meaning in context - "such as", "as", or ... in this sentence?

Reliable processes have only two characteristic features, namely A and B.

1. I Will examine them, considering their characteristic features such
   as A and B.




2. I will examine them, considering such characteristic
   features of them as A and B.



3. I will examine them, considering their characteristic features as A and B.


4. I will examine them, considering such characteristic features as
   A and B.

I think "such as" is always used when we want to mention things among others, it means the same as "for example". Is that so? I mean is "such as" always used when there can be other cases too.

This is what this dictionary says:

1. for example. "wildflowers such as daisies and red clover"


2. of a kind that; like. "an event such as we've shared"

So when we are not talking about kind, "such as" means the same as "for example".

Now, because there is only two characteristic features, can I use "such as" like in my first sentence?

Or can we say that the second sentence does not the problem?

What about the third sentence? Does it have the same problem?

Finally, the fourth sentence does not say that such features are characteristic of processes. Is that obvious from the context? If so, doesn't it have the problem in the first sentence?

Can you suggest better alternative for the bold part?

verbs - Use of hypens with "auto": autopopulate, auto-populate, or auto populate?

I've done a fair amount of research (like here), but I can't find any examples of hyphen rules with "auto". Microsoft Word doesn't take "autopopulate", but will accept either auto-populate or auto populate.

What I read about prefixes is that they shouldn't be hyphenated, but MS Word disagrees with this one. Unless auto isn't really a prefix at all, but I do take it to be.

Right now I'm thinking that auto doesn't usually work by itself unless you're talking about a car.

Does anybody have any authoritative word or grammatical insight?

Answer

Whether or not prefixes are hyphenated depends a lot on which prefix it is. In general, newly coined prefixes or neologisms are likely to take a hyphen, while established vocabulary tends to lose the hyphen. There are no absolute rules, though.

That being said:

• autopopulate is probably wrong, since the use of the prefix auto- in this sense is very recent.


• auto populate is also wrong, since verbal compounds are never written separately


• auto-populate is probably the preferred answer

grammaticality - Was I driving more than 5 mph under the speed limit, or less than 5 mph under the speed limit?

Suppose I am driving 38 miles per hour in a 45 zone. This, of course, is seven miles per hour under the speed limit. Of course, I am driving this slowly because the road is wet, and safe driving habits suggest that when the road is wet, one should consider the safe speed limit to be five miles per hour less than the posted limit.

For this situation, which is correct?

• "I am driving more than 5 mph under the posted speed limit"


• "I am driving less than 5 mph under the posted speed limit"

To support the first case: my speed discrepancy from the posted limit is more than 5 mph. TO support the second case: my total speed was less than 45 less 5 (equals 40).

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Edit: As many pointed out, there are certainly ways to assemble a phrase to remove any ambiguity. But that's not really the point of why I asked. My reason for asking is two-fold:

1. The scenario came to mind when I was driving after a recent snowfall. I was minding my speed, but thought about accident situations. I wondered what would happen if I got in an accident and told the officer, "officer, I was driving more than 5mph under the speed limit." Would that indicate careful or safe driving? Could that phraseology be used against me? Would the insurance company clamp down on that usage of a phrase to deny a claim?


2. More generally, how do comparisons work? There are (at least) two comparisons in either construction: "under the posted speed limit," which unambiguously means "slower than the legal limit," and "more/less than 5 mph." However, in this case, "5 mph" isn't a speed at all; it is a discrepancy. One cannot drive at a speed discrepancy; in fact, the only reason the quantity "5 mph" has units at all is because of the mathematical property that units be additively consistent (i.e. you cannot add 5 mph to 17 bananas). Restructuring the phrase to use a dimensionless quantity also removes ambiguity: "I was driving slower than 89% of the speed limit."

So my question could really be more abstractly framed as: when relatively comparing something to another comparison, does the "relational arrow" point in the direction of the inner-most comparison?

Other examples:

• It is less than 5 degrees below freezing (29 degrees, or 23 degrees?).


• I am more than 5 pounds below my target weight of 180 lbs (177 lbs, or 172 lbs?).

