English Language Learners

Good afternoon@DamkerngT.!

I think i'm hurting is uncorrect

Allo

7:57 AM

@Hanaa In English, the word is incorrect.

Yes

How do you feel today?

I'm hurting may sound a bit funny, but I think it works (as one of the answers explains).

@Hanaa Thanks to the vinegar (and you!), I have no fever!

Just a little muscle pain here and there.

Great

It is against fever too

Yes

I'm chatting from another machine.

This one works fine, but it's really slow.

So you migrated

Why is it slow

8:01 AM

Normally while reading interview I have noticed that question is mention asQ and answer is A but while in book "day of jackal" writer has mention Q and R

The CPU is not to be blamed for; this PC has no graphic accelerator card.

@Freddy Question and Reply?

Ah

Okay

Question and respinse@Freddy

So it's kind of lagging a bit, but it works okay.

8:03 AM

Might be possible

(Not very great for this chat room, though.)

Response

When will u buy a motherboard?

I think I'm going to buy it today.

Yes

now a days I use tablet for chat rooms

8:05 AM

Online, I mean. So I will get it next week, I suppose.

Yes

@Freddy What tablet? Windows 8.1?

Nope it is android

Ahh... Android is good, too.

Its good because of app called chatSEy

8:07 AM

Do you have a real keyboard or do you use its on-screen keyboard?

@Freddy Eh, chatSEy works with SE chat too?

Yes

I use on screen keyboard

Oh, I just noticed the capital SE. Looks like it was designed specifically for SE chat.

BTW, if you want to buy stuff online from China, buy anything except SD cards (micro and standard alike).

It will save you a lot of headaches.

I think, that have cause you great headache!

That's right!

90% of my dispute history is only for these SD cards!

Need to go, bye

8:14 AM

Later!

Bye

Q: "I made it" vs. "I've made it"

~~See you later!~~ Oh, sorry! That was for Freddy!

2

If I want to say that I was able to accomplish something, when should I say "I made it", and when should I say "I've made it"? What's the difference between the two forms? Please give me a long answer to help me understand this correctly.

meaning tense present-perfect past-simple

Oh, an interesting question!

I wonder if it's different in AmE and in BrE. I guess so.

No it does not have relation to Am andBr english

I wish all the answerers would tell us about their dialects.

@Hanaa Hmm?

I made it means i accomplished it in the past

8:22 AM

Literally, yes.

(I would avoid using accomplish there, but I think it's okay.)

I have made it means i have accomplished it now

Ah, I think that's incorrect.

It has a relation to the present

Hmm... Technically, it's correct, but I wonder if you really used it in that sense.

How?

8:24 AM

Tell me more about your idea "It has a relation to the present".

I have made is not an action finished in the past

Ah, you get it wrong indeed.

Why?

Okay, maybe some examples can help.

He asked about the difference

8:27 AM

(Please forgive my delay. This PC is very lagging.)

No problem

I understand

But why am i wrong?

> John (to Ted): I told Jane that you are with Cathy this morning. Sorry, pal. I didn't really want to, but I had to to do it. I did it for you.
Ted: You've done it!

Yed

Yes

I'm back at my old PC again. The another PC just crashed!

So, you see. The action could've been finished for the present perfect.

Sorry fr u

No never

8:34 AM

It's okay. That was my first time on that machine. I expected some problems.

@Hanaa This is one of pitfalls non-native speakers usually have.

(Or fall into, to be more idiomatic.)

From where have u brought that example?

I know that you may not believe me (for a very simple reason: I'm a non-native speaker, too).

@Hanaa I wrote that up myself. Does that change anything?

(I guess you would think, "Yeah, it changes everything!", but you're too polite to say that to me. :-)

What u have written can not become a rule

Hhhhh u r funny

I think they (English linguists) made it a rule.

Though most native speakers would simply use it.

(No rules is my #1 rule in language learning.)

