Language Overflow

MAR, you could join that thread! It's a thread for everyone with an M!

Welcome! See you around!

@DamkerngT. But I don't have an M!

7:07 AM

Technically not, but I'm sure you'll pass. :P

Oh hey, that's our own MaxW!

(Actually he's just a recent regular of the site but who's counting?)

Q: Why no definite article at the start of "Seating capacity in the cinema is for approximately 1,400 people."?

2

Seating capacity in the cinema is for approximately 1,400 people. The interior of the theater was remodeled during the period of the late 1940s to early 1950s. (from Wikipedia) Why 'the' is not used in first sentence, while it is used in the second?

articles definite-article

The quote is from Wikipedia, so it might be just a typo.

Personally I think it's okay.

I'm not sure..

Personally I think it's not okay.

7:13 AM

It seems like the zero article (oh, no I used it myself too) is okay with in.

"The capacity in the cinema was 506 seats." (Dawn.com) - but that's from a Pakistani media. They sometimes make mistakes.

"capacity in the cinema" only brought 14 results at google

I think it's free choice with in. Hmm... actually with/without the alternatives would give me different feelings.

nods

@CopperKettle Perhaps "capacity in * production" is easier to find.

nods

The cinema has a seating capacity of 1400. (0:

7:43 AM

in Tavern on the Meta on Meta Stack Exchange Chat, 52 secs ago, by Jason C

I used to will know a guy who is leaving his time machine on once.

Anonymous

Nice ungrammar!

@snailboat Tomorrow I'm finding out this was fun.

Anonymous

Nice grammar!

Niece grammar!

Anonymous

The will sentence is ungrammatical because will has no infinitive form. Instead, they needed to use the periphrastic futurive be going to.

A: "Most everyone" versus "mostly everyone"?

7:50 AM

2

Most everyone is the most acceptable form, because everyone is a pronoun, which the quantifier most can modify. A pronoun works like a noun. See how the quantifier mostly modifies a noun: Most desserts are sweet. Mostly is not a quantifier but an adverb. An adverb usually modifies a ...

Thanks @CopperKettle! for saving the day!

@Dam please post some IPA of how your name is pronounced.

@DamkerngT. Oh, 'tis but the shortest day in the year! Nothing much! (0:

:D

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Hmm... my name in IPA...

@DamkerngT. Waiting

Anonymous

@CopperKettle m.youtube.com/watch?v=ypNPxwnppU0

7:54 AM

/damkɤŋ/

@snailboat Nice! (0: Good afternoon, Snails!

@DamkerngT. I'm gonna pronounce your name when someone hits me with the bullet.

LOL

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. No, when someone does that, you should say "You got me, pardner"

Anonymous

I listen to that song every winter solstice :-)

Anonymous

7:57 AM

Then say "Bury me with my money!"

@snailboat (0:

Anonymous

It's traditional.

It makes me think of River Dance!

It's from The Mask. (0:

@snailboat Oh dang.

Martha Argerich - [Chopin] Polonaise in A flat, Op. 5, No. 6

8:05 AM

►

It's also a great piece of music. I don't recall any computer music. No, I've just recalled one piece.

Hardly is another odd ball, I think.

It mostly functions as an adverb.

Anonymous

Yes, some learners think hardly is an adverb corresponding in meaning and usage to the adverb hard, but it is not!

But is it an adverb in Hardly anyone knows?

@snailboat I've had about 15 teachers in studying English. 16 of them have reminded me 17 times that "hardly" and "hard" aren't friends.

HP Scanner plays Beethoven. ScanJet 5P Easter Egg. Step motor music.

►

8:13 AM

I think motor music could be a good description for my singing. :-)

(0:

Anonymous

That's quite a few teachers!

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. That's cool! I only had a couple of teachers, and both weren't my teachers, since they taught our school classes. (0:

Oh, it's an Easter Egg!

@DamkerngT. Yes. (0: I had a scanner of that model, but only learned of this feature after selling it. (0:

8:15 AM

@CopperKettle Yeah that. I never have attended a class where I was the only classmate of me.

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Ah, I see. (0:

"Everyone mostly uses this equation" - would this be okay, I wonder.

Sounds fine to me.

Sounds fine to me.

Everyone mostly uses this equation: sometimes they use another equation.

Then I'll need to remodel my answer.

Anonymous

8:19 AM

@DamkerngT. Sure.

Anonymous

See CGEL p.815

Anonymous

But you can use a more specific label than 'adverb'.

Anonymous

'Cause while you can get away with classifying them as adverbs, the adverb category is too heterogeneous for that to be a particularly useful description on its own.

