Talk:English grammar/Archive 3

Use of "An"
I have seen the word "An" on television being used in front of "Hilarious" and "Historical" Does anybody know whether this is accurate?

80.189.49.121 22:53, 25 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Historically, this was quite common; nowadays, it's more common in the U.K. than in the U.S. (dunno about anywhere else). —Ruakh TALK 01:17, 26 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I believe that you don't modify the article based on the object's adjectives, but based on the pronunciation of the object itself. thus:

"a hillarious skit" "an historical essay" "a ivy league university"

in practice it is often simplified to the adjectives though..

—  r obbiemuﬃn  page talk 17:33, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

What is appropriate: "There are a number of things" or "There is a number of things" ?

Googling both yields 700k pages for 'there are' and 800k pages for 'there is', so it seems like it's a tie there... 138.16.26.47 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 20:28, 9 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Since 'a number' is singular, the latter is correct. --Wolf2581  (contribs · talk) 10:31, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry but the subject of the sentence is "a number of things", which is plural. Therefore the former is correct. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.138.9.89 (talk) 13:58, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
 * No, Wolf is correct: the immediate subject is "number" which is modified by "a" to make it singular; "things" is merely a gentive attached to the subject by "of". Therefore, the correct reading is given in the latter statement.  (Colloquial English has a different spin, but this article is about Formal English) Jubilee♫ clipman  00:54, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

This section does not make sense to me. The examples given seem to contradict the rules stated. If "a" is used strictly before a noun with a consonant sound, then why was "a University" given as an example - University being a noun beginning with a vowel sound, right? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.44.225.201 (talk) 11:44, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Although "university" is written with a vowel at the beginning, the "u" is not pronounced as a vowel sound, it's said "yu" rather than "un". The a / an distinction depends on the sound rather than the written letter at the beginning of a word, that's why we can say "an hotel" if we don't pronounce the "h" of "hotel" (as in slightly old-fashioned British English). Seonaid —Preceding unsigned comment added by Seonaidbeckwith (talk • contribs) 20:01, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

affect / effect
I was reading a WP article and thought that I found a wrong usage of affect / effect. So, I searched the phrase on Google: "an affect on" versus "an effect on" and found it to be ~ 50 / 50. Which, if either, is correct?100TWdoug (talk) 05:36, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

The idiom is usually "an effect on"—a cause usually has an effect on something, but Americans abroad sometimes affect an English accent. Used as a noun, affect usually means the psychological expression of emotion or desire. "Effect" usually means something that has happened. --Rhymworm (talk) 03:56, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

And remember, "affect" the noun is pronounced with the accent on the first syllable [AF-fect]n., while "affect" the verb is pronounced with the accent on the second syllable (causing the "a" to be pronounced as a schwa) [a-FFECT]v. I think English may be unique in how many words are spelled the same or similarly, but are pronounced differently depending on the part of speech. (Another example: [EN-ve-lope]n./[en-VEL-op]v.)

Perhaps too fine a detail to add to this article, but how something is accented/emphasized can determine what it means. Take for example "the green house"/"the greenhouse." When said aloud, the adjective of the first phrase is given less emphasis than the noun it modifies [the green HOUSE], while the compuound noun of the second phrase has its accent on the first syllable [the GREEN-house]. ~HaOb198.45.18.38 (talk) 22:59, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

