Language Overflow

Damkerng T.

01:21

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Ah, he's talking about theoretical "rings" of users, I think.

("Ring" is my made-up term.)

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Interesting that he says it's really obvious.

Damkerng T.

01:46

I agree with user3169. Though I think it's not your main point of the question, wake should've been written woke. If you want to think in the present tense, you may need to rephrase the whole sentence, like I've been lying in bed since 10 o'clock or I've been awake since 10:00. — Damkerng T. 26 secs ago

Catija

Yeah, that question doesn't make any sense.

Damkerng T.

@Catija I think the OP adapted the example from another question, but in that question the sentence was used for expressing a habit ("wake up at 10 every day").

So, it's confusing!

in ELL's Cabin, 8 hours ago, by snailboat

Unfortunately, many people have fairly poor metacognition―see Dunning-Kruger

Dunning-Kruger! (@snailboat)

That's why I think stuff like psychology can be useful.

Thanks for the sharing, too.

> Dunning and Kruger proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent people will:
- fail to recognize their own lack of skill
- fail to recognize genuine skill in others
- fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy
- recognize and acknowledge their own lack of skill, after they are exposed to training for that skill.

Because there are too many types of failures in the proposal, I know that I've got some of them.

I wonder if there is anyone who doesn't fail any of them in any way.

"Fail to recognize genuine skill in others" - recognizing genuine skill in others is really hard, imho. I wonder if anyone knows the true extent of my own skill. Anyone up close or from afar.

By way of analogy, I frankly think that I don't know the true extent of others too. Though I think I usually have some ideas.

Thinking about that. I think all of us are too quick to judge, most of the time, from the most trivial things in life to the most complicated and important ones.

Which makes advertisement and words of mouth work.

We don't know how to judge or don't want to spend enough time to gather enough evidence to judge, so we trust ones who we think are trustworthy.

I guess that's exactly the reason why we've got a lot of standard tests/exams.

People don't want to spend their own time or effort to gauge the exact levels of skills of their students or employees, so they delegate this to standard tests/exams.

The problem is how much we can trust these exams.

Good exam designers should've already been aware of this, so I think they adapt and improve on a regular basis.

in ELL's Cabin, 8 hours ago, by inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Yeah . . . 5 downvotes = 1 upvote/2 upvotes.

That's exactly what happened sometimes.

I think it works that way for exactly the same reason why playing victim (or self-victimization) works.

"Caring and conscientious people cannot stand to see anyone suffering" --Wikipedia

Note unrelated errors in your sentences: 1) "and I can use my before them" should be ", and can I use ..."; 2) "said me" should be "said to me" both times; 3) "teared" should be "tore". — zwol 7 hours ago

Good point.

How can we grow the correct idea in a learner's mind correctly right the first time?

Is learning it by rote, "You say what to whom," enough?

@Catija I translated it into English from a Persian dissertation abstract. I am not sure if I had seen similar usage of either somewhere, but I found it somehow convenient to use and wondered if it was grammatical. So posted a question here :) — JasonStack 7 hours ago

Another mystery solved!

Catija

02:43

That's why asking is always worth it. Sometimes they actually reply.

Damkerng T.

@Catija Yes! It worked nicely this time!

Damkerng T.

03:01

Current status: 2040 tabs and 37 more windows

I think I should do a bit of my work stuff, and clear my tabs down to at least 2010 tabs, before resuming ELLing!

Damkerng T.

03:20

I just noticed that the description of the ELU chat room is now in Japanese!

> この説明は中国語で書かれていないのですが、大丈夫です。

It reminds me of English and ELL.

For a complex enough text in another language, how can a learner tell whether it sounds natural or not.

For me, it's virtually impossible to tell whether この説明は中国語で書かれていないのですが、大丈夫です。 was written by a Japanese speaker.

Damkerng T.

04:49

0

Q: "Most days" or "On most days"

Which sentences are correct? It was raining most days. It was raining on most days. It was raining most mornings. It was raining in most mornings. I've seen most as a determiner used both with and without prepositions. And I couldn't find a rule on what usage is correct.

Something simple turns difficult?

> 1. It was raining most days.
2. It was raining on most days.
3. It was raining most mornings.
4. It was raining in most mornings.

> @Khan: "Most days" here would indicate that the rainy days significantly outnumber the sunny days. Most of the time, I take the train; sometimes I take the bus. We do not say "in most mornings" even though we say "in the morning". – TRomano 5 hours ago

> @TRomano: Hmm, yes, after googling for a bit, seems like phrases that include "in most mornings" are almost never used. Yet, some phrases like "seen on most days" are much more common than "seen most days". I feel like I'm missing something. – Atm5 5 hours ago

Hmm...

