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00:01
@ostrichofevil and yubraj sharma: I plainly doubt the authority of the original post on another site. Maybe it's a typo that ruins it for me (They were in the same class, so they would have know each other). Maybe it's the suspicious comma in He grew so angry, it seemed he would explode. (I haven't looked over every point in that post.) Or maybe it's simply because I'm a lumper (as opposed to "splitters") that makes me think I don't need all those 23 points to understand the usage of would. — Damkerng T. 41 secs ago
00:35
Hi @DamkerngT. Not exactly. It's called 'closing time'. It's just that they were closing up :)
Oh, I see!
@DamkerngT. You around right now?
@DamkerngT. Ok, so do you want to know what GKP said?
00:41
@DamkerngT. Ok so in that piece on Language Log ...
... he talks about the meaning of conditional if.
@DamkerngT. I don't think that conditional if has any meaning as such. So I kind of asked why we should think it has some meaning like other prepositions. My theory was that conditional inversion "Had she asked, I would have helped" has the same meaning as "If she'd asked I would have helped". So in those two sentences the inversion and the if have the same 'meaning'. So it doesn't seem like if has a special lexical meaning in conditionals at all.
intrigued!
@DamkerngT. So, basically, GFK said that I had a point. That means that I'm not necessarily crazy!
00:55
@DamkerngT. Yes, exactly. Anything that indicates that I'm not crazy is almost definitely wtong! :D
Hah! I thought it was the opposite! :D
But it was very satisfying, and I got more feedback than I've had in two and a half years of my PhD in one email ...
@DamkerngT. a little bit of crazy goes a long way, as I'm sure you agree!
@Araucaria Hah! That's a bit strange!
@DamkerngT. "Crazy" isn't a very strong word in English. It can mean adventurous, unorthodox, passionate, unexpected, unconventional etc.
@DamkerngT. Oh, which bit's strange?
nods -- My thought about "strange" was for the feedback that was more than that in two and a half years.
01:06
@DamkerngT. Sorry, misunderstood. Yes, not good :( My supervisor is like a melted ice-cube. But less excitable.
@Araucaria Don't worry. I understand the nature of the chat perfectly! -- Haha! A melted ice-cube. I'll borrow that phrase sometimes!
@DamkerngT. It's nice to be able to share my GKP experience with you!
I'm so happy that you shared it with me!
Thanks!
@DamkerngT. Was a pleasure old chum.
Am going to have to hit the hay, I think. Sorry for being unsociable! 'Tis 2:09 here and the morning beckons (that means work ...) Hasta pronto
Have a good sleep!
We wish it had been Friday last night, eh? :P
 
2 hours later…
02:45
From The Enemy of My Enemy - The New York Times: "Likewise, double negatives don’t always amount to positives; they can make negatives more intense, as in “I can’t get no satisfaction.” (... The eminent linguistic philosopher J. L. Austin of Oxford once gave a lecture in which he asserted that there are many languages in which a double negative makes a positive, but none in which a double positive makes a negative — to which the Columbia philosopher Sidney Morgenbesser, sitting in the audience, sarcastically replied, “Yeah, yeah.”)" — Damkerng T. 1 min ago
While it's true that some people may think that using double negatives to make a negative is "uneducated", I wonder if those people are just simply afraid of themselves.
It sure is controversial, trying to associate anything in a language with "uneducated". (And chances are, we may find many of educated people, some are very highly educated, some even have an extremely high social status, use them, too.)
I wish our world were in more harmony. We don't want racism, sexism, ageism, and many other -ism's. I suppose we don't want "educatism" either.
03:48
Indeed @DamkerngT. The ism-ists are too focused on labeling everything to appreciate anything.
04:45
Appreciation restores the harmony.
True, that!
05:44
The tag american-english suggests that desired answers are supposed to be a word/phrase in current use in contemporary American English, so I'll leave this phrase here: parental abode. Considering that home, house, place are common words, using abode could achieve a better effect since it signifies an unexpected usage. An example from Ancient Indian Tradition & Mythology, Volume 33: "A women who listens to this with devotion and is sanctified by the lord shall be honoured in her parental abode as well as in the abode of her husband." (Note: this word is used in AmE, too.) — Damkerng T. 25 secs ago
06:19
I don't know why, but comments on EL&U seem to be in a larger font size than comments on ELL!
07:18
Afternoon ^^
 
3 hours later…
10:19
@Araucaria I tried to make it clearer for myself and posted this Q&A, and linked it to that nice answer of yours. :) I don't know how far I managed to go though.
 
