Starred posts

StoneyB

Apr 5, 2015 17:33

You've been around long enough to be immune. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but snarky remarks are just a flag."

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Anonymous

Apr 4, 2015 12:45

Be Nice.

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ʇolɐǝz ǝɥʇ qoq

Apr 3, 2015 17:52

Use this

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Anonymous

Apr 3, 2015 11:53

If you look it up, you may wish to search for backwards anaphora, another term for cataphora

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Anonymous

Apr 2, 2015 14:35

This is an example of information packaging.

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Follow My Proposals

Mar 17, 2015 23:08

Try this: ackuna.com/badtranslator

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Anonymous

Mar 15, 2015 21:04

Come and go are deictic verbs

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Anonymous

Mar 15, 2015 16:15

Something like: "..., of which I think more than a few are false positives."

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Damkerng T.

Mar 13, 2015 22:25

@DariusMiliauskas If you asked me, I'd say we need more good answers even more than good edits.

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Anonymous

Mar 10, 2015 07:53

The former them has deictic reference and the listener expects whatever it refers to to be animate

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Jim Reynolds

Mar 9, 2015 16:23

Now I want a T-shirt saying do the needful

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tchrist

Mar 8, 2015 17:05

You cannot choose among three candidates in a list. You must choose between them.

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tchrist

Mar 8, 2015 14:46

> OED: In all senses, *between* has been, from its earliest appearance, extended to more than two. In OE. and ME. it was so extended in sense 1, in which *among* is now considered better.
It is still the only word available to express the relation of a thing to many surrounding things severally and individually, among expressing a relation to them collectively and vaguely: we should not say ‘the space lying among the three points,’ or ‘a treaty among three powers,’ or ‘the choice lies among the three candidates in the select list,’ or ‘to insert a needle among the closed petals of a flower.’

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Anonymous

Mar 7, 2015 13:10

CGEL p.1066: Kim lent a book to Ed which contained all the information he needed.

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Damkerng T.

Mar 5, 2015 15:14

My first Yosemite experience: What a flat (and cheap-looking, imo) desktop I have here!

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Damkerng T.

Mar 5, 2015 13:47

@BenKovitz The problem is most non-native learners (of any languages, probably) expect that every aspect in the L2 they're learning will be in black-and-white.

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Anonymous

Feb 23, 2015 14:53

More on Canadian eh: homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~cla-acl/actes2004/Gold-CLA-2004.pdf

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Anonymous

Feb 23, 2015 14:12

But in reality, final eh is distributed on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border. I have final eh in my native dialect of Northern Illinois English, but many of my Canadian friends do not

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StoneyB

Feb 19, 2015 18:44

There are two actual questions. One is What does of mean here? But it's an idiom: of doesn't 'mean' anything. The other is What's the difference between require of and require from? The answer is 'none', and that's probably discoverable from a dictionary.

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Anonymous

Feb 17, 2015 17:38

Though it often assimilates: implode : explode :: irrupt : erupt

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Man_From_India

Feb 16, 2015 14:09

If anyone wants to look up any word in OED, I can help :) feel free to ask me :)

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infinitesimal

Feb 11, 2015 18:08

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infinitesimal

Feb 9, 2015 10:20

Amazing story

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Anonymous

Feb 7, 2015 20:17

A predicate is, in semantic terms, something that is true of the subject.

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Anonymous

Feb 4, 2015 17:58

They assume you're as far down the rabbit hole as they are

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Anonymous

Feb 3, 2015 22:17

When you say "I'm going to Paris next year", there's no the being omitted

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Anonymous

Feb 2, 2015 14:30

"I ain't afraid of no ghost."　← Negative concord. A single negation (semantically) is expressed twice in the sentence

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Anonymous

Feb 1, 2015 11:54

@DamkerngT. Snail people call them "whorls"!

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Hanaa

Jan 31, 2015 20:30

The most difficult person to correct is oneself. It's hard to see our own weakness. So listen when given good advice. Don't get defensive. Proverb

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CopperKettle

Jan 27, 2015 17:34

And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle
Of the tramways and the 'buses making hurry down the street,
And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting,
Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.

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Anonymous

Jan 25, 2015 13:29

Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how infinitesimal the probability, must be the truth

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Anonymous

Jan 23, 2015 19:33

Many speakers prefer agreement with whichever disjunct has greater number, so they'd go for plural in either order

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Anonymous

Jan 19, 2015 11:07

> There was but one beloved face on earth,
> And that was shining on him;

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Anonymous

Jan 19, 2015 11:01

> However normally expresses a contrast between two PROPOSITIONS, while but is available for all sorts of pragmatic contrasts, up to merely conveying ‘I am about to say something unexpected’. There are then many circumstances where but is fine but however is at best odd (Zwicky)

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Anonymous

Jan 17, 2015 19:47

Poor snailtrireme.

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Anonymous

Jan 17, 2015 19:03

Yeah, they're like if CDs and vinyl got together and had babies.

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Anonymous

Jan 14, 2015 19:37

Do you know the English saying, "If it sounds too good to be true, ..."

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Anonymous

Jan 13, 2015 15:58

Note to self: if I ever need to get a hold of Copper Kettle, just mention poetry!

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Ilan

Jan 11, 2015 18:26

"The graphs in question represent the percentages of snails eating carrots and playing basketball"

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Anonymous

Jan 10, 2015 19:12

It shows solidarity

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Damkerng T.

Jan 10, 2015 14:42

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Anonymous

Jan 10, 2015 14:02

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Anonymous

Jan 8, 2015 20:56

itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000877.html

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Damkerng T.

Jan 8, 2015 20:15

lie, lay, lain - lie, lied, lied - lay, laid, laid

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CarSmack

Jan 8, 2015 19:23

I would say Blood Meridian is the novel of the past year that has impacted me the most @CopperKettle @DamkerngT. @Ilan @snailboat

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Anonymous

Jan 8, 2015 18:24

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Anonymous

Jan 8, 2015 10:40

Try a verb that licenses interrogative content clauses but not NP complements

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Anonymous

Jan 6, 2015 10:13

Copper Kettle's comments are good. First, afraid doesn't take an interrogative content clause as a complement, while unsure does. Second, call doesn't take an as-preposition phrase as a complement―removing as would fix things. Third, example should be plural.

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Anonymous

Jan 6, 2015 08:11

CGEL p.1586: "Plurals with 's: An apostrophe may be used to separate the plural suffix from the base with letters, numbers (notably dates), symbols, abbreviations, and words used metalinguistically: (i) p's and q's, 1960's, &'s, Ph.D.'s, if's and but's (ii) She got four A's and two B's. This practice is less common than it used to be; with dates and abbreviations ending in an upper case letter, the form without the apostrophe is now more usual: in the 1960s, two candidates with Ph.D.s."

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Anonymous

Jan 5, 2015 07:23

œ is neat.

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