nouns - Can a preposition be before an adverb?

Ok, this site says

The preposition is almost always before the noun or pronoun and that
is why it is called a preposition

Now, this oxford dictionary says

here (adverb)

used after a verb or preposition to mean ‘in, at or to this
position or place’

I live here.

Put the box here.

Let's get out of here.

Come over here.

So, the dictionary says "here is an adverb & we can put a preposition before here"

Eg: I am in here

I would say the dictionary is not correct, "here" in "in here" is a pronoun or noun. But I am not sure.

The same thing happened to "there".

Eg: he is in there; he is up there

Can a preposition be before an adverb?

grammaticality - Why do I instinctively want to use the present tense with a conditional?

My boss is not a native speaker of English, so he often asks me to correct his writing. The problem is, he wants me to explain why I make changes, and doesn't accept "it just sounds better that way" as an answer. Usually, I come up with some likely-sounding nonsense reasoning, but this afternoon, I just couldn't articulate why I corrected his

We might be able to figure this out from the schedules you will send us.

to

We might be able to figure this out from the schedules you send us.

I know that the version with "will" is perfectly understandable, and I don't think it is ungrammatical per se; but it just sounds better without "will", and I'd like to know why.

Edit: the current highest-voted answer answers the question "why did my boss write it with a future tense". I don't care about that. That's not my question. I want to know why the present tense sounds more natural. Is there a "rule" about this? If it's not the subjunctive (since people keep downvoting the answer which says it is), what is it?

Answer

In your sentence as amended, send is without a doubt in the present indicative tense (and it is not a conditional sentence). In English, however, the present tense does rather more than express what’s going on in the present. To talk about something that’s going on right now, we generally use be + the –ing form of the verb which describes the action or state. We use the present tense, on the other hand, to refer to:

(1) a fact that is always or generally true (Water boils at 100 degrees centigrade);

(2) a repeated action (I go to church every Sunday);

(3) an event that occurs at the moment we are speaking (I promise); and

(4) fixed or planned events taking place in the future (My flight leaves early tomorrow morning).

In your example, send could express either (2) or (4), depending on the context. In either case, it is understood that the schedules are or will be sent according to a pre-arranged plan. If that were not to be the case, you would have to say We might be able to figure this out from the schedules you’ll be sending us. Perhaps that was what your boss meant. If so, he was half right, but we express the future by using will + the plain form of the verb only when we are making a prediction or when we are expressing a decision, often made at the time of speaking, about the immediate future. Neither of those cases seems likely given the first half of the sentence.

british english - Pronunciation of "lorry", "worry" and "sorry"

I have always pronounced lorry as "lur-ee" (as if to rhyme with worry), for as long as I can remember. Everyone else I know pronounces it as "lor-ee" (as if to rhyme with sorry).

Which one is correct, and why would the pronunciation of the vowel differ between sorry and worry when their spellings differ only in a consonant?

Answer

I don't do "correct", but I've never heard anybody pronounce "lorry" to rhyme with "worry".

I believe that the difference is because of the lip-rounding of the /w/. Many words starting with "w", "wh", "sw", "qu" or "squ" have different vowel sounds from similar words with a different consonant.

Eg

• watch, what vs patch, thatch, pat, that


• war, warm, swarm vs far, farm


• worth, worm vs forth, form

(There are exceptions to this rule).

pronunciation - Why the extra syllable in words like these ending in -r and -l?

First-off, I'm not a native speaker.

I've noticed that a lot of words ending in -r and -l are pronounced as if they had an extra syllable. Especially when they have a -ee- or -ai- sound.

Consider

• reap



• real


• rear

The last two are pronounced ree-ul and ree-ur. Reap is a one-syllable word. Others aren't.

More examples: beep/beer, cake/care, laid/lair

Also, words with most other sounds preceding -r don't seem to follow the pattern. Car is not caa-ur. More is not mo-ur.

So my questions are:

1. Is the extra syllable just something I'm hearing, or is it actually pronounced?


2. If it is pronounced, why do only -r and -l follow the rule?

Answer

Yes, the extra syllable is there. Like most such changes, it happens in order to simplify the pronunciation. The English long/tense vowels are diphthongs -- they end in a glide -y or -w, so when a diphthong is followed by a -l or -r in the same syllable, you're left with syllables ending in -yl, -wl, -yr, -wr, which are hard to pronounce.

