Language Overflow - 2015-10-04

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Anonymous

12:00 AM

I would rather use the term idiom than phrasal verb.

Anonymous

Idiom is a really general term, of course, and you can be more specific . . .

Anonymous

But it doesn't seem like a verb in construction with a particle or preposition phrase, and it doesn't seem to fit the diagnostics we'd use for a verb-particle idiom ("phrasal verb") like particle shift

Anonymous

But you could still call it an idiom to the extent that you think the combination is non-compositional (not predictable from the parts that make it up) in some way, either semantic or syntactic

Anonymous

Idiom is kind of a slippery term, since there isn't really a binary contrast between non-idiomatic and idiomatic language, more of a cline

Anonymous

A great deal of language is idiomatic to one extent or another

12:07 AM

Even familiar words like idiom and phrasal verb are slippery!

Anonymous

Phrasal verb is famously ill-defined in popular usage :-(

Anonymous

That's why I don't use the term.

Anonymous

Which is not to say that you can't.

Anonymous

As for idiom, I should probably try to be more careful how I use the term.

Anonymous

It's not terribly specific, so it usually helps to elaborate a bit when you use it :-)

Anonymous

12:19 AM

@DamkerngT. I'm interested in your idea of separating out "the passive in real English" from "the passive in exam English in NNS countries".

Yay!

Anonymous

I don't think we can ignore the distinction, because the entire site is, in theory, supposed to meet the needs of the folks posting questions. That's its core purpose, right? But then we narrow that scope somewhat―we don't do their dishes or take their garbage out, we only help them with knowledge about English, to the extent we can.

Anonymous

But still, the core purpose is meeting the needs of non-native speakers. That's why ELL exists in the first place, right? Folks thought ELU wasn't meeting their needs.

Anonymous

We can lose sight of that, I think . . . let me grab a quote from a book.

nods -- I think some of our users come to us because they have to do their passivization exercises/exams, which could be somewhat different from real English usage.

So I think it could be useful if we tell them what their books or teachers may want, and what they should keep in mind when they really use English later in life.

Anonymous

12:25 AM

I didn't put a mini post-it on the page!

Ah!

Anonymous

I found it!

Anonymous

> It's hard to avoid the uneasy feeling that we teach what we teach because we can, not because it's especially helpful.

Anonymous

That was in the preface to Vance 2008.

I remember that Swan said something similar, but I can't remember his exact words.

Anonymous

12:30 AM

On the other hand, I don't actually want to consider textbook English a separate language. I think that's useful as a metaphor, but in reality they belong to two different categories―one natural, one an artifact

I usually think of it as another "dialect". :P

Anonymous

Sometimes the metaphor is handy: "Well, that sounds a bit like textbook English to me. It's perfectly grammatical, but in real life people are more likely to say such-and-such . . . "

It is useful to distinguish between different genres and registers, though

Anonymous

Sure.

Anonymous

Register is a natural phenomenon.

Anonymous

12:33 AM

Maybe I'm getting a little off-track here.

Anonymous

So I think we can't really ignore the distinction between the two. But that also means I don't think we can ignore what passives are really like.

Anonymous

Simply recapitulating the information in their textbooks wouldn't be satisfactory either.

I think we can follow StoneyB's idea, that we should do only A) and B), but not C).

Hold, please

Anonymous

What are A) and B) and C)?

Anonymous

Holding!

12:37 AM

> A) Teaching people how to emulate well-employed passives.
B) Teaching people how to understand badly-employed passives.
Neither should involve
C) Teaching people to emulate badly-employed passives.

Thanks for the holding! :-)

Anonymous

Welcome back!

@snailboat Strongly agree. It does them no service to be tricked into believing tortured constructions are productive English used by native speakers.

For textbook English, please marked sure to qualify as EFL-textbook English.

Actual book-English is perfectly fine.

nods

Learners won't necessarily know the difference, though. Unless we're classifying text as EFL-textbook English based purely on the fact that it appears in an EFL textbook.

I used to call EFL-textbook English "canned English", but recently I think "canned" is not quite right. It goes beyond just being canned.

