Jose Carillo's Forum

YOU ASKED ME THIS QUESTION

Jose Carillo’s English Forum invites members to post their grammar and usage questions directly on the Forum's discussion boards. I will make an effort to reply to every question and post the reply here in this discussion board or elsewhere in the Forum depending on the subject matter.

Is it intellectually dishonest to cite a source one hasn’t really read?

Question e-mailed by a Forum member whom I’ll identify only as MH (May 20, 2013):

Hi! Is it considered dishonesty if I cite a book, journal, etc., in my bibliography without really having seen the actual material but just read it in the Internet? For example, author A cited in his bibliography the book of Author B about innovation. Then, I just Googled author B and cited in my reference his book. Is this in any way being dishonest?

My reply to MH:

Your question is a very sensitive one that needs a highly nuanced answer, and I will presume here that the question is purely a hypothetical one. We have to begin by clarifying what the term “actual material” means in the context of your question. As you know, in the Internet age, some books now come in the form of e-books, which are books composed in or converted to digital format for display on a computer screen or handheld device. The content of a legitimate e-book—meaning one that’s published, distributed, and sold by a reputable publisher—is exactly the same as that of the traditional edition printed on paper; the only difference is the form by which the reader is able to access and read the content. And, of course, some of these e-books or portions of them end up being posted on the web with or without the consent of the author or publisher. From an information-delivery standpoint, however, it makes no difference whether you read the paper edition or e-book edition of any form of intellectual property like, say, a reference book or a work of fiction or nonfiction. The only thing you need to ensure is that you have read the authentic work or the part of it that you are using as a reference.

Now let’s examine your example of the book on innovation by Author B that was cited by Author A in his bibliography. Hypothetically, you say that you just Googled author B and then cited his book as a reference in your own written work. If what you found through Google and subsequently read is Author B’s book on innovation in an e-book or digital form, or at least the actual chapter or authentic part of that book referred to in your own work, then citing Author B’s book as your reference is a perfectly legitimate and honest act. This is particularly the case when you referred to a particular author or work in a curated website like, say, the Perseus Digital Library, where you can read free of charge the authentic texts of a plethora of books on the history, literature, and culture of the Greco-Roman world (including the whole portfolio of William Shakespeare’s works). However, if all you did was Google the name of Author B and then read his biography on Wikipedia simply to check that he had actually written the book on innovation cited by Author A, and if you actually had not read that book or an authentic part of it that you referred to in your written work, then I think it’s intellectually dishonest to make that reference to Author B’s book on innovation. It’s not enough to go through the motions of Googling Author B simply as a salve to a guilty conscience. Indeed, this form of intellectual dishonesty should be scrupulously avoided by every self-respecting netizen.

Rejoinder  from MH (May 22, 2013):

Sir,

Salamat po. 

I am now writing my dissertation, and I don’t want to be dishonest in whatever way. 

I am truly grateful to you. God bless.

MH

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The difference between “stock knowledge” and “stack knowledge”

Question from Mrbraveheart, new Forum member (May 29, 2013):

Hi Jose!

How have you been? Hope you’re happy and healthy! 

I’ve become your disciple after reading English Plain and Simple. As your disciple, I still reckon that I have a great many things to learn. And one of them is the difference between “stock knowledge” and “stack knowledge.” I have searched the Internet but none of the results can give a valid, justifiable and truthful answer. Hope you can help. Thanks heaps!

Grateful,
Mrbraveheart

My reply to Mrbraveheart:

Thank you for your good wishes! I’m fine and doing quite well.

I would define “stock knowledge” as the set of structured, systemic, and contextual information that one has already learned and internalized; it is preexisting knowledge, as opposed to knowledge that one doesn’t have or has yet to learn and understand. 

As to “stack knowledge,” I must tell you that whatever it means isn’t part of my stock knowledge yet. This is my very first encounter with that noun phrase, so I can’t tell you offhand how it might differ from “stock knowledge.” In fact, a cursory search on the web has convinced me that “stack knowledge” doesn’t exist in the English lexicon at all.

You see, there are strings of words in English that are known as collocations—familiar groupings of words that commonly go together and convey meaning by association. To this category of words belong such verb phrases as “feel free,” “make progress,” and “save time”; such noun phrases as “powerful computer” and “strong coffee” (as opposed to “strong computer” and “powerful coffee,” respectively, which are very poor collocations); and such idiomatic expressions as “gone with the wind,” “straight as the crow flies,” and “tempest in a teapot.” 

The noun phrase “stock knowledge” is clearly a strong collocation that consists of the noun “knowledge” modified by the adjective “stock” in the sense of “commonly used or often brought forward.” On the other hand, when looked upon as a noun phrase, “stack knowledge” doesn’t qualify as a collocation because it fails to convey a clear and identifiable meaning by association. Differentiating “stock knowledge” from “stack knowledge” is therefore like differentiating apples from desktop computers, which is clearly not a very meaningful exercise. 

Indeed, “stack knowledge” won’t sound nonsensical only when we look at “stack” as a verb in the sense of “to arrange in an orderly pile or heap,” with “knowledge” as its direct object. We can then use “stack knowledge” in a sentence like, say, “The function of a computer’s hard disk is to stack knowledge in a memory bank for long-term storage.” This is a very unnatural-sounding sentence, of course, but we can make it semantically more precise by replacing the word “knowledge” with “information.” This time, the verb phrase “stack information” works very well because it’s a fairly strong collocation by itself.

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SOS after testy debate on usage of “resulting in” vs. “resulting to”

I received the following e-mailed SOS about a grammar issue last April 26, 2013, from a newspaper columnist-friend whom I won’t identify here to protect his privacy:

Joe,

I corrected somebody’s “resulting to.” I said it should be “resulting in.” “Show me the rule that says it should be ‘resulting in,’” said she, in a piqued and challenging manner. I immediately picked up your book Give Your English the Winning Edge and looked for the relevant rule.  I didn’t see it or I could not find it.  

Please cite me the rule before the lady goes into a rage. Many thanks!

Oscar

My reply to Oscar:

April 26, 2013

Dear Oscar,

I’m afraid that my book Give Your English the Winning Edge doesn’t cite a definitive rule on the usage of the form “resulting in,” but that form does appear in the list of “frequently misused phrases using prepositions” that I provided on Page 196 in my earlier book, English Plain and Simple. In her pique, however, your friend obviously won’t find the mere appearance of “resulting in” in that list as a convincing argument against her preference for “resulting to.”

Let me therefore cite two authoritative sources below to support the strong primacy of “resulting in” over “resulting to” in English usage:

The Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary & Thesaurus classifies “result in something” as a phrasal verb that means “to cause a particular situation to happen,” as in “The fire resulted in damage to their property” and “Icy road conditions in Teesdale resulted in two roads being closed.”

In the same vein, the McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs classifies “result in something” as an idiom that means “to achieve something; to bring about something; to cause something to happen,” as in “I hope that this will result in the police finding your car” and “All my effort resulted in nothing at all.”

I must add at this point that I don’t know of any English usage authority that cites or vouches for “result to something” as a legitimate idiom or phrasal verb.

Now, by definition, a phrasal verb consists of a verb and a preposition or adverb that modifies or changes the meaning of that verb; for instance, “give up” is a phrasal verb that means “stop doing” something, which is very different from “give.” The word or words that modify a verb in this manner is also known as a particle.

