Language Overflow - 2016-01-24 (page 1 of 2)

« first day (219 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (3005 days later) »

12:51 AM

> "When we began, we thought the project would take six to nine months," says Katelyn Larkin, who earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in biology at the UI and has worked in Neiman's lab since she was a sophomore. "Instead, it took more than three years. We learned that these snails grow at a snail's pace."

(from a study on snails)

> The answer may lie in part to a parasitic worm that preys upon the snails. The asexual females are more vulnerable because their offspring's genomes are exact replicas of their own, making them easier to target and wipe out. The sexual females, because they mate, inherit a separate, distinct genomic set that diversifies the gene pool and thus makes them better able to withstand parasitic attacks.

Exactly like in a book on biology I was listening to.

Red Queen hypothesis

The Red Queen hypothesis, also referred to as Red Queen's, Red Queen's race or The Red Queen Effect, is an evolutionary hypothesis which proposes that organisms must constantly adapt, evolve, and proliferate not merely to gain reproductive advantage, but also simply to survive while pitted against ever-evolving opposing organisms in an ever-changing environment, and intends to explain two different phenomena: the constant extinction rates as observed in the paleontological record caused by co-evolution between competing species and the advantage of sexual reproduction (as opposed to asexual...

Now this is a strange sentence: "The answer may lie in part to a parasitic worm that preys upon the snails."

Maybe the proper form is "the answer may lie in part in a parasitic worm.."

1:18 AM

> "For example, children with autism under the age of 10 were found to have three times lower brain B12 levels, which is similar to levels for generally healthy adults in their 50s"

Quite important vitamin.

2 hours later…

3:10 AM

0

Q: "Everyone working on this together has come to a different conclusion" or "conclusions"?

Everyone working on this together has come to a different conclusion. Since everyone work on this come to a different conclusions, why "a different conclusion" instead of "different conclusions"?

singular-vs-plural

Everyone doesn't seem to combine well with "together".

1 hour later…

4:31 AM

A great cartoon:

The Wind Rises (Japanese: 風立ちぬ, Hepburn: Kaze Tachinu) is a 2013 Japanese animated historical drama film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and animated by Studio Ghibli. It was released by Toho on July 20, 2013 in Japan, and by Touchstone Pictures in North America on February 21, 2014. The Wind Rises is a fictionalized biopic of Jiro Horikoshi (1903–1982), designer of the Mitsubishi A5M fighter aircraft and its successor, the Mitsubishi A6M Zero, used by the Empire of Japan during World War II. The film is adapted from Miyazaki's manga of the same name, which was in turn loosely based on the...

4:58 AM

@CopperKettle This studio (Ghibli) never fails me. Not even once.

2 hours later…

7:13 AM

@Dam Interestingly, I feel a need to use has never failed when adding not even once.

Old robots never die, they just become obselete.

Timeless fact/proposition.

Hehe!

I think you're right about the tense.

I came to celebrate the GLORY of having the OP choose my answer, which is the best, against the ignorance of the masses!

taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2009/02/03/2003435170

Oops.

Yay!

I hope that wasn't a link to my favorite porn site: stinky butts.

.com

O.O

Hehe!

7:21 AM

I wanted this

3

A: A word for "getting colored"?

Turns color or colors The status bar gradually turns color as you scroll down. The status bar gradually colors as you scroll down. Turn color is clearer because to color more commonly means that a subject causes an object to become colored. However, using status bar colors is grammati...

Yaaaaaay! Have a solar panel upgrade, on me!

Oh, are you going to get off the grid?

I was trying to offer the equivalent of a cigar or glass of champagne.

Ah, I see. Thanks!

But I would like to prepare a survival shelter. Experience the joys of a post-apocalyptic world.

Solar panels would be nice, though it's not nuclear.

7:26 AM

Apacolyptic?

Erm, I meant hydrogen-fuel cells.

I'm not giving nukes to a deranged machine!

Sorry about the confusion. I didn't read the labels on my battery packs.

Nice try, though.

:D

About the apocalyptic, I think the world is looking more and more like the settings in Terminator franchise, way more than ever.

Have you seen Amazon's delivery drones?

7:35 AM

No. But I've heard it was planning/testing.

I think they may really use it now in the UK.

