Language Overflow

8:34 PM

1

Q: "Will" or "going to" or both, which one is correct (or more natural) in these specific phrases?

Are the following phrases correct? If both "will" and "going to" could be used, which one is more natural? It's raining. Don't go out. You'll get wet / You are going to get wet To me both sound fine, but shouldn't "going to" be the more natural one?! Because it's 'something that is go...

I'm sure I'll want to review everything, both comments and answers, in another question again:

5

Q: Using "will" vs "be going to"

It is a very confusing concept, when to use "will" or "be going to". Both of them refer to the future but there is a slight difference. One of the differences that I have found and I was confused about is that: We use be going to: when there are definite signs that something is going to...

modal-verbs future-tense semi-modals

> "Look at the clouds! It is going to rain."

In any case, "Look at the clouds! It will rain." sounds rather wrong to my ear.

But "It's raining. Don't go out. You'll/'re going to get/be wet."

is fine.

Anonymous

8:49 PM

@DamkerngT. It'll rain is okay, but it sounds more certain to me. "It's not going to rain." "Oh, it'll rain, all right. Just look at those clouds!"

Anonymous

So if you use 'll without wanting to sound quite that certain, I think it would be natural sounding to add a modal adverb like probably: It'll probably rain later.

Anonymous

I don't know. It's going to rain later is certainly fine.

Anonymous

Now that sounds relatively certain to me, too!

Anonymous

I'm probably going to have to look up the difference between the two again :-)

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Interesting! "Oh, it'll rain, all right." like yours sounds perfectly okay.

Anonymous

8:52 PM

Between H&P 2002, Quirk et al 1985, and Biber et al 1999 there's quite a bit of info on that.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

\o @Snail

Anonymous

But it's just so nuanced and complicated!

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Guys do we want a [point-of-view] tag?

Anonymous

I don't have any confidence in my ability to describe the differences off the top of my head.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat nods

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. I'm not sure what it means.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

8:53 PM

@DamkerngT. There is one question tagged with it

Anonymous

One is obviously that will has only finite ("primary" in H&P parlance) forms, while be has non-finite ("secondary" in H&P parlance) forms, so we can say It could be going to rain or the like, but we can't do that with will.

Anonymous

What question is that?

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

2

Q: Tenses from a point of view

“He says she’ll not be here long.” (1) This phrase, uttered in my hearing yesterday, would have only conveyed the notion that she was about to be removed to Northumberland, to her own home. I should not have suspected that it meant she was dying; but I knew instantly now: it opened clea...

tense point-of-view

Anonymous

So it's about narrative point of view.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Maybe the difference is highly context-dependent and it depends on what's going on in the speaker's mind.

Anonymous

8:55 PM

It's a thing that can be usefully discussed, but we probably don't need a tag for it if we've only ever had one question about it.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Well, in many cases they're roughly interchangeable.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Removing it.

Damkerng T.

Probably quite similar to how a Thai chooses a pronoun for their interlocutor.

nods

Anonymous

Of course, will has modal meanings be going to does not.

Anonymous

I think will can sometimes sound more certain, or can have a sense of volition where be going to would not.

Anonymous

8:58 PM

@DamkerngT. See CGEL p.211

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Thanks! (I'm happy that I have CGEL now :-)

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Do tags with tag wikis get removed if ~~heated~~ tagged out from all the questions?

Anonymous

When you use the full form of will, as in your example It will rain, I think it's very likely you're doing so to stress will, which makes it sound very certain.

Anonymous

9

Q: What's an orphan wiki?

I created a tag wiki for the mixed-content tag on SO. Later I saw I had earned two rep points for orphan wiki. When I click on the link I get sent to a revisions page, but am not sure what I am supposed to do. What do I need to do, if anything?

discussion tag-wiki orphaned-wiki

Anonymous

Tag wikis prevent a tag from being deleted if they exist on at least one question.

Anonymous

9:01 PM

Otherwise, the tag wiki turns into one of those things :-)

Anonymous

Automatically deleted, I mean.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Oh good.

Anonymous

When ELL was started, bad tag wiki excerpts were made for almost every new tag.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@Snail what are pronouns like "whoever" and "whomever" called?

Anonymous

So I guess that prevented some tags from being automatically cleaned up.

Anonymous

9:07 PM

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. You aren't happy with pronoun? :-)

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@snailboat Well, I wanna tag a question about the two so I thought there may be another relevant tag.

Anonymous

Who and whom can be interrogative pronouns or relative pronouns, depending on how they're used.

Anonymous

As interrogative pronouns, they're personal (take animate reference), but as relative pronouns they can take inanimate reference as well.

