Language Overflow

Man_From_India

00:50

4

Q: "That the Earth is round" vs "The earth being round"

A friend of mine recently got this question wrong on a test, but the teacher apparently wasn't able to explain why they got it wrong (at least not clearly). The question is: __________ is a known fact today, but it was considered a dangerous lie when it was proposed. The Earth is round That th...

grammar

Damkerng T.

I think it's something about semantics rather than syntax.

Then again, the best answer is probably it's just not what we normally say or write.

"The Earth being round is a well-known fact," I mean.

Man_From_India

nods

The answer mentions about absolute construction, I think that's right.

Damkerng T.

Hmm... I don't quite agree with that assertion.

Man_From_India

I think OP is being confused with [noun] who is [verb+ing] construction. That answer didn't address that.

Damkerng T.

Who knows, "The Earth being round is a well-known fact" may be just fine five or ten years from now. :-)

Man_From_India

00:58

@DamkerngT. hmmmm I don't know but I thought that is the only likely explanation. Is there anything wrong with calling it absolute.

@DamkerngT. :)

> His being generous is nothing new.

But somehow I can't perse "the earth" sentence like the sentence above.

Damkerng T.

It's possible to argue that it's unlike The Earth being round.

This is probably closer: The earth being so seated cannot naturally be moved.

Man_From_India

I now see why you don't completely agree with "absolute" things in that answer.

@DamkerngT. nods

Anonymous

01:14

The Earth being round is a gerund-participial clause and can function as subject.

Anonymous

The absolute construction is just one possible way a gerund-participial clause can be used.

Damkerng T.

Another The earth being sentence, but more evil-ish: The earth being full of bloody crimes, signifies its being filled with evils of every kind : blood denotes the evils which offer violence to the goods of love and charity, and entirely destroy them.

Man_From_India

Another similar sentence I found in COCA

> People being afraid of the word Muslim is the reason I made the movie.

@snailplane right.

But do you think The Eart being round is a known fact is correct?

In People being afraid of the word is the reason I made the movie, the subject of the whole sentence can be either those type of people or being afraid of the word. I think it's context dependent.

Man_From_India

01:53

Found this sentence in Google Book

> Of course, it is possible that the earth being round is a deep-seated belief

Another

> It is a fact about the world in the same way that the Earth being round is a fact about the world.

Anonymous

02:05

@Man_From_India Well, it seems grammatical at least.

Anonymous

I think most people would use a that-clause with extraposition: It's a known fact that the Earth is round.

Anonymous

That the Earth is round is a known fact is also okay, but probably less likely.

Anonymous

#The Earth being round is a known fact might be strange in terms of meaning.

Anonymous

I'm not really sure about that # I put there.

Man_From_India

02:55

@snailplane I also think it's grammatical, but I too find it odd in terms of meaning. What do you think about the sentences I quoted from Google Book in my last comment.

Anonymous

@Man_From_India This sentence looks fine to me. The subject is unambiguously people being afraid of the word.

Man_From_India

@snailplane yes that's ambiguous.

Anonymous

It doesn't look ambiguous to me.

Anonymous

If you added commas and changed is to are, I could see people being the head of the subject.

Anonymous

But *people is doesn't work.

Man_From_India

03:00

@snailplane oh right, I overlooked it.

Anonymous

That's why I said I thought it was unambiguous.

Man_From_India

Hmmm

Anonymous

It's a gerund-participial clause with an explicit subject of its own, in subject function.

Man_From_India

What about Of course, it's possible that the earth being round is a deep-seated belief.?

@snailplane nods

Anonymous

@Man_From_India That seems semantically suspect.

Man_From_India

03:03

Hmmmm I get only one meaning.

Anonymous

I understand it, but it seems weird saying the earth being round is a belief.

Man_From_India

To me it seems that the earth is round is a deep-seated belief.

That is from Google Book, I have to check its author and publication year. Will do from desptop later.

Anonymous

I might just be looking at it a bit too closely. :-)

Anonymous

In any case, it seems grammatical.

