Language Overflow

V.V.

05:14

@CowperKettle it was 1972.

@DamkerngT. A very interesting question.

The participle clause works, when it includes the reason,(reason --result ), the infinitive works like a relative clause imho.

This comes from TR's examples.

Hi all.

CowperKettle

05:54

@V.V. No, in May 1963

Good morn

Damkerng T.

06:46

@V.V. I'm still not sure about the possible range of meanings of the two alternatives. (Cc @snailplane)

> Be careful with Orlando. When you a renting a car from this company inspect the car precisely and make sure you have marked all scratches and dents on your hire agreement. Do a lot of photos before collecting and returning the car. Ask someone to have signed your agreement that you have returned the car undamaged. At least you will have some evidence in case they want to cheat you.

> tripadvisor.com/…

"Ask someone to have signed your agreement that you have returned the car undamaged" -- I'm not even sure what this means, exactly.

(Of course, I can make a good guess, after seeing the context.)

It's not easy to come up with a good string to search for the pattern "NOUN to have signed".

"player to have signed" has no results in Google Books.

On the other hand, there are some results for "player having signed".

Damkerng T.

07:11

0

Q: photo credit and the opening credit

The item 7 in http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/credit. recognition by name of a person contributing to a performance (as a film or telecast) <the opening credits> Is the same meaning for the credit in photo credit?

nouns

Note to self: some might argue that they aren't of the same sense, while some would argue otherwise. That's why dictionaries never have the same number of definitions for a given word.

V.V.

07:24

+1 today, then winter will return, tney say.

Damkerng T.

07:35

@V.V. +1C? Brrr!

CowperKettle

07:46

Sawasdee khrap

-2C today, very warm

@V.V. "then winter will return" - did you mean "when"?

Damkerng T.

08:03

@CowperKettle LOL

Sawasdee khrap!

CowperKettle

08:14

@DamkerngT. It is, it's not a joke. It's a great weather to ice-skate

Four months from now, it will be thawing heavily..

Damkerng T.

@CowperKettle I see. It sounds mind-boggling to me, though, to say that -2 is very warm!

CowperKettle

In winter, "very warm" is when you can literally take off your hat for long stretches of time, or the gloves.

Damkerng T.

I could feel like I was in Frozen if I was there!

CowperKettle

(0:

V.V.

08:35

-1+3 today, -10-1 tomorrow. How do you like it? But it's still warm.

CowperKettle

it will drop to minus 20 again next weekend

I wish the global warming was more quick

Cardinal

08:55

What is a "postpositive" adjective?

> His arms, as such, appear upon a seal, supported by two swans, close, gorged with coronets and chained; each of them holding in his beak an upright ostrich.

en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/gorged

the dictionary maintains that the adjective "gorged" is "postpositive".

@CowperKettle Oh my god, couple of days ago the temperature drops to -2 and we had very time.

Damkerng T.

@Cardinal In plain English: not used before noun

Anonymous

09:36

@DamkerngT. How about player to have been signed?

Damkerng T.

@snailplane 2 results in Google Books!

Anonymous

@Cardinal Postpositive is one of the four basic functions of adjectives: attributive, predicative, postpositive, predeterminer

Anonymous

Sometimes when an adjective is limited in function, those labels are used. For example, we have the attributive adjective live as in live bait, but the predicative adjective alive as in She's alive. We can't swap them: *You can catch more fish with alive bait and *Most of the passengers were killed in the crash, but she's still live don't work.

Anonymous

Postpositive adjectives are relatively rare. I think Wikipedia has a nice example, something like all the visible stars in the night sky (attributive) versus all the stars visible to the naked eye (postpositive)..

2

Anonymous

Visible can have all four functions.

Anonymous

09:46

But sometimes when people say postpositive adjective, they mean one that can only function as a post-head modifier in NP structure. To make this clear, you can call them postpositive-only adjectives.

