Language Overflow

Man_From_India

01:30

0

Q: Does the part "given its expected duration" modify vaccine or is it another kind of grammar structure?

They were unsure about the utility of the vaccine given its expected duration. Does the part "given its expected duration" modify vaccine or is it another kind of grammar structure?

clauses

Anonymous

Definitely doesn't modify vaccine

Damkerng T.

01:44

Kenny Rogers & First Edition - Just Dropped In - (Live Vocal)

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Man_From_India

02:57

@snailplane nods

Anonymous

03:28

I read your answer and upvoted :-)

CowperKettle

Good morning!

Word of the Day: opaque language

> In other words, learning to read in an opaque language (such as English or French) reinforces our capacity to rapidly process many visual elements, because whole words must be deciphered to achieve fluent reading in these languages.

As transparent languages have a much greater focus on the letter-sound correspondence, learning to read in these languages is though to improve our sensitivity in perceiving the sounds of the language.

Anonymous

04:00

More commonly, deep and shallow orthographies. It would be better to refer to the orthography as deep/shallow or opaque/transparent, not the language, because the writing system is not the language itself.

Anonymous

Many languages can be written with multiple writing systems.

CowperKettle

Ah!

> “It doesn’t go left to right,” Auli says, of their translator. “[It can] look at the data all at the same time.” For example, a convolutional neural network translator can look at the first five words of a sentence, while at the same time considering the second through sixth words, meaning the system works in parallel with itself.

Facebook came up with a new translation system based on convolutional networks

popsci.com/…

Maybe I should after all enroll in a biotech course in a university. Translation might be a human-dead profession in a couple of years.

Anonymous

05:22

Machine translation has definitely been having a profound effect on translation generally, even though machine translation is still unreliable and low quality for most language pairs.

Anonymous

In two years, I'm rather certain that MT will still be quite bad, but people are often willing to settle for free and bad.

Anonymous

Or even cheap and bad.

Man_From_India

06:44

1

A: Adjective or adverb with gerund

It's difficult to tell with hard, because adverb and adjective are the same. If you change it to quick, all becomes clear: He believes in thinking quickly He is a quick thinking man.

I think this is a potentially misleading answer.

> He believes in working hard.

> He is hard working man

In both cases I think hard is an adverb. I don't think in the second case, an adjective can occur in place of hard as suggested by the answer.

> He believes in thinking quickly

> He is a quick thinking man.

Even the quick in the last sentence is also an adverb.

Though I believe we hardly ever hear someone say quickly thinking man. Most of the time we hear a quick thinking man, This quick is an adverb. I wonder why we don't say quickly thinking man and use it as a NP.

This is a strange phenomenon.

Anonymous

07:50

We can say both Think quickly! and Think quick!

Man_From_India

08:17

@snailplane nods

But we say a quick thinking man as a NP, but not a quickly thinking man.

Anonymous

10:27

@Man_From_India The most relevant bits in CGEL are at the top of p.1659

Man_From_India

@snailplane oh thanks a lot. I will read it.

But am I right in my assumption that quick is an adverb in a quick thinking man, which is used as a NP?

Anonymous

Yes

Anonymous

Definitely.

Man_From_India

Oh thanks.

I was going through this question. And it seems like on ELL we don't have a good answer regarding Focusing Adverb. Can you be of any help here?

3

Q: Are focusing adverbs exceptions?

As you know, Adverbs can modify Adjectives, Verbs and other Adverbs; however, focusing adverbs seem to show different characteristics regarding it. Focusing Adverbs vary according to their placement and can modify Nouns, Noun Phrases, Verbal Phrases.. So, my question is: Are focusing adverbs ex...

adverbs

CowperKettle

> albebetin and bioengineered variations of the K3 peptide (I google and find examples without the, which confuses me)

> For example, if I say "Only Steve", the response would be "Only Steve what?" since the context is unclear.

@Prodigy this is a very good question. Please ask it seperately. — Man_From_India 18 mins ago

A typo there, @Man_From_India

Man_From_India

10:40

@CowperKettle this seems to be a pretty bad response, IMO.

@CowperKettle oops sorry, it is. Can't change now :(

It's like saying poor Steve. But poor Steve what?

Not so good reply.

userr2684291

@user178049 A cursory glance at the Cambridge Dictionary website you referenced reveals no instances of the pattern provide somebody something.

CowperKettle

@Man_From_India No, I think "Poor Steve." can be said without any additional words. With "Only Steve." it's harder.

(0:

userr2684291

@user178049 I think provide can't be used that way, similar to suggest.

