She remained treasurer.                   b.  *She questioned treasurer.
           iv  a.  They appointed him secretary.       b.  *They promised him secretary.

Examples [i-ii] illustrate the possibility of replacing an ordinary NP by an AdjP (adjective phrase) in the case of PC, and the impossibility of doing so with O. Examples [iii-iv] show bare role NPs functioning as PC and the ungrammaticality that results from putting them in O function: the NPs in [iiib/ivb] need determiners (e.g. She questioned the treasurer; They promised him a secretary).

The ability of AdjPs to function as PC but not O reflects the fact that a PC characteristically expresses a property, while O (like S [subject]) characteristically refers to someone or something: AdjPs denote properties but are not used referentially. Similarly, the restriction on bare role NPs reflects the fact that they too cannot be used referentially; note in this connection that they are equally excluded from subject function: *Treasurer has resigned.

On p. 255, CGEL points out that a bare role NP can function as predicative obliques, which is exactly how it functions in [1] and [2].

■ Predicative obliques

Predicative elements may occur as complement of a preposition instead of being related directly to the verb. Much the most common preposition is as:

[9]                    INTRANSITIVE                                          TRANSITIVE
          i  a.  That counts as excellent.    b.  I regard her as indispensable.                  [AdjP]
         ii  a.  She served as treasurer.    b.  They chose her as secretary.         [bare role NP]

Again the predicand is S [subject] in the intransitive, and normally O [object] in the transitive.³⁰ The complements of as we analyse as predicative obliques, and the as phrases themselves (as excellent, etc.) as marked predicative complements.

^{30The verb strike is exceptional in having S as predicand in a transitive construction: compare I regard him as a
liability (normal, O as predicand) and He strikes me as a liability (exceptional, S as predicand). The behaviour of strike here correlates with its exceptional alignment of semantic roles and syntactic functions. Like regard it belongs to the field of cognition, yet it aligns experiencer and stimulus with O and S respectively, instead of the usual S and O (cf. §2.3), and this exceptional alignment in turn reflects the fact that the sense involved here is a secondary one relative to that of He struck me on the chin.}

grammar - Plural / Singular verb in this sentence?

Recently an editor just changed the plural verbs in my essay to singular ones, but I don't understand why he did so. Please see below:

(Original sentence)

After rising to power through multiple revolutions, the Chinese Communist Party holds a subversive notion and ideology that not only aspire to break the old world, but also aim to build a new one.

(revised sentence)
After rising to power through multiple revolutions, the Chinese Communist Party holds a subversive notion and ideology that not only aspires to break the old world, but also aims to build a new one.

In my understanding, there are two nouns in "a subversive notion and ideology", and that should be followed by a plural verb?

Answer

The key is in the use of the indefinite article.

To paraphrase:

The CPP holds a ^{subversive notion and ideology} that aspires . . .

I have put the subject in superscript in order to set it off from the rest of the text. Especially because of the a, the syntax treats the phrase as a compound single subject.

It is the same idea as:

This ^{fish and chips} is delicious.

Although there are actually two separate things joined together, they are thought of, and treated as, a singular item.

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In order for the syntax to show that there are multiple things being used as individual subjects, you would need to remove the indefinite article and pluralize the subjects:

The CPP holds subversive notions and ideologies that aspire . . .

Alternatively, it's possible to use a phrasing similar to what follows—but it would be somewhat awkward:

The CPP holds a subversive notion as well as a subversive ideology that both aspire . . .

pronunciation - Does a word that starts with a vowel letter start with a vowel sound?

I'm currently learning about consonant to vowel linking, and I'm wondering if it's safe to assume that most words (if not all?) that start with a vowel letter (a, e, i, o, u) will also start with a vowel sound.

Knowing this information will help me quickly identify whether a word starts with a vowel sound. Then, I can check the ending sound of the previous word to see where consonant-to-vowel linking is required.

Answer

The best rule in English is that you should ignore spelling for purposes of pronunciation and ignore pronunciation for purposes of spelling, as these two things each have their own separate stories. You must learn each one separately by rote, not attempt to infer one from the other.

Sandhi effects have nothing to do with letters. They are purely phonologic in origin, so only sounds count.

