English Language Learners

Anonymous

00:01

Japanese has a lot of traditional units, and I don't know all of them . . .

Anonymous

People still use some of them, including jō

Anonymous

I think some of the old units are dying out.

Damkerng T.

I think I've seen some ads (for Japanese expats here) with something like KDO.

Anonymous

Ah . . . I'm afraid I don't know what that means

Damkerng T.

My memory is not precise, I think. Probably need to swap letters around, or something else but close.

Anonymous

00:03

Well, it could be one of the many things I should know but don't :-)

GATA

Sorry to distract you would you please tell me which one sounds more natural. The resolution of this monitor equals/equals with/equals to mine.

Damkerng T.

Oh, it's LDK, I think.

Probably is equal to.

But equals can be a verb too.

Anonymous

Can I pick "is the same as"? :-)

Damkerng T.

That would probably be what I picked. :-)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Living, dining, kitchen!

GATA

00:11

Thank you both :)

Damkerng T.

@snailplane A-ha! I thought it's something Japanese.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. It is, sort of. People don't say LDK in English, even though it stands for English words.

Damkerng T.

What does 3LDK mean?

Three rooms, one for L, another for D, and another for K?

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Um, I'm not exactly sure. The 3 is for three rooms, but I don't think it means one of each is set aside for those specific purposes.

Anonymous

You should be able to look up the details if you like :-)

Damkerng T.

00:15

I found another one 6SLDK. (I think S ~ Sleep. Sounds rather big!)

I couldn't figure out how the diagram was mapped to 3LDK here: realestate.co.jp/en/forsale/view/200009

Oh, it's only $2,780,000 (USD).

:D

$2,780,000 for 13,342.00 m² ...

Come to think of it, that's not very expensive, considering the land area.

GATA

Its about 4 in the morning here. My eyes are not mine anymore. Thank you for conversation:) Bye for now.

Damkerng T.

See you soon. Bye.

Anonymous

08:03

It's funny. My own experience (and selective perception bias, perhaps?) tells me that me neither is the inferior option.

Anonymous

It doesn't roll off the tongue, it doesn't sound as good, and I feel like I don't hear it as often.

Anonymous

But after ten comments objecting, even after I linked to Paul Brians' website with some text saying that some people might object to it and prefer me neither

Anonymous

I think I may throw in the towel

Anonymous

Particularly now that there's another answer with an alternative view

Jolenealaska

@snailplane Link? "Me neither" does have a childish ring to it, but I'd need to see it in context.

GATA

08:59

Hi all. Please tell me which one is correct -> is or was . "I apologize for asking a question that is/was discussed in past."

I think "is" is the correct answer but I am not sure because I think saying "was" dosen't change the fact.

Jolenealaska

09:32

Actually, the best way to frame that question is to not use either. "I apologize for asking a question discussed in the past."

GATA

09:44

@Jolenealaska Thank you :)

Jolenealaska

Do you feel that your question has been answered?

GATA

Yes of course but now that you have asked :) Were my own sentences grammatically correct?

Jolenealaska

Sorry - I was elsewhere...Hold on, I'll look.

Looks good, including the typo which looks like like a standard typo from a person comfortable with the language.

GATA

10:02

@Jolenealaska Thank you very much :-)

Jolenealaska

Anytime. My pleasure.

Avinash Raj

12:58

" Don't underestimate even a single rep user.They knows something that you don't know"

Is this gramatically correct?

Jolenealaska

13:50

Sorry, I was away. I'm not sure I understand your question?

Certainly "knows" is incorrect there, but we're used to that kind of thing.

Avinash Raj

They know something that you don't know

^ is this correct?

Jolenealaska

I'm sure every one of them knows things I don't know. The one thing I've got to qualify myself as an authoritative "answerer" here is that I have used the language (well) for 45 years. The grammar of your line is completely correct.

Avinash Raj

thanks :-)

Jolenealaska

It seems that you may be trying to say (ask) something that goes beyond grammar. What is that?

Avinash Raj

14:05

yes, i'm going to put that on my prof desc.

Tyler James Young

16:40

Here I will expound a bit on the problems I see with anything resembling “Hard work and discipline is our tradition”.

Neil D'Silva

I am here...

Tyler James Young

Aside from the number-agreement issue

Hello!

Neil D'Silva

Yes, that was my primary concern.

Tyler James Young

I don't think it sounds quite right either way you write it (“is” or “are”)

Neil D'Silva

Hard work and discipline is our tradition... Hard work and discipline are our traditions... I see what you mean.

