English Language Learners - 2014-12-18 (page 1 of 2)

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Anonymous

12:59 AM

There are some interesting quotes in this book

Anonymous

> The very fact that English is an international language means that no nation can have custody over it. [...] It is a matter of considerable pride and satisfaction for native speakers of English that their language is an international means of communication. But the point is that it is only international to the extent that it is not their language. It is not a possession which they lease out to others, while still retaining the freehold. Other people actually own it.

1:11 AM

Interesting. Maybe we can think of NNS-English as another dialect that covers a wide variety of Englishes.

By the way, I found this: perec.mcmaster.ca/noun-countability

> Which words do non-native speakers of English pluralise the most? This is an interactive visualisation of a semantic network of 417 plural nouns that are pluralised most by non-native English speakers.

8 hours later…

9:14 AM

Hi! I am confused about these sentences. Please check and let me know which one sounds fine to you. "Haven't I been calling you?" vs "haven't been I calling you?". Please tag me so I get the notification.

3 hours later…

Anonymous

11:47 AM

The latter is ungrammatical. You can only invert one auxiliary verb

12:50 PM

Hi @DamkerngT.

What's up

Hi! I'm trying to get a new hat. :D

What's all this buzz about hats! I am missing something

The Pizza Hat one is really hard on ELL, I'd say.

@learner Ah, but you're wearing a hat, too!

Oh, I see! I thought it was a head band !

Hey, you've got a Selfie hat! Nice!

Hehe!

12:53 PM

I was suspicious about that selfie thing!

Could it mean somehow I'm selfish !

That question of yours is really great.

@learner Not at all. I think you gave us good information.

I did a bit of a research about the word selfie yesterday but left it there

No I meant the word selfie itself

Oh, you mean the word selfie itself. It's usually used nowadays when people taking a photo of themselves (thus self-ie.)

Yeah, that's what I've learned

As far as the hat is in concerned, it just means you answered your own question.

12:56 PM

but not sure of any additional undertones!

Hope so

4

Q: It's/I'm acting in your best interest/interests

The plural version is more common according to Google ngram. It is also used as an example in Cambridge's dictionary. It's in his interests to keep careful records However, I would like to know whether the plural and the singular versions are equally perfect to use without sounding unnatura...

plural collocation

I think this one gets you the hat! :-)

Yup

@learner Answering our own questions is actually encouraged here. I think I can remember StoneyB mentioned that once on the meta.

The real question I was interested in was about the perfect modals in the future and I am happy that I've gone that far with this stuff. There's still more but I'm on it

I have this feeling that these big guys are ignoring me :(

Oh, I think it's quite popular now to think of English as a two-tense system, i.e. no future tenses.

@learner Not quite so, I think. I can tell that StoneyB seems to have less time to contribute to the site lately.

1:01 PM

I've learned so

Yeah I can see that but still !

maybe JK too

J.K. is a moderator. I think he tries not to write too many answers.

you think so

Ben is potentially another user who can give you a great answer. But I haven't seen him for a few days. He wrote a few great answers about tenses.

@learner Yes.

I'm afraid I don't remember him

What's his ID?

A moment.

1:04 PM

take your time

Ben Kovitz, Bloomington, IN

2.1k 20

grammar subordinate-clauses meaning modal-verbs past-tense word-meaning word-usage

Oh I see I gotcha

Most native speakers can answer your modal questions, more or less. But not everyone can spell out all the nuances for us learners.

He may have been here for a while but I've only recognized him recently

nods

1:07 PM

You know what, that modals question of mine is tricky even for common native speakers

I have a very good idea about them (the modal verbs), yet I think my idea is not 100% aligned with all native speakers. (But, hey, I think even native speakers don't always agree with one another.)

I've done a bit of online research and I can tell

@learner Exactly. I think one main problem is the usage varies across dialects.

Aww... Pizza Hat is really hard on ELL!

(It's the 30 Minutes or Less hat: ask a question that gets at least 5 answers in 30 minutes or less.)

so what do you need to do to get one

waw

it IS really hard

1

Q: Wow! Nice! I smelled you baking cake!

Which one is grammatical? "Wow! Nice! I smelled you baking cake!" "Wow! Nice! I smelled your baking cake!" Both of them are acceptable, maybe?

grammar present-participle

That's my first attempt. :P

The second one sounds tricky. But I think it's okay because I feel it's similar to patterns of my+ gerund I've come across recently. I think it's a bit formal? — learner 36 secs ago

@learner I think maybe it's because the second one is the correct one, pedantically, strictly speaking.

