Tuesday, May 4, 2021

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Is your cousin's wife or husband first cousin?

Posted: 04 May 2021 09:34 AM PDT

I know that two persons are first cousins if their parent are siblings, but how do you call your cousin's wife or husband, are they still your first cousin?

What is the difference between an "uncountable noun" and an "adjective"

Posted: 04 May 2021 09:17 AM PDT

In the word "afternoon tea"(the tea that is served in afternoon) the word 'afternoon' is an uncountable noun as OALD shows.

In the word "English countryside"(the countryside that is in England) the word 'English' becomes adjective.

But why? I can't see the difference in the work these words do.

Other examples are "egg noodles", crocodile shoes", "sports car"

and "double bed", "favourite movies", "paper tiger". (Interestingly OALD does not count "paper" as adjective.)

Can somebody kindly explain me please. Thank you!

How long has the word "site" been used as a noun in English?

Posted: 04 May 2021 09:09 AM PDT

I am writing a book that takes place in the fictional past, so I'm trying to make sure the language used in my writing doesn't draw the reader back to the present because of it not fitting well with the time period of the story. I am specifically struggling with the word "site." The characters in my book find ancient ruins, and I'm trying to figure out how the characters would talk about the place where the ruins are located, and if the word "site" is acceptable. I remember when I was in grad school (many years ago), there was some kind of online catalog that I would use to do research on how long a word has been used with a specific meaning, but I can't remember what that website was.

What parts of speech are the words "about and how" in this sentence?

Posted: 04 May 2021 08:48 AM PDT

"You should wake me," I say, thinking about how I can interrupt his sleep two or three times on a bad night.

Is it correct to drop the repeating noun (except for the last one) in a list?

Posted: 04 May 2021 08:46 AM PDT

I can't find the grammar rule about dropping a repeated noun in a list. I'm not sure what it's called and Search results weren't relevant. I'd like to try this construction myself if it's grammatically correct because I love how efficient it is.

For e.g.:

Give them the blue, red, and green crayons.

versus

Give them the blue crayon, red crayon, and green crayon.

Additional question: What's the best grammar book for someone who wants to dive deep into this topic? (I am an ESL person, but learned English as a teenager. I love English grammar!)

Is "more especially" a correct phrase

Posted: 04 May 2021 08:35 AM PDT

I am not a native speaker, but I am trying to become fluent in English.

I've come across this sentence spoken by a native speaker and wondered if this is correct, because it sounds odd to me.

"How do you think we can show the difference between x and y? More especially the height and weight of y."

To me, most specifically sounds valid. Especially alone makes more sense. But more especially sounds weird.

Is "more especially" a correct usage? Any input would be much appreciated. Thank you!

should I say "fight" or "fight against"

Posted: 04 May 2021 08:32 AM PDT

Which one is correct?

Immune system fights tumor and infection. Immune system fights against tumor and infection.

Thanks!

Can someone please correct an english text? [closed]

Posted: 04 May 2021 08:19 AM PDT

I wrote an English text for an activity at my school, I would like to know if it is grammatically correct.

Here is the text:

The benefits of speaking a second language.

There are several benefits to learning a second language fluently, not only for entertainment, but also in the professional field. Being bilingual makes a lot of difference academically, the chances of employment are much greater for a bilingual person than for people who speak only one language.

Speaking another language helps a lot in different situations, many people get interested and motivated to learn a new language because of the better accessibility to foreign entertainment that they will have, being able to watch foreign movies without the subtitles, reading books in another language, playing games without the translation, traveling abroad, etc. In addition to these benefits, speaking a second language can also be a great asset to have a respectable and successful career.

Language skills can bring you great advantages in the professional field, increasing your chances of hiring and bringing new opportunities. By being able to communicate and interact with different people from different countries, you will be able to negotiate with companies abroad, understand and make contracts from distant places with different languages and even come to work outside the country. All of these benefits help to increase your professional value, helping in a successful career.

Correct usage: Summarized in or by

Posted: 04 May 2021 07:48 AM PDT

What is the correct sentence here?

  1. "The entire paper can be summarized in ten points"

  2. "The entire paper can be summarized by ten points"

Thanks!

How to start a sentence with "To name a few"? or any alternative phrase for an academic document?

Posted: 04 May 2021 07:32 AM PDT

How I can start a sentence with "To name a few"? I have read this post. I am writing a paper and for saying how important is the topic, I want to add a few examples. I do not want to list everything and want to just mention two examples with emphasizing on this point that these two are just examples and there are a lot of usages for the topic. I chose "To name a few" but it is usually used at the end of sentence. How I can use it at the beginning or any alternative phrase?

Does "How are you doing" require a response? [closed]

Posted: 04 May 2021 05:38 AM PDT

If I say "Hi" and someone says "How u doing", does this mean I should reply? Or is it just another form of "Hi"?

Like should I say "good"/"great", etc., or should I not respond?

What is it called when a poetry stanza alternates between iambic tetrameter and triameter?