12:42 AM

0

A: To infinitive used after adjective

*"He is difficult to be pleased" is ungrammatical. The object of the infinitival verb can be made subject ("He is difficult to please [him]"), but the subject cannot ("He is difficult to [him] be pleased"). Why does it work that way? I don't know. The syntactic rule involved is tough-movement,...

Which I believe is misguided. Some textbooks use real examples.

Anonymous

Yeah, I don't want to imply that EFL textbooks by definition contain unnatural English, although it certainly seems that many of them do.

@DamkerngT. Canned suggests prepared responses for certain situations.

Then it is not productive English, but counterproductive.

This is more like... contrived English.

2

12:43 AM

That!

Anonymous

I feel like a lot of our learners would be better off throwing away their textbooks :-(

Anonymous

Sep 26 at 10:30, by Damkerng T.

> The chocolate tastes sweet when it is tasted. (Quasi-passive voice)

Hehe! That's a real example!

Anonymous

People may well ask about this because it appears in their textbooks.

Anonymous

But we can't teach them to use it as though it's natural English a native speaker would produce.

12:46 AM

This distinction we're trying to make is fraught with danger.

Although it's not something a native English speaker would produce, it doesn't mean that one didn't.

> A child’s head is warmer when it is hooded.

It's this competence vs performance issue.

Anonymous

Competence is what you expect, performance is what you get.

Nobody hoods a child.

@snailboat Absolutely. So is the issue that some of the examples seem as though they'd not be produced by a competent speaker?

12:47 AM

> People are at their ugliest when they are bigoted.

Nobody bigots anybody.

And even then, that definition... what's a "competent speaker", anyway?

Are we talking about passives and I've gone off-topic"?

Anonymous

I think we might've been talking about passives.

Right.

Passives were discussed.

The conversation was sidetracked.

12:50 AM

I've just finished reviewing Swan's PEU, and I can now say confidently that the passive is all over the book! It's a bit here, a bit there, but it's almost everywhere!

Anonymous

In reality, there isn't always a binary contrast between "native" and "non-native", or an absolute standard by which a speaker is "competent", and so on. That's okay. These are idealizations that make it easier for us to talk about language, not absolute descriptions that can be applied to each individual speaker.

Anonymous

degruyter.com/view/product/181635

@DamkerngT. I’d frankly rather more time were spent on articles.

Anonymous

Another topic that revolves around information structure!

@snailboat Bookmarked!

12:53 AM

You know how we've thought that canonical posts are a good idea?

What if... they're not?

You need something to close dupes to.

Do we close lots of questions as duplicates of canonical posts?

ELL doesn’t close much.

@tchrist English articles are one of the Gang of Four.

Nor downvote.

Nor edit.

12:54 AM

That's my point, though.

Anonymous

Well, they might be bad if someone like me wrote them. :-)

@DamkerngT. Culturally revolved?

@tchrist Just my idea: Articles, Tenses, Modal Verbs, and Prepositions

Anonymous

@jimsug StoneyB intended for his canonical post to be a reference more than anything, as I understand it.

Right.

Whereas the almost explicit purpose of the passive CP is to be a dupe target.

12:56 AM

@DamkerngT. All of which were learned by native speakers not by rote but by observation. Perhaps you cannot teach this.

nods -- That's why they're the Big Four.

Anonymous

@jimsug Well, maybe it's okay if the purpose of a canonical post isn't quite the same as it is on Some Other Site.

That's not what I mean, though.

Canonical Posts take a lot of time to do right.

And it's worse when they're not done right.

Anonymous

Solution: Make StoneyB do all of them!

Another approach that we can try (for the passive) is I keep posting questions on ELL asking about how acceptable each of uncommon passive transformation rules in NNS grammar books is.

One rule or one sub-rule at a time.

Anonymous

12:58 AM

We just need to get a length of chain and an object heavy enough to keep him from getting away.

The most duped.

Anonymous

It'd be great if we had a way to keep posts in order when we wanted to.

@snailboat Favorites.