Anonymous

For example, attorney general but never *general attorney.

Anonymous

Nor *That attorney is general (predicative), nor *So general an attorney I have never seen! (predeterminer)

Anonymous

@Cardinal But I'm not familiar with the use of gorged in heraldry, so I can't comment on the description given in the Oxford Dictionary of English.

Anonymous

@V.V. @DamkerngT. It's getting very cold here! It'll get down to 4°C this week – almost freezing! Brrr.

Anonymous

Right now it's around 9°C out, and the heater is working very hard to keep me warm.

Damkerng T.

09:54

@snailplane Oh, that's the coldest weather I've ever been in! (Except for a few brief moments outside at Jungfraujoch.)

Anonymous

We each think different things when we hear "very cold" :-) I've been in colder weather since I grew up outside Chicago, but for me this is still very cold.

Anonymous

For V.V. and Kettles, it's not so bad :-)

Damkerng T.

I remember that I felt like almost dying at 4°C!

Anonymous

Brrrr!

Damkerng T.

8°C in Berlin (also windy) was also brutal!

Anonymous

09:56

I don't tolerate cold well.

Damkerng T.

Me either!

Anonymous

10:14

It's raining here.

Anonymous

I do love rain.

Damkerng T.

I don't like rain much, actually. I guess it's because it usually brings us traffic jams and power outages over here.

Oh, and sometimes it makes some giant billboards fly!

CowperKettle

My sister caught cold in Delhi

Takes antibiotics now

it is only +13C at nights

Damkerng T.

Ah, I didn't know Delhi can be that cold sometimes!

Hope she'll get well soon!

CowperKettle

at night, yes

I hope so too

Cardinal

10:46

@snailplane Thank you, that's interesting.

@snailplane Rain is indeed lovable!

@snailplane I use the Oxford to find proper example sentences for putting in the Anki. I usually read several sentences and, finally, choose a sentence that I that liked the most.

CowperKettle

@snailplane I wonder if people still go to surf in the ocean.

@Cardinal nice! I also try to pick examples, but usually just copy definitions from Wikipedia

Anonymous

11:02

People do go surfing. I don't live right at the coast myself, though.

Cardinal

11:21

@CowperKettle It's a good idea, I would try that.

CowperKettle

@snailplane feel free to delete the last 4 comments

@Cardinal my words are too complex, so Oxford does not have them

so I just pick chunks from Wikipedia (0:

Cardinal

11:52

@CowperKettle nods

Cardinal

12:08

I was reading about the word "Schadenfreude", came across with the phrase "morose delectation". What does that phrase mean?

By the way,

Word of the day: Schadenfreude

It seems that phrase is some kind of sadism or related to sadistic behaviors.

Damkerng T.

12:29

@Cardinal I think it's a behavior that's universal across languages and cultures.

Interesting that it looks like something came straight from German.

thestar.com/news/world/2016/11/26/…

Phrase of Tomorrow: spy bill (aka snoop law)

> Tim Berners-Lee, the computer scientist credited with inventing World Wide Web, tweeted news of the law’s passage with the words: “Dark, dark days.”

Damkerng T.

13:53

I can't help but think this question is better suited for ELU since few native speakers are going to care to split these hairs. — Andrew Nov 23 at 23:49

Huh? Wouldn't that make it fits ELL better? (assuming that most users at ELU are native speakers who care more about questions from native speakers)

You ask if abating is a "gerund or a verbal noun", but a gerund is a verbal noun. There is no difference between the two. A gerund is what we call the noun form of a verb. Every verb has its gerund. That gerund can be used like any other noun. Just as we can talk about the ferocity of the storm, we can talk about the abating of the storm. There's nothing special about using of or any other preposition after a gerund. We can say coming to the house or leaving for the city or running over a cat. — P. E. Dant Nov 23 at 20:21

P. E. Dant's comment is incorrect; for details please see chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/48770/a-gerund-is-not-a-noun In the abating of the storm, it is a noun rather than a gerund, which we can tell because it has the form of a noun phrase, complete with a determiner and of-phrase, because it takes adjectival rather than adverbial modification, and so on. — snailplane ♦ Nov 23 at 20:29

Personally, I think I would avoid using both the term "verbal noun" and "gerund".