Man_From_India

I also having trouble with our the earth being round is a known fact sentence.

:(

Let's see what answers the question gets. As for the current answer, I'm not very satisfied.

Anonymous

03:46

@Man_From_India Maybe The Earth being round is a known fact works. I don't know. It's possible I've been looking at it too closely and my judgments are off. It might be a good idea to survey some (other) native speakers and see what they think.

Anonymous

It doesn't seem like the Earth being round is specifically non-factive to me . . .

Anonymous

Anyway, I urge you to ask some other speakers for their judgments. :-)

Anonymous

03:58

1

Q: Dropping /t/ when is next to a consonant

I was once reading the phrase next year, and I was told I should've pronounced next year as /nɛks jɪə/, that is, without the /t/. Does this work with other phrases? Like count them?

pronunciation

Anonymous

Can we close this as a duplicate of:

Anonymous

2

A: In the natural way of speaking, How to pronounce "next stop"?

Next stop, /nekst stɒp/ Next stop, /neks stɒp/ The answer to the original poster's question is: Yes, we do say "nex stop". In example (1) you can see an unnatural pronunciation for the phrase "next stop". It's not a mistake, but it's not the normal pronunciation we'd expect. If you ...

Anonymous

What do you think?

Anonymous

I'm inclined to close it.

Anonymous

04:31

14

Q: Should we fix backticks?

I would still like to look into doing this because it is tedious in the extreme to edit every single instance of mis-used backticks into italics, and because almost no one ever fixes these. Therefore we should just “do the right thing” and map backticks into <i>...</i> not into <code>...</code>. ...

discussion feature-request featured formatting

Anonymous

We could do this on ELL, too. We have to edit out backticks fairly often.

Anonymous

04:48

Word of the day: acerb

2

Rubisco

07:15

@snailplane Well, that usually happens.

@snailplane Yep, that's what the meta post is for

CowperKettle

07:42

Good noon!

> No original drug products based on a bispecific monoclonal antibody have been registered to date, either in Russia or abroad.
> No original drug product based on a bispecific monoclonal antibody has been registered to date, either in Russia or abroad.

Which is better? I favor option 2.

Rubisco

\o

CowperKettle

Good midnight, Snails!

o/, Muhammad!

Rubisco

@CowperKettle I favor 1.

Man_From_India

Good afternoon Kettle and MAR.

Rubisco

Hey Man

Man_From_India

07:44

Hey

CowperKettle

Namaste, Man ji!

For some reason your avatar fails to load

Rubisco

Mine fails on SO chat

CowperKettle

BBL

Man_From_India

Hehe strange, and it got automatically changed :-)

See u kettle

Anonymous

08:02

Good noon, Kettle o' Cowper! :-)

CowperKettle

10:10

@snailplane (0: Sorry for being so un-chatty.. I'm proofreading the document I've been translating since September 13, a huge document..

Anonymous

Oh, I hope that goes well!

CowperKettle

I hope so too!

> We washed the microcolumn with 80% acetonitrile, then with 0.1% TFA in water. We next performed the binding of the sample by aspirating and dispensing it through the media multiple times (10 cycles), then washed it with 0.1% TFA in water. We eluted the sample using a 20 mg/ml solution of the matrix (2,5-dihydroxybenzoic acid) in 50% acetonitrile with 2 mM sodium acetate.

This is the sentence I'm tormenting now.

Or it torments me, making me forgo chatting with you.

It's reciprocal tormenting.

BBL

Damkerng T.

10:54

♪ I got the shirt... I got the shirt! ♪

@CowperKettle Fight-o! Fight-o!

@snailplane Oh, it's another variant!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I ran into it just last night :-)

Damkerng T.

This is the first time I've seen the word!

Anonymous

It's the first time I can recall seeing it.

Anonymous

Acerbic seems much more common.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

11:01

Not that acerbic is an especially common word to begin with, mind you.

Damkerng T.