Man_From_India

@CowperKettle well, for example someone asks, "who is coming?" And the answer is "only Steve (is coming)". Another question: "which Steve?" The answer is "(it's that) poor Steve."

My point is it's contextual. One can't just explain it based on how he showed it.

userr2684291

It looks to me as some kind of obsolescent use, and LDOCE explicitly says: "Don’t say: We provide parents information."

user178049

11:08

@userr2684291 It is the first definition. Provide someone something. Cambridge def. is unclear in this case, I guess.

I think provide is just fine here.

userr2684291

@user178049 What's the first definition?

Anonymous

We'd usually say We provide parents with information, wouldn't we?

userr2684291

It says give someone something.

@snailplane Indeed.

@snailplane That's the actual question, by the way.

Anonymous

Oh.

userr2684291

Not that exact sentence, but that structure.

user178049

11:10

Yeah, it is "someone"

userr2684291

@user178049 I don't care about that.

user178049

@userr2684291 Btw, next time just comment on my post. I'm having a connection problem lately. It will be fixed soon, hopefully.

This chat room took my 10 minutes to load O..o

userr2684291

Oh.

I mean, I don't want to pollute the comment section when we can discuss it here.

Anonymous

What the

Anonymous

0

Q: A multiple choice question

Extracted from a textbook of master.get.com.tw ______ us the ability to resist disease, but also helps us build our body tissues. (A) Vitamin C not only provides (B) Not only does vitamin C provide (C) Not only vitamin C provides (D) Vitamin C, which not only provides The ans...

sentence-construction

Anonymous

11:14

No one mentioned that it needs with.

userr2684291

Yes.

Anonymous

That's weird.

userr2684291

That's why I was unsure.

I replied to Mr. Sovereign that B can't be correct, but then realized the whole thing is just dodgy.

Man_From_India

@snailplane both option A and B are okay. But where to put with?

userr2684291

No. B lacks it after but, in my opinion.

9 mins ago, by snailplane

We'd usually say We provide parents with information, wouldn't we?

Man_From_India

11:18

Oh got it, thanks.

userr2684291

I'm sure you're able to infer the pattern.

Man_From_India

@userr2684291 yes thanks :)

userr2684291

11:39

The OED (2nd edition): trans. To supply or furnish for use; to yield, afford. Const. † to (obsolete), for, or with dative.: 1898 Besant Orange Girl ii. xxvi, The contractors..do honestly provide the convicts the rations prescribed by the Government.; 1581 in Confer. iii. (1584) R iv, Prouide me ynke and paper, and I will write.

Man_From_India

+1 Both reducing have got to bare got and omitting the subject relativizer are quite common in US speech; they're not so much "illiterate" as casual ellipsis. — StoneyB May 3 at 10:41

ELL is indeed a treasure trove of information.

Similar informations are scattered around on ELU too.

userr2684291

@Man_From_India Hm. Is omitting the subject relativizer really that common in colloquial AmE? It sounds quite illiterate to me.

Man_From_India

@userr2684291 in that particular US dialect.

It's however ungrammatical in Standard English.

user178049

12:04

@userr2684291 @snailplane provide doesn't take two objects right?

userr2684291

@Man_From_India Then that statement is misleading.

user178049

I misread the first example provided by Cambridge. I thought it was "provide us useful information"

M.A.R.

\o all

@user178049 Right

userr2684291

@user178049 I don't know; can prepositional phrases be considered objects?

user178049

@M.A.R. Yeah, thanks

userr2684291

12:10

@M.A.R. Look what the cat's dragged in.

user178049

@userr2684291 AFAIK, no.

M.A.R.

@userr2684291 I take user17-something's question to be only about direct objects and the dative sense

So shoo with your linguistically correct analysis

userr2684291

@user178049 Then I implore you to examine the definition from the OED I pasted above.

Man_From_India

@userr2684291 hmmm but subsequent comments there make it clear.

Araucaria Man

0

A: Subject/object in this sentence: "Against no one was feeling more bitter than against Rhett Butler"

In context it's a bit easier to make sense of the original example The public outcry against the speculators grew louder and more venomous.[...] Against no one was feeling more bitter than against Rhett Butler. The subject of the bolded clause is the noun phrase feeling which refers to the...

@userr2684291 Yes, they can - though it's quite rare :)

user178049

12:25

@userr2684291 I edited that post, but I used Webster's Usage book. What do you think? I'll use the OED def. you have given if you don't like it.

Man_From_India

@AraucariaMan it's tough answer, need time to sink in.

userr2684291

@user178049 I think there's a difference between provide to and provide for.

user178049

@userr2684291 I can't figure it out.