Soon it will become this: m.youtube.com/watch?v=_PaEgaTZUQQ

:P

But here is what we have now (with videos): amazon.com/b?node=8037720011

Anonymous

@JimReynolds Turn color, though, is much less common than saying the name of the actual color.

Anonymous

corpus.byu.edu/coca/?c=coca&q=44640002

Anonymous

See turns color down at the bottom with 1 result, while turns red has 114?

8:25 AM

@snailboat @JimReynolds I think I just got another word for it: colorize!

Anonymous

Colorize is associated with film colorization. It appears in some other contexts, but it wouldn't be my first choice in this one.

8:45 AM

What the OP was trying to say wouldn't be my choice at all.

But I think all of us were trying to get along the OP's idea.

9:08 AM

34

Q: What is 'explain like I'm five'?

In my recent question, I got this link in an answer. Here, 'Explain like I'm five' is written. I tried to find its meaning on the Internet, but I got only an acronym ELI5. Is 'explain like I'm five' a phrase or an idiom? What does it mean?

meaning meaning-in-context

Judging from this and many of my recent answers, answers to easier questions have better chances to get more votes on ELL.

The answers tend to be shorter, and they're easier to read, and it's easier for most users to know whether the answers are correct or not, perhaps.

BTW, I just went outside, and the weather reminds me of Frankfurt!

(And it snowed in Taiwan!)

Oh! It will get even colder next week!

Anonymous

9:34 AM

Brr!

Anonymous

It's 5°C here right now. Of course, it's nighttime! But it's supposed to be a cold day, only up to 10°C.

Anonymous

With the rain come cold temperatures.

Anonymous

> 1a. With the rain come cold temperatures.

Anonymous

> 1b. With the rain comes cold temperatures.

Anonymous

Which do you like?

Anonymous

9:37 AM

How about:

Anonymous

> 2a. Cold temperatures come with the rain.

Anonymous

> 2b. Cold temperatures comes with the rain.

Anonymous

Do we make the same choice?

@snailboat I like the latter.

Anonymous

Let me edit those examples to label them.

9:39 AM

@snailboat Cold temperatures? Hmm... 'come', I guess.

Anonymous

So you like 1b but 2a.

nods

Anonymous

Presumably, then, cold temperatures feels like a subject in 2 but not in 1.

But now everything looks tricky!

Anonymous

After all, the basic (uninverted) position for a subject in English is to the left of the verb.

Anonymous

9:41 AM

So in 2 it's hard to conclude that it's not a subject.

nods

Anonymous

In 1, we have what looks like inversion, with the verb semantically predicating on the right-hand side cold temperatures, and with what appears to be a PP dependent on the left-hand side, where we'd typically find a subject.

I wonder if it's really an inversion.

Anonymous

I looked online and people say both.

Ahh

Anonymous

9:43 AM

> With the New Year Comes New Sales for Sag Harbor Shoppers

Anonymous

> With the new year come new resolutions — resolutions to eat healthier, watch less television, or learn a new skill.

How about, "With the rain come they"? (<-- probably something nobody says. :-)

Anonymous

Well, you're right that people generally don't talk that way :-)

Anonymous

It sounds very formal and does sound unusual.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. You might want to read CGEL pages 1385-1390, the section about "subject-dependent inversion".

Anonymous

9:50 AM

(Or, y'know, skim then read any bits that catch your eye :-)

Well, it's about 5-6 pages. Let's see...

It looks a bit similar to [11iii] My neighbours have a huge back yard. [#Through it run my kids almost every afternoon.]

Anonymous

Ooh, I'd never have realized that distinction without them pointing it out for me.

They don't say anything about the agreement, though, if I didn't miss anything.

@DamkerngT. It has snowed in Bangkok? Wow.

It's much harder to boil my water now!

@CopperKettle Ah, no! Not yet! It's just a bit colder than usual.

9:59 AM

Here, the period from 20 January to 20 February is the coldest.

But this year, the weather is mild.

My kitchen is outside my house, and it's getting really long to boil water! (The handle of my teapot is always cold!)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I was thinking after your "With the rain come they" example you might want to read a discussion of when inversion is appropriate or not :-)

Oh, you have a kitchen right in the open. Nice.

Anonymous

And I'm not really capable of explaining that myself.

@CopperKettle Perhaps some of the coldness over there gets down here this year. :D

10:00 AM

@DamkerngT. It will take a long trip to reach Thailand. (0:

@snailboat It looks like the inversion is questionable, I think!

