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05:33
Someone is methodically upvoting my questions on Literature SE
Several questions each day
 
3 hours later…
08:58
ell.stackexchange.com/a/177368/3395 Do people really say When a child, she liked to read books? I don't know if it's because I had two hours of sleep, but that sentence doesn't sound that good to me.
Anonymous
Probably not, actually, but a hundred years ago I think people talked that way more often.
A hundred years ago.
Interesting. The OED has some interesting citations.
Heh.
The older Webster's dictionary had this "on one occasion, when a boy, I went fishing with three other boys — W.J.Reilly", and MW has "went fishing when he was a boy" at the same... thing. Definition.
How droll.
"According to Reilly's 'law,' customers are willing to travel longer distances to larger retail centers given the higher attraction they present to customers. In Reilly's formulation, the attractiveness of the retail center becomes the analogy for size (mass) in the physical law of gravity."
 
2 hours later…
11:13
Daily idiom: "tit for tat" Tit for tat voting on posts is not allowed on Stack Exchange sites. Users should vote on the content of the posts and not retaliate with down-votes, or pay for up-votes on their posts by up-voting someone else's post.
3
 
3 hours later…
14:00
@snailboat ell.stackexchange.com/q/177383 How would you prove which form is used?
14:18
After someone says I loved you and now I hate you you can ask Did you? as well as Do you?, and it's obvious what you're referring to. It's also obvious that did/do(es) doesn't carry any semantic meaning because if someone tells you I hate X, I loved Y, and I enjoy Z and you ask them Do you? that might be ambiguous (Do I what, hate X or enjoy Z?). The same follows for hated, love, enjoyed, and did.
Also, could you tell me where in CGEL might I be able to find more about go swimming, come swinging, etc., structure/pattern?
I wonder what other verbs belong to that category.
I've read about the go and verb thingy but that's not it.
 
2 hours later…
Anonymous
16:19
@userr2684291 It's all in the section on catenative verbs.
Anonymous
See pages 1228 and 1231.
Anonymous
Hate and love are different from go.
Anonymous
Although go can be followed by a to-infinitival constituent, in that case it's an adjunct of purpose rather than a catenative complement.
Anonymous
@userr2684291 That's a great question! There are some different ways you can approach distinguishing the plain form of a verb from its plain present tense form. One is to make the subject third person and singular, so if it's the plain present, it should become the third person singular present form instead.
Anonymous
If it doesn't change form, then it might not really be a tensed form, since it doesn't show the attributes of a tensed form (changing form to agree with the subject in number and person).
Anonymous
16:26
Another way is to change the verb to be, since it has a special plain form, although it always work. For example, if you're looking for the complement of do in a do-support construction, it's kind of tricky since be is an auxiliary already in most uses.
Anonymous
But we can try lexical be, as in Don't be mean!
Anonymous
Sometimes you want to look at a range of examples like that to make a conclusion, because you can come up with patterns. When does be show up?
Anonymous
We find that there are very few constructions with consecutive finite forms. You brought up an example, which is the quasi-serial verb construction (go + verb), but that seems to be pretty exceptional.
16:57
Thank you.
17:55
Word of the day: basilar skull fracture
18:44
Hello @CowperKettle and @snailboat I am back again.
 
2 hours later…
20:42
@userr2684291 Hi, I see you still have a double r in your name.
@CowperKettle A moderator might remove the votes after a month or so.
 
1 hour later…
21:55
Hello @userr2684291 long time no see.
Interestingly I spoke to a Croatian couple a few days ago.
They were trying to find the right bus to take at midnight when they came here for vacation.
Then I immediately thought of you.
I hope you asked them if they knew userr2543843609...
21:58
Because you are the only Croatian I knew about.
It's good that Croatia is second in the World Cup.
Nobody expected them to get so far.
True, but once we started playing I was hoping we'd win.
But who cares. It's just football. Who knows what stands behind all that. It's just a huge business.
Yeah, it's just a game.
(I'm not saying the matches were rigged, just that it's a big business.)
Yeah.
22:04
I am planning to learn Russian as well.
So now the list of languages I want to know other than English is: German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Russian. =)
I am feeling down today, more so than usual.
A 16-year-old girl, a sister of one of my online friends from the US already speaks 4 languages fluently. Amazing stuff.
Partly because I asked a friend for help, and it would have been alright if he said no, but instead he just cut off the phone calls I made to him. He could be overseas right now, but I doubt so.
And there is another friend I message ten times before he replies once, asking if he can meet for lunch, and the answer would be no.
I think I should stop contacting them altogether.
I suddenly realize that people you know in real life for years can become so cold.
I don't think ceasing all contact is ever good.
22:12
And it's not as if I ask them for any money or stuff like that. They have no reason to be scared of me.
Well, okay, sometimes.
This has happened to me so many times. I think people just get sick and tired of me.
But not just like that, randomly. You should stay in touch, but obviously if they don't feel like talking to you as much as you do with them, it'd be reasonable not to give them that much attention.
I have not been working for many years because of my mental illness, but I never gave people any problems, but I think they look down on me and one by one they abandon me.
Have you tried talking to a therapist?
22:16
Maybe that is why I decided to come back to SE tonight, to post some answers and talk to some people in the chat.
I have seen people for meds and therapy, yes, but this is something else I am talking about now.
Well, if you're sure your condition and meds for it aren't one of the factors, then I don't know how to help you.
What I mean is: I don't understand why these friends in real life treat me the way they do.
I guess I had the wrong impression of them from the very start.
Oh I remember you saying I always say things like 'it is' instead of 'it's'.
Haha, yeah.
@JasperLoy Yeah, but I got the impression that it's older friends that're starting to abandon you.
I now have CGEL, ODE, and SOED.
So I thought perhaps, I don't know, if something changed in your life recently, that might've influenced it.
22:24
@userr2684291 Yes, I thought too highly of them for years, it seems.
@JasperLoy What does SOED stand for?
@userr2684291 Shorter OED. 2 volumes. 2007. 6th edition.
Ah. Haha.
I am not getting the 20 volume OED or the compact edition that has to be read with a magnifying glass!
22:26
But I think bookdepository.com had good prices for them the last I checked, but still way too much.
I have a couple of ancient (from my parents) German–Serbo-Croatian and vice versa and English–Serbo-Croatian (and vice versa) dictionaries.
I've never opened them.
But I also have a couple of new dictionaries my dad bought me maybe 4 years ago. English–German (and vice versa) and a learner's German dictionary. I love the latter. I didn't know it was for learners at all until I opened it, a couple of years later, hahah.
@userr2684291 I have the Oxford German Dictionary, the biggest one and latest one.
I like that one.
I think it came with my parents' Mac.
I am thinking of buying a MacBook Air.
It is the cheapest laptop from Apple.
A learner's dictionary is invaluable for the first year or so of active learning of the German language (and I bet other languages, too). The Duden, for example, is a bit too hard to chew through.
22:39
I am surprised I got so many votes today. I posted 4 answers on 3 SE sites.
I am leaving now, bye.
See ya.
Enjoy some more votes. (:

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