Answer

I think the other answers have missed a key factor in how this would be interpreted. And that's that it's a lot more common to be talking about your speed in relation to the national speed limit than to be talking about your speed in relation to 5mph less than the speed limit.

In other words it is unusual to say that your speed was "less than (national limit - 5)", whereas it's fairly common to quantify how much less than the national speed limit you were.

So I think that

I was driving more than 5 mph under the posted speed limit

is very clear that you mean that's how much you were under the limit by. In fact it took me a little while to find your other meaning at all.

Edit: David Richerby makes another excellent point: if you were indeed saying that your speed was "less than (national limit - 5)" you would say "I was driving at less than (national limit - 5)". Not "I was driving less than (national limit - 5)". Further evidence for the ambiguity being negligable in this instance. Do read his answer.

adjectives - Indefinite articles used with plural nouns: It was AN amazing TWO DAYS

The indefinite article a(n), derives from the old English word an meaning "one". Generally this word only occurs in determiner function before noun phrases which are singular. However, there seem to be some cases where this determiner occurs before plural noun phrases. I say that, but actually these noun phrase seem so bizarre to me, in terms of their structure, that I'm not sure they're definitely noun phrases at all. Here are some examples:

• a full three months before we left


• an amazing two days



• an awkward ten minutes

Ignoring the article here for a moment, these noun phrases are odd because the adjective is occurring before the numeral. We would normally expect to see:

• three full months


• two amazing days


• ten awkward minutes

Even given the oddness of the word order in the original phrases, I can see no reason why the normally singular indefinite article is licensed here.

Can anybody give an account of the syntactic structure of these phrases, and/or explain why the semantically singular article is able to be used with such phrases - even if they compulsorily trigger plural verb agreement?

Here is an example of one of these instances which seems to demand a plural verb:

1. An amazing two million people attend every year.


2. *An amazing two million people attends every year. (ungrammatical)

Answer

A few old grammar rules

A great many, a good many, a few.—These are very incorrect and bad
phrazes; and the singular article can never be properly used with a
plural noun.

Since Few words on Many Subjects was published in 1831, English has seen quite a few changes. I don't know whether this rule was enforced at schools, but I did find another example lambasting the use of the indefinite article before many in front of a plural noun.

There is an extensive and growing error in the use of the adjectives good and many. It is not correct to say “a good many apples,” tho we may say “many good apples;” for, omitting the adjective good, we can not say “a many apples.” Neither is it correct to say “a great many persons;” for, “a great persons,” or “a many persons,” would be improper. It would be better to say, many apples; many persons, and omit the good and great. We do not hear of “a bad many,” or a “small many.” Why then say “a good or great many?” “The rushing of many waters;” “the influence of many minds,” are much more expressive than to add the words great and good.

^{Source: A grammar of the English language: Explained According to the Principles of Truth and Common Sense ... (1839)}

a/an + adjective + number + plural noun

The fact that native speakers were using the article "a" in front of adjectives and plural nouns in the 19th century, proves there is nothing new under the sun. Today the following sentences are perfectly grammatical.

1. He weighed a whopping twenty-five stones (350 lbs)


2. We spent a wonderful/fantastic/memorable three weeks in Greece


3. He had collected a good many books


4. She waited a full three minutes before speaking


5. It had been an exciting two years for Alice


6. Ted had an exhausting two days in Denver.


7. It costs a mere twenty dollars.

In sentence 3, “a great number of” could substitute “a good many”.

(a) He weighed twenty-five stones.
(b) We spent three weeks in Greece.
(c) He had collected many books.
(d) She waited three minutes before speaking
(e) Alice had experienced two exciting years.
(f) Ted had two exhausting days.
(g) It (only) costs twenty dollars

The sentences are only grammatical without the "a" and its "adjective"; take away only one of the two components, and the sentences become ungrammatical. The indefinite article modifies the adjective with the number. There has to be a number attached to the adjective in order for the sentence to be grammatical.