Maybe

But it is not accepted in the academic field

8:39 AM

About they've made it a rule, I think they didn't really try to make it as some kind of rule. It's more like it's a discovery based on observations.

@Hanaa What is unacceptable?

(BTW, if you asked me, academic writing is relatively simple when it comes to tenses.)

To use present perfect fr an action finished in the past

Tenses in journalism and legalese will be much more complicated.

Ahuh

@Hanaa It's because academic writing, simple as it is, does not usually involved in experience sharing.

We don't write about our personal experiences very often in academic writing.

Most of the time, it will be about stating facts and results of studies.

Yes

8:44 AM

Oh, I formed a seriously ungrammatical sentence over there. It's a clash of "does not" and "get involved".

But novels

Ah, novels are different.

Novels are relatively close to real speech, compared to other kinds of writing.

Yes

Have you ever read the page about English perfect by StoneyB on ELL meta?

Hmm... Maybe it's on the main site, not on the meta site.

I got two years studying tenses

From oxford grammar book

8:47 AM

Perhaps you will need more. (Sorry :P)

Books aren't really good for learning a language deeply.

Maybe:b

Q: Canonical Post #2: What is the perfect, and how should I use it?

31

This is a Canonical Post, intended as a reference and resource for both Questioners and Answerers. The English “perfect” is deeply puzzling for learners. Nearly one Question in every twenty here asks about perfect constructions, and every Answer seems to raise new Questions. Even very advanced...

perfect-constructions canonical-post

> Michaelis has written several papers about tense and aspect.

That's his sentence. Now you can be sure that native speakers really use it like I said.

Ah good

> 3. The existential or experiential perfect indicates the existence of past events: it asserts that at least one instance of the eventuality named by VERB occurs prior to Reference Time.

> Michaelis has written several papers about tense and aspect.

I know that :D

8:52 AM

See, I guess you know that. We all kind of know that. But when we try to think of those rules in the books we've read (or studied from), we couldn't make sense of it, or we could get bogged down with a restrictive (and usually incorrect) conclusion.

Any way i am not an overuser of grammar

nods -- Good for you!

I focus on the meaning more than the grammatical correctness

For me, meaning always comes first. However, tenses are also related to meanings.

Yes

8:54 AM

BRB

Ok see u

I'm back. Ah, see you!

I replied late :D

Q: I haven`t learned it for one year VS I haven`t learned it in a year

Oh! I misunderstood you!

:D

4

there~ I hope you could help me with these^^ I haven`t learned it for one year. I haven`t learned it in a year. What is the differece?? I haven`t practiced playing basketball for one year. I haven`t practiced playing basketball in a year. What is the differece?? Actually, ...

grammar tense

Hmm... this is getting even more complicated.

But be careful, your examples with learned aren't quite the same. It's fortunate you added your original sentence to the question. learned is different because it describes a process leading to a culminating point. So saying you haven't learned it in a year is not quite semantically correct- perhaps I haven't studied it for a year would be better. And I haven't learned it in a year means that after spending a year trying to learn it, you still were not successful. But this is peculiar to learn and doesn't apply to the other verbs on your question. — Jim 18 hours ago

Whatever Jim said.

Yeah

9:01 AM

Though it's fair that learners shouldn't have to learn about aktionsart (telic, atelic, and so on), it could be useful if they're aware of such concepts.

(Not the jargon, the concepts)

Yes

I'm going to prepare date past

Gotta go

See you! And have some fun (whatever "date past" is)!

Bye and have a nice day

Learn seems to be tricky.

I think it's different for different speakers.

CopperKettle

@DamkerngT. Glad you're okay!

9:06 AM

Is learned a process or an accomplishment? or both?

@CopperKettle Yay! Thanks!

CopperKettle

I'm just dropping in to say I'm glad you're fine, @DamkerngT.! (0:

Thank you very much!

I'm happy I'm okay.

