Saturday, March 20, 2021

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Is it correct to say "I know some people from before"?

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 09:51 AM PDT

Here I'm telling a friend that I am a new student in my class and there are some people I am acquainted with.

What suffix rule applies to making rival into rivalrous (i.e., is this legitimate)

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 09:32 AM PDT

I was annoyed to find my neuroscience textbook transforming the noun "rival" into an adjective in

...IT changes systematically when people and animals report switches in rivalrous percepts.

I checked my 1913 Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary and it had no such suffix production on the noun rival. It suggested a verbal noun form that would apply, i.e., rivalling. One might say then "report switches in rivaling percepts" (looks more like an adjective in context). I could not find "rivalrous" in an online text version of the Oxford English Dictionary I have (but might not be the entire Oxford). Now that I think of it, saying simply "rival percepts" would be correct.

I checked with Google Ngram American English and rivalrous showed no usage really until a spike shortly after 1920, then declined to almost nil usage but began to increase after 1940, reaching a very small decimal value (1e-6 percent) by 2019. British Ngram no usage until began to climb after 1960, reaching a similar "peak" of 1e-5 percent or the like (have trouble counting the decimal places).

My Princeton WordNet resource has rivalrous:

Overview of adj rivalrous

The adj rivalrous has 1 sense (no senses from tagged texts)

  1. emulous, rivalrous -- (eager to surpass others)

But WordNet admits it is very rare:

wn rivalrous -famla

Familiarity of adj rivalrous

rivalrous used as an adjective is very rare (polysemy count = 1)

The usual production for noun to adjective is

The simplest way to turn a noun into an adjective is to add suffixes to the end of the root word. The most common suffixes used to create adjectives are -ly, -able, -al, -ous, -ary, -ful, -ic, -ish, -less, -like and -y. For example, turn the noun "danger" into the adjective "dangerous" by adding the suffix -ous.

"rivalrous" appears to me to be an erroneous production which is somehow creeping into usage. But how should one produce an adjective from rival?

That-clause as an object after transitive verbs like "infer" and "inform"?

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 08:33 AM PDT

I came across an example sentence on Cambridge Dictionary of the word "infer", which is a transitive verb.

He inferred that she was not interested in a relationship from what she said in her letter.

I wonder if the logic of this usage is to make the that-clause a direct object to "infer". If it's the case, can I also say something like:

He informed that she would no longer attend the meetings.

instead of

He informed us that she would no longer attend the meetings.

Why is there a space in the bowdlerised "L– ." in Jane Eyre?

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 09:20 AM PDT

I have been reading Jane Eyre recently and came across a sentence the other day:

...and away we rattled over the "stony street" of L— .

There is a blank between "–" and the full stop, which made me quite confused. I know that the reason why the author used "L" instead of a concrete name is avoid to reveal someone's private information or be sued for libel, but this blank still perplexes me.

Why is there a space before the full stop? Is it a typo? If not, what does it mean?

A backdoor question

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 06:46 AM PDT

Bumped into an interesting phrase, '[they] may find themselves with a back door out of city'. Does that mean that people in question just have a chance to be thrown out of the city, or the idiom has any other inner or metaphorical meaning? Thanks in advance

Read the given conversation and note the main ideas discussed in this while applying any method of note taking [closed]