> And Catherine Guinness, theStout heiress, came in most mornings—late mornings—to proofread Interview, which meant she changed “color” to “colour” and “center”to “centre” and someone else,usually me, hadto change everything back.

> --Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Close Up

> I liked Kev and Angelo, the plumbers, who came in most mornings and teased Frank about where his meat might have come from.

> --Honeymoon in Paris: A Novella (A Penguin Special from ...

> Since Mom cooked dinner and supper every day, seven days a week, pop always let her sleep in most mornings.

> --IT'S MY STORY - I'LL TELL IT MY WAY - Page 61

> (and a lot more)

On the other hand...

There is basically no results for in most of the mornings.

But in most of the morning (note the "s") is in use.

So basically we have this pattern: MAIN-CLAUSE (PREP) most (of the) morning(s)/day(s)

Which of them are possible?

Which of these are more common?

I've just notice that though Harvard doesn't require a student to take TOEFL, it states clearly that the student should be more than at ease with English.

> English language proficiency

A strong knowledge of English is essential for successful study at Harvard, including the ability to understand and express thoughts quickly and clearly. Although you are not required to take the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or other proficiency exams, you may submit your scores if you have done so.

> college.harvard.edu/admissions/application-process/…

Define irony.

It's when you read a comment by someone and when you click to see their profile, it says do not believe anything you read online.

4 sounds very incorrect, and 2 sounds a little less incorrect, but is still wrong. 1 and 3 are the best, but using "It rained most days" and "it rained most mornings" sounds better. — Jojodmo 3 hours ago

> Jojodmo
http://www.jojodmo.com
"Do not trust everything that you read online"
- Aristotle

> ell.stackexchange.com/users/18122/jojodmo

:P

in ELL's Cabin, 8 hours ago, by snailboat

@HarryCBurn If you mark a noun phrase with the, you're telling the listener "I think you can identify what this noun phrase refers to". That's the basic idea.

^I missed that message when browsing through the chat log this morning!

1

Q: Definite article for things that are mine

Can I use the definite article for things which are somehow mine, and can I use my before them? For example to say When I was 16 years old, the father said me ..... Instead of When I was 16 years old, my father said me .... or As I fell, the shirt teared apart

definite-article

Note to self: personal/possessive pronouns, demonstrative pronoun, and articles in combined could be a source of confusion for some learners.

1

Q: Meaning of 'as you may say'

Here is the example, which is from 'Baker's blue-jay yarn' by Mark Twain. I think the sentence means '(bad words) you might say in everyday life', but I'm not sure. "He just had strength enough to crawl up onto the comb and lean his back agin the chimbly, and then he collected his impressions ...

sentence-meaning

Note to self: How can we teach or help learners to develop their skill of reading in context?

Yeah, it's a literary device, said for effect. The author doesn't really think that the reader won't believe him—it just alerts the reader that something astounding is about to be reported. — Brian Hitchcock 22 hours ago

Ah, literary devices could be one of the solutions.

Also related:

Then can I say I was new to two computers which were bought recently — Ahmad 14 hours ago

@Ahmad: Not usually, no. Note that X is new to A essentially means from A's point of view, X is new (i.e. - A has only recently encountered X). Idiomatically we often switch the "perspective" - for example, I'm new to marriage (I haven't been married long). But that's essentially a "figurative" usage (the state of "marriage" has no consciousness, so it can't really "experience" you being in that condition). The figurative usage tends to breaks down if A is a very specific "real-world entity" such as one or two particular computers that have never "met" anyone at all. — FumbleFingers 12 hours ago

Basically, the learner will need to know that I'm new to X is not used to mean that I've just got or bought X recently.

Damkerng T.

05:35

Yay! I'm down to 2015 tabs!

0

Q: Why isn't this incorrect?

Farmers who grow major crops such as corn, rice and wheat, aware that new developments in agriculture production can result in millions of dollars in additional revenue, switching to newer, more efficient technologies. NO ERROR? For the question above I was stumped at the fact of how awa...

sentence sentence-structure

Oh, I just ran into that.

Catija

@DamkerngT. :D I don't think that ELU likes me :P My answers there never get many upvotes but I appreciate yours:P

Damkerng T.

@Catija I upvoted it. :-) -- I'm not sure why ELL doesn't seem to welcome questions from GRE/GMAT/TOEFL/IELTS and such.

Such questions seem to be well-received on ELU.

Sometimes I can't make sense of ELL-ELU differences.

Catija

@DamkerngT. I've only ever seen one question from the GRE here... it was migrated from ELU and got closed because it was asking five different questions at once.

