Language Overflow

Fawad

00:03

@M.A.R. np

Damkerng T.

LOL -- you're now Araucaria Man! @Araucaria

(^_^)

userr2684291

00:16

@skullpetrol I find it somewhat inconvenient that you cannot collapse messages.

skull petrol

Me too.

Damkerng T.

Morning! o/

skull petrol

Hi pal \o

Damkerng T.

Phrase of the Day: fons et origo

4

userr2684291

@skullpetrol It's also as though I'm forcing everyone else to look at some website preview, or the Wiktionary definition (I think that's the main reason no one actually uses the define: command) by taking so much freaking space.

skull petrol

00:22

Putting a user on "ignore" will collapse all their posts.

userr2684291

Oh.

Let me try that.

@skullpetrol Haha.

skull petrol

;-)

userr2684291

@skullpetrol Just as I expected – although that's not exactly what I had in mind when I said collapse.

skull petrol

I know, hence my "wink."

userr2684291

@skullpetrol I wasn't sure. (:

I know what winking is – I wasn't sure why you were doing it.

skull petrol

00:27

Just experimenting :-)

userr2684291

@skullpetrol And how convenient is it that it says (17 definitions (or something like that) omitted) with no option to expand those definitions? Haha.

skull petrol

Ikr

define: ikr

Hmm, no internet slangs?

Damkerng T.

5

Q: Can a preceding vehicle mean a vehicle ahead?

When driving, you should keep a certain distance from a vehicle ahead of you (or in front of you) I would like to use "a preceding vehicle" instead of "a vehicle ahead of you" because "a vehicle ahead of you" is longer. Is it acceptable?

adjectives

userr2684291

@skullpetrol Bad design – no response when it (effectively) fails to fetch the entry.

skull petrol

Exactly.

Damkerng T.

00:32

I think one reason that we see zero votes often enough on ELL is because sometimes our answers don't agree with one another.

skull petrol

Leave the user waiting...

Damkerng T.

The preceding vehicle doesn't sound that bad for me, but I'm not a native speaker.

skull petrol

Sounds "formal."

userr2684291

Uh-huh.

skull petrol

preceding, succeeding

Damkerng T.

00:37

nods -- there seem to be lots of results in Google Books, too.

skull petrol

Yup, sounds like a "bookish" word.

ahead, behind

userr2684291

@skullpetrol D'you happen to know whether there's a complete list of chat commands somewhere, because neither define: nor translate: are to be found in that mini-FAQ that's available to the plebs. Or are they considered Easter eggs? :>

skull petrol

I haven't found anything either >8(

But it's a feature in all the chatrooms.

Damkerng T.

0

Q: What is one word to describe an essay that is both fluent,smooth and formal?

What is one word to describe an essay that precisely describe as fluent,smooth and formal? It is known that online translation softwares could not translate a phrase like this into vocabulary.

vocabulary

Hmm... I hope there's such a word in their first language too.

skull petrol

:-/

userr2684291

00:52

If I were to describe commands as Easter eggs (but with less confidence), how do I go about doing it with the construction something/somewhat of? "They are something/somewhat of Easter eggs."? Is this construction ever used when followed by a noun in the plural?

skull petrol

They are something like Easter eggs?

userr2684291

Yeah.

But I wanna use the other expression.

skull petrol

They are some what of the Easter eggs variety?

user178049

@DamkerngT. I think we can call it "a formal and well-written essay".

Damkerng T.

@user178049 which is not a single word (^_^)

userr2684291

00:57

@skullpetrol Haha, nice.

skull petrol

:-D

userr2684291

@skullpetrol I mean, the way you got out of that situation.

skull petrol

I try.

userr2684291

Thanks, by the way.

@DamkerngT. People just love crossword puzzles, don't they?

skull petrol

@DamkerngT. I like "treatise."

Damkerng T.

