grammar - word order of "become," "sufficiently", "advanced" in this sentence

So this is still a mystery to me. Can someone help me please? This is the question:

It was only when electric motors ______________ to become portable
that vacuum cleaners became common household items.

1) became advanced sufficiently

2) sufficiently became advanced

3) had sufficiently become advanced

4) had become sufficiently advanced

And please tell me why the 3 wrong answers are wrong. Also, can we put an adverb like "sufficiently" between "had" and "become"? Does the answer to the last question only apply to this sentence or is it always like that?
And one last thing, please choose one of the answers given. This was a test, so no other answers were available.

Answer

The fourth one is the correct one.
Reasoning:
First of all, let us focus on why the fourth alternative is the correct choice. In the sentence, we are talking about the order of two events in which the second occurred after the first one had already happened because the second event was conducive only due to the happening of the first one. Hence, we need to use past perfect tense here leading to the cancellation of the first two options.

Now the question is about "advanced sufficiently" or "sufficiently advanced". Here we are trying to focus on the word "advanced" since if the electric motors hadn't become advanced, we wouldn't have seen portable vacuum cleaners. In order to focus the word "advanced", we need to put the adverb "sufficiently" just before it (since we are interested in the advancement of the technology).

P.S.: The third law of British science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke states: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws)

participles - Participial clause?

On ELL a user has asked how to parse the emphasized -ing form in this sentence from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone:

Harry swung at it with the bat to stop it from breaking his nose, and sent it zigzagging away into the air.

I am puzzled how to answer.

Zigzagging could be taken as an adjectival participle modifying it; certainly if you delete zigzagging you're left with away into the air as the ordinary complement demanded by send: you send something somewhere.

But that isn't how the semantics work for me. Send here seems to me to be a causative and zigzag a non-finite verb, which could be paraphrased with an infinitive:

He sent it zigzagging away into the air = He caused it to zigzag away into the air.
He sent him riding away to London. = He caused him to ride away to London.
He sent him packing. = He caused him to pack [i.e., to hurry away].

Thus it zigzagging away seems to me to be a full clause. But I have not found any formal description of subordinate clauses employing the -ing form where the clause does not act as a nominal, and that is clearly not the case here: ordinary NP complements to sent are Direct Objects and Indirect Objects.

So how do Modern Grammars analyze this construction, by what tests do they establish this analysis, and what do they call the construction?

Answer

McCawley doesn't say much about it, as far as I can see, but it appears to be a variety of the complex of serial verb constructions around motion verbs and their inchoatives and causatives, like the various serial verb constructions mentioned in this freshman grammar exam question (#4, restricted to come and go):

• Bill went and dug some clams. (go and + V)


• He asked us to come eat the clams. (come + V)


• He said “Come and get it!” (come and + V)


• We’re going to go eat them. (go + V)



• We'll go swimming afterwards. (go + V-ing)


• We'll come strolling in late tonight. (come + V-ing)

But there are lots more verbs that cause motion, and motion has a number of verb-like properties, so this construction complex gets much broader in scope. E.g,

Harry swung at it with the bat
to stop it from breaking his nose,
and

• went muttering curses out the door


• came lurching out the door


• brought her shuddering back to consciousness


• plucked it screaming out of the air


• sent it zigzagging away into the air


• tossed it spinning down the stairs


• dropped it unmoving into the cauldron

There are a number of possibilities here:
the initial verb part of the serial verb may be

• an intransitive motion verb (go, come)


• a transitive causative/inchoative of a motion verb (respectively: take, bring)


• a transitive verb that entails some kind of induced motion (pluck, send, toss, drop, etc.)

while the gerund part normally describes some property of

• the motion induced by the verb (lurching, zigzagging, spinning), or


• the object or person caused to move (muttering, shuddering, screaming, unmoving)

In either case, it is the moving object that functions as subject of the gerund constituent and displays the property; one may give it several different kinds of PS, but I'd treat these more or less the same way I treat phrasal verbs, as a discontinuous construction with two parts that share the semantic load, subject to easy idiomatization and extension to many metaphors.

pronouns - Is naming the first person last proper grammar or just proper manners?

I cringe when someone does not follow the rule of naming the first person last:

Who went to the party?
- Me, Bobby, Sally, and Joe.