Araucaria Man

@Man_From_India Is there a particularly difficult bit? (Should I make something clearer?)

CowperKettle

> This group has made the most significant achievement in the creation of oligomeric proteins, as described in the referenced article [link]. (I wonder if this is the right phrase - I want to tell the reader that the article can be accessed by following the link).

userr2684291

12:36

@user178049 I don't know whether what the OED says is okay in modern English. snailplane said it should be with, but the OED contains examples which point otherwise, so I don't know.

Man_From_India

@AraucariaMan now I understood the sentence. But may I offer something?

userr2684291

@user178049 english.stackexchange.com/a/55930/71740

Man_From_India

> Against no one was feeling more bitter than against Rhett Butler.

If we rephrase it like this it would be easier to grasp, I think.

> Against no one was [feeling] (which was) more bitter than (the feeling) against Rhett Butler.

userr2684291

@Man_From_India This doesn't look grammatical.

Man_From_India

But I think the before feeling makes it better.

userr2684291

12:48

Difficult-to-parse sentences are simply ?(?(?)), even if it's possible to generate them by performing legal productions.

Laters.

Araucaria Man

@Man_From_India Please do ...

@Man_From_India I agree it's far easier to parse that way, but it would give the sentence a different flavour.

@snailplane Your wish is my command ...

CowperKettle

"Araucaria Man"! Great nickname

The tick that bit me turned out to be healthy.. phew

Araucaria Man

@snailplane

0

A: A multiple choice question

*Vitamin C, which not only provides us with the ability to resist disease, but also helps us build our body tissues. (Ungrammatical) This example is ungrammatical because it is a noun phrase with no following verb. Everything after the word which is part of a relative clause which give...

@CowperKettle Thanks. Everyone thought I was a girl : /

@CowperKettle Good news!

CowperKettle

@AraucariaMan I was afraid it would have Lyme

I'll be more careful next time

Araucaria Man

13:06

@CowperKettle Yeah, you certainly wouldn't want that.

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle Yeah, make sure it's sick next time

o.o

Anonymous

@AraucariaMan I have the opposite problem :-)

M.A.R.

Hullo @madshvero! Welcome to our chat

madshvero

Thanks! :)

M.A.R.

13:23

0

Q: What is the subject in the sentence "My name Pablo it's said"

I have a confusion about if this sentence is correct in English and if so what's the subject. How is it analyzed syntactically?

grammar syntax subjects

O.o

Added to the list of random words that are supposed to mean something

CowperKettle

"My name is Pablo, it's said"

the subject is name

"It is said that my name is Pablo"

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle That one makes sense.

I thought you were Artyom.

Araucaria Man

@snailplane :)

M.A.R.

Mistaking @Arau for @Snail

Araucaria Man

@CowperKettle So, if name is the subject, what is the word it doing?

(trick question)

M.A.R.

13:34

@AraucariaMan A spectator

Araucaria Man

@M.A.R. I think that's kind of right!

@M.A.R. It's part of a parenthetical phrase.

Man_From_India

@AraucariaMan different meaning? Or different implication?

yubraj

13:58

Hi everyone!!!

M.A.R.

Hi

yubraj

How are you?

@M.A.R.

M.A.R.

Great! You?

yubraj

I'm fine

What are other ways of saying "I'm fine" please?

M.A.R.

You could say "doing fine"

CowperKettle

14:10

or..

I Hate Myself and Want to Die

"I Hate Myself and Want to Die" is a song by the American rock band Nirvana, written by Kurt Cobain and recorded in February 1993. == History and recording == Cobain originally intended to call the band's third studio album I Hate Myself and I Want to Die, but changed his mind, according to Tom Mallon of Rolling Stone, due to fear that the dark humor of the title would be lost on some critics and fans, and after being convinced by Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic that the band might end up with lawsuits if Cobain stuck with the original title; Cobain changed the title to Verse Chorus Verse, then...

A song popular in the days of my youth

(0:

I knew very little English then, but I somehow remembered the title

M.A.R.

Not a very lively title

yubraj

Yes

Where can I find the videos/commands for conducting drill or assembly in school? For examples of commands: attention, stand at ease, left,righ turn, about turn?

@M.A.R.

M.A.R.

Uh, I have no idea what you're talking about

yubraj

Oh!

I need to know that so I asked

M.A.R.

No, I mean I don't know what you mean

CowperKettle

14:16

@yubraj Maybe you could look on YouTube? You could search for videos of actual assemblies in the military.

M.A.R.