@CopperKettle nods -- So Taiwan got some snow first. :P

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I didn't see anything either. I usually assume the standard thing to do with this sort of inversion is to have the verb agree with the subject, regardless of where that subject is.

Anonymous

I started to doubt myself, though, because when I typed my sentence:

Anonymous

27 mins ago, by snailboat

With the rain come cold temperatures.

@snailboat nods -- I'd assume so, too, if CGEL didn't say anything.

Anonymous

10:03 AM

I thought to myself, "Hey, that doesn't sound too good. Maybe I should write comes."

@snailboat But it didn't sound strange to me at first, and the New Year sentences sound fine, too.

Anonymous

My poor ear! It didn't know what to do.

Anonymous

I should probably have just not used inversion :-) But let's say I did.

I would certainly opt for "With the rain come cold temperatures" - Temperatures is the only logical Subject here!

:D

Anonymous

10:04 AM

CopperKettle is on my side!

And it's boiling!

Okay, I switched my side. :D

Anonymous

Thanks CopperKettle for being in my corner boiling up some subject-verb agreement :-)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. It was an honest question, though. I couldn't tell which sounded right.

@DamkerngT. See, eveyone wants to be closer to a boiling kettle this time of year!

10:04 AM

nods -- :D

(0:

"With the rain comes cold temperatures" would sound colloquial/vernacular to me.

Like "They has taken all the horses from the stall"

Maybe the pattern "There's [many things]" got me.

Anonymous

That's one where younger speakers tend to differ from older speakers.

Anonymous

Younger speakers favor invariant there's more and more, while some more conservative speakers really don't like the sound of it.

nods

1 hour later…

11:16 AM

@snailboat I know turns red is more common than turns color, but is there a better substitute for what the OP seeks in the question?

A status bar will turn from "colorless, transparent, or white" to a color. So the status bar (blank).

Of course, turns red is too specific, as it might turn any of a variety of colors (I suppose!)

Anonymous

I liked some of the versions with fade.

Anonymous

Is there some reason they can't be more specific, by the way?

I read some of the links and saw that "fade in" is used to mean, well, appear or transition from not-something to something.

But it doesn't seem to fit here, and also, it's a specialized term.

Anonymous

In software, you commonly fade from one thing to another.

So we'd want to know if an audience could be expected to understand it.

Then we need to specify that a color will fade in.

A status bar will transition from some non-colored state to a colored state.

Anonymous

11:23 AM

Can you link me to the question again?

Yes. For a small service charge.

Anonymous

I need to see the context.

Input credit card #

Anonymous

@JimReynolds Well, it's your fault. You typed @snailboat instead of responding to my message, so I can't click back and look at the context! All your fault. :-)

3

A: A word for "getting colored"?

Turns color or colors The status bar gradually turns color as you scroll down. The status bar gradually colors as you scroll down. Turn color is clearer because to color more commonly means that a subject causes an object to become colored. However, using status bar colors is grammati...

Oh. How do I respond to a message? Wow.

Is my sheet ignorance not stupefying?

Anonymous

11:24 AM

You click on the little arrow at the right end.

Anonymous

It appears when you move your mouse over the message.

That surely provides some value on its own?

Anonymous

This feature is unavailable on the mobile version :-(

@snailboat Saw it a hundred quadrillion times and it never registered!

@snailboat Because our first answerers didn't ask, I suppose.

11:25 AM

And I also wondered by if I mouse over a message, others may become highlighted.

Anonymous

There you go! Now move your mouse over the reply you just wrote, and you can see which message it replies to.

So it implied that the question was clear enough.

@DamkerngT. Am I replying to a message that was replying to another message?

@JimReynolds Yes!

How can I know if @Dam's message "Because our first ...." was in reply to another messgae?

11:27 AM

Just click the arrow in front of it.

Is there a comprehensive guide to how to use the features of the chat?

Anonymous

There's a guide.

Anonymous

Click 'help'.

Anonymous

There's nothing stopping an answerer from suggesting turns blue or such, though.

A similar problem:

2

Q: What's the meaning of "Sure looks like it went over, too"?

Shouldn't that be a good thing, telling somebody, "no thanks required"? Sure looks like it went over, too. Look at you. You're sure making the rounds. I found this line from the movie, As Good As It Gets, and I'm curious about this phrase "it went over". "went over" has various me...