01:00

@userr2684291 Seems so :-)

@skullpetrol Me too, but it probably doesn't mean precisely what the OP wants.

user178049

@DamkerngT. Haha, sometimes I wonder why do they need a single word. Extra two words won't waste the paper

Damkerng T.

I still can't think of any exact word for it, in any languages.

@user178049 LOL -- Same here! :D

user178049

Shouldn't it be "what should we do?" ell.stackexchange.com/q/126785/35026

Damkerng T.

What should we do? would be fine too.

skull petrol

^

:-)

CowperKettle

02:12

Word of the Day: ointment

2

> Whether elected or appointed
He considers himself the Lord’s anointed,
And indeed the ointment lingers on him
So thick you can’t get your fingers on him.

Damkerng T.

02:28

LOL -- where's this from?

Anonymous

02:41

@user178049 Yeah, that's the odd thing about single word requests. Why not ask for the best way to express something rather than a single word? If there is a single word that fits perfectly, great! But if it's better to use a few words or a phrase, then why not do that instead?

Damkerng T.

Off-topic: USB chargers

Someone just sent this to me, and I find it very eye-opening!

I guess I have lots of unsafe plugs all over my place!

user178049

02:57

@snailplane Yes, rephrasing is a better alternative. It would be a waste of time looking for a single word to fit in the discourse. And here,ell.stackexchange.com/questions/108005/… TRomana taught me to think out of the box, I never ask a single-word-request question since then :)

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected: What is meant by "got jumped"? by Jonathan smith on ell.SE

Færd

03:49

Yesterday I used reflect on to mean rub off on: I'm afraid their bad behavior is going to reflect on me (= I'm going to pick up bad habits from them).

There's no strict limits to figurative speech, but I guess that sentence won't be understood as I wanted it to, and so is incorrect in a sense.

Damkerng T.

06:05

That's wrong. "How do you do" is not a question, it's a statement. A formal way of saying hello. I'd say it is old-fashioned. If somebody says How do you do to you, you should reply How do you do. — SovereignSun 23 mins ago

Um... what?!

> "How do you do" is not a question, it's a statement.

Okay, let's write How do you do, period, from now on, if we trust him.

I decided to upvote the answer, to compensate the downvote.

SBM

07:01

oh okay

sorry

Brock

09:01

@DamkerngT. You there ?

Damkerng T.

@Brock Um... yes, but not quite available at the moment. :-)

SBM

:

CowperKettle

> how do you do (old-fashioned) -- a difficult, worrying, and unpleasant situation: "I had a row with my sister and now she's refusing to talk to me." "Well, that's a fine how do you do!"

Brock

@DamkerngT. - Yeah I'm right here

I have one more silly question

There was a dialogue from the movie Batman in which a person was saying and was making a general statement and the dialogue goes like this, "I am a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it." Here what if i use 'a car' in place of 'cars'. I think both the version should mean 'any car'. Isn't it ?

user178049

Is this a relative clause. It seems not. ell.stackexchange.com/q/126806/35026

Anonymous

09:07

@DamkerngT. It depends on how you define "question". It has the grammatical form of a question. It is an interrogative main clause. Semantically, it doesn't ask anything, and pragmatically a response may be expected, but an answer is not expected.

Anonymous

So if we define "question" in terms of meaning, it really isn't a question.

Anonymous

If we define "question" in terms of grammatical form, it does look like a question.

Anonymous

Regardless, how do you do is an idiom. It has a fixed form and its own pattern of usage, and its own meaning which you would not be able to figure out just by looking at the words.

Damkerng T.

@snailplane nods -- I'd say the comment is misleading, at least in my opinion, anyway. Considering that we still call a rhetorical question a question, I'd say How do you do? is perfectly a question, to the average person. It's just that it's a question that doesn't expect any answer and is used for greeting.

Anonymous

I think it is fair to say that it's not a question, and in fact, people do write it without a question mark.

Anonymous

09:10

But if someone said it was a question, I don't think I'd quibble too much over that.

