English Language Learners

Ilan

8:11 AM

Hey

Anybody live?

Anonymous

8:55 AM

I live!

Anonymous

I practically make a habit out of living!

Ilan

9:09 AM

@snailboat :) that's incredible. Most of us don't live at all!

I had some question, but I figured it out :)

Anonymous

Oh, well, I certainly hope that's not something I actually wrote :-)

Ilan

9:25 AM

no :)

10

A: List of common symbols and abbreviations

*: Used in front of an example word or phrase to indicate that the example is ungrammatical (e.g. *Me enjoy eating cookies.) ?: Used similarly to *, but indicates a word or phrase that is potentially marginal or awkward, rather than fully ungrammatical (e.g. ?unbelievableness) ??: The same as ?...

I had a reading mistake when reading "Me enjoy eating"... (I've read it as "we enjoy" and did not understand why it is incorrect phrase

Damkerng T.

9:41 AM

Good evening!

Ilan

:)

hi

I should leave for a while now, however I'll be back

!

Damkerng T.

Alright! I just sneak in here for a bit. :-)

Hmm... Me enjoy eating cookies doesn't sound that ungrammatical.

Definitely not fit for writing, though.

I think a # is enough (for dialectical; it seems like ctype.h uses a different set of notation).

Anonymous

11:13 AM

@DamkerngT. It's super ungrammatical.

Anonymous

Unless you're Cookie Monster.

Anonymous

# doesn't mean dialectal

Anonymous

If you use it to mean dialectal, then you can tell people that's what you mean by it, and it'll all work out fine, but in general if you mark an utterance with # people won't understand it that way

Anonymous

Most commonly it means something is wrong in terms of meaning

Anonymous

Grammatical but infelicitous

Anonymous

11:17 AM

Which dialect do you suppose might contain nominative me?

Damkerng T.

@snailboat It reminds me of something like that! CM and the children.

@snailboat What is the symbol for dialectal used in CGEL? It seems like I misremembered it. (I thought it would be #.)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. % means "grammatical in some dialect(s) only" in CGEL

Damkerng T.

A-ha! I misremembered it indeed!

Thanks!

Anonymous

Think of the circles on either side as dialect groups, divided by a / :-)

Damkerng T.

Nice!

Anonymous

11:31 AM

0

Q: When I need to add a 's' to the first noun and when I don't?

Below you can see 63 of a Smart Card security target. (Here) The question is : "When I need to add a 's' to the first noun and when I don't?" I mean which one of the below expressions is true? JCVM's information flow control SFP JCVM information flow control SFP What is the meaning of it?...

Anonymous

's' is a confusing way of talking about 's

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

Well, that question is a bit of a mystery to me.

Anonymous

I can always leave it to someone who understands it :-)

Damkerng T.

I think most of the time in technical specs, we simply use nouns as adjectives.

Anonymous

11:48 AM

Yeah, my guess is that adding the s thingy is probably unnecessary

Anonymous

Pretty opaque text there…

Anonymous

The internet is fun

Anonymous

I keep finding all sorts of interesting language and such I've never seen in print

Anonymous

I just saw a subordinate clause (in Japanese) with two periods in it

Anonymous

It clearly represents speech, but it has no quotes around it

Anonymous

11:56 AM

People use punctuation in all sorts of interesting and creative ways

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Maybe it's ungrammatical. :-)

I've found lots of lots of ungrammatical or less-that-should-be writing in Thai on the web.

From the article: "This phrase should invariably be followed by a present-tense infinitive–hence would have liked to go, not *would have liked to have gone, *would have liked to have read. The erroneous phrasings are very common" It's basically saying that, while not technically correct, it's commonly used by native speakers anyway. I agree with that, it sounds a bit clumsy but most native speakers don't use 100% flawless English. — Mark 27 mins ago

Interesting!