Anonymous

11:27 AM

I'd say something like gradually changes to a solid color.

Anonymous

I wouldn't say turn color, but it seems there are people who use that phrase.

Anonymous

There are probably a bunch of decent ways to say it, though.

By answering the question, we're telling the OP that the question is good, no more context is needed, and so on.

What if the referent has already scrolled off screen?

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. That kind of looks like well was left out.

Anonymous

11:29 AM

@JimReynolds That's when you click the arrow like Damkerng explained :-)

Hmm.... The status bar gradually changes to a solid color.

I think it's highly context dependent. The answer is not bad, because it's focused on the surface meaning of "went over".

Oh. There are two "arrows"

I see now.

I was blind, but a-now aaah see!!!!

The status bar turns color.

Anonymous

We might have to start by figuring out if the transcription they've provided is correct.

Yes, your suggestion is better.

11:31 AM

I remember that the movie was a bit complicated, and ironies happened all the time.

*%&$&^*(&)(*&_)*(*(*(%^9

Anonymous

Oh, they provided a link to a clip! Neat.

I remember the "Thank you note" though,

but I'm not sure how well she (the waitress who wrote the note) received his "No, thank you."

@snailboat They cut the clips rather badly, I'd say.

Anonymous

It does sound like that's what's being said. So the next question is what the context is.

Anonymous

I don't think I've heard went over without something like well afterwards before!

11:35 AM

I think the two guys didn't have any clues what was going on in her mind.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. It's kind of weird out of context, isn't it?

nods

Maybe I can find that scene on YouTube.

Oh, I misremembered one person in the scene!

It was right just before this clip: youtube.com/watch?v=uPkkwwTw9Q4

A-ha! Found it!

No Thank, You Note, Thank You.

2

Q: using "girl" as a mass noun, with no article

My elder child name is Julie. Jule is nice, charming and naughty girl. My question is: girl is a countable noun, but I have not written any article and I'm trying to use girl as a mass noun. Is the above sentence correct?

articles nouns countability

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Oh, thank you! That's very helpful.

Anonymous

My best guess is that went over does mean 'went over well'.

11:41 AM

@snailboat You're welcome!

nods -- That's why I think Peter's answer is not bad.

Anonymous

That's just what it seems like when I hear it. But I have to admit it seems unfamiliar to me.

Because Melvin abused his language all the time in the movie.

It's not that his language was bad or anything. It's more like he didn't know or care much about those social "cues".

One probably could also say "I want a sandwich with girl", but that would suggest some cannibalistic tendencies. — CopperKettle 15 mins ago

@CopperKettle o_O

Anonymous

Well, there are definitely ways to use girl as a non-count noun.

> Does the smell of girl disturb you?

Hmm...

Wondering why not 'of girls'?

11:46 AM

@DamkerngT. I just tried to come up with an example.

@CopperKettle An example that gave me a strange feeling!

I wondered if one can say, "During his concert, the stadium was full of girl" - but I was unsure, so the sandwich example seemed the most natural (although highly unnatural) version. As an analogy to "There's apple in this pie"

@snailboat Can/should I add this to my answer, snailboat?

I'd like the OP to see it.

@CopperKettle In my mind's eye, @CopperKettle is a whole lot of girl!

That's girl as non-count, isn't it?

@JimReynolds Hehe, but it sound unnatural.. Shouldn't it be "a whole lot of a girl" (in a derogatory sense)?

I'd like to write a nice answer to that question, but I'm busy now, and it would take a lot of time.. I've even some poetry quotations. D'oh.

BBL

No, it can be very positive.

I mean, not to call a man a girl .. but ..

Oh. No. We would say "a whole lot of girl" where "girl" is "girlness" not a girl.

11:55 AM

@JimReynolds Oh! Another example of a mass "girl".

It can mean a large girl, jokingly. But not necessarily.

It can mean very girlish. A whole lot of woman makes more sense as a positive term to most people today, I think.

Very womanly in a sense of the goodness or sexiness or whatever it is about womanhood we may like or love.

12:08 PM

@DamkerngT. Because we use the generic singular for mass nouns.

> It smells like cats. It smells of cat.

Either, or switched.

> It smells like cat. It smells of cats.

