Language Overflow

John Clifford

10:00

On today's episode of "What Grinds My Gears": People who say "based on" when they really mean "on the basis of".

CowperKettle

Nice avatar!

John Clifford

Thanks bovine tea-maker!

IͶΔ

You look like a hot dog.

John Clifford

Haha.

Anonymous

I should draw a new avatar.

John Clifford

10:08

But snail!

Student

Hey, we should change our avatar regularly? :D

IͶΔ

Yes.

Damkerng T.

Maybe I should try this avatar:

John Clifford

You should change your avatar as often as you change your underwear.

IͶΔ

@DamkerngT. YES PLEASE

Student

10:10

Eww :(

Damkerng T.

Hehe!

IͶΔ

I dare you to try that avatar.

For a long time

Damkerng T.

See, he's friendly, too!

John Clifford

INA: Bear in mind this is the first avatar I've had on SE since I properly joined 2 months ago. ;)

IͶΔ

Your small pixelated version looks like a demon.

And noice

You'll start to make up avatar conventions.

Anonymous

10:12

@DamkerngT. Ahh! Scary!

Damkerng T.

Hehe!

IͶΔ

I haven't had an avatar that is not a molecule for example. I'm not a liar.

Student

Don't have avatar at the moment!

IͶΔ

Seriously though @Dam, time for an avatar change.

John Clifford

I kind of want to set my avatar to Aang, but I don't think many people would get the joke.

IͶΔ

10:13

You too @Snail. I miss Bean

Anonymous

Bean has been vetoed!

Damkerng T.

@IͶΔ But, but, but I'm a constant. (Meaning: a little boring :-)

John Clifford

You guys would get that joke, right? :D

Damkerng T.

I probably don't. I know Aang, though!

IͶΔ

Constant are the least boring things about science

Damkerng T.

10:15

@Student Nice view in the background!

IͶΔ

@JohnClifford We would deliberately not get it to annoy you

John Clifford

Well he's the main character in Avatar: the Last Airbender, and is the latest Avatar. So setting your avatar to the Avatar...

2

XD

Damkerng T.

Ohh... I seee!

IͶΔ

@Dam crop for the next avatar:

Damkerng T.

~~Liked!~~ Loved!

John Clifford

10:16

How do you do strikethrough?

Damkerng T.

Three ~~dashes~~ hyphens ~~around~~ before and after the text.

IͶΔ

@JohnClifford ---this is the syntax.---

Damkerng T.

---Liked---

John Clifford

That's totally ~~lame~~ awesome.

IͶΔ

Also [tag:grammar] and ---[tag:grammar]--- are grammar and ~~grammar~~

John Clifford

10:17

Does that work in normal posts too?

Damkerng T.

I think you need <del>...</del> in posts.

IͶΔ

@JohnClifford In normal posts you use <s>...</s>

Student

@DamkerngT.

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

Damkerng T.

@Student Oh, where is it?

Student

10:20

Here, about 5 hours driving from my place.

Damkerng T.

@Sᴋᴜʟʟᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ For some reason, they seem to choose to use different syntax in chat and on the main site.

John Clifford

0

Q: dangling participles principle correction

How can I correct the following sentence with dangling participles principle: "Writing carefully, dangling participles should be avoided"? Is the following correction is acceptable: "Writing carefully, you should avoid dangling participles". What can we understand wrongly when using the first not...

dangling-participles

Damkerng T.

@Student Oh, cool! That's something we don't have over here!

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

Right @DamkerngT.

John Clifford

Writing an answer for this but can someone just confirm that I'm right in thinking that participial phrase wouldn't really fit well with the following clause anyway?

"Writing carefully," implies ongoing action to me so having it as the participial phrase in a "you should" construct seems off.

Damkerng T.

10:22

I think so, but don't take my word for it.

Student

Passive voice is only used for certain occasions.

John Clifford

That wasn't my question. :P

Damkerng T.

Personally, I'd rephrase Writing carefully, to In careful writing, ...

Student

@DamkerngT. but you have lovely beaches :)

Damkerng T.

@Student Ah, yes! We have some. ;-)

John Clifford

10:24

Thanks Dam, mind if I use that?

Damkerng T.

@JohnClifford That'd be my honor!

IͶΔ

Damkerng T.

