Questions pertaining to the structure of phrases and sentences.
61
votes
1answer
3k views
Is there a name for this type of sentence structure: “She looks as though she's been poured into her clothes, and forgot to say 'when'”?
Comedians seem to use phrases that employ this type of sentence structure - is there a name for it?
Examples of Groucho Marx's one liners seem to fit this pattern - and if memory serves, Emo Philips. ...
11
votes
2answers
3k views
Should I refer to “Section 2.3” or “Subsection 2.3”?
When writing a document that is divided into numbered sections and subsections, sometimes I would like to refer a certain subsection that has been numbered 2.3, for example. Here the 2 represents the ...
10
votes
6answers
262 views
How does the parenthetical “that is” function?
It's the last sentence of an article in The Economist.
Some of the powerful elders might have faded from the scene. Mr Xi and Li Keqiang might then have a freer hand to promote their own people, ...
10
votes
2answers
192 views
What's the most pedantically correct way to reference sectioned and numbered rules aloud?
I am a roller derby announcer. An important part of my job is to explain the rules of roller derby to the fans.
The rules of modern roller derby are promulgated by the Women's Flat Track Derby ...
7
votes
2answers
488 views
Is “want” a causative verb?
I've always held on to the definition that Causative Verbs express how the Noun before the Verb influences the execution of an action.
Similarly, the Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written ...
7
votes
2answers
415 views
What phrase is “you betcha” a descendant of?
"You bet you"? That's the closest I could think of. Or is it "you bet yourself", with the "self" omitted so it's quicker to say? Or is it something else altogether?
6
votes
1answer
569 views
Zero conditional form
Chatting with a colleague we came a cross a dilemma (as we are not English native), which of the following sentences are wrong? Why?
If I knew everything, I'd be a genius.
If I know everything, I'd ...
6
votes
6answers
682 views
Grammar: “Just because A, doesn't mean B”
I hear this all the time, and often from writers, but it never sounds right. I found myself using it in something I was writing.
For example: "Just because I stopped eating doesn't mean I'm full." ...
5
votes
3answers
254 views
sylleptic parentheses
Here's a quote from Wikipedia:
the triple point of Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water (VSMOW, 273.16 K and 0.01 °C)
Now, "VSMOW" refers to "Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water", while "273.16 K and ...
5
votes
1answer
1k views
What is a carpenter if he doesn't carpent?
Why does "carpenter" end in "er" if "carpent" isn't a word? Same with "butcher". (As in: "I butch for a living.")
5
votes
1answer
320 views
Frequency of word use vs number of words
Let's consider a partition of the words in the english language according to respective use frequency.
Looking at the frequency graph it should be easy to find classes of words with approximately the ...
5
votes
3answers
473 views
English generator algorithms
This may be an odd question for this site, but tonight I've been enjoying myself by creating a small script that produces (is supposed to produce) sample sentences that resemble English, while being ...
5
votes
2answers
275 views
When talking about something, where do we place its name in the sentence?
In Computer Science papers (and I'm sure that in papers in many other fields, too), we often have to describe a new tool or method that has a name.
Let's talk for instance about Eclipse, and its wide ...
4
votes
1answer
146 views
Building a phrase structure of “On the weekend …”
I'm reading Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing, and I'm doing one of the early exercises, trying to work out some of the language infliction about the word 'fun'.
On the ...
3
votes
3answers
245 views
Should I reformat this sentence? [closed]
I kind of feel like the first comma in the sentence below should be a semi-colon. Does anything else in there read funny?
As you’ll see in my enclosed resume, I
have the educational background,
...
3
votes
4answers
263 views
It is an existential question
A question on another site asks, I have a laptop ... Now I am trying to install Windows 7 and it shows a message saying "Driver not found".
Whereupon a commenter asks, What is the "it" that shows ...
3
votes
3answers
205 views
Validity in the brevity of this prose?
