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02:53
To follow up on my last night's groggy inspections, these are the COCA results for DECIDE that PRON will|would:
> decided that PRON would . . . . 523
decided that PRON will . . . . . . . 48
decide that PRON will . . . . . . . . 14
decide that PRON would . . . . . . 15
Which is in general agreement with the Google Books results: books.google.com/ngrams/… .
Most of the decided that PRON would ones are simple past verbs, and most of the decided that PRON will ones are present perfect verbs.
My question was Why are " decided that PRON would " hits so much more than any other ones?.
I think the answer (as @Dam proposed) is in how probable it is to utter either one of those structures. It is quite natural to talk about past decisions (decided that PRON would), as natural but less probable to talk about recent past decisions ((have) decided that PRON will), and unnatural or much less probable to report decisions just as they are made (decide that PRON will).
Why is talking about recent decisions less probable than past decisions? I guess simply because of the proportions of the time spans: at any time you have made more past decisions than recent past decisions.
There may be no other reason for the asymmetry between the results.
03:29
Even most of those 14 decide that PRON will hits are not live reports of decisions: they are infinitives, habitual situations, present-tense narration, etc.
04:24
Images from the movie they had just seen hovered about her.(hovered about her.)Where? Around or in her mind?@CowperKettle
Then goes the description of those images.
05:20
@V.V. both. They hovered around her, but not in reality: her mind imagined them hovering around her.
But really what they mean is that she recalled some images from the movie, or maybe even that she thought about the movie.
ah.. then goes the description.
So she imagined them in her mind's eye
06:03
Thanks @CowperKettle Tyom.
 
3 hours later…
08:55
This chat is for ELL right... can I ask about *two hours' leave.*

> Grant me a two-hour leave
> Grant me two hours' leave

The first one, ***two-hour*** is an adjective while the 2nd one is possession. Can someone explain to me why and how it's possible to become possession? Why *leave* become a possession of *two hours.*
@XPMai There are six types of genitive construction CGEL lists; it need not denote possession.
Feb 1 at 18:54, by snailplane
@Cardinal Markdown is disabled in multi-line messages. It's a design bug. The only two kinds of Markdown that work in multi-line messages are blockquotes (with > at the beginning) or pre-formatted text (four spaces at the beginning of each line).
@XPMai Anyway, google CGEL and go to page 471 – paragraph titled Measure genitives.
09:36
@marcellothearcane Hello. Welcome.
@userr2684291 hello..
The seeds that lay dormant thus (a)/far for want of heat, now (b)/ sprout forth with the help of the Sun heat.(c)/No error (d) answer says c @DamkerngT. @M.A.R. @snailplane Thanks in advance
@user62015 "Sun heat" strikes me as unidiomatic.
Okay.
So what can we do?
@user62015 What do you think?
09:43
@userr2684291 oh thanks @userr2684291!
@XPMai No worries.
@marcellothearcane Cool! So it's quasi possessive
@XPMai i suppose so.. I'm not too sure, since i've never heard of quasi-possessive before...
@marcellothearcane That's the link you gave me lol, I've never heard before too and I'm gonna look into it. Now i'm googling CGEL
@XPMai yeah, but i don't understand it! I'm looking into it too...
@XPMai apparently it's for specialised cases, such as "a day's pay", "two weeks' vacation", "your money's worth"
09:51
seems so
No idea
@Færd You need to add the results for "I have decided that" and "I've decided that" together! Also, you'll find a lot of law reports in the results and a lot of people telling stories using the dramatic present. "So she splits up with me, and I decide to report her to the police for ...".
Other thing is that we don't use the present perfect all that much in books (especially in the first person). And then you've got to remember lots of constructions where we use the present to talk about the future "If I decide that ..." etc ...
@userr2684291 Whoa, seems like you know the full details behind it. Sadly there's no e-book on Google, the best I can find is this scribd.com/doc/252377510/… but at page 471 it seems to be different.
@userr2684291 The grammar rule is genitives?
@Færd Yes, I think so. For example, if we are telling any kind of story about what happened this morning or yesterday or last week and so forth, we won't use the present perfect, we'll use the past simple. So a large proportion of recent past events are going to use the simple and not the prefect anyway ...
Am I able to chat with the community users not presently on StackExchange Chat, as a form of PM?
10:06
@XPMai 470 then. I know the page from memory.
@user62015 "Sun's heat".
Thanks.
The heat of the sun.
See the examples of heat A greenhouse stays warm because the glass traps the heat of the sun.
@V.V. "which concentrate the sun’s heat and use it" – news.mit.edu/2010/solar-storage-1026
@XPMai If they've been in here before, then yes, you can
@V.V. The heat of the sun?
10:40
> The chromatographic results of the standard solution are reported in Table 1.
Can we possibly use of here?
I always write for here.. now I'm reviewing a translation
I hate making too many corrections and disappointing the reviewed translator
The quality of being hot; high temperature.
‘the fierce heat of the sun’ This is from oxforddictionaries.com. The previous one was fom Cambridge dictionaries.com.
11:32
Definition of heat
intransitive verb
1
: to become warm or hot water heating in a kettle
2
: to start to spoil from heat
transitive verb
1
: to make warm or hot heat a can of soup heat the oven to 350 degrees
2
: excite were heated by his stirring words
heatableplay \ˈhē-tə-bəl\ adjective
See heat defined for English-language learners
See heat defined for kids
Examples of heat in a sentence
I heated the vegetables in the microwave.
They heat their house with a wood stove.