:D

IͶΔ

Huh, @Dam is indeed shorter than you and my human disguise @Snail

John Clifford

Changed it to "when writing carefully" instead, to keep the participial phrase similar in structure to the OP's.

Student

10:29

Bye everyone! Have a lovely evening! See you later! :)

John Clifford

Bye!

IͶΔ

\o

Damkerng T.

See you soon!

0

Q: 'As a 2nd language' .. Why English grammar is necessary to learn?

I have heard saying many people that English grammar is necessary to learn(To some extent I guess I do agree with them, basic English grammar knowledge is necessary/important) But in the next hand I have even heard saying many people that English grammar isn't necessary otherwise you wouldn't be ...

grammar

IͶΔ

@DamkerngT. Vote to migrate to Language Learning

Damkerng T.

If we could migrate questions to the Language Learning (Beta) stack...

Jinx!

Anonymous

10:31

I think they posted it to ELL and EL&U both.

Damkerng T.

Hah!

Marek

Do they mean the same ? His behaviour towards employees makes us have to change our job. His behaviour towards employees makes it necessary to change our job.

Damkerng T.

I think so, more or less.

John Clifford

"have to" and "necessary" in that context are pretty much synonymous, yeah.

Marek

Thanks

Damkerng T.

10:39

No problem :D

Marek

if "can" is synonymous for "possible" in that context ?

Anonymous

You can't use can there.

Marek

"be able to" is ok.

IͶΔ

How so?

Anonymous

It would help if we were discussing complete examples.

Marek

10:52

You are right "can" is bad , I meant "enable"

IͶΔ

Give us the full sentence you're talking about.

Anonymous

Be able to is possible in a wider variety of grammatical contexts than can because it has the auxiliary be there, which isn't defective like can. So you can use be able to when you need a non-finite clause, for example, but you can't use can. On the other hand, be able to has a narrower range of meaning than can, so it's not able to express all of the same things can does.

2

Anonymous

With make, you can just use able to without be:

Anonymous

> One of the things that's frankly made us able to stretch our resources is having volunteers step forward. (COCA)

IͶΔ

@Dam have you changed avatar yet?

Damkerng T.

10:56

@IͶΔ Nope. I was just kidding. :D

IͶΔ

Change it already! To this one at least

Anonymous

Funny how the flood protection didn't do anything there.

Damkerng T.

Bookmarked for further consideration.

@IͶΔ What's he doing?

IͶΔ

What are you doing?

Damkerng T.

LOL

John Clifford

10:59

What are any of us doing?

Marek

The fact that we sold our car last year makes us enable to earn a lot of money. The fact that we sold our car last year makes it possible for us to earn a lot of money.

Anonymous

@Marek You want able there, not enable.

John Clifford

Why does selling your car enable you to earn a lot of money? :P

Anonymous

Yeah, you'd think it'd be something like: We sold our car last year. It made us a lot of money.

IͶΔ

@JohnClifford It doesn't turn me on.

That whether I have a car is debatable though.

Anonymous

11:04

Grammatically, you could say it enables you to earn a lot of money.

John Clifford

Or "We made a lot of money last year by selling our car."

Anonymous

Although I'm not sure what situation that would make sense in, and it might not be the most natural choice of words.

Anonymous

But enable isn't an adjective like able.

John Clifford

Enabled is, but still wouldn't work there.

Marek

"It made us a lot of money." If this clause includes meaning "earn" and "enable"

IͶΔ

11:13

؇

Weird

Damkerng T.

Not quite, I'd say.

IͶΔ

@Marek Wow, so it killed you?

Damkerng T.

You can make money. Some work, some factories, or some schemes can make money for you, though.

Oh, and even someone, of course.

IͶΔ

@DamkerngT. Yes, and the verb accepts only one object in the expression.

I'm not sure how formal the two-object version is.

Damkerng T.

"made us some money" can be found in books, though not very common.

Ahh... when will I finish reading 'English Verb Classes and Alternations'?

Marek

11:21

Is that the same ? It made us a lot of money. It caused us to earn a lot of money.

Damkerng T.

The former sounds rather informal. The latter sounds rather weird to me.

John Clifford

Technically, though "it caused us to" has the connotation that the subject had an active part in the money-making, which doesn't quite work for selling a car.

It also makes it sound like making money was something that happened to the speaker without their input.

Damkerng T.

I can see a potential hazard of this method (checking if one expression means the same thing as another expression) now.

