Thursday, May 20, 2021

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

"Сделать на отъебись" in English

Posted: 20 May 2021 10:42 AM PDT

There's an obscene yet often used expression in Russian which sounds exactly like this:

"Сделать что-то на отъебись"

Which means you do/create/complete something just enough so that it worked (often in a very bad, barely sufficient, shoddy way) and not a single bit more. As a result of such "work", the product can be used for its primary purpose but it leaves a very bad aftertaste and in certain cases can even be dangerous.

Is there a similar expression in English?

Interpretations of ambiguous term sentences

Posted: 20 May 2021 10:27 AM PDT

The textbook of linguistics says each of the sentences below is ambiguous and has two different ways of interpretations. I'd like you to tell me if you can distinguish them.

I didn't marry her because I loved her.

What worried John was being ignored by all girls.

Thank you in advance.

How to use advanced words in speech [closed]

Posted: 20 May 2021 10:41 AM PDT

I hear some people who can somehow use all sorts of synonyms of usual words instinctively while speaking. While I too do have command over a significantly strong vocabulary but it effects are only visible while writing something. Which too takes some time for me to come up with the right words.

I want to learn how to do that. Is all just a matter of learning new words or is there something more to the fantasy.

Can one use "surpass these barriers" and "overcome these obstacles" interchangeably?

Posted: 20 May 2021 09:03 AM PDT

I was recently in a situation where I used the expression "surpass these barriers" in reference to certain difficulties/obstacles someone was experiencing. Upon using the expression, I was told obstacles are overcome, not surpassed, and that therefore the expression "surpass barriers" was inadequate.

Is there truth to this?

It personally does not seem incorrect to me, given that the use of word "barrier" is a metaphorical reference to the obstacles in question. Since the context is metaphorical, using "surpass" doesn't seem inadequate to me.

Am I wrong in believing this?

Thanks!

someone please help me out [closed]

Posted: 20 May 2021 09:01 AM PDT

I am in a pickle. Someone please help me out.

The sentence: What is more horrible an experience than this?

Is it grammatically correct?

Can an em dash correctly follow a comma (e. g.: I argue, however, - while ... - that... )

Posted: 20 May 2021 07:35 AM PDT

Are there situations were an em dash correctly follows a comma?

Think about the combination of two sentences:

  1. Aristotle argued against thesis X because it seems to include a logical fallacy. I argue, however, that thesis X should be construed in a completely different way.

  2. I argue - while applying the method of textual analysis - that thesis X should be construed in this way: xyz.

Combination 1 + 2: Aristotle argued against thesis X because it seems to include a logical fallacy. I argue, however, - while applying the method of textual analysis - that thesis X should be construed in a completely different way.

Is this combination correct (in AE and BE?) and what would be correct alternatively ("... , however, while applying ..., ..." or "... , however - while appyling ... - ...")

what does "glancing about him for support" mean? [closed]

Posted: 20 May 2021 07:30 AM PDT

Poppy brought a book. When everyone had been introduced she took the end chair and began to read with her hands round her face like blinkers.

'This is the last time I let you do this,' said Philip.

'Do what?'

'Read in company.'

'But it's boring!'

'It's rude.'

Poppy smiled and shrugged. Athena stood by the door and watched. Philip, glancing about him for support, caught her eye.

Does the sentence in bold mean:

  1. philip was glancing about him to find somewhere to lean his back or to make more room for himself?

  2. philip was looking at others to be approved by them?

Source: The children's Bach by Helen Garner.

Some with negatives

Posted: 20 May 2021 07:07 AM PDT

Some with negatives.

  1. I don't want some guy coming in here and asking me questions.
  2. I don't want any guy coming in here and asking me questions.

Number 1, I know I have this before. Number 2 sounds unnatural. Though I can recall hearing something like this, "I don't want just any guy coming in here off the streets and asking us questions." I know there is written grammar that we mainly use any with negative statements, however, there is little detail in the written grammar I can find about using some in negative statements. What does this community think are the rules for using some in negative statements?

Also, has this aspect of the grammar just been overlooked because it is inconvenient to explain? Or to avoid confusing the beginner?

Some other examples from Ludwig (excellent site for finding authentic language!): https://ludwig.guru/s/don't+want+some https://ludwig.guru/s/not+some https://ludwig.guru/s/not+some+small

How to find list of adverbs with their usage related to corresponding verbs and adjectives [migrated]

Posted: 20 May 2021 06:09 AM PDT

I am a Programmer and working on a NLP project that suggest adverbs to the adjectives and verbs in the sentence. I need grammar suggestion regarding this.

