English Language Learners

@parv See you!

A: Phrase choice: "lay/were lying" vs. "were laid (out)"

8:33 AM

> I guess with what I got from the context that ...

@MARamezani An example of what that we should avoid.

2

You don't need the relativizer that in either sentence, or the verb in the first or the auxiliary was in the second. Why clutter your sentences up with superfluities? We helped ourselves to the snacks on the table. We helped ourselves to the snacks laid out on the table. So the only quest...

Ahh... His answer echoes my thought (about redundant words) nicely.

Your first example made me squint a little. So I checked it with a dictionary. Here is what I found: lay: "4 [intransitive] spoken a way of saying “lie,” meaning to have your body in a flat position, that many people think is incorrect" — Damkerng T. 1 min ago

Your first example made me squint a little. So I checked it with a dictionary. Here is what I found: lay: "4 [intransitive] spoken a way of saying “lie,” meaning to have your body in a flat position, that many people think is incorrect" -- Re: Sorry. I just realized that it's in the past tense. — Damkerng T. 1 min ago

9:10 AM

hi

Hi!

I have a question please; could you tell me if it is correct or not?
If you told me this before, I didn't went to the party

I wouldn't have gone to the party

Thanks

Hmm... that's not quite right.

If you'd told me this before, I wouldn't have gone to the party.

That's better.

9:14 AM

why 'you'd told me' why not 'you told me' ?

Because you want to say something that didn't really happen.

Fact 1: You didn't told me this (before).

Fact 2: I went to the party.

Yes

So the expression (the if-sentence) is about something unreal (that did not happen).

It is clear no. Thank you very much.

you'd = you did ?

That's why you need to push it another step.

You had

9:27 AM

Hello people, robots, and mollusks, as appropriate.

Anonymous

I am not actually a mollusk, but I do have several pet land mollusks!

:-)

Hi snailboat!

I didn't want to assume.

Anonymous

It's yours? Cute!!!

Anonymous

Uh-huh! Her name is Luna, and she used to be an egg!

Anonymous

9:33 AM

Then she hatched and looked like this:

Anonymous

@JimReynolds Hello!

Hello @snailboat!

Anonymous

And she got older:

Anonymous

And now she's all big, as you can see from the first picture I showed you! :-)

Anonymous

9:34 AM

@DamkerngT. Hello!

By several folds!

Anonymous

Think of -fold as a suffix that attaches to numbers, not as a separate countable word

Anonymous

So we have twofold, threefold, thousandfold, but probably not several folds

Anonymous

We also have manyfold, which became manifold!

Hmm... severalfold is probably not a word. A-ha!

9:36 AM

But severalfold or several-fold

Anonymous

It's at least somewhat productive, though I'm not sure without thinking about it exactly what it can attach to

Anonymous

Severalfold sounds fine to me

Hmm.. We must investigate. A mystery!!

Anonymous

As Jim kindly demonstrates, you can spell the resulting compound with a hyphen

nods

Thanks both of you!

Anonymous

9:37 AM

(Though manifold is a lexical compound, now a separate word, and can't have a hyphen)

I haven't seen a snail like Luna since I left the US.

They look so different here.

Anonymous

She's a Helix aspersa, now often called Cornu aspersum, the common garden snail

Anonymous

I like seeing other kinds of snails :-)

Anonymous

I found a garlic snail the other day!

My friends corrected me. We have common garden snails here, too.

Anonymous

9:39 AM

Anonymous

@JimReynolds Oh, but I'm sure you have plenty of other sorts of snails, too!

Yes, much bigger, as I'm sure you know.

Anonymous

Garlic snails are a type of glass snail, Oxychilus

Apparently they've eclipsed the likes of Luna in my mind!

Anonymous

Well, garden snails are about the biggest we have here. Though Achatina have invaded Florida, which has been in the news!

Anonymous

9:41 AM

And those are the giant snails.

Anonymous

I live in California

I'm from northern CA.

Anonymous

I'm sort of from here! I'm frommer Illinois, but I'm at least a little bit from northern CA.

Anonymous

I moved here as a teenager.

I grew up in several small towns on the coast. Mostly Fort Bragg, about 3.5 hours from SF by car.

Anonymous

9:43 AM

@JimReynolds We can do that!

Anonymous

We can start by heading to COCA ...

Anonymous

Then we could search for *fold

Oh, I'm not alone!

> What al-Qaeda has done is al-Qaeda's force is multiplied several folds, ...

Anonymous

I see some surprises here! Duofold, bifold, and multifold are all unexpected, as is double-fold

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Is that sentence fragment written by a non-native speaker?

9:45 AM

Could be.

Anonymous

The strangest thing is not the use of fold there

It's from NPR Freshair, titled "Rohan Gunaratna discusses the research he put into his new Global Network of Terror"

Anonymous

It's the use of the finite clause al-Qaeda's force is multiplied several folds as a complement to is

I like COCA, but my searching proficiency is rather primitive.

