10
votes
Does “You all” sound too southern?
It is also a matter of pronunciation and pausing. If you pronounce well your two words you and all without joining them in one syllable (y'all), there should not be an issue.
Otherwise, you can always ...
- 37.1k
10
votes
Accepted
"Can I bum a cigarette?" - "I’m an athlete"
This is called an implicature.
It was coined by H. P. Grice to refer to what is suggested in an utterance, even though neither expressed nor strictly implied (that is, entailed) by the utterance.
...
- 153k
6
votes
Do all “epicene” pronouns mean the same thing as one another?
What you're looking for likely doesn't exist because authority on this topic is still decentralized, so systematic study is not yet meaningful.
I think it's worth considering what a systematic study ...
- 1,086
5
votes
"Can I bum a cigarette?" - "I’m an athlete"
The response itself, which seems to not answer the question literally, is called an:
indirect speech act.
In your instances, a yes/no question is asked, but the response doesn't say yes or no ...
- 72.1k
4
votes
"When I last saw him he was dying, but now you'd hardly know he'd been ill"
You've got it backward: CGEL is saying that for some speakers bare he was dying entails his subsequent death, because dying is a process which ends in death. These speakers insist on something like he ...
- 69.1k
4
votes
What natural mechanisms in English are used to avoid to mention the number of things and the gender of people?
Two strategies may help if you want to give less information about a pet or person you know.
The first, which conceals number, is to recast the answer around your own role rather than around the pet:
...
- 41.7k
4
votes
Why does the verb "was" indicate the fact that no longer exists?
The simple past tense doesn't have to mean that a statement is no longer true - it just says that it was true at some time in the past.
If the man is no longer rich, we could say He used to be rich or ...
- 28.1k
3
votes
Accepted
Can one say "the dark one" to refer to a person with black hair?
No, at least in American English. It would be interpreted as potentially being a reference to skin color (and, at least in the US, rude).
The equivalent of "blond" is "brunette" ...
- 206
3
votes
Does “You all” sound too southern?
Many thanks to the (great) chefs/hosts who made me dinner tonight !
3
votes
Accepted
Implication of unstated contrasting cases
The entirely correct conclusion drawn in the question is a result of a phenomenon detailed first by the philosopher Paul Grice. The rules he formulated for what he called "Cooperative ...
- 109k
3
votes
Do all “epicene” pronouns mean the same thing as one another?
I’m a nonbinary/genderqueer person and the answer is yes. Epicene pronouns in English like sie/hir, xe/xem, ze/hir, e/em, ey/em, thon/thons (we could go on all day) do not have semantic differences. ...
3
votes
What natural mechanisms in English are used to avoid to mention the number of things and the gender of people?
I think you are asking the impossible.
Let's take the singular/plural matter. First you have to be clear whether your intention is to mislead or deceive the neighbour. Here is a possible way of ...
- 11.4k
2
votes
Difference between Pragmatics and Sociolinguistics
The study of language in relation to social factors, including differences of regional, class, and occupational dialect, gender differences, and bilingualism This is what we call as Sociolinguistics, ...
- 52
2
votes
polite tag in questions : for me?
It's ungrammatical and doesn't really make sense. "for me" would normally follow you asking someone to do something, like "Can you spell your last name for me?".
If you want to "soften" (which ...
- 23.2k
2
votes
Can you limit something to a state of complete reduction?
Consider the definition of limit on Google:
limit:
a restriction on the size or amount of something permissible or
possible
If I were to put limits on your talking, at an all-day meeting I've ...
- 18.1k
2
votes
Can you limit something to a state of complete reduction?
With quasi-real commodities such as money, zero amounts are possible. Thus a 'zero spending limit' is appliable.
According to Adrian B at Advertisercommunity.com:
Some banks configure the cards ...
- 87.2k
2
votes
What natural mechanisms in English are used to avoid to mention the number of things and the gender of people?
Different languages have different things forced on you. In English, number is forced on a noun ('a dog' or 'dogs, but never just 'dog'). In Chinese, for a brother you must indicate whether he is an ...
- 72.1k
2
votes
A: You haven't heard it? B: No, I heard it (nodding a yes)
In the cited conversational exchange—
A: You haven't heard it?
B: No, I heard it {nodding a yes}.
—person B seems to have understood person A's question along these lines:
A: [Is it true that y]ou ...
- 169k
2
votes
Accepted
Water can/may still get in
This appears to be a case of inadvertant misattribution by the Original Poster. Here is the actual text and its context:
The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, Huddleston & Pullum (2002, ...
- 48.7k
2
votes
The word 'until': 'fought off the Dutch until 1903' _ does this necessarily imply being conquered in 1903?
Yes, logically, 'S did V until T' says nothing about the situation from T onwards.
Pragmatics (a sense of how practised Anglophones actually use the language, sometimes defying logical approaches) ...
- 87.2k
2
votes
Is "being away from home a good deal" strictly habitual?
The definition of "good deal" in M-W is:
a considerable quantity or extent : LOT
When used to refer to time, it's not specific as to whether it's one long stretch or lots of short ...
- 22.5k
1
vote
Does “You all” sound too southern?
The most obvious solution is:
Thanks for dinner!
This avoids the issue that the OP mentioned, namely that you might be construed as singling out one particular person as the addressee.
- 19.6k
1
vote
Does “You all” sound too southern?
Those classy San Diegans should not have made fun of you for sounding like a southerner. In the Philly metro area its not uncommon to hear or see people using y'all, and nobody would consider this ...
- 115
1
vote
Does “You all” sound too southern?
There's also a slightly less formal (Bill and Ted) manner...
Thanks, everyone, for a most excellent meal.
Or you could even just look at everyone and make sweeping gestures, while saying simply:
...
- 141
1
vote
Accepted
Why is there subject auxiliary inversion in the embedded clause in "I wonder could we untie him"?
I seriously doubt C. S. Lewis would make a typo. This is indeed spoken language, but it is also standard in some dialects. Yale University has an article on Inversion in embedded questions, commenting ...
- 37.1k
1
vote
When can we use "This/That is how we/you do it"?
You can think of that phrase as short for
If you want to operate a restaurant well, this is how you do it.
where "this" refers to the way the restaurant being reviewed is run. The rest of ...
- 22.5k
1
vote
"It is that ..." sentences in a non-linguistic context
"It's not that I'm sick. It's just that the water went down the wrong pipe."
The phrase "It's not that..." is the subject of the sentence and is a substitute for a repetition of the phrase or subject ...
- 287
1
vote
"He has been learning to swim" implicates that he doesn’t know how to swim
The significant part of this sentence is "swim".
If I said "He has been learning to tie his shoelaces.", it would be as an explanation for why my young son's shoes look the way they do. Tying ...
- 2,664
1
vote
"He has been learning to swim" implicates that he doesn’t know how to swim
The simple explanation is: we cannot learn something we already know. Thus, when we say, "I'm learning X" it must mean I don't know X.
The problem with this simple explanation is that it's often not ...
- 7,663
1
vote
"Populist" in the following text context
No, I don’t think it has a derogatory meaning. This is an AP wire story, and the term is used as a description, not as editorial comment.
What populist means, here, is another question. In current ...
- 16.3k
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