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| bio | website | javamex.com |
|---|---|---|
| location | ||
| age | ||
| visits | member for | 2 years, 3 months |
| seen | 1 hour ago | |
| stats | profile views | 496 |
I am a language and IT specialist. My current activities include:
- development of various web sites, including the compilation and back-end development of language dictionaries and learning materials (incorporate Java Servlets and MySQL);
- software development, including various titles published for iOS;
- language translation, with a focus on specialist IT translation between French, Spanish and English;
- web articles devoted to Java programming with a focus on performance.
Please message me privately for information about potential collaboration.
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May 5 |
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Is “could've” or “should've” standard English? As well as Colin's point, the shift between slang and standard is not necessarily unidirectional: the opposite can also happen, and what was once a standard, boring-sounding word can at a later stage in the language come to be perceived of as "slang". |
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May 4 |
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Is it correct to change the common structure in these phrasal verbs? Thanks Edwin that's interesting. (Skimming rapidly, I think their results largely concur with what I suggested in my answer, though obviously setting out actual evidence and detail is always a good thing!) |
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May 3 |
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Is it proper to use the word “bandwidth” as it relates to time allotment? @Kris - My main problem with the statement would be that it is too limiting. I would re-phrase it as "There is no absolute authority on any language". You can quote me on that. |
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Apr 25 |
awarded | Notable Question |
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Apr 19 |
awarded | Enlightened |
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Apr 19 |
awarded | Nice Answer |
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Apr 18 |
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Lack of it / Lack thereof Though one could of course take the view that sometimes it is "better" or more effective to use plain, boring, universally understandable language rather than fancy antiquated verbiage. Both arguments can be made... |
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Mar 13 |
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Is the conditional a mood or a tense? @tchrist P.S. I forgot to mention that in Spanish, while things basically work as you say, there is a slight complication that the conditional form ("sería") is in reality often interpreted as meaning what in English would be "would have been", i.e. "I speculate now that this was the case in the past". |
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Mar 13 |
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Is the conditional a mood or a tense? @tchrist I was originally thinking actually about indirect speech, e.g. "He said that he would have finished it by 8pm", rather than conditionals as such. But I should say I'm also going on vague recollections from an Italian course I did at university several millennia ago-- maybe I just misremembered, or maybe it was specifically the case of e.g. "He believed that he would have done it...". |
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Mar 12 |
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Is the conditional a mood or a tense? @tchrist I'm aware of the situation in Spanish, but I had a feeling that specifically in Italian the subjunctive was used (under some circumstances?) for reported future-in-the-past? |
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Mar 5 |
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Why “the ipad” and not simply ipad Good explanation-- re your last point, I think the reason is also partly to do with the fact that it is common to refer to platforms/operating systems without articles ("in Windows", "for iOS", "under Linux"), so it's a way of emphasising the iPad as a platform as well as a physical device. |
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Feb 12 |
awarded | Yearling |
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Feb 11 |
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What's the difference between “I want” and “I am wanting”? Agreed that with its meaning of 'lacking', "wanting" is at best formal if not archaic. But "I am (etc) wanting" can be used as a regular progressive-- see my answer for an explanation and examples. |
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Feb 11 |
answered | What's the difference between “I want” and “I am wanting”? |
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Feb 9 |
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“None” as plural indefinite pronoun Remember that you can almost always invent some spurious rationalisation for whatever spurious rule you want to invent. I could say that it is more "rational" for verbs to have the ending -s in the plural, not the singular, because that is the pattern observed in nouns. |
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Jan 31 |
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Comma before “which” @aszekely - Except that in reality, it isn't actually true that "which" is used exclusively for non-restrictive clauses and "that" for restrictive. This is an invention that some commentators advocate but there is no intrinsic compulsion to follow it and it is far from universally adopted. Or in other words, you only "need" a comma if you arbitrarily decide to follow that convention. |
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Jan 30 |
answered | Is this an adverbial or a noun clause? |
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Jan 30 |
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What's the difference between a gerund and a participle? That's fine, but note that I'm really not talking about "edge cases". For example, a structure of the form "Him quick arriving" is *always ungrammatical and it's a basic property of a gerund that it has verbal arguments. You're absolutely right that the status of "gerund" is a million miles away from "universally agreed upon"... so therefore, I would have expected a good answer to emphasise this fact. |
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Jan 29 |
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What's the difference between a gerund and a participle? I repeat: it's really much more complex than this. I also think that defining "noun" as "subject of the verb" is extremely questionable, incidentally, but in any case I don't think it helps you here. How in your definitions do you account for e.g. "I disagree with him smoking". Your answer is fine as a very simplistic starting point-- my objection is simply that you're failing to mention or acknowledge that things are in reality much more complex. |
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Jan 29 |
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What's the difference between a gerund and a participle? N.B. It's not really so simple as a gerund being a "verb used as a noun". Think about "walking is good for you", and consider the following variant: "Walking quickly is good for you". Notice how an adverbial form is used to modify what you are positing to be a "noun". Consider also the pair "Him arriving"~"His arrival". The latter is ostensibly noun-like, but the former has some important differences. |
