English Language Learners

Hanaa

6:00 PM

I think the problem is with "to"

I have been in somewhere not to somewhere

Man_From_India

No @Hanaa to is perfectly fine there

Hanaa

No

The verb to be can't be used with to

Anonymous

@Hanaa Yes, it can.

Hanaa

As if you said: i am to New Yprk

York

Anonymous

@Man_From_India Have been to X also differs from have gone to X in that the former entails having subsequently departed from X

Anonymous

6:04 PM

@Hanaa Right, that sentence doesn't work.

Man_From_India

for two weeks does carry a sense of continuation, and as in that sentence the action is already completed, the adverbial phrase is adding some confusion.

Anonymous

The motional be construction is limited to the perfect.

Man_From_India

Am i right?

Anonymous

It's perfectly natural to say "I've been to New York", but ＊"I am to New York." is ungrammatical.

Man_From_India

agree

Anonymous

6:05 PM

I'm not sure why a for duration adjunct is ungrammatical with this construction

Hanaa

@snailboat it is verb to be in both stcs

Anonymous

@Hanaa Right, it's the verb be in both sentences.

Hanaa

And there is no problem with the for

Anonymous

Ah, I'm afraid my version of English is different from yours

Hanaa

I have been in New York for two weeks is ok

Anonymous

6:07 PM

That's a different construction.

Man_From_India

oh my god!!! another user having Northern US tongue finds that sentence completely acceptable :( @snailboat r u also from US, right?

Anonymous

That use of be isn't limited to the perfect: "I'm in New York" is fine.

Anonymous

@Man_From_India I'm a native speaker of American English. I grew up near Chicago, and I moved to California when I got older.

Anonymous

My dialect is a mix of the English spoken in those two regions

Damkerng T.

@Man_From_India One thing I've learned from ELL is that when it comes to edge cases, different speakers will have different opinions.

I've noticed this in my first language, too. I guess it's probably the same in all other languages.

Anonymous

6:09 PM

Is this an edge case?

Hanaa

To there is for stating the direction

It is not an adverb

Damkerng T.

I don't know, but you think it's unacceptable and another speaker think it is; I think it's an edge case.

Anonymous

To is, as far as I'm aware, never an adverb

Hanaa

It is a preposition

Man_From_India

Actually at first I though that sentence is correct, but now after talking about it here, I got some reason to belive that senence is wrong :D :D

Damkerng T.

6:10 PM

@Man_From_India I think it's awkward.

Hanaa

How will correct it @Man_From_India?

I forgot to write "yoy

You

Man_From_India

@Hanaa actually I was thinking in that construction the action is not completed, and the adverbial phrase was indicating a continuous perios of time for two weeks

so I thought it is correct

but as @snailboat said in that structure the action is completed

Anonymous

Yes, "I've been to X" means you've gone somewhere and subsequently left that place, and you are now in the resulting state of having that experience

Man_From_India

and the adverbial phrase for two weeks add continuous time, so it creates confusion

Anonymous

"Have you ever been to Paris?" "No, I've never been ~~to Paris~~."

Hanaa

6:14 PM

I will explain why u can use the present perfect there@Man_From_India

Man_From_India

please go ahead

Anonymous

"I've been in Paris for two weeks."　←　In this case, the state of being in Paris started two weeks ago and continues into the present

Anonymous

Quite different

Man_From_India

yes...that is different

Hanaa

The [for + a period of time ] ecpression needs always the present perfect

Man_From_India

6:16 PM

there been is the past perticiple of be

Hanaa

So @snailboat

As i said :to is the problem not for

Damkerng T.

@Hanaa Such a rule is very risky.

Man_From_India

@Hanaa not always, but yes I got it what you mean. but still as @snailboat has already mentioned been in I have been to X is not in present perfect form.

Anonymous

@Hanaa "I'll be eating for another five minutes."　←　No present perfect

Hanaa

I said to is uncorrect before@Man_From_India

Anonymous

6:19 PM

Are you unfamiliar with the "have been to X" construction, @Hanaa?

Man_From_India

This is actually a set expression - I have been to X

Hanaa

No @snailboat

Look@Man_From_India

Man_From_India

yes

Hanaa

Either u say: i have been in New York for two weeks

Or i have been to new york before two weeks

Anonymous

How about "two weeks ago" instead of "before two weeks"?

Hanaa

6:22 PM

With to, you should use before

Anonymous

I don't know what "I've been to New York before two weeks" means.

Man_From_India

@Hanaa got it...yes that is correct :)

Anonymous

How about: "I've been to New York before."

Anonymous

That would be fine. Before is optional.