Damkerng T.

Oh!

BTW, I'm sure you'll be one of our great answerers if we've gotten more GRE/GMAT/TOEFL/IELTS questions on ELL. :-)

Catija

@DamkerngT. :D Thanks :D They are interesting questions but it's best if people can be very specific about what they don't understand. Sometimes they simply post the question and ask "which is the correct answer and why"... and that's not helpful to anyone. They really need to show what work they've done, explain which answer they think is correct and why and (if they know it) which answer the test says is correct.

Damkerng T.

05:43

Welcome. I really think that anyway. :D

nods

Damkerng T.

07:10

0

Q: what does"as lately as " mean?

everybody. Could you please show me what is the difference in meaning between the two? A. I saw him as lately as the last Monday. B. I saw him as lately as Monday. Meanwhile, Would you possibly show me what the following mean? as lately as

meaning

Hmm... the difference between recently and lately could be interesting.

I think we can make a lot of marginal sentences out of that.

Damkerng T.

08:52

Let The River Run - Carly Simon

►

Good old memory. Sweet yesterday.

Catija

@DamkerngT. Have you seen Working Girl?

Working Girl

Working Girl is a 1988 romantic comedy-drama film written by Kevin Wade and directed by Mike Nichols. It tells the story of a Staten Island-raised secretary, Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith), working in the mergers and acquisitions department of a Wall Street investment bank. When her boss, Katharine Parker (Sigourney Weaver), breaks her leg skiing, Tess uses Parker's absence and connections, including her errant beau Jack Trainer (Harrison Ford), to put forward her own idea for a merger deal. The film features a notable opening sequence following Manhattan-bound commuters on the Staten Island Ferry...

That's the theme song of the movie.

Damkerng T.

@Catija Yes! It was the first movie I've watched on my VCR player!

Catija

@DamkerngT. We just watched it last week. Really love it.

Damkerng T.

I still had to read subtitles in my first language back then.

Yep! Love it!

I just heard it again in a scene from Little Black Book.

Catija

I didn't realize the video was from the movie, too!

THat's cool.

Damkerng T.

09:01

Oh, I think I learned how to say "Nah" from this movie. :P

Catija

09:43

Lookie, a TOEFL question and it even got answered :D

1

Q: Why is "in the shape of ellipse" ungrammatical?

This is a TOEFL question: The orbit of a celestial body is usually in the shape of ellipse. The solution states that the word "ellipse" is an ungrammatical word, but I don't know why. I think that word is not wrong and it don't need to be corrected. Anyone can explain me? Thank you

grammar exam-question

Damkerng T.

Hehe! It makes me wonder, is it really ungrammatical?

I know that with an article, it's safer, but is it mandatory?

It reminds me of my recent question:

3

Q: '[That] includes publisher and date' — no article?

I stumbled upon this text: Many thanks go, first of all, to the authors of more than a thousand sentences quoted in Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style. Each author's name and the title of the work appear at the end of the quotation and again in a bibliography-index that includes publisher and ...

grammar articles zero-article

Catija

@DamkerngT. I don't have anything to back it up but I'd certainly say "yes". It sounds wrong without the article.

Damkerng T.

It seems like United States. Department of Commerce. Office of Technical Services was incorrect too.

> ... — having an outline in the shape of ellipse, i.e., having two axes of symmetry (of spores in optical cross section) ...

> --OTS. - Issues 73-54039 - Page 118

A book on optoelectronics (Allerton Press) also write it without an article:

> Strictly speaking, the central region of the blur cross section is in the shape of ellipse, for Az = -3.7 mm.

> --Optoelectronics, Instrumentation and Data Processing

There are a few possibilities that we can explain this, I think.

That these examples are blatantly wrong, that the acceptable English to TOEFL is only a subset of the real English real people use, that TOEFL didn't say that it's ungrammatical--just less desirable, or that it wasn't really from TOEFL.

All of them are possible, IMHO.

I did the same for "in the shape of ellipsis|circle|rectangle". All got some results.

Catija

09:59

@DamkerngT. That's odd. I would never use that phrasing.

Damkerng T.

What's with the blue bubble!?

@Catija nods

Damkerng T.

10:23

Which choices are possible?

> These are magnets in the shape(s) of (the) fruit(s) and vegetable(s).

> These are magnets in the shape(s) of (a/the) fruit/vegetable.

It's interesting that we say all shapes and sizes but we seem to favor in the shape of Xs even when Xs is in the plural.

> In addition to pieces that exhibit the continuing influence of Meissen and the Orient, perhaps the best-known examples of Red Anchor tableware are naturalistically molded dishes in the shape of fruit, vegetables, or animals (see cat. no. 2).

