conditionals - "If you be my love” vs. ”If you were my {love}"

I was wondering how somebody in the 19th century would have said or written

1. If you are/were my girl/boyfriend, you must never cheat on me

I thought it might be something like this

2. If you be my love, you shall never be untrue

Halt! Before anyone objects and says that "shall" is reserved for the first person singular and plural, I did check and discovered this Wikipedia entry for Shall and will

Whether or not the above-mentioned prescriptive rule (shall for the unmarked future in the first person) is adhered to, there are certain meanings in which either will or shall tends to be used rather than the other.[…]. However, there are also cases in which the meaning being expressed combines plain futurity with some additional implication; these can be referred to as "coloured" uses of the future markers.

Thus shall may be used (particularly in the second and third persons) to imply a command, promise or threat made by the speaker (i.e. that the future event denoted represents the will of the speaker rather than that of the subject). For example:

• You shall regret it before long. (speaker's threat)


• You shall not pass! (speaker's command)


• You shall go to the ball. (speaker's promise)

Questions

1. Is my 19th-century version realistic? Did I miss out on something?





2. What type of conditional is sentence number 2 called?

Answer

Your first sentence could not be in the 19th c. as it includes words and expressions that were not used then. Such as 'girlfriend' and 'cheat on'.

I looked up 19th c. songs, because I thought they'd be a good source of 19th c. popular language. And also because I'm a songwriter of very old songs, and I love them!

Well 'girlfriend' wouldn't be there - that's a modern word from c. 1922. Nor would 'sugar' be an option - that's from the 30's.
19th c. versions might be 'mistress' - which just meant 'young woman', 'master' which meant 'man or young man'. Or 'my love' or 'darling'. Or 'sweetheart'. Or 'my dear'. 'Wife', or 'maiden' meaning 'young girl' could be there as well.

Sweetheart:
https://www.sheetmusicwarehouse.co.uk/19th-century-songs-m/my-sweetheart-when-a-boy-song-in-the-key-of-e-flat-major-for-higher-voice/

'Cheat on me' wouldn't be there, either, in the sense of 'cheating in love', as that's from the 1930s.
'False': The 19th c way of saying that might be that you, or your love was 'false'.

Origin of 'Cheat in love': https://psmag.com/social-justice/cheaters-history-cheating-68591

In the 19th c. to convey 'ever', you'd simply use the archaic 'ere'
It means '(if) ever you were'. So it implies possibility, eg:

Ere you are my love, you must ne'er be untrue

Actually there is 'ere' - which means 'before' - 'ere you were my love' which is archaic
Then there is "e'er" which means 'ever'
But 'ere' seems more natural to me, here.

Ere: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/ere

In the 19th c. 'never' is often contracted, written "ne'er" with an apostrope for the missing 'v'. This is common in songs. It sounds like 'air' as in 'ne'er do well' which is probably familiar to you. You can also find 'nairy' in old songs, which means 'never', or 'not any' as well. 'Nairy a day goes by when I don't think of you'.

Nairy: https://www.etymonline.com/word/never
Poetic contraction (various): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetic_contraction

So to return to your question, here are some 19th c. examples of how you might say it:

• 'Ere you are my darling, you must nairy be untrue'


• 'Ere you are my love, you'll ne'er be false to me'


• 'If you be my love, you shall ne'er be untrue'



• 'If you be my dear, you'll ne'er be false to me'

grammar - What is the predicate in "Is he happy?"

In most theories of grammar, sentences can be broken into smaller chunks called phrases and these phrases can be broken into smaller chunks, smaller phrases still. So in the sentence:

• He is happy.

We see two phrases, a noun phrase he functioning as Subject, and a verb phrase is happy functioning as Predicate:

• [He] [is happy]

I am wondering, however, what the verb phrase/predicate is in the sentence:

• Is he happy?

This sentence does not divide easily into two straightforward chunks.