Interesting... acerbic, boondocks, and reverie each has been used twice in ELL posts.

@snailplane They're quite similar are sure are related, but the consonants after next in the two questions aren't the same (one is next year and the other is next stop).

Anonymous

It's true, but the answer on the other question talks about both cases.

Anonymous

I thought Araucaria's answer might cover this case well enough to close it as a duplicate.

Damkerng T.

I tried to close a question as a duplicate because an answer in another question can answer the newer question once, but it resulted in some strong different opinions.

Anonymous

Well, the questions need to overlap as well.

Anonymous

11:10

But the answer is the key.

Anonymous

I thought in this case the questions might be similar enough even though they're not identical.

Anonymous

Questions don't need to be identical to be closed as duplicates. (If they're truly identical, we can merge instead.)

Damkerng T.

I'm not sure. I think I'm okay with it either way, but how about leaving a comment that relates the two questions together?

Anonymous

Anyway, I'm not opposed to leaving it open.

Anonymous

There's already a comment :-)

Damkerng T.

11:12

Ah! I see!

I think /nekst wi:k/ happens quite more often than /nekst stɒp/.

I guess we can't really hear the /t/ sound in, say, I don't know.

Oh, but we can hear the glottal stop, if it exists.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Hmm, probably. But I suppose the /t/ disappears from both regularly.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Yep! You might hear some glottalization.

Anonymous

Although as you wrote, "if it exists" :-) There might not be any /t/ left at all.

Damkerng T.

Hehe!

Anonymous

Don't know in particular can be extremely reduced.

Anonymous

11:26

As indicated by the common eye-dialect spelling dunno.

Anonymous

But it can be reduced further, to the point where the speaker doesn't even open his or her mouth, and simply hums the tune of I dunno.

2

Anonymous

Possibly accompanied by a shrug :-)

Damkerng T.

LOL

I'm guessing that /nekst wi:k/ happens more often in BrE than in AmE, but I have no good way to check it.

I might be able to come up with an idea after dinner.

If you have a good solution, please do not hesitate. :-)

Off to dinner. BBL

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. We need a searchable audio corpus of spontaneous BrE speech.

Damkerng T.

12:46

The Cadbury Lectures 2016: Thinking locally: continuity and change

►

Do you think there is a /t/ in this instance of next week?

I tried the first 10 results of youglish.com/search/%22next%20week%22/uk. 6 of 10 have no /t/, 2 have it, 1 is inaudible, and the last one (the one above) is inconclusive.

Trying US...

Anonymous

That's speech, but not spontaneous speech.

Damkerng T.

In the first 10 results of youglish.com/search/%22next%20week%22/us, 8 have no /t/, 1 has it, the other one is not sure.

@snailplane She seems to think and talk as she goes, I think, but I agree that she also seems to pronounce words a bit more carefully than she might on other occasions.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Yes, I don't mean that the lecture is entirely pre-written and memorized, just that it's not spontaneous speech.

Anonymous

If you're giving a lecture or think you're being recorded, you won't produce the same sort of speech.

Damkerng T.

Some people might go to a salon before the lecture, even!

I know my grandma would. :D

Man_From_India

13:08

@snailplane I wrote this answer, but I haven't included if the earth being round seems odd or not. Let's see how the commenters feel about it.

0

A: "That the Earth is round" vs "The earth being round"

That the earth is round is a known fact today, but it was considered a dangerous lie when it was proposed. As you already know that a finite subordinate clause headed by a subordinator that can function as a complement in a sentence - either a subject or an object. And hence your sentence ...

Damkerng T.

@Man_From_India Strange. I can't find that sentence.

There is only one hit of ""It is a fact about the world in the same way".

The sentence is quite similar, though.

> It is a fact about the world in the same way that apples falling downwards are a fact about the world.

Apples falling downwards are a fact is a quite interesting clause.

Even more interestingly, this sentence is on the same webpage:

> I assert that they were arrived at with the fact of 1 + 1 equalling 2 being a necessary consequence.