What I intended to write full out was:
We have moved away from obsoleted
technologies and technologies being
deprecated.
What I actually wrote feels slightly awkward but I justified leaving ...
3
votes
1answer
4k views
Yoda's sentence structure [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
What term can be used to describe Yoda's speech?
What is the structure of Yoda's sentences? Are they grammatically correct (US english)?
"Size matters not, ... ...
3
votes
2answers
730 views
What is the structure of the sentence 'const to the rescue'?
The following is the context:
Despite my fastidious coding habits, I
have made a silly mistake and typed +=
when I meant to type +. As a result,
when concatUnsafe is called, it will
modify ...
3
votes
3answers
406 views
What does “this” refer to?
What does "this" refer to in the following quote from the Wikipedia article on Learning Curve?
The learning curve can also represent at a glance the initial difficulty of learning something and, ...
3
votes
2answers
222 views
What defines a correlative?
I have come across a number of expressions (both...and..., if...then...) which are named as "correlative" in different grammars (namely Quirk et al.).
The question: What makes an expression a ...
2
votes
6answers
1k views
What is the structure in “as best you can”?
I instinctively translate it "as best as you can", however this makes no sense. What is the real structure behind this phrase?
I'll include an Ngram to illustrate the historical presence of this ...
2
votes
5answers
660 views
Structuring sentences without using the word “but”
I seem to have a habit of using a lot of sentences that involve the word "but": "I haven't tried it yet, but I think it should work"; "I could easily resort to chicken, but I want to see how far I can ...
2
votes
4answers
341 views
How should this sentence structure be interpreted?
I'm playing an online game in which I came across a message in the form of a sentence of which the structure is new to me.
It read:
You do not have a hatchet which you have the level to use.
...
2
votes
1answer
377 views
What types of antonyms are there?
As we know, Schadenfreude is defined as "the feeling of joy derived from witnessing the misfortunes of others". This question defines the antonym of Schadenfreude as "the feeling of discomfort derived ...
2
votes
2answers
100 views
On the structure of “search for weapons and bands of pro-Hussein fighters still holding out”
I came across the following expression:
The primary task of many American troops in Baghdad has been to search for weapons and bands of pro-Hussein fighters still holding out.
This is from a ...
2
votes
1answer
349 views
How to describe relations between objects unambiguously?
Following Martha's advise I am splitting up a question Compound sentences, the punctuation and mooore.
Consider the following fragment:
child nodes of a story representing its sub categories
I ...
2
votes
3answers
121 views
Conflicting views or emotions in the passage
What does the following passage from this NY Times article mean?
He [Theodore Roosevelt] transformed the 20th century; no, he overextended the 19th. He was a progressive trust buster; no, an ...
2
votes
1answer
412 views
Constructing compound sentences
Consider the following sentence:
One of the items that needed a further development was a research on child nodes of a story representing its sub categories being updated the moment the list of ...
2
votes
3answers
114 views
Correct use of IN compared to FOR when describing an action
I find it rather odd when someone writes that an item was used "in prediction" of 'X', however I don't know whether that is my own preference or it's actually incorrect. Personally, I think that ...
2
votes
2answers
465 views
Prepositions in a compound sentence
Following Martha's advise I am splitting up a question Compound sentences, the punctuation and mooore.
Consider the following sentence:
One of the items that needed a further development was a ...
1
vote
2answers
3k views
“I'm not understand” — help regarding sentence structure
I am trying to learn/improve my English by remembering grammar rules. Everyday, I read a lot of technical documentation and have many conversations with my colleagues from US.
I already have many ...
1
vote
2answers
337 views
What is the meaning of the word 'should' in the following paragraph, and how does it function?
You might also be curious why the productsList variable is initialized as new list of strings at the start of the method, only for it to be overwritten by the code in the try block. This is a ...
1
vote
1answer
214 views
What is the meaning and structure of the following sentence?