Posted: 04 May 2021 08:40 AM PDT

What is it called when a poetry stanza alternates between iambic tetrameter and triameter?

  1. If I shall wander into hell

  2. And die upon its coals

So we have one line of iambic tetrameter and one line of iambic triameter. Is there a name for structures like this? Or is it just really iambic heptameter that has been divided between lines?

Only if-conditional sentences and inversion

Posted: 04 May 2021 07:29 AM PDT

As I was studying for my upcoming grammar exam, I stumbled across the following sentence:

  • Your membership will only be renewed if you pay your subscription within the next seven days.

Is it also okay to use "if only" + inversion in this case? Isn't the following the more logical sentence?

  • Only if you pay your subscription within the next seven days will your membership be renewed.

What determines what can be pied-piped and what not in wh-movement?

Posted: 04 May 2021 05:16 AM PDT

  • A wh-expression without wh-movement, where the wh-word is the object of the preposition "about":

    You are talking about what?

  • A sentence that has undergone wh-movement:

    What are you talking about?

  • ⸺with a pied-piped "about":

    About what are you talking?

  • The entire wh-clause has gotten pied-piped. Acceptable or not?

    Talking about what are you?

Similarly (I find),

From Google search results

  • A wh-expression without wh-movement, where the wh-word is the object of the preposition "of":

    Chills and headache are symptoms of what?

  • That above, with wh-movement applied:

    What are chills and headache symptoms of?

  • ⸺with a pied-piped "of". Acceptable or not?

    Of what are chills and headache symptoms?

  • The entire wh-clause has gotten pied-piped. Acceptable or not?

    Symptoms of what are chills and headache?

Here's the question⸻

What exactly determines what can be pied-piped and what cannot in wh-movement?

  • By "pied-piping," I mean it in the linguistic sense. "A wh-word taking adjacent words together when moved."
  • I've come from ELL as my question was told to be esoteric for the website.

Word Search - Half -hearted action

Posted: 04 May 2021 09:44 AM PDT

I am familiar with the question Neutral word for half-hearted

But I am looking for a negative word.

Consider the case:

Patient is brought to emergency ward in hospital. The Doctor knows that they have 1 hour to administer medication. Doctor goes socializing for 50 minutes - because that was more short term fun for the doctor. And at the 50th minute comes back and administers the medicine. When asked the Doctor claimed, that there is still time.

The 1 hour is however an average, and for this patient, it was too long. His body rejects the treatment.

I am looking for a word to describe the Doctors behavior.

More generally : Putting off your call of duty, or long term goal, or your dream as long as possible only to scramble at the 11th hour.

It would be nice, if the same word can also capture the defense / claim that there is still or enough time / resource etc left. If not then maybe we will find a companion word that fits well.

Word form : I want this to be a single word , possibly a verb, please. If the single word does not capture both the meanings I mentioned, then two words are also OK. I would be open to phrases, in worst cases as well.

Words that i have considered :

Half hearted action, acting at the 11th hour: Does not quite catch the negligence and drooling after a different short term hedonistic fulfillment (like the socialization for 59 minutes ignoring the patient)

Ignorance, Carelessness, disregard : Very broad terms. I would like the word / phrase to be specifically capture the general meaning above.

Lukewarm : There is no shortage of enthusiasm here. The main issue is that the action is delayed as far as possible with excuses of "still enough" / "still time left" etc.

Word for challenging a general idea or belief [closed]

Posted: 04 May 2021 05:25 AM PDT

I need a word or phrase which can be used to describe someone or something challenging a general idea of belief. Here are some examples:

They challenge the ethos of their particular eras and in turn, inflict personal and political change.

In these sources, they investigate the intricacies of human interaction, and how the distribution of power can be altered through challenging the zeitgeists of the same country at two distinct points, one filled with racism and the latter with chaos.

I need terms to replace the word "challenge" in these examples. Any help will be strongly appreciated.

Noun clause or adverb clause? [closed]

Posted: 04 May 2021 04:30 AM PDT

I was reading about noun clauses and adverb clauses and I am a little confused about what follows:

One grammar claims that the clause in bold in the following sentence is a noun clause working as an adjective complement:

I'm happy that you've decided to come.

Another grammar says that the sentence in bold in the following sentence is an adverb clause:

Many English speakers today are surprised that Early English would be unintelligible to them.

I am confused, because both clauses follow an adjective and, because they start with "that," I think they are, indeed, noun clauses. Moreover, the second clause doesn't seem to work as an adverb, once it doesn't answer "when?", "how?", "why?", "where?", etc.

Can anyone help me, please?

Which verb defines the tense of a sentence?

Posted: 04 May 2021 07:42 AM PDT

I need to categorise an assortment of statements based on their tense and a few of them I am struggling to categorise.

Take the following sentence:

John needs to make a slight improvement to achieve the grade he was aiming for in Mathematics

Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe there are three verbs tenses in this sentence:

needs to - future present tense
achieve - present tense
was aiming for - past tense

Which verb in this sentence defines what tense it is? Is there a simple set of rules one can follow to define the tense of a sentence?