"To compute the distance between two coordinates everyone mostly uses the Spherical Law of Cosines equation."

I have no problems with the sentence, but I hate the cosines equation.

8:22 AM

Spherical cow

A spherical cow is a humorous metaphor for highly simplified scientific models of complex real life phenomena. The implication is that theoretical physicists will often reduce a problem to the simplest form they can imagine in order to make calculations more feasible, even though such simplification may hinder the model's application to reality. The concept is well enough known that it is sometimes referred to in scientific discourse without explanation. == Details == The phrase comes from a joke that spoofs the simplifying assumptions that physics students are taught to use as they approach nearly...

"For as whipp'd tops and bandied balls,
The learned hold, are animals;
So horses they affirm to be
Mere engines made by geometry"

(reminded me (0:)

@CopperKettle Oh I love that! Now I know what to call octet next time I see a question with it.

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. (0:

BBL!

See you later!

> a) Hardly anyone believed the fugitives’ story.

> b) Everyone hardly believed the fugitives’ story.

The two seem to mean not quite the same to me.

> c) Anyone hardly believed the fugitives’ story.

And I suspect that c) is probably ungrammatical.

Hmm... maybe it's grammatical, too.

Anonymous

8:48 AM

People make the spherical cow joke a lot.

Anonymous

Some years back, the Physics Diet webpage went online, and it began with "Consider a spherical physicist".

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. No, because anyone is outside the negative context created by hardly.

Anonymous

And NPI any- requires a non-affirmative context.

A spherical snail. O_O

Anonymous

Snails are more interested in the golden ratio.

Q: Can an 'adverb' modify 'nouns/pronouns'?

8:52 AM

1

While answering to this question here, very interesting discussion took place with CopperKettle. It's absolutely right that adverbs modify many things, but nouns/pronouns. But then, expressions such as... Almost everyone would agree to this... and... Hardly anyone would do that... ...

grammar adverbs pronouns nouns

Here comes a good question, but it's locked!

Anonymous

So, adverbs generally don't modify nouns.

Anonymous

But they have a limited use in modifying noun phrases.

He locked because of the tag? That's not acceptable behavior.

Using the term adverb already makes it tricky business in itself, imho.

Anonymous

It'll unlock later.

Anonymous

8:55 AM

@DamkerngT. One justifiable point of view is that we should use more specific terms than adverb whenever possible. Terms like intensifier.

Well, he's misusing his mod powers. He disagrees hence the tag must be there and our opinion doesn't matter.

nods

Anonymous

Hardly is an approximate negator.

3

^^ That sentence says a lot of things.

Oh, that makes me curious, what is not in Not everyone agrees?

I guess it's a negator, but can we call it an adverb?

Hmm... maybe, traditionally, not is an adverb, I guess.

8:58 AM

@DamkerngT. Oh I think that would mean we should call everything an adverb. O_O

Even that emoticon.

Anonymous

Negator is a fine label.

Anonymous

You can call it an adverb if you want.

Anonymous

It does some things adverbs do, although it has its own unique grammar.

Anonymous

Saying a word belongs to a particular part of speech (lexical class) is most useful when you can identify a natural class of words that mostly have the same traits.

Anonymous

It's okay if not every member of a class has exactly the same grammatical traits.

Anonymous

9:07 AM

But the point of putting things in categories is to make your job easier.

Anonymous

Let's say your job is describing the entire English language.

Anonymous

You could just describe every word, one by one.

Anonymous

And describe how each word interacts with every other word it can possibly interact with.

Anonymous

Of course, finishing that job would be impossible!

Anonymous

There'd be a lot of redundancy, because a lot of words are similar to one another.

Anonymous

9:08 AM

So you take a shortcut and come up with classes, and you say these classes have certain basic traits.

Anonymous

And that works pretty well for a lot of words.

Anonymous

Call those words the central members of the categories.

Anonymous

But then there are words out at the periphery, words which don't fit into one category as well.

@Snail you should write a book. :)

Anonymous

When you claim something is a peripheral member of a word class, you're not saving quite as much effort, because you still have to spend time on the individual word, explaining how it differs from the central members of that class.

9:10 AM

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. +1

Anonymous

The less it is like the central members of the category, the less useful it is to claim it belongs to that class.

Anonymous

Another problem arises when you come up with too few categories.

Anonymous

If we acknowledge an adverb class, what does that mean? Different types of 'adverb' seem to have very different behavior.

Or I could write one titled "Great ~~expectations~~ chat messages".

Anonymous

So should we subdivide the category and get rid of 'adverb' entirely? Does it make our job of describing English easier?

Anonymous

9:12 AM

Some linguists do just that.

