Should it not be "All what happens"?

@M.A.R. Hello! Are you there?

Yep

I mean as an independent pronoun.

@Cardinal No, all that happens . . .

@M.A.R. Why? all is a pronoun; what's the problem?

It's a determiner there, I think

So it's like saying "the is a good person" instead of "the accountant is a good person"

A different "all" is "all is good"

Or "all's well that ends well"

all matters is that all is a pronoun!

:-)

@M.A.R. Hope you won't get bothered if I ask a silly question. You have helped me a lot and i really appreciate the way you people have helped. Today, I read a sentence on quora which reads like this - "Is it true that women avoid eating bananas in public?" Now if I rephrase the sentence as "Is it true that women avoid eating a banana in public?"

@Cardinal No, that's ungrammatical

Do both the sentence mean the same or not?

Lexical and syntactic categories are different, my friend

@M.A.R.

@iamRR Yes, they do. Could you put the link to the quora question here?

@iamRR I think the plural form is more sensible. It conveys a sense of generality!

google.co.in/…

@Cardinal @snailplane Yes, even i think the same.

@M.A.R. You say that that something is a pronoun does not mean we can always use them as a pronoun in a sentence. ?

'a banana' sounds somewhat unnatural to me. It looks to me as if the sentence mean that it refers to some particular banana. Isn't it?

@iamRR It's unnatural, yes. But a possible replacement. Native speakers of English are unlikely to phrase it that way, ever.

@iamRR Yep

However, the google search among the books is considerable. 393 for "all matters is that".

@Cardinal On the internet, nobody knows you're not a native speaker.

nod

@M.A.R. - As you say that it's a possible replacement. Do you mean to say that 'a banana' in the sentence mean all bananas in general or does it mean that the sentence refers to just one particular banana ?

@iamRR There's a difference between what's allowed in a language, and what's really used by its fluent speakers. There are multitudes of phrasings that are possible in some context but a fluent speaker isn't likely to ever use them

So it's unlikely that you'd hear a native speaker of English say that sentence with "a banana"

But it might, in that context, refer to all bananas

Or it might not, and it would refer to one particular banana, then

@M.A.R. - So if I randomly ask a question with a sentence " Is it true that women avoid eating a banana in public"? What would you make of it? Will you instinctively think that it is referred to all bananas in general or will you think that it is referred to just one particular banana? Or will you think that the phrasing of the question just sound so unnatural?

@iamRR I'd think you meant all bananas

Wait

No, I'd think you meant one anonymous banana

Sorry, I'm a bit distracted.

Watching NCIS

So 'a banana' can never express generality in that sentence. Right?

@iamRR yeah you can say that

Hmm

What if the sentence is - "Is it true that a woman avoids eating bananas in public"? Here 'a woman' means one anonymous woman or does it express all women in general?

@iamRR A woman in general.

Personally I would say, is it true that women avoid eating bla la la ... 0:-)

@Cardinal - So the sentence "Is it true that a woman avoids eating bananas in public" and the sentence "Is it true that women avoid eating bananas in public" sound the same. But the sentence "Is it true that women avoid eating bananas in public" and the sentence "Is it true that women avoid eating a banana public" don't sound the same. Right?

@snailplane Ah, thank you. I've reread it, and it looks okay

Isn't "scared" here an adjective? I don't think it's a passive voice ell.stackexchange.com/a/128290/35026

@iamRR I guess so.

This was filmed on 23 april 2017 in Snezhnogorsk, Russia

@Cardinal Okay!

@iamRR Hm...

Here it says "The Indefinite Generic refers to the Definition of a species, that is, those properties that are absolutely necessary for anything to be a member. It doesn't work as the subject of any predicate that isn't definitional. But with a definitional property, it's certainly true for any member."

In A woman avoids eating bananas in public, the subject is an Indefinite Generic, and whatever is predicated of it should be included in the very definition of woman. Does a woman definitionally avoid eating bananas in public? I'd say no.

QED, haha.

@user178049 You need an article before definite article here. :>

@user178049 I would agree.

@userr2684291 damn, SE should allow people to edit a comment after 5 minutes

What do we call a person who hates to be loved?

@user178049 @M.A.R. talked about this, but I don't think I remember their explanation re comments.

@user178049 The main idea was that comments are unimportant, so why do you even care about editing them, or some BS explanation like that.

Hello!!

Hello.

@userr2684291 What is BS? Is that bullshit? O.. o

Hello

Yeah, haha.

@user178049 I know words. I have the best words.

@userr2684291 What?

@user178049 Trump said that. It's ironic because I don't know what other word to use.

what does this sentence actually mean i didn't quite understand it ?

@userr2684291 hahaha

@EngFan I think it literally means I didn't understand it.

@user178049 Not quite.

hmm

You didn't understand it completely. Maybe.

Yeah.

@user178049 : thought so ..but not sure ..

@user178049 What's amusing is that in positive sentences, in BrE, quite means "fairly", and in AmE it means "very".

Yup

@user178049 There's also this useful guide: cheeptalk.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/…

@userr2684291 Thanks

@userr2684291 his

Please help me!