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 06:03 AM PDT

CONVERSATION START FROM HERE -> >> the title of my talk this evening is the art of effective communication and I wanted to find the communication can be simply defined as the delivering of information effective communication is when that information is actually received by your audience because he doesn't matter how great your delivery is your communication is ineffective if the information is actually received by your audience and I'll take it a step further and we should information be received by your audience but it also needs to be understood by your audience here's an example of a computer on that computer screen is a bunch of computer programming if you're not a computer programmer that information makes no sense you saw that the information has been delivered without understanding information in front of you that information is useless Mostly affective when your audience is able to take the information that you've given them and then relay it to another third-party that he got it he surely received the information and he truly understood able to share it with someone else I wanted to find art is really it's going with the flow it's being in the zone it's being present and adjusting is necessary because you can have all the structure in the world but you have to learn how to navigate through conversations you may need to navigate through questions or bottles or comments you may never of heard before excommunication really is an art form it's like a song and dance communication kind of reminds me of painting a painting let's see your original idea was to make a Lastro with the color orange put in the middle of the process you decide that it's about being in the zone Effective communication number one on the list is wasted time we waste so much time due to ineffective communication and I highly doubt anyone here second motion to see along with waste of time conversations drag on much longer than they need to and with that are emotions drag on much longer than they need to be ineffective communication also leads to misunderstandings and misunderstandings could lead to the eventual loss of relationship has anyone ever lost a relationship or a misunderstanding so you see the need for effective communication and I'm not here to proselytize but outside of this forum I share my Christian faith a lot and over the years and doing so I've literally had a conversation with thousands of different people these people are from every background And I know there may be similarities but you will never find a carbon copy conversation do you have to learn how to navigate through questions you may need to explain an idea in a different way if you receive it the first time your job as a communicator is to deliver a message and make sure that message is received and understood by your audience point-blank that say anything that hinders your audience information needs to be removed from your speech and this includes removing things like extra words extra stories and even extra motions one of the biggest hindrance to effective communication is talking for way longer than we need and this is not only because were dealing with people short attention span's but when you talk longer than necessary Station with someone and if you see this brings up a very serious issue there are people out there that suffer from a very serious disease and disease and this disease is commonly known as diarrhea of the mouth feels like a damn just broke in the floodwaters are gushing out just about every word in the English language no point it's a problem or problems arise with communication and conversations become more about the person wanting to be an actually delivering information that is a mathematical phrase this is the shortest distance between two points is a straight line and direct communication because after all You're angry at someone instead of directly telling the nature angry instead of directly telling them why you're angry and potentially sitting down and coming to a peaceful resolution you may give him the cold shoulder and by the way do you around him and slam doors but we do all these things hoping that this message will get across to feel understand that I'm mad at them instead of directly when you speak to understand that simplest city is Albert Einstein once said that if you can't explain it simply you don't understand it well enough I'll say that again Albert Einstein once said that if you can't explain it simply you don't understand it well enough that one of the biggest things Define your terms is huge and this is why you can end up using the same word as someone else and having different definitions as to what that word means and one of the best ways to clear this up by asking the following question what does that mean for you what does that word mean to you what does that phrase need to clear up confusion before you start do you need to know what your end goal is what do I want my audience to receive what's the information for message that I want them to receive it I'm a huge fan of a TV show the office from the office there's a scene where Michael Scott is talking to his boss David David wants to know why his branch is so successful and Michael says David don't have any reason any circumstance whatsoever I'll start a sentence and I don't even know where it's going I just hope I find it along the way now that's funny on TV not so much we're dealing with people one on one in the real world I truly feel that one of the biggest things is not the biggest thing that effective communication requires is the following humility humility is key when it comes to effective communication there are really two keys to humility number one is it you can always be you can always be wrong when you understand you understand to listen to opposing viewpoints listening to other peoples opinions listening to other peoples arguments and the fact the second key to humility is this it is not about you it's about your body Information the best way that your audience will receive it not necessarily the way you think the best sound in already and it's not what you say but it's how you say it well guess what it is what you say you have to know what you're talking about being a part of a conversation listening to someone talk about something you know they know nothing about and secondly it is how you say it you know if you're angry or condescending towards the number of negative tone your audience from receiving your message I don't want to add a third layer to this because it's not what is said or how it said but the third layer is this is what's being said coming from a trustworthy source Then your words will fall on deaf ears and it's really interesting how reputation ties into this to see if your reputation is a hot mess no one will listen to a word you say and why should anyone listen to the words you say when your life speaks a different message contrary to what you're preaching and take us home your actions what either promotes nullify your words I'll say it again your actions will either promote nullify your words direct munication in effective communication is a 2 Way St. in Denny's if you're not the one speaking and communicating you should be actively listening you shouldn't focus on more than one thing at a time and you should give your focus your attention See effective communication safe time it saves emotions and you could quite possibly save relationships aren't these things were saving

What did this girl say in this video? [closed]

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 05:17 AM PDT

I was watching this video 5:13. What I heard was "I will always read a short By-A?? book", which did not make sense to me. I hope someone can share what he thinks the girl said.

Uses of 'after all', 'withal', 'anyway', 'anyhow' instead of 'however'?

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 08:37 AM PDT

Suppose, a sentence is: 'He isn't qualified on paper; however, the interviewer recommends him to hire based on his great potential.' Can I use 'after all', 'withal', 'anyway' and 'anyhow' instead of 'however' in this sentence?

is my sentence correct? [closed]

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 04:55 AM PDT

One example of that is our history, we were taught about some things that we thought were true, and as we get exposed to other information, we tend to doubt our history's literature.

Crossing / Knocking at/on door

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 04:57 AM PDT

Context: I have received a feedback request for an interview process. The company didn't offer me the job, but I appreciate their approach in requesting feedback, so I am inclined to provide it. However, I'm not sure it's anonymous and I'd like to express some criticism, but I also would like to not be excluded from a possible recruiting process in the future because of my opinions. I told someone the following sentence:

I am reluctant to express negative feedback to someone whose door I might knock on again in the future.

They (native speaker) corrected me saying:

... whose door I might cross ...