Anonymous

It might make a fine segue into the question: what exactly is a question? :-)

Anonymous

Because then we could discuss the definition of "question" in terms of meaning.

Damkerng T.

@Brock I'd read I'm a dog chasing cars more like "I'm a dog chasing some cars", rather than "any cars".

Anonymous

And we could discuss why it might not be considered one.

Damkerng T.

@snailplane Exactly!

Anonymous

09:11

But the way the discussion was going on in the comments there wasn't particularly constructive.

Damkerng T.

I guess you can see the deleted comments. The tone was so strong that calling it a question is a no-no, which I don't think is right.

Anonymous

@user178049 Yes.

Anonymous

When a relative clause has a gap in subject position, it must be a wh-relative or that-relative, but cannot be a bare relative.

Anonymous

So that cannot be omitted.

Brock

@DamkerngT. In the sentence "I'm a dog chasing a car" . Here, 'a car' means just one single car or more than one car ?

Anonymous

09:16

One.

Damkerng T.

It's a single car, one car. I'd imagine a car, so this is not a generic, but a specific one.

Brock

'A good student is fun to teach'. Here 'a good student' means just one good student or more than one good student ?

Damkerng T.

When you see a, it always is one. Never more than one. But it can (depending on the intended meaning) represent every object in the same class.

It's like every vs. all, if that helps.

Every car here is good -- All cars here are good.

A car vs. cars -- similar

Anonymous

@Brock That is an indefinite generic noun phrase.

Anonymous

I think that Damkerng's explanation makes sense :-)

Damkerng T.

09:22

BTW, I got a new earworm! youtube.com/watch?v=Eh_purWrofE

Anonymous

Oh, um. Wow!

Damkerng T.

(potentially dangerously cute :-)

user178049

@snailplane it is hard for me to grasp it, maybe because the subject is unclear.

@DamkerngT. That's Indo :)

Damkerng T.

I guess so! It's fun and cute anyway!

user178049

Pokemon2 dimana kamu.. =Pokemon2 where are you

Damkerng T.

09:27

Oh, fire in Indonesian sounds like "ak-key"!

(It's Sanskrit, I think.)

user178049

@DamkerngT. Where did you here that. Though I'm not Indonesian, I'm sure it's "Api"

Damkerng T.

@user178049 Oh, I see. I must've misheard it!

Brock

'A car' is expensive to run. It represents only one car but this sentence applies to any car. Did i understand it correctly ?

user178049

@DamkerngT Yeah, could be :)

Damkerng T.

@Brock I think so, though the sentence sounds strange to me.

user178049

09:33

@Brock I think you cannot "raise" the object of the verb run to the subject in the main clause because the adjective "expensive" doesn't permit it.

It's hard to explain, sorry. But I agree with Damkerng. It's really strange

user178049

10:33

@DamkerngT. Learning advice please. Where to start learning English for foreign learners? Speaking, grammar, listening?

Damkerng T.

I think a little bit of each of them would be useful.

I think if I started from scratch I would consider the direct method.

Then learn a bit of grammar, then focus on reading and listening, both, like hell. :-)

When I feel somewhat comfortable with the language, I'll then consider speaking/writing.

user178049

Thanks :)

Damkerng T.

No problem. :D

M.A.R.

10:57

A small niggle: "There's this link in the footer, and basically all Stack Exchange contributions are licensed by cc-by-sa, which means that once the author posts something, it's no longer theirs, but the community's." <-- That bit isn't true, although I understand what you mean. What you write is always yours, even if other people have the right to play with it, and even if it's theirs too. There are certain rights that you always retain in relation to this material. — Araucaria Man 12 hours ago

@Arau I dunno how to word it better. Feel free to edit

SmokeDetector

11:22

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword with a link in answer, link at end of answer: taking out 'that' in this sentence by pankaj on ell.SE

userr2684291

@DamkerngT. Why?