Interesting!

in Tavern on the Meta on Meta Stack Exchange Chat, Jan 18 at 20:04, by bjb568

I feel concerned about the present of English.

amazon.com/gp/product/0300080840

A curious book title.

12:27 PM

It’s playing on so many other scholarly texts that begin The Rise and Fall of, of which ~ the Roman Empire may be one of the most renowned.

12:39 PM

1

A: When I have to use verb with "to" and when without?

There are Some verbs that are followed by the to-infinitive: I decided to go home as soon as possible. We all wanted to have more English classes. Common verbs followed by the to-infinitive are: Verbs of thinking and feeling: choose decide expect forget hate hope intend learn like love mean p...

> Verbs of thinking and feeling: choose decide expect forget hate hope intend learn like love mean plan prefer remember (and would like, would love)

I wonder how they came up with the list. Why didn't want in the list? Where is think or see? (Isn't it strange that feel is not a verb of "thinking and feeling" like others in the list?)

Uh oh!

> English Verbs (Speedy Study Guides)

Hmm... who copied who?

> learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar/verbs/…

> learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/node/1404

If you copied this answer from somewhere else, please cite your sources appropriately. For more information, see How to reference material written by others. Thank you. — Damkerng T. 22 secs ago

12:54 PM

@DamkerngT. Gosh, is Scholes still alive? He was the rising star of narrative theory when I was in grad school forty years ago.

Hah!

It seems like he's still alive, yes.

I skim over the reviews a little. It was very well-received, I think, though it wouldn't make a bestseller, because the topic would limit the number of the readers.

(Hah! 'bestseller' is one word, and no space in-between!)

Anonymous

@JimReynolds It's actually part of the question already.

Anonymous

> Is there a word or phrase for changing from being transparent (or colorless, or maybe white) to a solid color?

Anonymous

So if you think that their wording is suitable, you could add a note saying so.

@snailboat As we scroll down, the status bar solidifies! -- Just kidding. :P

1:02 PM

@DamkerngT. Come to think of it, am I still alive, forty years after graduate school? It seems unlikely.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I hate it when my status bar is all gooey.

@StoneyB Statistically, the longer you've lived, the longer you'll live. :D

@snailboat Aww... gooey status bars!

@DamkerngT. Statistically, we should probably all be dead already.

LOL

Oh, it was a sports day of some school today!

(There is a stadium not very far from my house. They're having their fireworks right now. I think it's the close ceremony.)

1:20 PM

@snailboat That's probably something they can help you fix over on the Power User site. I bet somebody's got a patch.

Hmm ... do people still 'patch' programs these days?

Sad .. Windows can no longer find debug.exe.

@StoneyB I think they still do.

@StoneyB You could give WinDbg a try: msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/…

I've heard that they are going to leave .net behind too. (Not to mention debug.exe.)

Holy cow! That's an actual debugger, not just a byte-level editor.

I never got around to understanding what .net does. or did. I pretty much dropped out of programming when Windows came along.

1:48 PM

Word of the Day: geofence

Anonymous

What is a geofence?

A "virtual fence" against some apps or devices.

Hello guys how are you all doing?

I found it in npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/01/23/463197593/…. I was thinking about posting some sentences from it, but changed my mind.

Anonymous

Hi again! Glad to see you here, it's been a while :-)

1:52 PM

Yup...it's....everything ok?

Hi, @Man_From_India! Welcome back!

I think so. How are things going over there?

Anonymous

We've finally been getting a good amount of rain here. Our lawn is even starting to grow a little! :-)

It's holidays here...:) 23rd was birthday of one of our freedom fighters...though that holiday overlapped with Saturday :-(

A holiday less

@snailboat Ah... finally, the rain comes. :-)

@Man_From_India Aww... Hehe!

@snailboat u might find more snails :P

1:55 PM

@snailboat I thought lawns were illegal in SoCal these days!

Anonymous

Well, our lawn was basically dead. They'd told us we could only water 15 minutes a day, and only twice a week and after eight in the evening. We didn't even do that much.

Anonymous

Even before that, our lawn wasn't in very good shape.

Anonymous

But the watering laws did more or less guarantee that our lawn would be dead. It's surprising how many people ignored the laws and watered their lawns anyway, though.

Anonymous

Oh, yes, and no watering within five days of measurable rainfall.

I sorta envy you. I wish I had the energy to kill my lawn and replace it with some sort of evergreen cover.