Are we talking about military commands?

yubraj

Just like military command but in schools

Commanding to students

yubraj

14:48

@CowperKettle ok Thanks

CowperKettle

15:10

> Each of these monomers has two subunit contact surfaces: a and a` on the protein A; b and b` on the protein B.

How do we pronounce this a`, I wonder

Man_From_India

@snailplane Thanks. That portion of the book clears all the confusion I had regarding this. So why it's a quick-thinking man but not a quickly-thinking man? I gather that it's because quick-thinking is a compound adjective, a lexical item, not something formed by adverb+verb+ing sequence. The man seems quick-thinking but it's incorrect to write The man seems quickly-thinking.

userr2684291

@CowperKettle I'd read it as "a prime".

That's how it's read in mathematics at least.

(And a is pronounced /eɪ/.)

CowperKettle

@userr2684291 Thank you!

userr2684291

15:29

@yubraj youtube.com/watch?v=4irFJ7q96ns You're welcome.

Anonymous

@AraucariaMan Oh, thanks for taking the time to write that :-)

Man_From_India

15:46

It's true that the common pattern is PROVIDE + SOMEBODY + WITH + SOMETHING.

userr2684291

@M.A.R. Hm, what causes a great number of views (in a short period of time), but a relatively small number of votes on questions/answers? Are people more inclined to vote if they see the answer's already been heavily up/down voted?

Man_From_India

But I have found many examples of provide somebody something, without with.

Some are not very old use.

> He could afford to buy his kids anything, but lamented that as the most famous athlete in the world, he couldn't provide them the simple pleasure of an undisturbed day at the amusement park. [USA Today - 1993]

> A powerful alliance of nonprofits has emerged in the city, supported by money from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other philanthropies, to recruit and train new charter operators and to help provide them the support and the personnel they need to set up and run consistently high-quality charter schools. [NYT - 2008]

userr2684291

@Man_From_India Me too. LDOCE / Longman Dictionary of Common Errors (which, incidentally, can also be abbreviated to LDOCE) advises against it, though.

Man_From_India

> I colored easily as well, which provided him a hope even he knew to leave unsaid: blood that surged so close to the surface would wet his wrinkled shirt, spatter his shoes, and saturate the dirt where they paced.

userr2684291

@Man_From_India How old are the authors of those articles, though?

Man_From_India

15:52

@userr2684291 nods Longman and many others. I have checked it.

@userr2684291 I have mentioned the year of publication.

userr2684291

@Man_From_India What other dictionaries have you looked that up in?

@Man_From_India That's not what I inquired about. Nonetheless, they can't be that old, so I believe it's valid, but I'd never write it (unless by mistake).

Anonymous

16:12

Maybe we can get away, just for a moment, from the idea that all utterances fit into binary categories of "valid" and "invalid".

Anonymous

Not that I'm saying you're characterizing them that way, but

Anonymous

I really like how Araucaria put it:

Anonymous

> All of the examples from the Original question would be much more natural with the word with. The usual pattern is: provide someone with something

userr2684291

I really don't like how Araucaria put it.

Anonymous

It doesn't say "The examples are all flatly wrong because the word with is missing. You absolutely have to use it there."

Anonymous

16:14

It goes on to not say "No one would ever say it without with, and if you look, you will certainly not find any examples of that sort."

Anonymous

But the answer still draws a useful contrast between the version with with and the with-less version.

CowperKettle

16:38

На Ямале дети застряли на льдине в луже посреди двора. Пришлось вызывать спасателей

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In my hometown yesterday, special services were called to rescue kids who found themselves stranded on a snow island surrounded by a large puddle of thawed snow

I once got all wet by falling in such a large puddle. I thought it was still ice-covered and tried to run across it. (0:

Because in early May all the snow suddently starts to melt, and it's suddenly Venice all around

userr2684291

17:04

@CowperKettle When I was taught how to ice skate on a frozen lake not that far away from my house, the guy who was teaching me would always throw a large rock on it from a height to check if the ice would break. I approach frozen surfaces with caution, haha.

@snailplane How is it possible that native speakers produce unnatural utterances in such large numbers (n-grams, COCA)? Namely, are the ratios of 1 : 4.95, 1 : 3.45, etc. negligible? That's 1 in 5, and 1 in 4 speakers, respectively, that use the with-less version in some such constructions. I don't know how to trust the "more natural this way" assessment, really.

CowperKettle

17:22

@userr2684291 Yes, you can't be too careful with real lakes.

People do drown now and then in Yekaterinburg trying to ice-fish in the spring, or trying to cross a river on thin ice

Волинський народний хор. Їхали козаченьки степом, долиною

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A song about a group of Cossacks frustrated by a girl who refuses to go with them

(0:

So they go on their way alone, without her.

userr2684291

Uh, it's not "1 in 5 and 1 in 4", I screwed up there, but the numbers are still too close so who cares about the actual interpretation. And it's not people but utterances.