Damkerng T.

@userr2684291 Okay, what does it mean?

userr2684291

@DamkerngT. It means it's expensive for you to run a car.

M.A.R.

@userr2684291 It's just weird

userr2684291

@M.A.R. Why?

Damkerng T.

11:34

I suppose running a car is fine, but I'm not familiar with it.

M.A.R.

28 secs ago, by M.A.R.

@userr2684291 It's just weird

Damkerng T.

Let's see if we can find: How do you run a car?

M.A.R.

That we can

But "a car is expensive to run" is something I won't say, for some reason

Maybe because they're cheap

Damkerng T.

I suppose in generative grammar, we can transform any sentence using an existing pattern.

userr2684291

@user178049 Yes, it does.

Damkerng T.

11:38

Anyway, how do you run a car on the dole? is the only legit result, AFAICT, returned by Google, and it's not in a book, even.

user178049

@userr2684291 Does what?

userr2684291

@user178049 It permits it.

Oh, I'm sorry, you can't see the message it highlights...

M.A.R.

Why? Mobile?

SE on mobile reminds me of frog rain.

userr2684291

It works very well on all my machines.

@user178049 I think you cannot "raise" the object of the verb run to the subject in the main clause because the adjective "expensive" doesn't permit it. Doesn't look that way.

user178049

@userr2684291 Ohh, you mean the adjective "expensive"

userr2684291

11:41

Yeah.

M.A.R.

@userr2684291 Well, you haven't maybe tasted the agony of chatting on mobile

Ugh

userr2684291

@M.A.R. But I have(n't). (:

M.A.R.

These megacompanies using feminism to promote their products

user178049

Hmm.. Though it permits it. I wouldn't say that. "to run a car is expensive" might be better IMO.

M.A.R.

Makes me sick

What the heck does Lipton tea have to do with feminism?

userr2684291

11:43

@user178049 I don't know, it sounds fine to me. "A car is easy to run." How about that?

M.A.R.

@user178049 permitting is strong though

Damkerng T.

What does this run mean, exactly?

M.A.R.

This is a matter of style, I think

userr2684291

@DamkerngT. books.google.hr/…

user178049

@userr2684291 That's fine. Adjectives like easy, hard, diifficult always permit object-to-subject raising. afaik

Damkerng T.

11:45

@userr2684291 That doesn't answer my question: what does this run mean, exactly?

Should I emphasize exactly?

userr2684291

@DamkerngT. It literally says what it means.

Damkerng T.

(I'm thinking that it's possible that this sense of run is BrE.)

user178049

@M.A.R. Yeah, maybe because they eat spinach.

Damkerng T.

(or maybe people use it loosely and it covers more than one senses of the typical run.)

userr2684291

@DamkerngT. Have you clicked on the link?

Damkerng T.

11:46

@userr2684291 The link is bad.

userr2684291

Hm.

Damkerng T.

Can you click on it in chat?

userr2684291

Yup.

Damkerng T.

It simply lists lots of pages. Not sure on what page I should look.

But anyway, I don't think it's that different from other dictionaries.

userr2684291

No worries, I got you.

Damkerng T.

11:48

Wow! That's a really bad definition!

userr2684291

It's some Oxford's thesaurus.

Damkerng T.

Now that makes sense.

userr2684291

Yup.

Damkerng T.

Thesauruses aren't dictionaries.

No wonder they define it so loosely that it's unusable.

This is better, perhaps:

user178049

@userr2684291 where did that come from? Did you download books illegally too? O_o

Damkerng T.

11:50

> If you run a car, you own one, drive it, and pay for the costs: I can't afford to run a car.

> dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/run

userr2684291

@user178049 Scroll up.

amazon.com/Colour-Oxford-Thesaurus-Dictionaries/dp/0199607923

This book.

Damkerng T.