1:59 PM

After eight in the evening!

Is there still light?

Anonymous

We do suddenly have lots of snails here. It's hard to find native snails, though. Just the invasive ones. They're everywhere!

Anonymous

It's dark before eight.

Anonymous

Today sunset will be at 5:23.

How would people water their lawns after eight, then?!

Anonymous

With a sprinkler, probably?

2:01 PM

Ahh...

Right. I forgot that option.

Watering plants in my garden is quite enjoyable, though.

Anonymous

I don't see many people around here water their lawns by hand. Actually, we don't have very big lawns around here to begin with. A lot of houses don't have lawns at all!

Anonymous

Very different from where I grew up.

nods

Are tiny houses popular over there?

Not with real-estate agents.

Hehe!

Anonymous

2:04 PM

I was about to answer when I realized that tiny probably means different things in different parts of the world!

I heard it from Ellen, so it's the tiny houses over there.

They look like they could fit in a lawn easily. :-)

Anonymous

Houses out here feel smaller than where I grew up. And they're almost all one floor, no basement.

Anonymous

I did live in a two-story house out here a few years back, so they do exist.

Virtually all houses have no basement over here, but most of them have two or more floors.

(Except those condos, of course!)

@snailboat A basement is another thing that looks like a good idea (for someone who doesn't have one like me :-).

Anonymous

I like having two floors :-)

2:09 PM

nods -- Me too!

Anonymous

user image

Hong Kong is at 45! (45 what, I'm not sure.)

Oh, it says m^2.

That's about the size of a medium-sized condominium room.

(My room in my younger days was about 32 m^2.)

Your bedroom?

No. My apartment room was just a single room.

It was about 8x4 m.

(Bathroom, laundry area, and everything in that 32 m^2.)

(I had no private room until I moved out and rented my own apartment.)

What we'd call an 'efficiency' apartment, then. (Marketing genius, that!)

2:26 PM

:D

2:46 PM

@StoneyB I was reading CGEL about the relativizer and fused relative construction parts. But reading that I am now not very sure if that sentence is at all correct.

> When people are in possession of their mental faculties, they are the experts on whether their lives are worth living.

I am now not very sure if that is a fused relative construction, though it looks like one

WHY?

Refer to page no. 1073 of CGEL

According to the diagram, there should have a gap for the relative modifier clause. But in our sentence that is missing.

3:16 PM

@snailboat I wonter if that only for standalone houses or including apartments.

@DamkerngT. I had a friend in youth whose room was about 3 by 5 meters. A cupboard, a bed, a table and a chair. (0:

His parents lived across the corridor, in another room. All the amenities were down the corridor, and in the middle of the corridor there was a door to a communal kitchen.

I'm not sure how such houses are called in the West, because there are probably no such houses. They resemble hostels, only that people live there for decades.

3:38 PM

@Man_From_India Well, CGEL distinguishes "fused relatives" from "embedded questions" (6.2, 1070 ff), a distinction I'm not comfortable with: I think these are not two different constructions but two different uses of the same construction. But there's certainly a gap: for instance, in I don't know whether I will choose A or B the gap is the object of choose; this might be represented as I don't know which of A or B I will choose _.

Hmmm...That distinction didn't make much sense to me either.

Yes, your which sentence does have a gap. But the sentence with whether!!! I am not very convinced.

But I still think there is a meaning gap in the original sentence. Is that sentence correct?

But that's what whether means: which of either.

(though I understand what that sentence mean)

@StoneyB Yes but in that sentence choose have got an object A or B. So gap?

No: A or B is not a conjunct object, it is a definition of the alternatives which are licensed to fill the gap. It's exactly like a fill-in-the-blank question: I will choose ____ [enter A or B].

Ahh I see....yes now I see it. And if we call whether a subordinator, then also it's fine. But that original sentence? Is that correct?

3:48 PM

They are experts on whether their lives are worth living is equivalent to "They can fill in the blank in 'Our lives ____ [are/are not] worth living'".

thinking... But not getting all, still seems something missing :(

« first day (219 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (3005 days later) »

Transcript for

Jan '1624

Language Overflow

This is the main chat room for ell.stackexchange.com. Welcome!

join this room
about this room

00:00

06:00

12:00

18:00

all times are UTC

site design / logo © 2024 Stack Exchange Inc; legal

mobile