Anonymous

(See: lumping and splitting)

Anonymous

So with that in mind, can we identify some other words that are exactly like not grammatically? Can we identify any words that are at least similar to not?

Anonymous

And how are they the same or similar?

Anonymous

That's how we figure out if not is an 'adverb' or something else.

Let's say it could look like an adverb because many people think Hardly in Hardly anyone agrees is an adverb, so should Not in Not everyone agrees.

Anonymous

9:19 AM

But *very anyone agrees is ungrammatical.

Anonymous

Isn't very an adverb?

It is!

Anonymous

But it doesn't seem much like not.

I think it's this kind of analysis that makes linguistics tough. (And most people don't see why it's difficult.)

Anonymous

We have to come up with a bunch of sub-categories if we're keeping the adverb category.

9:20 AM

nods

Guys I have a new meta post that I'd like featured. Should I flag it?

Anonymous

If we don't come up with sub-categories, then when we say something is an adverb, we aren't saying anything useful.

Anonymous

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. If you like!

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. I see none.

Anonymous

But if it gets declined, don't sweat it.

9:23 AM

@DamkerngT. Wait for it.

Ahh

Q: Poll: Remove "grammar", or not?

@snailboat I'm too cool for that.

2

We've discussed this issue finely in Is This Tag Useful? Episode 1 - The Big Boss (grammar) and A proposed solution to the "grammar" dilemma -- Please contribute your answers to the "what is grammar" post. However, a recent question came up with the tag, which is currently locked. 1 It made me re...

discussion tags

@Snail @Dam ^^^^

Anonymous

Burninating is bad.

Anonymous

When you burninate a tag, it removes it from all existing questions, but in the future people are free to add it back.

Anonymous

When you blacklist a tag, people can't add it in the future.

9:35 AM

@snailboat @Snail People agreed to keep it available for when a learner can't choose other tags.

Do you want me to add a third answer "blacklist the tag" @Snail? I'm afraid it might cause some confusion.

Anonymous

Dunno.

Anonymous

Polling is officially discouraged anyway.

Of course my vote goes for the "yes" part, and more to the "blacklisting" thingy.

Anonymous

That is, posting answers to your own polling question.

But if we add a third answer, the grammar haters™ might split up.

@snailboat I wanna avoid this: ell.stackexchange.com/questions/76622/…

in the future.

Anonymous

9:38 AM

Um.

Anonymous

I don't think anyone can answer the question right now!

See my point? No one can do anything to that post now. No editing, commenting, voting or answering.

We can just flag.

And flags are bad. They escalate issues.

10:32 AM

@Dam @Snail we have a new chatroom

To grammar, or not to grammar

This room is meant to be for general discussion about whether ...

What?!

What indeed.

I think it would be best if you just share your thought there @Dam.

A: Can an adverb be a noun at the same time?

11:51 AM

3

Home in this construction is short for at (one's) home (with a locative verb) or to one's home with a verb of motion. Bill is (at (his)) home now. They went (to their) home. Home is one of those idiomatic locative nouns that are allowed to drop determiners and occasionally even prepositions, ...

Prof. John Lawler on home.

It's worth reading, I guarantee.

It's always worth reading when it's J.L.

12:30 PM

Hi all!

How r u @Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. ?

Q: call it -- what does this term mean? Context: I can't. I'm calling it. I'm calling it

1:22 PM

6

Source: The Martian (2015) starring Matt Damon Example: I have doubled my battery life by scavenging Rover 1. But if I use the heater, I will burn through half my battery every day. If I do not use my heater, I will be slowly killed by the laws of thermodynamics. I would love to solve this p...

meaning

This reminds me that some short utterances can be very cryptic and lots of meanings can be unfolded out of it.

E.g., that part (I would love to solve this problem right now, but unfortunately my balls are frozen.) I can't. I'm calling it. I'm calling it. can be translated roughly into Thai as แต่ตอนนี้ไม่ไหวแล้ว เอาวะ ลุยเลยดีกว่า -- And I'm pretty sure that it's not the best translation in the world, and yet at the same time it could be the best possible translation.

My Thai translation above is another good example that can show how weak machine translation can be.

@Hanaa Oh hullo!

A: Can an 'adverb' modify 'nouns/pronouns'?

2:35 PM

0

Many people say that by definition a word that modifies a noun or a pronoun is an adjective, which is why there's an ample debate on the subject among English native speakers. Some argue that since an adverb modifies a noun or a pronoun it automatically becomes an adjective. Yet, others assert ...

> However, in my language it is unanimously accepted that an adverb, as a dependent and inflexible part of speech, always acts as a determiner to the: verb, verb phrase, adjective, another adverb, interjection, noun that denotes actions, states or properties, pronoun and numeral.