You know that I am not given to giving answers! — learner 2 mins ago

Um... I think anyone can write answers here (given than their account didn't get banned).

1:23 PM

Maybe the first sentence means "I smelled you (while you were baking cakes)"

Good evening, @DamkerngT.!

I'm not sure you got what I meant. Just in case, I meant to say, I don't usually post answers

Good evening!

@learner Ah, I see. I misunderstood your message, it seems.

@DamkerngT. no worries, that was my newest phrase today!

I almost hated that guy who used it ! I've never seen it before ! =)

Probably alludes to Mark Twain's.

don't know but I might google it up

Brb

Anonymous

1:46 PM

@DamkerngT. This sentence seems fine, although personally, I might say "given to writing answers" to avoid using give in two different senses in the same sentence

Anonymous

oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/…

Anonymous

> [predicative] (given to) Inclined or disposed to:

Anonymous

@learner Don't forget there's no space before tall punctuation in English :-)

@snailboat I didn't misunderstand it that way. I just think it's rare to use give to mean allow. Also, I thought it's rarer to mean I didn't give me to do something.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I don't think it meant allow

1:49 PM

Oh! I think it simply means I don't (or won't) allow myself to ...

Anonymous

Oh, I don't

Anonymous

I think it meant what learner said, "I don't usually post answers"

Hmm... Interesting. I think the 'usually' is implied. (It's the same in my language. Maybe we borrowed it from English.)

Anonymous

Well

Anonymous

macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/american/given

Anonymous

1:51 PM

> having the tendency to do something

I know but I keep making it from time to time! I was gonna do it now hehe

Anonymous

So in the negative, it means "tends not to do something"

Nice! They have a separate entry for it!

Anonymous

OED given sense 2. "Used predicatively: Inclined, disposed, addicted, prone. Const. to."

Anonymous

corpus.byu.edu/coca/?c=coca&q=35735460

Anonymous

1:54 PM

Not all of these are true positives, but lots of them are :-)

I think, according to the dictionary definition, the subject doesn't have to be a person.

Anonymous

Can you think of an example where the subject isn't a person?

This machine is not given to mistakes.

Anonymous

Hmm, sounds funny...

Anonymous

Hey, I found an example! :-)

Anonymous

2:00 PM

Feb 18 at 13:20, by Damkerng T.

0

A: What's "that strength"?

This is 19th-century poetry, and Tennyson was a little given to archaisms. A strength is an obsolete term for a company of troops†, and Ulysses is addressing “my mariners”, the men whom he led to Troy and who passed many dangers with him on the return voyage. So he's saying “We aren’t that band o...

That sounds nice.

Anonymous

I mean, the subject here obviously refers to a person (I think it might always). I just meant an example of given to :-)

I mentioned Mark Twain because of his phrase, "I am not given to exaggeration, and when I say a thing I mean it."

Anonymous

I don't think of given to as an allusion to Twain

Anonymous

But that's a good example!

Anonymous

2:03 PM

I think the phrase given to exaggeration predates Twain

Probably. This phrase sounds really old-fashioned to me. Maybe it's coming back!

Anonymous

It's formal English

Anonymous

It's not especially common outside of formal registers

Anonymous

And language is gradually moving toward being less and less formal

(Twain's was just something I thought of when I learned about learner's intended meaning.)

Anonymous

2:06 PM

It sounds somewhat old-fashioned to me too, I suppose

Anonymous

Although I probably say it myself from time to time :-)

I can imagine that! (In a good way, I mean. :-)

Anonymous

books.google.com/ngrams/…

Hey, it's indeed coming back! (Try changing the year to 2008. Perhaps not very reliable, though. :-)

Anonymous

The data past 2000 are not directly comparable to the data before 2000

Anonymous

2:09 PM

So you can't conclude that there's a resurgence

Anonymous

They put the default window at 1800～2000 on purpose

Anonymous

They call that range the most carefully curated of their datasets

Anonymous

sciencemag.org/content/early/2010/12/15/science.1199644/suppl/…

Anonymous

> As a result, we caution users that results from after 2000 are not generally comparable with results from before 2000 and often reflect changes in corpus composition. This was an important reason for our choice of the period between 1800 and 2000 as the target period.