Indeed!

@JimReynolds I typed several [fold] into the WORD(S) input box.

9:46 AM

Ah. Speech!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I ask because it sounds like it

The most deviant of communicative channels.

nods

However, I think this "several folds" sounds legit: He set his parcel, thickly wrapped in several folds of butcher's paper, before Cat on the desk.

(Because it's about folds of paper!)

Anonymous

Yes! That is the independent noun fold, which we should consider separately from the derivational suffix -fold

Anonymous

Although the two are related in terms of etymology.

9:50 AM

I think that's why I'm regularly confused by the two senses.

Yeah. And you shouldn't fold your cat, Dam. Even to fit him or her into your pocket for easy carrying. I think that's already prohibited in your programming.

:-)

Anonymous

When I talk about the latter, I write it with a hyphen to make it clear I'm talking about a suffix rather than an independent word

Anonymous

-fold!

lol -- I just realize that my cat loves to fold himself in a small box he used to sleep in when he was still very young!

Anonymous

9:52 AM

Cats love boxes, huh? :-)

鏡もち箱とねこ。-Round rice cake box and Maru.-

Indeed!

Anonymous

There's a lot of cute box kitties on YouTube.

Anonymous

►

It's kinda funny. Sometimes I wonder whether he knows that he's outgrown the box!

I just saw ours folded up in a box of socks, apparently a sort of feline paradise.

9:53 AM

:D

lol (watching the video)

Haha. I want to sleep in a big box of giant socks. Cozy!

Hahaha!

Anonymous

Wait, what are you doing with a giant's socks?

Anonymous

I mean, I assume it's giants who wear giant socks.

Oh, we had a few interesting questions on apostrophe-s yesterday.

Anonymous

9:56 AM

I posted a comment on one of them today.

Anonymous

"As an adjective" isn't quite right―it's a genitive noun phrase. We can tell this by looking at its morphology and its syntactic distribution. But your idea is pretty close! What's important is that it's an attributive modifier, not a determiner, and that's what invites the comparison to an adjective. More specifically, this is what's called a "descriptive genitive" in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language; see page 470. — snailboat 34 mins ago

> ell.stackexchange.com/questions/53828/…

Oh, I haven't seen your comment!

Anonymous

Well, you hadn't.

Anonymous

But you have now :-)

Yes!

Anonymous

9:57 AM

See sets a pretty low bar. You could still say you haven't read it.

Maru is too cute!!!

Jude Niroshan

good evening my fellow brothers :)

Anonymous

I know, right? Maru is adorable.

@JimReynolds I love the moment when another cat walked by and he looked after that cat.

Yet still sat tightly in the box!

Anonymous

I liked when the other cat peeked in from the left side of the frame at the end :3

9:58 AM

@JudeNiroshan Good evening!

@snailboat Oh, I missed that cat!

Hi Jude!

Anonymous

I haven't participated much on ELL lately, so comments are a step up for me

Anonymous

s/Hi/Hey/

@snailboat Yay!

Jude Niroshan

@JimReynolds hi jim, what's up?

諦めないねこ。-Maru never gives up.-

10:00 AM

►

snailboat, you are incredibly gifted with verbal ability.

lolrotf!

Maru is exactly like Hagu!

I really enjoy reading most anything you say.

Anonymous

Well, thanks! :-)

Anonymous

My verbal deficits are preventing me from figuring out how to properly respond.

10:05 AM

I think "Lesson 1. Coach's Master Reading" sounds a little bit better because this way, the grammar is better. — Cookie Monster 4 hours ago

This is another interesting comment on apostrophe s.

Should it be Coach's Master Reading or Coach Master Reading?

I looked into it a little bit, and found more curious examples.

Anonymous

I've only just realized―most of my filenames aren't grammatical strings of English!

Anonymous

I'm going to have to rename a million files…!

> Julie Andrews singing in My Fair Lady was some of her best work.
Julie Andrews' singing in My Fair Lady was some of her best work.
Julie Andrews's singing in My Fair Lady was some of her best work.

@snailboat Hehe!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. First, can we clarify what "master reading" is?

Hi all

Anonymous

10:07 AM

Hello!

can i ask some questions?

:)

@snailboat I don't like the term much, but I think it could mean the master reading that students are supposed to imitate.

Hi! @IceGirl

For me, the second cat provided a startling contrast to Maru's stillness. I had started to--more or less consciously--think of Maru as too cute to be real.

(Which is why I suggested example rather than master.)

Anonymous

A-ha! Example sounds good to me

Anonymous

10:09 AM

Usually when teachers provide examples of something done correctly, they call them examples rather than masters

Once I was done optimizing the soil for my new low water consumption plan, I was ready to replace all my plants. I decided that the placement of all my plants would reflect the amount of water necessary to keep them alive.

What does 'reflect' mean?