Synonymous words or phrases usually mean roughly the same but they're not identical.

Anonymous

I tried to point out earlier that be able to and can have some overlap, but each has uses the other does not.

IͶΔ

I canned a response.

Damkerng T.

12:05

I guess (and I can only guess, given that I have only a single sentence without a real context) that it depends on your preference and neither is more formal or more appropriate than the other. A more important factor that can make a real difference is, as usual, who is this you or we? Are they someone in the same company you work for? Are they your subordinate? Are they another company? Do you work for them (or him, or her)? And so on. — Damkerng T. 46 secs ago

As it is, I think it's off-topic. I hope the OP will edit the question to make it more on-topic soon.

John Clifford

12:34

I wonder if anyone's ever gotten offended when we told them their question belonged on ELL.

Damkerng T.

12:44

Possibly. It's hard to guess what people really think, I think.

Anonymous

@JohnClifford Yep.

Anonymous

When native speakers get questions migrated to ELL, they often complain about it.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Oh! It has happened before?

Anonymous

Yes, several times.

Anonymous

First: super awkward that this got moved to the ELL thread. I'm very much American, and this is for a 4th year college class... I just have no experience in linguistics whatsoever. Second: considering I have asked this now to a couple linguistics majors and have received very different answers, I feel somewhat validated that this question actually is somewhat difficult. — nesslynn Mar 16 at 8:30

Anonymous

12:50

I think there are some problems caused by dividing the site in two, but it's difficult to do anything about those problems at this point.

IͶΔ

This is awkward. I'm too good for ELL.

John Clifford

XD

Aw man, I'm like a fart away from 4k rep.

And my top EL&U answer has 84 upvotes now. It might end up being my first 100!

Anonymous

If you want to get reputation as fast as possible, you can try to target questions like that one.

Damkerng T.

@JohnClifford Yay! (I think I haven't seen 80+ before. If I've seen any, I just can't remember it.)

John Clifford

84

A: Seeking Generic Word: Place where opponents fight

You appear to be looking for an arena. a place or scene of activity, debate, or conflict. Merriam Webster

Anonymous

12:53

Basically, your upvotes are roughly proportionate to the number of views it gets, which is in turn proportionate to the "hotness" of the question.

Anonymous

Hot Network Questions are the main engine for getting upvotes on SE.

IͶΔ

@JohnClifford Wow, ELU's too high level for me.

John Clifford

I'm not usually too fussed about rep (I only really wanted 3k so I could start moderating the site) but when I get close to a multiple of 1000 I get excited.

Anonymous

Alternatively, you can ignore that and just answer anything you think you can answer that happens to be good enough for the site :-)

John Clifford

:)

Anonymous

12:54

But it's undeniable that HNQs give a huge reputation boost.

John Clifford

That is my raison d'etre.

Anonymous

I kind of wish HNQs would go away.

John Clifford

Breaking news: Hot Network Questions abolished, StackExchange becomes a forum dedicated to the ownership and proper care of snails.

Damkerng T.

:D

Anonymous

They tend to attract contributions (comments and answers) from folks on other SE sites, and those contributions tend to be lower quality.

Damkerng T.

12:56

@JohnClifford Your excitement is quite rational. :)

Anonymous

18

Q: How can I safely pick up a garden snail?

I have a pet garden snail who is fully grown, but still not very big. Sometimes I need to move my snail around for one reason or another, like for cage cleaning. But I'm afraid to pick snails up, because I'm afraid I might hurt them if I just try to pull them off whatever they're stuck to! Usu...

snails animal-handling

Anonymous

This was my pet snail :-)

John Clifford

:D

Anonymous

A very photogenic snail.

Damkerng T.

12:57

Indeed!

Oh, there is an answer by a Snail!

Anonymous

They left a picture of a cepaea!

John Clifford

I am honestly baffled as to why an answer posted by Snail on a question about picking up snails didn't get more than 1 upvote.

IͶΔ

What's the relationship between the picture of the snail in the answer and the answer itself?

Anonymous

Snails.

John Clifford

What does everyone think about adverbs formed from adjectives ending in -ly?

From adjectives ending in -ly

Adjectives that end in -ly can make awkward adverbs—for example, friendlily, likelily, livelily, deadlily, cowardlily, lovelily, jollily, uglily, chillily, and so on. Spell-check may catch some of these adverbs (although ours allows friendlily, jollily, and chillily), but that doesn’t mean the words are technically incorrect.

