English Language Learners

Anonymous

16:01

0

Is there some special rule for words starting with two consonants? I was taught to use a article when a word starts with consonant (or an otherwise). I just wrote "a mPOS device" but MS Word proposes to use "an". I can hear "emPOs". Is this a special rule or the Word spell checker bug? Thanks

Anonymous

That sounds like a duplicate to me! :-)

Damkerng T.

Yes!

MARamezani

Ah, come on! Isn't that "too brood", at least?

Anonymous

No, the answer is quite simple

Damkerng T.

@MARamezani Eh, why too broad?

Anonymous

16:02

Words that start with consonants phonemically are preceded by a; words that start with vowels phonemically are preceded by an

Anonymous

That's the whole answer

MARamezani

Hmm, maybe I couldn't have summed it up like that.

Damkerng T.

> I just wrote "a mPOS device" but MS Word proposes to use "an". I can hear "emPOs".

Anonymous

I mean, sure, you can elaborate on what precisely that means, or put it in other terms.

Anonymous

"It's based on sound, not how it's spelled"

Damkerng T.

16:04

I can hear "emPOs", so I wonder what confused him.

Anonymous

Since he can hear that it begins with a vowel, if someone tells him that the rule is about sound, he should be fine.

MARamezani

@DamkerngT. Obviously the spelling.

Damkerng T.

But if he can hear *emPOS", he should also hear "anempos".

Anonymous

As a bonus, someone could explain the traditional rule about ði-ðə allomorphy

MARamezani

Hah, I finally earned "electorate".

Anonymous

16:07

(Pronounce the with the /i/ vowel before vowel sounds, pronounce the with the /ə/ vowel before consonant sounds)

Damkerng T.

The thing is I believe that we already have such a question (and answers).

Congrats!

Anonymous

Me too, and that's one reason I didn't rush to answer it … :-)

Anonymous

@MARamezani Nice, a gold badge!

MARamezani

Youngest to earn it, I'd say!

I earned it sooner than fanatic. :O

Anonymous

I still don't have Fanatic on ELL.

Damkerng T.

16:09

I see. So the pronounciation is the rule. — Leos Literak 50 secs ago

See, self-answerable.

Anonymous

There you go, Leos Literak.

MARamezani

I think he's gonna delete that question.

Anonymous

I still feel like the would be a nice bonus.

MARamezani

Yeah, let's be sure about everything.

> Once upon a dream, ah was a hoomin.

That's F.E.'s about me.

What does it mean?

Anonymous

I believe he is now a tiger.

MARamezani

16:12

"Ah", I suppose, is "I".

Right?

Anonymous

Once Upon a Dream is presumably a reference to Maleficent

Anonymous

@MARamezani Yes, that's correct

MARamezani

@snailboat Or he could be a doll.

Anonymous

I can't speak for F.E., but I know that when he used to come around chat, he talked about Maleficent a lot.

Anonymous

@MARamezani He could be. I have the sneaking suspicion, though, that he is not

Damkerng T.

16:14

Sometimes Tiger chatted with Robot.

MARamezani

Once upon a dream, huh @DamkerngT.?

Damkerng T.

Robot remembers that Robot had to patch our walls lots of times.

Anonymous

I don't really want to discuss him at length in his absence, though

Anonymous

Since I don't believe he wants to be a part of ELL chat

Anonymous

But hopefully we've cleared up what his "About Me" means, at least to the extent that I can help with :-)

Anonymous

16:16

If you have further questions, you could perhaps leave him a temporary comment somewhere

Anonymous

And ask him directly

Anonymous

(Not really SE policy, but ELL is a fairly chatty place)

MARamezani

So now that we're backbiting, does anyone know why CarSmack changed to that name?

Anonymous

I don't know why he changed his name to Doulos

Anonymous

It's not my intention to speak ill of anyone who isn't present

MARamezani

16:21

I know @snailboat. It's not nice.

But we're not ill-talking.

Anonymous

Well, you said backbiting :-)

MARamezani

We're just talking.

Anonymous

So I wanted to issue a disclaimer.

Damkerng T.

I think MARamezani meant just talking behind their back.

Anonymous

That has negative connotations, too! :-)

Damkerng T.

16:23

Perhaps not as strong as backbiting.

Anonymous

Hmm, perhaps not―I'm not really familiar with backbiting. I had to look it up

MARamezani

Yes, Damkerng. I've been through hell to translate my religious laws about backbiting to English!