In my speech, which is a Midwestern variety of Standard English, what happens to simplify the pronunciation is that either the -l or -r becomes syllabic, so you get an extra syllable (as you've observed), or else the glide -y or -w drops out, and you're left with a simple vowel preceding the -l or -r instead of a diphthong.

Personally, I make the -l syllabic in your example "real": [ɹɪjl] ==> [ɹɪj.l̩], but in "rear", instead the glide is dropped: [ɹɪjɹ] ==> [ɹɪɹ]. However, I believe syllabifying the -r and leaving the glide is also common.

I also drop the glide, making the preceding vowel a monophthong in your examples "beer", "care", and "lair", but again, I think the two syllable pronunciations are common.

verbs - Is it correct to say "I think sth important"?

I know that I can say:

I consider this idea important.
I deem this film stupid.
I regard my health as important.

But can I say:

I think money/health/love/etc. important.

Or does it have to be:

I think money/health/love/etc. is important.

Or are both okay?

Answer

Here are a few specialized constructions of this sort:

We do not think it necessary to go. ("think it A" where "A" is an adjective)

Some people do not think it important to be thrifty. (same as above)

She did not wish him to think it possible. (same as above)

I think it fair that ... (same as above)

I thought it over carefully. ("think it over" is a fixed phrasal verb)

It seems that for "think", one cannot use it with two 'objects' as in "think X Y", and only in the idiomatic construction "think it X" where "it" can only refer to a concept or idea, not physical things.

dialects - "Bring" vs. "take" in American English

English (other than American English) has a clear differentiation between the two words. Both are about translocating something. In "bring" the something of somebody is moved to where the speaker is currently situated. "Take" is used to translocate something or somebody to a place that the speaker is not currently at.

You cannot “bring” your books to school if you are currently at home. You can only take them to school. Most of the time one can get the meaning from the context of the sentence but it can get very confusing when the other party is on the telephone and you do not know their location.

Why does American English not differentiate and when did it lose the differentiation?

Answer

Take and bring in the sense of translocation do not have an exact, complementary usage bound by the location of the speaker as proposed by the question. Oxford Dictionaries defines this sense of bring simply as “Take or go with (someone or something) to a place”. Merriam-Webster defines the location binding of take as “to another place”, whereas bring is bound “toward the place from which the action is being regarded”.

The location binding of bring is not necessarily defined relative to where the speaker is currently situated. For example, in a telephone conversation, since the speaker and the hearer are not in the same location, to bring could be to the speaker's location, or it could be to another location contextually relevant to the conversation—“the place from which the action is being regarded”. You can say “bring your books to school” whether you are at school or at home, because you don’t have to actually be at school to regard an action from there. In context, you are simply imagining the action happening from the perspective of school.

Others agree. John Lawler parallels come and go with bring and take:

To summarize, both come and go mean to move, but their use is determined by their deixis, i.e, the identity and location of the speaker and addressee...

For instance, in a situation where someone has knocked on your door and you shout reassurance to them to let them know you're on your way to the door from somewhere else,... what you say is I'm coming, because you're moving toward the place your addressee is at; in English you can take either the speaker's or the addressee's position as the terminus ad quem for come, as well as the terminus a quo for go.

It's easy to see that bring and take have these stigmata, too.

I'll bring it right back.   (to you)  
I'll take it away.          (from you)  
Take this away.             (from me)  

Bring the car.              (to me)  

With this kind of fluidity..., there are lots of choices available for bring and take. If you are speaking to someone outside your office community, who will not be accompanying you tomorrow, you would be more likely to say I'll take the sausage to work tomorrow; but you could still say I'll bring it to work, because, after all, you'll be there, and it'll count as moving towards you, the speaker.

The Grammarist notes about hypothetical situations

When one is using the future tense, either of these verbs are correct because nothing has actually happened yet. Usage is based on which point of view the speaker wants to emphasize, the moving of the object or the removing of it.

meaning - Phrase Question "Be preoccupied with"

One question on meaning of the phrase "be preoccupied with", I am not a native speaker and tried to find out the accurate meaning and nuance on the web search, but could not.
I have seen that a native speaker use this phrase when he excused for a delayed response to a client as in "Sorry for my late feedback, we are preoccupied with many things in the past few weeks". I understand that this means "I have been busy for many things to do". But there is no any results relating to what I expected. Would my understanding on the meaning be correct?