In the case of the phrasal verb “result in,” the verb is “result” and the particle is “in”; together, they form an idiom or expression with a meaning and nuance distinct from those of the verb “result” alone. Of course, some will argue that the form “result to” can be used as well to yield the same meaning and, admittedly, it would be difficult to refute their argument from a grammar standpoint alone. Among native English speakers, however, the form “result in” is the conventional and well-accepted usage, such that it can safely be said that the correct idiom is “result in” and not “result to.” Thus, those who persist in using “result to” in educated circles put themselves at risk of being deemed uninformed or—at the very least—unidiomatic in their English.

On several occasions, I had called attention to and critiqued the frequent misuse of “result to” by the Philippine print media. You may want to suggest to your friend to check out my English-usage website, Jose Carillo’s English Forum, and read my critiques on that faulty usage and other grammar gaffes. I’m sure she’ll find it interesting to read particularly “Media needs a reporting standard for prophets and plain guessers” (April 24, 2010) and “Very frequent preposition misuse mars today’s English journalism” (June 12, 2011).

I trust that when your grammar adversary is through with these two readings, she would be enlightened and finally relent in her defense of the form “result to.”

With my best wishes,
Joe Carillo

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Difference between “a little” and “little,” between “a few” and “few”

Question by Mwita Chacha, Forum member (April 8, 2013):

I have lots of problems telling the usage difference between “a little” and “little” as well as “a few” and “few.”

My reply to Mwita Chacha:

Follow the modification patterns below religiously and you won’t have trouble anymore using those tricky adjectives:

When modifying uncountable nouns, use the adjective “little” to emphasize the lack of something, and “a little” to emphasize that something still remains, as in the following sentences:

“They have little time to run a successful political campaign.” (They don’t have the time to do a successful political campaign.)

“They have a little time left to do their political campaign.” (They have some time remaining to do their political campaign.)

On the other hand, when modifying countable nouns, use the adjective “few” to emphasize the lack of something, and “a few” to emphasize that something still remains, as in the following sentences:

“We have few good people to run the country’s judicial system.” (There are not enough good people to run the country’s judicial system.)

“We still have a few good people to run the country’s judicial system.” (There still remain some good people to run the country’s judicial system.)

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The difference in nuance between the adjectives “all” and “every”

Question e-mailed by MEM from Rome (April 6, 2013):
 
I am not sure that e-mail is the right way to ask you about my doubt. If it isn’t, can you tell me what I should do to get an answer?

What is correct?

(1) “It is worldwide known that alcohol abuse is bad for health. Alcohol is a toxic substance to all organs of the body, in particular brain and liver.”

(2) “It is worldwide known that alcohol abuse is bad for health. Alcohol is a toxic substance to every organ of the body, in particular brain and liver.”

My reply to MEM:

Either e-mailing me your questions or posting them in Jose Carillo’s English Forum is OK with me. It’s no problem at all.

In the two sentence constructions you presented, “every organ” is the correct, idiomatic usage. Using “all organs” is also grammatically correct, “ever” and “all” being practically synonymous in the sense of “being each individual, part, or member of a whole without exception,” but using “every organ” more closely conveys the individual vulnerability of each of them to alcohol. The sense conveyed when “every organ” is used is that the adverse effect of alcohol on a particular organ may be different or may vary in degree compared to its effect on other organs. In contrast, when “all organs” is used, what is conveyed is the collective vulnerability of all of those organs to alcohol. This gives the nuance that all of those organs will be adversely affected by alcohol simultaneously and to the same degree—a sense that, of course, doesn’t sound very realistic.

Your second sentence is therefore the correct choice, but its syntax needs to be improved to make its English beyond reproach and more fluent. I would recommend the following refinement:

“It is known worldwide that alcohol abuse is bad for the health. Alcohol is a substance that is toxic to every organ of the body, in particular the brain and the liver.”

I hope this helps. 

RELATED READINGS:
Must an adjective always precede the head noun of a phrase?
Usage rules for the article “the”
A puzzling variation in the use of the indefinite article “a”

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Distinguishing between subjunctives and second conditionals

Question by Mwita Chacha, Forum member (March 28, 2013):

(Spinned off from “How do we incorporate ‘that’ clauses in second conditional sentences?”)

I think I’ve understood everything you’ve explained except that I find myself having misgivings about the grammar of the sentence “If you were not my wife at the time, I would have said you were crazy.” Were I you, I would write it as “If you had not been my wife at the time, I would have said you were crazy.” “Were,” as I understand it, is only reserved for present unreal conditional sentences—subjunctive sentences in this case. But when talking about events of the past, the linking verb “had been” is what becomes appropriate. 

My reply to Mwita Chacha:

Your proposed construction of the sentence in question, “If you had not been my wife at the time, I would have said you were crazy,” is faulty both grammatically and semantically. It incorrectly uses the past perfect conditional “If you had not been my wife” to convey the wrong idea that the woman referred to was previously the speaker’s wife but was no longer so (perhaps by divorce or legal separation or whatnot) at the time being referred to. This sense is precisely the opposite of what is intended, which is that the woman was indeed the speaker’s wife at the time referred to, for which reason he knew that she wasn’t crazy and, this being the case, he couldn’t have possibly said she was.

In contrast, by using the subjunctive past-tense “If you were not my wife at the time,” the sentence “If you were not my wife at the time, I would have said you were crazy” correctly describes the hypothetical state or outcome—one thought of by the speaker at some point in the past—of an unreal situation or idea contrary to fact. Here, of course, the unreal situation or idea contrary to fact is “if you were not my wife at the time,” and the hypothetical state or outcome is “I would have said you were crazy.” The “were” in the “if”-clause or premise is the subjunctive “were,” while the “were” in the hypothetical state or outcome is the simple past-tense “were.”

I hope it’s clear by now that in the sentence under discussion, the subjunctive mood works to describe what would inconceivably happen if someone assumes something unreal or untrue. This is distinct from the function of the so-called second conditional or unreal possibility sentence, where the speaker talks about a possible but very unlikely result that the stated future condition will be fulfilled; in short, the stated outcome is an unreal possibility. Indeed, it’s incorrect to say as you have said in your posting that subjunctive sentences are “present unreal conditional sentences” that use the subjunctive “were.” These two are entirely different grammatical constructs altogether.

At this point, to further clarify the issue about this distinction, I’m now posting here “The maverick behavior of verbs in subjunctive sentences,” a subsequent column I wrote for my “English Plain and Simple” column in the March 23, 2013 issue of The Manila Times:

The maverick behavior of verbs in subjunctive sentences

In my column last week, in reply to a question posed in Jose Carillo’s English Forum, I explained the tough and tricky difference between a subjunctive sentence and a second conditional or unreal possibility sentence. I said that subjunctive sentences are those that denote acts or states that are contingent on possible outcomes of the speaker’s wish, desire, or doubt, while second conditional or unreal possibility sentences are those that talk about a possible but very unlikely result that the stated future condition will be fulfilled.

Based on this distinction, I said that the first of the two sentences presented for analysis, “If you were not my wife, I would say you’re crazy,” is the correct subjunctive sentence, one that describes the hypothetical state or outcome of an unreal situation or an idea contrary to fact. In that subjunctive sentence, I pointed out, the verb “be” in the “if”-clause exhibits grammatically deviant behavior by sticking to the past tense “were” regardless of the person and number of the subject. This is why even if the noun “wife” happens to be singular, “be” takes the form of “were” instead of “was” in that subjunctive sentence.