"with the fact of 1 + 1 equalling 2 being a necessary consequence", I chuckled reading that, to be honest. :P

> Link: scientiasalon.wordpress.com/2014/08/21/…

Anonymous

13:26

@DamkerngT. It sounds fine, though.

Damkerng T.

I think it's going to sound better as time passes.

Anonymous

Why's that?

Damkerng T.

My guess was it wasn't as fine in the past.

Anonymous

Why's that? :-)

Damkerng T.

Well, a fact is supposed to be in the form of a proposition, I think.

E.g., we wouldn't read 1 + 1 = 2 is true as "one plus one being two is true", I think.

But my feeling is we're moving toward some kind of regularization of English.

Man_From_India

14:02

@DamkerngT. yes here.

google.co.in/…

Damkerng T.

14:18

@Man_From_India I'm not sure who wrote it or whether it's a translation or not. In any case, it's relatively new. (Thanks for the link, BTW.)

Cardinal

Phrase of the evening: coat of arms

Damkerng T.

> The motto is in the Pali language written in Thai script: "สพฺเพสํ สงฺฆภูตานํ สามคฺคี วุฑฺฒิ สาธิกา" (Sabbesaṃ saṅghabhūtānaṃ sāmaggī vuḍḍhi sādhikā) meaning "Unity brings happiness". The supporters of the arms are two mythical creatures. To the left of the shield (dexter) is an elephant lion (a lion with a trunk) or a Gajasiha (คชสีห์). To the right of the shield (sinister) is the king of the lions, the Rajasiha (ราชสีห์). The two supporters represents the two ancient departments of Kalahom (Gajasiha) and Mahatthai (Rajasiha).

Man_From_India

14:51

Whatever info I got about this book

amazon.com/Sociology-Religion-Reader-Mysearchlab/dp/0205710824

S.R.I

15:14

OHHAI!

Damkerng T.

@S.R.I Hi!

@Man_From_India Strangely enough, it's not in this edition: books.google.com/books?id=h9OPCgAAQBAJ

Man_From_India

15:44

@DamkerngT. Or maybe the page where that sentence occurred is not available for preview. Just my guess.

Damkerng T.

@Man_From_India I don't think the sentence really matches the chapters around the page we've seen in the old edition, according to the contents of the new edition (previewable on Amazon), actually.

Man_From_India

@DamkerngT. Or maybe they edited it in the newer edition. So better, we should not consider that sentence. Lack of reliable source.

Damkerng T.

Man_From_India

But that sentence is not here in this page.

Damkerng T.

@Man_From_India I'm not very surprised by the sentence, though. Personally, I think the newer text it is the likelier we may find one such sentence.

V.V.

15:50

Privet-hi!

Damkerng T.

Privet!

Man_From_India

@DamkerngT. One minute, though I wrote that answer, and almost supported its correctness, I am not very comfortable with that sentence. I mean our sentence on ELL. Though grammatical, still it sounds very odd to me.

CowperKettle

> The method, within its limits of error, has demonstrated sequence similarity

Can we write it like this? ^^

I can't put my finger on how exactly to write this

Man_From_India

Don't know why, but I think that the absolute meaning associated with it is the reason.

I mean the meaning, when it's adjunct.

Damkerng T.

@CowperKettle Sounds okay enough for me. :D

V.V.

15:53

What's the sentence?

S.R.I

@DamkerngT. Sawasdee Khrap!

CowperKettle

@DamkerngT. Fine!

Damkerng T.

Sawasdee khrap!

Man_From_India

@CowperKettle Do you mean, whenever that method showed errors, and among the errors, there is some sort of patterns?

CowperKettle

@Man_From_India I mean: The error has an error that it may exhibit. We should always have this error in mind.

So, taking into account this error (probable error) we can say that the amino acid sequences are similar.

