sentence - "In spite of" vs "other than."

I would like to know which sentence flows better. This one:

I was a taken aback by Limei's little confession. In spite of her
impulsive personality, she seemed like a normal girl, leading a normal
life. Could she be more exceptional than I thought?

or this one:

I was a taken aback by Limei's little confession. Other than her
impulsive personality, she seemed like a normal girl, leading a normal
life. Could she be more exceptional than I thought?

Suddenly, I'm unsure which one to use.

What I want it to say is that, except for her impulsiveness, Limei seems like a normal person.

Answer

Considering what you want to say, other than is perfect. You can also say, "Besides her impulsive personality.."

In spite of her impulsive personality means she hardly behaves as a normal girl, which has taken you aback. Whereas, Other than her impulsive personality means she is usually both impulsive and humble in her way of living.

slang - The math problem is too difficult for `X` to work out

There are four options: everybody, somebody, anybody and nobody.
Which one should be used in X place ?

Answer

As FF has pointed out, only everybody and anybody are acceptable
(everyone and anyone also work). They work, and the others don't, for the same reasons:

1. Too is a Negative -- too Adj to VP means 'so Adj that Not VP';
   therefore NPIs like anyone work within its scope,
   and so anybody is used here, instead of somebody.

   
   
   
   

   That's also why nobody is ungrammatical here, because that would mean
   *The math problem is so difficult that nobody can't work it out.
   which is ungrammatical (that's what the "*" means).




2. Everybody, somebody, and anybody are all Quantifiers -- logically, ∀ and ∃.
   By DeMorgan's Laws, propositions with both a negative and a quantifier are ambiguous.

   
   
   

   
   

   Note the opposite orders of not (logically ¬),
   compared to some/any (∃) and every (∀) below.

   
   

   
   
   

   I.e, Everybody doesn't like it
   can mean
   either
   It is true that there is somebody who does not like it.
   ¬(∀x) φ(x) ≡ (∃x) ¬φ(x)
   or
   It's not true that there is somebody who likes it.
   ¬(∃x) φ(x) ≡ ∀(x) ¬φ(x)

So the two choices that are grammatical do not mean the same thing.

• The test is too difficult for everybody to figure out means
  'The test is so difficult that there are some people who can not figure it out'


• The test is too difficult for anybody to figure out means
  'The test is so difficult that there are no people who can figure it out'

grammar - How to parse this sentence (...because ...)

I have confusion on parsing of following sentence...

"There is no reason to be depressed or give up simply because you will make a few wrong choices."

The sentence was captured from an article and the context are as below.

5. The fact that failure will happen is not an excuse for expecting to fail

There is no reason to be depressed or give up simply because you will make a few wrong choices. Even more crucial, you must try your best every time because it is the effort and the practice that drives the learning process. They are essential, even if you fail.

Should I parse this sentence as "[There is no reason] [to be depressed or give up simply because you will make a few wrong choices]." or as "[There is no reason to be depressed or give up simply] [because you will make a few wrong choices]."

Thanks for your help ...

Help + Noun + Gerund or Infinitive

1. Help my sister peel oranges.


2. Help my sister to peel oranges.


3. Help my sister peeling oranges.


4. Help my sister with peeling oranges.

Which of the above is/are correct, and why are the others incorrect?

grammatical number - Can "what kind" be plural?

Is it correct to say, "What kind of patents are being issued in these sophisticated times?" It seems like it should be What kind of patents is being issued..., but that sounds wrong. What kind of patent is being issued... is correct and sounds right, but loses a little bit of the original meaning.

Is there something magic about what kind that allows it to be plural, or do people just misuse it a lot?

Answer

Is kind of patents ever correct?

It’s a bit informal. Kind of (plural noun) is surprisingly uncommon in formal writing, fairly uncommon even in journalism, but common in speech and fiction:

She had the kind of eyes that followed you around the room. I’d thought that happened only with paintings… (fiction)

But I don't think it faces the kind of problems, say, a Los Angeles does. (spoken)

Those kind of games tend to be tiebreakers with teams that are alike. (spoken)

Does kind of patents take a singular or plural verb?

Plural, almost always. This is like how a lot of people is plural. No one says A lot of people is upset about it. So it’s what kind of patents are, not is.

Is this the kind of thing where whatever option I choose, it’s going to sound wrong to someone?

Yes.

Then is it best to just recast the sentence entirely?

That’s up to you. I probably would, unless the context was informal.

single word requests - Hypernym for comparisons (less than / greater than)

Question says it all, I'm looking for a Hypernym that groups ">" and "<" and perhaps similar logical comparators (">=") into a word. I'm not sure if "logical comparator" is even a valid term, and using it doesn't feel great either.

Answer

These are known as relational operators.

In computer science, a relational operator is a programming language construct or operator that tests or defines some kind of relation between two entities. These include numerical equality (e.g., 5 = 5) and inequalities (e.g., 4 ≥ 3).

In programming languages that include a distinct boolean data type in their type system, like Pascal, Ada, or Java, these operators usually evaluate to true or false, depending on if the conditional relationship between the two operands holds or not. In languages such as C, relational operators return the integers 0 or 1, where 0 stands for false and any non-zero value stands for true.

An expression created using a relational operator forms what is termed a relational expression or a condition. Relational operators can be seen as special cases of logical predicates.

Wikipedia: Relational operator

grammatical number - "A myriad of emotions 'greet/greets' me"

Here, "myriad" is a noun, and I suppose "myriad of emotions" is a prepositional phrase, so presumably the verb must agree with "myriad"?