Now, playing the devil’s advocate, let’s imagine what would happen if we used the present tense “are” in the “if”-clause of that sentence: “If you are not my wife, I would say you’re crazy.” We can see that this is neither a subjunctive sentence (which requires the subjunctive “were” in the premise) nor a second conditional sentence (which requires the past-tense “were” in the premise). While the sentence looks grammatically defensible, it is semantically flawed and illogical. Indeed, the speaker making that statement would appear to be blind or suffering from amnesia, or both. He is unable to recognize his very own wife in front of him or, if talking to her over the phone, he can’t even recognize her by her voice.

Subjunctive sentences exhibit two more deviant behaviors of verbs that make them distinct and semantically different from indicative sentences.

The second deviant behavior is that in subjunctive “that” clauses, verbs in the singular third-person don’t follow the subject-verb agreement rule. They drop the “-s” or “-es” at their tail end and take the base form of the verb instead. Thus, it’s incorrect to construct subjunctive sentences this way: “It is essential that she follows the operating procedures.” “The law requires that he terminates all of his private business dealings before assuming public office.”  The verb in the “that” clause of both sentences should drop the “-s” or “-es”: “It is essential that she follow the operating procedures.” “The law requires that he terminate all of his private business dealings before assuming public office.”

The third deviant behavior is exhibited by the verb “be” in subjunctive “that” clauses: “be” doesn’t inflect or change form at all no matter what person or number is taken by its subject. It is therefore incorrect to use the present tense or future tense for the verbs in these subjunctive sentences: “The ombudsman recommended that we are suspended for a month.” “We ask that you are present at the inaugurals.” “She ordered that I will be here tomorrow.” Instead, “be” should be used in all of them: “The ombudsman recommended that we be suspended for a month.” “We ask that you be present at the inaugurals.” “She ordered that I be here tomorrow.”

As we can see from the above examples, subjunctive sentences perform several other tasks aside from describing the outcome of an unreal situation or an idea contrary to fact. They also indicate a possibility given a hypothetical situation, express a wishful attitude or desire, demand that a particular action be taken, raise a question about a hypothetical outcome, and express a request or suggestion…

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How a second conditional sentence differs from the subjunctive

Question from Mwita Chacha, Forum member (March 11, 2013):

How do we incorporate “that” clauses in second conditional sentences? Specifically, which is correct between “If you were not my wife, I would say you’re crazy” and “If you were not my wife, I would say you were crazy?”

My reply to Mwita Chacha:

Distinguishing a second conditional sentence from a subjunctive sentence can be tough and tricky, so I can understand why you haven’t been able to classify the following two sentences correctly: 

“If you were not my wife, I would say you’re crazy.”

and

“If you were not my wife, I would say you were crazy.”

To begin with, those two sentences are not second conditional sentences. A second conditional or unreal possibility sentence is one that talks about a possible but very unlikely result that the stated future condition will be fulfilled; in short, the stated outcome is an unreal possibility. To denote this situation, the “if” clause of the sentence states the future condition in the simple past tense, is followed by a comma, then is followed by the future result clause in the form “would + the verb’s base form.” 

Here’s a correct example of a second conditional: “If I finished medical school, I would be a doctor,” or, alternatively, “I would be a doctor if I finished medical school.” We have an unreal possibility situation here because the speaker didn’t finish medical school and didn’t become a doctor.

Now, of the two sentences you presented, the grammatically and semantically correct form is the first: “If you were not my wife, I would say you’re crazy.” As I have already pointed out, however, the sentence isn’t a second conditional. It’s actually a sentence in the subjunctive mood, a form in English that denotes acts or states that are contingent on possible outcomes of the speaker’s wish, desire, or doubt. This is as opposed to denoting acts and states in real-world situations, which is what the indicative mood does. 

One of the functions of the subjunctive is to describe the hypothetical state or outcome of an unreal situation or idea contrary to fact. It has this telltale marker: when the verb “be” is used in the premise or “if”-clause of subjunctive sentences, it exhibits maverick behavior by sticking to the past-tense form “were” regardless of the person and number of its subject, as in these examples: “If I were a billionaire, I would subsidize the college studies of 1,000 bright students from poor families.” “If she were my age when I was in my mid-twenties, I would have married her.” “If you were nothing less than a political genius, you’d be able to solve the awful income-inequality problem in the Philippines.” As we can see, in the subjunctive form, “be” looks and behaves as if it were always in the past-tense plural regardless of the number of the subject.

Interestingly, if constructed in the inverted form, such subjunctive “if”-clause sentences could do away with “if”: “Were I a billionaire, I would subsidize the college studies of 1,000 bright students from poor families.” “Were she my age when I was in my mid-twenties, I would have married her.” “Were you nothing less than a political genius, you’d be able to solve the awful income-inequality problem in the Philippines.”

But what about the other sentence you presented: “If you were not my wife, I would say you were crazy?”? It’s an incorrect construction of the subjunctive. In form, only the premise or “if”-clause can use the subjunctive “were.” The outcome has to be in the conditional form of the appropriate tense of the verb. 

The first sentence you presented, “If you were not my wife, I would say you’re crazy,” is in the present-tense subjunctive. If the speaker wants to refer to precisely the same situation in the past, he needs to put the outcome in the past-tense conditional form to make the sentence semantically correct: “If you were not my wife at the time, I would have said you were crazy.”

I hope that this has adequately clarified the distinction between second conditional sentences and subjunctive “if”-clause sentences for you.

RELATED POSTINGS IN THE FORUM:
The four types of conditional sentences
Tricky subjunctive sentences trip both academic cleric and reporter alike

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When it is desirable to position adjectives postpositively

Question by Mwita Chacha, Forum member (March 6, 2013):

We are always told that in constructing a noun phrase, an adjective must precede the head noun. Now how this clearly poorly constructed noun phrase has qualified to be a book title?

My reply to Mwita Chacha:

My first English-usage book, English Plain and Simple: No-Nonsense Ways to Learn Today’s Global Language, has been in print since 2004, and I’m gratified to say that over the years, it has received generally positive critical reviews as well as appreciative reader feedback. I was therefore momentarily thrown off-balance when I read your posting above.

Knowing you to be a nonnative English speaker who’s admirably knowledgeable about English grammar and usage, however, I find your indictment of “English Plain and Simple” as a grammatically flawed title perfectly understandable. After all, the prevailing grammar convention in English is that as a rule, adjectives should be positioned before the noun they modify. This is the so-called attributive position, as in the noun phrase “major dilemma” where the adjective “major” works as a premodifier. The polar opposite of this is the so-called predicative position where “major” works as a postmodifier, as in “dilemma major.” To the eyes, ears, and sensibility of a trained English speaker, this is an awful and patently unacceptable position for that adjective. 

Indeed, the general run of English adjectives doesn’t work properly in the predicative or postmodifier position. Think “blunder monumental,” “nonsense absolute,” and “fool incorrigible” and you’ll immediately realize why. In contrast, see and feel how right and proper those noun phrases become when the adjectives are moved to the premodifier position: “monumental blunder,” “absolute nonsense,” and “incorrigible fool.”

