grammar - "Who" versus "whom" with multiple verbs

Which of these phrases is more correct?

The man who I know to be unhappy

The man whom I know to be unhappy

Is one of the verbs in the phrase more important, thus determining the noun case, or is something else happening with the particular combination of verbs? (The man whom I know is valid but the man to be unhappy isn't; the tense must be specified as in the man who is unhappy.)

Answer

In this instance, the pronoun "who" is the object of the verb "know". So you want to use objective case whom.

terminology - What is a small tent kind of shop on the side of the road called?

What is a small tent kind of shop on the side of the road called?

It can sell stuff like newspapers, snacks, coffee, and other small things. The only two things that come to mind are "a hot dog stand" and "street vendor" (though the latter is the person). So, I was wondering what other words for it may be?

In my language it's called a kiosk or simply a van, whether it's immovable or on the wheels, but from what I've googled, the pictures say it's not the same thing in English.

Here is what I want to know the name for:

Answer

pushcart

A type of cart with wheels that you manually push.

Dictionary.com says the term is primarily used in the US and in Canada

mainly US and Canadian a handcart, typically having two wheels and a canvas roof, used esp by street vendors. Also called: barrow

Wikipedia suggests that it is typically known as a food cart

A food cart is a mobile kitchen set up on the street to prepare and sell street food to passers-by. Food carts are often found in cities worldwide selling food of every kind.

Food carts come in two basic styles.

• One allows the vendor to sit or stand inside and serve food through a window.




• In the other, the vendor stands next to the cart, while all the room in the cart is used for storage and to house the cooking machinery, usually a grilling surface.



• Some food carts are towed by another vehicle, while some are pushed by a human or animal.

It can also be simply called a food stall with wheels, or a vendor cart

A hot dog cart

If the food cart is part of a vehicle, it is called a foodtruck

usage - Is "humble myself" idiomatically sound?

When a member posted a grammatically correct question today for scrutiny, I replied in 'comments,'

No mistake, but only bemused grammarians and humble myself!

Now I wonder: is "humble myself" a grammatically or idiomatically sound way to refer to oneself in an expression of personal modesty? My father says it all the time, as in

"the only Ph.D holder in this august audience is humble myself."

I could not find this expression on google search, which is dominated by the religious verb "to humble oneself/yourself/myself (before the Lord)" -- that is why I am asking this question here.

Two kind senior members replied in the same comments section:

@EnglishStudent: to me, "my humble self" sounds more natural. But in "the only Ph.D holder in this august audience is humble myself/my humble self" it looks like false modesty. – sumelic

@English Student: I've read "my humble self" in British literature, but it sounds very old-fashioned. I've never heard "humble myself" in the way you are using it (native speaker of US English here, mainly BosWash corridor) -- but I would not be confused if I heard it. – ab2

My father says it is an old-fashioned courtly British way of referring to oneself, whether with real or false modesty (and in the case of the Ph.D, some real sarcasm, because none of the other so-called luminaries at a particular conference had a doctorate, except for "humble himself!") -- he learnt his English in newly post-independent India, mainly by reading his medical textbooks and British literature.

It may well have become an archaic expression.

What I want to know is whether you experts at EL & U have heard it before, and can say if it is idiomatically sound?

Answer

Your father probably has a charming way with words, and although "humble myself" as he uses it is idiosyncratic, not idiomatic, he has not stretched English to its elastic limit -- to use the term from your bio. He should continue using this phrase, because it pleases him and no doubt his listeners.

idiosyncratic, from Dictionary.com:

pertaining to the nature of idiosyncrasy, or something peculiar to an
individual: The best minds are idiosyncratic and unpredictable as
they follow the course of scientific discovery

grammatical number - "occur" vs "occurs" with a singular collective noun

I wrote:

The ability to guarantee that a batch of writes occurs together.

One reviewer wanted to change that to occur.

I'm not sure if this is my idiom (Australian of U.K. origin) vs American or if I'm wrong.

I regarded batch of writes as a singular collective noun.

This English Club reference and others suggest using a plural verb with collective noun is less common in American English.

edit

To clarify, the sentence is in a book about programming computer databases and the full sentence is much longer, possibly too long!

Those three operations are all we need; everything else is sugar on top (or maybe something a bit more nutritious, like the ability to guarantee that a batch of writes occurs together).

Answer

You are correct. It should be occurs because you are talking about a batch. Now, a batch of what? That is something else.

grammatical number - Plural nouns in nominal compounds

I wonder whether there are rules or guidelines regarding plural nouns in nominal compounds. For example a compound university students list. If there are many lists and many universities is it grammatically correct to say universities students lists? Must all elements be in the plural form or can some be left in singular, even though the meaning is plural? I've seen an expression universities student lists; is it correct?

Answer

There is a cross-linguistic principle that words incorporated into compounds tend to lose any inflections (I remember an article in Language in the 80's - probably, from the index, one of the articles in Vol 62 No 1, but I haven't a copy to hand).

So in English, the norm is that nouns incorporated into compounds do not take a plural ending. Where they do, this is usually because the singular form would be ambiguous, often because there is a homophonous adjective. An example I recall is "solid modelling" - the company I worked for in the 80's used this phrase (in the UK, hence the spelling of "modelling"), but other vendors preferred "solids modeling", presumably because they thought that "solid modelling" might be a solid kind of modelling, as opposed to the modelling of solids.

What possessive forms are used for mutual 1st person ownership?

I want to talk to someone about the house that my wife and I own. Saying, for example, "My wife's and my house is awesome," sounds a bit funny to me. What's the best way to express this?

Clarification

I'm asking specifically about the grammar of multiple nouns in possessive form. I'm particularly curious if it's possible to do this with a first-person pronoun (me). I am capable of rephrasing this in other ways - my question is not how to express the idea, but about this particular grammatical construction, if it is even legal.

Answer

As far as I know, most style guides advise against this and say there is no acceptable solution without rephrasing the sentence, as most answers here have rightly done.

If the second possessor had been a noun, you could have stuck the possessive onto the second noun only. Note that this applies only if both possessors possess the same house together:

my sister and her husband's house

This is what the Chicago Manual of Style seems to suggest. I'd rephrase that too, though.

pronouns - How to tell if "which" refers to subject or object of main clause?

I have not been able to find a satisfactory answer regarding rules about this issue. What I have heard are lots of opinions:

Here is a picture of my house, which I like very much.

Here is a picture of my house that I like very much.

In the second example, that clearly refers to the subject of the main clause, since we could omit it and it would still mean the same thing:

Here is a picture of my house I like very much.

In the first example, is there any rule about what which refers to? There is some ambiguity otherwise.

Answer

There's ambiguity when you try to analyze a sentence devoid of any communicative context. But since language is "quite often" used for communication, other things serve to help disambiguate; such as perceived speaker's intention, the topic of the discourse, the intended function of the sentence. If they don't, you can always ask your interlocutor whether he is referring to the picture or to the house.