Anonymous

12:18 PM

What's a present-tense infinitive? Sounds like a contradiction in terms

Anonymous

What Garner appears to mean is that the following verb phrase should not contain the perfect auxiliary have

Anonymous

Though he doesn't say why not

Anonymous

Seems fine to me.

Anonymous

I don't think the stars are warranted

Anonymous

Honestly, it's probably the superior option a lot of the time

Anonymous

12:37 PM

People say punctuation in general is a lot less constrained by rules in Japanese than English

Anonymous

I'm never quite sure what to think about punctuation

Anonymous

The same people who tell me there are no rules clearly have strong opinions about where punctuation should be used :-)

Man_From_India

1:58 PM

0

A: Poor 'him' or 'he'? Reason?

Pronouns don't normally allow an adjective before it. Consider the following sentence - You are interesting, and you allowed me to contact you for this academic project. This is fine, but if we want to place the adjective before the pronoun, it will be incorrect, and hence the following se...

I just did some google search for this question, and came to know that there there are only a few adjectives that can come before a pronoun, not all adjectives can function this way..

my question is how to identify such adjectives?

Damkerng T.

I wish there would be a rigid set of rules. I'm afraid we don't have one.

I think Google Ngram is not really good for the case of "poor her" vs. "poor she".

Man_From_India

@DamkerngT. In BNC, there a 4-5 results for poor he

Damkerng T.

As standalone utterances?

Man_From_India

and they all came because poor is attached with something else, and after that there is a he. that is not poor he

Damkerng T.

Ahh... that makes sense.

Man_From_India

2:09 PM

So it comes to there is no result for poor he in BNC

Damkerng T.

nods

Man_From_India

@DamkerngT. So isn't there any kind of factors that prompts those adjectives to come before pronoun?

Damkerng T.

I think there are some of them (otherwise people would use them randomly) but it's hard to formulate them as rules.

Man_From_India

Yes I just came to know there are few like silly, poor, lucky

Damkerng T.

Yes, "Silly me" or "Lucky me" is common. "Smart me" is borderline. "Great me" sounds weird.

(I think "Despicable me" was popularized by the animation.)

Man_From_India

2:16 PM

@DamkerngT. WOW, nice finding!!! :D I love that movie, both part actually :D :D

Damkerng T.

I love those minions!

Man_From_India

I love the concept of stealing the moon :D :D

I wish I also could steal it and keep it forever with me :D (for some personal reason ;))

Damkerng T.

:-)

Popping the question on a rocket is also cute!

Man_From_India

That is also because of strange play of words :P

Damkerng T.

Hehe

Hmm... Come to think of it, I think I have never heard "Poor it" before.

(It always is "Poor thing".)

Discovery of the day: Stirling engine

Man_From_India

2:27 PM

they are for personal pronouns...and CGEL sates core personal pronouns

I will edit my answer there to include your info. that is a good input. Thanks

Damkerng T.

My pleasure!

Man_From_India

2:56 PM

That was a wrong info, so I deleted :)

CoolHandLouis

3:21 PM

From a review of the musical play, "The Adams Family":

"Favorite moment: when it came on stage, but poor it only had one second."

:)

I think it is being used as a proper name here, but funnily enough, that might could also hint at a valid usage of "poor it" to refer to a sentient yet non-gendered being.

Man_From_India

@CoolHandLouis There is no occurrence I found in google :( :'(

In BNC only one - ‘Poor it,’ said Lydia.

CoolHandLouis

4:11 PM

Lydia is the girl in the Addam's family. :) She's referring to the character named "It". It's a play on words since "it" is also a pronoun and the character named It is non-gendered. But grammatically "It" is being used as a proper noun there.

Man_From_India

4:31 PM

okay :)

Ilan

7:52 PM

@snailboat did u c the video about seahorses?

Anonymous

8:31 PM

@Ilan Yes, I saw it! I forgot to comment and thank you for linking me to it! :-)

Anonymous

I enjoyed it very much :-)

Ilan

did you pay attention to the birth of seahorse?

I think it was very impressive

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