SpringLearner

14:11

hello everybody

I want to send an email to my boss regarding my work on weekends. I just wanted to inform that I have worked on saturday and sunday.I wanted to send an email as below, can anybody please tell me is the grammar,contents is appropriate

dear XXX
FYI
I have worked on the weekends(saturday and sunday)
Regards,S
YYY

Cardinal

@DamkerngT. nod

> Vladimir Putin Presents ‘Honored’ Actor Steven Seagal With a Russian Passport

yahoo.com/celebrity/…

:-)

V.V.

14:49

@SpringLearner Hi, What help do you need?

I wouldn't say "dear" to my boss.

SpringLearner

@V.V. I just wanted to know whether the contents ,grammar are correct

V.V.

Make it more formal.

SpringLearner

can you please guide me?

V.V.

Sir, I 'd like to inform you that I worked on Saturday, (write the date) and™Sunday (the date). Sincerely yours,(name, surname )

If you think it too official, write his name instead of Sir.

Mr.X

SpringLearner

Thanks

V.V.

15:05

You're welcome, but change the content according to the cultural relations of your country.

SpringLearner

@V.V. will it be ok if I make the subject as weekend work

V.V.

Work at weekend.

What's the aim of it? To be paid?

SpringLearner

for getting comp off

V.V.

I see. If you could prove and show what you did it might be better. Business letters, for instance, etc.Good luck.

SpringLearner

@V.V. is it ok

I would like to inform you that I worked on yesterday(26-11-2016 Saturday) and today(27-11-2016 sunday) for unti testing

V.V.

15:42

@SpringLearner on Saturday, but yesterday (without on)

M.A.R.

@snailplane 4 deg C is even worse than 0 deg C.

Damkerng T.

17:40

Word of the Day: regurgitate

CowperKettle

18:22

@Cardinal The exact Russian counterpart to Schadenfreude is Zloradstvo

"malicious joy", the feeling of joy caused by somebody's misfortunes

zlo - evil, vice

rad - root meaning "joy"

hence, "a feeling of evil joy"

@DamkerngT. Poetic abridgement: regurge

> A river girds the city west and south,
The main north channel of a broad lagoon,
Regurging with the salt tides from the mouth;
Waste marshes shine and glister to the moon
For leagues, then moorland black, then stony ridges;
Great piers and causeways, many noble bridges,
Connect the town and islet suburbs strewn.

(The City of Dreadful Night)

> The city is not ruinous, although
Great ruins of an unremembered past,
With others of a few short years ago
More sad, are found within its precincts vast.
The street-lamps always burn; but scarce a casement
In house or palace front from roof to basement
Doth glow or gleam athwart the mirk air cast.

Damkerng T.

@CowperKettle Having stony ridges in the poem, it must be a good poem! :-)

CowperKettle

@DamkerngT. It is a work of genius. There are many bits to relish.

I literally imagined it when I memorized pieces of it

Damkerng T.

Why do I feel like we just used relish in our chat a while ago?!

CowperKettle

hmmm

I did a search - we only used it twice

evar (0:

Damkerng T.

Was it a word of the day?

Oh!

CowperKettle

18:30

Damkerng T.

Maybe I ran into it recently but somewhere else.