However, due to the influence of French and other Romance languages (as a rule, they position adjectives after the nouns being modified), English has accumulated a sizable number of adjectives that sound right, look right, and feel right positioned after the nouns they modify. They are known as postpositive adjectives, and here are just a few noun phrases using them: “heir apparent,” “time immemorial,” “body politic,” “devil incarnate,” “accounts payable,” “words unspoken,” “poet laureate,” and “court martial.” Through force of repeated usage over the centuries, these phrases have established themselves as perfectly legitimate grammatical constructions in English. 

Native English speakers will therefore now find it terribly out of line saying these phrases the normal prepositive but unidiomatic way. However, many nonnative speakers or learners of English will understandably say them or insist in having them said precisely that way—“apparent heir,” “immemorial time,” “incarnate devil,” “laureate poet.” Little do they know that they are showing instead their lack of awareness that some adjectives can work postpositively.

Now, discounting the fact that English phrases using postpositive adjectives exist, is there any practical use at all for breaking the premodifier norm for adjectives? The answer is a definite yes. Normally, when the information an adjective contains isn’t the main focus of the noun phrase, the adjective takes the attributive or premodifier position, as in “all bright and beautiful things, all great and small creatures, all wise and wonderful things.” On the other hand, when the objective is to emphasize or dramatize the information supplied by those adjectives, it is desirable—if the syntax allows it—to position those adjectives postpositively. 

We can clearly see and feel the intended emphasis—in this particular case, the elevation of language and poetic flourish—that the postpositive positioning of the adjectives provides to these lines from Cecil Frances Alexander’s 1848 inspirational hymn:

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.

I used precisely the same mechanism of language to lift the title of my book above the mundane and commonplace. Avoiding the plain-Jane form “Plain and Simple English,” I came up with the much more catchy postpositive “English Plain and Simple” instead.

Rejoinder by Mwita Chacha (March 11, 2013):

I’m most grateful, Sir, for the response; it has really been an eye opener. Before this, I had always been confused by adjective-following-nouns constructions. From now on I’lL try whenever possible to construct my noun phrases in that way, assuming there are no “hard-and-fast rules” that govern such positioning of adjectives.

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Situations when the present tense is wrongly applied

Question by Mwita Chacha, Forum member (March 6, 2013):

This question is related to this newspaper sentence: “Two people are killed after their car veers off the road and crashes into a roadside lamppost.” When I saw it, it struck me outright as grammatically wrong because it uses the simple present tense where a simple perfect or simple past would be appropriate. So why do you think the writer of the story was so careless as to not remember that we never use a simple present tense for an action as already completed as the death of those two people? 

My reply to Mwita Chacha:

As a matter of style and to heighten the sense of immediacy of a statement, many established English-language newspapers use the present tense for news story summaries and photo captions. I have a feeling that the sentence you presented, “Two people are killed after their car veers off the road and crashes into a roadside lamppost,” is one such news summary, which is normally set in a bigger typeface in boldface or italics before the news story proper or lumped together with other news summaries in a boxed format. I’m sure you’ve come across many such news summaries in the daily newspapers in your own country and elsewhere. The writers and editors of those news summaries are deliberately using the present tense for past events and are certainly not being careless with their English grammar and usage.

As a rule, newspaper writers and editors also use the present tense for photo captions. For immediacy’s sake, they use the present tense when describing the action in the photograph, as in this caption for a photo in today’s online edition of The Manila Times:

ANGRY MNLF FIGHTERS SAILING TO SABAH. Malaysia’s Defense Minister Zahid Hamidi shows a picture of dead Filipino gunmen at Tanduo Village after the air and ground assault launched on Tuesday against up to 300 invaders.

Usually, after rendering the first sentence of a photo caption in the present tense, the caption writers and the editors revert to the past tense for subsequent sentences in the caption that describe past actions or events.

The main news story related to the photo will, of course, always use the past tense for the actions and events being reported as having already happened. 

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Grammatical dilemmas posed by the usage of possessive pronouns

Question by mioorphosed, new Forum member (February 25, 2013):

Reading a teacher’s manual and saw these sentences. I am confused as to which is proper: Should it be “Guide the pupils in making their portraits” or “Guide the pupils in making their portrait”? Should I consider the nature of the object here—noncount or count noun?  Please help.

My reply to mioorphosed:

Let me restate your question for greater clarity: Should the number—whether singular or plural—of an object be always made to agree with the number of the possessive pronoun? Specifically, in the two alternative sentence constructions you presented, should an object’s being singular (“portrait”) or plural (“portraits”) always determine whether the possessive pronoun be correspondingly in the singular or plural form, too?

The answer is a categorical “no.” Whether the possessive pronoun should take the singular or plural form is grammatically independent of whether the object it modifies is singular or plural. What determines the number to be taken by the possessive pronoun is the sense intended by the writer or speaker. Thus, in the kind of sentence construction you presented, the possessive pronoun can theoretically take these various forms that vary not only in number but also in gender:

(1) “Guide the pupils in making their portraits.”
(2) “Guide the pupils in making their portrait.”  
(3) “Guide the pupils in making his portraits.”
(4) “Guide the pupils in making his portrait.”
(5) “Guide the pupils in making her portraits.”
(6) “Guide the pupils in making her portrait.”

The sentences above clearly show that the possessive pronoun is independent in number from that of the object it modifies. Also, we need to find out precisely to whom the possessive pronoun refers, for it’s possible that the subject could be someone or people not even mentioned in the sentence itself. In fact, it sometimes can only be inferred from the preceding sentences of the exposition.

Now, in the particular case of these instructional sentences, “Guide the pupils in making their portraits” and “Guide the pupils in making their portrait,” which of them has the correct object—the one with the plural “portraits” or the one with the singular “portrait”? As I earlier pointed out, it depends on what the speaker or writer specifically has in mind. And I must hasten to add that none of those two sentence constructions is precise enough to convey an unmistakable sense; indeed, we need to grammatically tweak both to ensure that the pupils won't misunderstand the instruction.

Here are the possible tweaks we can do to those sentences to make them crystal clear:

If the possessive pronoun refers to the pupils themselves, and those pupils have been tasked to individually do a single portrait of someone other than themselves, then the correct form is “Guide the pupils in making their portrait of __________” (plural possessive pronoun referring to the pupils themselves, singular object other than any of the pupils themselves).

If the possessive pronoun refers to the pupils themselves, and those pupils have been asked to individually do portraits of themselves, then the correct form is “Guide the pupils in making portraits of themselves” (plural possessive pronoun, plural object referring to the pupils themselves). However, to make it unmistakable that the portrait each pupil has to do is that of himself or herself, it is highly advisable to qualify the object as follows: “Guide the pupils in making their respective portraits of themselves” (plural possessive pronoun referring to the pupils themselves, plural object referring to the pupils themselves).

Although rather unlikely using the alternative sentence constructions you presented, it’s also conceivable that the possessive pronoun “their” refers to subjects of the portrait other than the pupils themselves. In that case, those sentences should take either of these two forms for clarity: “Guide the pupils in making a portrait of the subjects individually assigned to them” or “Guide the pupils in making portraits of the subjects individually assigned to them.