If anyone can tell the way or resource to find the words list and their corresponding adverbs that can be used with that word.

for example: Like I have time related words, whenever user inputs a sentence and I see a verb or adjective that is related to time, I suggest to him the adverb list that can be used with time.

So, I want to cover all that categories be it time, speed, linking adverbs, commonly used adverbs, etc. So I want to first have type of words and corresponding adverbs list.

this great number of apples roll or rolls? [closed]

Posted: 20 May 2021 05:26 AM PDT

Do I use the verb with s or without s? The apples roll; it would be of course, but how about: This great number of apples roll? or rolls?

Who does the "she" in this sentence refer to? [closed]

Posted: 20 May 2021 05:32 AM PDT

In the paragraph below: what is the meaning of the part in the first bracket? And who does the she in the second bracket refer to?

Why didn't you come to dinner?' she said to him. ('I marvel at the second sight of lovers,') she added with a smile, so that no one but he could hear; 'SHE WASN'T THERE. But come after the opera.'

A paragraph from Anna karenina by Leo Tolestoy

Is "baggage" as "portable military equipment" a technical or an old-fashioned term?

Posted: 20 May 2021 05:46 AM PDT

According to dictionaries, one of the meanings of "baggage" is "an army's portable equipment". But I wonder if it is a technical or an old-fashioned term. I'm not sure if native speakers are generally familiar with this meaning of the word.

How to express gratitude to an interviewer regardless of the interview outcome? [closed]

Posted: 20 May 2021 04:19 AM PDT

I'm drafting a thank-you note to the recruiter after a series of onsite interviews with the team. And wondered if it might seem less polite or render a discounted feeling if I included the following phrase.

As you and the team determine the potential next steps, and regardless of the outcome, it's been a privilege to be considered for the opportunity.

I do want to emphasize that I'm looking forward to hearing from the team on the next steps while also being grateful for the process that I just went through with the team. But don't want my curiosity to learn the final outcome oversize the core idea (gratitude) of my email. Any thoughts?

Why do content clauses have to be only finite when relative clauses can be non-finite as well as finite?

Posted: 20 May 2021 09:20 AM PDT

Both The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (by Huddleston and Pullum) and Oxford Modern English Grammar (by Aarts) say that relative clauses can be non-finite as well as finite as in:

1a. He found a video [that the kids could watch]. [finite relative clause]

1b. He found a video [for the kids to watch]. [non-finite relative clause]

CaGEL (Page 950) says "The term content clause reflects this default status: it suggests that the clause is simply selected for its semantic content." If this is what a content clause is, I think that [for them to be worried] in 2b below should be classified as a content clause.

2a. It was natural [that they should be worried]. [finite content clause]

2b. It was natural [for them to be worried]. [non-finite content clause?]

But somehow both CaGEL and OMEG seem to define content clauses to be only finite. (Let me know if I'm mistaken about this.)

What's wrong with classifying the non-finite clause in 2b as a content clause? Are there any other grammars that allow content clauses to be non-finite?

EDIT

For those who are not familiar with the term content clause, here's a definition of content clause from The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar: enter image description here

Tenses in clauses with conditionals [closed]

Posted: 20 May 2021 07:12 AM PDT

If you could go back in time, what would you do so that you ___ your life lived without regrets?

  1. will have
  2. would have
  3. have
  4. would have had

My questions:

  1. Is this a badly written sentence? How do I make it right?
  2. Which answer will natives go for?

How should I understand this sentence in the movie Bridgerton?

Posted: 20 May 2021 04:43 AM PDT

I just watched Bridgerton Season 1 Ep. 2 at scene 14.47 and the old lady goes

  • "You ate but not one bite at tea, my dear!"

The context is that 3 people were having tea together and the old lady complained about the young lady being not well fed.

What stucture is that?

Normally we have [verb] + [not] + [NP1] + [but] + [NP2] , meaning [verb NP2 only].

He scored not one goal, but 3 = He scored 3 goals.

But with this sentence, I'm completely in the dark.

Word or phrase for becoming clumsy due to being overjoyed/happy

Posted: 20 May 2021 07:50 AM PDT

As the title implies, I'm trying to describe a person who is extremely happy and because of that behaves clumsily since they don't have enough attention about their surroundings.

The specific case would be that the character is in a celebration, and trips and falls, or breaks her mug banging it to others' during a toast etc. It's important to note that they're not normally clumsy at all, and these would not happen to them if their mind wasn't focused on the joy and celebration at the moment.

I was wondering if there is a word or phrase to describe this elegantly?

