Saturday, October 30, 2021

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Checking these sentences. (Participle phrase)

Posted: 30 Oct 2021 06:40 AM PDT

  1. It is said that tests have been shown that the vegetable samples contain residues from two or more pesticides.
  2. It is said that tests shown that the vegetable samples contain residues from two or more pesticides.

Which one is grammatically correct?

Visit somebody at/in [name of place] [duplicate]

Posted: 30 Oct 2021 06:20 AM PDT

What is correct, please?

to visit somebody at [name of village/town]

to visit somebody in [name of village/town]

Checking these sentences [closed]

Posted: 30 Oct 2021 06:05 AM PDT

  1. What's your favorite breakfast you ate every morning when you lived in Canada?

  2. Have you ever seen a volcanic eruption? Was it brimming you with fear when you realized nature is stronger than us?

  3. Are you feel dedicated to your job anymore?

  4. Do you have an assumption on how to solve this tricky situation?

  5. Do you have the curriculum the teacher gave us yesterday?

Are my sentences correct?

What is a good word to indicate that a member was "there" at the beginning of the formation of a club or organisation

Posted: 30 Oct 2021 05:06 AM PDT

I am forming a club/organisation and I am looking for people who share the visions and values of the organisation.

The organisation is based on membership, and there will be different tiers of memberships. These initial members are not exactly co-founders however, I want to create a label of membership that confers to them their status as "trailblazers".

I looked up synonyms for the word "trailblazer" and came across some of the following words:

  • avant-garde
  • discoverer
  • groundbreaker
  • pioneer
  • vanguard
  • trendsetter

I'm not overly keen on these words - and I am wondering if there is a succinct word that encapsulates the "ethos" of "being there at the beginning" ?

Grammar Rule for Every

Posted: 30 Oct 2021 04:33 AM PDT

Could you please help me with the question below?

Which one is correct and why?

Every man and woman voted for __________ leaders.
A. their
B. his
C. her
D. theirs

My answer is "A" but the book answers "B".

Usage of "illiteracy" in certain sentences

Posted: 30 Oct 2021 03:49 AM PDT

How to use the "illiteracy" word in sentences when you want to mention your illiteracy related to some topics or areas? I'm a native Russian speaker, and when I write English text, I can make mistakes, and that mistakes make me to look illiterate. What words do I need to use to mention that I'm not illiterate as a whole but I can be illiterate when I use this exact language?

For example, I wanted to write something like "sorry for my illiteracy in English". Is it a correct sentence if I want to mention that when I use English, I can sometimes write sentences which can be considered illiterate?

I googled examples of "illiteracy" usage, but cannot find this exact usecase.

(Will be glad to see any examples, including non-informal, including sentences which do not use the "illiteracy" word but which have close meaning.)

P.S. Exact sentence I was trying to construct: "Kind people will never left me alone with my illiteracy in English." — is it a correct one?

he stood up (but it never mentions) [closed]

Posted: 30 Oct 2021 02:56 AM PDT

Source : Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Chapter : 21

Quote: 'Well, we've got to try, haven't we?' said Harry. He stood up and pressed his own ear against the door.

Context : Harry and Hermione are in a broom cupboard and the chapter once mentions that Hermione sat down on an upturned bucket; But it doesn't mention that about Harry, he was standing the whole time.

What do you think? Maybe I didn't understand this properly?

Is there a conceptual influence on plurality according to definable/indefinable number? [duplicate]

Posted: 30 Oct 2021 02:48 AM PDT

I found that my instinct was to say 'All I can see is the cat's whiskers' but my instinct was also to say 'All I can see are the cat's eyes'.

After some thought, either this is just a personal quirk of my own experience of the English language, or this is something that is idiomatic (perhaps only in my native British English or even more locally, my Scottish background) or . . . .

. . . . it is a genuine conceptual effect of expressing a clearly definable number (a pair) as a plural and expressing an indefinable excess as a collective singular.

Does the indefinability of a number (greater than, say a pair or a trio) affect it's usage as a collective singular in situations where there is an ambiguity of grammatical expression ?

Can a relative clause be a compound sentence?

Posted: 30 Oct 2021 02:46 AM PDT

They began to believe that their way of doing business was failing and that their incomes would therefore shortly begin to fall as well.

In this sentence, can I remove the second "that" while keeping the sentence gramatically correct, so that the relative clause becomes a compound sentence?