I didn’t want to make things appear so complicated, but these are actually some of the many grammatical dilemmas we will encounter when we construct sentences involving possessive pronouns and their object or objects. To ensure grammatically and semantically correct sentences, we just need to be doubly sure not only of the antecedent noun of the possessive pronoun being used but also its relation to the object being modified by the possessive pronoun. We should avoid guesswork and never leave things to chance when using possessive pronouns.

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Which is correct: “am I not” / “ain’t I” or “aren’t I”?

Question by nutcracker, new Forum member (February 6, 2013):

The tag-question is taught as early as in grade school and as far as I can recall, we add the tag-question based on the verb used in the first part; e.g., “I have given you the result, haven’t I?” (it follows the rule “positive-negative; negative-positive”).

However, I often read in fiction stories this form: “I am a burden to you, aren’t I?” Is this accepted in the Western English language? Been trying to find the rule in this case until I chanced upon your very informative forum.

My reply to nutcracker (February 7, 2013):

In spoken English, as we know, a tag question is a usually contracted interrogative fragment that immediately follows a declarative or imperative main clause, as in “You are now of voting age, aren’t you?” The speaker adds the tag question—in this case the contracted “aren’t you?” for “are you not?”—to get a quick response from the listener. 

The uncontracted equivalent of “aren’t you?” in the first-person singular is, of course, “am I not?”, as in “I am now a qualified voter, am I not?” This isn’t the way educated native English speakers normally say it, though. Almost always, they would contract the verb in both the main statement and in the tag question. In this case, they’d say “I’m now a qualified voter, aren’t I?
   
From the sound and look of it, “aren’t I?” is obviously not the contraction of “am I not?” Its more logical contracted form is “ain’t I?” or “amn’t I?”, but admittedly, both sound and look so awkward that educated English speakers don’t feel comfortable using them. Even if “ain’t I?” and “amn’t I?” are used colloquially in some areas of the United States and the United Kingdom, they are actually deemed nonstandard and improper in polite society or educated circles.

This is why in fiction books and in most other published works, you’d almost always come across the statement “I am a burden to you, aren’t I?” instead of its deeply colloquial equivalents “I am a burden to you, ain’t I?” and “I am a burden to you, amn’t I?” Indeed, most grammar authorities of American and British English consider “aren’t I?” standard usage, so those who habitually use “ain’t I?” and “amn’t I?” as tag questions risk being looked down as uneducated.  

As you pointed out, tag questions normally use the opposite polarity rule for the verb in the main statement, as in this example you presented, “I have given you the result, haven’t I?” However, this rule isn’t followed when people are strongly expressing sarcasm, disbelief, surprise, concern, shock, or anger. Instead, they are apt to use positive tag questions instead: “You think you’re God’s gift to mankind, do you?” “Oh, you will really quit the speakership, will you?” “So you think I’m being funny, do you?” And as a mark of civility or politeness, a speaker can very well attach a positive tag question to a positively stated request: “See me now, will you?” “Do that, will you?” “Please send me the audit report, will you?

The opposite polarity rule for tag questions is also not followed when there’s a breakdown of civility or when people are expressing downright hostility and combativeness. In such situations, negative tags are used for negative main statements: “So you don’t respect me at all, don’t you?” “You really didn’t like my proposed amendment, didn’t you?” “So you don’t think political dynasties are good for this country, don’t you?” In such cases, a negative tag is used instead of a positive tag to express contempt or displeasure or to make the listener uncomfortable about his or her position. 

FURTHER READINGS ABOUT TAG QUESTIONS IN THE FORUM:
“Saying our tag questions right”

Rejoinder by nutcracker (February 7, 2013):

Thank you so much for your very comprehensive response to my query. I’ve been doing my readings in the forum. I admit that the questions raised  here were those that I also encounter regarding English grammar. Your explanations are quite helpful and easy to digest.

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The real score on the disputed usage of “who” and “whom”

Response of hill roberts, Forum member, on who’s “a native English speaker” (February 16, 2013):

Kat, who are you referring to when you say, “a native English speaker”? Are you referring to the British in general? or the Americans or Australians/New Zealanders? If you can specify that “all native English speakers” speak the same grammatical way, then you are sadly mistaken. However much you say, “native English speaker,” these people don’t speak standard English in the real sense of the word—grammar included.

Rejoinder by kat, new Forum member (February 17, 2013):

Surely you mean “whom”...?

Admonition to Kat by Joe Carillo (February 17, 2013):

Two things, kat:

First, I think that as a matter of courtesy in this Forum, you owe hill roberts answers to her questions, not try to deflect the issue with your snide question casting doubt on the correctness of her usage of the relative pronoun “who.”

Second, I think you also owe not only hill roberts but all other Forum members an explanation why you think “whom” and not “who” is the correct usage in that posting of hill roberts. 

Response from Mwita Chacha, Forum member (February 17, 2013):

Kat seems to be arguing for the sake of arguing. And as a nonnative English learner holding high opinion of the Forum, I don’t assume this is the right venue for that.

Intervention by Joe Carillo (February 18, 2013):

ON THE DISPUTED USAGE OF “WHO” AND “WHOM”

I agree with Mwita Chacha’s sentiment that this Forum shouldn’t be allowed to become a venue for arguing for the sake of arguing. 

At any rate, in what seems to me like thwarted and deflated hubris, Kat is unable to respond to Hill Roberts’s and Mwita Chacha’s comments about his or her snide posting. Indeed, in contrast to his or her viciously quick stab at Hill’s usage of the pronoun “who,” Kat is now strangely taking such a long time to justify his or her derisive insinuation that Hill’s usage is grammatically wrong. Unfortunately, Hill herself seems unavailable at the moment to post a rejoinder, so some Forum members might get the impression that Hill has found her usage of “who” faulty and indefensible. I am therefore taking the liberty of clarifying the “who vs. whom” usage by simply posting the usage notes of two leading English grammar authorities from both sides of the Atlantic. This is for the benefit of Forum members who’d rather get the usage right without fuss than to be needlessly dragged by a vicious flamer into debating it ad nauseam.

Here are the usage notes:

OxfordDictionaries.com (For British English):

“Who” or “whom”?

There’s a continuing debate in English usage about when you should use “who” and when to use “whom.” According to the rules of formal grammar, “who” should be used in the subject position in a sentence, while “whom” should be used in the object position, and also after a preposition. For example: 

Who made this decision? [here, “who” is the subject of the sentence]
Whom do you think we should support? [here, “whom” is the object of support]
To whom do you wish to speak? [here, “whom” is following the preposition to]

Some people do still follow these rules but there are many more who never use “whom” at all. The normal practice in current English is to use “who” in all contexts, i.e.:

Who do you think we should support?
Who do you wish to speak to?

From Oxford Dictionaries: “Who or whom?”