clean-up
someone really needs to clean this article up. Information is scattered in different areas. And, you really cant get the best picture of how English works from this article (for example, no one could figure out how to make noun phrase from this article). Too much attention is paid to a traditional type of description that is modelled after Latin grammar. It would be much better to approach it from a more modern description like Quirk et al., Huddleston's work, etc. Presumably, there are enough editors on wikipedia that are interested in English grammar, so I encourage you to pick up a grammar. – ishwar  (speak)  23:45, 27 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The being unable to build a noun phrase (this is one reason why English grammar is hard to describe, I just created one noun from seven words) is likely due to the fact that the information on adjectives is completely missing form the "adjectival modification" section (that whole section just has a template saying it needs to be expanded) and is instead found in the beginning of the pre-modification section, showing a very clear lack of organization. Another problem seems to be that the adjectival modification section is at the very end of the pre-modification section, the order of this article is all wrong, to understand English you have to understand what adjectives do before you try to learn determiners because an adjective and a noun together form a single object, like a phrase within the noun phrase. A good way to think about this is the following sentence, which I have used different brackets on to show the different sections and subsections in order: [The {Big }] will pop. This article only mentions word order for placing determiners and adjectives, when it should also explain the order in which you use the adjectives and determiners to modify a noun and create a noun phrase.Scotty Zebulon (talk) 17:45, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Problems
This article is a complete disaster. I partially agree with the 'clean up' comments above, but think the situation is more drastic. I don't see any way a struggling English student, college level or not, could competently use it to solve a problem. First, the general article under the heading "English Grammar" does not need to contain every single rule of English grammar. The English Grammar series and related articles can take care of that by themselves. If someone wants to learn about ellipsis, they can look up the article on ellipsis. As it stands now, the article is bloated, both with well-written sections and neglected parts that beg the reader to "improve" them. Do we really need all of this?

Second, even if some unfortunate student were to stumble upon this article in an attempt to find aid, he would be hard pressed to understand most of the terminology used here. For instance, consider the section on adjectives. Even with my experience as an English tutor, I've forgotten what a copular verb is. My spellchecker even thinks 'copular' is a typo, not a real word. Then there are words like 'attributive' and 'predicatively' jammed in there too. This is an Encyclopedia aimed at general audiences, not a reference text for college English Professors. We've got to clean it up!

Err, with that said... suggestions? —Preceding unsigned comment added by ArchetypeRyan (talk • contribs) 06:40, 11 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Agreed with original comment (although I would have put it in stronger terms myself) and in response to ArchetypeRyan's plea for suggestions, I reckon the article as it stands is far too jumbled - and lengthy - to sort out in one go. How 'bout splitting it off/merging with other existing articles and cleaning up each separate article as per Wikipedia articles in general? Simplistic, but necessary under the circs. Feedback? --Technopat (talk) 18:07, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Auxiliary Inflection
After the paragraph: “Traditional grammar views -n't not as an inflectional suffix but as simply a phonologically reduced form (in traditional terms contracted) of the grammatical word not. . . .”

some of the examples raise questions.

Did Haliln't bring the coffee?

I’ve never seen this construct in written English, certainly not in Shakespeare / post-Shakespeare literature or in anything technical, historical; quotations (e.g., to add depth and color to a character) excepted. I think I’ve heard this usage once, by a young child (in the US), and possibly in some British speakers who were speaking in a very informal atmosphere(many colloquialisms; alternatively, they were speaking in a shorthand local vernacular), but it seemed to be understood by the speakers as non-standard/poor usage.

Are there any literary examples available?

Is this an assumed extension of a rule?

Is this a rule borrowing from another language?

Did Halil not bring the coffee?

Ok.

Sadaf brought the coffee, didn't she?

Ok.

*Sadaf brought the coffee, did not she?

This might be logically equivalent to the previous example, but it appears to be poor English and has been indicated as such on many standardized English tests.

*Sadaf brought the coffee, did shen't?

See comment following first example.

Sadaf brought the coffee, did she not? Ok.

Ed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.127.138.107 (talk) 03:58, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi. Ungrammatical sentences are indicated with an asterisk preceding the sentence example. So, all of these sentences that sound wrong to you are in fact impossible sentences. The asterisk is standard in linguistics. Ungrammaticality can also be doubly indicated with in the prose, so you are welcome to expand the section for clarity. Likewise with the negation section, which is just my list of examples demonstrating some grammatical phenomena — all lacking explanatory prose. – ishwar  (speak)  04:10, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Tangential addendum: the asterisk is used not specifically for ungrammatical constructs but for all hypothetical constructs, not only in linguistics but in other fields as well. For another example from linguistics, hypothetical reconstructed words (e.g. Proto-Indo-European words) are indicated with asterisks as well. For an example from logic, in a reductio ad absurdum argument, the proposition to be reduced to a contradiction is indicated with an asterisk as well, indicating that it is being considered hypothetically and not actually asserted. Just FYI. --Pfhorrest (talk) 00:19, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Hi I.,

Thanks for the clarification. The intent of the asterisk does not seem to made clear in the article, so I made no assumptions. An occasional reminder, for clarity would be helpful. Ed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.127.138.107 (talk) 04:38, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Grammar vs. Punctuation
Someone just told me that punctuation is considered separate from grammar proper. That may very well be incorrect. I checked this article out of interest. It doesn't mention periods or colons at all, and it mentions commas only once:


 * "Tag questions (disjunctive questions) represent statements with tags separated by a comma."