I have a fairly adequate knowledge about the thing.

It's negative connotation.

Islamic teachings treat both the same way.

Damkerng T.

Sometimes it's quite difficult to map a word in one culture to another.

MARamezani

0

Q: Can you help me define parts of speech in these sentences?

Some of them don't even have predicates. I simply don't understand how to distinguish parts of speech here. What a still perfect day! No sound! A lovely evening. Then the first stars.

grammar syntax

Are those ellipsed, or are they minor sentences?

What a still perfect day!

Anonymous

Why do they want to identify the parts of speech in those sentences, I wonder?

Anonymous

16:29

@MARamezani That's a type of major sentence, an exclamative

MARamezani

Nah, I mean isn't it awkward?

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I think their name, Study.English.Well, suggests that they could be a teacher.

MARamezani

They ask those types of Qs a lot.

Anonymous

Oh, wait, it's true that there's no predicate there

Damkerng T.

> What a still perfect day!

Anonymous

16:30

"What a still perfect day ~~this is~~!"

Damkerng T.

Hmm... I think I've never heard What a still before.

Anonymous

We could construe it as ellipsis if we wanted :-)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Me either. It must mean nothing is moving

Damkerng T.

lol

Anonymous

In which case it would be reduced from a full exclamative clause

MARamezani

16:31

I guess they're solving a stupid grammar book's exercises.

Anonymous

Sounds likely

Anonymous

You could construe a lot of those as ellipsis if you wanted to. The problem is that you can't construe every nonsentential utterance as ellipsis

Damkerng T.

I think all of them are some forms of ellipses.

MARamezani

Argh, they never write good titles.

Damkerng T.

On Chem.SE?

Anonymous

16:33

And in other cases, there's no clear choice for the ellipted material: "It's a lovely evening." "What a lovely evening." "This is a lovely evening."

MARamezani

Nah, I mean that user: Study.English.Better.com

Forget strike tag.

Anonymous

In chat, strikeout has special markup: ---three dashes before and after---

Anonymous

I'm not sure it'll work in that case, though.

MARamezani

Thanks. I'll remember that.

Anonymous

Study.English.Better.---com--- 　　←　Let's try!

Anonymous

16:34

Failure.

Anonymous

~~But it's pretty handy when discussing~~ ellipsis

MARamezani

Maybe it's because of the dot: Study.English.Better. ~~com~~

Anonymous

Yeah.

Anonymous

That's why I suspected it wouldn't work

MARamezani

Yay.

I learned the thing.

Damkerng T.

16:35

The nicest thing about ellipsis is we can insert anything we like (that makes sense for us)!

Anonymous

Yay! :-)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. That's also the least nice thing about ellipsis.

Anonymous

If we don't use it in a rigorous fashion, then it loses all explanatory value

Damkerng T.

Isn't it good that we can communicate without having to communicate explicitly? :-)

Anonymous

As you can change any sentence to mean anything at all if you're willing to posit arbitrary ellipsis ~~except this one, 'cause its meaning is so clear no amount of ellipsis could possibly change it~~

Damkerng T.

16:37

I mean, the use of it, not the explanation for the question.

MARamezani

Yes ~~it's good that we communicate~~.

Damkerng T.

Right! ~~This is kinda fun, I think!~~

Anonymous

Well, there are definitely rules about what you can insert.

MARamezani

~~Yeah~~.

Anonymous

And they're language-particular.

Anonymous

16:38

For example, in Japanese, you can usually leave out a negator if it's clear from context. In English, you can do that.

MARamezani

I wonder what this would look like: :)

Anonymous

You might be able to figure out I left not out of my last sentence about English, but English doesn't really work that way, so it ends up rather confusing

MARamezani

Oh, it doesn't look like anything.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I mentally filled that not for you!

Anonymous

Yep! But leaving it out is more or less an error in English rather than a grammatical option :-)

Damkerng T.

16:40

@MARamezani Makes me think of watermelon!

Anonymous

My sentence was misnegated.

MARamezani

This is watermelon: :O

Oh, I can use that whenever I want to type big theta.

Anonymous

I type te-ta with Japanese input. θ or Θ

MARamezani

Hi @Freddy!

Damkerng T.

I'm wondering what part of speech no and not are.

> There is no sound!

Anonymous

16:43

@DamkerngT. No is a clear determiner

Damkerng T.