> --Eighteenth-century English Porcelain in the Collection of ...

Also interesting is when we seem to favor in the shape of fruit, vegetables, and|or animals, but we favor in the shape of fruits and vegetables.

British English: fruit and vegetables,fruits and vegetables

> books.google.com/ngrams/…

American English: fruit and vegetables,fruits and vegetables

> books.google.com/ngrams/…

What should we tell the students/learners then?!

0

Q: Why is the simple present tense used here?

Why is the simple present used in the following sentence (describing League of Legends)? Bilgewater devours itself as a shadowed figure returns admist the fire. (source) Shouldn't it be like the following? Bilgewater devours itself as a shadowed figure returning admist the fire.

grammar

> Bilgewater devours itself as a shadowed figure returns admist the fire.

> Source: lol.garena.ph/contentNewsSub.php?contentidselect=00002938

> Epilogue: lol.garena.ph/site/en/bilgewater/#story-4

So it's Philippine English?

> Bilgewater devours itself as a shadowed figure returns admist the fire.

I can't read that any other way than as meaning while.

Damkerng T.

11:10

0

Q: Meaning of 'fat'

Could the word 'fat' mean 'big'? Here is the example, which I think 'fat' seems to mean 'big'. It was a knothole in the roof. He cocked his head to one side, shut one eye and put the other one to the hole, like a 'possum looking down a jug; then he glanced up with his bright eyes, gave a win...

meaning

A-ha! As I expected, fat may not be as simple as most people may think.

A possibility would be "not much of a hole", in the sense we mean when we say one has not much of a chance -- "Fat chance the prom queen will go out on a date with you, you dweeb." Or it may be a reference to a ring used in a game of marbles. If the marble stays inside the ring when the game calls for it to get knocked out, the marble is said to be 'fat'. (See Wright's English Dialect Dictionary under fat). But that's just a conjecture — TRomano Aug 2 at 19:35

0

Q: from the moment vs after

1.Explain about what you usually do from the moment you wake up and to the moment you go to sleep. 2.Explain about what you usually do after you wake up and until you go to sleep. my humble personal opinion is that from the moment = after / to the moment = until But I'm not sure if I ...

sentence-construction

Filed under 'queer-substitution' in my bookmarks.

1

Q: What is an adverbial clause of this sentence?

I am learning English grammar. And I was doing exercises of replacing adverbial phrase with adverbial clause. And I am unable to replace adverbial phrase with adverbial clause in the following sentence: "with a view to early retirement he saved his money." First of all please explain what this ...

adverbs clauses

Ahh...

I finally reached that tab...

With a view to retire early is still just a phrase, not a clause. — Damkerng T. May 25 at 2:24

Adverbial clause

An adverbial clause is a dependent clause that functions as an adverb; that is, the entire clause modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. As with all clauses, it contains a subject and predicate, although the subject as well as the (predicate) verb may sometimes be omitted and implied (see below). An adverbial clause is commonly, but not always, fronted by a subordinate conjunction—sometimes called a trigger word. (In the examples below the adverbial clause is italicized and the subordinate conjunction is bolded.) Mary, the aspiring actress, became upset as soon as she saw the casting...

Hooray! 1999 tabs!

in ELL's Cabin, 3 mins ago, by Damkerng T.

Note to self: Person, persons or people?

in ELL's Cabin, 3 mins ago, by Damkerng T.

> In modern English, people is the de facto plural of person. People and person have separate Latin origins, and they came to English at different times by different paths, but there are examples of people used as a plural of person from as early as the 14th century.

in ELL's Cabin, 1 min ago, by Damkerng T.

> Persons was the original plural, and it is possible to find examples of its use in all types of writing up to the present, but it prevails only in a few contexts, most notably law and law enforcement, and in a few common phrases (e.g., persons of interest, displaced persons, missing persons). Elsewhere, it usually gives way to people.

in ELL's Cabin, 1 min ago, by Damkerng T.

> --Grammarist

Damkerng T.

12:33

19

A: Why is 'to' not used before 'home'?

In this phrase "Go home", home is not a noun but an adverb Specifically, it is an adverb of place So you do not need a preposition like "to" prior to home. The Longman Dictionary specifies Do not use a preposition (a word such as 'at' or 'to') before home when it is an adverb Other si...

It's a noun-adverb-preposition war!

Anonymous

14:09

That's odd—none of the answers call home a preposition. Well, traditionally it would be called an adverb, it's true…

Anonymous

We've already discussed this though, so I won't repeat the arguments in favor of the intransitive preposition analysis

jimsug

Hah. Adverbs are the international law of language.