None of them seem natural to me

What are you trying to convey?

@userr2684291 This is always a good read: blog.codinghorror.com/rate-limiting-and-velocity-checking

CC @user178049

When there are limits, you can always assume it's because someone abused a feature

And people do it because they can

Can we use were here? "If Rome were built in a day, we would have used the same contractor"

@CowperKettle I guess English teachers would suggest using had been instead. (^_^)

@DamkerngT. yeah, but are grumpy translation proofreaders like English teachers?

That's the million-dollar question

:D

This is weird. Ellbot can't log into SE!

o.o

Good excuse

How is Chembot?

@DamkerngT. on a sick leave

Ahh

I wonder if SE changed anything.

There are two parts of authentication. OpenId and StackExchange. It passes OpenId fine, but fails on StackExchange login.

> Unable to log in with your OpenID provider

Hah!

Oh, maybe it's the HTTP vs HTTPS thing.

Ahh

Okay, problem fixed!

Is there a good uncluttered description of the synthesis of methanol from carbon monoxide and hydrogen, I wonder

The mechanism must be curious

@M.A.R. I thought he was a poor leaving group

:0)

(0:

I found some PDFs behind paywalls on this mechanism. I'm too lazy and have too little time

I wish there was an answer with a simple mechanism on Chem SE

Hi@DamkerngT.

Hi@DamkerngT.

Hi @M.A.R.

How are you?

I am not able to answer this question

@user62015 Hi

@user62015 B

You are right but any explain please

Negative sentence

V.V.'s right on track

Because we have can't so we can't use neither here right?

It already contains something negative

@user62015 yep

Hi guys!

Yes so neither does not make sense here

But either should give us a choice

But we don't have any choice here

As it says you can't

"Either " has several meanings.

Okay

Why don't you look it up in the dictionary?

Okay. 8

I will thanks

Lets do it together.

Here you are.

My husband's just workin part-time down to the Sunoco. He twin to get work in the Ford plant, but they ain't hirin right now.

Can anyone tell me what does "twin" stand for?

Hello!!

we haven't received any response since a long time - is this grammatical ?\

I think it should be for instead of since ..

Hi, me too.

But wait for native speakers.

@EngFan Yeah, it should be for instead of since.

@userr2684291 : thanks!

@EngFan Or in...

Not sure if you've all seen this but it's a fun 25 question quiz to help non-native English speakers determine if they're ready to take the Cambridge English Exam. I see a lot of common pitfalls in the test that many EFL/ESL users make.

@EngFan I also wouldn't use "any"... We haven't received a response from you in a long time

@Catija : would you please explain why you won't use any ?

@EngFan Just wouldn't... I'd be more likely to use "any" with something plural. "I don't have any cats" vs "I don't have a cat".

I don't know if that's a "rule" though.

hmm

dictionary.cambridge.org/us/grammar/british-grammar/quantifiers/…

This seems to imply that it's good for plural or indeterminate numbers of things... or uncountable nouns... "response" can be uncountable... so in your case it may be OK... but if it were something like "message", then it'd be clearly singular.

I actually used any to mean that i haven't received a single response from them

We're talking about personal preference... I just wouldn't use "any"...

I don't have any hard data... I'm not a linguist specialist. If you want a better answer... ask an actual question rather than polling people in chat.

@userr2684291 Hello!

@Catija : Thanks .

@iamRR Hi.

@userr2684291 Consider a sentence "Why does a woman hate eating bananas in public" ? Here 'a woman' means some unspecified woman or does it refer to all women in general?

Consider another sentence - "I want to marry a guy firm Canada". Here 'a guy' refers to some unspecified guy or does it refer to all guys in general ?

@snailplane

@iamRR Clearly not all guys... only ones from Canada.

Again, it's ambiguous... context would probably tell you the answer. If the speaker is currently unattached and generally discussing preferences, they're probably talking about any guy from Canada... if they're dating someone and that person happens to be from Canada, they're probably talking about that person...

Suppose I am working on some initiative and someone asks me what's this initiative all about. I reply - "This initiative tries to help a student realise his/her potential". So here 'a student' means some unspecified student or does it refer to students in general ?

@Catija

Like with your first example, I don't think we would generally phrase it this way... it'd be common to say "This initiative tries to help students realize their potential".

If you really want to have it be singular, I think it'd be more common to say "This initiative tries to help each student realize their potential".

@iamRR Hm.

@iamRR I think that question is intrinsically wrong if a woman is a generic noun phrase because the answer is "no, she doesn't".

Or, technically, the answer would be "mu", haha.

@iamRR If you want to make it generic, use the plural. Then it'd be an overgeneralization, but acceptable.

@iamRR So I'd take it as a nonspecific woman. However, I'm having trouble coming up with a context to shore up the article choice.

I realized we actually have articles encoded in all adjectives in a way in my first language, and every adjective (as far as I know) has this property. Bijeli means "the white" and bijel means "a white". I wonder how I can use this to my advantage in English.

By this property, I meant that there are both versions of every adjective.

Word of the day ingurgitate

Good morning (if it were morning in your country)!