It looks like an adverb to me.

MARamezani

TADA!

Anonymous

In fact, in the 19th century some grammarians called it the negative article

3

MARamezani

36

Q: Help us test the shiny new "User Activity" page! (Plus a bunch of new features.)

Today, we're shipping the new "Activity Page" of the Profile here on Meta SE, so you can test it out and hopefully share some feedback and suggestions before we ship it network wide. Hate words? Assuming you're signed in, just click your face up in the top bar, and you can see it right now. Or,...

discussion featured design profile-page feedback

Anonymous

To go along with a and the

Damkerng T.

16:44

@snailboat Oh, that's an interesting idea.

Anonymous

That was when the determiner category was less fleshed out, of course

Anonymous

Of course, articles are prototypical determiners

Anonymous

So you could still call it that if you wanted―it's just tradition that we label a and the only that way, really

Freddy

@MARamezani hello

Damkerng T.

@MARamezani Coming soon?

Freddy

16:45

Hello everyone

Damkerng T.

Hi @Freddy!

MARamezani

I just saw it featured on meta.

Freddy

~~ohh so this is done like this~~

Damkerng T.

:)

Anonymous

No is similar to determiners like the and which in being number neutral

Damkerng T.

16:47

Hmm... If no is a determiner I think we can call all of these "noun phrases".

Anonymous

Whereas determiners like a and one and every work with singular nouns specifically

Damkerng T.

> What a still perfect day!
No sound! A lovely evening. Then the first stars.

Anonymous

No sound is a noun phrase.

Anonymous

Then doesn't really seem to fit into a noun phrase

Damkerng T.

Then the first stars is a bit different. It's Then + a noun phrase.

Anonymous

16:48

I guess it does under some circumstances as a peripheral modifier...?

Anonymous

I'd have to look up then to figure out how to describe it

Damkerng T.

I think this then is a conjunction.

Anonymous

Well, then you must think of the example as a reduced clause

Damkerng T.

nods

MARamezani

:(

Anonymous

16:49

Why sadface?

MARamezani

The new shiny change isn't for betas.

Damkerng T.

> The sun came up. Then the first stars ~~appeared~~.

MARamezani

Duh, I was stupid.

Damkerng T.

Hmm... Macmillan seems to suggest that that then is an adverb.

Anonymous

Yeah, but the traditional adverb category is too broad to be especially useful as a description

Anonymous

16:54

So you need to be more specific

Anonymous

Certainly then is not much like very

Damkerng T.

@Hellion Oh, yes! I didn't read the whole sentence. Thanks for the correction. (I should remove my comment but that would leave Hellion's comment dangling, so I'll keep it there to remind me of my own mistake. :-)) — Damkerng T. 55 secs ago

MARamezani

Guys, one question has bothered me as soon as I became a member in ELL.

Anonymous

As long as the mistake doesn't mislead anyone

Damkerng T.

That's what I get from my 10-second reading/reviewing. :-)

Anonymous

16:59

Being exposed to a mistake and correction may leave someone worse off than if they learned the right thing in the first place

MARamezani

@DamkerngT. You robo-reviewer!

Anonymous

Students don't always remember which things they read are mistakes and which are correct―they tend to pick up whatever language they're exposed to

Damkerng T.

@MARamezani Sometimes I do that!

@snailboat That's so true!

MARamezani

@snailboat That's not quite true for a careful reader.

Anonymous

@MARamezani What makes you think so?

MARamezani

17:01

I sometimes get like that.

And that sometimes is when I don't pay enough attention to what I read.

Anonymous

Just keep in mind the introspection illusion and that many effects are observable more through scientific study than via anecdote

MARamezani

Oh, I can't argue with that!

Btw, I had a question....

Damkerng T.

which is...?

MARamezani

Why isn't there a policy against answering questions that are gonna get closed (especially when as a dup)?

Anonymous

Well, there is an expectation that people not do so

Anonymous

17:06

And especially people who've close voted

MARamezani

There is this question:

0

Q: The brown bears found At / In / On?

The brown bears found on / in/ at Kodiak Island are the largest in the world. Here's the prepositions that I will always get mixed up. on It is more likely to emphasize that bear was found on the Island not a land. So, the author might talk about how bear can be found 'on a island' or s...

prepositions

Anonymous

But people nonetheless answer AND close vote on the same question

Damkerng T.

@MARamezani I just wish that all the high-rep users would do that automatically.