This is surprisingly common in informal spoken American English. I admit have a strong cultural bias against this practice. My native language is Spanish and listeners in informal situations often reply with el burro por delante (the donkey in front) to correct the speaker.

Another post (Which of these sentences use the correct grammar?) partially covers this topic but the answers do not conclude whether it is proper grammar or just proper manners.

Answer

It's a matter of style, or manners, if you will. Grammatically, all of the following are equally fine:

• Jack and I went to the store.


• I and Jack went to the store.


• I and that stupid moron went to the store.

word order - When may adjectives precede determiners? (E.g. too difficult a task)

The expression too difficult a task sounds a little pompous, but it doesn't sound ungrammatical. According to my folk-beliefs about English grammar, determiners precede adjectives. However, the expression too difficult a task seems to controvert that belief.

Additionally, the expression too difficult of a task seems grammatical too.

1. Under what conditions may determiners precede adjectives?


2. Are there conditions under which too difficult of a task would be a more grammatical expression than too difficult a task would be?

(This question does not ask what the question “How big of a problem” vs. “how big a problem” asks. That question does not pertain to determiners.)

Answer

This construction seems to require a modifier that makes a comparison, such as too, (not) as, more, equally, less. Intensifiers which don't have this quality don't seem to do it: *very difficult a task doesn't seem to work.

The construction with of is recent, and traditionalists don't regard it as grammatical. But it is clearly grammatical for some people (though not for me). I think it is predominently American, and I'm sure that it arose because of the unusualness of the traditional construction.

grammatical number - Does the plural include the singular?

Does the plural include the singular? And if so, in what sort of cases?

This question has arisen because of the example sentence below.

Amendment shall be permitted only in cases of:
1. deletion of claims
2. correction of error

My co-worker, who is not a native speaker of English, insists that if only one error is corrected (or if only one claim is deleted), then amendment will not be permitted. Is this the necessary interpretation?

Is there a specific name for this issue? And if plural does include the singular, what are some less legalistic examples that can be used to explain that the plural form is not necessarily, well, plural?

Answer

There are a few issues that seem to be in play.

In most cases, a reference to plurals in rules also includes the singular. And vice versa.

In the event of errors, accommodation will be made.

While the plural is used, most readers would believe that this applied to a single error as well as multiple errors. Similarly

In the event of error, accommodation will be made.

It means the same thing.

Sometimes, to make clear that both singular and plural circumstances apply, parenthetical plurals are used.

In the event of error(s), accommodation will be made.

This makes it explicit that both singular and plural problems will be adjusted for.

I am not aware of a term that names this characteristic (or conundrum).

As you have suggested, this is a problem often faced in legal drafting (which you wish to avoid). To ensure clarity, many contracts say something that means "plural words can cover singular events and singular words can cover plural events."

To convey this simply you could say

Amendment shall be permitted only in cases of: 1. deletion of one or more claims 2. correction of one or more errors.

Your example also raises another issue. It lists two conditions:

1. deletion of claims 2. correction of error

There is some ambiguity as to whether these conditions are conjunctive or disjunctive as written. Does it mean

when there is both 1. deletion of one or more claims AND 2. correction of one or more errors

or does it mean

when there is either 1. deletion of one or more claims OR 2. correction of one or more errors, BUT NOT BOTH

or does it mean

when there is either 1. deletion of one or more claims OR 2. correction of one or more errors, OR BOTH

You need to clarify whether you mean

• 
  
  1. AND 2.
  
  


• 
  
  1. BUT NOT 2.
  
  


• 
  
  1. AND/OR 2.
  
  

pronunciation - What are the historical justifications for first-syllable stress in the word “orthoepy”?

Funnily enough, the word orthoepy (or orthoëpy) meaning “(the study of) correct (or standard) pronunciation” has no single established correct pronunciation: it may be stressed on either the first or the second syllable (there is also variation in the pronunciation of the vowel in the penult syllable).

I’m curious about how the variant with stress on the first syllable originated, and how it has been justified by the orthoepists who have favored it. (A Wordnik blog post by Charles Harrington Elster, the author of “The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations”, seems to say that he favors the first-syllable stress only because “authorities have ... long countenanced” it and because he thinks it better emphasizes the root “ortho”; this seems like a lame explanation to me.)