For example "The ____ that he was at the moment, he spilled most of his beer on the table when banging his mug to others' for the toast." or "He had a _____ , not looking where he is going and bumping into guests while running from room to room in the party."

What came to my mind was joystruck, or joy drunk but unfortunately they aren't actual words. Having a mind over-saturated with happiness might describe the condition, but is too long and I was hoping a more common word/phrase exists for it.

How to quote material that ends sections with semicolons

Posted: 20 May 2021 06:57 AM PDT

I haven't found an answer to this specific scenario:

"This is an example of the quoted text from the report where this section ends with a semicolon;"

That is also the end of my sentence so I'm wondering if I need further punctuation such as:

"This is an example of the quoted text from the report where this section ends with a semicolon; ..."

or

"This is an example of the quoted text from the report where this section ends with a semicolon..."

It seems the report uses semicolons as final punctuation if the end of the sentence is the end of a section/chapter so I don't know which rules to apply.

Edited to add: I want to quote the end of a section of the report. The source material ends with a semicolon since this report ends sections/chapters with semicolons. I want to put the quote at the end of my sentence: Example sentence then "quoted material goes here;"

I'm new here so let me know if this is the wrong forum for this topic. Thanks for your help.

With "being" vs without "being"

Posted: 20 May 2021 05:06 AM PDT

Here are two sentences:

  1. The training examples get labels 1 or 0 based on the tactics being useful or not for the proof state.
  2. We take the inspiration from the paper and implement an online version capable of incremental optimization.

My English teacher told me that for the first sentence, either "tactics being useful or not" or "tactics which are useful or not" is fine. However, "tactics useful or not" is awkward in her opinion.

For the second one, she said we could use "an online version capable of incremental optimization" instead of "an online version which is capable of incremental optimization".

Why in the first case, we cannot ignore "which is" or "being"?

Can "wildlife" be a collective noun?

Posted: 20 May 2021 08:29 AM PDT

All dictionaries I have checked list the term wildlife as an uncountable noun. But there are plenty of examples that treat wildlife as a plural. Indeed, Google returns around one million search results for the phrase "wildlife that is," much fewer than the over 2.7 million for "wildlife that are."

I've found it difficult to wrap my head around this word: Is this an uncountable noun as the dictionaries say or can this be sometimes treated as a collective noun that can represent a plural?

Why do the mainstream dictionaries all proclaim wildlife as an uncountable noun while people frequently treat it as a plural?

Is "go to the hospital" used even when referring to multiple hospitals? [AmE]

Posted: 20 May 2021 07:53 AM PDT

It's well known the British go to hospital while the Americans go to the hospital.

But I wonder Americans really use go to the hospital in the completely same way as Britons do with the zero article hospital.

I have come across the following sentence, a bit modified for removing distractions, from a New York Times article.

Police officers fired rubber bullets and stun grenades at citizens, sending hundreds of people to the hospital by the afternoon.

It's unlikely that all of the hundreds of people mentioned above were taken to a single hospital, I believe. This begs the question--whether Americans use the phrase to the hospital even when people go to or are sent to multiple hospitals.

In British English, the phrase to the hospital in the quoted sentence above should be rewritten as to hospital, with no information on which hospital or hospitals they were admitted to, much the way phrases such as to school and to church have no interest in the physical place when they mean abstractly the purpose they are designed for.

With the phrase to the hospital, do Americans recognize abstractly and not care about the physical place, so to the hospital is used even when multiple hospitals are involved?

I appreciate any suggestions or explanations.

What does simple really mean in grammar?

Posted: 20 May 2021 06:39 AM PDT

Problems with explaining English grammar often reside in the terminology. There is often a big assumption that we understand what the terms mean. Simple is, in my opinion, one of the most important examples.

Recently I have noticed two terms, present perfect and present perfect simple.

When I looked up simple in multiple dictionaries it stated that simple meant a verb tense without an auxiliary. So now I'm confused because the perfect tense uses the auxiliary has/had. So now I'm thinking, the meaning is a verb tense without an auxiliary "to be" verb means simple, but I can't find that in writing anywhere. Being that I can't find it written anywhere and that I can find present perfect written without the "simple" term added at the end, I'm starting to think that the present perfect is in fact not simple, but I have no idea.

I think the biggest problem with grammar, is it is somewhat scientific, yet it often lacks citation. People state rules all the time without ever stating the origins of them.

Ideally, I'd like to know who came up with using the term simple in English grammar and what they actually intended that word to mean and why we seem to be using it and NOT using to talk about the present perfect. My research on Google had led to no results on these matters.