0

Q: "To run" vs. "for running of"

I read this sentence in a book: Petrol is needed for running of a car. I wonder if I could say "Petrol is needed to run a car." Is the second sentence grammatically correct? If yes, then what is the difference between the two?

grammaticality infinitive-vs-gerund to-for

This question is related, but the answer is not very useful.

user178049

@userr2684291 Hmm.. "chatting on mobile browser" you should know the struggle.

Damkerng T.

A-ha!

No wonder it sounds strange to me.

userr2684291

@DamkerngT. Yes?

Damkerng T.

11:57

Yes. Look at the frequencies.

userr2684291

Hm.

user178049

Feeling better with Chrome

userr2684291

@DamkerngT. Yeah, sorry. There was a delay.

Damkerng T.

Don't worry! It happens to all of us. :D

userr2684291

It could be that it's more of a British thing.

But it really doesn't strike me as British; it sounds normal.

Damkerng T.

12:01

nods -- But it appears in AmE as well, though much less frequently.

@userr2684291 I can understand the idea, but the precise meaning seemed to escape me.

userr2684291

Yeah, but you never know. There are too few results to judge. Although you could inspect the results more closely...

Damkerng T.

nods

ColleenV

@AraucariaMan The legal stuff lays it out quite clearly. "...even if such Subscriber Content has been contributed and subsequently removed by You" Of course the mod team is here to make sure that the letter of the law doesn't interfere with the purpose of the site and folks' enjoyment of it, but we should encourage folks to be comfortable letting the community have control content they contributed.

userr2684291

@ColleenV Would you understand running a car as "using and maintaining it"?

user178049

@userr2684291 Test

userr2684291

12:11

:>

Damkerng T.

1.bp.blogspot.com/-tVONvTPid3c/V2Fxx6uwmlI/AAAAAAAAA98/… is the link,please check — B.shruti 20 mins ago

But the link doesn't have the phrase in question! -- scratching his head

userr2684291

Hahaha.

user178049

@DamkerngT. It's motivational btw

Damkerng T.

nods -- FWIW, I haven't heard swinging at the issue either!

user178049

I'm looking for a button to quote a text.. Hmm.. It doesn't on Google Chrome too?

Damkerng T.

12:16

It says it's from WikiTanica.com. Maybe we can find it there?

Oh! Found it! Found it!

wikitanica.com/2016/06/happy-weekend-quotes-images.html

Probably written/translated by a non-native speaker, I guess.

(at ~~~60%~~ ~~75%~~ 90% confidence)

userr2684291

@user178049 Huh?

Damkerng T.

> Well, I guess if they don't want to hire a person who will show up on time in the hours and show proper respect to fellow humans because they post stuff I don’t know, probably just get judged on grammar and punctuation anyways.

Haha! :D

userr2684291

@DamkerngT. Yeah, but the meaning is transparent. I think swinging there comes from the elided expression come out swinging.

Damkerng T.

I'd take it that way, too, but because I haven't heard it, I can't be sure.

The author seems to use too many unidiomatic or less idiomatic phrases all over the page, so I wonder if this swinging is more like the "swinging" in my first language.

(ตีโพยตีพาย -- basically means, making a fuss)

user178049

12:34

@userr2684291 I trying to make something like this

H.

Ahh, it doesn't work

Damkerng T.

Aww

user178049

I think "he will eat it until he is sick" sounds better, right? ell.stackexchange.com/q/126836/35026

Damkerng T.

I'm not sure. The sentence sounds odd without the context.

I wonder where he got that sentence from.

user178049

12:49

Yeah, and future perfect doesn't really make sense here, IMO.

userr2684291

13:41

@user178049 Yup.

It's understood as: until it will have made him sick. — Lucian Sava 38 mins ago

That makes no sense either.

