63
votes
Accepted
What is the term for a sentence which reads same forwards and backwards?
They are still called palindromes, but are qualified by the term word-unit.
There are also word-unit palindromes in which the unit of reversal is the word ("Is it crazy how saying sentences ...
- 39k
63
votes
62
votes
Accepted
Is there a sentence that begins with “them”?
Fronting the object for focus, by converting an SVO sentence into an OSV one, is a common enough syntactic pattern in English:
Contest Rules
Submitting ungrammatical sentences is of no use here.Them ...
- 137k
56
votes
Is there a sentence that begins with “them”?
At the risk of stating the obvious:
'Them' is the word that starts this sentence.
If that's a little too meta:
'Them' is my favourite movie.
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45
votes
How is “The Stars My Destination” a grammatically correct title/sentence?
It makes complete sense. You're under-citing. Here's the entire verse from The Stars My Destination:
Gully Foyle is my name
And Terra is my nation.
Deep space is my dwelling place,
The stars my ...
- 137k
43
votes
Is there a sentence that begins with “them”?
This form (using a gerund, or noun phrase) hasn't been mentioned yet, and is grammatical albeit awkward:
Them being able to come up with such unusual sentences was a surprise to some but not to ...
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25
votes
Is there a sentence that begins with “them”?
Them was Van Morrison's band in the 60's.
Them Again was the name of their second album.
Them In Reality was the name of their 1971 album.
At least four sentences on the linked wikipedia page ...
- 1,056
19
votes
Is there a sentence that begins with “them”?
Have you never seen a Western? Typical dialogue:
“Them there critters are mighty jumpy tonight”
And here is a real example from The Legend of Barry Claw
“Them there Injuns sure won’t never ...
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13
votes
Is there a sentence that begins with “them”?
Them and meth are anagrams.
This is a sample sentence.
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11
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What is the term for a sentence which reads same forwards and backwards?
Chiasmus, would be my response.
Taken from literarydevices.net:
Chiasmus is a rhetorical device in which two or more clauses are balanced against each other by the reversal of their structures ...
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9
votes
Is there a sentence that begins with “them”?
‘Them bones, them bones, them dry bones’ are lyrics from a spiritual, where they originally appear as 'dem', that also appear as 'them', in a song by Alice in Chains.
http://www.metrolyrics.com/them-...
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9
votes
Accepted
Is this just an error or am I missing something?
I suspect the intended meaning is, "As the farmers, we provide all our teas with a Tea Passport..."
The producers are saying that they have farmed the tea themselves, rather than bought it ...
- 4,587
8
votes
Accepted
Trivia quesiton logic
"Ago" means "earlier than the present time" or "before now". It is not used to talk about time before future events. Jane is twelve years old. For the answer to be eight, the riddle would be "In two ...
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8
votes
Is there a sentence that begins with “them”?
My grandmother, who lived through the depression as a sixth child in a hardscrabble mining family, had a saying - "Them that has, gets."
- 81
6
votes
Accepted
Using synonyms to improve text readability ("elegant variation")
This is a matter of style, on which people disagree. In the past, people in English-speaking countries, just like the OP, have been taught that such ‘elegant variation’ is desirable, that it makes ...
- 8,928
6
votes
Accepted
Will definitely be Vs will be definitely
There are certain adverbs in English that are typically placed in mid position (as opposed to front or end position). Among these mid-position adverbs are 'certainty' adverbs such as definitely, ...
- 33.5k
6
votes
Accepted
What are the differences between the following?
The sentences mean slightly different things.
I did this for the first time in Tibet.
This implies that this is the first time you've done it ever.
I did this in Tibet for the first time.
This ...
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6
votes
Accepted
What's the syntactic explanation in "Mistakes are likely to happen":
As pointed out in comments, (be) likely is a Raising predicate. That means that the noun phrase subject of be likely with a following infinitive complement is not really the subject of likely, but of ...
- 109k
6
votes
Skipping a relative pronoun
You are in error. If you had only skipped the relative pronoun,
you would have produced the ungrammatical clause
*I slowly turn toward the elderly gentleman is standing at my side
In fact, in ...
- 109k
5
votes
Through a Glass, Clearly / A Scanner Darkly / In a Mirror, Darkly / etc
The phrase through a glass darkly originated in the 1560 Geneva Bible translation of The First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, Chapter 13, verse 12. But, the phrase's popularity correlates with ...
5
votes
Is this just an error or am I missing something?
I think this may be a case of a misplaced modifier.
Consider the part As the farmers, all our teas...
It seems to suggest that teas are the farmers.
Equivalently, if you use the participle phrase ...
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5
votes
Accepted
"There are fish of every hue." For different kinds of fish, should fish be in plural form here?
The plural form of "fish" is "fish" ("fishes" is also an accepted plural, but it is less common). The same is true for
bison
sheep
deer
moose
aircraft
and a number of ...
- 535
4
votes
Accepted
Is there a term for filler sounds in written language
Those are known as interjections. Merriam-Webster says of this part of speech:
An interjection is a word or phrase that is grammatically independent from the words around it, and mainly expresses ...
- 22.9k
4
votes
Accepted
Mixing countability; how to correctly say "there is plenty of rice, earthquakes and typhoons"?
The OP asks: “But here I am asking if there is a way that I can keep the three nouns as close together as possible”
One sentence.
Earthquakes and typhoons are as plentiful as rice where I live.
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4
votes
Accepted
What does it mean when you say 'What I wouldn't give to be there?
It's a less dramatic version of the doubtless hyperbolic
"I'd give my right arm [/hand] to be there."
(See, for example, Cambridge Dictionary)
The implication is that you'd give up many of your ...
- 87.1k
4
votes
What are the differences between the following?
If you are not necessarily compelled to use this particular structure, you could choose another to convey your meaning:
It is in Tibet that I did this for the first time.
This applies to I have ...
- 37k
4
votes
How to say this more concisely with less redundancy?
"Like" adds nothing special; "access" can be avoided a second time.
I felt (that) I had a privileged access to something (that) most people are barred from.
- 23.9k
3
votes
Fronting of helping verbs for impossible probabilities
The relevant definition of "have" in the OED is:
In the protasis of a counterfactual conditional sentence, with inversion of subject and verb instead of an if-clause.
The past subjunctive of ...
- 67.3k
3
votes
Linguistic term for repeating a subject as in "We sat there, we two."
We sat there, we two.
The technical term for this is right dislocation. See CGEL, Ch. 16 Information Packaging, §8 (1408) and particularly §8.2 (1411). It is analyzed as if a discourse-old element ...
- 69.1k
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