Is the presence of the comma relevant in an article on English grammar or not? No other commas are explicitly pointed out.

Lpetrazickis (talk) 18:40, 26 August 2008 (UTC)


 * That's a good question. Properly speaking, "grammar" primarily refers to the grammar of speech, rather than its written representations; but I don't think it's much of a stretch to lump punctuation in there with it. (However, "grammar" is often used to include spelling, word choice, language etiquette, and so on, and I do consider these to be a stretch.) —Ruakh TALK 00:27, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Error regarding pronouns?
IANAL (I Am Not A Linguist), just a native English speaker who stumbled upon this article, but there seems to be an error in the first subsection of this article, "Nominals", regarding pronouns. It claims that pronouns can only ever replace noun phrases and not nouns simpliciter, but that seems incorrect. Pronouns can replace proper nouns (e.g. "Henry") and definite nouns (e.g. "the king") just fine ("Henry ate cake", "The king ate cake", "He ate cake"). It's only indefinite improper nouns (e.g. "a king") and improper nouns simpliciter (e.g. "king") that cannot be replaced with pronouns.

But as I said, I am not a linguist, so I'll make no changes to this article myself, lest someone with actual linguistic training correct me. --Pfhorrest (talk) 00:12, 16 December 2008 (UTC)


 * The issue here is one of definiteness and not of the substitution of a pronoun for a noun phrase. Pronouns like he are definite so there would obviously be a semantic incompatibility when swapping them out for an indefinite NP.


 * "Nouns simpliciter" can be substituted by a pronoun: This is like water but it's not made out of it, A: Pizza is my favorite. B: It’s my favorite, too!..


 * Pronouns are virtually unexplained in the article. (for example, English pronouns are not really very pronounish, they're more like determiners as in us folks, we the people, etc.....) – ishwar  (speak)  01:21, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Noun phrases - Determiners
I think the main problem with "*many seven smart children, *seven many smart children, *the many seven smart children, *the seven many smart children." and the like, is not a positional problem, but a matter of logic: you cannot use multiple descriptors that are sub-sets of each other, or that contradict each other: This is not really an English issue: what language would allow ANY of the above?
 * many seven --> seven is a subset of many
 * all many ---> many is a subset of all
 * seven five ---> seven contradicts five

Perhaps the positional issue is real, but the examples were faulty... I confess to finding the section confusing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.136.47.120 (talk) 14:20, 23 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Your all + many example is false: English allows for all the many (count noun) (as well as all the (cardinal number) (count noun). Crucially, the must intervene between. But, your point is not without merit. The cooccurrence restrictions are probably largely semantic in nature. And they may very well be cross-linguistic. I'm not aware that anyone has ever completed a full analysis of this though. – ishwar  (speak)  00:57, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Modals and modality - Modal forms
Note also that for many speakers "may" and "can" have merged into a single meaning (that of "may"). This is of course wrong, but is often perpetrated, and may eventually be "correct"; but as of now:

can <=> ability;

may <=> permission

"Can I have a cookie, Mommy?" "You CAN have a cookie, dear, but you MAY NOT have one. It is too close to your dinner." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.136.47.120 (talk) 14:38, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes/No questions - Tags - Reversed polarity tags
'''(b) If the subject of the statement is the indefinite pronoun ‘somebody’ in the tag it is replaced by the pronoun ‘they’.

Someone is knocking at the door, aren’t they?'''

Uh, no. "Someone"/"Somebody" is singular (someONE/someBODY). This fact is recognized in the main body of the sentence, where "is" is used, NOT "are".

