English Language Learners

12:04 PM

You need to look up the words tool, link, system in a dictionary and then ask us about a particular word if the definitions still leave you in the dark. — TRomano 40 mins ago

Totally agree with the comment.

Anonymous

I voted to close

Damkerng T.

Okay, I voted, too!

0

Q: ascribe significances -- meaning?

"We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language... we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and cla...

comprehension

Hmm... because it's him who asked that, I think we can assume that he knows both ascribe and significances, probably?

Now wondering how often 'significances' is used in the plural form...

Anonymous

0.3% of the time in COCA

Damkerng T.

lol -- Thanks!

I didn't think that you would search for it in COCA!

Anonymous

You thought wrong! ;-)

Anonymous

12:14 PM

books.google.com/ngrams/…

Damkerng T.

Wow! It's barely there!

Anonymous

Still, it's perfectly cromulent.

Damkerng T.

:D

somehow thinking of Nico...

0

Q: The way to say eyesight

I'm Korean, and here, when we talk about eyesight, we say "My left eye is 1.5 and right eye is 1.0. The smaller the number is, the worse the eye is. Ex) 2.0 - perfect / 0.1 - too bad. need glasses. And I wonder how to say 1.2 in English way. I googled and it shows that 20/20 means 1.0. Howe...

translation

This question isn't so much about the English language as it is about unit conversions. — zerohedge 46 mins ago

I guess it is about both!

Anonymous

There aren't many words ending in mulent

Anonymous

There's cromulent and temulent...

Damkerng T.

12:20 PM

But cromulent wasn't a real word, I think!

asking himself, what is a real word?...

Anonymous

I don't know what it means for a word not to be real

Anonymous

I've certainly used cromulent quite a bit over the last decade or two :-)

Damkerng T.

Hah! I thought it was only 4-5!

Anonymous

And people usually know what I mean by it!

Anonymous

Is that enough for it to count as real? :-)

Damkerng T.

12:22 PM

Of course!

Anonymous

Which is to say, cromulent is perfectly cromulent

Damkerng T.

LOL :-)

Anonymous

It's definitely a funny word, though.

Damkerng T.

It sounds like something edible to my ears! :P

Anonymous

So you wouldn't want to use it in a serious or formal context. (Is that where realness comes in?)

Damkerng T.

12:29 PM

0

Q: "For 30 years" vs. "about 30 years"

A company celebrates its 30th anniversary. If I write: For 30 years, at your service. For 30 years, the best solution. is that correct? Or maybe it should be: About 30 years, at your service. About 30 years, the best solution.

word-choice prepositions time

Interesting! -- I think slogans don't really have to be a complete sentence. Some slogans don't even make sense!

1

A: Can "used to" be a verb?

In your sentence, 'used to' is used as a modal verb. Check OALD. As 'used to' itself show that something happened continuously or frequently in the past, hurt is a transitive verb here. So, IMO, in your sentence 'hurt' is not an infinitive, but verb. Hope this will help.

The answer makes me wonder, what exactly is infinitive?

0

Q: meaning of "a viking madonna"

I read the famous line describing Nicole from Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald: "Her face, the face of a saint, a viking Madonna, shone through the faint motes that snowed across the candlelight, ..." I looked up Wikipedia and it says "Madonna is a medieval Italian term for a noble or...

meaning-in-context

I wonder if Scott Fitzgerald meant this Madonna (by Munch): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_%28Edvard_Munch%29

Or maybe something he had seen in church.

Hmm...

After reading a bit...

> *A man whose the dogs bit him went to the hospital yesterday.

That's ungrammatical.

Anonymous

12:51 PM

It is.

Damkerng T.

But this one is grammatical.

> A man whose dogs bit him went to the hospital yesterday.

Now, let's suppose that the man has two dogs.

> A man whose each dog bit me on two different occasions went to the hospital yesterday.

Is it ungrammatical?

Anonymous

It is.

Damkerng T.

Interesting!

Now, let's suppose that he has 5 dogs.

> A man whose each and every dog bit me on different occasions went to the hospital yesterday.

Is it ungrammatical?

Anonymous

Um, maybe. :-)

Damkerng T.

Hehe! :-)

Anonymous

12:54 PM

I'm not very comfortable with it, at least.

Anonymous

So if you forced me to pick, I'd give it a thumbs down.