6

Q: When is it acceptable to say 'my son'

I've heard the phrase being used in multiple occasions. But I'm not sure, when exactly it is OK to use this phrase. It seems to be acceptable in a religious context. For example a priest talking to a member of his church. It is of course OK if you are actually speaking to your son. But I've al...

This one is almost Pizza Hat!

@snailboat It takes a huge amount of effort to curate a corpus, I think. Also, 1800-1900 materials were sometimes OCRed incorrectly.

2:21 PM

@snailboat What do you think of the expression (I'm afraid) as in "(I'm afraid) I can't agree/ etc"? I have this feeling it's UK English and not an American. Something as the pattern "Do you fancy playing ..." is.

Hehe! That reminds me of...

"I'm sorry Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that," said HAL.

Chime in then @DamkerngT. This question has been bugging me for long now

I think I'm afraid is quite dialect-neutral.

Fancy sounds a bit more BrE, or formal, or old-fashioned, to me.

Anonymous

This use of fancy is definitely BrE

Anonymous

Other uses of fancy are fine in AmE, though

Anonymous

2:27 PM

A dictionary should say so: macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/american/fancy_25

Heh! I'm not familiar with sense 3!

Anonymous

It's rather common in BrE

Anonymous

But it would be strange in AmE

Come to think of it, maybe something like, "I fancy her touch," is sense 3. <-- Oh, no one ever said that on Google.

What's important is "I'm afraid". I don't hear it as much as I do from BrE speakers

@DamkerngT. youtube.com/watch?v=ARJ8cAGm6JE

that Dave!

2:32 PM

Yep! (My Flash is disabled at the moment, but I can remember that scene.)

I think even the comparison seems unfair regarding "I'm afraid". So what do you think?

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I think of phrases like "Do you fancy him?"

@snailboat nods

@snailboat & @DamkerngT. I'm going out now. See you later & I'm hoping will find your comments later

See you around!

@learner I'm not sure if it's true (that BrE speakers tend to say "I'm afraid" more often), but I think I expect BrE speakers to say "I'm afraid [...]" more often than AmE speakers.

-3

A: "He saw it stop and his son get out"

Both sentences have grammatical errors, in my opinion. Are you sure they were copied from the novel correctly? The simplest way to fix them is to make these two changes: Gordon was about to walk away from the Impala when he saw it stop and his son GOT out. So it was real. (period) The boy h...

I think I could downvote it for the Crab hat. I chose not to, though.

Hmm... I may change my mind later. :P

3 hours later…

6:07 PM

Hi!

I had asked a question before but I still don't have answer.

Please tag my name with the answer.

Hi! -- Oh, which one, on the main site?

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I don't know who begins sentences with I'm afraid more often, but AmE speakers certainly say it commonly enough

Anonymous

Looks relatively even in GloWbE corpus.byu.edu/glowbe/?c=glowbe&q=35740935

I feel that way because I think generally AmE speakers are more outspoken.

Anonymous

@user62015 I can't. I don't know what you want us to answer.

Anonymous

6:17 PM

@learner I'm not sure what you want me to comment on, either

Anonymous

I'm here, though! :-)

I had posted a question two hours ago.

Let me ask again. Please wait.

Anonymous

You can use the simple past for that, by the way. "I posted a question two hours ago."

Thanks.

But let me ask as the past perfect also sounds fine?

Anonymous

Sure, potentially, though my ear expects the simple past.

Anonymous

6:20 PM

Which is why I mentioned it

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. In my experience, most native speakers are absolutely lousy when it comes to explaining modal auxiliaries.

Haven't I been going to school for two years? VS have not been I going to school for tow years?

I agree. Thanks -:).

Anonymous

I'm hardly an exception―which is why I tend to leave questions about modals to other people… :-) Although I've been working on my understanding of modals

Anonymous

Ah, that's different from the question you asked last time.

Anonymous

@user62015 Last time you said "Haven't been I going to school for two years?"

6:22 PM

I asked in the chat.

I did not post the question.

Anonymous

This time you said "Have not been I going to school for two years?"

Anonymous

Both are ungrammatical

Anonymous

As I said before,

Anonymous

"Haven't been I going to school for two years?" is ungrammatical because you've inverted two auxiliaries. You can only invert one.

No. I am just concerned about the negative interrogation questions.

Anonymous

6:23 PM

"Have not been I going to school for two years?" is ungrammatical for the same reason, plus another one

Anonymous

I'm not sure what you're saying "no" to

Anonymous

"Haven't I been going to school for two years?" is fine.