Anonymous

What I mean to say is,

Not that that’s ordered as you would.

I think Pullum’s points about certain would-be passives being inadmissible for the particular reason he states needs some attention.

Anonymous

1:01 AM

The individual answers StoneyB posted on his own question appear to have an intended order. They're numbered one through five and each one links to the next one at the bottom.

Because the EFL textbooks keep generating broken ones that his rule would strike down.

Anonymous

But they appear in the order 2, 3.1, 1, 5, 3.2, and then 4.

Anonymous

Wouldn't it be neat if they could appear in the order 1, 2, 3.1, 3.2, 4, and then 5?

@tchrist Agree.

Anonymous

Maybe someone needs to write a canonical post on information packaging.

Anonymous

1:05 AM

That's really the information people are missing most about things like inversion, postposing, existentials, passives, clefts, and so forth.

@snailboat It's in that order, but we have to sort the answers in the "oldest" order.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Right, I can put it in that order for myself, but I can't make it appear in that order for other people.

@snailboat I'm just scratching the surface of it.

@snailboat Ahh... I see. That's indeed confusing sometimes.

@tchrist It is linked to the most often, but it is the dupe target for only three questions. data.stackexchange.com/ell/query/370921/…

Anonymous

benjamins.com/#catalog/books/slcs.40/main

Anonymous

1:06 AM

Wouldn't it be great if books like this were priced to be sold to actual people rather than university libraries? :-)

0

Q: "both of them equals" or "both equal"?

I have a lot of options how to express what I want, so I'm confused because I don't know what is correct. 1) Both equal 2) both equals 3) both of them equal 4) both of them equals 5) both of them is equal 6) both of them are equal 7) both is equal 8) both a...

How can someone not know that both refers to two things?

@jimsug Ah, what's the most duped one?

One is singular; all else is plural. End of story.

Anonymous

The trick sometimes is knowing whether something is "one" or not. :-) Like, peanut butter and jelly.

Anonymous

Twenty miles is too far to walk.

1:09 AM

People try too hard. Or too little, maybe.

@DamkerngT. data.stackexchange.com/ell/query/370922/posts-with-dupe-links

For sandwiches, I’d like ham and cheese, peanut butter and jelly, and tunafish.

@jimsug Thanks!

Anonymous

I left a comment.

Anonymous

Now I just need to leave one more comment to get to 3,000! :-)

1:26 AM

@snailboat I’m not particularly convinced his edit clarified anything.

And his evil grammar tag doesn’t help in the least.

I think it just comes down to him not grasping that both can never be one.

I don’t care whether the rainbow I’m remembering and the one you’re remembering are the same rainbow; both are still rainbows even if there’s just one of them.

If I had ten little Indians boys that were all the same, many Indians are still not one.

I fixed the tags.

I am yet to find even one instance of both or both of them taking a singular verb. Not one.

Duplicate of:

0

Q: "Both of you know" or "Both of you knows"?

Which of the following is correct? Both of you know about it. or Both of you knows about it. ...

2

Q: "Both John and Christina takes an apple." or "Both John and Christina take an apple."?

Both John and Christina takes an apple Both John and Christina take an apple. Which one is correct? Why?

2:00 AM

Variously exact dupes, possible dupes, and related questions in one or both ways can be found in: english.stackexchange.com/q/27327 ell.stackexchange.com/q/6373 english.stackexchange.com/q/159553 ell.stackexchange.com/q/31075 ell.stackexchange.com/q/24385 english.stackexchange.com/q/24846 english.stackexchange.com/q/22357 ell.stackexchange.com/q/54459 ell.stackexchange.com/q/62699 ell.stackexchange.com/q/30426 ell.stackexchange.com/q/16238 ell.stackexchange.com/q/24385 ell.stackexchange.com/q/62971 — tchrist 32 secs ago

I ran out of space. :)

Several of those truly are exact duplicates.

Thing is, as @snailboat observes, there are multiple questions here.

So which dup one selects depends on which question one is answering.

And just presenting examples of opposing sentences does nothing to say what the question is.