Origin and Etymology of heat
Oh, can't delete this one. Found Sun's heat in Merriam-Webster.
@V.V. I think they knew what "heat" means.
Wanted to copy an example only.
Oh, why can't I remove it?
@V.V. You had about 5 minutes or less to delete it.
Honestly, I don't know why that is so; it's not particularly useful. @M.A.R. Explain.
11:48
Let it be then
@V.V. Actually, 2 minutes.
It jumped from the fingers
@V.V. What do you mean?
I mean I am clumsy with technical things
Always pressing the wrong button
@V.V. Hehe. With practice comes perfection.
11:53
Not in my case.
Humanitarian
@V.V. Hm?
@M.A.R. Especially because there is a history feature, so you can always see what was written at a specific time.
If there already exists such a feature, why is it restricted?
@Araucaria True.
Thanks for the input, Arau.
12:54
> with the concentration that equals to the nominal concentration of
I think that this "to" is superfluous
Can it possibly be used there?
@userr2684291 two minutes. It's to disallow normal users from doing harm while rage-quitting. You shouldn't be able to delete messages from 5 years ago, rendering already archived stuff obsolete
Mods can edit and delete messages from long times ago though
13:40
@M.A.R. You can delete answers from five years ago, though.
@userr2684291 Vandalism on the main site already raises some red flags
And it does occasionally happen.
It also makes more sense to preserve stuff on the main site, in their best state
While editing on chat makes less sense. You made a typo; get over it. That's the train of thought.
Most chats don't allow editing from the past two minutes even
@M.A.R. Um, so why is editing chat allowed?
@userr2684291 Because it's pretty useful not to look awkward in the first two minutes
@M.A.R. First off, can't mods revert deleted messages?
@userr2684291 Not sure
But they can delete messages of other users from 5 years ago
13:45
I think especially because chat is so unimportant, they shouldn't care. The same with comments.
Chat is important, I get all the best answers here.
14:19
> I'm interested (1) to work / (2) in working in Germany this summer.
2 is possible, meaning I have such a wish, or I'd like to do that.
What about 1 though? Isn't it possible in the sense that I've planned to do it and I'm interested to find out how it's like?
The answer key says no, but ...
Correction: ... what it's like
@Færd As in "I'm sufficiently interested to do it."? Otherwise it makes no sense to me.
Even then it sounds contrived.
14:36
> . The resulting molecule has a prolonged therapeutic effect even after a single-dose administration and a lower risk of adverse effects associated with fluctuations of drug levels in blood.
Is that okay, or should it be in the blood?
I like your wording.
My?
My would be "in the blood"
I don't want to understand it and it sounds fancy.
It's scientific.
@CowperKettle Oh, I wouldn't use the article
Which one?
@M.A.R. why
Because it's generally blood
It belonging to the patient, or it being the sample isn't important . . . Wait
No, I'd still go with the zero article version.
14:41
0
Q: "Drug levels in the blood" vs "drug levels in blood"

CowperKettle The resulting molecule has a prolonged therapeutic effect even after a single-dose administration and a lower risk of adverse effects associated with fluctuations of drug levels in blood. and The resulting molecule has a prolonged therapeutic effect even after a single-dose administrati...