CopperKettle

@Hanaa Note that there's a difference between the full forms "I've got to go" (I have an obligation) and "I got to go" (I had an opportunity to go in the past, and I used it)

@DamkerngT. Then I'm off to do some work (0:

Bye!

Have a nice day! Catch you later!

Anonymous

10:41 AM

@DamkerngT. I think learn is typically durative and telic

Anonymous

In some special contexts it can be an achievement, like if you're playing a video game and your character learns a new skill (which may be an instantaneous change of state, taking no time whatsoever)

Anonymous

@Hanaa I'm hurting is something native speakers say.

Anonymous

@Hanaa "I've been to New York." "Oh, really? When?" "Two years ago." Was the going not an action completed in the past?

Anonymous

Of course, we're using the present tense, and this sentence focuses on the present state (of having this completed event in the past)

Anonymous

But the only relevant action is in the past and complete.

10:48 AM

Hi @snailboat ^_^

Anonymous

Hello!

How are you?

Anonymous

Sleepy.

Anonymous

It's almost 3 A.M. here!

Where?

Anonymous

10:49 AM

California.

You stayed up

It is too late

Anonymous

No, I slept, but I woke up in the middle of the night

Anonymous

I'll go back to sleep soon :-)

Don't you work in the morning?

Anonymous

Well, that aside, it's a weekend.

10:50 AM

ahaaa

My name is mentioned

Anonymous

I was responding to old messages

i will check there

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I'm looking at a (not-so-)random sample of academic writing, and the tenses look like this: present, present, present, present, present, present, present, present, present, present, present, present, present, present, present, present, …

Anonymous

So I'm inclined to agree! :-)

Ahuh

Thank you for the inforrmation@CopperKettle

Thank you @snailboat

Anonymous

10:56 AM

@DamkerngT. I had that information in my ELL profile for a long time, but I guess it got overwritten when I updated my profile and synchronized it everywhere

Anonymous

I'm a native speaker of American English. I grew up near Chicago, so my native dialect is a type of Inland Northern American English, but I moved to California as a teenager, and my speech is something of a mix of the two now.

Anonymous

I should put it back in my profile, I suppose.

Anonymous

Okay, I did that.

@DamkerngT. It is date past is วันที่วาง

made of dates and used in traditional algerian sweets

I will go @snailboat

Sleep well

Bye

3:25 PM

@Hanaa Ahh.. I guess you meant paste or pastry.

BTW, that Thai translation is quite funny. It doesn't make any sense at all. (It roughly means a day that places. Place what, I don't know.)

@snailboat Hooray!

@snailboat Yay! Thanks for the verification! It's what I've observed for a while.

Anonymous

I only looked at one paper

Anonymous

I couldn't guess what past meant, but your guesses sound quite plausible!

Anonymous

I could only think "date past" meant something like "a day before today"

Anonymous

Do you read a lot of academic papers? I mostly only read linguistics papers

Anonymous

Mostly ← autocorrect has failed me!

3:50 PM

Hi @DamkerngT.

Hello @snailboat

Anonymous

Hello!

How r u doing?

Anonymous

It's too early yet for me to be able to answer that question. I need caffeine. :-)

he he....good morning :)

Anonymous

4:30 PM

I made green tea!

I was about to ask you a question on language :)

Anonymous

I'm here!

Anonymous

I know some stuff! I don't know other stuff, though.

Q: Go a holiday vs Go on a holiday

This question

1

I know we can go on a holiday, and I think it is British. But does "Go a holiday" exist? If so, how is it used? Can it be used in all tenses? I have come across the following sentence, though, I am not sure if it is just a typo: Have you ever gone a holiday that mixed business and pleasure? ...

prepositions phrasal-verbs

In news I have seen "go a holiday", but doesn't it wrong?

Anonymous

It definitely sounds wrong to my ear

Anonymous

4:33 PM

I don't think it sounds like American English

Anonymous

I wouldn't have thought it was British English either, but . . .

Anonymous

My knowledge of other varieties of English is limited!

Anonymous

Lessee.