8 hours later…

10:02 AM

in ELL's Cabin, 2 mins ago, by snailboat

> "Tags are short structures which can be added at the end of the clause in conversation or in written representations of speech. They take either the form of a noun phrase or of an interrogative or declarative clause." (p.139)

10:36 AM

in ELL's Cabin, 6 mins ago, by snailboat

> This is a very huge space. (very huge actually feels slightly awkward, but let's ignore that and focus on what's grammatical or not...)

> This is so huge a space (that...)
This is such a huge space (that...)

in ELL's Cabin, 26 secs ago, by snailboat

@DamkerngT. He gave me [so much sugar]. and *He gave me [so hard work]. (CGEL p.540)

11:01 AM

This sentence is impossible: "English has * vast grammar."

But we can say this: English grammar is so vast.

What if we've already said "English has" and want to say that its grammar is so vast? How could we end our thoughts?

Perhaps, with English has a huge amount of grammar.

A little awkward, but perhaps passable.

2 hours later…

12:46 PM

in ELL's Cabin, 3 mins ago, by tchrist

> Did you know that it was I who did this beautiful piece of work?

in ELL's Cabin, 2 mins ago, by tchrist

The (c) part distributes wronglyishly.

in ELL's Cabin, 4 mins ago, by tchrist

Anybody who doesn’t hate the living writes that as Q3— (a) Do you know it was I (b) who has done (c) this piece of beautiful work? (d) NO ERROR: ALL THREE OF a, b, and c are correct.

in ELL's Cabin, 2 mins ago, by tchrist

user image

3 hours later…

4:05 PM

user image

In IELTS speaking test, if you can't remember a word, don't say "I've forgotten the word"!

Apparently, they don't like it.

user image

Interesting, Personally is incorrect.

@DamkerngT. When I was a student the jocular expression was "How you say in English?", with a heavy generic Eastern European accent.

4:21 PM

Hehe!

There was something that bugged me in that mock-up test/exercise.

It seemed like they suggested that students/test takers should speak in a particular way.

(Which is closer to real English, but perhaps it's halfway between real Exam English and real English.)

4:52 PM

They're the experts, I suppose. It's like pretty much everything in every field: follow the "rules" if you don't know enough to break them.

I suppose so. I also think that most learners/test takers instinctively know how they should act and what they should do in the exams.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. "instinctively"

I think it's almost universal; in the classroom vs. out of the classroom, some students behave totally differently. :-)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Yep. In the class: Yawn; out of the class: Swear at anything you see.

LOL

5:09 PM

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Gee, it's just like they're being prepared for work!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@StoneyB We are.

> Another thing that students say a lot is how can I sound like a native speaker? My answer would be why do you want to? When you speak, the important thing is that people can understand you and you can communicate.

> If your accent makes that difficult for people, then there are things you can do to improve it. You can practise individual sounds. Find out which sounds cause problems for speakers of your language. You can practise intonation by listening to native speakers and getting used to the sound of sentence stress in English.

(from the same MOOC course)

It's good advice, I'm sure; but I think it's probably easier said than done.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

It's definitely easier said than done.

How can you be easy to understand, and be fluent, but speak unlike any native speaker?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. Your name should be inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M.

5:14 PM

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M LOL

I think what the advice actually is is, try the best you can to speak like a native speaker, but don't worry if you don't sound exactly like a native speaker.

@DamkerngT. Every native speaker manages to do it.

I guess it's more or less true! Though the differences between native speakers are usually much smaller compared to the differences between a learner and a native speaker.

5:38 PM

1

Q: With regard to/ In Accordance with

_________ your instructions, we have closed your bank account. (a) With regard to (b) In Accordance with My guess is it should be "In Accordance with" but my book gave the other option(with regard to) Which option fits well here? Why not the other one? Kindly clarify. TIA.

sentence-construction

A really interesting question.

I guess in another dialect of English, in accordance with can't be used with someone's wish.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. PerE finds both versions acceptable, but with regard to seems more appropriate.

I think, in AmE:

> In accordance with your instructions, we have closed your bank account.