Hanaa

@snailboat two weeks ago needs the simple pasy

Anonymous

6:22 PM

@Hanaa I was trying to guess what your sentence meant …

Man_From_India

two weeks ago/back is perfect

Hanaa

I was in new york two weeks ago

Anonymous

That sentence seems good.

Hanaa

With AGO there is no prst perfct

Anonymous

I agree, "I've been to New York two weeks ago" isn't a really good sounding sentence.

Anonymous

6:25 PM

Though ＊"I've been to New York before two weeks" seems flatly ungrammatical

Hanaa

Yes

Man_From_India

two weeks before

Anonymous

Hmm, I really think the before that would go with this is intransitive

Damkerng T.

I thinks the marginality of I have been to new york before two weeks is off the chart. I guess it's quite unlikely that a native speaker will think it makes sense.

Anonymous

That's why I suggested "I've been to New York before."

Hanaa

6:26 PM

Two weeks ago is the most appropriate

But it means he left newyork and he is not there in the present

Man_From_India

g2g...i will see the discussion later :) good night!!!

Anonymous

I just got another Yearling badge on ELL! Yippee!

Damkerng T.

@Man_From_India Sleep tight!

Hanaa

Good night!

Anonymous

@Man_From_India Have a good night, Man from India!

Damkerng T.

6:28 PM

@snailboat Congrats!

Hanaa

Congrats

Anonymous

Hehe, thanks :-)

Damkerng T.

I got +2 on ELU because someone just deleted their account!

Anonymous

I got it for doing nothing!

Hanaa

Welcome

Anonymous

6:29 PM

@DamkerngT. Oh! You'd been downvoted by some future-self-account-deleting fiend!

Damkerng T.

It seems so!

Hanaa

I don't care about badges

Anonymous

Badges are more or less meaningless

Hanaa

Date past

Anonymous

Like, yesterday?

Damkerng T.

6:31 PM

That reminds me that I still don't know what kind of food date past is.

Anonymous

A pastry?

Anonymous

I'm not sure if a date paste sounds tasty.

Anonymous

But I have yet to, in haste, taste date paste

Damkerng T.

I remember that Hanaa mentioned dates the fruit a few days ago.

Anonymous

Are dates a fruit? I can never remember which ones are fruits.

Anonymous

6:32 PM

Hey, they are.

Anonymous

I remember that strawberries are fruits and not berries

Damkerng T.

Oh, strawberries aren't berries!

Anonymous

And bananas are.

Damkerng T.

Wait a sec, bananas are berries!

Hanaa

Dates are a very sweety fruit

Damkerng T.

6:34 PM

I'm so confused now!

Anonymous

Yeah! A berry with millions upon millions of clones.

Hanaa

Dates are grown in palm trees

In sahara

Anonymous

I remember reading an article from more than 10 years ago suggesting that all bananas might die out within 10 years, since they're a giant monoculture of clones and one disease could wipe them out―as happened with earlier cultivars

Anonymous

@Hanaa We've got palm trees here.

Anonymous

I don't think they're native to the area, though.

Hanaa

6:35 PM

Yes

Anonymous

But Californians thought it would look nicer if we had palm trees, so we have them everywhere.

Hanaa

Dates are so healthy and the reachest fruit

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Ahh... so obviously they were wrong.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Seems so. A good thing, too, as I'm rather fond of bananas.

Damkerng T.

:D

Hanaa

6:36 PM

I mean palm trees for dates

Damkerng T.

I have a few mini-banana trees. :-)

Anonymous

One of favorite flavors is a fruit-berry combination: strawberry-banana!

Hanaa

Dates are small and brown

Damkerng T.

Never tried to eat its fruits, though.

Hanaa

They are sweety

Damkerng T.

6:38 PM

@Hanaa I'm not sure if dates are only for some specific kinds of palm trees.

Names of edible things are tricky.

Hanaa

They grow in another kind of palm trees found in sahara

They can't be in the tropical areas

They need a very hot and fry sunny climate

Dry not fry

Damkerng T.

We have some sugar trees here, and they're related to palm. Their fruits are nice, too. If someone asked me in English what it is, I probably had to answer, they are dates.

(For the lack of words.)

Hanaa

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_palm

Damkerng T.

Oh, I found my exact motherboard on Ebay! ebay.com/itm/….

I don't know why the price is that high.

Hanaa

See u after the prayer

Brb

Damkerng T.

6:45 PM

See you!

A-ha! Wikipedia calls the seeds of sugar palms, jelly seeds.

> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borassus_flabellifer

Anonymous

Hey, user stangdon left a comment on TRomano's answer saying they disagree that "I have been to the moon for two weeks." is unsayable

Anonymous

That's interesting.

