grammaticality - Using "An" and "A" in a sentence

I'm trying to understand this simple concept.

As far as I understood it, back to the days when I was a student, "an" should be used only before vowel words, that is, only before the following words: "a","i","o","u".

Yesterday my sister asked me a question related to this subject and I wasn't sure if my answer was correct because there are so much controversial sources explaining this subject.

The original question she asked me was which one of the following is the correct form to be used in a sentence:

An history

Or

A history

I told her that she should use "a history" only because 'h' isn't a vowel word. Is it correct?

Thank you very much

Answer

Words of one or two syllables beginning with ‘h’ are normally preceded by ‘a’. They include ‘hotel’, ‘hostel’, ‘host’, ‘hearty’, ‘hero’ and ‘hardy’. (Some speakers may say ‘an hotel’, because ‘hotel’ is also a French word, in which the ‘h’ is not aspirated.)

Words of three or more syllables beginning with ‘h’ in which the first syllable is stressed are also preceded by ‘a’. They include ‘history’, ‘herbalist’, ‘heightening’ and ‘helicopter’.

Words of three or more syllables beginning with ‘h’ in which the second syllable is stressed give rise to some uncertainty. They include ‘historian’, ‘historical, ‘hiatus’ and ‘Hibernian’. I and some other speakers of British English precede them with ‘an’, but others don’t.

grammaticality - If I were to say I was a former student of somebody, would I add an apostrophe s after their name?

If I were to say that I was a former student of a particular person (for this purpose let's pretend his/her name is Eve), would I add an apostrophe s to the name because I would be referring to them as being one of their students? In other words, would I say:

1. "I'm a former student of Eve."


2. "I'm a former student of Eve's."

possessives - Why use apostrophe-s to denote possession when using 'of'

Think of the simple phrase "Bill's friend".

If you were going to turn this around using the preposition 'of' would you say:

• A friend of Bill's
  or



• A friend of Bill

It appears to me that, in the US anyway, people always say "A friend of Bill's".

Even though I'm a native American English speaker, this just sounds weird to me. It seems to create a 'double possessive' (a term I just invented). I always want to respond: "A friend of Bill's what?" A friend of Bill's aunt?

So what's at work here, and do British English speakers also do this?

Answer

As @FX_ points out, it’s called a double genitive or double possessive.

In this example, it’s not compulsory: both a friend of Bill’s and a friend of Bill are correct, although the first is probably more common. (Usage data, anyone?)

If Bill were replaced by a pronoun, however (poor Bill!), the double genitive would be required: a friend of mine is correct, but not a friend of me. (Similarly with yours vs. you, his vs. he, etc.)

Also, sometimes, this is needed to avoid ambiguity between the possessive and other uses of of: for instance, a picture of Bill’s means that he owns the picture, whereas a picture of Bill means he’s portrayed in it.

word usage - What preposition should one use with "redundant"?

I realize it's usually better to just say "A and B are redundant". But, I've also seen

• A is redundant with B


• ... to B


• ... of B

all with basically the same intended meaning. Are any of these more (or less) correct?

Answer

The correct idiom is:

A is redundant with B.

Google hit counts confirm that "redundant with" is by far the preferred usage:

• "redundant with" — 310,000 results


• "redundant of" — 45,900 results

"Redundant to" actually shows more results that "redundant with", but the vast majority of those are actually "redundant" followed by an infinitive, eg. "It is redundant to specify both height and width."

grammar - A colon or a comma in alternative questions

Which punctuation mark should be used before the second part of the alternative question? Should it be a colon or a comma?

Eg:
What do you like best: pears or apples? or
What do you like best, pears or apples?

Which of these two question has the correct punctuation?

All gramma manuals I looked through say nothing about using a colon in alternative questions.

Thanks in advance, Vic.

grammaticality - Can “another” be used with plural nouns provided periods or measurements don’t count?

Merriam-Webster says about another the following:

being one more in addition to one or more of the same kind
—http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/another

However, I come across such sentences as: “I am giving another three books away”, “give me another 2 flowers”. I think it’s fine to say “give me another twenty minutes” as it is a period of time, but I wonder about “another two books/flowers”. Is it grammatically correct? Another thing which seems to be suspicious is that I can’t find such examples in dictionaries.

grammatical number - Is the singular form of "desiderata" a disused word?

I was interested in the following paragraph which appeared in an article titled “A New Gauge to See What’s Beyond Happiness" by John Tierney in The New York Times (May 16, 2011).

“They wanted to win for its own sake, even if it brought no positive
emotion,” says Dr. Seligman, a professor of psychology at the
University of Pennsylvania. “They were like hedge fund managers who
just want to accumulate money and toys for their own sake. Watching
them play, seeing them cheat, it kept hitting me that accomplishment
is a human desiderata in itself.” [emphasize mine]

Can someone clarify if the fragment "a human desiderata" is "simply" ungrammatical, as I think it is, or if the problem consist in the fact that the singular form of "desiderata", that is desideratum, is a disused word?

Is it possible to argue the latter hypothesis from the nGram below?

---

Oxford
Dictionaries - "desideratum: noun (plural desiderata)"