Anonymous

They compound with -ever to produce indeterminate forms.

Anonymous

The difference between who and whom is one of case.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

9:11 PM

Yes I know.

Anonymous

Well, I just listed off all the relevant terminology I could think of.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

I ended up tagging it with [pronouns] and [relative-pronouns]. O_O

Anonymous

Can I see the question?

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Case!

Lemme see . . .

0

Q: whomsoever vs whosoever

One hour in the week was set aside by him for the reception of whomsoever chose to visit him. One hour in the week was set aside by him for the reception of whosoever chose to visit him. What is the correct fit among the two here? For me, any confusion between whomever and whoever boi...

pronouns relative-pronouns

Anonymous

Yes, in this question they're relative pronouns rather than interrogative pronouns.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

9:13 PM

I added [case].

Anonymous

The versions with so are very nearly archaic.

Nihilist_Frost

0

A: Past or present tense for a hypothetical situation

The tense choices here have nothing to do with likelihoods. You are asking which of the two things "have a spare copy" and "did another run" was true. This is an inclusive or, or that both can true at the same time too: you could simultaneously have a spare copy on hand, and already did another...

comments?

Damkerng T.

You had me at the first sentence.

I don't think people think in this manner: Please let me know if you 75% chance do another run.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ Usernew isn't pingable anywhere.

Anonymous

9:41 PM

Usernew should be pingable in Language Overflow.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

I can't ping him.

Anonymous

Why not?

Anonymous

It's only been 4 days since Usernew's last message in Language Overflow.

Anonymous

The ping should go through.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anonymous

9:43 PM

Do you mean that you can't tab-complete Usernew's name?

Anonymous

Because that's not the same thing.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@Usernew please stop retagging questions for a few days.

@snailboat Yes.

Oh?

Anonymous

In any case, I can tab-complete Usernew's name.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

I can't, and this is due to a bug in Chrome apparently.

Anonymous

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Do me a favor and reply to this old message.

Anonymous

9:52 PM

8

A: Does ping work in chat with no autocompletion?

You can sometimes ping a user even if their name isn't autocompleted, and conversely sometimes the name of unpingable users is completed. This is because your browser decides whether to autocomplete, whereas the server decides whether the @user mention generates a ping, and they base their decisi...

Anonymous

That information is old, though, so it might be the usual Meta.SE documentation rot.

Anonymous

How did you determine that not being able to tab-complete a name was related to a Chrome bug?

Araucaria

10:36 PM

A question for you guys, which I posted on the dark side:

2

Q: You're both of us' child / You're both of our child / You're both of ours child - Why are these all ungrammatical?

There was an interesting question on our sister site ELL: Is “Both of our child” valid? Suppose a kid asks their mother "Am I your child or Dad's child?": Why are the alternatives in the title grammatically wrong? *You're both of us' child *You're both of our child *You're both of ours c...

determiners saxon-genitive possessive-pronouns

Precipitated by this question over here:

2

Q: Is "Both of our child" valid?

Child: I am Papa's child. I am Mama's child. Mama: Oh, so you are both of our child? Is Mama's reply correct? I want to use "both of" in my reply. How should I form the sentence if the above sentence is wrong?

sentence-construction sentence-structure

Damkerng T.

10:55 PM

Related: Is it possible to understand Pay me your half of the month's due as [ Pay me your [ half of the month ]'s due ], instead of [ Pay me your half of [ the month's due ] ]?

How about Ten of the book's essays are written by or with other authors? Can we read it as "essays written in ten of the books" as opposed to "ten essays written in the books"?

Jul 8 '15 at 12:29, by Damkerng T.

Mostly we go by familiarity and analogy.

(Just want to remind myself)

After reading about be going vs. will (CGEL, p. 211), I think if we want to have a machine that can understand natural languages (particularly, English), probabilistic modes could be the best choices to deal with some aspects (like this one, along with prepositions and other things).

0

A: 'recently' with present perfect and past

Generally speaking, you can use the adverb "recently" in both the past simple and the present perfect, without any difference in meaning. The use of this adverb in the past is more common in AE while in the present perfect is more common in BE. However, if you look at these the senses minutely, t...

> For example, I have purchased that CD recently indicates that I own or have that CD now.

Hmm...

Your book is wrong. You're right; whosoever is the subject of chose, and that means it can't be whomsoever. In general, I would recommend that no one ever use the word whomsoever at all; nor even the word whom. They're not useful and confuse even native speakers. Who can work in any situation; whom is never required. — John Lawler Oct 11 '15 at 20:51

Hmm... I agree with the latter part.

> To bring ruin on whomsoever hath shown kindness to me.

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