Anonymous

If I heard that sentence, I'd just think, "What?"

Damkerng T.

Really interesting!

Anonymous

The next question: Does anyone actually say things like that?

Anonymous

6:58 PM

I haven't found an example yet, but I'm not the most skilled corpus trawler out there

Damkerng T.

The word unsayable is also interresting.

Anonymous

I was trying not to distort the meaning of what either party wrote

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

Of course, unsayable is a fine word, but its usual meaning is a little different :-)

Damkerng T.

That's what I thought!

It made me think what his (or her) dialect is.

Anonymous

7:02 PM

But I hoped it would be clear I was re-deriving it from un- + [ say + -able ] with its literal meaning

Damkerng T.

Oh, so unsayable is yours?

Anonymous

I just made it up, yes. :-)

Anonymous

I'm prone to doing that sort of thing.

Damkerng T.

Hehe!

lol

Got it.

Anonymous

Probably everyone does that sort of thing sometimes, at least in their native tongues, though to lesser or greater extents depending on the person

Anonymous

7:04 PM

Productivity is fun!

Anonymous

And I'm fond of certain types of non-standard derivations

Anonymous

You can go pretty far with a nonce derivation in the right context

Damkerng T.

Hehe! I guess so.

I'm not sure if I will dare to write non-standard English in comments and answers.

I probably have done it before!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Hmm … I think I avoid that, too.

Anonymous

I'm not entirely certain.

Anonymous

7:07 PM

I typically write in a semi-formal style, so I probably avoid most non-standard usage without thinking about it

Anonymous

(Not a real formal style, but not as informal as I get here in chat.)

Anonymous

I don't know how to describe stuff in terms of a formal-informal dichotomy.

Anonymous

I think of it on a scale of 1-7 :-)

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Ah, an interesting scale!

Is it like in gymnastic?

Anonymous

But I'm pretty sure I vary in formality here in chat, from somewhat informal to somewhat formal

Anonymous

7:10 PM

@DamkerngT. I'm not sure!

Anonymous

I don't know much about gymnastics.

Damkerng T.

Oh, so why 7?

Anonymous

It's not uncommon for linguists to use 1-7 scales when they ask for things like grammaticality judgments.

Anonymous

Sometimes 1-5.

Damkerng T.

Ahh... That's new to me!

Anonymous

7:11 PM

Grammaticality isn't really binary, either.

Damkerng T.

Interesting!

Anonymous

> I think snails are cute.
> *I think snails is cute.
> **I snails is cute.
> ***I snails cute.
> ****snails is is is is is cute, I.

Damkerng T.

Ah, looks like it's the distance of the minimum fix.

Anonymous

Roughly. But some errors are starrier than others.

Anonymous

So we probably want to assign weights to error classes, too.

Damkerng T.

7:14 PM

nods

Anonymous

Hmm, what's a good example of semiungrammaticality?

Anonymous

Hey, zero Google hits for semiungrammatical! I win!

Damkerng T.

Maybe our been to is a good example.

@snailboat You won!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Yay, me!

Anonymous

I think, for example, some proximal agreement might go unnoticed, but if you call attention to it, the speaker might start to think it sounds funny

Anonymous

7:16 PM

But then be unsure whether or not it's really grammatical

Anonymous

So you might mark it with a ?

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

And like stars, you can pile on question marks to indicate an utterance that is even questionable-er.

Damkerng T.

Oh, Google Translate could be sort of a good ungrammatical sentence generator.

Anonymous

I think a good questionable sentence generator would be a passive sentence homework assignment for ESL speakers.

Damkerng T.

7:19 PM

Hehe!

Anonymous

At least half of the questions I see of that sort make me think, "Well, you can make that sentence passive, but someone needs to discuss when passives are appropriate and when they're not..."

Damkerng T.

Oh, meatie's question earlier today generated a few interesting comments.

Anonymous

"The telescope was looked into by him. A star in the distance was seen by him."

Anonymous

What was meatie's question?

Anonymous

I haven't read a meatie question in over a month.

Anonymous

7:21 PM

At least, that I can remember.

Damkerng T.

I'm trying to search for it. It's not very easy for me at the moment.

Anonymous

1

Q: The word Bonistics

Does the word Bonistics really exist in English language. I could find it in dictionaries but the internet search responses a lot with this word. It is about the papered money against the Numismatics - the metal coins. If no, how is it called in English? Thank you.

Anonymous

Another question about whether a word exists.

Anonymous

I know they don't want to hear "Yes, you just used it" as an answer, so of course I won't write one saying so

Anonymous

But it seems like they should ask what they really want to know

Damkerng T.