It's interesting that they wrote "as a determiner" instead of "modify".

But is it true in Romanian?

The assertion is twofold. One is that it's unanimously accepted. The other is it can acts as a determiner of a noun, pronoun, numeral, and interjection, besides other things that we can expect in English.

I thought Romanian is quite like Latin.

Adverb

Adverbul este o parte de vorbire care exprimă caracteristicile unei acțiuni, stări sau unei însușiri ori circumstanțele acțiunilor și stărilor. Adverbele pot fi recunoscute folosind întrebări specifice: Când?, Cât de des?, Cum?, În ce mod?, Unde? Pe unde? sau alte întrebări de același tip. == Cum se identifică adverbele == === Exemplificări === Unele exemplificări din următoarele propoziții pot clarifica în localizarea adverbelor, spre deosebire de adjective, cu care sunt adesea confundate, precum și a modului lor de folosire. În următoarele două propoziții, aproape echivalente semantic...

@DamkerngT.

Yes?

How do i say that i called someone by a mistake

?

You mean you mistook someone for someone else?

no

For example i made a phone call to you

but i did not want that

2:43 PM

Oh!

it was a mistake

You could say (to them), Sorry, I made the wrong call.

Sorry, it was the wrong number.

no not a wrong number

Sorry, I didn't mean to call you now. Catch you later.

Thank u

yes this latter is good

2:44 PM

No problem. :-)

@DamkerngT. What does it mean?

It's for when you see Mr. B and you think he's Mr. A. :-)

This is the 1st time i see this form : mistook someone+for+someone else

When you do that, you mistake Mr. B for Mr. A.

For example i think that you are not @DamkerngT.

2:50 PM

Yes, you may think I'm someone else!

You are sitting in a train station. Then i see u from afar and i think that u r my friend

And call u

u look to me

I say : ooops i mistook u for my friend

?

Yes!

Anonymous

"Oh, I'm sorry! I thought you were someone else."

Yes

That works too! Perhaps even better.

3:02 PM

Mistake someone fr someone else is suitable when u r talking about a person who made the mistake

As i think bcz i'm not sure

Example: She had mistook @DamkerngT. for her friend when she was in the trainstation

That would be fine, too.

I think it's free choice. Snailboat's choice is like when someone tells a young lady that he'll walk her home. I'm sorry. I mistook you for someone else could sound like when he's telling her he'll escort her home.

@DamkerngT. I think you need a det. there. It's a free choice.

Wow, I don't know what's happening to the response time of my internet connection.

Anonymous

@Hanaa She mistook X for Y (past simple) or She had mistaken X for Y (past perfect) but not *She had mistook X for Y

where is it? OMG

3:17 PM

deleted his response cause it took too long time

Just want to add to MAR that I don't think it's free choice is particularly wrong.

(Can't check anything. Can't even type anything fast enough, except blindly, so...)

It's weird.

It might not be wrong.

It looks like "it's free bananas!" but weirder.

@DamkerngT. Same here.

Anyone can search for some examples for me.

To me, It's a free choice could sound like it's a choice that is free.

Anonymous

When I hear free choice, I imagine people are talking about the difference between NPI any and free choice any.

Anonymous

That sort of thing.

It's free choice sounds to me like it's when we're free choose from several choices.

Anonymous

3:31 PM

> 1. I don't want any pickles on my hamburger at all.

Anonymous

> 2. *I want any pickles on my hamburger at all.

Anonymous

This is the negative polarity item (NPI) any. It appears in non-affirmative contexts.

Anonymous

> 3. I won't buy any hamburger that has pickles on it!

Anonymous

> 4. I'll buy any hamburger that has pickles on it!

Anonymous

But this any happily appears in both affirmative and negative contexts.

3:35 PM

Ahh... my drive C: space is critically low!

Better move things around...

BTW, I heard that this Christmas is a full moon Christmas, which happens only once every 38 years.

Anonymous

Oh! I had no idea!

It's Meta Day! (Do something on the meta site, and you'll get a hat!)

Anonymous

I got one when I voted on the poll!

Yay!

3:56 PM

If the Be careful note is entirely correct, how should we explain these: I much appreciate your help; We much appreciate your invitation; We much prefer country to the town? — Damkerng T. 45 secs ago

I wish we had more people using our sites!

How about a hot cat for a change?

(Just saw hot dog being mentioned in another room. :-)

(0Ж

Nice

It turns out, most is an adverb after all

:D

A: "Most everyone" versus "mostly everyone"?

