Language Overflow

Anonymous

00:01

> There are more than twice as many employees in Department X as [ ~~there are~~ ＿＿ ~~employees~~ in Department Y ].

Anonymous

> The boy was as tall as [ the girl ~~was~~ ＿＿ ~~tall~~ ].

Anonymous

> The boy was six feet tall.

Anonymous

> The girl was six feet tall.

Anonymous

> The boy was as tall as [ the girl ~~was~~ ＿＿ ~~tall~~ ].

Anonymous

@Cardinal Technically, X could be larger than Y. It means that X is (at least) equal to Y.

Anonymous

00:05

But your question is how you can combine more than with twice as.

Anonymous

@Cardinal I would like to review how comparative clauses work before I try to explain anything any further :-)

Anonymous

00:26

I would like to reopen this question:

Anonymous

0

Q: "Center of someone's universe"

Her young son is the center of her universe what is meant by center of someone's universe?

Anonymous

It's a very short question, to be sure. They haven't included any details (research effort, context, etc.). But it's a clear enough question, and it's not Entirely Answerable by a Dictionary.

Anonymous

Is it?

Anonymous

Wow, it really does have a definition in one dictionary:

Anonymous

merriam-webster.com/dictionary/…

Anonymous

00:27

Still, only one: onelook.com/?w=center%20of%20someone%27s%20universe&ls=a

Anonymous

Do you think it should remain closed?

Anonymous

Four people voted to close it with the "Entirely answerable with a dictionary" reason.

Anonymous

One person voted to close it with the "Details, please!" reason.

Damkerng T.

02:54

Voted to reopen. :-)

Anonymous

03:08

@DamkerngT. Let's see what the review queue says :-)

CowperKettle

03:55

\o Morn all

yubraj sharma

04:43

Hi All !

@DamkerngT. How are you ?

Stack Exchange

0

Q: Is there a tag for questions about optional uses of "that"?

Many sentences include the word "that". In Standard English, there is a category of situations where the word "that" makes the sentence slightly clearer, but the word "that" is optional. For example, the following question is about an optional "that": where the suffix indicates the address is ...

discussion tag-request

yubraj sharma

3

A: The appropriate usage of prepositions

You asked which of those three sentences makes the most sense, but I'd say it's more about context and it also depends on what you want to say. Your sentences: 1- I am worried about whether my student caught the gist of the lesson or not. Here, this sentence is idiomatic and understandable...

Damkerng T.

05:07

@yubrajsharma Hi!

yubraj sharma

05:26

What do you think of my answer, especially about last sentence?

yubraj sharma

05:56

@snailplane Hi how are you ?

Anonymous

@yubrajsharma Hi :-) I'm good. I'm drawing stuff.

Anonymous

Completely unrelated to ELL, I'm afraid :-)

Anonymous

The correct adverbial phrase is widely spread. — Mick 21 mins ago

Anonymous

Kind of strange that this got 3 upvotes.

Anonymous

@Mick: That isn't even a "correct" adverbial phrase. It contains an adverb, sure, but widely spread is an adjectival phrase. The only thing it can modify is a noun. — Robusto 14 mins ago

Anonymous

06:06

Not to mention widely spread sounds strange.

yubraj sharma

@snailplane oh ! Strange for upvotes ?

Anonymous

I usually think it's strange if a plainly incorrect comment is highly upvoted.

Anonymous

It's a good question, though. The question, I upvoted :-)

yubraj sharma

Umm ....which is incorrect comment, I don't know

Anonymous

Mick's.

Anonymous

06:18

The one with 3 upvotes.

yubraj sharma

Ok I got it

What about my answer in ell.stackexchange.com/questions/110579/… ?

Anonymous

Technically, 3 doesn't imply that the student(s) didn't attend the lesson.

Anonymous

All it says is that the teacher didn't teach them.

Anonymous

Or, well, the teacher could have taught them something besides the lesson. Let's suppose you have a teacher who goofs off during class and talks about stuff besides the lesson. You might worry about whether the student is being taught anything by that teacher.

yubraj sharma

06:33

Yes ! I said the students didn't attend the lesson because they weren't teached by the teacher, Students could have taken the lesson if the teacher had teached them. Do I need to improve my answer ?

Anonymous

If the students "attend" the lesson, that means they showed up.

Anonymous

But you can show up without being taught.

Anonymous

I remember showing up for a class one time, and the teacher was nowhere to be found!

yubraj sharma

Umm ...Attending the lesson in class and being teached is two different thing. One can attend the lesson without being taught. Did I catch that ?

Anonymous

06:51

Yes

Anonymous

Attending = showing up in class

Anonymous

Being taught = the teacher teaches you

yubraj sharma

I'm going to edit my answer

Anonymous

:-)

Damkerng T.