Also, the inquirer is, essentially, lying. I can't locate the sentence he purportedly saw in that book.

scribd.com/doc/3002311/English-Grammar-Book-Round-UP-5 Page 28 contains no such thing. He also managed to misread the title of the subsection, misread the rule, and conflate it with another rule he read on p. 25.

user178049

14:00

@userr2684291 I think some folks are just trying to earn cheap repution points. They don't ask questions based on the actual problems they face.

userr2684291

14:17

I tried to edit their question, at least the annoying parts (I find inconsistencies within the same post irksome), but I feel as though I haven't really accomplished anything significant. After forty-two questions you'd think they would learn to use block quotes and italics, but no. :<

@user178049 Could be, but I doubt it. The question they asked is a valid one.

user178049

@userr2684291Haha, that annoys me too. They don't the quote block, italics, and more annoying they leave a link cluttered. That's why I'm so lazy reading those question

userr2684291

14:33

From ell.stackexchange.com/q/126841/3395: ...the study of the purges that wiped out the entire generation of Bolshevik leaders and socialist workers and intellectuals who led the October 1917 Revolution and created the Soviet Union. The inquirer is asking whether the verbs in bold should be in the past perfect. How exactly can purging of a generation of people happen before their accomplishing something?

The name of the book is Stalin's Terror of 1937-1938...

I know that Russians had a different calendar, but it wasn't 20+ years behind.

Brock

14:50

Suppose the govt has launched a scheme named X and I'm making a sentence like this - According to this scheme 'a farmer' will get monetary benefits if the crops fail. If i use 'farmers' in place of 'a farmer' will there be a change in meaning ?

@DamkerngT.

@DamkerngT. Sorry for the trouble!

userr2684291

By purging, I'm pretty sure, in the context where Stalin is mentioned, it's meant literally. Stalin actually killed millions of people, or sent them to gulags (where they would die anyway).

userr2684291

15:15

@Brock To highlight something, use the bold (= **bold**) typeface, not quotes. Apropos what you asked, they mean the same thing.

Anwar

hi

is commenter a valid word in English?

userr2684291

Yeh.

Anwar

but in chrome, it raises a spelling error. I got suspicious. thanks

Brock

According to this scheme a farmer will get monetary benefits if a crop fails. Vs According to this scheme a farmer will get monetary benefits if crops fail. What about this one, is the meaning of both the sentence same ?

userr2684291

@Brock Nix the equals sign next time.

Brock

15:22

'a crop' Vs 'crops'

Catija

@Anwar It's really not worth trusting your browser's spell checker... there are tons of perfectly valid and not even rare or recently minted words that it doesn't recognize. If you want to know if it's a word, use an actual dictionary.

Anwar

@Catija Thanks.

yubraj

15:48

Hi ...All!

How are you all?

How should I explain about where I live, especially if someone asked me where I live I say I live far across the Nunsari river and near Bakraha river.

Far across the river is correct to say or over the river is correct to say please

userr2684291

@Brock Hm, I don't think a crop there would be generic anymore.

It's generic in the sense that it's assigned to a generic farmer, but I don't know whether it's generic by itself.

Brock

@userr2684291 however 'a farmer' was a generic noun. Right ?

userr2684291

Yeah.

Brock

@userr2684291 btw what is your native language ?

userr2684291

@Brock I'm not a native English speaker, otherwise I would've known.

Brock

16:06

@DamkerngT. There ?

userr2684291

16:18

@Brock They will see pings when they come back.

M.A.R.

16:40

@M.A.R. I think the bad practice you may have seen comments warning against was linking to an external source without quoting or summarizing the content. Just a bald "here, read this" link, which means "your answer is somewhere else", and prohibited for that reason across SE. The major reason is this is a Q&A site, so we want As here, as well as considering what happens to "link only As" when that link inevitably breaks. Then the A is useless. — Dan Bron 5 mins ago

userr2684291

What I think is confusing is the fact that I'd say "If a crop fails, the farmer will receive reimbursement." or "If a farmer does well, the crops will...", because we're talking about that particular farmer's crops, and vice versa.

M.A.R.

