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04:33
@snailboat I think whom is rather less common than who. But I don't think it's ungrammatical.
> Agents probed the 18-year-old Khan's alleged repeated communication and conspiracy with an individual whom he believed to be a fighter with Islamic State to obtain weapons, including pipe bombs or pressure-cooker bombs, according to a statement from Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich on Thursday.
From USA Today (2016)
 
6 hours later…
10:24
Maslenitsa (Russian: Мaсленица, Ukrainian: Масниця, Belarusian: Масленіца; also known as Butter Week, Crepe week, or Cheesefare Week) is an Eastern Slavic religious and folk holiday, celebrated during the last week before Great Lent, that is, the eighth week before Eastern Orthodox Pascha (Easter). Maslenitsa corresponds to the Western Christian Carnival, except that Orthodox Lent begins on a Monday instead of a Wednesday, and the Orthodox date of Easter can differ greatly from the Western Christian date. == Traditions == According to archeological evidence from 2nd century A.D. Maslenitsa may...
10:36
Hi, can someone answer this post: ell.stackexchange.com/questions/200116/… (Actually no one has replied to it,yet......................
 
6 hours later…
16:09
22 dots should definitely be registered a new punctuation mark
Kinda nice and dark movie but the second half was increasingly underwhelming
Or decreasingly overwhelming?
16:46
Word of the day: donzerly light
2
 
3 hours later…
19:58
@CowperKettle 🤣
Anyone know why everything's been downvoted here? ell.stackexchange.com/questions/194493/…
@SamBC I have a theory: It might be because . . . someone pushed the down arrow!
Mmmmm, it might be someone who's suddenly frustrated that none of the answerers looked for a dupe. And there's definitely a dupe for "(to) help" questions
Anything is going to be speculation anyway unless the downvoter commented
2
20:23
Yep.
@snailboat Is dive – dived / dove (AmE) – dived a "regular verb"? Or perhaps "slightly irregular"? I'd understand if for analysis' sake you'd adopt a more scalar-like system, but I'm not really sure how to answer this. "The question is, do all regular verbs have the same form for V2 and V3?" Yes, but don't they definitionally? Their question would be okay if they didn't know what regular meant, I think.
I know that dove is an irregular form, and I would therefore say that the verb dive has irregular forms. But it also has regular forms.
It is regular in some dialects, and irregular in others.
If a verb has any form that doesn't follow the regular pattern, it is irregular.
20:40
Right.
So their question would make sense in a situation in which regular verb denotes verbs which follow another regular pattern; namely, the one in which the preterit and past participle forms don't exhibit syncretism.
CGEL says "We have seen that with all regular verbs the preterite and the past participle are identical".
I'm perplexed, and I can't even.
Okay, I see it as an observation. Alright, it makes some sense.
Syncretism is a different issue completely.
21:08
So, being irregular is a binary state. If it differs from the standard pattern at all, it's irregular. Remembering of course that there's a tiny, tiny bit of variation in the standard pattern like doubling of consonants occasionally.
But irregular verbs can be more or less irregular than other irregular verbs. Actually, most irregular verbs are regular under old Germanic verb patterns, either as a weak verb or as one of the several strong verb patterns. Strong verbs form their preterite by vowel shift, and the past participle by a suffix, and sometimes vowel shift as well.
And the vast majority of irregular verbs are only irregular in either preterite or past participle, or both.
And when I say "both", it's possible for them to both be irregular in the same way - some irregular verbs do have identical preterite and past participle.
(and the British -t versions may still be considered essentially regular, just having had a consonant shift, or may be considered irregular)
 
1 hour later…
Anonymous
22:20
@userr2684291 Definitely sounds better that way.
22:49
Aw, Snailie's alive.
@SamBC "A number of common verbs are clearly somewhat irregular, but can nevertheless be treated in terms of the ·ed formation, supplemented by four other operations..."
But you're right, they still always distinguish between regular and irregular verbs.

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