Anonymous

There are zero results in GloWbE for [go] a holiday

Anonymous

(When you put a word in brackets like that, it means "match all the forms of this word", like went and go and goes, etc.)

Anonymous

4:35 PM

So it didn't find any matches in any region.

Anonymous

My guess is it's just a typo.

Even dictionaries say so...but problem is in a few news websites I have found such usage :(

like this

dailyrecord.co.uk/authors/the-judge/…

Anonymous

You can find lots of examples of nonstandard usage if you look.

Anonymous

Let's take a look …

Anonymous

Maybe it's grammatical in some dialect or another

4:38 PM

I see...it might possible...thanks :)

Anonymous

It could be a reanalysis of "go on holiday"

Anonymous

@Man_From_India Sure, it might be possible. English has a lot of variation from place to place.

what does reanalysis mean?

Anonymous

But I can't find this construction in even corpora that contain a fair bit of nonstandard usage like GloWbE, so my guess is it's not standard and not particularly common

Anonymous

@Man_From_India We have a word: another

Anonymous

4:40 PM

As you probably know, this word comes from an + other

Anonymous

However!

Anonymous

People often say "A whole nother"

Anonymous

As though it's: a + nother

Anonymous

These people have reanalyzed the word

ohh

Anonymous

4:41 PM

In their minds, it's made of different pieces than what it was historically actually made from.

Anonymous

There's lots of examples of reanalysis.

Anonymous

For example, "You've got another think coming!"

Anonymous

People now often write "You've got another thing coming!"

Anonymous

The two are practically indistinguishable in speech

Anonymous

Here's another example:

Anonymous

4:42 PM

We used to have a word, napron

Anonymous

And people would say the phrase: a napron

Anonymous

Over time, it became an apron instead!

Anonymous

And now we only have the word apron :-)

wow :)

it's really informative...

Anonymous

A lot of nonstandard reanalysis goes on all the time.

Anonymous

4:47 PM

Like, for example, some people hear "first of all" and think it's "firstable"

Anonymous

And so they think that it's a function of the suffix -able

Q: How to review without being perceived as picking on people

Ohh so they mainly come from the way people speak...and then it enters into their dialect.

Anonymous

Yeah, that sort of thing happens in speech

Anonymous

It's much harder to mix up "of all" with "-able" if you learned them in writing!

Anonymous

5:02 PM

0

So, after it was mentioned that the moderation duties have grown exponentially, I have been trying to spend more time reviewing than answering. This has led a couple of contributors to feel like I'm picking on them because I'm doing my reviews at the same time that they are posting a lot, and I'm...

discussion moderation

@snailboat I subscribe to IEEE, ASA, and Science. I think most of the articles are academic.

BTW I'm migrating to a new PC, which seems to be not truly capable of handling all my tabs. Migrating stuff is no fun.

@Man_From_India Hi!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. A-ha!

Anonymous

I used to have personal subscriptions to certain journals that I ended up not reading, and I realized I was spending too much money on something I wasn't reading …

I think it's pretty much the same here.

However, I'm very good at skimming. :D

I think the subscriptions paid off more a couple of years ago. Back then it was very hard to read some papers freely online.

Anonymous

Oh, yeah.

Anonymous

5:12 PM

I'm really happy with how much stuff is open access these days, although I'm hopeful that 10 years from now we'll have a lot more

Anonymous

There's still too much information locked away

nods -- Probably particularly in some other areas, like linguistics.

I think I can find maybe over 60% of the papers in IEEE and JASA on the web nowadays.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. If you're serious about linguistics, there's still a lot you won't be able to read online :-(

Anonymous

It helps to have a good library nearby!

Anonymous

I've been slowly building up a collection of books on language, especially Japanese :-)

5:16 PM

@snailboat I don't know why they make linguistics so secretive. :-)

@snailboat Nice!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Well, the cabal―ack! They're here! I've said too much! Noooooo

Oh, I see.