Damkerng T.

nods

You've already seen the examples of whose each and every I found a few days ago, I guess?

Anonymous

I haven't

Damkerng T.

Ah!

Okay, I'll look for it.

Apr 16 at 14:30, by Damkerng T.

> "But you will notice that the center of this world system is New York State, with whose each and every city, town and place the rest of the world is to be brought into contact. [...]" -- Telephone Review - Volume 8 - Page 132 https://books.google.co.th/books?id=OCgoAAAAYAAJ

Maybe it's easier to copy the whole thing here.

> "But you will notice that the center of this world system is New York State, with whose each and every city, town and place the rest of the world is to be brought into contact. [...]" -- Telephone Review - Volume 8 - Page 132 http://books.google.com/books?id=OCgoAAAAYAAJ
"... colleges we could select at least one Eleven whose each and every member would be a teetotaler ..." The Decay of Bulldogism: "secret" Chapters in Yale ... - Page 101 http://books.google.com/books?id=Tn9YAAAAYAAJ George Frederick Gundelfinger - 193

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I had to read that three times to parse it

Damkerng T.

12:58 PM

Me too!

:D

But still, someone used it!

Anonymous

I can't understand the second one. Can you supply the complete sentence?

Damkerng T.

trying...

Oh, no! I can't access that book!

I suppose it's on page 101, but Google gave me the wrong block when I searched for the text.

Anonymous

The whose-clause looks fine, at least

Anonymous

> Surely from the Elevens of our several hundred colleges we could select at least one Eleven whose each and every member would be a teetotaler, and one whose each and every member uses booze and lots of it.

Damkerng T.

Yay! I guess you can access more of the book than me.

Anonymous

1:01 PM

Look, it's got two of them!

Damkerng T.

Oh, indeed!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I just searched elsewhere

Damkerng T.

Ahh

Anonymous

1:25 PM

0

Q: What say the girl here

I'm studying for my TOELF ITP in youtube. Could you help me to understand what say the girl at the minute 3:09 in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNdwhLlOv0I?

listening

Anonymous

Now that sounds like a textbook talking.

Anonymous

I mean, if textbooks were people.

Damkerng T.

:D

The narrator's voice sounds so familiar!

Maybe I've heard his voice on VOA before.

Anonymous

I left a comment, though that may have been the wrong thing to do

Damkerng T.

The choices are funny!

@snailboat Eh, why is it so?

Anonymous

1:32 PM

But ELL doesn't want answers that short, and I can't think of anything to add

Anonymous

And I suspect some folks think this sort of question is off-topic in the first place

Damkerng T.

nods -- If the OP didn't practice it for a test (which I assumed so), the other room could be useful for the OP.

Still, the choices are funny! :-)

> Can Barry go camping with us this weekend?
Oh, I don't think he's old enough.
(A) Barry's too old to enjoy camping.
(B) Not enough people are going camping.
(C) This weekend is not a good time for camping.
(D) Barry's too young to go camping.

Who would answer (A) or (B)?! :-)

Hello @Freddy!

Freddy

@DamkerngT. hi

Damkerng T.

I believe that we can free to interpret any quotes whichever way we want; however, if we want to know what the speaker meant when he or she said that, it's probably the best to understand it in context. I found this quote on en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:John_F._Kennedy, with a note "Yes, but it is edit" (from Yale University Commencement June 11, 1962). — Damkerng T. 11 mins ago

Argh! I wish I could edit my comments!

"I believe that we can free ..." -- facepalm!

It's so funny to read our own writing! :D

Anonymous

@StoneyB How do quasi-serial verb constructions fit in to your most recent answer? "I'll come take a look."

Damkerng T.

1:41 PM

Yay, finally I can be sure that an infinitive is a verb, too.

muttering to himself, 'ellipsis'...

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. It's not clear if the QSV construction is actually derived from ellipsis of and

Anonymous

It's a pretty old construction

Anonymous

Zwicky proposes that it might be derived from a reanalysis of an imperative, like Go, get some wine!

Anonymous

And it has a bunch of interesting constraints

Anonymous

> I go get some wine whenever I can.
> *She goes gets some wine whenever she can.

Anonymous

1:48 PM

Both verbs have to appear in their plain form

Anonymous

And the first verb can't have any dependents:

Anonymous

> *Go out get some wine.