Evening, Katyusha!
@M.A.R. What's not to love about articles?
And bigfoot Ben
@userr2684291 Only the article part
15:04
0
Q: Are there penalties at Stack Exchange for copying answers?

Alex89Before Stack Exchange, I participated at a similar site. That site had a mandatory requirement: all answers must be different from each other, and users cannot copy from anywhere including Internet. I will not copy here either. I always try to write all by myself. If I use other's words, I'll mak...

15:18
> Control was performed immediately after manufacture and then every 3 months.
Can this be written in English?
Or is "control" unusable in such a context?
@CowperKettle "Quarterly" is a word. :>
15:44
@userr2684291 yes, but I asked about "control was performed"
I think it's better to be as close as possible to the original when translating pharma texts, so "3 months" is okay :>
> Based on the facts provided above, we may \ can conclude that:
Which is better?
This is an interesting question for me.
I'd be grateful for a comment
16:07
I think can sounds a bit more natural, but may is not really wrong (at least that's what I think).
You are right, "that" is not possible in that function. Which is one of the reasons why "that" is not a relative pronoun, but a clause subordinator. — BillJ 18 mins ago
BillJ is right, but I wish we had a (meta?) page that explains why it's so, based on what grammar, along with reference books, etc.
Otherwise, it's very confusing to learners.
@DamkerngT. thank you!
I just weighed in with my idea. :D
16:53
Robots for the world!
 
2 hours later…
19:19
@userr2684291 No, I didn't mean that. Where did sufficiently come from.
And I retract my proposition. Maybe it's safer to use interested to only before 'learning' verbs (e.g. find out, learn, see, hear).
Although this deserves more looking into.
(Correction: Where did sufficiently come from ?)
A bit larger than I need.
Abundance is good.
A bun dance can be better.
Or even a bum dance.
Anyway.
> I had been interested to meet him and his wife because we shared the unfortunate distinction of having our marriages publicly picked apart
> I'd be interested to ask you about these fascinating relationships
> we are interested to compute the maximal controlled invariant set
> we asked those interested to sign up for an appointment with a researcher
... and tens of other sentences from COCA question the theory that says interested to is either used to talk about reactions to things one learns, or to talk about a wish to find out something.
So my original sentence, I'm interested to work in Germany this summer, could validly mean something like I'm eager to go to Germany for work.
I'm not sure about the exact meaning yet.
20:19
@Færd By inserting that word, I was trying to suggest (or emphasize) a different interpretation of the sentence.
@Færd Otherwise it wouldn't make much sense to repeat your sentence, now would it?
@Færd Yeah, all of these sound unnatural to my ear. It should be "Interested in asking you..." etc.
20:40
@M.A.R. Apparently it's "in the blood".
Oh?
Whatever. Slaps gut feeling
@M.A.R. Yeah...
No particular person's blood or no particular blood is being referred to with the. With the article it is analogous to "this drug affects the heart". Both versions, with and without the article, are correct. — TRomano 3 hours ago
Wait, I was right too
@M.A.R. 2 vs. 1.
2 vs. TRomano.
Tim wins.
20:47
@M.A.R. It's high time we came to terms with defeat.
UNPOSSIBLEZ!!!111
@M.A.R. Articles tend to put the mitheree in blown to smithereens.
!!flip/userr
And
(╯°ਊ°)╯︵nsǝɹɹ
!!flip/smithereens
20:49
(۶ૈ‡▼益▼)۶sɯᴉʇɥǝɹǝǝus
I'm still pretty sure that I'm right, even when if you prove that I'm wrong.
Even if I'm wrong, you need to rearrange facts so I be right again.
@M.A.R. You sure done showed 'em, pardner.
 
2 hours later…
22:58
Hi All
How are you?
I have never teached in a school, not even in boarding school. I'm going to teach in a primary class in a boarding school. Could you please share me idies about how to start teaching in a primary class. I have been ordered to give a demo class tomorrow for the selection of a teacher(I have also applied in the boarding school to be selected) So, I need to have some teaching Idies.
How to begin the class? I'm week in spoken English. Could you please tell me some ideas?

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