RLIMIT_NOFILE
Specifies one greater than the maximum number of file descriptors that a process
may hold open.
1
vote
2answers
163 views
Is this the structure of verb + object + adverbial phrase? [closed]
In ‘point new Gryffindors in the right direction ‘, is this the structure of verb + indirect object + direct object, or verb + object + adverbial phrase? As a Korean, I’m easier to accept the former ...
1
vote
3answers
825 views
How can I rephrase compound sentences to make them simpler?
Following Martha's advise I am splitting up a question Compound sentences, the punctuation and mooore.
Consider the following sentence:
One of the items that needed a further development was a ...
1
vote
3answers
771 views
What does the phrase 'Quote-O-Matic' mean?
A sample application in the book 'Test Drive ASP.NET MVC' used this as its title.
1
vote
1answer
97 views
Forum/s, Topics, Discussions and Posts [closed]
There are many internet forums out there and I am wondering which would be the most correct way to structure one's own forum.
For example, many forums are stated as "Forums" (even more use the ...
1
vote
2answers
46 views
Difference between using 'to go' versus 'going' in this sentence [duplicate]
What is the difference between I haven't tried to go there and I haven't tried going there?
1
vote
1answer
61 views
“Appear” followed by a verb: Necessarily a copula (linking verb)?
I’m wondering how I can structurally determine when a verb is being used as a copula and when it is not. Specifically, is the verb “appear” followed by a verb NECESSARILY a copula (i.e., linking ...
1
vote
1answer
217 views
Is it “me” or “I” and why? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
When do I use “I” instead of “me?”
John, Valencia, and I (or me)?
I found a photo of Sarah, Thomas, James and I?
OR
I found a photo of ...
0
votes
2answers
189 views
What's the correct usage of this sentence?
Had you been there, you would have understood.
or
If you had been there, you would have understood.
Which of the above sentences is a grammatically correct sentence or usually preferred ...
0
votes
3answers
396 views
Punctuation of sentence ending with the word “period” for emphasis
I really enjoyed The Dark Knight Rises and want to send a grammatically correct tweet about it. Unfortunately correct punctuation of the following eludes me:
In other news The Dark Knight Rises ...
0
votes
3answers
199 views
Structure and meaning of 'having a just a few' in the following paragraph?
What is the structure and meaning of 'having a just a few' in this paragraph?
The major shift here is that we treat both entities and users groups as very cheap resources. Instead of having a just ...
0
votes
1answer
159 views
Curious about the type of humour employed by Twitter's @AntiJokeCat? [closed]
Despite my general disregard for Twitter and its adherents, I very much enjoy AntiJokeCat's brand of humour. His/her gags are funny because they seem to subvert the notion of what a joke is and ...
0
votes
2answers
126 views
When to prepose an auxiliary in a sentence?
I read this at Time.com, and it's in the second line of the third paragraph.
And wouldn’t you know it, their theory proved to be both true and
statistically meaningful.
I suppose it means "And ...
0
votes
1answer
105 views
Is 'that' necessary for this sentence? [duplicate]
My friend and I were playing this game, in which we were complimenting others.
For example, she said, "You're so pretty, all the boys want to 'holla' at you."
Then I said, "You're so pretty, that all ...
0
votes
2answers
59 views
Structure of “the talk was of 'smart' sanctions” [closed]
From an article named "Iran’s nuclear programme: A red line and a reeling rial":
SIX YEARS ago, when America and Europe were putting in place the first raft of measures to press Iran to come clean ...
0
votes
1answer
71 views
Is there a reversal in the following sentence?
This mapping also helps better support page parameters.
Is the above sentence the same as this one?
This mapping also helps support page parameters better.
The original sentence is ...
-1
votes
3answers
407 views
Where I can find many good sentences? [closed]
First of all, I am really sorry if this topic does not fit here. I need to do an English sentences analysis, so I need to create a database. I need to find and input many English sentences into a ...