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (For American English):

Usage Note: The traditional rules for choosing between who and whom are relatively simple but not always easy to apply. Who is used where a nominative pronoun such as I or he would be appropriate, that is, for the subject of a verb or for a predicate nominative; whom is used for a direct or indirect object or for the object of a preposition. Thus, we write the actor who played Hamlet was there, since who is the subject of played; and Whom do you like best? because whom is the object of the verb like; and To whom did you give the letter? because whom is the object of the preposition to. • It is more difficult, however, to apply these rules in complicated sentences, particularly when who or whom is separated from the verb or preposition that determines its form. Intervening words may make it difficult to see that Who do you think is the best candidate? requires who as the subject of the verb is (not whom as the object of think) and The man whom the papers criticized did not show up requires whom as the object of the verb criticized (not who as the subject of showed up). Highly complex sentences such as I met the man whom the government had tried to get France to extradite require careful analysis—in this case, to determine that whom should be chosen as the object of the verb extradite, several clauses away. It is thus not surprising that writers from Shakespeare onward have often interchanged who and whom. Nevertheless, the distinction remains a hallmark of formal style. • In speech and informal writing, however, considerations other than strict grammatical correctness often come into play. Who may sound more natural than whom in a sentence such as Who did John say he was going to support? —though it is incorrect according to the traditional rules. In general, who tends to predominate over whom in informal contexts. Whom may sound stuffy even when correctly used, and when used where who would be correct, as in Whom shall I say is calling? whom may betray grammatical ignorance. • Similarly, though traditionalists will insist on whom when the relative pronoun is the object of a preposition that ends a sentence, grammarians since Noah Webster have argued that the excessive formality of whom is at odds with the relative informality associated with this construction; thus they contend that a sentence such as Who did you give it to? should be regarded as entirely acceptable. • Some grammarians have argued that only who and not that should be used to introduce a restrictive relative clause that identifies a person. This restriction has no basis either in logic or in the usage of the best writers; it is entirely acceptable to write either the woman that wanted to talk to you or the woman who wanted to talk to you. • The grammatical rules governing the use of who and whom in formal writing apply equally towhoever and whomever and are similarly often ignored in speech and informal writing.

From American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: “Who”

For those who remain doubting Thomases even after studying these usage notes, I would suggest visiting the following sites for many interesting opinions and examples about the “who vs. who” usage:

1. About.com Guide by Richard Nordquist
2. “Grammar: Whom do you trust?” in The Economist, April 5, 2012

I hope this settles the matter of “who vs. whom” at least in this Forum once and for all.

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Which is correct: “am I not” / “ain’t I” or “aren’t I”?

Question by nutcracker, new Forum member (February 6, 2013):

The tag-question is taught as early as in grade school and as far as I can recall, we add the tag-question based on the verb used in the first part; e.g., “I have given you the result, haven’t I?” (it follows the rule “positive-negative; negative-positive”).

However, I often read in fiction stories this form: “I am a burden to you, aren’t I?” Is this accepted in the Western English language? Been trying to find the rule in this case until I chanced upon your very informative forum.

My reply to nutcracker (February 7, 2013):

In spoken English, as we know, a tag question is a usually contracted interrogative fragment that immediately follows a declarative or imperative main clause, as in “You are now of voting age, aren’t you?” The speaker adds the tag question—in this case the contracted “aren’t you?” for “are you not?”—to get a quick response from the listener. 

The uncontracted equivalent of “aren’t you?” in the first-person singular is, of course, “am I not?”, as in “I am now a qualified voter, am I not?” This isn’t the way educated native English speakers normally say it, though. Almost always, they would contract the verb in both the main statement and in the tag question. In this case, they’d say “I’m now a qualified voter, aren’t I?
   
From the sound and look of it, “aren’t I?” is obviously not the contraction of “am I not?” Its more logical contracted form is “ain’t I?” or “amn’t I?”, but admittedly, both sound and look so awkward that educated English speakers don’t feel comfortable using them. Even if “ain’t I?” and “amn’t I?” are used colloquially in some areas of the United States and the United Kingdom, they are actually deemed nonstandard and improper in polite society or educated circles.

This is why in fiction books and in most other published works, you’d almost always come across the statement “I am a burden to you, aren’t I?” instead of its deeply colloquial equivalents “I am a burden to you, ain’t I?” and “I am a burden to you, amn’t I?” Indeed, most grammar authorities of American and British English consider “aren’t I?” standard usage, so those who habitually use “ain’t I?” and “amn’t I?” as tag questions risk being looked down as uneducated.  

As you pointed out, tag questions normally use the opposite polarity rule for the verb in the main statement, as in this example you presented, “I have given you the result, haven’t I?” However, this rule isn’t followed when people are strongly expressing sarcasm, disbelief, surprise, concern, shock, or anger. Instead, they are apt to use positive tag questions instead: “You think you’re God’s gift to mankind, do you?” “Oh, you will really quit the speakership, will you?” “So you think I’m being funny, do you?” And as a mark of civility or politeness, a speaker can very well attach a positive tag question to a positively stated request: “See me now, will you?” “Do that, will you?” “Please send me the audit report, will you?

The opposite polarity rule for tag questions is also not followed when there’s a breakdown of civility or when people are expressing downright hostility and combativeness. In such situations, negative tags are used for negative main statements: “So you don’t respect me at all, don’t you?” “You really didn’t like my proposed amendment, didn’t you?” “So you don’t think political dynasties are good for this country, don’t you?” In such cases, a negative tag is used instead of a positive tag to express contempt or displeasure or to make the listener uncomfortable about his or her position. 

FURTHER READINGS ABOUT TAG QUESTIONS IN THE FORUM:
“Saying our tag questions right”

Rejoinder by nutcracker (February 7, 2013):

Thank you so much for your very comprehensive response to my query. I’ve been doing my readings in the forum. I admit that the questions raised  here were those that I also encounter regarding English grammar. Your explanations are quite helpful and easy to digest.

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The correct usage of the apostrophe-s to show possession

Question by clementejak, Forum member (February 7, 2013):

Is it correct that when a word ends in “s” and has 2 syllables, “‘s”  should be added. Like: “Lucas’s dog.”

and

If the word ends in “s” with only one syllable, only apostrophe should be added. Like Kris’ son.

Thank you. Please enlighten me on the rule.

My reply to clementejak (February 7, 2013):

I must admit that it’s the first time that I’ve heard of such rule for forming possessives in English. What I know is this general rule: To form the possessive of a singular noun that doesn’t end in the letter “s,” simply affix an apostrophe-s (‘s) to that noun, as in “Lea’s blouse” and “Rigoberto’s excuse.” However, if the noun is plural or already ends in “-s”, just affix an apostrophe (‘), as in “the mayors’ entourage” and “the winners’ prize” (for plural nouns) and “Ces’ TV show” and “the hippopotamus’ snout” (for singular nouns ending in “-s”). I’m not aware of any rule that makes a noun’s syllable count as a determinant for the use of either the apostrophe-s or just an apostrophe.

There are several special cases that deviate from this general rule, though. For the possessive of names ending in “-s”, it’s possible for the written form to either affix apostrophe-s to the noun, as in “Jones’s dilemma” and “Harris’s itinerary,” or just an apostrophe, as in “Jones’ dilemma” and “Harris’ itinerary.” It’s a stylistic choice that once made, needs to be used consistently. We also must keep in mind that for the spoken form in both cases, the /z/ sound must be added to the name to evoke the plural.   

Applying this rule to the examples of possessives that you provided, we have the following stylistic choices: “Lucas’ dog” and “Kris’ son” (using apostrophe only), or “Lucas’s dog” and “Kris’s son” (using apostrophe-s). We actually have the same stylistic choices for proper names with any number of syllables, such as “Mercedes’ gown” and “Amaryllis’ hairstyle” (using apostrophe only) or “Mercedes’s gown” and “Amaryllis’s hairstyle” (using apostrophe-s). As you can see, the same rule for making the possessive applies regardless of the number of syllables in the noun.  