I read this sentence as an exercise of proofreading and did not find the source.

"dinosaurs to fly" vs "flying dinosaurs" [closed]

Posted: 30 Oct 2021 02:34 AM PDT

I read a passage from an LSAT:

"It seems likely that the earliest dinosaurs to fly did so by gliding out of trees rather than, as some scientists think, by lifting off the ground from a running start. Animals gliding from trees are able to fly with very simple wings. Such wings represent evolutionary middle stages toward developing the large wings that we associate with flying dinosaurs."

Could someone explain and parse out this weird subject "the earliest dinosaurs to fly"? What's the usage here? Is it a reduced form?

I found this particularly bizarre when reading "flying dinosaur" at the end. It seems the test maker distinguishes between "flying dinosaur" and "dinosaur to fly".

What is the difference between "library downtown" and "library in downtown"?

Posted: 30 Oct 2021 01:48 AM PDT

I was recently asked a question by my friend on the difference between:

  1. I am going to the library downtown.
  2. I'm going to the library in downtown.

At first, the second sentence didn't give me much sense, but I just read the sentence a couple of times, and the meaning it gave me somehow is that the first one is saying that the library is located in the downtown area (not a specific place), and the second one is saying it's located in a specific place called downtown (like maybe a mall called downtown - FYI there is a mall called downtown in my country that's why I thought of that).

So what do you think? What is the difference?

Whst is the difference between "where" and "while", as shown in the sentence below? [closed]

Posted: 30 Oct 2021 06:03 AM PDT

enter image description here

I always don't know how to use "where" as an subordinating conjunction.

Should I use a colon here?

Posted: 30 Oct 2021 12:13 AM PDT

I also encouraged her to tell the bullies: "Get a life."

Should there be a colon here or nothing?

Is the word "field player" a synonym for "outfield player" in the context of association football? Does it even exist?

Posted: 29 Oct 2021 09:15 PM PDT

I'm currently working on a user interface which has the option to filter a list of football players based on their general position, so to either show all goalkeepers or all players playing on the other positions. There is a term for the latter, "outfield players", but I've also read and heard the word "field player" a lot and assumed it was a perfectly fine synonym. Also, in German, my native language, the word "Feldspieler" is a valid word and actually the only option I know of.

But it seems like "field player" is not really as widely accepted/used as I thought it was. For example, the Wikipedia article for "Association football" only uses "outfield player" and the Cambridge Dictionary only has "outfield player", searching for "field player" returns no results. Even just googling the term was a weird experience, like I just invented it. It seems like "field player" is widely used within the term "field player gloves" by multiple manufacturers though, to distinguish them from goalkeeper gloves.

While I don't really care if "field player" is in a dictionary or if Wikipedia editors feel like it is a word, I do care about if people understand the term as a synonym for "outfield player" and if it will "feel" alright, especially for native speakers.

Basically, if you had two buttons and a list of footballers below in front of you, would the button texts "goalkeepers" and "field players" make sense to you (and most people) or not?

EDIT: The Google Ngram Viewer also shows that "outfield player" is more popular, but it seems that wasn't the case just 15 years ago: Google Ngram of "outfield player"

The plurals show a similar trend: enter image description here

I'm really unsure why.

Is there an expression or idiom for getting a negative result after being irresponsible?

Posted: 30 Oct 2021 03:12 AM PDT

There's an expression in Russian (доигрался) which roughly translates to something akin to "You've really done it this time." It's rooted in the word for "playing" and it implies that you've played past the point when you should have stopped (maybe akin to what the grasshopper was doing in the Ant and the Grasshopper).

The problem is that in English there doesn't appear to be a future tense version of this paradigm. You can't warn someone that if they keep at it they'll [really do it this time].

Curious if anyone knows of an expression (maybe even one that's not used anymore) that can stand in for the end of a sentence that acts as a warning to be mindful of your actions.

"Protective armor" Why does such a word combination exist?

Posted: 29 Oct 2021 08:43 PM PDT

Why does such a word combination as "Protective armor" exist? Is there non-protective armor?

Please, explain if there is some nuance.

Comma Before "If"

Posted: 29 Oct 2021 07:15 PM PDT

I would like to ask if a comma is necessary before "if" in this sentence (this one is from the mystery novel I am writing):

I adopted the literal way of understanding the verse, and if it was written to convey a literal message, I would deduce . . .