> (= We have closed your bank account as you told us to do so.)

> With regard to your instructions, we have closed your bank account.

> (= About your instructions, we have closed your bank account.)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

In accordance with sounds like they didn't know how to close bank accounts and you taught them how to.

Hmm... I think it means "according to" in AmE.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I still get that impression.

Well, it's PerE, you can't argue with it.

5:43 PM

With regard to seems to mean "concerning" or "with respect to", thus basically means "about".

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I don't think it works the same way.

But the meaning is close, yeah.

(But of course, that 2011 Tier 1 Exam wanted With regard to.)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Oh no, I must be wrong then.

See? In Exam English, they swap the meanings of the two.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

You mean they meaning the two of the swap.

5:46 PM

LOL

So, with regard to the OP's question: "Why not the other one? Kindly clarify. TIA." ...

It's because it's another kind of English.

0

Q: The only person who/that can read

The only person who/that can read and write English well is my friend. In this sentence why that is preferred?

Hmm... my first reaction: Really?

Is that really preferred?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Is . . . "that" preferred? — inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M 8 secs ago

user image

It's clearly not so in Google books.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Is . . . "that" preferred? — inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M 1 min ago

This is the first time I've typed "Google books" instead of "Google Books" because I just noticed that the logo says "Google books". But I feel really awkward typing that. It sounds like Google owns all those books.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Let's just call it "Results pertaining to books using the engines of the Google company located mainly in the US which is the most successful company of the world". Problem solved.

5:58 PM

LOL

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

-3

Q: Will Stack Exchange ever be paywalled?

Arguably, one of the core features that has made the Stack Exchange community websites so popular, helpful, and efficient, has been its free to use nature. In opposition to sites like novicesexchange (name changed to protect the innocent.. or rather the guilty) this site attracts the cream of th...

We lately get many instances of this on the main meta. Suspicious

I guess never.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Don't guess. It's "never" alright.

Thanks for the confirmation!

6:47 PM

1

A: how to distinguish using past simple or present perfect?

I believe the first example should be written as "It has been years since I rode a bike."(correct) and the second example as "It has been years since I’ve ridden a bike."(not correct) Perfect simple is used to describe actions happened within a span from a point in the past UP TO NOW on a tim...

Ahh... this answer says English Grammar Today is wrong.

Let's see...

> * We can use the past simple, present perfect or past perfect after since with the expression it + be + time + since:
- It’s been years since I rode a bike. (it’s = it has)
- It’s been years since I’ve ridden a bike. (it’s = it has)
- It’s years since I rode a bike. (it’s = it is)
- It’s years since I’ve ridden a bike. (it’s = it is)
- It’d been years since I’d ridden a bike. (it’d = it had)

* It’s been years since … is more common in American English than It’s years since ….
* When since introduces a state in the past that is still continuing in the present, we use a pres…

Admittedly, some examples sound awkward to me indeed.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

> It’s years since I rode a bike.

Me no like that example.

That one is acceptable to me.

- It’s years since I’ve ridden a bike.

This one is harder to take.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Me no like that either.

I mean, when I can say "it's been years" I won't go for "it's years".

nods -- But apparently some speakers really do say that.

(including well-educated ones, afaict)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Cat why is M&TV so slow on suggested edits? ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

@DamkerngT. I can expect any construction from @TCh. :)

7:10 PM

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I can’t say that either.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

O.o

7:27 PM

@DamkerngT. Including me.

Yay! I've got a confirmation!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

7:49 PM

0

Q: What do significant figures think of significant figures?

We have a number of questions that are asked here solely because they're problems people face in chemistry classes. Examples are: Significant figures used to imply stated error? When expressing a quantity, do the non-significant figures determines whether you round up the last significant figur...

discussion allowed-questions close-reasons

I loooooooooove punny titles.

@DamkerngT. US English

British English

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@StoneyB We win! ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ

@StoneyB I always hated Brits.

My own English tends to be more British than that of most Americans, because I grew up mostly on British literature.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I take my words back.

Hides in shame

Many thanks! @StoneyB

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