The plethora of references regarding syntactic (as opposed to semantic) Predicates, and the enormous online literature on verb phrases (VP's) seems to ignore cases where the auxiliary verb has been moved to a position before the Subject.

This is the situation in the example above. In such sentences, what is the structure of the verb phrase, and is the auxiliary verb still part of the verb phrase?

Is there a standard grammar of English which allows for discontinuous verb phrase Predicates?

word choice - "boilinghot" vs "boiling-hot" vs "boiling hot"

As the title indicates, these three forms of words/phrases can be quite confusing to me sometimes. When should they be written as one word ("boilinghot"), when should they be written in two words ("boiling hot"), and when should they be written as a hyphenated compound ("boiling-hot")? Does it make any difference which is used? There are other terms like this, such as blackboard/black board/black-board; swingman/swing man/swing-man etc.

Answer

In the first place, I've never seen boilinghot used.

As for the other two, there are different times for different uses. Only use the hyphen when it is a compound adjective

Let's speak of why the sea is boiling hot.

Let's speak of the boiling-hot sea.

@drm65 illustrates how Google NGrams may be misapplied. Searching for a hyphenated expression will cause it to flat-line unless you put a space between the hyphen and the words: e.g. "boiling hot,boiling - hot"

So while boiling hot appears to be used more often than boiling-hot, the latter's representation is not zero.

meaning - Do listeners understand different adjective orders?

I found What is the rule for adjective order?,
but I keep wondering if listeners actually understand what I mean when I don't follow that order. For example, if I say, "a lovely long white coat," I may change it to "a long white lovely coat," or "a lovely white long coat."

They both sound the same to me.

differences - Usage of " 's " in is Franco a friend of Jamie's?

What is the difference between "is Franco a friend of Jamie's?" and "is Franco a friend of Jamie?"?
Are both correct?
What is more appropriate?

grammar - As well As, coordinating or subordinating conjunction

I have a serious problem with "As well As " !
is it a coordinating conjunction or subordinating conjunction?
I have surfed the Net and look it up in many books and dictionary but unfortunately No straight answers !
some say coordinating some say subordinating, and some say it doesn't have the meaning of "And" at all, but some say it Does mean "And" !!!

I'll be glad if somebody can give me a complete answer

Best Wishes
Mohsen

phrases - "more of a"or "too much of a" in a plural sense

Using "more of a" and "too much of a" is quite common, but when it comes to pluralizing these expressions, things become more complicated. I've never seen someone use these with a plural subject – I just see people rephrasing:

"He is too much of an idiot to understand."

"They are too stupid to understand."

Something I have always wondered about is whether you can pluralize those two expressions, something like "They are too much of ... ". But I cannot think of any way it would be used in the plural.

Answer

I believe there are two things at play here. One is the fact that "too much of an" is dependent on a singular-typed characteristic, so it sounds clunky when converted directly to plural. The other is whether the phrase type is an established convention or not.

Consider these examples:

He is too much of an idiot to understand.
They are too much of idiots to understand.

While the above transmutation looks like it would fit, the problem is that the construction sounds unnatural, however could work.

The next revision suffers from something of the same:

He is too much of an idiot to understand.
They are too much of an idiot to understand.

This suffers from a singular-plural disagreement and sounds unnatural to the ear. Part of the issue is that "an idiot" applies to one person.

To resolve these two issues, some changes need to be made. In order to maintain continuity, these kinds of changes can be introduced, to allow singular-singular agreement.

He is too much of an idiot to understand.
They are (all) too much of an idiot to understand. (revision 1)
They (each) are too much of an idiot to understand. (revision 2)

Wherever the singular and the plural can both receive a singular-typed adjective, the construction tends to stay the same:

He is too much of an inconvenience for us at the moment.
They are too much of an inconvenience for us at the moment.
He is too much of a liability to the company now.
They are too much of a liability to the company now.

The most important reason why this works is because the singular-typed adjective here tends to be an abstract idea rather than a word that describes an individual that is countable.