@MAR is there anything this spell checker doesn't pick on about?Pick on is an object verb, so it would need to be "doesn't pick on you/one for?" Maybe more artfully: that it doesn't complain about?
I hope you help me with these sentences:
It must have been pretty tough when you started a business
When you started a business must have been pretty tough.
I know sentence 1 can be used as right, but I was wondering if I could phrase sentence 2 as much as people use sentence 1.
Well, the first part of my life, I was pretty isolated. Just around other Americans in a small town. And no internet, etc.
So, grammar issues were just between other native speakers, and between teachers and students: Are you saying it right? Am I saying it right? And it's always been so emotional!
It used to have stronger statements about whom often sounding "pompous"!
This new one is still good guidance (my personal opinion), but it is not as easy to read or as interesting as the last one. More neutral, though. Maybe that's good.
You have used the word "doubt" several times today.
It is balanced, because they themselves make fun of India and certain things about Indian culture, but underneath, there is an obvious love of their culture and people, and the characters are very funny and likeable.
I hope you can help me with these sentences:
It must have been pretty tough when you started a business
When you started a business must have been pretty tough.
I know sentence 1 can be used correctly, but is sentence 2 just as common or correct?
It's hard to explain, because you can make the OP's construction in English, though it's unusual. For example, "When you arrived was a bad time to talk to the boss."
@Man_From_India Let's see…another factor here is that "when" the business was started wasn't tough; what's tough is starting a business. "When you started a business" functions here as an adverb, not as a subject. English demands a subject, so this sentence calls for the fictitious "it".
@Man_From_India In other words, at the time you started the business, starting the business was pretty tough.
@Man_From_India Well, if a person really wanted to say that the time was tough, then the OP's phrasing is actually right. But in English, that's a weird thing to say. On the other hand, you can use the word "times" to mean prevailing conditions, as in teh well-known sentence "times are tough".
Wait, are you telling me that "When you started whatever you did, a business must have been pretty though." as a weird sentence but grammatical doesn't work?
@Man_From_India Saying that the time was tough goes against the grain of English. We do say "times are tough" and "I had a tough time", but that's different, because those don't use "when" to refer to the time. It can be done; it's just weird.
The difference is whether you're using "When you started" as an adverbial phrase or as the subject of the sentence. It's weird to use it as the subject of the sentence, although, if you read up above, I gave an example where it's done.
@DamkerngT. Ha! Yeah, looking at these things with a microscope can foul up your intuition. Actually using language is almost completely unrelated to thinking and talking about language.
> It's hard to explain, because you can make the OP's construction in English, though it's unusual. For example, "When you arrived was a bad time to talk to the boss."
@BenKovitz The problem is most non-native learners (of any languages, probably) expect that every aspect in the L2 they're learning will be in black-and-white.
I think this is a common human tendency when starting to learn anything that is inherently messy and complicated: "Oh, come on! Can't you just tell me a few rules so I can learn all this in a few minutes?"
@DamkerngT. Yep! We also want anything new to work like something we're already very familiar with, and we get frustrated when it just doesn't work that way—especially if it almost works that way.
@DamkerngT. I think an important thing to do with L2 learners is repeatedly disabuse them of the idea that they're going to learn the language by memorizing rules and definitions. You have to encourage them to pick it up from real usage, using rules and explicit descriptions as an aid to help them better imitate real usage. Imitating examples is at least 90% of how you really learn.
@Man_From_India I just read your answer. Wow, that's quite good! You caught that "when" is introducing an adverbial clause, even though in other sentences it can introduce the subject.
@DamkerngT. I've also been surprised by how hard it is to search ELL. I find it easier to just use Google (and fight against its "feature" where it calls the ELL search for you!).
@Man_From_India Seriously, even choosing examples from dictionaries requires judgement and insight. I've often encountered poor or even wrong examples in dictionaries.
Hmm... In his first alternative, It must have been pretty tough when you started a business, that a sounds really awkward to me. And yet it hasn't been addressed by anyone.
The is probably better, but I think I would use your.
A-ha! I see. Maybe the sentence was meant for a super-rich person who started a new business or two every day at that point in time.
@DamkerngT. Ah, yes. I noticed that, too. I figure it's a secondary matter, not what the OP is asking about, but I could be wrong.
@DamkerngT. The choice of "a" suggests that the speaker is asking about the generally prevailing conditions at that time, not just the speaker's own business. It's very subtle. And if the OP has that meaning in mind, I can see why he might think of "When you started a business" as the subject of the sentence.