Anonymous

Of course, if you believe a question should be open, then why not answer?

MARamezani

It's a dup, and some earned rep by answering it.

Anonymous

17:06

Even if you think other people will close it.

Damkerng T.

(I mean avoid answering those questions.)

MARamezani

You lost me!

Let me read the script.

Anonymous

Some users go as far as inserting placeholder answers on questions they believe will be unjustly closed

Anonymous

So that they can edit these into proper answers at a later date, if the time runs out on them

Anonymous

Of course, if you believe a question should be open, you might answer and vote to reopen after it gets closed

Anonymous

17:08

And sometimes questions do manage to get reopened.

Damkerng T.

I think closed questions and duplicate questions aren't the same thing.

Anonymous

Duplicates are a type of closed question

Anonymous

But they're special in that they aren't automatically deleted

Damkerng T.

Only some of the closed questions are duplicate, yes.

MARamezani

Yes. I've seen the case a lot, specifically on ELL.

Anonymous

17:08

They're the kind of closed question we want most.

Anonymous

We don't want off-topic questions or questions that make no sense

Damkerng T.

Other closed or soon-to-be-closed ones are sometimes worth fighting for.

Anonymous

But duplicates are okay―they help future users find the (hopefully correct) answer to another question

MARamezani

I give up!

Damkerng T.

On what? That question?

MARamezani

17:10

But still, couldn't one just answer a dup and get [dirty] reps for that?

By answer, I mean a copy.

Damkerng T.

@MARamezani I think that happened quite a lot! I wondered every time what was in their mind when someone wrote an answer they knew it was duplicate.

Anonymous

If you see a copied answer, flag it for deletion

Damkerng T.

@MARamezani Another trending thing here is to Google for an answer on other sites and copy it to ELL.

MARamezani

Would that work?

Anonymous

If you see an answer copied from another site, flag it for deletion

MARamezani

17:13

@DamkerngT. Indeed!

Anonymous

Plagiarism should be deleted on sight

Anonymous

If there's attribution, then it's potentially okay

Damkerng T.

Some of our answerers are relatively advanced when it's about this copying.

MARamezani

Yup. Not about only one answer.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat If we look closer, I think even in those answers with attribution are potentially misleading. I mean they could sum it up differently from the original.

MARamezani

17:14

Or reference.

Anonymous

If they're wrong, we can downvote

Anonymous

ELL doesn't have nearly enough downvotes

Damkerng T.

nods

MARamezani

But....but....but I'll lose a rep if I downvote an answer! :)

Damkerng T.

I don't really care much about the rep points. What really worries me is I'm not sure how well it will be received.

But I do agree that we could use a lot more downvotes on ELL.

MARamezani

17:19

There are serial upvotes (as in, going on an upvote spree on different questions from different users) who never get caught.

To simply outmatch others' vote counts, or for a reason I can't imagine.

Damkerng T.

(BTW, I think I could say that because I already have enough rep points to engage in any activities on our main site.)

@MARamezani Oh, really?

MARamezani

Yes.

Anonymous

@MARamezani That's right, that's one of the two things that reputation buys you apart from privilege―downvotes and bounties

Anonymous

Since ELL has so many misleading answers, it's helpful to use comments or downvotes when appropriate―for example, if the misleading answer is the highest ranked one

Anonymous

Then the goal is to get the correct answer to the top

Anonymous

17:22

Comments are good, but they aren't always useful.

Anonymous

Bounties are good, too. I like to set bounties to work on the unanswered question list

Anonymous

Unfortunately, last time two of my bounties failed :-(

Damkerng T.

Aww

Anonymous

I have now offered 6800 reputation in bounties

MARamezani

ELL is way better when it gets to "unanswered".

Anonymous

17:23

I don't really like to see it go down the drain like that―maybe I should pick better questions to bounty?

Anonymous

We have 274 "unanswered" questions

MARamezani

In chemistry, the first unanswered has a 25 score.

In ELL, some of those questions are the ones that are actually "case-closed".

Damkerng T.

I bet that it's not easy to find old but good questions in the unanswered list.

Anonymous

On Japanese, our top unanswered is scored 8

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. That's true.

Anonymous

17:24

I go through the list and upvote every answer I can to try to remove them from the list

Anonymous

But lately it seems like that's only a small fraction

Anonymous

That's why the list is still over 200―I can't find answers worth upvoting :-(

Damkerng T.