Tyler James Young

16:43

they both seem wrong

Neil D'Silva

They do.

Tyler James Young

the first seems wrong because you just said two things

Neil D'Silva

And merged them into one object?

Tyler James Young

the second seems wrong because you either pair “are” with “tradition” or pluralize “tradition”

yeah

Neil D'Silva

You are echoing my thoughts/reservations.

Tyler James Young

16:45

I don't think those terms are well chosen in the first place, though

Neil D'Silva

What can we do to correct this? Playing as little as we can with the terms they have used...

Tyler James Young

are the terms set?

to me, “hard work” is not an attractive proposition as a student or parent

Neil D'Silva

This slogan was chosen by the school before I entered the picture. Now they are blissfully aware of how incorrect it is. I have to point it out to them as I am the chief editor but I want a strong explanation for why it is wrong.

Tyler James Young

I think your best bet might be a complete rewording

Neil D'Silva

If it comes to that...

Tyler James Young

16:47

I think it's odd to pair those terms

Neil D'Silva

You mean hard work and tradition?

Tyler James Young

they are basically synonymous if I am understanding their intention correctly

Neil D'Silva

I guess the school wishes to say that they coerce students to practise discipline and work hard.

That's the essence.

And that they have been doing it since a long time - 42 years to be precise.

Jolenealaska

Hard work is our tradition and discipline is our way of life!! (or something like that) Or Not Hi Guys!

Tyler James Young

it seems like the intent is to convey that your school has deeply ingrained practices that encourage focused, rigorous learning

Hi, Jolene!

Neil D'Silva

16:50

All right. I will need to sleep over that. I will think of a way where we can dissect the terms 'hard work' and 'discipline' and probably create a compound sentence.

Jolenealaska

Tyler, did I send you something not long ago? A bit of silliness?

Neil D'Silva

Hello everyone... I am new here; am just getting to know people.

Tyler James Young

Send how?

Jolenealaska

Here, you may have been beeped?

Tyler James Young

I am not aware of this if it occurred.

Jolenealaska

16:52

I'm looking at you now, I'm sure it was you, but you must not have gotten the message

Tyler James Young

@Neil I think in general you would want to get away from the notions of "hard" and "discipline"

Jolenealaska

Hold on, I'll see if I can find it, but by now it's sure to be anticlimactic and no longer funny

It was hysterical back then, though. I swear.

Neil D'Silva

Yes, I am juggling that notion in my head.

Tyler James Young

“hard work” is just too general, in my opinion

and to many it symbolizes work that is unnecessarily difficult

rather than, say, challenging students to an appropriate degree and encouraging them to find smart solutions to problems

Jolenealaska

@TylerJamesYoung Before I paste this, laugh first and get it over with.

@Tyler James Young Methinks it behooves thee to never jealously veil such brilliance as thou wouldst shed upon us poorly clad folk

Neil D'Silva

16:57

I see what you mean.

Jolenealaska

Wow, did I really silence a room that fast? Or is my 'puter locked up?

Hmm. Well, Tyler, that line cracked me up back when I wrote it. We were swapping comments with T2W(?) about the word "clad"

Anyway, cya all

Tyler James Young

17:54

@Jolenealaska I got pulled into a meeting and now must go to another. Good stuff, though! Glad to have you here on ELL!

Jolenealaska

18:43

@PoLIVoX do you read this?

Damkerng T.

Oh, too bad that I come in late. I missed the discussion on that motto.

I think I learned a lot from that question. I downloaded a few papers but haven't really read them yet.

Maybe I can read one of them now. If you're interested, the paper is called A corpus study of mismatch in English copular constructions.

@TylerJamesYoung I'm sure that hard work must correspond to some word in NeilDSilva's L1. It is also fine in my L1. We have a specific word for it (อุตสาหะ), usually translated to industry, in a sense of being industrious.

I think I've seen some choose to translate it to diligence.

Tyler James Young

19:04

I much prefer “diligence”

“discipline” has all sorts of connotations, and most of them center around punishment-based training

@DamkerngT. I should probably tag you, I just realized

Damkerng T.

I'm here. I'm reading it. :D

I guess that the phrase might be inspired by some ancient thoughts.

In my own version, which is Buddism related, there are four morals that lead us to success.

With my limited vocabulary, the best I can convey is perhaps this translation: being content, diligence, concentration, consideration

But I understand why "discipline" can evoke negative connotations.

Ah, found the page Iddhipada on Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iddhipada

They seem to translate them into: intention (chanda), effort (viriya), consciousness (citta), and investigation (vimangsa).