The Reversed polarity tag basically reverses the order of the subject and verb, but then makes the verb-modal negative, and replaces the noun with a pronoun.

Many people say ", aren't they?". Perhaps it is because they do not know if "someone" is a "he" or a "she", and don't want to say: "..., isn't he or she?", but it is still an incorrect construction. The [pro]nouns and verbs need to agree in number in both parts of the sentence.

"Someone is knocking at the door, isn't he?" should be used, unless one knows that there is more than one person at the door:

"Some people are knocking at the door, aren't they?"

The problem goes away if one uses "There is/are..."

"There is someone knocking at the door, isn't there?"

"There are some people knocking at the door, aren't there?" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.136.47.120 (talk) 15:15, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Countable Nouns
The list given contains some nouns that are indeed countable in some contexts, so I don't think they're good examples, at least in typical American usage: grass- "We have three species of grasses for sale"; sugar- "how many sugars do you want in your coffee?", meaning how many sugar packets or sugar cubes do you want; coffee- "Please go to Starbucks and get us three coffees", meaning three cups of coffee; water- "Please go to the concession stand and get me three waters", meaning three bottles of water. Perhaps this is considered idiomatic, but this sort of usage is employed everywhere in the USA, and is very common. I'll leave to it someone else to fix the text. Kornbelt888 (talk) 04:31, 10 February 2009 (UTC)


 * This is mentioned in the Dual membership, conversion section.


 * You can convert a noncount noun to a count noun with a change in meaning. It is not idiomatic, but completely regular (that is, you can do to virtually every noun — although some of these would be semantically weird, you would have to think of an improbable context).


 * Perhaps it should be elaborated on further in the text (since it is apparently unclear). – ishwar  (speak)  01:02, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Using Definite Article 'The' With Person's Name
There is one somewhat unusual usage of 'the' preceding a person's name, such as "have you seen the Sammy?" This might be said of a close family member or friend and connotes a special affection about Sammy, say, a parent may have for a child, and would only be used between people who all share the closeness with Sammy. (Although a somewhat humorous singular application has even leaked into popular culture with Donald Trump being called "The Donald" - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump#Personal_life.) Granted, this is an unusual usage of 'the', but it is grammatical to Americans.Kornbelt888 (talk) 04:43, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

A question
In the sentence, “Professor Plum kicked the very large ball with red spots over the fence. “ Did the ball have red spots or did Professor Plum use red spots to kick the ball? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Typeset (talk • contribs) 22:05, 10 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The surface sentence is ambiguous, so it could mean either depending on context. – ishwar  (speak)  01:41, 30 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The surface sentence may technically be ambiguous, but colloquial sentence order would tend to have "Professor Plum kicked the very large ball over the wall with red spots" for the latter meaning.

November1925 (talk) 13:26, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Except that now the wall has red spots... That wasn't in the original. LOL!  Both sentences are ambiguous.  Both need to be rewritten eg ...using red spots' or ... which had red spots Jubilee♫ clipman  00:14, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Confusion about opening paragraph.
In the opening paragraph of this article, there are two methods listed for studying English Grammar, but both groups have the same name. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.123.235.111 (talk) 19:45, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Assistance, please
Not strictly related but this has been bothering me, take pity on a poor student. Is "I wouldn't want you to not know anything" grammatically correct? And if so, are double negatives sometimes permitted. Pietru (talk) 18:12, 27 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Double negatives are always permitted; it is just that, frequently, they lead to poor style. With triple negatives, the sense may have to be teased out by eliminating negatives in pairs! In the example quoted, (ignoring the split infinitive) eliminating the negatives results in "I would want you to know something", which IMHO is not the same, so I would leave the sentence as it is (apart from unsplitting the infinitive, which improves the sentence's rhythm).

November1925 (talk) 16:35, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Prescriptive vs Descriptive
I feel that the the neutrality of the first paragraph is in doubt. Indeed, I would call it classist. Prescriptivists are not mere guardians of class. They tend to argue that English is a treasure worth preserving, and the best way of doing this is to mount resistance to sloppy usage. November1925 (talk) 16:24, 30 March 2009 (UTC)16:20, 30 March 2009 (UTC)