CowperKettle

> The rolling thunder seems to fill the sky
As it comes on; the horses snort and strain,
The harness jingles, as it passes by;
The hugeness of an overburthened wain:
A man sits nodding on the shaft or trudges
Three parts asleep beside his fellow-drudges:
And so it rolls into the night again.

wain

Noun: wain ‎(plural wains)

(archaic or literary) A wagon; a four-wheeled cart for hauling loads, usually pulled by horses or oxen.
"The Hay Wain" is a famous painting by John Constable.
wain
wine
wain

(3 more not shown…)

Verb: wain ‎(third-person singular simple present wains, present participle waining, simple past and past participle wained)

Misspelling of wane.
As the auto industry is waining away, the city is looking for something new. [1]

When I first read that part, I though that "trudges" was a plural noun

Damkerng T.

wain = "Misspelling of wane"! :-)

@CowperKettle Me too.

CowperKettle

@DamkerngT. (0:

> Then I would follow in among the last:
And in the porch a shrouded figure stood,
Who challenged each one pausing ere he passed,
With deep eyes burning through a blank white hood:
Whence come you in the world of life and light
To this our City of Tremendous Night?—

CowperKettle

18:54

Good night!

Damkerng T.

19:12

Good night! (Sorry for being AFK!)

Cardinal

22:34

> Each employee of a certain company is in either Department X or Department Y, and there are more than twice as many employees in Department X as in Department Y.

This is a part of a problem that I saw in sample problems of the GRE exam.
I can't understand the structure used to compare two things.

A is twice as many as B. This is OK; A = 2B

However, I cannot digest the aforementioned sentence.
I mean from the English point of view.

Anonymous

There are more than twice as many employees in Department X as ~~there are employees~~ in Department Y.

Anonymous

If there are 10 employees in Department Y, there must be at least 21 employees in Department X.

Anonymous

A > 2B

Cardinal

Thanks, I came to this conclusion by observing and comparing the English and Mathematics, I was curious to justify the expression.

Anonymous

22:52

We can think of it as comparing two variables, each in an existential clause:

Anonymous

> 1. There are A employees in Department X.
> 2. There are B employees in Department Y.

Anonymous

> 3. There are more than twice as many employees in Department X as [~~there are~~ ＿＿ ~~employees~~ in Department Y].　　（A > 2B)

Cardinal

I don't know why my first impression was Y>2x :-(

Anonymous

We can add in the missing words there are and employees, but we have to leave the gap in determiner position (corresponding to B in the example above) blank.

Anonymous

That gap represents the second variable.

Cardinal

23:00

my problem is with this part:
"as many employees in Department X as in Department Y"

I completely understand "as long as" and "twice as many as", but I have problem when there is more than one word between the two "as"s

Anonymous

Well, if you understand twice as many, then more than twice as many shouldn't be too hard. It just means more than 2B, rather than equal to 2B.

Cardinal

nods

Anonymous

If my explanations aren't helping, I encourage you to post this as a question on the main site :-)

Cardinal

my problem lies within the region between the two ass

Anonymous

Someone might be able to explain it better than I can ~~explain it~~.

Anonymous

23:06

You can provide a link to this chat log in your question if you want, so people don't end up giving you the same explanation.

Cardinal

I must read your comments above several times and think again. I'm very tired. Maybe it's not a big deal.

It's 2:40 am here.

Anonymous

Oh! Maybe it would be a good idea to rest :-)

Anonymous

You need sleep to learn things.

Cardinal

Yay, thank you.

Let's consider this:
There are as many employees in Department X as there are in Department Y.

Does it make any sense?

I guess it means X=Y.

Stack Exchange

23:24

1

Q: Guide to formatting ELL answers -- best practices?

Is there a place on ELL or ELL-Meta that conveys best practices on formatting answers, specifically in the context of conveying English language information? For example: presenting language examples with block quotes vs. preformatted vs. lists formatting correct/incorrect examples distinctly f...

discussion answers editing formatting markdown

Cardinal

23:34

I think my problem is that I'm trying to treat two different things alike, trying to shape them into a single structure:

There are more than twice as [many employees in Department X] as in Department Y.
The boy was as [tall] as the girl.

Anonymous

23:58

@Cardinal Hmm, those are indeed different.

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