@snailplane I remember that in a class, we almost never saw our teacher!

He was too busy running his consultancy business.

Word of the Day: ersatz

yubraj sharma

07:16

Ok I've updated the answer ell.stackexchange.com/questions/110579/…, Have I missed anything?

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I think changing a to one would improve that sentence :-)

Damkerng T.

@snailplane Thanks for the tip!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Just one of the zillion things I can't explain off the top of my head :-)

Anonymous

I still haven't reviewed comparative constructions. I need to do that.

Damkerng T.

@snailplane I think it's about emphasis. And emphasis is not easy to explain, anyway!

@snailplane I remember that your comments look great.

Especially this one:

7 hours ago, by snailplane

> There are more than twice as many employees in Department X as [ ~~there are~~ ＿＿ ~~employees~~ in Department Y ].

@yubrajsharma Implications are generally subtle. I don't think you missed anything much, though it's hard to discuss all possible cases and implications thoroughly.

(Because we don't have a real context, right? :-)

(Oops! I typed 'And' as 'An' up there!)

Anonymous

07:32

@DamkerngT. A wild 'd' appears!

Damkerng T.

@snailplane It's magical! :-)

(Thanks!)

yubraj sharma

@DamkerngT. Yes ! There's is not any context

I'm think about preposition+being+past participle -Without being taught

She can learn English without being taught.

by teacher

Is "gerund" compulsory in this sentence?

Can't we convey the same meaning by using "Infininitive" ? Or, is there another way to say the same thing ?

Damkerng T.

07:57

@yubrajsharma What do you have in mind, to rewrite that sentence with an infinitive?

yubraj sharma

Yes !

I thin it's not possible!

CowperKettle

She can learn English without the need to be taught

yubraj sharma

Here's "need" which wasn't in the first sentence.

And "By teacher" isn't necessary ?

CowperKettle

yes, it is omissible

CowperKettle

08:24

0

Q: Is it okay to say "15 minutes of four" in English?

Is it okay to say "15 minutes of four" in English meaning "3:45"? Or would it mean "4:15"? Or is it totally incorrect to say that? (I heard once a native speaker said that, but I am not sure if that was him just playing with words or that was an acceptable way of saying the time in English)

word-usage

In Russia, we say "15 minutes of the fourth"

meaning, "of the fourth hour"

15 minut chetvertogo

yubraj sharma

08:45

Nods..

Usess of "As" to mean for example; for instance:
Some flowers, as the rose, require special care.http://www.dictionary.com/browse/as?s=t

How 'as' is different from 'such as'?

Anonymous

People rarely talk that way.

CowperKettle

> Some flowers, as the rose, require special care.

Yes, I wanted to say that I never heard "as" used thus

Anonymous

Such as is common enough, though.

CowperKettle

09:05

GDP of Russia is the GDP of California divided by 2.3

Thailand is quite unequal too

Anonymous

0

Q: possessive determiner my , mine is what?

My and mine are both called possessive pronouns My is called a possessive determiner What is mine also called?

pronouns possessive determiners

Anonymous

Note to self: Answer this later.

CowperKettle

"Mine" is not a determiner?

I don't understand the question

Anonymous

Putting words into part-of-speech buckets isn't an exciting life goal on its own. It's only interesting to the extent that it lets you make predictions about how those words are used in as simple and accurate a manner as possible.

CowperKettle

"putting usage"?

I agree, it is not exciting. I'm just procrastinating. Should be proofreading

Anonymous

09:18

That was supposed to say "words".

Anonymous

My brain is working extra hard to type on my new tablet keyboard :-)

Anonymous

Wordsing is hard.

CowperKettle

Yay!

New tablet!

Anonymous

Yuh-huh.

Anonymous

I like it :-)

CowperKettle

09:19

I've got a tablet, but it's charging system is bad (constantly gets disconnected), so I rarely use it.

I like a good keyboard, with real keys.

Have been using Microsoft Natural for the last 15 years

Anonymous

This is a 2-in-1 laptop. I switched to the real keyboard mid-sentence.

Anonymous

Kind of like doing a fancy skateboard trick when you barely know how to walk. It's no surprise I failed to words :-)

CowperKettle

I see. I just looked - wow they are expensive. About $1000 per piece. I'll stick to my keyboard for a while. (0:

The unexpensive one have weak CPUs

Anonymous

This one is quite nice, but it has integrated video. I don't intend to play any games on it.

Anonymous

The most expensive ones I saw are gamer ones.

CowperKettle

09:24

That's fine with me, I haven't played games since 2009

Anonymous

But I don't need that.