Update 5/20/2021 I believe/hope I've found the answer from Collin's Dictionary https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/simple

"In grammar, simple tenses are ones which are formed without an auxiliary verb 'be,'"

I have visited America. (present perfect simple) UK grammar.

I have visited America. (present perfect) US grammar.

This seems to be a feature of British grammar, whereas in American grammar this is not followed. There seems to be the idea that any auxiliary verb eliminates the "simple" state (for lack of a better word) of the verb in American grammars, whereas in the UK it is only the "be" verb that eliminates the simple state.

See the term present perfect simple used here: https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/grammar/intermediate-to-upper-intermediate/present-perfect

Note the authority of the source.

We use the present perfect simple (have or has + past participle) to talk about past actions or states which are still connected to the present.

Also, see here https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/grammar/british-grammar/present-perfect-simple-i-have-worked

and here https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/grammar/british-grammar/past-perfect-simple-or-past-simple

See the present perfect used here from a US source: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/grammar/verb_tenses/index.html

I hope this clears things up for a lot of English learners out there.

What is the term for a sentence which reads same forwards and backwards?

Posted: 20 May 2021 08:46 AM PDT

Please note, I'm not asking for a palindrome. I mean to say that only the word order is rearranged, not the actual spelling of the word. An example might be as follows:

First ladies rule the State and state the rule: ladies first.

Non-finite clause or to-infinitive?

Posted: 20 May 2021 05:02 AM PDT

I'm analysing this sentence complex in terms of sentence trees and am a bit at a loss here.

He began to swim again, feeling suddenly the desperate exhaustion of his body.

In the part "He began to swim again," is the "to swim again" a nonfinite clause or just a bare infinitive? Do I write the tree as S --- Cl1 (He began) and then two subordinate semi-clauses Cl2 (to swim again) Cl3 (feeling suddenly....)

OR

Is it Main clause (He began to swim again) with one subordinate nonfinite clause (feeling suddenly...)?

"For," "In," or "On," in terms of ROI

Posted: 20 May 2021 06:17 AM PDT

$900 billion is still considerably larger than most can comprehend, but the actual return on investment for space exploration is considerably higher than any other existing industry.

In this sentence, is "for" the correct word?

Should it instead be:

... the actual return on investment in space exploration is ...

or

... the actual return on investment on space exploration is ...

In this case, "return on investment" (ROI) is an economic phrase, and I think that's what has me confused.

What's the name of the color printed section in a book?

Posted: 20 May 2021 07:18 AM PDT

Before books were routinely full color, there would be a section of full color pages bound into the middle of the book.

What's the name for this section?

Plural indefinite pronouns?

Posted: 20 May 2021 07:58 AM PDT

Can some indefinite pronouns be plural? One commenter on Mr K's Grammar World says they cannot. He also says the following examples contain quantifiers, and not indefinite pronouns.

  • Many have expressed their views.
  • John likes coffee but not tea. I think both are good.
  • I'm glad to say that fewer are smoking these days.
  • I'm sure that others have tried before us.
  • They say that vegetables are good for you.
  • All is forgiven. - All have arrived.
  • There is more over there. - More are coming.
  • Here is some. - Some have arrived.

'Ask' and its objects

Posted: 20 May 2021 07:56 AM PDT

I'd like to know if the objects of the verb 'ask' must follow an order. If so what is that order? Should the first object be the person (someone) or the thing (something)?

For example: Will you ask for that money to your mother? or Will you ask your mother for that money?

The opposite of "archive"

Posted: 20 May 2021 10:23 AM PDT

A colleague and I are writing some software and we're looking for some advice on the usage of the word "archive". Currently, we're using archive as a marker to state that the entry in our database has been put to one side (i.e archived away), but that we can still access it at any point.

Currently, we're using archive as a (sort of) synonym for hidden, in that archived items will be hidden from view when a user accesses the database. This is because, more often than not, our database will include hundreds of entries, and allowing the user to arbitrarily hide/archive entries from view should help them.

As an example:

When the user archives Entry 15, it is no longer listed in the standard database view. Another view of archived entries will be provided.

The problem we're having is thinking of a correct and succinct word or phrase for the opposite of archiving an entry in our database. We've looked at "un-archive", "un-hide" and "retrieve from archive" but these don't seem to fit entirely ("un-archive" and "un-hide" seem slightly unwieldy and "retrieve from archive" feels too long). Perhaps "restore" would work, but we're leaning away from that as it has connotations of the entry having being deleted or removed completely.

Our target audience includes people who do not speak English as their primary language, so we're striving for simplicity and focus.

I was wondering if anyone has ever come across this situation before or if there are any useful suggestions for our situation?
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