Thank you.

"They told each other they had better leave" [reciprocity and distributivity]

Posted: 04 May 2021 07:02 AM PDT

Following the lead of Higginbotham (1985), Andrew Barss (1986) notes that examples like (1) are ambiguous.

(1a) They told each other they had better leave

(1b) John and Bill told each other they had better leave

Let's focus on (1b) for simplicity. Specifically, what is being claimed is that (1b) may convey both the distributive reading in (2a) and the collective reading in (2b).

(2a) [J told B that B should leave] & [B told J that J should leave]

(2b) [J told B that J&B should leave] & [B told J that J&B should leave]

I am not a native English speaker, but I wonder whether the availability of the distributive reading hinges on the fact that the embedded clause subject they is number-neutral, i.e. it may denote both an individual and a plurality of individuals. (Note also that each other is formally singular.)

My impression is that (3) lends itself less to such construal.

(3) We told each other we had better leave

What do you guys think?

Relative clauses: extra information clauses

Posted: 04 May 2021 08:23 AM PDT

enter image description here

Hello.

I can't understand how some of the relative clauses work in English. I see no difference between the two given examples:

Barbara works for a company...

Colin told me about his new job...

a company/new job

What's the difference? Why can't we use that in the second sentence? I think they both give some extra information, not just the second one. But they say we can use which in the first one. If so, why don't they put a comma before it?

All the explanations I read on the topic are not clear and do not tell the difference.

There's another sentence that/which (???) I found on the web:

The iPad (which/that) connects to the iCloud was created by Apple.

The correct answer is: The iPad, which connects to the iCloud, was created by Apple. (All iPads connect to the iCloud, so it's unnecessary information.)

If we use that, does it mean there are other iPads that/which (???) were created by other companies (but we know that all iPads are made by Apple — there's only one iPad that/which (???) is created by Apple)?

This is so confusing. I also put that/which clauses in bold that I don't know the correct answer for (I hope some of them are interchangeable).

Please help!

Word for someone who is constantly yet excessively stressed

Posted: 04 May 2021 05:28 AM PDT

What is a noun for someone who unduly stresses? For example, a worrywart is someone who constantly yet excessively worries. However, there is a vast difference between "stressing" and "worrying," so "bundle of nerves" does not count. Therefore, a _______ is someone who constantly yet excessively stresses.

Any help is appreciated!

Would you say, "She was quiet after she'd been back from school," or "She was quiet after she'd gotten back from school"?

Posted: 04 May 2021 08:05 AM PDT

I don't know if these two choices are just preference or not.

On a side note, would it sound better if you say "ever since" or "since" in place of the word "after"?

thanks

Do we say "as it" or "as if" to say "as it is right now"?

Posted: 04 May 2021 07:09 AM PDT

In casual speech, take this conversation, for example:

Person A: Here's the message: "Hi, my name is [...] Cheers"

Person A: Do I send it as it is right now?

Person B: Yeah, no problem send it like that.

I often shorten the "as it is right now" part but I'm not sure if the correct way to say is "as it" or "as if".

What is the origin of skinflint and the image it is derived from

Posted: 04 May 2021 09:46 AM PDT

I would like to know what's the origin of the word skinflint.

When you lookup skinflint in a dictionary you will find a definition like the following:

A penurious person; a miser; a person who is stingy with money; a penny-pincher.

I can easily imagine what a penny-pincher literally describes but what's the image or action a skinflint is derived from?

I found on etymonline.com the following description:

slang; literally "kind of person who would skin a flint to save or gain something"

But it's still unclear to me.

Has it to do with the knapping off flint flakes or the scraping of animal skins with a flint?

Difference between participal adjective and relative clause

Posted: 04 May 2021 09:04 AM PDT

I saw someone explained that participal adjectives have the same function as relative clauses. If that is correct, what is the difference between them?

for examples,

  1. a bill requiring approval of the committee
  2. a bill that requires approval of the committee

1 is a participal adjective, 2 is a relative clause.

Do those sentence have the same meaning?

"There appears to be" or "There appear to be" + plural noun phrase

Posted: 04 May 2021 08:39 AM PDT

I'm wondering which of these is correct:

  1. There appears to be no functional systems in place to handle this.

  2. There appear to be no functional systems in place to handle this.

First takes "there" as subject. Second takes "functional systems" as subject.

Why does "smashing" mean "very good"?

Posted: 04 May 2021 09:43 AM PDT

Smashing is a BrE slang which means "very good" or "impressive". Most folks might know this already, due to its use as a catch phrase by various BrE characters in media.

However, from the usual meaning of the word smash (which means breaking with violence), it's not obvious how it could come to mean "very good". Did this meaning come from a specific context, perhaps military, or sports?

Difference between addressing and answering a question

Posted: 04 May 2021 09:49 AM PDT

"To address the question", "To answer the question". What's the difference?
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