So eunuchs, Unix, Europe, Ulysses, eustachian, Oaxaca all begin with consonants, while honor, honest, hour, huerta, our, umbrella, ylem, Ysidro all begin with vowels. Words like herbal and historical can vary.

And not all sandhi effects are the same, either. Just because we use the same pronunciation for an in both an apple and an eel doesn’t mean we use the same pronunciation of the in both the apple and the eel; with the eel, there is an extra glottal stop after /ði/, so /ðiʔˈil/.

word choice - all days vs ever day and all persons vs everyone

Can I say "all days" instead of "every day"? And "all persons have the right to live" instead of "everyone" so as to emphasize in the first case and to refer to every single individual?

word choice - "If it was" or "if it were"?

Should I say "If I were [something]" or "If I was [something]?"

This came up because I am writing a comment above a function in some code. Here's the comment, basically:

// Shuts down everything
// Will stop the process if it was running
function Shutdown()

So should that say "if it was running" or "if it were running?"

Also, why?

pronouns - "It was he/him who/whom I voted for."

I'm not particularly a grammar pedant, but I thought of this sentence this morning and it has defied my searching skills.

It was he/him who/whom I voted for.

The question here covers something similar, but it doesn't have the disagreement where the "he" behaves like an object in the second clause and a subject in the first. Which of these sentences sounds more grammatical?

1. It was he who I voted for.


2. It was he whom I voted for.


3. It was him who I voted for.


4. It was him whom I voted for.

Oddly enough, this website seems to suggest that one should use sentences like "I chose whoever came first," despite the usual usage of "I chose him."

Answer

The traditional pedantic version of this sentence would be "It was he whom I voted for" (although a pedant who believed in avoiding stranded prepositions would instead say "It was he for whom I voted").

The object of the preposition for in the relative clause is typically analyzed as consisting only of the relative pronoun whom/who. The relative pronoun and the personal pronoun he/him refer to the same person, but they do not occupy the same position in the grammar of the sentence. The personal pronoun he/him is not part of the relative clause at all.

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The "Let he/him who..." question has "he/him" as the object of the main clause and "who" as the subject of the relative clause. It seems comparable to your sentence, where "he/him" serves as a predicative complement in the main clause and "who/whom" serves as the object of the preposition "for" in the relative clause. In both cases, the standard prescriptivist viewpoint is that the relative pronoun should be inflected according to its role in the relative clause, and the pronoun before the relative pronoun should be inflected according to its role in the main clause.

"I chose whoever came first" is a different situation because there is no other pronoun before the relative pronoun: it is a "fused" relative. A fused relative pronoun is "supposed" to inflect according to its role in the relative clause. See this blog post: "For Whomever the Bell Tolls" (by Jonathon Owen, Arrant Pedantry). The actual, as opposed to prescribed, behavior of "fused relatives" seems to be fairly complicated: see F.E.'s answer to “Put me in touch with whomever created it”? for more details.

The verb be is not actually analyzed as taking a direct object, but a "predicative complement". Completely separately* from the issue of relative clauses, there is variation between "he" and "him" as a predicative complement: "It was him" is usual, but "it was he" has traditionally often been prescribed as a "more grammatical" form (based on the idea that the predicative complement should have the same case as the corresponding subject, which in this case is the nominative pronoun it). Sentences with nominative predicate pronouns, like "It was he", still exist to some extent as "elevated" variants of sentences with accusative predicate pronouns.

(*"Completely separately" may be a slight simplification: Barrie England's answer to "It is I who am at fault?" indicates that the use of "nominative" predicative complements may in fact be more frequent in present-day English before relative clauses that have who as the subject. But from a prescriptive point of view, there isn't supposed to be any relationship between the use of "It was he" and the presence of or case of a following relative pronoun.)

relative clauses - "that" omission, subject-verb distance

when can we remove 'that'? I've heard different opinions

I bought the book that is required for this course
I bought the book required for this course

I recommend that you take my advice
I recommend you take my advice

I know that you are correct
I know you are correct

the report that was approved by the board was written by Susan
the report approved by the board was written by Susan

We are studying advertisement strategies that other companies use to recruit minorities
We are studying advertisement strategies used by other companies to recruit minorities