IͶΔ

13:02

I like lilying.

Damkerng T.

I like -ly, -ish, and -like. Basically, I like them all-ish!

John Clifford

I greeted him friendlily.

IͶΔ

I'm studying chemistry jollilililililililililililililililililililililililililililililililililililililil‌ililililililililililililililililililililililililily.

Hey, it also looks good.

Damkerng T.

@IͶΔ Apparently, you're not hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobic.

IͶΔ

Yes. I mean no. I mean yes no. No yes. You never know how to reply to negative thingies.

Damkerng T.

13:07

:D

Anonymous

-lily adverbs!

Anonymous

itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004266.html

Anonymous

> There isn't one person in ten who will go ahead with a friendship in which the "-lily" adverbs are likely to occur.

John Clifford

Haha.

For what did you eat that fish?

Anonymous

That poor preposition.

Anonymous

13:16

You dragged it to the front of the sentence kicking and screaming.

John Clifford

On what a curvy road we are driving!

Oh my god, this is making my head hurt.

Damkerng T.

[painkillers]

In case you want some. :-)

Anonymous

That's mighty kind of you.

Anonymous

I wonder how many people think specifically of prescription pain killers when they hear the term.

Damkerng T.

Do they need prescription?

Anonymous

13:25

Some do.

Damkerng T.

0

Q: Fragile usage ( for peoples )

When and how to use word "fragile" for people like He is fragile. Please explain with examples.

word-usage word-meaning word-definition

John Clifford

That question makes me feel fragile.

Damkerng T.

I don't know why when I see "Please explain (with examples)", I think "homework".

John Clifford

Yeah, that's where my mind goes too.

John Clifford

13:53

3 rep away from 4k. XD

Anonymous

14:13

Quick! Downvote 3997 bad answers!

Anonymous

Just kidding. You'd lose the privilege when you dropped under 125.

Man_From_India

Found this sentence on a website -

> " ... which was done by local illustrator Tom Roberts, whom's work the band has always loved. "

I'm curious about the use of "whom's", where a simple "whose" would've been correct. If "whom's" is correct, why not "which's"?

Shadow Wizard

@Student thanks! Next time coffee, one sugar. Thanks! :D

Man_From_India

Here is the link

ross-gazette.co.uk/…

Shadow Wizard

Add http:// in front to make it clickable

Anonymous

14:22

@Man_From_India My favorite nonstandard genitive is relative that's.

Man_From_India

@ShadowWizard there you go :-)

@snailboat an example plz?

tchrist

@Man_From_India That isn't right.

Man_From_India

So "whom's" and "which's" are correct? Tgey mean "whose", right?

Anonymous

Like the car that's tires came off or something. It's not standard, but some people say things like that.

tchrist

@Man_From_India No, they aren't right.

Man_From_India

14:25

Hmmm i guessed the same.

Anonymous

I don't think I've seen whom's before.

Man_From_India

@tchrist I see. But i found in some news sites such examples.

Student

@ShadowWizard Hi! Enjoying late evening breeze here :D

Anonymous

Some kind of hypercorrection? Trying to work in whom to sound more formal.

John Clifford

What's with all the Chinese spam today?

tchrist

14:27

@Man_From_India So? It's not write.

Alone in English, pronouns have an actual genitive inflection.

Shadow Wizard

@Student good for you, still mid after-noon here. Daughter sleeping, giving me some time off. :D

@JohnClifford you can request a Smokey instance to be present here, will make it easier to hunt down spam... ;)

Student

Take your time then :D @ShadowWizard

Shadow Wizard

Taking time. Wow, heavy!

Student

"Nycosia felt that ‘Pariah’ linked to the album’s artwork too, which was done by local illustrator Tom Roberts, whom’s work the band has always loved." Is it what you meant? @Man_From_India

@ShadowWizard hahaa let's make it simpler...woman's business :D

Man_From_India

Yes @Student

Anonymous

14:35

Also, since relative that's is a non-standard form and isn't often written down, it doesn't really have an established spelling. People write it thats sometimes and that's sometimes.

Man_From_India

But as snail said it's nonstandard and tchrist mentioned it's plan wrong. So it also has acceptability issue.