Oh, how many families are there in the US?

Anonymous

Um, Google Sensei probably knows

(They were just saying on TV that there are 115.5m families watching Superbowl.)

Anonymous

Oh, is that today?

5:19 PM

I'm not sure, I thought it should be tomorrow.

I was so busy with the migration!

A-ha! It's about 30 hours to the Superbowl.

Anonymous

Oh! I see!

Anonymous

I'm running out of phrases like "Oh!"

It's usually on Sunday, which means Monday morning in Thailand.

Hehe!

Anonymous

I say them a lot, and you're taking them from me! I typed "A-ha!"

Anonymous

And I had to backspace and come up with "Oh!"

5:22 PM

I got the A-ha spelling from you indeed!

Anonymous

I almost went as far as "Ah, I see!", but I wasn't willing to go quite that far this morning

Hi everyone

Anonymous

I have to keep some phrases in reserve, you see

@Hanaa Hi!

Anonymous

If I use them all up, what will I have left when I really need them!?

5:23 PM

@snailboat Oh, that sounds like what kung-fu masters would do.

When they teach their students, they will keep the best move to themselves.

(Just in case the students come back and challenge them, they say.)

Anonymous

Hehe!

Q: I have been to somewhere + Adverbial Phrase of Time

5:44 PM

was looking at this question

2

Can we use present perfect tense to imply that we have been to somewhere before ( but we are in different place now ) by adding the information that shows how long we stayed there? But I have learnt that the sentence below is grammatically wrong. I have been to somewhere for two weeks.

prepositions present-perfect

is the sentence - I have been to somewhere for two weeks. - really wrong?

Definitely not wrong, if you asked me, and if it had for (which it does).

to me ot just means that they went to that place two weeks back, but they are presently not out of that place.

Anonymous

@Man_From_India What's it supposed to mean?

Anonymous

Ah, I see

Anonymous

Um.

5:48 PM

@snailboat that is what my guess is. because been here is the past participle of go. The tense is present participle. So the action started in the past and continues in the present.

Anonymous

Been is never the past participle of go.

Anonymous

The tense is present.

Anonymous

"I have been to New York." is a special use of copula be in a present perfect construction, which tells you that the present state of the subject is having gone to New York at some point in the past.

Anonymous

It's hard to make sense of adding for two weeks to this predicate

[To me, it's equivalent to I once have visited somewhere two weeks long.]

5:50 PM

@snailboat I was completely wrong in assuming it

I checked Advanced Learner's Dictionary...

it says - "Been is used as the past participle of go when somebody has gone somewhere and come back."

@snailboat I think the sentence was perhaps hacked up by a learner. (Note my non-standard usage of hack.)

Anonymous

@Man_From_India Been is used with a similar meaning, but I see no grounds to actually call it a form of go

Hi again

Anonymous

It's diachronically unrelated and there's no suppletion

@DamkerngT. so i failed to give the right Thai translation

:D i just made it randomly

Anonymous

5:54 PM

Went was originally unrelated to go. It was a form of wend. But these days, we call it a form of go anyway. Why? Because it takes the place of a form that go is missing

Anonymous

*Goed is now non-standard, and went is used in its place.

I think @DamkerngT. is right about the meaning of that sentence. They went there and returned. They spent two weeks there. Am I right? @snailboat

Anonymous

This is called suppletion. But there is no suppletion going on with been

Anonymous

Because go isn't missing its past participle: "I have gone to New York."

Anonymous

@Man_From_India It has no meaning to me.

Anonymous

5:55 PM

That's why I had to ask what it was intended to mean.

Anonymous

I can make guesses, of course.

Anonymous

One guess: I've been in the state of having gone there for two weeks.

ohh :( so it is all happening to the for two weeks part

Anonymous

Another guess: I'm in the state of having gone there, and my trip there lasted for two weeks.

@Hanaa Did you use Google Translate? It's not very reliable as a translator.

5:58 PM

Yes@DamkerngT.