For a more comprehensive discussion of forming possessives in English, particularly with respect to special cases, click this link to the CCC Foundation Grammar Guide to Writing. I’m sure the site can clarify for you many aspects of this simple but sometimes tricky aspect of English grammar.

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The role of the bracket in the English system of punctuation

Posted in my personal message box by forces20, Forum member (February 2, 2013):

Hello, Sir Carillo!

Do we have any topic in this forum discussing the use of punctuation bracket? I cannot find one. 

Thank you.

My reply to forces20:

Yes, there’s a detailed discussion in the Forum on the usage of the bracket. It’s part of my series of three postings in September-October 2010 presenting a unified approach to the use of punctuation in English. For a comprehensive understanding of the place and function of the bracket in the English system of punctuation, I suggest that you read all three parts of the series, as follows:
 
1. “The parenthesis and its uses: parenthesis by comma” (September 17, 2010)

2. “The parenthesis and its uses: the appositive phrase” (September 24, 2010)

3. “The parenthesis and its uses: parenthesis by dashes and parenthesis by parentheses” (October 1, 2010)

And to round off the discussion on punctuation, I recommend that you also read “A grammar conversation on parenthetical usage” to get a better feel of punctuation in actual practice (September 7, 2010). 

When you’re done, I’m sure that you’d have already acquired a clear systems view of punctuation in English and can put it to good use in your expositions.

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Which of the indefinite pronouns are singular or plural?

Question by spelling, Forum member (January 9, 2013):

Hi there!

Happy New Year!

Can you please clarify the following;

Do the following words take singular verbs and other singular forms like “is,” “does,” “has?”: “anything,” “anybody,” “anyone,” “somebody,” “someone,” “everybody,” “everyone,” “no-one,” “all of them,” “another one,” “each,” “either.”

Do the following words take plural verbs and other plural forms like, “are,” “do,” “have?”: “both,” “few,” “many,” “others,” “several.”

My reply to spelling (January 10, 2013):

The answer to both of your questions is undoubtedly yes, but I think it will be more instructive if those words that you enumerated are formally identified and classified according to usage.

Those words are indefinite pronouns—pronouns that refer to an unspecified person, thing, or amount, such as “anybody” or “anyone” for no matter what person, “anything” for no matter what thing, and “enough” for as much or as many as needed. They are distinct from definite pronouns, which replace nouns whose identity has been clearly given, such as the personal nouns ”I,” “you,” and “she” for specifically named or identified persons; and the demonstrative pronouns ”this” and “that” for a person, thing, or idea that’s present or near or that has just been mentioned.

By function, indefinite pronouns are classified into quantifiers or modifiers that limit number or quantity, such as “some,” “any,” or “several”; universals or modifiers that refer to an entire group or concept, such as “all,” “every,” and “each”; and partitives or modifiers that indicate a non-specific quantity, such as “either,” “neither,” and “anyone.” Many of the indefinite pronouns can also serve as determiners, which are words or group of words that introduce a noun to denote an indefinite quantity or a definite but unknown people and objects, such as “several” in “several ships” and “a lot of” in “a lot of participants.” 

Having already mapped the domain of indefinite pronouns, we can now take up the matter of which of them are always singular and which are always plural.

The indisputably singular indefinite pronouns are these: “another,” “anybody”/”anyone,” “anything,” “each,” “either,” “enough,” “everybody”/”everyone,” “everything,” “less,” “little,” “much,” “neither,” “nobody”/”no one”, “nothing,” “one,” “other,” “somebody”/”someone,” and “something.” They always take the singular form of verbs, as in “You’ve made so many mistakes today and another is unacceptable” and “Nothing scares me more than meeting a drug-crazed gunman in the street.” 

On the other hand, the indisputably plural indefinite pronouns are the following: “both,” “few,” “fewer,” “many,” “others,” “several,” and “they.” They always take the plural form of verbs, as in “You can assign me to Manila or Jakarta; both are acceptable to me” and “Fifty applicants applied for the job and several have been shortlisted.”

There are indefinite pronouns, though, that can be singular or plural depending on context. They are “all,” “any,” “more,” “most,” “some,” and “such.” For instance, “all” is singular in sense in the sentence “All is fair in love and war” but plural in sense in “We expect exactly 120 participants in this convention; all have arrived.” In the same token, “more” is notionally singular in “This is all the money I have right now but there is more in our joint savings account” but notional plural in “Only six trainees are with us now but more are joining us this next week.”

Still debated today is whether the indefinite pronoun “none” should always be treated as singular. Since “none” means “no one” and “one” is obviously singular, some argue that it should always take a singular verb in the context of countable nouns, as in “We interviewed nine applicants but none has met our expectations.” Grammatically, however, there’s nothing wrong in using “none” in the plural as well depending on context and emphasis, as in “We interviewed nine applicants but none have met our expectations.”

Rejoinder by spelling (January 11 , 2013):

Hi there! 

My goodness, or, as we say in Afrikaans:
“Sjoe!” It will take me days to study your answer!!! Cheesy

Thank you very much.

I sent an e-mail to the person that is handling the orders for your books.  He has not replied yet.  Must I give some more time? Will he get back to me?

Have a nice day!

Related question by Mwita Chacha, Forum member (February 2, 2013):

I’ve failed to understand why “they” has been mentioned in this thread in the same breath as other indefinite pronouns. My sense is that “they” falls under the category of definite pronouns, pronouns used to represent a noun that has been mentioned before already.

My reply to Mwita Chacha:

You’re correct in your appreciation of “they” as falling under the category of definite pronouns. Indeed, it’s a third person pronoun that’s normally and commonly used in the sense of “those ones.” As such, it serves as the plural of “he,” “she,” or “it” or is used to refer to a group of two or more individuals that are not all of the same sex or gender. However, “they” in the generic sense of “people” is also used as an indefinite subject without an antecedent, as in this sentence used to begin an exposition: “They are the happiest people on earth, and I’m referrring to those who are truly loved and are truly loved in return.” Here, the pronoun “they” actually has no antecedent noun, and even the pronoun “those” that refers to it later is also an indefinite pronoun.

It is in grammatical situations like this that “they” works as an indefinite pronoun. Of course, some grammarians object to this usage on the ground that every pronoun must have an antecedent pronoun, but in actual usage, the indefinite pronoun “they” is considered standard and valid for all kinds context.

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How would an exam be reflective of one’s English proficiency?

Question by moumi, new Forum member (January 28, 2013):

How would an exam be more reflective of the actual proficiency of a learner?

My reply to moumi:

Check out this posting in the Forum, “How criterion-referenced tests can help improve your English.” It explains how English-language tests are designed to measure the actual proficiency of learners. There are several other postings in the Forum’s “Preparing for English Proficiency Tests” that discuss the proficiency-measuring mechanisms of tests like the TOEIC, TOEFL, and G-TELP. For good measure, why not take the sample tests provided in the Forum yourself?

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Can gerunds be modified by adverbs?

Question by Rezassp (December 28, 2012):

Please let me know what the role is of the word “abroad” in this sentence: “Living abroad can be an educational experience.”

It seems that the adverb “abroad” modifies the gerund noun “living”? If that’s correct, can we say that gerunds can be modified by adverbs?

Please let me know of any grammar reference book that explains this.

Thanks!