@DamkerngT. Indeed context can modify virtually anything. (This is part of the fun of poetry!) The complex influence of context is another thing that L2 speakers try to avoid, as well as something that throws off L1 speakers when explaining the language. Often an L1 speaker will get fixated on the typical context for something and take it as a "rule", unaware of the influence of context.
Hmm, basically the battle seems to be: rules vs. context. Rules try to identify things you can depend on in any context. There's precious little of that in English.
@DamkerngT. I think you're right. And it's amazing how many bad sentences can be right if set up right. (Probably still only a tiny minority can be made right by context, when you consider just how many bad sentences one could invent.)
@DamkerngT. My answer here probably didn't do the OP any good, but it was fun to write! It tries to explain how even some very bizarre stretches of grammar can sound right and even be the best choice.
@DamkerngT. I've been meaning to compose a little poem to illustrate exactly how the bizarre inversion could work. Then i remind myself that I have a Ph.D. to finish. (And then I post something else to ELL…)
Talking about bizarre stretches, I posted 7 of them last April. I'm rather sure that you've already seen those sentences: ell.stackexchange.com/questions/20304/….
@BenKovitz That's not a fun fact. We can't always have all the fun in the world. :-)
@DamkerngT. Ha! I hadn't seen that question. (I'm actually a bit of a newbie on ELL.) I'm not surprised both that it got 18 upvotes and that it got closed. Each of the seven sentences would make a fine question, though.
Some probably fit ELU or the linguistics SE better than ELL. #4 is commonly used as evidence against Chomsky's theory of syntax (wrongly, in my opinion), because English speakers can't parse it.
@DamkerngT. BTW, several native speakers objected to this answer about unconventional word order because—I suspect—they were taking one common usage as a rule, not aware of the contextual factors that shape it.
@DamkerngT. Wow! if you can parse that sentence in real time, you're doing better than me.
Possibly a major source of confusion is the way we sometimes use the conditional mood for things that are not conditional. Off the top of my head, I'm not sure why "I wish you would be more careful" gets the conditional while "I wish the search engine were more powerful" doesn't.
Here's a guess: in the "more careful" sentence, "would" suggests both the future and volition. In the "search engine" sentence, the intended meaning is an alternate reality right now. But this surely isn't the whole story.
> This was my experience when iOS was flattened. Although primitive seeming at first, after a few weeks, it felt fine—and its predecessors looked clumsy. http://www.erickarjaluoto.com/blog/apple-doesnt-design-for-yesterday/
I wonder if everyone else will feel the same way.
(I'm still at iOS 7.)
> You’re living in Apple’s past, and, in time, you’ll move forward. When you do, you’ll find a system that works as intended: because Apple skates to where the puck is going to be.
I wonder if the history will repeat itself, like when Jobs was away from Apple the first time.
@Man_From_India @DamkerngT. "It turned out to be not the case" definitely awkward. I'm finding it hard to explain why. It's definitely grammatically correct, and there are definitely circumstances where it would fit well.
@AmitJoki You can use the simple present there, but the perfect present fits better because you're talking about a span of time that ends in the present. This question has my attempt to explain it.
@DamkerngT. My pleasure! And thanks for letting me know you liked it.
I get the impression that some people don't like the "time interval" theory. I simply made it up while I was answering this question. As far as I know, it has no academic "support". But I asked around and looked at a lot of examples, and I still haven't heard of one. And I think it explains the perfect aspect's use in English and way of thinking that you need to have in order to use it well.
The problem (which I think we could write a book about that easily) is that we can twist just one word, and the tense and aspect will work differently.
@DamkerngT. Yup. The variety of interpretations given just for "I have seen a dog", where the native speakers didn't even realize that other very ordinary interpretations were possible, well illustrates that.
@DamkerngT. I have some hope for the idea of replacing rules or precise definitions with some notion of a primary, or central, idea, which can be used, bent, stretched, and abused in new ways in every new situation—and also a certain way of conceptualizing things (like time), which makes certain things obvious and other things non-obvious. I'm not sure yet if talking about primary meanings, etc., is too vague to be useful.
@DamkerngT. I'm guessing that the downvotes were because there's no academic support for the idea. I don't know, though. It would be nice if at least one downvoter gave a reason, even a brief one.
@Man_From_India It's a long answer, but what's going on seems messy and complicated. Maybe someone else can write a shorter, simpler answer that gets it across more directly.
I hope you help me with these sentences:
It must have been pretty tough when you started a business
When you started a business must have been pretty tough.
I know sentence 1 can be used as right, but I was wondering if I could phrase sentence 2 as much as people use sentence 1.