Damkerng T.

The tense is interesting. Can we say, She went get some wine or He came tell me his secret?

Anonymous

No, because those verbs are not in the plain form

Anonymous

The verbs in this construction can't take any other inflectional forms.

Anonymous

1:51 PM

Well, either the plain form or a form identical to it (the non-third person singular present form)

Damkerng T.

Ah, then how can we say She come get some wine whenever she can in past narratives?

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Well, you can't. You have to rephrase it.

Anonymous

> She went out and got some wine whenever she could.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. FumbleFingers is mounting a defense of whose each

Damkerng T.

Ah, on a similar ground I've just used!

StoneyB

2:25 PM

@snailboat I very carefully avoided trying to fit those constructions in! ... They are, as you say, very old. I'm not sure whether it's relevant than in Shakespeare the modal and imperative uses seem to be distinguished:

Polonius says "I will go seek the King", but imperatives are pretty consistently pointed with a comma" "Go, bid the soldiers shoot."

I'm beginning to think though that highly idiomatic constructions like this are where the transformational treatments I got so enthusiastic about learning two years ago cease to be informative.

On second thought, the comma may be Shakespeare's idiograph (or his printer's). Marlowe doesn't point "Come live with me and be my love".

pazzo

2:48 PM

@DamkerngT. Yes, but it shows that real life communication, whether oral or written, does not match the perfect sentence constructions of exercises or grammar books...which do not reflect reality in this sense.

Damkerng T.

@pazzo Indeed, and thanks!

Damkerng T.

3:15 PM

A random thought: two teacher's books or two student's books should be grammatical, but why is it so hard to find such things on Google/Google Books?

Anonymous

3:28 PM

@DamkerngT. Someone might be able to give you a good explanation as to why these phrases aren't particularly common, so it's a fair question. But a lot of things that are grammatical are poorly attested or entirely unattested. Remember, speakers say things that no one's ever said before every day

Damkerng T.

nods

Oh, hello, @WillHunting!

Will Hunting

@DamkerngT. Hello. Thank you for your last message. I really need a miracle.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. We can start with this: attributive genitives in general are quite a bit less common than genitive determiners.

Damkerng T.

@WillHunting It hope it can convey the meaning. I wasn't sure which word I should use, so I picked one that someone else had translated before.

Anonymous

And descriptive genitives are a subtype of attributive genitives.

Damkerng T.

3:32 PM

Eh? A subtype?

Oh, "descriptive".

Will Hunting

@DamkerngT. I think your English is better than mine.

@snailboat I just found out you are she and not he.

Damkerng T.

@WillHunting Oh, no! I don't think so. I remember English is your L1, right?

Will Hunting

@DamkerngT. Yes, but I am just praising you.

StoneyB

@DamkerngT. At a guess, because 'generic' nominals like nounx's nouny are rarer than generic nominals of the form nounx nouny

Damkerng T.

Um... thanks, then!

Anonymous

3:33 PM

"Descriptive genitive" is the term CGEL uses for "a respectable old folks' home"

StoneyB

Or what @snailboat said.

Damkerng T.

Ahh... thanks!

Anonymous

We can see that the genitive noun phrase old folks' isn't a determiner here. It's coming after an adjective ("respectable") and there's already a determiner ("a")

Anonymous

So instead of calling it a determiner here, we'll call it attributive (like an attributive adjective or an attributive noun)

Anonymous

Hence "attributive genitive"

StoneyB

3:34 PM

But "two respectable old folks' homes" would be sorta ambiguous.

... which might, come to think of it, be why these descriptive genitives are rare!

Anonymous

And CGEL's description of attributive genitives breaks them down into two categories, one of which is the descriptive genitive. These are subject to various sorts of restrictions and aren't especially common in the first place. Importantly, they usually have animate reference (with a small number of exceptions like a fine summer's day)

Damkerng T.

Are things like student's book or teacher's book still in use, or are they becoming outdated?

Anonymous

I'm just going to stealthily edit those old messages and move that apostrophe in folk's so it looks like the way StoneyB wrote it :-)

Anonymous

No one will ever be the wiser!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. H&P titled a book A Student's Introduction to English Grammar

Damkerng T.

3:40 PM

@snailboat :D

@snailboat Oh, indeed!