Anonymous

Well, there are lots of times when "[plural NP] are [singular NP]" is unquestionably grammatical.

Anonymous

And [NP with ambiguous number] is [singular NP] is possible also, given the opportunity to construe the former as singular

Anonymous

> [ Drinking and driving ] is [ a dangerous combination ] .
> [ Drinking and driving ] are [ a dangerous combination ] .

Anonymous

Are both grammatical with the same meaning? Yes, I think so.

Anonymous

19:17

The verb need not agree with the predicative complement, only the subject . . .

Anonymous

. . . though the conclusion I came to in our earlier discussion is that when the subject can be construed as singular or plural, the complement may put a semantic constraint on that--

Anonymous

> [ Hard work and discipline ] is [ our traditions ] . ← Unquestionably ungrammatical

Anonymous

The complement being plural keeps you from construing the subject as singular.

Damkerng T.

I agree with that. After our discussion that night, I found that the best example that could help me mend this pattern was [Fish and chips] is/are our best seller(s).

I googled that pattern, and it turned out to be just like what we've discussed.

Anonymous

Yeah, combinations like that can readily be construed as singular--but interestingly, they are often used as plural!

Damkerng T.

19:22

Only 1b, 2b, and 4b exist.

Anonymous

By the way, in my private corpus of AmE "me either" outnumbers "me neither" by more than two-to-one

Anonymous

So I think I'm going to keep saying "me either", personally :-)

Damkerng T.

You told me that earlier yesterday(?).

Me too.

Anonymous

I thought I only checked public corpora.

Anonymous

To be honest, I had only checked COCA in detail, and it turns out the results don't hold for BNC due to false positives.

Anonymous

19:24

So over there, it seems "me neither" may be more popular.

Damkerng T.

From the paper I'm reading, there is this sentence in the Switchboard Corpus: The only thing we've taken back recently are plants.

Anonymous

That sort of non-concord occurs in spontaneous speech fairly often

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Ah, I see. That's quite in line with what Swan wrote.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Good ol' Swan.

Damkerng T.

:D

I think that kind of error is related to my errors I usually made when I typed.

Anonymous

19:26

@DamkerngT. The one from Switchboard?

Anonymous

When we construct sentences, we don't plan them out ahead of time.

Damkerng T.

Yes. I mean before I can reach the latter part, I've already forgotten what I've said earlier in the same sentence, because my typing is too slow.

Anonymous

Well, there is thinking time sometimes, but we don't usually plan out our sentences ahead of time.

Anonymous

Or perhaps I should say: we don't usually plan out entire sentences before saying them.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I think that's quite realistic, in any language.

Anonymous

19:28

Sometimes we forget whether something is singular or plural early on in the sentence, and then we use proximal agreement

Anonymous

The verb agrees with something near it instead of the head of the subject NP

Damkerng T.

Proximal agreement sounds interesting.

Anonymous

It just means agreeing with something near the verb.

Damkerng T.

Ah, I see.

Anonymous

One type of proximal agreement is a strategy for resolving number agreement with disjunct subjects.

Damkerng T.

19:29

That reminds me of that question: There is/are one apple and two bananas ...

Anonymous

Usually, when you have a disjoint subject ("A or B"), the verb agrees with both of the disjuncts individually.

Anonymous

"Neither Bob nor Mary likes cheese."

Anonymous

"Neither they nor we like cheese."

Damkerng T.

Oh, that can be tricky.

Anonymous

But the fact is, not every speaker uses the same strategies for resolving agreement with disjuncts, particularly when the two have different grammatical number

Anonymous

19:30

So you'll find variation.

Anonymous

One strategy speakers use is proximal agreement: agreement with nearest.

Anonymous

Others use agreement with greater number.

Anonymous

"Neither the Presidents of the United States nor she like cheese."

Anonymous

"Neither the Presidents of the United States nor she likes cheese."

Anonymous

That sentence is terrible.

Anonymous

19:32

I need to rewrite my examples so they actually fit the words that I just wrote. :-)

Damkerng T.

I get your point, PotUS and I is a good example.

Anonymous

Ah, I need to use a third-person example because "I likes" is bad.

Anonymous

I updated my examples.

Damkerng T.

You mean saying Neither X nor I likes Z is bad?

Anonymous

Hmm. Unfortunately, it's getting hard for me to make that judgment. I need to look up the strategies speakers actually use

Damkerng T.

19:35

(I can see why it could be bad, but is it really bad?)