@Dam we want arsenic here? :o

@Brock Damkerng isn't a native speaker either, BTW.

Most of us here aren't native speakers.

userr2684291

Also, I'm kind of confused about the level of genericness we're talking about here. Can a noun be generic within a narrower group?

A farmer is generic. Now if I'm talking about certain farmers in a certain group, can I still generalize about them with a farmer?

yubraj

Hi@userr2684291

userr2684291

Hi.

yubraj

16:46

Hi @snailplane

Howdy?

How do you do?

userr2684291

National holidays here, I think, life's good. (:

@M.A.R. Is any always generic?

M.A.R.

@userr2684291 Most probably not, but I don't have a definitive answer

userr2684291

@M.A.R. Is any of them generic?

Man_From_India

4

Q: Is or are in this context

Which of the following is right in this context? Who is your favourite footballer and cricketer? Who are your favourite footballer and cricketer?

british-english subject-verb-agreement lists

Nice puzzle :-)

M.A.R.

www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/000001.html

userr2684291

16:58

> These are constructions, which means that the phrase itself, and its usage, have special grammar and special meanings. It's not that the articles the or a have special meaning, really -- they hardly have any meaning; rather, their use in these generic constructions marks them as special.

yubraj

Hi @Man_From_India

I asked a question please help me someone!!!

M.A.R.

@yubraj Where is it?

Man_From_India

Yes @yubraj please provide the link to ur question.

yubraj

How should I explain about where I live, especially if someone asked me where I live I say I live far across the Nunsari river and near Bakraha river.
Far across the river is correct to say or over the river is correct to say please

userr2684291

@M.A.R. "The Definite Generic refers to the Prototype of a species, roughly the image we associate with tiger. The tiger, as a prototype, has all the properties of anything we would call a tiger, except that it doesn't exist in an individual physical sense, like all real tigers do." How would a prototype differ from a definition?

Man_From_India

17:04

@yubraj on top of my head, over here is wrong. Far across is fine.

userr2684291

Meh, I give up.

EngFan

Hello!

userr2684291

Reading further I get that what you can say about the prototype (the), you can't say about the definition (a). OK, I'm beginning to grasp this. A prototype is thus closer to a generalization (plural) than to the definition.

EngFan

I invite you for a coffee or I invite you for coffee ?

yubraj

@Man_From_India ok....Thanks

yubraj

17:26

But I'm not even sure for the meaning of "far across".

What would you say?

yubraj

17:54

One more questions is "How do you do?" Is a question?

M.A.R.

@yubraj Uh, what else is it?

0

Q: What is a modal, really?

Is "have to" a modal verb? tells us, in two conflicting answers, that it's either a modal verb or it's not a modal verb. Then I just realized that there are never any definitions provided for what a modal is, only examples of modal verbs, or examples of what they do. It's an all familiar thing: ...

modal-verbs terminology

V.V.

18:15

My upvote. But they can say it is a duplicate

M.A.R.

@V.V. Dupe of what?

I checked

V.V.

"Have to"question.

M.A.R.

Nah

yubraj

18:30

@M.A.R. It's a my question

M.A.R.

@yubraj What?

I didn't get what you said

yubraj

If that's question how to respond to that question

M.A.R.

Traditionally, they respond to it with ''How do you do''

yubraj

I mean, "How do you do?"

M.A.R.

30

Q: Do you really answer “How do you do?” with “How do you do?”

I'm a non native speaker of English. In our learning we were told that when we say hello to someone we use equivalent phrase: How do you do? In response we do say: How do you do? But I'm unsure about the usage in the USA or UK. I haven't heard from them. I'm an Indian. Is this the c...

formality greetings

yubraj

18:32

Can't I respond that with "I'm fine and how do you do?"

V.V.

No.

It's just a formal greeting

M.A.R.