3 hours later…
12:55
I don't want schism
13:50
Good evening!
@Araucaria Seagoing Grammar Gastropod
> For I've a gastropod at sea,
Afloat on feeble planks of wood;
She does not know what fear may be;
I would have told her if I could.
> I would have locked her in my arms,
I would have hid her in my heart;
For oh! the waves are fraught with harms,
And she and I so far apart.
@CowperKettle Nice!
A beautiful poem, by Christina Rossetti
Christina Georgina Rossetti (5 December 1830 – 29 December 1894) was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children's poems. She is famous for writing Goblin Market and Remember, and the words of the Christmas carol In the Bleak Midwinter. == Early life and education == Christina Rosseti was born in Charlotte Street (now 105 Hallam Street), London, to Gabriele Rossetti, a painter and a political exile from Vasto, Abruzzo, and Frances Polidori, the sister of Lord Byron's friend and physician, John William Polidori. She had two brothers and a sister: Dante became ...
Why do all poets look bored on Wikipedia?
14:01
Should they look amuzed?
Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin (/jəˈseɪnɪn/; sometimes spelled as Esenin; Russian: Серге́й Алекса́ндрович Есе́нин; IPA: [sʲɪrˈgʲej ɐlʲɪkˈsandrəvʲɪtɕ jɪˈsʲenʲɪn]; 3 October [O.S. 21 September] 1895 – 28 December 1925) was a Russian lyric poet. He was one of the most popular and well-known Russian poets of the 20th century. == Biography == === Early life === Sergey Yesenin was born in Konstantinovo in Ryazan Governorate of the Russian Empire to a peasant family. He spent most of his childhood with his grandparents, who essentially raised him. He began to write poetry at the age of nine. In...
Maybe it's a tradition for poets to look 'out of this world'
He looks like that troll face that . . .
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (/ˌmɑːjəˈkɔːfski, -ˈkɒf-/; Russian: Влади́мир Влади́мирович Маяко́вский; July 19 [O.S. July 7] 1893 – 14 April 1930) was a Russian Soviet poet, playwright, artist and stage and film actor. During his early, pre-Revolution period leading into 1917, Mayakovsky became renowned as a prominent figure of the Russian Futurist movement; being among the signers of the Futurist manifesto, A Slap in the Face of Public Taste (1913), and authoring poems such as A Cloud in Trousers (1915) and Backbone Flute (1916). Mayakovsky produced a large and diverse body of work during...
Where's that smirk emoticon?
@CowperKettle He looks like he'll burst like "I HATE YOU" any minute.
Anonymous
As StoneyB says, go is intransitive and can't be passivized, so this explanation isn't quite right. Historically, be was used as a perfect auxiliary similar to have, but the perfect be was very gradually lost (we now say I have come rather than I am come). While it was in the process of disappearing, the verb form gone was reanalyzed as a predicate adjective, and this adjective is still used in English today despite the loss of perfect be gone. — snailboat 23 mins ago
Anonymous
14:05
There are exceptions to the "intransitives are never passive" rule. Agree is intransitive, but we have "it is agreed". Likewise we have "it is gone". — laugh 2 mins ago
@CowperKettle "Thou art tho pathetic"
Anonymous
Le sigh.
@PhMgBr That's the famous Li Po
Good evening, @snailboat!
14:06
@snailboat Le sigh again
John Donne is not bored!
@CowperKettle Eh, he does look bored to me.
To me, he looks inspired
As if he has to listen to some idiot and hardly keeps his eyes open
Guy Wetmore Carryl
14:10
He looks like an annoyed cat
Like when @Hagu doesn't want to play with @Dam
@PhMgBr He has a great verse about a poet and his cat
>
A POET had a cat.
There is nothing odd in that—
(I might make a little pun about the Mews!)
But what is really more
Remarkable, she wore
A pair of pointed patent-leather shoes.
And I doubt me greatly whether
E'er you heard the like of that:
Pointed shoes of patent-leather
On a cat!
Found one un-annoyed poet!
He's like "is this smell you?"
And another one
BWAHHA, I see annoyed poet where there is none.
> The men that worked for England
They have their graves at home:
And bees and birds of England
About the cross can roam.
But they that fought for England,
Following a falling star,
Alas, alas for England
They have their graves afar.
And they that rule in England,
In stately conclave met,
Alas, alas for England,
They have no graves as yet.
This is the last one's verse
14:16
@CowperKettle "You think that's funny? I'll show you funny"
The one above him is Dylan Thomas.
His verse was quoted in that space travel movie @DamkerngT. liked
Where they travel to a planet where you spend 9 years in an hour
Bob Dylan chose his "Dylan" surname in his honor
Another unannoyed poet
Kate Tempest
Oh, she's tempest, that's why
Probably because she likes Shakespeare
> born Kate Esther Calvert
She has a great poem, "My Shakespeare"
> He’s in every lover who ever stood alone beneath a window,
In every jealous whispered word,
in every ghost that will not rest.
He’s in every father with a favourite,
Every eye that stops to linger
On what someone else has got, and feels the tightening in their chest.
> He’s in every young man growing boastful,
Every worn out elder, drunk all day;
muttering false prophecies and squandering their lot.
He’s there – in every mix-up that spirals far out of control – and never seems to end, even when its beginnings are forgot.
> He’s in every girl who ever used her wits. Who ever did her best.
In every vain admirer,
Every passionate, ambitious social climber,
And in every misheard word that ever led to tempers fraying,
Every pawn that moves exactly as the player wants it to,
And still remains convinced that it’s not playing.
It's kind of rap poetry.
 