It's not quite clear if they exist, and what rules they follow.

Well, that's not true. You can't quite categorise them semantically. But you could do it distributionally. maybe.

Damkerng T.

14:35

@snailboat But there is no preposition in go home, so I wonder how the analysis could apply to the question. Or are we discussing go to school? Or did I miss something?

@jimsug It seems like a convenient pile. :P

Damkerng T.

14:55

0

Q: Any alternatives for the verb "to bury"?

I want to say "somebody was buried somewhere", to place (a corpse) in a grave. But the word "bury" sometimes sounds rude or very technical to me. Am I right or is it very normal to use "bury". If it is not appropriate, can you tell me an alternative?

phrase word-use alternative-word

I wonder if where he (or she) is works.

(It should work. Though I think there's nothing wrong with bury.)

Damkerng T.

15:14

> Concerning the general effectiveness of written CF, the results of the study corroborate those of recent studies on corrective feedback (Bitchener, 2008; Bitchener and Knoch, 2008a, 2008b, 2010a; Farrokhi and Sattarpour, 2011; Sheen, 2007; Sheen et al., 2009). ... Therefore, it can be concluded that firstly, providing written CF is an effective way for responding to EFL learners’ written performance in general. Secondly, focused written CF has more positive effect on these learners’ acquisition of the targeted structures than the unfocused written CF.

> THE EFFECT OF FOCUSED VERSUS UNFOCUSED CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK ON DEVELOPING GRAMMATICAL ACCURACY OF IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS’ WRITTEN PERFORMANCE WITHIN DIFFERENT GENDER GROUPS
Seyed Mahdi Araghi and Farnaz Sahebkheir

Another paper focuses on the effect of negotiated feedback.

> Correcting students’ written grammatical errors: The effects of negotiated versus nonnegotiated feedback. Hossein Nassaji.

> repozytorium.amu.edu.pl/jspui/bitstream/10593/2303/1/…

Anonymous

Home is the preposition

Damkerng T.

Oh, I see! (How can I overlook it?)

Hmm... but I think our discussion on intransitive preposition analysis was about phrasal-verb lookalikes.

Maybe I've forgotten part of it or couldn't grasp all of it.

Anonymous

16:08

@DamkerngT. No, but it was a while ago, so I guess it wouldn't hurt to go over it again :-)

Damkerng T.

Oh, so it's not related to phrasal verbs?!

Anonymous

No.

Anonymous

We have transitive verbs and intransitive verbs, right?

Damkerng T.

Yes.

Anonymous

Sometimes we find verbs that are always intransitive.

Anonymous

16:09

Sometimes we find verbs that can be transitive or intransitive, depending.

Anonymous

But apart from taking objects as complements, or not taking objects as complements

Anonymous

We find that these verbs have a lot of things in common in terms of function, morphology, and so forth

Anonymous

So we label them all with one part of speech, 'verb', even though sometimes they're intransitive

Anonymous

Even though some verbs never take objects, we still call them 'verbs'.

Anonymous

But if you look at traditional grammar . . .

Anonymous

16:11

Any time you have what would otherwise be called a preposition, but without a complement, they call it an 'adverb'!

Anonymous

But they don't act like the other thingies we call adverbs.

Damkerng T.

I think I remember that we discussed walk across.

Anonymous

Of course, there are a lot of different thingies people call adverbs, and those groups don't necessarily have a lot in common.

Anonymous

But these 'adverbs', apart from being intransitive, pattern like prepositions, tend to fit in well semantically with other prepositions―and of course, a lot of them are uncontroversially called prepositions when they have complements

Damkerng T.

(Sometimes I think it might be helpful if we had a PoS called adadjective. :P)

Anonymous

16:14

So Otto Jespersen said that we should make things simpler and just call them prepositions even if they're intransitive

Anonymous

And that was 90 years ago.

Anonymous

So it's not actually a terribly new idea.

Damkerng T.

Thinking along Jespersen's idea, I think we have to call home a preposition because we won't think of come as a transitive verb.

(Otherwise, home could just be a noun.)

Huh?

> He go his home bury his mama, go two, maybe three moons.

> --Time Never Runs Back: A Novel - Page 120

I didn't expect to find such an example!

(Though He go is obviously non-standard.)

Anonymous

16:35

@DamkerngT. It's supposed to sound like a Native American speaking English as a second language, I think

Damkerng T.

Actually, I just came up with a new idea, but I have a hunch that you're not gonna like it. :-)

I think it could work too, if we allowed English to have a zero preposition. :D

> He walked home.