Anonymous

I know my own judgments are a little idiosyncratic

Anonymous

Arnold Zwicky wrote about this topic.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Now that I stare at it, it's started to seem okay again.

Damkerng T.

Hehe.

Anonymous

That's the problem with trying to do stuff based on your own judgments--they change the longer you look at something ;-)

Anonymous

19:37

Although I think a lot of us put a lot of confidence into our own personal grammaticality judgments.

Damkerng T.

By the way, when I use a singular they, which should I say between they is and they are?

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. It's like singular you. You say "you are" even if it has a singular referent.

Damkerng T.

Oh, I see! Thank you.

It shouldn't be a problem if I'd thought of "you are".

I think that Walden question is intersting.

It's strange that they asked about "any" instead of "lest".

Anonymous

No, it makes sense. Any is an NPI and lest is a covertly negative subordinator licensing NPIs (typically following predicates of fearing)

Damkerng T.

And somehow it also gave me a feeling that one person can have more than one user accounts on ELL.

Anonymous

19:42

What some linguists would call a 'negative trigger'

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. You can. There's nothing wrong with doing so--unless you use it for abuse, of course!

Anonymous

If, for example, you vote up your own answers, that is called "sock puppetry" and is grounds for unpleasantness

Damkerng T.

@snailboat My first reaction was that, if they knew the meaning of lest, they wouldn't have asked about any like that.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Well, I think you can view "negative trigger" as a syntactic trait (it is after all a matter of licensing)

Anonymous

However, it's obviously closely tied to semantics, as you suggest!

Damkerng T.

19:44

@snailboat Got it. I think no abuse has been made, up to this point.

Anonymous

> I doubt [ that's even true at all ] .

Anonymous

Here, doubt is covertly negative (meaning "negative without an overt negator like not").

Anonymous

It licenses negative polarity items in the subordinate clause it takes as a complement

Anonymous

Here, even and at all.

Anonymous

Contrast with the positive:

Anonymous

19:47

> *I sincerely believe [ that's even true at all ] .

Anonymous

> I sincerely believe [ that's ~~even~~ true ~~at all~~ ] .

Damkerng T.

> I sincerely believe that's true, though not by much.

Anonymous

There, you have an overt negator not so the question of NPI much is not related to the verb believe

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

"NPI" isn't exactly a coherent category.

Anonymous

19:51

Some NPIs appear in interrogative contexts. Others don't.

Anonymous

But it's still helpful as a concept, even if sometimes you have to go into a bit of extra detail to describe stuff accurately.

Anonymous

Do you think I should have answered the lest question on ELL instead of suggesting it be moved?

Damkerng T.

I'm sure I can't describe it accurately, but I'm aware of the concept.

@snailboat To me, it's unnecessary.

Anonymous

Answering at all, you mean?

Anonymous

Or moving?

Damkerng T.

19:54

However, I wonder how many of our ELL will use lest in real life.

@snailboat Moving is unnecessary, imo.

Anonymous

The sentence structure in that question is archaic.

Anonymous

I thought they might get a better answer on ELU.

Damkerng T.

It's hard enough to understand lest correctly.

Anonymous

We still use lest on occasion, but not in the same way.

Anonymous

Do you have a link to the question handy? I can't find it.

Damkerng T.

19:57

0

Q: What is this "any"?

Who that has heard a strain of music feared then lest he should speak extravagantly any more forever? (Source: Thoreau's Walden, Ch. 18, Para. 6) I don't understand why "any more" is used here. There is no negative here.

grammar

It's still on my tabs. :D

The tabs for "unfinished business" on ELL. :D

Anonymous

I see, the migration was rejected.

Damkerng T.

I didn't reject it.

Anonymous

Someone on ELU did.

Damkerng T.

Just staying neutral, in this case.

Anonymous

I don't have 3000 reputation there yet, so I can't vote to close.

Damkerng T.

20:00

Ah, I see.

Anonymous

I'm 285 reputation away.

Damkerng T.

Huh?

Anonymous

From 3000 points on ELU.

Damkerng T.

Oh, I see. :-)

Anonymous

So if I wanted to, I could probably hit 3k and gain the ability to cast close votes.

Anonymous

20:01

I'd just have to write a few answers, I suppose.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

I wonder what specifically it was closed for on ELU

Anonymous

english.stackexchange.com/questions/157200/what-is-this-any

Anonymous

> This question was voluntarily removed by its author.

Anonymous

Was the migration "rejected" because they deleted it from ELU?

Damkerng T.

20:04

That's possible, considering that deleting their own questions is their usual.