4 hours later…
18:31
Ugh! What happened in the other room!
19:17
@CowperKettle A-ha! I always think poems and rap songs are related. This is a proof!
@CowperKettle Yup!
19:42
> For example, 'It is hot in the room.'can transfer to 'In the room is hot.'
"In the room is hot."
I don't think it's a good sentence.
I mean, it's not like "In the room was Laura."
> Alkyl groups can also be removed in a process known as dealkylation.
I would guess there are many processes that remove alkyl groups, and dealkylation is one of them. As one of many processes, I would use a. On the other hand, "the dealkylation process" would be correct. — user3169 Apr 24 at 21:12
It's interesting that they interpret it that way. (Not that I disagree; I'm thinking that there are more than one possibility.)
It seems like words on the left and words on the right compete to dominate as usual.
To those who think if it's written the process it must be because of there is one and only one such process, it's quite obvious that the words on the left (Alkyl groups can also be removed in) is dominant.
On the other hand, if something known as dealkylation is sufficient to identify such a process and thus licenses the the, it's quite obvious that to these speakers, words on the right, known as dealkylation, is dominant.
20:56
sigh -- I wish I could edit all my dominate's out and replace them with dominant's.
21:21
Anyway, it's a good example of a sentence that we could use either article even though we don't really know how to use them correctly.
The reader's mind will make it work if it can work.
Pretty much like in animation. There is technically nothing that moves in animation. It's our brains that fill the gap and make things appear to be moving.
 
2 hours later…
23:13
> She is in a meeting at the client's offices.
She is at a meeting in the client's offices.
Maybe I'm thinking too much, but I wouldn't think they're truly identical. Then again, they can be used for pretty much the same thing.
But more importantly, how can one be in (or at) a meeting at (or in) several offices?
If that's fine, then I'd think All of the people are a student (rather than are students) should be fine as well.

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