7:23 PM

Maybe some other time. My browsing environment is really lame right now.

Anonymous

Aw!

Anonymous

I could find it.

oh @DamkerngT.

Yes?

Your browsing system

7:25 PM

@snailboat A hint is that I think I've posted a few comments from that question here. Maybe earlier today.

@Hanaa Yes. It's now sort of crippled in more than one way.

Hanaa

Yes

Damkerng T.

Discovery of the day: Ubuntu 12.04 with 2GB of RAM can't handle a thousand tabs.

Anonymous

What was the question about?

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I think it's about passive and it has from.

Hanaa

How much does it cost @DamkerngT.?

Anonymous

7:28 PM

Ah, I can't seem to find it

Anonymous

I don't know if meatie's question got deleted

Anonymous

But I don't see a recent one about passives

Damkerng T.

I remember that Carsmack made a notice that it could be ambiguous when the example is converted into passive and still has the from-phrase after the passive.

Anonymous

A-ha

Anonymous

Then I can look at their recent comments

Anonymous

7:29 PM

Hmm, no such comment

Anonymous

Maybe the question vanished!

Damkerng T.

Maybe it's not a real new question. Sometimes the community brings old questions back.

Anonymous

Ohh.

Damkerng T.

@Hanaa What is this it that you'd like to know? The old one or the new one?

Hanaa

The new

Damkerng T.

7:31 PM

Ah, the new one is not really new. It's a relatively cheap PC running on Intel Atom (two cores), having 2GB of RAM, and I bought it a few years ago.

Right now I have it running Ubuntu 12.04.

Anonymous

Have you updated glibc?

Hanaa

Is it ok?

Damkerng T.

But it can't really handle thousands of tabs.

Anonymous

The glibc in stock Ubuntu 12.04 has the gethostbyname vulnerability

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I'm not sure. I just re-installed everything today and let it update itself.

@snailboat Ahh

I think it's more like it needs more RAM.

Anonymous

7:33 PM

webshare.uchicago.edu/orgs/ITServices/itsec/Downloads/GHOST.c

Anonymous

This'll test your glibc for vulnerability

Damkerng T.

Though I can't really hear the sound, I imagine that my hard drive keeps swapping and swapping.

Hanaa

Why do you open thousands of tabs?@DamkerngT.?

Damkerng T.

@Hanaa Because I don't really like bookmarks.

Hanaa

ahuh

Damkerng T.

7:35 PM

BTW, I'm chatting from my old PC, via Remote Desktop.

I don't know how other people can handle their searches in few tabs. It's kinda a mystery for me.

When I'm hunting for something, it'll generate two or three hundred more tabs easily.

Hanaa

oooow

Damkerng T.

(Hunting for my old motherboard is a good eample.)

Hanaa

that is too much

Anonymous

I make liberal use of my browser history

Damkerng T.

nods -- I kinda like to be able to see all of them at all time. (To judge their conditions, their price, their models, and so on.)

Anonymous

7:39 PM

Makes sense!

Damkerng T.

So until my decision is made, I will have all those tabs open.

Anonymous

You mentioned this question earlier:

Anonymous

5

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

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

Anonymous

2

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

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

Anonymous

And that one.

Anonymous

7:39 PM

9

Q: "I am hurting" in the meaning of "I am hurt"? Why?

Once in a while I hear someone use the phrase I am hurting. It appears to mean I am hurt, not I am hurting you. For example, consider the text on this drawing: When and why is it correct to say I'm hurting in the meaning of I'm hurt? Is there any difference in meaning?

difference usage phrase adjectives gerund

Anonymous

That one, too.

Damkerng T.

I remember that I pasted a couple of comments here. Probably not the question itself.

Anonymous

Oh!

Damkerng T.

I could try using the search feature of this chat.

Anonymous

I was doing that :-)

Anonymous

7:41 PM

But I can't find any comments by Doulos.

Hanaa

I read them @DamkerngT. Thank you

Anonymous

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 yesterday

Damkerng T.

Not this one.

Anonymous

The well has run dry!

Damkerng T.

Oh, I could use iPad. It's much faster.

Hanaa

7:45 PM

Yes use it

Damkerng T.

Oh, found it! It's question #32588.

(My browser crashed again! -- I'm typing this on my iPad.)

1

Q: Active To Passive

Have a question about forming passive sentences from active sentences. 1a "The rebels attacked the city from the hilltop." 2a "The teacher yelled at the students from his (teacher's) office." 3a "The spy observed the suspect from his (spy's) car." For the above active sentences, if I...