CowperKettle

Found it: in Russian, they call them трансформер (transformer)

Anonymous

Neat!

CowperKettle

nix66.ru/catalog/…

Pentium N3710 -- quite slow..

Anonymous

This one has umm, let me check.

Anonymous

09:29

> 7th Generation Intel® Core™ i5-7200U Processor (3M Cache, up to 3.10 GHz)

Anonymous

How much is the 7579 where you are?

CowperKettle

Ah, the one I was reading about

@snailplane 7579?

Anonymous

It's the model # of the Dell I got.

Anonymous

I couldn't find it on that website you linked me to.

CowperKettle

@snailplane Transformer laptops with this CPU cost about RUB 50 000 here, which is about 800 dollars

It's a good price, but the salaries have halved sinse 2014, so people stopped buying such models

@snailplane I have good memories about Dell. At my father's work in Tyumen, I witnessed a Dell Latitude laptop land from a desk on the hard floor, which caused no malfunction, back in the 1990s

After that, I kind of like Dell. (0:

But Acers also turned out good.

My sister's also landed somewhere, and was cracked but still worked, maybe still works

I guess I would not use it in the touch mode much anyway

I'm the type type of person.

Anonymous

09:45

I like to type too.

Anonymous

It makes a nice e-reader in tablet mode. :-)

CowperKettle

Exactly. I want to fix my tablet's charging system to use it for that. I'd love to lie in my bed and read a book from it.

Damkerng T.

10:36

@CowperKettle Hooray! We are all there together in the chart!

CowperKettle

Yes khrap. (0:

Could one say that a cell line has an author?

I decided to use creator for that.

I have the feeling that in English one can be an author of a book, not of a cell line.

Even if what is done to create a cell line is basically, yes, a lot of work with code/information

But there's also the actual work with cell cultures, expression vectors, test tubes, pipettes, growth media

Damkerng T.

Hmm... I'm not sure what biologists would use.

CowperKettle

I will use author, it will be quaint but comprehensible in the context

Damkerng T.

nods

CowperKettle

@V.V. - good translation of Dickinson's poem. Selena Brown liked it a lot.

> Cultural properties: a suspension culture that grows in an atmosphere with a carbon dioxide content of 5 %. (Do I need "a" before "carbon"?)

Damkerng T.

10:59

Hmm... why not just "with 5% carbon dioxide"?

CowperKettle

@DamkerngT. Thank you!

Damkerng T.

:-)

user62015

11:15

Hi

@DamkerngT. How are you?

The government (A)/ has been incurring (B)/ loss at the rate of (C)/ fifty thousand annually. (D)/ No error. (E)

Could you help me?

CowperKettle

> Archeologists conducting research in Central American jungle have discovered an ancient statue of Ketzalmigonkugankoatltenochtitlan - the Aztec god of diction and memory.

yubraj sharma

Good Evening !

Damkerng T.

@user62015 This one is difficult for me. I think the sentence is okay in real English, but there are more than one potential error in Exam English.

The potential errors are not serious, though, IMHO.

Evening!

@CowperKettle One would need good diction and memory to remember this Aztec god's name!

yubraj sharma

1

A: "He won't (likely) be... so much... as for..." How can I paraphrase it?

Your two sentences: He won't likely be remembered so much for his accomplishments as for his character. He will be remembered for his character rather than for his accomplishments. In the first sentence there is 'as for', it means considering or speaking about according to http://dict...

What about my answer to this question?

Damkerng T.

If you wrote an answer, you should be sure that it's at least fundamentally correct.

yubraj sharma

11:25

Yes

Damkerng T.

"Is this sentence similar to the following?" -- I'm not sure what the OP means by "similar".

What kind of similarity were they thinking about? I don't know.

Oh, I see. It's their paraphrase.

yubraj sharma

I couldn't understand the question exactly, I tried to answer him/her, though

Anonymous

@CowperKettle Yes, you need a.

Damkerng T.

@yubrajsharma "All things considered, Your first sentence isn't like second sentence. They conveys two different meanings as follows"

Anonymous

I don't think cell lines have author

Anonymous

11:29

s. D'oh.

Damkerng T.

Personally, I don't think the two alternatives are very different. @yubrajsharma

CowperKettle

@snailplane neither do I

yubraj sharma

@DamkerngT. How ?

CowperKettle

@snailplane but the readers will understand

Damkerng T.

How what?

yubraj sharma

11:31

@DamkerngT. You copy pasted my words from the answer, why ?

Damkerng T.

@yubrajsharma To make it clear what I was talking about.

Anonymous

The propositional meaning is the same, but the non-propositional (modal) meaning is missing from the secomd sentence.

Anonymous

Darn, I'm awful at typing on this :-)

Damkerng T.