Is "I wish I would have <done something>..." ever correct? (vs. "I wish I had <done it>...")

Posted: 29 Oct 2021 05:02 PM PDT

I often hear (or read) a construct along the lines of "I wish I would have ". Here is a recent example:

I wish I would have written a post guessing at Facebook's new name [...]

This wish-I-would-have form has never sounded correct to my ear; I would only ever say "I wish I had written..." in this case. I've always believed it to be a sort of subjunctive formation (?) error, but it's so common I'd like some definitive ruling on it or further context.

If it's not considered grammatical, why is it so common? Is it a valid dialect or regionalism?

There are other questions on here that deal with adjacent or similar forms but I'm not sure they address this simple question squarely: I'm not asking about when "would-have" could be used, just whether it's correct here. Thanks!

Why do we have "taters" or "spuds" for potatoes but nothing for tomatoes or onions? [closed]

Posted: 30 Oct 2021 12:29 AM PDT

I've noticed that a potato is sometimes called a "tater" or a "spud" in informal English. I'm not looking for the origins of these words. I'm just curious to know why there are several informal words for a potato in English, but there aren't any for a tomato or an onion, for example.

Is this a grammatical construction?

Posted: 29 Oct 2021 11:31 PM PDT

There is a construction rule I often find myself reaching for of the form:

so X a Y

Where "X" is an adjective and "Y" a noun. E.g.

I had never encountered so bold a claim

I am a native (British) English speaker, but I am unsure about the status of this kind of sentence. The indefinite article feels intuitively required to me, but I am unsure why. It also feels (again intuitively) slightly dated or artificial.

Could anyone tell me if this construction is grammatical and, if so, why the indefinite article is used? If it is grammatical, am I right to feel that it is a bit artificial? What would be a more natural replacement?

What does dung-dropping mean？

Posted: 30 Oct 2021 10:00 AM PDT

Protect fields from what?

"Hairy, squirmy, squeaky little rats! They've infested the plantation since the storm.

The inspectors will ask, if we can't protect our fields from those dung-dropping sugar-eaters, how can we protect them from skooma-brewing thieves?"

This text is from a game. And I'm trying to translate it to Chinese.

But the word "dung-dropping" is very confusing. At least I have three interpretations of it.

  1. Straightforward. It means those rats are pooping.
  2. Extended meaning. Like "jaw-dropping" and "name-dropping".
  3. Pun. Dung also means something filthy. So can "dung-dropping" be understood as terrible or dirty?

English is not my first language. If there is a problem with my wording, I hope everyone could correct me.

Just 'carry' for 'carry weapons' and just 'lift' instead of 'lift weights'. What linguistic phenomenon is it?

Posted: 30 Oct 2021 09:00 AM PDT

There are English verbs that can be used without an object while meaning a certain object. E.g.

  • Carry = carry weapons
  • Lift = lift weights
  • Use = use drugs
  • Possibly, 'investigate' (an incident, a crime, a statement) as well.

Some examples I saw:

California may issue permits to carry if a person meets the requirements.

For years I lifted just because I loved to lift.

The FBI was called in to investigate.

This is what I'm wondering:

  1. Any more examples that spring to your mind?
  2. Is there a word or a term in Linguistics for this sort of phenomenon?

I found and read a few articles about null objects / context null objects. They mention examples like 'Beat [ø] until stiff'. Are my examples the same phenomenon?

Thank you.

What does "practices are the context to which they respond" mean?

Posted: 30 Oct 2021 07:06 AM PDT

Through our practices, we create the reality (context) through which the former is influenced by the latter. 'Social reality is practices' (Taylor, 1985 cited in Schatzki, 2005: 470). Or, to put it differently, practices are the context to which they respond. Contexts are 'nexuses of practices and material arrangements' (Schatzki, 2005: 471). The context with its institutionalized meanings limits the possibilities to think and act (Berger and Luckmann, 1966). As a consequence, leaders are not free 'to do whatever they want, but neither are they determined in their actions by the situations they find themselves in' (Grint, 2005: 1490, emphasis added).

Drath, W.H. & Palus, C.J. (1994) Making Common Sense – Leadership as Meaning Making in a Community of Practice. Published as CCL Report no 156.

I am reading an article and trying to understand what this sentence " practices are the context to which they respond" means.