Which version do you prefer?

Thanks!

A problem of the use of the Past Perfect tense in a complex sentense

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 04:02 AM PDT

Once there was a question on StackExchange about the reason for using Past Perfect with the verb "ask" in the pattern:

  • I wanted to order something on the Internet. I had asked for a new password when I realised that I had lost it. But I haven't got it yet.

Still it has been left unanswered.

Could someone explain it?

What does "All your responses for all questions should not exceed one page" mean?

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 04:05 AM PDT

I am presented with six questions that I'm required to respond to in writing. Some of the questions are:

  1. What do you believe in?
  2. What learning experiences have had the greatest impact in your life? etc etc.

The only instruction given is that:

All your responses for all questions should not exceed one page.

What does that mean? I am torn between two possibilities:

  1. The answers to each question must not exceed one page (my final submission should be at most six pages).
  2. The answers to all six questions must not exceed one page (my final submission should be at most one page).

not able to or not allowed to

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 03:31 AM PDT

Can we use not able to instead of not allowed to in the following context/sentence?

Not being able to leave the house (lockdown restrictions) has an upside which is...

How to hypenate this compound adjective?

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 02:26 AM PDT

I have this as a sentence:

These still commonly used phrases have retained their meaning over time.

Should 'still commonly used' be hyphenated or not? As in:

These still-commonly-used phrases have retained their meaning over time.

Obviously, if it wasn't used as an adjective, I would write:

Over time, these phrases are still commonly used.

What is the right form? Causative

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 04:17 AM PDT

  • You will probably get mugged if walk through that part of town

or

  • You will probably get yourself mugged if walk through that part of town.

Can I use "have" instead of "get"?

What is an idiom for loneliness and unnoticed?

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 09:44 AM PDT

It is for a poem that is about loneliness and how nobody really sees you or notices you, somewhat like if you are an invisible "thing" and I don't know what I can use to describe it.

Verb followed by relative clause

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 12:42 AM PDT

  1. The boy who ate fruit came.
  2. The boy came who ate fruit. Here both sentences have relative clause "who ate fruit" and a principal clause "the boy came". Here is my question: Both sentences convey same meaning right? If they're different what is the difference in meaning? And could we use verb of principal clause after a relative clause as in sentence 1 and word order of sentence 1 is correct?

"The partnership with Companyname" vs "Companyname's partnership"

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 09:56 AM PDT

Which of the following sentence is correct?

  1. We hope that Companyname's partnership will help us scale up faster.

  2. We hope that the partnership with Companyname will help us scale up faster.

“that ”at the beginning of a narrative sentence

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 01:36 AM PDT

That I don't know if I am good at making friends.

I'm not sure if this sentence is grammatically correct, but I've noticed this phenomenon several times where a "that" is added at the beginning of a sentence. Could you tell me what grammatical use it has, or what impact it has on the meaning of a sentence？

Is there a word for the phenomenon of knowing a compromise will happen and intentionally overbending the truth so the conclusion is more truthful?

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 04:51 AM PDT

Is there a word that describes the phenomenon of compromise where side A is telling the truth, side B is outright lying, but because both sides don't want the arbiter to pick dead in the middle, rather closer to their side, they exaggerate their case so that the concluded middle ground is actually favorable to them?

It comes up in politics, arguments, design, budget, etc. Would be great if there were a word to describe it.

It's a gaming of the arbiter's strategy "the truth is in the middle"

I wasn't successful in looking it up through any reverse dictionaries since it requires a situation and perspective of a situation to understand, and I don't have the English skill to explain it without an example. But I hope there's a word for it! (I would think there's definitely a word for it in Chinese. Chinese seems to always have very terse words for complex situational phenomenons. But I don't know the word in Chinese either.)

correct use of 'hunting' (gerund or continuous or past participle?)

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 09:32 AM PDT

Thanks!

And is there a difference between the following two sentences:

"... a safari. Lion hunting provided material for ..."

"... a safari. Hunting lion provided material for two ..."

Thanks!

Where does the use of "deck" to mean "set of slides" come from?

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 07:10 AM PDT

Nowadays, the word deck can be used to refer to a set of slides (e.g., PowerPoint slides). Where does that sense come from? Online Etymology Dictionary didn't yield any insight on it.

Term for a technique intended to draw criticism to an opposing view by emphatically overstating that view as your own

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 12:51 AM PDT

The reason I'm asking... I have a relative (real hippie patriarch) who does this all the time on FB (audience: Friends only, not Public), and FB doesn't understand that it's not his own opinion that he's expressing (albeit in an inflammatory way, for people who don't realize what it actually is). It's a form of protest for him, I'd say, usually against covert discrimination of some kind.