> He walked to his home.

> He walked here.

> He walked between here and his home.

> He walked between here and there.

> He walked (to?) there and back here.

> He walked from home (to?) here.

> He walked from his home (to?) here.

Oh, actually this should work too!

> He walked his home.

Hmm... what about run?

> He ran (to?) his home.

Another radical idea which could sound even more absurd, but probably is truer than true!, is that if some people can analyze it as an adverb while others can analyze it as a preposition (while yet others can analyze it as a noun), maybe it belongs to more than one PoS at once!

(Even light can have the wave-particle duality, why can't a word have PoS multiplicity?)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

16:54

@DamkerngT. Because FLAWLESS English doesn't allow it.

Damkerng T.

Hehe! I think most if not all linguists prefer to assign only one PoS to each word in any given sentence. :-)

Even Einstein didn't accept the idea of wave-particle duality. I think we don't have much hope to assign more than one PoS to each word. :-)

> This double nature of radiation (and of material corpuscles)...has been interpreted by quantum-mechanics in an ingenious and amazingly successful fashion. This interpretation...appears to me as only a temporary way out...

> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave%E2%80%93particle_duality

Damkerng T.

17:29

8 hours ago, by Catija

1

Q: Why is "in the shape of ellipse" ungrammatical?

This is a TOEFL question: The orbit of a celestial body is usually in the shape of ellipse. The solution states that the word "ellipse" is an ungrammatical word, but I don't know why. I think that word is not wrong and it don't need to be corrected. Anyone can explain me? Thank you

grammar exam-question

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

*an ellipse.

Damkerng T.

Yes. But!

Though in the shape of a/the X and in the shape of Xs seem to prevail, in the shape of X do exist everywhere I look, under a given condition.

I think it's when the shape of Xs is invariant.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

TOEFL isn't under a given condition unless they say so.

Damkerng T.

It's the same for the size of (a/the/) X(s), the length of (a/the/) X(s), etc.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Probably not just only TOEFL.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

BTW my meta question boomed.

Damkerng T.

17:33

Congrats!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

It's the newest meta.chem question, but it has thrice the views of the past one.

5

Q: How many shots will it take me to kill you with a neutron gun?

Recently, I've seen a trend of $\mathcal{\color{red}{SCARY}}$ questions back on chem. They're mainly about this: Get the picture? No? OK, I'll be more straight-forward 1: How to dissolve fifteen elves and seventeen trolls ASAP? How much does it take to dissolve an angry bird with hydroc...

discussion allowed-questions

Prolly because of the smart title.

Damkerng T.

LOL

> The booster stage would have been roughly the size of a 747 or C-5A; and the orbital stage ...

> --United States and Soviet progress in space: summary data

> (Charles S. Sheldon, ‎Library of Congress. Science Policy Research Division, ‎United States. Congress. House. Committee on Science and Technology. Subcommittee on Space Science and Applications - 1978)

> The hardware is just not clear. In our present guess on weights, it will drive you to aircraft of the size of 747 or larger, probably in the million pound class.

> --Technology Resources Survey and Applications Act: Joint ...

> (United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences - 1974)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Dam did you read it?

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I skimmed through it a little.

Enough to get the big picture. :D

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Two big pictures.

Damkerng T.

17:42

I didn't mean picture-picture!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

BTW I realized that get the picture? pun is awesome in my meta Q.

Realized it after I typed it.

Which means, I'm spontaneously funny.

Damkerng T.

BTW, I think this comment is misleading:

It is not a mixed conditional, because that type of conditional uses a past tense in the if-clause and a present tense in the main clause. edufind.com/english-grammar/conditional — Sander 54 mins ago

Ah, about that TOEFL question...

You can also say "The orbit ... is usually elliptical". — TRomano 5 hours ago

Sadly, these tests wouldn't use the best possible sentence on a regular basis.

They would purposely use patterns unfamiliar to learners who have never enrolled in any certified English classes of theirs.

But not too outlandish that most native speakers would be in trouble with.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. On the contrary, there are times when you can't make a convincing argument that a word belongs to one class or another

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Hah!

BTW, this comment and Ngram results are surprising!

We don't say "as lately as" but "as late as". It means 'as recently as'... The most recent time I saw him was last Monday. books.google.com/ngrams/… — TRomano 6 hours ago

The Ngram chart shows that as lately as barely exists.

But on Google Books, "as late as" gave me 88 pages (10 results a page), whereas "as lately as" gave me 22 pages.

