grammar - Can the phrase "the likes of which" and "with which" be combined to prevent ending a sentence in a preposition?

Here is the example I was writing when I came across this problem.

It is imperative that you cease this infernal flirtation, lest you unleash forces
the likes of and with which
the world has neither known nor been equipped to contend.

I know there are other ways to phrase this and I'm not militantly opposed to ending sentences in prepositions, but I am interested in the grammatical legitimacy of appending the the word "which" a single time to complete both phrases ("the likes of which" and "with which")--similarly to how the word "in" completes two phrases in the sentence

"I am both interested and involved in the study of linguistic features."

My case is obviously different, since a single word cannot complete both phrases (at least as they are commonly used). The following phrase

"the world has neither known nor been equipped to contend"

must be included to keep the overall statement coherent. But is it grammatical? I was also considering the fact that the word "both" might be what changes my second example ("both interested and involved in"). If the word "both" were added to my original paragraph as follows:

It is imperative that you cease this infernal flirtation, lest you
unleash forces
both
the likes of and with which
the world has neither known nor been equipped to contend.

Would this change anything? I'm sorry if this seems like a pointless question, but I'm seeking out edge cases for a Natural Language algorithm (they are harder to generate than I thought) and I have to seize upon them when I can.

Thanks in advance for your consideration.

Answer

It is imperative that you cease this infernal flirtation, lest you
unleash forces the likes of and with which the world has neither known
nor been equipped to contend.

First, you have a parallelism problem. When you are applying a parallel structure, which is what you're doing, it all has to still work even if you remove parallel parts. While "lest you unleash forces with which the world has not been equipped to contend" makes sense, "lest you unleash forces with which the world has not known" doesn't.

Now, if the last bit weren't a "neither/nor" but an "and," you maybe could get away with writing "the likes of (which) and with which" in the preceding bit, but only if you the alternatives joined by "and" in the second bit were followed by a comma and the word "respectively" in order to cue to the reader that the former refers only to the previous former and the latter refers only to the previous latter and that both don't refer to both of the previous.

That said, I don't see any way that you can restructure your sentence so that the latter part is an affirmative statement, thus allowing you to use "and" instead of "or" or "nor."

The way to write what you wrote is:

It is imperative that you cease this infernal flirtation, lest you

unleash forces the likes of which the world has not known and with
which the world has not been equipped to contend.

After wading through your original sentence to work out what it is you mean, which no reader should have to do, it becomes clear that "the likes of (which)" pertains only to "the world has (not) known" and "with which" pertains only to "the world has...(not) been equipped." Each does not apply to and does not grammatically work with the other, which is required for you to use the parallel structure you are attempting to use.

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/parallelism/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallelism_(grammar)

grammaticality - "it's a long time that.'

This question was posted here "It's a long time that" - correct or not? a few months back and an answer was selected. The answer given is hardly satisfying, and I feel that the question is worth exploring in more detail.

The OP states that a native speaker corrected him and said he should write "It's been a long time since."

In looking at some of the hits that the OP posted it is apparent that the phrase "It's a long time that" can be used in several ways. This was from a native English source:

When you sprain both your ankles, you have to do what you think is right. As I said, if he's healthy, he should play. If he's injured, he should sit. It's a long time that he's been off. He's got to go.

To me, this is ok. He's talking about the amount of time-off the player has taken. He's not talking about the last time he took some time-off...a present perfect idea.

The answer that was selected uses this as a reference Try as I might, I can't understand what the good doctor is saying.

Also, in looking at the OP's question it occurs to me that they might be using the phrase in the sense of the NBA example I provided above, in other words, he is talking about the amount of time spent. To me, a better way to express this would be "I've been doing this for a long time," or "I spent a long time on that," or maybe "I did that for a long time." but maybe I'm changing the meaning.

My question is: Is the example from google books an archaic way of using the present perfect? There's no present perfect in the example. Also, is the sentence "It's a long time that I did that." grammatically correct, and if not, why not?

grammaticality - Using "of" after a coordinating conjuction

How should I say this?

1. The color of the chair and the table ...


2. The color of the chair and of the table ...

Why should that option be used (apart from being the correct one)?

grammatical number - it was/it were + plural noun

Which of the following is correct?

1. It was the memories he made that mattered.




2. It were the memories he made that mattered.

Answer

Since "it" is singular, here "was" seems more appropriate.
So the right sentence would be:

It was the memories he made that mattered.

"were" is used with singular nouns/pronouns only when the sentence is in the SUBJUNCTIVE mood which is used for hypothetical situations. For example:

If I were you, .....

grammar - How do noun clauses work when they seem to leave no independent clause?

Another thing that was raised in conversation with my ESL friend is noun clauses.

I was aware of Adverbial and Adjectival Clauses and thought that the things he was demonstrating to me were in fact noun phrases, not clauses.