Maybe we can try another method: vote to close!

Anonymous

Sure. I've done that too, but probably 1% of the time or less

MARamezani

Closing! COUNT ME IN! Too bad, I don't have an account.

Damkerng T.

17:26

Oh, top voted questions in the unanswered list are actually pretty good!

But take some time to read, I think.

MARamezani

Look at the one in chemistry!

25

Q: Is there a general consensus on the causes of the alpha-effect?

There have been various explanations posited for the $\alpha$-effect. The $\alpha$-effect refers to a phenomenon wherein nucleophiles with lone pairs on atoms adjacent (i.e., in the $\alpha$- position) to the atom bearing the reacting lone pair sometimes exhibit dramatically higher reactivity tha...

organic-chemistry thermodynamics kinetics theoretical-chemistry

Now that's a question! (Though I don't get it)

Damkerng T.

I really like your question and the research you have done. I also think your reasoning is quite solid. However, as the definition is quite vague and attempt on finding a 'true'explanation can also only be vague. I agree with you that transition state stabilisation might be the strongest clue so far, but I am also afraid, that it remains an rather unsolved question so far. (Anyway, I'd be delighted if you could post doi or isbn into your question.) — Martin May 12 '14 at 10:12

MARamezani

Oh, this has turned into some kind of patriots' war!

Damkerng T.

Sounds like something unanswerable.

I don't know much about chemistry, anyway.

A bounty would be useful in this case.

MARamezani

See that user (Martin)?

Damkerng T.

17:28

Yes?

MARamezani

He's the most welcoming user I've seen in SE.

Damkerng T.

:D

MARamezani

His profile pic is actually very "cool" now.

It was friendlier.

Freddy

Martin taught me how to be moderator in CSE

MARamezani

17:42

Oh, Freddy, I don't think chemistry.SE is still that much "out-of-beta" for it to be CSE. One would might think of it as Cooking.SE or such.

Whew! That's a brainful. "The setbacks to the Minsk deal [ since the rebels disavowed it by taking a strategic town they said was not covered by the truce ] have prompted new calls for U.S. President Barack Obama to give Kiev lethal weapons to defend Ukraine." — snailboat 43 secs ago

Is it that brainful? :)

Anonymous

Nah, it's a brainful. :-)

Anonymous

Inserting that many words between the subject and verb can make it a bit difficult to keep track of what's going on.

MARamezani

I didn't have any other uses of "since" in mind, and I thought it's really rudimentary.

Anonymous

You have to be able to fit the whole thing inside your brain to understand it, which means reading it all at once and having it in your working memory. When learners are just starting out, they can't chunk their L2 as effectively and read more slowly, both of which increase the demands on your working memory

Anonymous

A beginner might not make it all the way to the verb have without getting lost

Anonymous

17:50

Keep in mind that what's rudimentary for you may not be for others :-)

MARamezani

@snailboat Unrelated, but this reminded me of "one man's meat is the other's poison". I have no clue why!

Anonymous

Just for fun: corpus.byu.edu/coca/?c=coca&q=37331927

MARamezani

It looked like an LCDOE!

Anonymous

I have the full version of the LDOCE on my electronic dictionary

Anonymous

It's pretty neat

Damkerng T.

17:56

@MARamezani Nice parse!

MARamezani

LDOCE, LCDOE, Whatever!

Anonymous

@MARamezani CGEL categorizes this under "verbless exclamatives", suggesting that it's interpreted with be and the subject understood, so as a type of ellipsis like we discussed

Anonymous

They also point out that you can omit just be

MARamezani

GP.

Anonymous

> What a terrible thing, that 'wailing wall' in Berlin!

Anonymous

17:57

That's their example for be omitted but the subject retained

Damkerng T.

By the way, if someone mentioned something as a sort of suggestion and said, "What say?", would you consider it rude?

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Hmm, it's not part of my dialect so I'm not sure …

Damkerng T.

I've just read "What say we" on ELU and it reminds me of "What say?" I've seen before.

MARamezani

@DamkerngT. "what say?" or "say what?"

Anonymous

@MARamezani I don't understand "GP"

MARamezani

17:59

Good point.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. "What say you?" and such is comprehensible to me

Anonymous

The only expansion I could think of in context for GP was Geoffrey Pullum, but Rodney Huddleston wrote that chapter of CGEL

Anonymous

Ah, "good point"?

MARamezani

:D

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