Does it mean the same as "practices are the context and practices respond to this context"?

What do you call a question you know the answer to, but you want an answer?

Posted: 29 Oct 2021 07:27 PM PDT

Consider this hypothetical scenario:

  1. You make plans with a significant other
  2. They bail on you because they are too tired
  3. You find out they went out with someone else
  4. You ask, despite knowing the answer, "did you end up going to sleep early last night?"
  5. They respond, "Ya"
  6. You respond, "That was a(n) _________ question"

I don't think it's rhetorical because you're expecting an answer. However, the question is asked for a different purpose than a traditional question since it's a test to see if the friend (or whomever) will lie or tell the truth. Is there a name for this type of question? Like... "unveiling question" or "truth-seeking question" lol?

EDIT:

The goal of this question is to determine whether the other party will speak the known truth. With that said, it is not a:

  • trick question. There is a correct and obvious answer
  • loaded question. There is no assumption - it is factual
  • trap question. The question can't expose ignorance since both parties know the answer.
  • interrogation. This is too generalized for what I'm looking for. "To question thoroughly"
  • prompt. This isn't a means to encourage a hesitant speaker

I'm unsure of whether "leading" is correct. To me, a leading question is one where the questioner doesn't actually have an answer to the question, and also needs to make the question specific for legal reasons. Whereas the questioner in my scenario above knows the answer, and doesn't necessarily have to ask a specific question, but rather uses it to expedite the unveiling process since the question in itself is a guise for an ulterior goal.

Also, I'm not looking for a general saying, nor an idiom - I'm looking to fill the blank in my scenario. Similar to how one would ask a rhetorical question where the questioned party answers, you would respond stating, "That was a rhetorical question."

EDIT EDIT:

I'm not looking for a word to describe the question (appending a word to "question"), but rather a word that is the type of question, but also flows well with the sentence and atmosphere. I'm essentially hoping/looking for something like "rhetorical question," but for this context.

If someone asks a rhetorical question and someone answers it, you can state that it's a rhetorical question, which is both the type of question, as well as a standalone explanation where the other party immediately understands that the question was unneeded. However, in this context, I want this type of question to make the other party immediately understand that they made a mistake and are in trouble, without having to add additional explanation.

Correct construction for "easily protected against"

Posted: 29 Oct 2021 10:04 PM PDT

What I am trying to express is that I have a problem P and a good G and it is easy to protect G from P. However, G is not the focus of the sentence and P was described in the previous sentence.

So I would like to say something like:

There is the additional problem P. However, it is easily protected against.

With it referring to the problem P and without going into what G is again. However, the construction seems complicated and possibly plain incorrect. What we would be a good expression?

I also considered:

There is the additional problem P. However, it is easy to protect against.

What does "Eat Lunch or be lunch" mean in this context?

Posted: 29 Oct 2021 10:05 PM PDT

I came across this phrase:

The problem facing companies today is that there are too many fishermen and not enough fish in the market. It's a matter of eat lunch or be lunch — or, as stated by Gregory Rawlins, "If you're not part of the steamroller, you're a part of the road."

What does eat lunch or be lunch mean in this context?

 

Edit 5 Oct 2013 7.58 PM:
I take it it is a fight for survival when there is too much competition. If they cannot find the means of surviving then they will go out of business. It uses the metaphor of fish. If they need to catch a fish to eat and there only 5 fishes in the pool and ten fishermen then five will go hungry (fish=customers). Please correct me and share your idea to clarify.

"in every respect" vs "in every aspect"

Posted: 30 Oct 2021 12:23 AM PDT

There is a quote from a local translation bureau website:

A translation shall be excellent in every respect: style, and formatting, and words, and meaning.

Is the use of 'in every respect' appropriate in this context?

I feel that 'style, formatting, words, and meaning' are aspects (or attributes) of a translation. Can we call them 'respects'?

Possessive and plural of "Series"

Posted: 30 Oct 2021 04:31 AM PDT

I'm looking at the financial definition of series: a group of stocks or options that have common characteristics. Source

How would I form the possessive and plural of this term? I'm guessing it is series' and series respectively.

Sample sentences, not sure of correctness:

He purchased one series.

He purchased multiple series.

This one series' characteristics are worth researching. <- This feels like it should be series's, but it looks so wrong.

These series' value is unmatched.
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