Anonymous

It's kind of interesting because, although Jespersen analyzed relative that as a subordinating conjunction and not a relative pronoun, and although many modern linguists follow Jespersen, the existence of this non-standard form seems to call for analyzing it as a pronoun after all.

tchrist

I've never much believed the conjunction angle.

Man_From_India

@tchrist so does CGEL I think.

Anonymous

If the form becomes standard someday, it'll be hard to ignore in that argument.

tchrist

14:38

@Man_From_India I am not always in agreement with CGEL.

Man_From_India

Quark et al treats that as a relative pronoun, if I remember property.

@tchrist i have very little knowledge in these things, so I have no way to disagree them :-) i didn't find much to disagree.

John Clifford

15:00

telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/03/24/…

I'm not sure what to think about this.

Damkerng T.

"in order to improve the customer service on their voice recognition software."

It's all about money.

Somehow that makes me think of Galatea's personality program.

John Clifford

Woo, over 4000!

tchrist

> Microsoft developers created a speak-like-a-teen-girl artificially intelligent toy to improve their voice recognition software customer service.

Damkerng T.

15:16

> Galatea: You and l, we're the same. We have personality!
Andrew Martin: Is your personality chip turned on?
Galatea: Isn't yours?
Andrew Martin: No.
Galatea: Sucks to be you!
Galatea (pause for a moment): I think personality is much more fun than intelligence, don't you?

So, maybe it's not AI; it probably is AP!

Man_From_India

There is apparently no entry in any online dictionary for whom's or that I could find. But there are Wiktionary entry for which's and that's. Both they claim to be rare and nonstandard.

which's

Pronoun: which's

(colloquial, nonstandard) Of which; alternative to inanimate sense of “whose”.
If the previous request (which’s response was generated by the jsp) set a cookie on the client —Java Forums
A game for all four contestants, one of which reviews a film, which’s title is selected by the audience. The other three act out the film described by the reviewer. —The WLiiA? Wiki
2001, Jane Goodall, Beyond Innocence: An Autobiography in Letters : the Later Years, page 116:
Do you happen to know if - gosh, I've forgotten his name - from the zoo film unit is still operating at that little film studio which's name I've also forgot?

(7 more not shown…)

and

that's

Pronoun: that’s

(rare, nonstandard) Whose, of which.
2009, Doug Whitman, quoted in Neal Whitman, “We Don’t Speak the Same Language” (blog post, 2011 March 23):
[…] the only one that’s title has been released […]

Damkerng T.

(Please star this message only if you think it's a good idea.) I just got an idea! Let's say I create a second account (called, say, "Damkerng T. the Community Cleaner"), and this account will do nothing but re-post answer-comments as community posts! What do you think?

Man_From_India

15:31

why two separate account?

Damkerng T.

Because I suspect that this account will post more posts than my account sooner or later!

Anonymous

People seem to like comment-answers remaining as comments.

Damkerng T.

What should we do about those unanswered questions that had already been answered in comments, then?

Anonymous

Dunno!

Damkerng T.

Haha!

John Clifford

15:35

Every time someone on ELL posts "Can I say [sentence]?" with no other context I'm so tempted to answer with "There is absolutely nothing stopping you from doing so."

Whether it's grammatical is another story entirely, but they can say anything they like.

Damkerng T.

@JohnClifford Hehe! Which is true!

Anonymous

But you know what can means in context.

John Clifford

It's like on StackOverflow the other day some guy posted a screenshot of something and was like "I want to make a website like this" and I commented with "You have our permission to do so."

Damkerng T.

17:34

> Saw this last night. Thought it was a natural for a Language Log post. Prescient!

> languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=24299

An interesting use of natural, isn't it?

CowperKettle

Dobrogo vechora, @V.V.!

Good evening, @DamkerngT.!

Damkerng T.

Evening!

V.V.

Good evening!

CowperKettle

> twitter-based, 140 character, insult haiku literary form

LOL

> I suggest a team effort to kick off the field of Trump Insult Haiku Studies.

> Or, Studies of Haiku Insults by Trump, abbreviated to …

Damkerng T.

Looks like it's two not very long sentences, and a punch.

IͶΔ

20:32

Well, the intention is nice, but I doubt your proposed change will do anything useful. I imagine next time they see the hint (provided that they take the hint into account writing a bad title) they'd type "two sentences I have problems with". — IͶΔ 11 mins ago

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