Anonymous

In this sentence, the negated auxiliary haven't is inverted with the subject I

Anonymous

It relates to the declarative sentence "I haven't been going to school for two years."

Anonymous

If we take the uncontracted version: "I have not been going to school for two years." and invert the auxiliary, we end up with: "Have I not been going to school for two years?"

Anonymous

6:25 PM

In that case, the not is a separate word and does not invert along with the auxiliary

Anonymous

Your other mistake is treating have not like haven't.

Anonymous

They are different.

So these two sentences are fine, right? "Haven't I been going to school for two years?" And "Have I not been going to school for two years?"

Anonymous

@user62015 Yes.

Haven't I been.........is wrong?

Anonymous

6:28 PM

No.

Anonymous

I just said that both of those sentences were fine.

Oh

Sorry!!!

Anonymous

No need to apologize

I meant to ask "Haven't been I"

opps

Anonymous

@user62015 Yes, a sentence beginning with "Haven't been I…" is ungrammatical

6:30 PM

Okay. And didn't I call? Sounds fine?

Anonymous

"Didn't I call?" is fine.

Anonymous

I would prefer to discuss complete sentences

I just need to understand the negative interrogation questions.

Did I not call you? Is also fine, right?

Anonymous

@user62015 Yes, this is fine. Do you understand why?

But Did not I call you? Is wrong.

Anonymous

6:32 PM

@user62015 You're correct, that sentence is ungrammatical

Not 100%

Please go ahead. If you may have time.

Anonymous

Only the auxiliary moves before the subject.

Anonymous

Did is the auxiliary.

Okay.

Anonymous

"I did not call you."　→　"Did I not call you?"

Anonymous

6:33 PM

The tricky part is:

Anonymous

Didn't is one word. It's a negative auxiliary.

Anonymous

"I didn't call you."　→　"Didn't I call you?"

Making sense. Great.

Go ahead.

I am watching it.

Anonymous

So "Did I not" and "Didn't I" are both acceptable, but "Did not I" sounds non-native.

Understand.

And you made a great point.

I appreciate it.

Anonymous

6:35 PM

It's a common error among non-native speakers.

Wasn't I working? Is fine, right? And the same point you have just made works for every tense, right?

Anonymous

@user62015 Regardless of tense, you invert only the first auxiliary.

Anonymous

If you don't have an auxiliary, you add the dummy do.

Anonymous

The negative suffix -n't is considered part of the auxiliary.

I understand.

Anonymous

6:37 PM

The negative word not is considered a separate word.

I agree.

What about the future perfect continuous tense?

"Won't I have been"

Anonymous

Try it. What do you think it becomes when you invert the subject and auxiliary?

Making sense?

Anonymous

"I won't have been"　→　"Won't I have been"

Anonymous

Just like you said.

6:39 PM

And "will I not have been"?

Anonymous

Uncontracted: "I will not have been"　→　"Will I not have been"

Anonymous

That's right.

Making sense?

Great.

Today you have solved a big problem of mine.

I appreciate it and it will help me a lot.

I had been searching the solution for the last three days. And finally my journey ended here.

Thanks.

Anonymous

That will cover almost everything. There are just a few exceptions to the rules, like "Aren't I"

Anonymous

People say "Aren't I" even though "I aren't" is ungrammatical

6:43 PM

I understand it.

Anything else I should know?

Anonymous

Although cannot looks like one word, people generally don't say "Cannot I"

Anonymous

They say "Can't I" or "Can I not"

I agree. -:)

7:34 PM

Good evening, @snailboat!

Anonymous

@CopperKettle Evening, Copper Kettle!

I never noticed the thing with "Amn't I", very nice!

Anonymous

@CopperKettle Yeah, so, this aren't isn't actually a contraction of are not etymologically

Anonymous

But then, perhaps you know that?

Anonymous

Did you look it up just now?

7:38 PM

Yes, I know but somehow never noticed (0;

Anonymous

Amn't became an't, which in non-rhotic dialects sounded the same as aren't

Oh, so there was "amn't"

Anonymous

And eventually, people started thinking they were the same thing, so they started spelling it aren't

Anonymous

@CopperKettle Still is, but only in a few dialects

Anonymous

A speaker of AmE will almost never hear anyone say amn't

7:39 PM

And it's hard to pronounce!

Anonymous

@CopperKettle oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/amn%27t

Anonymous

An epenthetic schwa!

