Timeline for Omission of 'for' with various quantified time intervals: influence of verb
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
33 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 21, 2016 at 15:03 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | "How many years have you lived here?", certainly. And "Have you been studying English for 10 years?" But your question formulations are infelicitous. | |
| S Jan 21, 2016 at 13:52 | history | bounty ended | CommunityBot | ||
| S Jan 21, 2016 at 13:52 | history | notice removed | CommunityBot | ||
| Jan 20, 2016 at 1:54 | comment | added | rhetorician | Just a thought . . .. If you were to turn your first statement into a question, which of the following versions would sound best to your ears?: "How many years have you lived here?"; "For how many years have you lived here?"; or "How many years have you lived here for?" Do the same for the second sentence: "Have you studied English 10 years?"; "Have you studied English for 10 years?" Again, which sounds better to you? | |
| Jan 20, 2016 at 0:30 | answer | added | Ricky | timeline score: -1 | |
| Jan 18, 2016 at 14:56 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | (1) Now acceptable in an informal register. (2) This is rather looking at prepositionless PP's. // There are other problems with the 'intransitive ppn stance': 'Reaching Mono Lake well before we were due to be picked up, we decided we had time to walk around.' vs 'Reaching Mono Lake well before we were due to be picked up, we decided we had time to walk around it.' I'm happier with 'not-really-adverbial locative/directional particles' here. | |
| Jan 18, 2016 at 14:35 | answer | added | Araucaria - Him | timeline score: 5 | |
| Jan 18, 2016 at 13:36 | comment | added | Araucaria - Him | @EdwinAshworth I don't know if you noticed, but if the authors in that paper didn't regard so many Jespersen-style intransitive prepositions as nouns then half the issues discussed in that paper would fall away! (downtown, overseas, home, here, there etc) | |
| Jan 18, 2016 at 13:07 | comment | added | Araucaria - Him | @EdwinAshworth What do you think about the relative acceptability of the study sentence if we put in into the progressive: "I've been studying English ten years now." ....? | |
| Jan 14, 2016 at 17:21 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | @FF I'd expect 'I'm taking a minute or two to have a fag'. | |
| Jan 14, 2016 at 13:08 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @Edwin: That's one of the drawbacks of the written form if I don't go out of my way to indicate emphasis. You wouldn't impose that interpretation if you actually heard my friend say I'm having a fag a minute (with the stress on fag rather than minute). Except in the remote eventuality it was a response to something like The preacher says no-one gets liver disease in the afterlife, so when I get to heaven I'm gonna have a sip of whisky every minute for the rest of eternity, | |
| Jan 13, 2016 at 20:16 | answer | added | Justin Ohms | timeline score: 2 | |
| Jan 13, 2016 at 19:48 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | Wasn't it cunning of me to put 'pronoun' instead of 'preposition' so that this would be revisited! Though the philanthropy is purely FF's. "I'm having a toffee a minute" would surely normally be read as 60 toffees per hour. | |
| Jan 13, 2016 at 16:14 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @Josh61: I have very little patience with the concept of "grammar rules" except in a few clear-cut cases, and this certainly isn't one of them. But I remember discussing I'm having a fag a minute with a Welsh friend a few years ago, the upshot of which was that in her vernacular the word for can be omitted more often than in mine. I'd like to know more about the principles/tendencies involved, particularly noting this ELL question. | |
| Jan 13, 2016 at 12:55 | comment | added | user66974 | @FumbleFinger: I think the answer to this question is in common usage rather than grammar rules. Are you looking for related evidence on the latter? | |
| S Jan 13, 2016 at 12:49 | history | bounty started | FumbleFingers | ||
| S Jan 13, 2016 at 12:49 | history | notice added | FumbleFingers | Draw attention | |
| S Jan 13, 2016 at 6:06 | history | suggested | GoDucks | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
seems an obvious slip to me, given the question and the sentence referred to
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| Jan 13, 2016 at 5:36 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Jan 13, 2016 at 6:06 | |||||
| Nov 2, 2014 at 22:39 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | No; 'I've studied philosophy ten years' sounds equally outlandish. It's probably far more colloquial in the US. | |
| Oct 25, 2014 at 14:45 | comment | added | Kris | Your discomfort seems to be due to the semantics. Is English a noun or an adjective there? | |
| Aug 26, 2014 at 13:12 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | I was just giving the reason why I included it. Do PDF reader software's built-in functions correct dodgy translations? Do you come in black? | |
| Aug 26, 2014 at 12:13 | answer | added | Gary's Student | timeline score: 1 | |
| Aug 26, 2014 at 11:51 | history | edited | Dan Bron | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 13 characters in body; added 3 characters in body
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| Aug 26, 2014 at 11:44 | comment | added | Dan Bron | Edwin, these days, people typically use their PDF reader software's built-in text search function (CTRL+F) to locate quoted passages or any known text. That said, if you prefer, I can go read the linked paper and edit a more direct reference (chapter/section/page) into your question. | |
| Aug 26, 2014 at 11:27 | history | edited | Dan Bron | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
keep it pretty :)
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| Aug 26, 2014 at 11:09 | history | edited | Edwin Ashworth | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 131 characters in body
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| Aug 26, 2014 at 11:04 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | You technowizzes amaze me. My attempts at hot-linking to a pdf article seem always to collapse. (You've prettified it too.) Though omitting the (1) from the quoted questions won't help people find them. | |
| Aug 26, 2014 at 10:59 | history | edited | Dan Bron | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
capitalize first word in title
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| Aug 26, 2014 at 10:57 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackEnglish/status/504221157118443520 | ||
| Aug 26, 2014 at 10:46 | comment | added | Dan Bron | I can't answer your more technical questions on the niceties of usage, but "I've studied English 10 years" sounds perfectly fine to my ear, and I've heard people say similar things (AmE). | |
| Aug 26, 2014 at 10:43 | history | edited | Edwin Ashworth | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
deleted 2 characters in body; edited title
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| Aug 26, 2014 at 10:37 | history | asked | Edwin Ashworth | CC BY-SA 3.0 |