It means "correspond to".

macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/american/reflect: 1 [transitive] to show the existence or nature of something

Be in propprtion with.

OK. Thanks :)

10:13 AM

Can we help to make it more clear, or you got it now?

so so

Let's keep talking about it, then. It's fun!

Anonymous

@IceGirl If you'd like a longer explanation, I think it'd be perfectly fine to post a question about it on ELL.

Anonymous

It's not really a straightforward use of reflect

@snailboat Yes. Good idea. OK. I will ask there. ;)

10:16 AM

We can make some examples.

@snailboat nods -- It's strange that it's listed as sense 1 on Macmillan.

Anonymous

I think it might be fun to explain how it's a figurative use of reflect, like an actual reflection.

I think mirror or even echo would work in that sentence, too.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Macmillan orders senses by most frequent first, while some other dictionaries try to show how the senses of a word developed by listing them in roughly chronological order

Anonymous

So for example, if you look up undermine in Macmillan: macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/american/undermine

Anonymous

10:18 AM

You'll find that the literal sense is listed second

The more times I read the sentence, however, the less clear I find it.

Anonymous

And the figurative, more common sense is listed on top

nods

Anonymous

Whereas if you check a historical dictionary like the OED, you'll find them in the opposite order

Anonymous

It's helpful to know how a dictionary orders its senses

Q: What does 'reflect' mean in this sentence?

10:20 AM

I asked it.

:)

Anonymous

1

Once I was done optimizing the soil for my new low water consumption plan, I was ready to replace all my plants. I decided that the placement of all my plants would reflect the amount of water necessary to keep them alive. What does 'reflect' mean here?

Is this published somewhere online? I think there is not enough information to understand what the writer did.

Thanks @snailboat ;)

Anonymous

@IceGirl Do you mind if I add the dictionary definition Damkerng quoted to your question?

@snailboat Yes. np

Anonymous

10:26 AM

I just added a little bit about our chat discussion so that people won't try to close it with the "show your research" close reason

Is your primary goal to understand what the writer thought and did, to understand the word more generally, or both?

@snailboat Thanks.

Anonymous

Oh my, it's April 1 already.

Oh. No!!!

:)

10:27 AM

Eh?

Isn't it tomorrow?

Well, in this chatroom. Because snailboat just made fools of us!!!

:D

Remember this. We will retaliate when she does not expect it.

:)

(Which now means, logically, when she does expect it.)

Anonymous

10:30 AM

It's actually April 1 in Samoa.

Anonymous

timeanddate.com/worldclock/samoa/apia

It's still April Fool's Eve here. :-)

but here it's still March 31

Anonymous

Here, too. But as soon as it's April Fools' Day somewhere in the world, tech sites start putting silliness online :-)

Anonymous

So be prepared! There's silliness out there.

10:31 AM

I only know Samoa from Survivor.

Ah. Tell us Samoa (some more). 0.o

@JimReynolds It looked beautiful, the way I can remember it.

I'm not sure how Jeff Probst pronounced it. I think both syllables were equally stressed most of the time.

Sure. A South Pacific Island.

Anonymous

Both syllables of Samoa?

Yes. I guess.

(I don't have a vivid memory of it.)

And sometimes it'd be like suhm-MAO.

Anonymous

10:35 AM

I count it as three: /sə.ˈmoʊ.ə/

Hah! Hmm...

Maybe I didn't hear the last syllable!

Anonymous

I haven't heard Jeff Probst say it

Anonymous

I only know how I say it :-)

Anonymous

Though that's the dictionary pronunciation.

Ahh

Anonymous

10:37 AM

In BrE, the diphthong would be /əʊ/ instead, though.

It shouldn't be too difficult to find that on YouTube.

Oh, my old browser won't work it YouTube anymore!

Anonymous

Oh no! If it won't work on YouTube anymore, what browser will you use for YouTube?

@snailboat I have two copies of Firefox. One is really old. The other is just old. ;-)

Anonymous

Vintage! They're vintage.

Survivor Samoa Ep. 1901 The Puppet Master (1/10)

Yeah!

►

Ahh... I misremember it indeed. He pronounced it "sa-MOH-ah".

I think it was before I "opened" my ears.

Anonymous

10:44 AM

Wow! This answer has 44 comments attached: ell.stackexchange.com/a/53671/230

Oh, yes! I posted a few, too!

It was the time when preposition clashed adverb!

Anonymous

Pre- and post-Jespersen grammar!

Exactly!

Anonymous

Imagine if intransitive verbs were considered adverbs

Anonymous

Because you had an arbitrary requirement that verbs be transitive

Anonymous

10:48 AM

So anything that's not transitive couldn't be considered a verb.

Anonymous

It'd be confusing because those intransitive thingies wouldn't behave much like adverbs, but they would behave like verbs.

Anonymous

So why call them adverbs?

Anonymous

Same thing with intransitive prepositions.