For example, let's suppose he's protesting what he believes to be a case of gender discrimination (re: women serving in the military, esp. combat arms). I'm just going to make up something, so this is not an actual quote (and lacks his expertise with this...whatever you call it).

Pack up your eggs and go home, ladies. We're busy shelling over here!

(Sorry, it's what I came up with, nothing more; actual quotes are not SE-ready. It's hard to be offhanded and exclamatory at the same time; I don't know how he does it. But nobody paid me to fly around the world and create technology, still in use 30 years later, so...you get what you pay for, or diminishing returns; but that's math.)

Apology made; back to the faux quote. On the surface of it, that's not good...for so many reasons, but the intent is obvious, I think. That being to provoke introspection (and open debate, possibly), not to disparage any group in any way (except perhaps the ones actually holding that view, indirectly).

But some people don't get it, and I understand that FB is not the appropriate platform (for so many things), but what would you call that...technique, specifically. I don't think it qualifes as playing devil's advocate (Wikipedia). I'm not sure, but I'm hoping for a more definitive term for that, even if it's informal.

Comma in series?

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 01:00 AM PDT

How to use serial comma when list has commonality.

1). I like the Mojave, Sonoran, and Colorado Deserts, and Sierra Nevada Mountains.

2). I like the Mojave, Sonoran and Colorado Deserts, and Sierra Nevada Mountains.

3). I like the Mojave, Sonoran, Colorado Deserts, and Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Which is the correct expression in USA?

As old as he looks

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 04:01 AM PDT

There is a sentence: "John isn't as old as he looks", what does it mean:

  1. He is young, but he looks like an old man
  2. He is old, but he looks/acts like a young man

What is "plurisecular"? Can't find this word's meaning, only translations

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 09:29 AM PDT

Here's a quote from Robert Hurley's translation of Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality arguing for the historical importance of the anonymous author of My Secret Life:

...he was the most direct and in a way the most naïve representative of a plurisecular injunction to talk about sex.

I've been searching for this word on Google, but it's giving me only translations, not an explanation, and I don't know the languages it provides me translations for.

Does anybody know what this word means?

What is a term for crop/livestock, something raised for indirect value?

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 05:05 AM PDT

What is a term for crop/livestock, something raised for indirect value?

How to choose between "where" and "when" after the expression "There hasn't been a moment...."?

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 07:06 AM PDT

There hasn't been a moment where/when science has ceased to amaze me. What do I choose? I have also seen use of "that" in some cases: There hasn't been a time that I haven't loved you.

Terminology: Definition of the term "direct object"

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 09:12 AM PDT

In Michael Swan's "Practical English Usage", he states in section 16.1:

Many verbs besides auxiliaries can be followed by forms of other verbs (or by structures including other verbs). This can happen, for example, if we talk about our attitude to an action: the first verb describes the attitude and the second refers to the action. The second verb structure is often rather like the direct object of the first verb.

Additionally he gives the following examples:

I hope to see you soon.

I enjoy playing cards.

I saw that she was crying.

What confuses me is the part "rather like the direct object".

If I'm not mistaken

  • the non-finite clause "to see you soon" is the object of the verb "hope"

  • the non-finite clause "playing cards" is the object of the verb "enjoy".

  • the nominal clause "that she was crying" is the object of the verb "saw".

Why does Swan consider those structures as "rather like direct objects" instead of "direct objects"? Do grammarians use other terms for those structures or is it possible that Swan uses the term "direct object" only for noun phrases, but not for finite/non-finite clauses?

Edit:

I have checked how the term "object" is defined in "A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language" by Quirk, Svartvik and Leech:

10.7 Object: direct and indirect

...

(a) FORM

Like the subject, the object is normally a noun phrase or a nominal clause.

15.3 Nominal clauses

Nominal claues (clauses approximating in function to noun phrases) fall into six major categories:

that-clauses (15.4)

...

to-infinitive clauses (15.10 f)

-ing clauses (15.12 ff)

...

15.4 That-clauses:

Nominal that-clauses may function as:

...

direct object: I noticed that he spoke English with an Australian accent.

...

15.10 To-infinitive clauses:

Nominal to-infinitive clauses may function as:

...

direct object: He likes to relax.

...

15.12 -ing clauses:

Nominal -ing clauses may function as:

...

direct object: He enjoys playing practical jokes.

...

Idiom: People caring about minor stuff while something terrible is happening

Posted: 20 Mar 2021 07:34 AM PDT

Imagine a situation in which the whole place is on fire, a bomb is about to explode, everyone is running for their lives and someone is checking his looks on the mirror... pretty inappropriate for the situation, don't you think? I'm looking for an idiom or colloquial/slang/informal expression to describe such an indifferent stance.

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