Anonymous

17:58

> "Grammar is to some extent an indeterminate system. Categories and structures, for example, often do not have neat boundaries. Grammarians are tempted to overlook such uncertainties, or to pretend that they do not exist. Our guiding principle in this grammar, however, will be to acknowledge them, and where appropriate to explore them through the study of gradience. [...]

2

Anonymous

> Another kind of indeterminacy is revealed through what may be called multiple analysis. It is one thing to analyse a sentence into a multiplicity of smaller units through progressive subdivision [...]; it is quite another thing to propose that two or more different analyses, each resulting in a different constituent structure, can be applied to the same sentence.

Anonymous

> There are occasions, however, when such alternative analyses seem to be needed, on the grounds that some generalizations that have to be made require one analysis, and some require another." (Quirk et al 1985 p.90)

Damkerng T.

Wow!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@snail \o

Actually, our meta's really hot now.

I'm typing with the speed of electricity.

Anonymous

Identifying lexical classes (parts of speech) can be interesting because the words in a given class tend to have similar ranges of functions

Anonymous

18:04

But a lot of the time, figuring out the function of each constituent is more useful

Damkerng T.

Before I may forget about it...

I think this is a good clue:

The fact that most speakers interpret 'Where did he go?' and 'Where did he go to?' the same also hints at something important. ('Where did he go to?' can be rephrased as 'What was the place that he went to?')

Hmm... I can't figure why one answer got 5 upvotes but the other got only one.

1

Q: Capital letters and numbers

If I have a sentence beginning with a number, should I use a capital letter? For example: 24 Other schools or 24 other schools

capitalization

nods

Catija

@DamkerngT. Because it doesn't answer the question "Do I capitalize the first letter of the first word after a number?" What it says is correct but it doesn't tell you what to do if there's no way around starting with a number. That's my guess, anyway.

Damkerng T.

nods -- Makes sense.

Anonymous

18:55

@DamkerngT. This might be silly, but I'd write "Numbers and capital letters" instead of "Capital letters and numbers"

Anonymous

Letters and numbers sound too much like two examples of the same semantic class, so I think this is very easily interpreted as [capital [letters and numbers]] instead of [[capital letters] and [numbers]], even though the former doesn't actually make sense

Anonymous

@Catija They wrote "If the context of the sentence is formal enough that correctly capitalising or not is an issue", which is a bit of a mystery to me

Catija

@snailboat That's because most people don't regularly use correct capitalization and punctuation... which I've never understood.

Perhaps a comment along the lines of "Is there a situation where proper capitalization isn't an issue?"

I was thinking about "proofreading"... and I wonder if a change of terminology would be helpful? "Editing" is a similar concept and it may be a good idea to change terminology to at least get people thinking about what they're doing?

Anonymous

19:13

I like the Japanese word for confetti. It's called 紙吹雪 kami-fubuki, which is literally 'paper blizzard'.

Catija

@snailboat Awww, かわいい

Catija

20:09

1

Q: play the garden

“You know,” I said to Rupert, “under Islamic law a quintessentially English occasion like this one would probably be outlawed.” Rupert nodded. He played the garden some more, a glass of white wine in his hand. Then it was time for him to make a speech about Omar Bakri. He took his place next to t...

meaning

Really interesting question. I can't find any other sources for the phrase "play the room" that actually give results without punctuation... clearly my google-fu is failing me.

StoneyB

21:09

@Catija I've always heard of it as "work the room", but this works, too.

Catija

@StoneyB No, that's probably right... which is why I updated the answer. I'm conflating "work the room" and "play the audience".

conflating... confabulating... mixing up... something.

That thing where you get so stuck, mentally, about one specific phrasing that you've been using it wrong and as soon as someone points out that it's X and not Y, you're like... OMG, you're so right. I'm such a dork.

StoneyB

21:31

@Catija Work, play, they're much of a muchness :)

(Speaking as an ex-actor, whose work was playing.)

Catija

@StoneyB :D YAY! Acting is fun... but I've spent a ton of time with actors and they can be a bit loopy :P Stage acting?

StoneyB

21:52

@Catija I always felt like acting was work. But I wasn't a real actor; I just played one on stage.

In my experience actors are mostly timid and insecure.

Catija

@StoneyB Probably. I spent three years working with a casting director, so I saw them when they were "on".

StoneyB

I was primarily a stage director, and I hated auditions. Mostly what you get out of auditions is reasons not to cast people.

Catija

@StoneyB That's true. I find it's easier to come up with reasons why a person isn't right for the role than why they are. Though, I wonder if it's slightly different as we were casting commercials & films.

StoneyB

@Catija I don't think it's that much different. You don't have to live with your bad choices so long with a commercial.

Damkerng T.

22:13

@snailboat Interesting!