Man_From_India

@userr2684291 Macmillan, century has one example sentence without "with". Collins also say similar things. MW usage Dictionary says we usually use with. Oxford says the pattern with with.

userr2684291

@Man_From_India Does any of them discourage the with-less use of the verb?

Man_From_India

@userr2684291 collins and Macmillan.

userr2684291

@Man_From_India OK, thanks.

Man_From_India

17:31

U welcome :)

@userr2684291 i think we can look further into it. Most of the occurrance are Spoken, though there are written occurrance as well. I think MW usage Dictionary puts it similar way. We usually use with.

V.V.

Good evening.

What's a" hinged door"?

userr2684291

18:15

@V.V. It means joined with hinges to the door frame or wall.

The door is hinged.

V.V.

An ordinary door?

CowperKettle

context

> The cabin lamp - taking long swings this way and that - was burning fitfully, and casting fitful shadows upon the old man's bolted door, - a thin one, with fixed blinds inserted, in place of upper panels.

V.V.

18:32

Ruby sings as she opens the hinged door with its criss-cross of green painted slats. The plywood box inside is a cube about three feet on a side, filled with a mound of flowered sheets and white terry cloth towels.

userr2684291

@V.V. Yes, it's an ordinary door.

V.V.

Oh, those writers!

Thanks.

userr2684291

Sure.

What always trips me up is the fact that door is a plurale tantum in my first language, so I sometimes say "the door are", even when I'm referring to one door. The same with a mouth.

V.V.

Ah! Interesting.

userr2684291

@V.V. Isn't it the same in Russian?

M.A.R.

18:38

@userr2684291 your face are ugly

V.V.

No, we have a door and doors, a mouth is singular, but in old R. We had" usta "like "lips".

userr2684291

@V.V. en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B2%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B0#Russian

V.V.

What is left of that is "gates "

userr2684291

What's interesting is that you use vrata as poetic and dveri as the usual word, and we do the opposite.

V.V.

modern ворота (gates), врата is poetic or religious.

userr2684291

18:50

I see.

M.A.R.

I read.

V.V.

I watch.

What's a mouth in your language?

userr2684291

Usta. Usnice are lips.

V.V.

Aha!

What I told you!

CowperKettle

userr2684291

18:54

@V.V. Yep.

V.V.

Crisps, chips and French fries

userr2684291

@CowperKettle IIRC, in Trump hotels, the first floor is the tenth floor, haha.

@V.V. And their place of origin is most likely Belgium, hehe.

V.V.

The Marcels are singing "Blue Moon". Look at this, please.

Found that "the Marcels" is a group.

Don't know, should I leave it as it is in translation?

userr2684291

@V.V. What do you mean?

V.V.

I mean we don't translate the names, right?

userr2684291

19:07

@V.V. You mean to Russian? I don't know what the standard practice is.

In Serbian they do a weird thing where they essentially transcribe everything to Serbian. So Apple, the company, becomes Epl in Serbian.

V.V.

I mean that standards are universal. The Beatles

userr2684291

Standards obviously aren't universal.

V.V.

What do you call the Beatles in your language?

userr2684291

sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%91%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%BB%D1%81%D0%B8 (Serbian)

V.V.

Oh! Really! And what do you call the insect?

userr2684291

19:15

@V.V. We call them the Beatles or grupa the Beatles, but since they're quite popular, we sometimes call them Beatlesi (which translates to "those who are the Beatles").

@V.V. An insect is buba.

:>

V.V.

A pretty name.

userr2684291

I don't know, the associations are not very pretty.

Buba is also the Volkswagen model (the VW Beetle).

V.V.

Buba should be something round.

userr2684291

That's how I see it as well. It's an informal word, though. Kukac is the neutral variant, and also the word used in the first sentence of our translation of the Metamorphosis, Kafka's novella.

We also have the word insekt, but it's rather technical- and foreign-sounding.

V.V.

I read about a car T-bird in this story.

userr2684291

19:26

I wouldn't know.

This is what Wikipedia has: en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=T-bird&redirect=no

V.V.

This story has so many names of different products, some international, others typical US.

From cereal, different types of canned soups, cookies, washing powder etc.

Songs, children prayers and what not.

userr2684291

@V.V. They're probably trying to help the intended audience (Americans) imagine and get the feeling of it all, the time and the place, maybe evoke some memories of their own.

V.V.

Thanks for your help. Good night.

userr2684291

Good night.

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