After a long discussion and some google searches, I had to concede that he was right to call them Noun Clauses, according to the entire internet. However, I can't seem to find anywhere a satisfying explanation for the fact that noun clauses often leave a sentence without an independent clause. For example:

He only gave me what he already owed me.

Here, as I am led to believe, "what he already owed me" is a Noun Clause. In my understanding, this means that "He only gave me" would be the other clause that makes this a sentence. The problem in my eyes is that neither of these clauses could stand alone.

Somebody please explain how this sentence with two subordinate clauses can exist, or else tell me why I am wrong.

Answer

The sentence you gave does not consist of two subordinate clauses. It contains one independent clause, and one subordinate clause. The internal structure of the sentence goes like this:

[He only gave me [what he owed me.]]

The outer pair of brackets encloses the entire sentence, which is the independent clause. The inner pair of brackets indicates the inner clause. Clauses which are contained within other clauses are known as dependent clauses, and this particular one is a nominal relative clause. It is a relative clause because it begins with the relative pronoun what, and it is a nominal clause (or noun clause) because it functions as a noun within the sentence.

Your intuition is mostly correct, but you've misunderstood where to put the clause boundaries. You seem to have been misled by the false assumption that a clause must be a complete sentence, and the idea that a clause cannot contain another clause. In this case the dependent clause what he owed me is incomplete because relative clauses have to be embedded in a larger context to have meaning, which is why they're called "dependent". And the fragment He only gave me is not even a full clause, because it lacks the direct object that's required by the verb gave. It only becomes a clause when you include the noun clause that acts as its object.

EDIT:

There seems to be some confusion about whether a dependent clause goes inside or outside of the independent clause. Let's look at this deductively, beginning with a simple sentence.

(Abbreviations: [] = clause boundaries, {} = phrase boundaries, IO = indirect object, DO = direct object)

[He gave IO{me} DO{ten dollars}].

In this case, I hope that there is no doubt that the indirect object and the direct object go inside the clause that contains them. The independent clause is not just the subject and the verb, but the subject, the verb, and all of the objects of the verb.

The important thing to remember about noun clauses (and other kinds of subordinate clauses) is that the structure of the independent clause does not change when you insert a noun clause. So in the original example we have something like this:

[He gave IO{me} DO[what he owed me]].

The noun clause what he owed me is the direct object of the verb gave, and it replaces the noun phrase ten dollars. But this has no effect at all on the structure of the independent clause. You can do the same thing with the indirect object:

[He gave IO[whoever he had borrowed from] DO[what he owed them]].

You could go even further with this, adding more nested dependent clauses inside dependent clauses, doing this forever in theory. (In practice it becomes extremely hard to understand after you've nested your clauses more than two or three layers.) But no matter how deep your nesting goes or how complicated the dependent clause becomes, it's still a single component in the structure of the higher-level clause. Dependent clauses do not magically move outside the structure of their parent clauses, nor do they change the grammatical analysis of the clauses that contain them.

Cases that accept both "to" + infinitive and "to" + gerund

I have searched both Google and this site. According to Collins, predispose can accept both to + infinitive and to + gerund. I find this questionable, but there it is.

Other than that, I can think of approach:
We need a new approach to win customers.
We need a new approach to winning customers.
Actually, in this case, it seems the infinitive works because of "need" and the gerund works because of "approach", so they're not actually saying the same thing.

I have seen on this site that prone does not work both ways, although people do use it both ways. It should only be used with to + gerund.

Are there other words or phrases that can accept to + infinitive and to + gerund equally?

*Note: I am not asking about "to" + infinitive vs. gerund. I am only asking about cases where the word "to" comes before the gerund, and also before the infinitive, and means the same thing. I have not found this question duplicated anywhere.

EDIT: And if the expressions do not always have the same meaning, can they ever have the same meaning?

EDIT: My current list, yea or nay?
well suited to do = well suited to doing
be adapted to do = be adapted to doing
proceed to do = proceed to doing
with a mind to do = with a mind to doing
agree to do = agree to doing
consent to do = consent to doing
donate to do = donate to doing

grammaticality - They are going to be letting me out next week

I am reading a book "Second hand" by Michael Zadoorian in which a boy visits his ex girlfriend in the hospital as she attempted suicide. There is a sentence which creates some difficulty to me: "They are going to be letting me out next week". I don't understand why the author used the verb to be in "to be letting me out". Is this correct? I thing it should be "they are going to let me out next week."

This is the context of the sentence:

I grab her hand and open the curled fingers. I place it in her palm. Luckily, it is practically nothing. A swizzle stick. Granted, a very old cool swizzle stick, a wooden one advertising "City ice Cubes" with a little character on it with an ice-block head. But it is still a swizzle stick nonetheless. And nothing for her to get all huffy about. Theresa looks at me and smiles, the one she was smiling before she forgot that she wasn't supposed to be smiling at me. "Thanks, J. You know, you really don't have to keep coming here every day. I think they are going to be letting me out next week."