@yubraj Respond with ''how do you do. And BTW, dude, that's an old phrase. Don't use it for greeting anymore, and forget what they told you in the English class.''

yubraj

Oh

Some of my friends use this phrase though we are non native speakers

Færd

19:56

Found it: lookit!

I thought it was look it.

Gerold Broser

20:27

Hi all

Is there someone who has some sense of humor like the black British and who is eager to do me a favour?

Anonymous

21:00

@SovereignSun In traditional grammar, that was certainly analyzed as a relative pronoun, and that's why you can find so many resources that say so even today. But about a hundred years ago, the great Otto Jespersen noticed that its grammatical properties weren't quite the same as those of the other relative pronouns, so he asked, what if it's the same that found in other subordinate clauses? And that seemed to fit better. Today modern linguists such as Huddleston and Pullum, along with linguists like McCawley, treat that as a subordinator/complementizer and not as a relative pronoun. — snailplane ♦ 1 min ago

Anonymous

I feel like I say this a lot.

ColleenV

21:28

@snailplane Would it make sense to add another tag in addition to relative-pronuns?

Anonymous

I added a few. :-)

Anonymous

We don't have a tag specifically for subordinators / complementizers.

ColleenV

@snailplane Should we?

Would it be useful to group those questions together?

Anonymous

Ermm, I think it might just cause confusion . . .

Anonymous

Due to the whole terminological mess there.

Anonymous

21:31

I'm going to have to eventually set this computer up to type half-width spaces so I can stop disappointing @M.A.R. with my ellipses.

Anonymous

@Brock Nope, you can't do that. It has to be cars to make sense.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. In COCA, I find 19 results for how do you do . and 128 results for how do you do ?. (For the uninitiated, the punctuation marks are written with spaces in queries on the BYU corpora because they're considered separate tokens.) Of those 19, it looks like 2 are false positives, so that gives us 145 total instances of how do you do, 17 of which are written with a period, or about 12%.

Catija

@GeroldBroser Not sure what this means...

Anonymous

So for some speakers, the intuitive "question-ness" of how do you do must be rather low enough that they would choose to write it without a question mark.

Anonymous

We already discussed earlier that it has the grammatical form of a question but not the semantic properties of one, so linguistically you could argue it either way depending on how you choose to define "question". But it's interesting to see that some speakers do treat this non-question idiom mentally as a non-question :-)

Anonymous

21:44

Now, just for fun: How many speakers do you imagine would treat Howdy! as a question? :-)

Anonymous

I'm not sure how much of a spectrum exists today. Etymologically, it's something like this, isn't it? how do you do > how d'ye do > howdy-do > howdy

Anonymous

But although I know people who say howdy, I don't know anyone who says how do you do.

Anonymous

I think I only know the phrase from books and movies and such.

Catija

@snailplane Heck, I say it all the time. :P

chat.stackexchange.com/search?q=howdy&user=139041&room=

Note, not a single one with a question mark.

Anonymous

22:10

@Catija Didn't think so :-)

Anonymous

I think that how do you do started out its life as a question, but over time it underwent a process called "grammaticalization". In grammaticalization, a few things happen. Phrases lose their literal meaning ("semantic bleaching"), and they tend to get shortened in pronunciation ("phonetic erosion").

Anonymous

By the time it became howdy, I think most people weren't even aware that it used to be a question!

Anonymous

The older form how do you do is somewhat intermediate. It still looks like a question grammatically, and I think a lot of people must think of it as a question because they write it with a question mark. But people don't really say that very often anymore.

Anonymous

And people do also write it with a period, as we saw above.

Anonymous

I might more specifically say it's an example of interjectionalization, actually, but that word doesn't have much currency yet . . .

Gerold Broser

22:23

@Catija I thought that one of the English experts here could have a look at the About Me of my user profile and tell me what can be done better there.

@Catija ...but, I thought it'd be better to mention this prerequisite as a disclaimer in advance. ;)

stackoverflow.com/users/1744774/gerold-broser?tab=profile

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