@snailplane Is it a Flipbook or a Transformer?

Anonymous

Yes! :-)

yubraj sharma

11:32

Two alternative could be interpreted in many ways but I chosed one way to interpret

Damkerng T.

@snailplane Hah!

yubraj sharma

@DamkerngT. Do I need to improve the answer ?

Anonymous

@yubrajsharma I don't think you understood the sentences.

Damkerng T.

@yubrajsharma Hmm... I'm not sure. I think it's up to you. :-)

0

A: Is there a rule which may indicate us when to use "BROAD" and when to use "WIDE"?

I realize that the OP has accepted the answer in the duplicate question of their own doing: uses for the words BROAD & WIDE But this is the page where new answers can be submitted, so I will submit mine wide ADJECTIVE 1. Of great or more than average width: ‘a wide road’ 1.1 (after...

Her last example (broadly applied vs. widely applied) is interesting.

I don't think they're really interchangeable.

I think broadly applied could mean more like "generally applied".

0

Q: Why does ‘much’ sometimes sound incorrect but not ‘so much’?

Example I love this so much. I love this much. There should be more cases, but I cannot think of anymore.

word-usage phrase-usage

"Why does ‘much’ sometimes sound incorrect but not ‘so much’?" -- I guess the best answer is probably... tada! "Because people don't say it!" :-)

(I thought to hedge it a bit, but it should be okay as is.)

Maybe it's more correct to say "Because people don't say it as often."

0

Q: Problem about sentence construction from LoTR passage

It was the pride and wonder of the Northern Line that, though their power departed and their people dwindled, through all the many generations the succession was unbroken from father to son. Also, though the length of the lives of the Dunedain grew ever less in Middle-earth, after the ending of...

sentence-construction

I was thinking to add that we can think of a semicolon as either a big comma or a small period.

Then I realized that I don't know much about Tolkien's style, so I'd better skip it.

yubraj sharma

11:57

He won't likely be remembered so much for his accomplishments as for his character.
Is this sentence similar to the following?

He will be remembered for his character rather than for his accomplishments.

First sentence means "He won't likely be remembered so much for his accomplishments speaking or considering his chracter."

If we consider his chracter, he won't likely be remembered. ......."

Anonymous

No, I'm afraid not.

Anonymous

It means that people will probably remember him for his character. They probably won't remember him for his accomplishments, which may be significant, but that won't be what they remember him for.

yubraj sharma

@snailplane Why ? What does "As for" means? Doesn't it mean "Considering or speaking about" , with regards to?

I'm afraid I don't know how to interpret the two sentences.

Anonymous

I'm sorry, I'll have to explain another time.

yubraj sharma

12:14

If I interpret the meaning of the sentence applying the meaning of "As for" in the first sentence, It will have different meaning. As I said before, As for means -considering" or "with regards" to or "speaking about",according to the dictionary.

CowperKettle

12:31

word of the day: throw for a loop

Færd

12:58

@DamkerngT. Screw E.E. But what annoys me most about it is the uncountable use of loss.

CowperKettle

The chat message (removed) for Fard should look like (nevermore)

Færd

How come? :)

CowperKettle

Because you're a Raven

Færd

Mmm.

Ah!

Cardinal

adjective of the day: seasoned

Damkerng T.

13:01

@Færd nods -- I was thinking they might want it as the answer, but later I felt unsure.

Færd

@CowperKettle Hey, that was a good one! Thanks!

The way we see ourselves in things around us and sort of impose our innermost, subconscious sentiments on things, the way we're trapped in ourselves, ...

CowperKettle

@Færd You're welcome! it's a beautiful poem in the beginning

I never finished reading it, because it gets a bit overwrought after a while

Færd

The way we too often choose to interpret things without knowing that it's just a choice.

A sad one, really.

Good thing I'm not the raven.

Oh, wait, maybe part of me is.

And nevermore is such a grim word.

CowperKettle

13:18

> And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me – filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door –
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; –
This it is and nothing more."

I love the "silken, sad, uncertain" bit

V.V.

14:36

Tada?interesting.

CowperKettle

14:59

@V.V. what?

Cardinal

17:11

> muddle: Busy oneself in an aimless or ineffective way.

2

That's my word! :D

Anonymous

22:21

@yubrajsharma You can't interpret as for that way in this sentence.

Anonymous

Really, that meaning is not assigned simply to the words as for, but to the marked topic construction as a whole, which contains the words as for.

Anonymous

This is not the marked topic construction, but a comparative clause reduced such that its first word is for.

Anonymous

So you've misunderstood the sentence.

Anonymous

It's saying he will be remembered for his character. That's what for is doing in this sentence. Your interpretation is ungrammatical.

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