“She waited a full minutes before speaking” (NO)
“She waited a three minutes before speaking.” (NO)
“She waited a minutes before speaking” (NO)

The noun phrases take a plural noun and a plural verb after the singular a great /good many; or a/an + adjective + number; e.g.

A great many people in this country are worried about law-and-order
An astronomical 300,000 tons of apples were destroyed.
… an amazing 250,000 new neurones are added every minute.

In a great (or) good many people, “great” and “good” act like the adverb very, or really, they intensify the adjective many; i.e. “very many people” and “really a lot of people”.

The determiner many and a good many are listed in all the dictionaries I checked, but they offer no insights as to why this construction is acceptable.

many n. (used with a pl. verb)
1. The majority of the people; the masses: "The many fail, the one succeeds" (Tennyson).
2. A large indefinite number: A good many of the workers had the flu.
^{American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language}

man•y
3. a large or considerable number of persons or things: A good many of the beggars were blind.
^{Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, © 2010}

Rogermue in the comments, suggests that a great many is derived from the German noun Menge a word meaning "multitude".

An article in Language Log has this to say on this particular construction

Funky a

A couple of days ago, I took Roy Peter Clark to task for claiming that phrases like "a million dollars" show that the indefinite article a can be used with a plural head ("Slippery glamour", 7/4/2008). I observed that the structure is clearly [[a million] dollars], not [a [million dollars]]; that expressions like "a million" are just numbers, fitting into the normal syntactic slot where numbers go; and that million in this case is morphosyntactically singular.

In the comments, Russell Lee-Goldman pointed out that
There are, however, a few cases where it really looks like "a" is acting funky:

– He was there for a good seven years.
– An additional three people are required.
– A mere four nations recognize that standard.
– She collected an amazing and heretofore unprecedented forty million dollars.

[..examples taken from the web...]

But these examples seem to me to represent a generalization of the phenomenon on display in phrases like "a million dollars": English number-expressions have inherited from their partitive history a limited ability to act like singular noun phrases.
However, I'll admit that the constituent structure doesn't feel like

[ [a  ] ]

but rather feels like

[ [a ] [ ] ]

— for what little those feelings are worth

The article ends with an update and suggests reading two studies. The paper, A SINGULAR PLURAL, by Tania Ionin & Ora Matushansky, I believe would interest the OP a great deal.

pronouns - Is using "he" for a gender-neutral third-person correct?

I know there are different opinions on this issue. My question: Is using "he" for a general, gender-neutral third person still in common use for formal writing? By common use I mean, can I expect my paper not to be penalised because I use "he" as pronoun for "a student", etc.?

I think "he/she" is too clumsy and I am not comfortable with singular they.

verbs - How do the tens­es and as­pects in English cor­re­spond tem­po­ral­ly to one an­oth­er?

Non-na­tive speak­ers of­ten get con­fused about what the var­i­ous tens­es
and as­pects mean in English. With in­put from some of the folk here I've
put to­geth­er a di­a­gram that I hope will pro­vide some clar­i­ty on the
mat­ter.

I of­fer it as the first an­swer to this ques­tion. Con­sid­er it a liv­ing
doc­u­ment. In­put is wel­come, and good sug­ges­tions will be
in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the di­a­gram.

---

No­ta bene: What this is not is a dis­cus­sion of whether there are
more than two tens­es in English. We have a ded­i­cat­ed ques­tion for
that, to which this

ques­tion is not in­tend­ed to sup­ply ar­gu­ments one way or the oth­er.
Here, the aim is to pro­vide an overview of what con­struc­tions
English-speak­ing peo­ple use for con­vey­ing in­for­ma­tion about ac­tions
re­fer­ring to past, present, and fu­ture, and to pro­vide it first and
fore­most to pre­cise­ly the peo­ple who are like­ly to use "tense" as a
catch-all term in their search, rather than to lin­guists who know bet­ter.

Break­ing News There is now an ex­cel­lent ELU blog ar­ti­cle ti­tled
How We Talk About Fu­ture
Si­t­u­a­tions.

It is high­ly rec­om­mend­ed read­ing.

Answer

A visualization of what we mean in English by the various tenses:

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.)