Anonymous

(But the origin of aren't doesn't have such a schwa)

word of the day: epenthetic

Anonymous

See Quirk et al. p.129 for some discussion

7:41 PM

Thank you, I'll do!

Anonymous

Although they say "Aren't I is widely used, especially in BrE"

Anonymous

It would be best to take a red pen and strike through that "especially in BrE" :-)

Anonymous

I'd actually rather refer you to Huddleston & Pullum

Oh, so the Brits say "Am I not"?

Anonymous

Aren't I is widely used in both AmE and BrE

Anonymous

7:44 PM

is what I meant to express

oh

Anonymous

I was unclear!

Aren't we all sometimes (0:

Anonymous

In H&P's CGEL, it's treated instead in the chapter on inflections

So the epenthenic sound is the e after r in aren't, now I see (looked up Wikpiedia)

Anonymous

7:46 PM

Who say, more accurately, that "Aren't I is fully established in BrE or AmE"

Anonymous

(Why or? Shouldn't that say and?)

Anonymous

@CopperKettle Aren't has no epenthesis. Amn't does :-)

Oh, now I see. It's pronounced but not written.

Anonymous

Epenthesis always refers to pronunciation

"An example of this kind is the Proto-Slavic form *gordŭ ("town"), in which the East Slavic languages inserted an epenthetic vowel to break the cluster -rd-, resulting in *gorodŭ, which became город (gorod) in modern Russian and Ukrainian."

Anonymous

7:48 PM

Imagine, for a moment, you've decided to contract am not to amn't. (Of course, language doesn't work that way, but pretend with me.)

Anonymous

You said earlier it would be hard to pronounce, right?

Anonymous

There are a couple ways you could fix that.

Anonymous

You could simplify the /mn/ cluster to, say, /n/

Yes, so we authomatically assign an a there.

Anonymous

In which case it would start to sound like aren't

Anonymous

7:49 PM

Or you could insert a vowel between the consonants so that you can say both /m/ and /n/

Anonymous

In which case you get modern amn't

Oh, indeed!

Anonymous

Pronounced /ˈamənt/

Anonymous

In English, the epenthetic vowel par excellence is /ə/

Anonymous

We almost always fall back on /ə/ :-)

7:51 PM

I guess in Russian the vowel o works this way (0:

> We apologize for any inconvenience, but an unexpected error occurred while you were browsing our site. It’s not you, it’s us. This is our fault. Detailed information about this error has automatically been recorded and we have been notified.

I just got that from ELL.

(Sorry for the interruption and hello, everyone!)

@DamkerngT. Sounds grammatical to me (0:

Hello, @DamkerngT. (0:

Looks like I can't access the main site.

In Russian we have words like "psikhiatr" which people tend to mangle to "psikhiator", inserting the epenthenic o.

@DamkerngT. Strange!

I just checked, ELL seems to work fine

Anonymous

Let me give you another example of epenthesis. In English, you can have lots of consonant clusters, as in strike /straɪk/. If we try to borrow this word into Japanese, rather than /straik/, we end up with something like /sutoraiku/, with epenthetic vowels inserted to break up the consonant clusters

Anonymous

7:55 PM

Wish they'd fix bold! :-)

@snailboat What?

@snailboat This is cool, I noticed that too (0:

Anonymous

I tried to bold individual letters: /sutoraik**u**/

Anonymous

But the last one was broken

Strange the the first two are fine.

Anonymous

Unfortunately, the Markdown implementation is trying to be clever :-)

Anonymous

7:56 PM

Yeah, it's 'cause of the word boundary.

Anonymous

They want it to work for footnotes*

Anonymous

*here is a footnote

Oh!

When I was a kid, we had music lessons at school, and the teacher sometimes put on a disc with a Japanese choir performing the Russian song Katuysha. I guess it was so replete with epenthesis that we just rolled on the floor laughing.

Anonymous

But zero-width spaces are all kinds of monkey wrench 'round here, so let's try and see…

7:57 PM

Interesting. Footnotes in chat... Hmm...

Anonymous

Dang, it failed!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Ah, well, chat is more or less a side effect.

@CopperKettle Hehe!

Anonymous

@CopperKettle Japanese has relatively strict phonotactics―not many clusters are allowed

.. I mean, they inserted vowels in ear Russian combination like "STCV"

Anonymous

7:59 PM

It happens in any language, though

Anonymous

spanchcocked?

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