My reply to Rezassp:

You are correct in your assessment that in the sentence “Living abroad can be an educational experience,” the word “living” is a gerund—a verb turned into a noun—that functions as the subject of the sentence. But in this particular construction, the word “abroad”—meaning beyond the boundaries of one’s country— functions not as an adverb but as an adjective in modifying the gerund “living.” Why adjective? It’s because “abroad” modifies “living” to denote extent or state or to distinguish it from other ways of “living,” in the same way that “home” modifies “living” in this sentence: “In my country, living home isn’t much of a choice for many people seeking gainful employment.”  Recall that by definition, an adjective is a word that serves as a modifier of a noun “to denote a quality of the thing named, to indicate its quantity or extent, or to specify a thing as distinct from something else.” In contrast, an adverb “typically serves as a modifier of a verb, an adjective, another adverb, a preposition, a phrase, a clause, or a sentence, expressing some relation of manner or quality, place, time, degree, number, cause, opposition…” (These definitions are from Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary.)

This brings us to your next question: Can a gerund, being a noun form, be also modified by an adverb? Definitely yes, particularly when the modification denotes the manner of the action—the verb aspect—contained in the gerund. Consider this sentence: “Living ostentatiously can ruin one’s finances.” Here, “ostentatiously” is obviously functioning as an adverb to denote the manner or way that the act of “living” is done. Even adverbs that don’t end in “-ly” can do such a modifying job for a gerund, as the adverb “far” does in this sentence: “Living far isn’t a palatable idea for working people.”

We can generalize on this by saying that a gerund can be modified either by an adjective or adverb depending on which of its dual aspect—the noun aspect or the action aspect—is to be modified.

SOME SUGGESTED READINGS ON GERUNDS:
“The Gerund,” H.W. Fowler, The King’s English, 2nd ed.  1908.
Pearson Learning Solutions - Chapter 43: “Gerunds, Infinitives, and Participles”
Gerunds and Infinitives: Their Noun Roles

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Can superlative attributes apply to any number of comparables?

Question by Mwita Chacha, Forum member (December 18, 2012):

I always have doubted the accuracy of sentences like “This is one of the most beautiful girls in our class,” or “They are two of the most respected elderly men in our neighborhood” and many other similar sentences. My sense is that a superlative should only be applied to express one noun that is the 'most' or the 'least' of all others in a given class of things or people as in “This is the most beautiful girl in our class” or “He is the most respected elderly man in our neighborhood.” But the first two sentences seem to violate this by showing that in a given group of things or people, we can well have even more than three things or people that exceed others in a certain aspect. So don't you think the strength of a superlative is diminished by distributing it to more than one thing in a group of compared things or people.

My reply to Mwita Chacha:

Let me first clarify the concept of the superlative before answering your question.

The superlative is the highest extent or degree of something. In English, to express which of more than two items has the highest degree of the quality expressed by the adjective, we append the suffix “-est” to certain short adjectives (like “newest” for “new”) or put the adverb “most” before longer adjectives (like “most reliable” for “reliable”). Superlatives can be either objective or subjective in character. 

Objective superlatives are those that express comparisons of facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations. The comparative measure is factual or numerically demonstrable, so the validity of the superlative statement can be accepted without question, as in these statements: “The 2.16-km San Juanico Bridge between the islands of Samar and Leyte is the longest bridge in the Philippines.” “Jupiter, with a mass two and a half times that of all the other planets combined, isthe biggest planet in our solar system.” 

Let’s see what happens when we apply the objective superlative to more than one in a group of things: “The 2.16-km San Juanico Bridge between the islands of Samar and Leyte and the 1.098-km Buntun Bridge over the Cagayan River between Cagayan Province and Apayao Province are the two longest bridges in the Philippines.” “Jupiter and Saturn are the two biggest planets in our solar system.” 

In the two sentences above, is the strength of the objective superlative diminished by applying it to more than one in the group of things being compared? Not at all. Clearly, there’s no grammatical or logical impediment to applying the superlative to more than one of the comparables.

Now let’s consider subjective superlatives, which are those that express comparisons as conditioned by a personal mindset or state. They are value judgments—opinions—and it would be difficult to determine or dispute their accuracy, truthfulness, or reliability. These two sentences that you presented are superlatives of that kind: “This is one of the most beautiful girls in our class.” “They are two of the most respected elderly men in our neighborhood.” 

Is the strength of a subjective superlative in the two sentences above diminished by applying it to more than person in the group? Again, the answer is clearly no. In fact, we can apply the superlative in such sentences to even more people and neither the strength nor validity of the superlative would be diminished: “They are five of the most beautiful girls in our class.” “They are the ten most respected elderly men in our neighborhood.”

Undoubtedly then, whether objective or subjective, superlative attributes can be applied to any number of things being compared without detracting from the strength of the comparison and the correctness of its grammar and semantics.

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Ideas for a forum-like assignment on “English: The Global Front”

Question by lglnet84, new Forum member (November 28, 2012):

Hi, I am a university undergrad and my assignment for this sem is a forum-like assignment. The title is “English—the Global Front.”

Any idea on how and what to write in this forum?

My reply to lglnet84:

If you can find time to go over the huge database accumulated in the discussion boards of Jose Carillo’s English Forum during the past three years, you’d be able to come up with lots of interesting ideas for your undergraduate assignment. You’d find discussions of practically every aspect of English grammar and usage between members from various countries that use English as a first, second, or third language. Just make a short list of, say, four or five ideas from the discussions that catch your fancy and you’d be off to a good start with your forum.

Good luck!

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When form is correct, “is/are + past tense of the verb”?

Question by happywifey, new Forum member (November 21, 2012):

In technical documentation, I always encounter the following usage:

“is + past tense of verb”
“are + past tense of verb”

Is this correct or acceptable?

For example:
1. Click the Add button. The user is added to the group.
1. Click the Add button. The user was added to the group.

The following sections are modified:
The following sections were modified:

My reply to happywifey:

Ordinarily, the grammatically correct versions of the sentences you presented are as follows:

“The user was added to the group.” (Not “The user is added to the group.”)
“The following sections were modified:” (Not “The following sections are modified:)”

Because the action was done and completed in the past, the passive-voice past tense of the verb (“was added,” “were modified”) is used instead of the active-voice present tense form (“is added,” “are modified”).

However, the linking verb can be used in the present tense (“is,” “are”) if we modify the passive-voice sentence into one denoting a state or condition, as in the following:

“The user is an added element to the group.” 
“The following sections are modified versions of the original.” 

In such constructions, the phrase that follows the linking verb functions as an adjective describing the subject. There is no action involved in the sentence.

Now the question is: Wouldn't it be possible to use the active-voice, present-tense constructions at all?

Yes, there's a special case. It is when the speaker or writer is making the statement at the very moment of utterance or the act of writing as part of a set of instructions. For instance,

TV TALK SHOW HOST: “This is how e-groups is organized. First, the provider team is formed. Then the user is added to the group...” 

or:

A FIRST-PERSON WRITTEN NARRATIVE USING THE PRESENT TENSE:
“Let me describe to you how e-groups are organized in Alpha Company. First, the provider team is formed. Then the user is added to the group...”

This, of course, is precisely the nature of the technical documentation statements that you provided. They are online instructions in real time, so the present-tense, active-voice construction is perfectly acceptable—in fact is the scrupulously correct usage—in each case.

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