It may show that they only 99.98% similar, but since the probable error is 0.05%, this 0.02% difference is within the error bracket

I just don't know how they write this in English

S.R.I

15:56

@Man_From_India "That X is a known fact, and ...." is what I'd use. "X being a known fact, but ..." sounds argumentative to me (Just to give you a "lay person" view of the "being" vs "is" question)

CowperKettle

Maybe "taking into account the accuracy of the method, we can say that these sequences are similar"? But that would be too wordy.

Man_From_India

@S.R.I thanks, nice input.

S.R.I

The first form says "X is a known fact, which we may have proved, so we are going to take it as it is and move on"

The second, on the other hand, says something like "X is a known fact, which we may not have proved or demonstrated, but I am not going to spend time walking through it with you"

Man_From_India

@CowperKettle What if you change limit of errors to error margin?

Damkerng T.

How about: This may show that they are only 99.98% identical, but this 0.02% difference is well within an acceptable margin of error, which is at 0.05%.

an/the/our acceptable margin, you choose, according to your context. :-)

Man_From_India

15:59

I think it's good DT, but the numbers are used for example purpose, I think.

Damkerng T.

nods -- I'm not really sure about the context anyway.

S.R.I

heh. In any conversation/argument, numbers are a prop. They don't assert anything themselves, it's up to humans to interpret those numbers!

Man_From_India

@S.R.I Ah might be SnailP was saying similar things. What did she say? Factive or non-factive? Hmmm, I forgot.

V.V.

@CowperKettle, range of error? Предел допуст.погрешности

Man_From_India

@DamkerngT. he is busy and gone :(

Damkerng T.

16:02

nods

BTW... is asking a vague question our way to make it a Hot Network Question?

Man_From_India

@V.V. u know Russian as well? Great!

Damkerng T.

1

Q: Opposite word for "hero", not in the sense of "villain"

We see heroes in fantasy movies, who fight against dragons and save princess (as always). While there exist those brave heroes, there also are people who exist to be saved by heroes. Is there any word in English to represent them in the sense that they are not as much dedicated to his or her valu...

word-usage

CowperKettle

@Man_From_India She is Russian

S.R.I

@Man_From_India shrug I don't do grammar/technical jargon when it comes to language (Nor am I anywhere near linguistics) :P

CowperKettle

@DamkerngT. hmm thank you

Man_From_India

16:03

@CowperKettle Oh right u said about it.

Damkerng T.

@CowperKettle My pleasure. Don't forget to have Nth opinions. :-)

Man_From_India

@S.R.I I am on the same bus as you are :-)

V.V.

Oh, where am I from this time?

CowperKettle

> What is the acceptable margin of error for the oxygen uptake method in evaluating the reactivity of organic waste? (PubMed)

S.R.I

@CowperKettle the-the-the-the!

Somebody should write or link to an article about useless use of articles!

CowperKettle

16:07

There must be some naturally-looking English phrase for this.. "The method, within its [error], has demonstrated ... etc."

Maybe the whole sentence is built in some other way in English

S.R.I

@CowperKettle Some engineers use the term "precision" for this purpose.

For example, "Precision" in resistors refers to the margin of error (+/- 5% means the resistor value will be +/- 5% from the advertised value)

Statisticians have a different term. "Variance", "deviation" or something like that.

@Man_From_India Ah, we are both journeymen then!

Damkerng T.

16:21

Maybe we aren't journeymen. We're journeying men. :-)

S.R.I

Nah, they'd be wayfarers :-)

Rubisco

Interrupts the discussion

S.R.I

Who's this @Rubisco guy? Oh, Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. -- How are your studies coming along?

Anonymous

Discussion, interrupted

Rubisco

@S.R.I Great

S.R.I

16:24

Whatever was going on, there was no discussion

So you'd have nothing to interrupt

Anonymous

Hi @S.R.I! Welcome back to ELL chat! :-)

Rubisco

@S.R.I Darnit

S.R.I

@snailplane Thanks! Good to be back :-)

CowperKettle

18:15

Dropping in to say good night.

yawns

Damkerng T.

18:27

Good night!

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