Anonymous

Oh, do you think it's userbunchofnumbers?

Damkerng T.

Exactly. :D

Anonymous

That's too bad--I don't think the question will get a proper answer on ELL unless StoneyB writes it

Anonymous

Although I could be wrong.

Damkerng T.

I'm not even sure if my interpretation is correct, but I think it's close enough.

Anonymous

20:05

I'm sure we have other users that could answer it

Damkerng T.

Oh, that's what I'm sure too.

Anonymous

But I'm not sure they will.

Damkerng T.

Hehe.

Anonymous

Well, I don't want to write an answer for it.

Damkerng T.

Oh, my, how should I parse this title?

> Italian man shot in the head injured sneeze ejected the bullet

Anonymous

20:13

It doesn't seem grammatical, even for headlinese. Have I parsed it wrong?

Damkerng T.

I guess he did an "injured sneeze".

He was shot in the cheekbone.

Later, he sneezed the bullet out.

Anonymous

[ Italian man shot in the head ] is a particularly poor attributive modifier

Anonymous

And injured sneeze is a weird sort of hypallage, I think

Damkerng T.

I got that sentence because I was searching for "injured sneeze".

Anonymous

But that's the only way I can make sense of it: [ [ Italian man shot in the head ] [ injured sneeze ] ] ejected [ the bullet ]

Anonymous

20:16

Which does not seem grammatical to me

Anonymous

Alternatively, pretend there are three commas and a hyphen:

Anonymous

> Italian man, shot in the head, injured, sneeze-ejected the bullet

Damkerng T.

That sounds much better!

Anonymous

But I'm not really prepared to read the original that way

Damkerng T.

22:52

19

A: "1 in 10 are" or "1 in 10 is"?

Both are commonly used and acceptable. There are various common cases where a superficially singular subject can or indeed must be associated with a plural verb: The government [are/is] considering the proposal. A lot of these matters [have/*has] been dealt with. The majority [are/...

> But there's really no God-given reason to expect the verb to agree necessarily with the head noun and actual data clearly contradicts this assumption.

I think it's about proximal agreement.

Anonymous

Ahh . . . I don't know.

Anonymous

Perhaps the grammatical number of the phrase "one in ten" is unclear.

Anonymous

I think you can use singular or plural agreement in this case.

Anonymous

> One in ten children is secretly a lamprey.
> One in ten children are secretly lampreys.

Anonymous

What do you think of these sentences?

Damkerng T.

22:57

One in ten is tricky.

Anonymous

I think this is another case where looking at it, it's easy for my intuition to change

Damkerng T.

But if it's not about percentage, I would prefer the first one.

Anonymous

As I started looking at it, is sounded better.

Anonymous

When I first heard it, my intuition was to use are.

Damkerng T.

> One of these ten children is secretly a lamprey.

I think this one definitely needs is.

But to be honest, how would the child be like if they were called a lamprey? Is it a slangword or something? :D

Anonymous

23:00

One of a linguist's secret duties is to amuse people with examples.

Anonymous

No, lamprey isn't slang

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I would say is is correct, but amuse should probably be replaced by torture. :-)

Or take it another way, enlighten is also good there.

Another Q on ELU seems to prefer is: english.stackexchange.com/questions/157293/…

Oh, hi, @Nico.

Nico

hi

Damkerng T.

Welcome to the chat room. :-)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Yeah, but I think objectively either is fine.

Anonymous

23:09

Not to say that you can't prefer one or the other, but I think maybe it varies too much to pick a winner.

Anonymous

For what it's worth, I like become in that example :-)

Damkerng T.

> 1 in 7 apples become green?

Anonymous

0

A: 1 in 7 appleS becomeS green? or, 1 in 7 apple becomeS green? or, 1 in 7 appleS become green?

ruakh, I wanted to give you an UP, but I'm too new. But I liked your reply.

Anonymous

Quick! Flag it! :-)

Anonymous

Oh, flagging NaAs is so exciting!

Anonymous

23:11

@DamkerngT. Yeah. Although the longer I stare at it, the more I like becomes.

Damkerng T.

Flagged.

Anonymous

That seems to be a pattern with me. When I don't think about it, plural agreement seems normal. When I sit there and think about it, singular agreement seems normal.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Yay! Go team!

Damkerng T.

Is it possible that the agreement seems to work differently when you speak from when you read/write?

Anonymous

Well, erm, um, . . .

Anonymous

23:12

I certainly think it is is possible

Anonymous

But I would need to be convinced that it's actually the case :-)

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English Language Learners