I think it's as interesting as this one:

> Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise played husband and wife and at that time they were husband and wife.

> --Economics as a Symptom of Sadism: Pathology in American ...

I didn't notice the order of "husband" then "wife" until they repeated it.

@Catija @StoneyB Aww... casting. Must be a tough job.

I mean I imagine that it's not easy to pick only one and refuse the rest.

I fell that sometimes when I have to pick people into my team.

"Did I make the wrong choice?" usually haunted me in the back of my mind.

StoneyB

@DamkerngT. It's a whole lot easier not to pick any of them. Course then you have to start all over.

Damkerng T.

Oh! Haha!

Oh, ^*feel!

@DamkerngT. You may be right. Please post your answer and explain it more so I can get what is "verb phrase"?! — Ahmad 4 hours ago

StoneyB

I wish I could cast my clients. On the same principles.

Damkerng T.

(about the comment) Ah, but I think the question is too broad!

@StoneyB Hah! Oh, I guess we all do that sometimes. :P

I know I can't run more than two projects at the same time. (I did it a few times. Not turned out that great most of the times.) So, sometimes I had to "cast" the hirers. :P

I think it's the same for you.

StoneyB

It was. But I haven't cast a show in 20 years now.

A little actual linguistics ... Is there any such thing as a widely used (or at least easily recognized) term for the string of verbforms that make up a construction? What a verb phrase ought to be, if the term hadn't been hijacked?

Damkerng T.

22:24

Besides "verb phrase", I know the terms predicate, and verb group.

But I think the definitions different group of people use are overlapping.

That's also another reason I refrain from answering Ahmad's question.

Cocopop's answer seems nice enough, too.

StoneyB

What I want is something that's just the verbs, not the complements. I've used "verbstring", but I don't much like that. "Verbgroup", maybe, but it sounds like a clump of verbs rather than something ordered.

Damkerng T.

Judging from the definition of "verb group" given by Macmillan, I think it's exactly what you want:

> verb group: a group containing at least one verb (the head), and often other words such as auxiliaries and modal verbs. For example, ‘could be’, ‘shouted’, ‘must go’, and ‘have been robbed’ are all verb groups.

StoneyB

Hmmm ... maybe that's what I should use, then. But I'm gonna argue with Mac about which verb is the head.

Damkerng T.

I think there must be a more vigorous definition for "verb group" out there somewhere.

Oops! I got a call. Gotta go. See you later!

StoneyB

Be brilliant!

Damkerng T.

23:31

@StoneyB Thank you!

Note to self: Three useful views to look at a language for non-native speakers: from the non-native speaker's point-of-view, from the native speaker's point-of-view, and a nonanthropomorphic view.

Damkerng T.

23:50

There is something about clownfish... Wait, is it 'clown fish' or 'clownfish'?!

> Marlin tries to tell them that not all clownfish are funny, but he tries unsuccessfully to tell a joke anyway.

> --Reel Diversity: A Teacher's Sourcebook

> Orphaned Punchline: Marlin proves that, despite what all the other fish think, not all clown fish are funny.

> (allthetropes.orain.org/wiki/Finding_Nemo)

From IMDb:

> Marlin: There was this mollusk, and he walks up to this sea cucumber. Normally, they don't talk, sea cucumbers, but in a joke everyone talks. So the sea mollusk says to the cucumber...
[sees the mask]
Marlin: Nemo!
Chum: [laughing] Nemo! Ha ha! Nemo... I don't get it.
Bruce: For a clown fish, he's not that funny.

Damkerng T.

> Marlin: It's just as well. He might be hungry.
Dory: Oh don't worry. Whales don't eat clownfish. They eat krill.
Krill: Swim away.
Dory: Oh look. Krill.

Damkerng T.

> Bob: Hey Marty, calm down.
Marlin: Don't tell me to be calm, pony boy.
Bob: Pony boy?
Bill: You know for a clownfish, he really isn't that funny
Ted: Pity

Damkerng T.

> Marlin: If this is some kind of practical joke, it's not funny, and I know funny. I'm a clownfish.

Damkerng T.

> Marlin: [exasperated] Would somebody please just give me directions?
[School of fish take shape of clown fish with sour expression]
School of Fish: [mockingly] Would somebody please just give me directions?
Marlin: I'm serious!
School of Fish: Blah-blah-blah, me-me-blah! Blah-blah, blah-blah, me-me-me!

Damkerng T.

Wikipedia uses "clownfish": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphiprioninae

Merriam-Webster uses "clown fish": merriam-webster.com/dictionary/clown%20fish

Oxford Dictionaries Online uses "clownfish": oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/clownfish

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