8

You've left out the most important alternative: almost. Here's an expanded version of your Google Ngram: In most everyone, most is a contracted version of almost, an adverb modifying the every component of everyone. (Yes, I know everyone is written as one word, but syntactically it's apprehended...

I'm not sure what Quirk et al's and CGEL would call this most.

4:19 PM

My answer garnered a bunch of comments saying that most is colloquial and most unwelcome in most formal situations.

"Most everyone", while not wrong, is informal and in many situations would be unacceptable in any English speaking country. You've said that a pronoun works like a noun and that "Most desserts are sweet" is correct, but that works because desserts is a plural form of a noun, and can therefore be modified by 'most' You can't say "most lightbulb are bright", and you can't say "most yours are nice", even though lightbulb is a noun and 'yours' is a pronoun. — topo morto 3 mins ago

In most yours are nice, is it really modifying the pronoun? I'm not sure. It might be modifying an ellipted word.

I think I agree with the formal/informal contrast.

nods

I guess is could be similar to some cases of much (which is used instead of very much).

Very could bring an informal tone to it, imho.

Well, I don't object much to the comments, so I've emended my answer a tad.

nods

43 mins ago, by Damkerng T.

It's Meta Day! (Do something on the meta site, and you'll get a hat!)

Don't forget to get the hat!

Just vote an answer or a question is enough.

But on the meta site.

Anonymous

4:40 PM

@CopperKettle Sometimes!

Anonymous

@CopperKettle *Most yours are nice seems ungrammatical to me.

Anonymous

It's in a different category from most everyone.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I'm using food in my examples because I'm hungry! :-)

Anonymous

@CopperKettle You might consider the difference between the types of modification that are possible in a noun phrase.

Anonymous

Usually when we say an adjective modifies a noun, we're saying adjectives can appear in attributive position, before the head noun. That's a kind of modification.

Anonymous

4:44 PM

Adverbs, on the other hand, can appear at the left periphery of a noun phrase, modifying the entire thing: She ate [almost the entire cake]!

2

Anonymous

Notice how it appears before any determiners.

Anonymous

Now, think about that for a moment:

Anonymous

When a noun phrase is headed by a pronoun, where does the determiner go?

Anonymous

The answer: nowhere! Pronouns don't take determiners.

Anonymous

So if you've got no determiner and no attributive modifiers, how do you tell the difference between an adverb modifying a pronoun (in attributive position), versus an adverb modifying the entire noun phrase (at the left periphery)?

Anonymous

4:46 PM

You can try something like inserting an attributive modifier.

Anonymous

If the adverb is really modifying the head noun directly (as an attributive modifier), then you should be able to re-order the attributive modifiers and come up with a grammatical sentence (if possibly a somewhat less natural one).

Anonymous

But if it's flatly ungrammatical because the modifier needs to be at the left periphery, that's a hint that the adverb isn't really modifying the pronoun directly at all.

@snailboat - thank you! Very informative.

In any case, please don't eat my hot cat, however much you're hungry. :D

Anonymous

Coming up with that sort of example is hard, though.

4:49 PM

@snailboat Bon appetite!

Anonymous

Most of the time, pronouns don't take attributive modifiers either! (Sometimes they do.)

@DamkerngT. Was it Hagu?!

Anonymous

So it's difficult. We might want to compare noun phrases headed by common nouns instead.

@CopperKettle Ah, no! Just some photo I found on the web.

Ah. (0:

Anonymous

4:50 PM

In that sort of noun phrase, it's easy to show that adverbs appear at the left periphery, before determiners or attributive modifiers.

Anonymous

And then we can reason by analogy, and say that the simplest explanation is that adverbs do the same thing in NPs headed by pronouns as well.

Anonymous

Definitely tricky to establish, and I'm aware that I haven't really made a complete argument here, but I would say that adverbs generally do not modify pronouns directly.

@snailboat I can't come up with any counter example.

Anonymous

I'm pretty sure you could make a better argument, but I haven't eaten yet :-)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Silly me! ;-)

4:52 PM

@snailboat Okay, I'll let you have the hot cat. Just this once. :P

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Let's work with that, though.

(And thanks for the invaluable information!)

Anonymous

Examples like silly me are exceptions rather than the rule.

Anonymous

Usually pronouns like that don't take attributive modifiers, right?

Oh! I missed that!

Anonymous

4:53 PM

Doesn't that encourage us to analyze pre-pronoun adverbs as peripheral modifiers rather than attributive?

Anonymous

Otherwise, adverbs would be another exception.

nods

Anonymous

I don't know. There are lots of ways you can come at the argument, but my brain isn't really working yet this morning :-)

Better have something first. :-)

(0: