@Fantasier Thank you for this new term. I've been waffling for years on whether to call them ergative or middle-voice or what, and getting yelled at for abusing those terms; this is very useful.

@StoneyB Thank you! I was it was an erroneous inversion.

@CopperKettle Yeah, that's the problem with using the sort of isolated sentences you get in textbooks: they may be right in some contexts and wrong in others, and there's nothing to tell you what the context is supposed to be.

@StoneyB It's not from a textbook, but from a text I was proofreading at lang-8

(0:

lang-8.com/763639/journals/…

Hmm ... even in context it's ambiguous, but I think OP is talking about the number of species in the tank, not the number of species which exist.

If she were talking about the number of species on the Earth, it would've been wrong to invert to "were there"? O_o

"Why you are astonished at how many were there?" - so this is also okay?

I'm being dense..

@CopperKettle No, I think you understand this just fine. What's at issue here is the difference between a) a question, which is an independent clause, and b) a free/fused relative clause, which always behaves syntactically as if it were a noun phrase. What's confusing you is two different words spelled there. One is the deictive locative = "in that place", as opposed to here = "in this place". The other is the expletive, which acts as a 'dummy' subject in the existential construction There BE.

The expletive is always in subject position, wherever that happens to be, so it inverts with BE in a question, but stays in its ordinary place before BE in other contexts.

In a formal question, the subject always inverts with the first auxiliary: "Why are you astonished?" (BE always behaves like an auxiliary, even when it's the only verb present.)

Otherwise, the subject does not invert. How many ... in your sentence is the object of the preposition at, so it has to be a "nominal", a fused relative clause: ... astonished at how many were there [in the tank] or ... astonished at how many there were[in existence].

ell.stackexchange.com/users/21503/user1 -- Watch out for this user @Stoney. He doesn't deserve your helpful comments.

@StoneyB Thank you!

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. - good evening!

\o

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. I thought at first that user was a troll.

@CopperKettle Looks like a combination of rep whore farmer and troll.

rep farmer?

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. He does seem sorta belligerent. shrug No skin off my nose.

@CopperKettle People who answer for the sake of getting reputation points, rather than helping people.

I had a couple run-ins with him today. I'll simply ignore him from now on ... but he does have some good answers, and I'll upvote those.

@StoneyB Hah! Come to think of it, it does work indeed! Now I wonder if there any verb in English that can't be turned around like this.

@DamkerngT. Probably not, though it could be -- challenging to imagine circumstances in which it would be appropriate.

Inventing transitive versions of intransitives strikes me as harder than the other way round.

trying to come up with a verb that can only be used intransitively...

(even verbs like 'walk', 'run', 'stand' can all be easily used transitively if we have a good context for them)

@DamkerngT. How bout procrastinate :)

I don't think anybody would buy "I really want to procrastinate this project."

Haha! Good one!

I don’t imagine you’d buy an exclamatory Procrastinate my ass! as a transitive use. :)

LOL

You can walk a dog and run a program and stand your mother-in-law. Or not.

Or if you can't stand your mother-in-law you can stand her in the corner.

OED stand (v.) is dizzyingly long.

Ah, it seems like drives there is not accepted.

That comment makes no sense.

Hello, @Stephie!

Hi!

LOL -- I just learned that пока in Russian (meaning "bye") sounds like Japanese baka (meaning, "silly"). :-)

@Stephie BTW, welcome to the room. (I'm not sure if you've been in this room before.)

Happens in many languages: German "Gift" means "poison". Always makes me grin around Christmas - some presents are indeed poisonous.

LOL

@DamkerngT. I've been here before, but rarely.

I often hang out over in the Frying Pan. (Seasoned Advice / cooking)

@Stephie Oh, that happens to my name, too. Some of my German friends pronounce my name really close to danke.

@Stephie Ah, I see! I haven't visited the Frying Pan for a while.

Are you in Thailand, @DamkerngT.? Your profile says so...

Yes, born and raised.

So quick maths: Morning already?

You could say so! (It's 5:17 here.) But the sun still hasn't come up.

Still or already awake?

Already. :)

Wow!

For a few hours already.

23:18 here. Still in my case ;-)

Hello, @snailboat! I just found a good site for testing our glottal stop perception. We can do this later, when you want to. (If you still want to. :-)

How does one recognize serial downvoting?

@Stephie Ah, I see! Hmm... it's 6 hours, the difference.

@DamkerngT. My top three answers were downvoted today. Usually I get very few downvotes.

Of course I know the system will recognize excessive downvoting, but this got me curious. Not because I lost 6 rep points.

Ah, it happened to me once. My top two posts were downvoted a while back, and I have a rather good idea who did it, though I can't be 100% sure.

Were you in some kind of an argument or so?

No, not really. I still can't figure out why.

<shrugs> Happens, I guess.

nods -- I think the best thing we can do is perhaps to just ignore it.

(It's easier said than done, I know. :-)

So how is winter in Thailand? Or are you so close to the equator that it doesn't matter?

Winter is cold for me, as always. For me, anything below 25 C is cold. :-)

How is the weather where you live?

Okay!

@DamkerngT. We are preparing for winter. That means there will be frost at night soon and in a few weeks even during the day. Currently it's unusually warm - around 16-18 C and dry. Raking leaves in a t-shirt is rather uncommon in November.

Oh, I thought November was winter already.

<-- is thinking of snowman :-)

Can happen. First frost by the end of October is common.

Snowmen time is later, though: Jan./Feb. And sometimes March, when you are so darn fed up with the stuff and are dying for spring.

The proverbial "White Christmas" is a 50:50 chance.

But looks good in the commercials ;-)

LOL -- I've been to German a couple of times, and missed the winter every time. The last time I was there, I left Germany to France just before the winter.

Where have you been? <curious>

Oh, Frankfurt, not the am Main.

And Berlin.

Frankfurt/Oder

It was the suburban area of Frankfurt. I think the town was Oberroden. (Not sure about the spelling anymore.)

You probably don't get much "picture perfect" winter in the cities - mostly grey slush. Sunny day in the Uplands is the key...

A-ha! Found it! The full name of the place I used to stay in is Offenbach, Rodermark-Ober Roden.

@snailboat I miss it exactly until the fifth day of shovelling. Getting up half an hour earlier to clear the sidewalks dampens all enthusiasm quickly ^_^

@DamkerngT. What a mouthfull! That's in Hessia, somewhat north of where I live.

@DamkerngT. The first time I ever saw snow was in Germany.

@StoneyB I envy you. :D

@StoneyB Says the man from the country that has blizzards ;-)

It was very exciting. Of course I was only six years old and didn't have to shovel it!

Snow is always fascinating to me, perhaps just like Olaf the snowman and his idea of summer. :-)

I never went through an actual blizzard. I do remember two feet of snow falling during Easter break of my last year in graduate school.

Happens (on a small scale) every winter here.

Worst experience: Being stuck in a 70 km trafic jam due to snow and ice.Two days before Christmas. Spent the night in the car, bundeled in probably every piece of clothing we had with us.

That's horrible!

So much for "Driving home for Christmas..."

The scary experience I had on the highway was just a heavy snow -- the semis kept roaring through at 75 mph and covering my windshield with slush.

I was locked out of the hotel in Frankfurt once (on another trip). I felt like dying, literally.

Nobody on duty?

@snailboat I think I started to have hypothermia already. I couldn't stop shaking.

@Stephie Nobody was around. Not until someone came over about 30-60 minutes later.

Hey, the hotel is still there! hotel-restaurant-rainbow-heusenstamm.de

@DamkerngT. Walk down memory lane...?

@Stephie Yes! I had quite a good time back then. (Except for the part that I was locked out.)

@snailboat Ah, I've only seen Japanese folks doing that in documentaries.

@snailboat People like that are insane! (If not dead.)

Wow, that's quite something!

I used to love winter and hate summer. Now that I'm old it's just the reverse.

@snailboat Ah, the drought is still there?

Guys, it's getting late here. So bye and take care!

Good night!

Sleep tight, @Stephie

I'll remember to use guten nacht the next time. :-)

I've lived most of the last fifty years in riverbottoms, where summers are debilitating

@snailboat Oh, so that's why.

@StoneyB How hot are the summers over there?

Yay!

I think the humidity during the summer could be the main factor. High humidity is quite unpleasant, and perhaps debilitating as you said.

Oh, that's quite hot (or warm).

@snailboat Haha! I know that feeling!

Where I grew up, in Alabama, we usually had daily highs of 37-42°C throughout July and August. In St. Louis we only get maybe ten days per summer over 38, but it's rarely below 33.

Is Arizona where you keep UFOs? :P

I think 28 C is the perfect temp. for me.

Oh, hehe!

So you really keep some of them! :-)

Arizona's where we keep people who believe in UFOs.

When I was in grad school I did all my writing in a corner drugstore which had the university library across one street, the university bookstore across another, and two used bookstores next door. Heaven!

I used to go to a big shopping mall near the university because it had a big, big bookstore.

And they were terrific used bookstores, filled to the ceiling with review copies the faculty sold.

Later, that big bookstore looked small when I found Borders in Singapore.

There's a big used bookstore a few miles from my wife's school. Last time I was down I picked up Crystal's Encyclopedia of the English Language for $6.

$59.99 new.

Yes!

I haven't had time yet to browse it. But I did check, it's the 2nd edition.

Oh, dear, guests arriving. Not mine, my son's, but I have to go make dinner. Ciao!

Enjoy!

Hee!

I love these exclamation points! :D

Definitely, they did! <-- Here's one. :P

BTW, does Japanese on this site look okay? ja.speaklanguages.com/%E8%8B%B1%E8%AA%9E/…

Thanks!

Oh, what would people usually use?

有難う!

わかった！

It's interesting that it's by NHK. :D

@snailboat I hope that that NHK is not "Nihon Hikikomori Kyokai". :P

@snailboat Ah, I didn't really know it. Actually, I was wondering why it was harder on the laptop. (I thought it was the other way around.)

I remember that you have some software that helps you type this stuff on mobile, though.

I just keep what I need handy and use the mouse.