The earliest source I am familar with that describes this pronunciation is John Walker’s Critical Pronouncing Dictionary (1824). Walker says it is accented on the first (pre-antepenult) syllable, citing Elphinston and Nares (p. 429). It’s not clear from his respelling system whether he means for the penult syllable to have secondary stress and a long vowel (/i:/) or no stress and a reduced vowel /ɪ/, as Walker seems to transcribe both of these sounds as e².

In an earlier section about general principles of stress placement in compounds derived from Greek he gives the following odd justification for this stress pattern: “Orthoëpy, having no consonant in the antepenultimate syllable, naturally throws its accent on the first” (p. 54).

I don’t understand why this seemed “natural” to Walker. Walker loved analogies; are there any other Greek compound words where this happens that I’ve missed? I actually can only think of counterexamples, such as psychiatry.

In fact, I wasn’t able to find any other Greek-derived or Latinate words of any type ending in "V.VCy" that had stress earlier than the antepenult. There are a lot of words like sponta’neity with antepenult stress on a vowel in an open syllable. I did find polyploidy, haploidy, diploidy but in these words the “oi” is pronounced as a diphthong rather than as two vowels in hiatus, so they don’t really seem to have the same structure. (I also found the words breviary and zedoary, but I disregarded these as they end in the suffix “-ary” < Latin “-arium/-aria/-arius” and words with this suffix tend to follow different principles of stress).

I realize this question may seem to be a matter of opinion. But, I don’t actually want an answer that describes your preferred pronunciation. I want to learn facts relevant to the pronunciation of this word, in particular:

• whether there are any words that back up Walker’s idea that antepenultimate syllables that don’t have a consonant after them are less likely to be stressed




• whether any of Walker’s contemporaries or precursors gave a different explanation for why this word is, or should be stressed on the first syllable.

I don’t think these are matters of opinion. 
Also, note that this is not a duplicate of either of my previous questions about the position of stress in specific other words, Why does "stigmata" [often] have penult stress? and Can the stress pattern of "uroboros/ouroboros" be explained by any principle, or is it random? Those questions were just open-ended “why is this word stressed this way” questions; in this question I’m specifically focusing on the two points listed above (if there are any analogous words with the same stress pattern, and whether anyone discussing the pronunciation of this word in the past gave another justification than the ones Walker and Elster give).

Answer

Looking at words beginning with ortho- there seem to be two possible pronunciations:

/ɔːrˈθɒ-/ as in orthogonal or orthography,
/ˈɔːrθə-/ as in orthodox or orthodontist,

where the second pronunciation has primary or secondary stress on the first syllable.

But in English phonology, the vowel /ɒ/ must be followed by a consonant, so the first pronunciation is ruled out for orthoepy. This is presumably what Walker meant when he said “Orthoëpy, having no consonant in the antepenultimate syllable, naturally throws its accent on the first” (1822).

You could also pronounce orthoepy /ɔːrˈθoʊ.iː.pi/. This seems to be what Robert Nares meant when he said that "the accented vowel is long in the antepenultima" (1782). However, there aren't any other words where ortho- is pronounced this way. I suspect this discouraged people from using it.

grammaticality - Does a comma come between because and although?

I am editing answer explanations for a school curriculum. The more I read the phrase "because although", the more stumped I become on whether there should be a comma between because and although. Here's a basic example:

After a short reading passage, a question asks for the main idea and then gives multiple choice answers. Let's say Choice A is "The narrator hates lemons." The answer explanation then reads:

"Choice A is incorrect because although the narrator does say she hates lemons, this is not the main idea of the passage."

I've been putting a comma ("because, although the narrator does say she hates lemons, this is not the main idea...") because I regard that phrase as parenthetical and unnecessary. Without it, the explanation would read, "Choice A is incorrect because this is not the main idea of the passage." The antecedent for this is in the answer choice. The use of although is more of a concession to the student who misinterpreted the passage (Yes, it does talk about lemons, but that's not the main idea).

So... comma or no comma?

These are read by middle school and high school students and their teachers.

Answer

It is interesting to see the usage in the NYT. I see instances where a comma is used. I see just as many where it isn't. With one exception in twenty, every article printed prior to 1950 appears to use "because, although." Removing the comma could be a (relatively) new convention.

If students are confused, it should always be possible to restructure the sentence to separate the two words.

"Although the narrator does say she hates lemons, choice A is incorrect because this is not the main idea of the passage."