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grahamb
Joined: 30 Apr 2003
Posts: 1945
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 Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2015 10:01 am Post subject: Decomposing |
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| Actually, the pun was johnslat's; I just jumped on the bandwagon as usual. |
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johnslat
Joined: 21 Jan 2003
Posts: 13859
Location: Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
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| Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2015 12:12 pm Post subject: |
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Dear grahamb,
Thanks, but I didn't "compose" the pun - it wasn't one of my compositions. I plagiarized it.
I hope no one's composure is decomposed by my admission.
Regards,
John |
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grahamb
Joined: 30 Apr 2003
Posts: 1945
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| Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2015 1:36 pm Post subject: Roll Over Beethoven |
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Someone beet you to it, John.  |
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fluffyhamster
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 3292
Location: UK > China > Japan > UK again
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| Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2015 8:28 pm Post subject: |
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| Yeah, I was wondering where the pun was in Grahamb's rather than Johnslat's words. A-mouldering? Scully? The Truth is Out There! Guess we'll all have to be much more CAREFUL in future when reading forums like these. Not that I want Scot to become a young filly or anything (well, not unless he wants to!). |
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grahamb
Joined: 30 Apr 2003
Posts: 1945
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| Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2015 9:45 pm Post subject: A-mouldering |
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It's from the song "John Brown's body", Brown being an abolitionist who was hanged in 1859:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_(abolitionist)
The tune inspired The Battle Hymn of the Republic (Mine eyes have seen the glory... etc). Stirring stuff! |
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fluffyhamster
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 3292
Location: UK > China > Japan > UK again
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| Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2015 12:52 am Post subject: |
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Oh, I know the songs (well, at least the tune), I was just poking fun at how the pun couldn't've been in what you'd posted. (No need for Mulder or Scully to investigate this "mystery" then). BTW Yodobashi Camera in Japan may've used that tune or very similar in a jingle ('His truth is marching on' = ?Dudu ?dadada Yodobashi Camera!, or something like that). Fascinating piece of trivia, I know!  |
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fluffytwo
Joined: 24 Sep 2016
Posts: 139
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| Posted: Fri Dec 16, 2016 8:56 pm Post subject: |
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6) While browsing an issue of Kernerman Dictionary News (as you do LOL) I discovered that Patrick Hanks, editor of such dictionaries as the NODE and now Professor of Lexicography at the University of Wolverhampton, has been developing something called the Pattern Dictionary of English Verbs:
http://kdictionaries.com/kdn/kdn21.pdf
> http://pdev.org.uk/#about_cpa
Not sure how valuable it will be compared to say the COBUILD Grammar Patterns (it's messier for a start, and looks somewhat idiosyncratic), but thought people would be interested to at least know about it. |
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twowheel
Joined: 03 Jul 2015
Posts: 753
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| Posted: Sat Dec 17, 2016 1:05 am Post subject: |
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| fluffytwo wrote: |
6) While browsing an issue of Kernerman Dictionary News (as you do LOL) I discovered that Patrick Hanks, editor of such dictionaries as the NODE and now Professor of Lexicography at the University of Wolverhampton, has been developing something called the Pattern Dictionary of English Verbs:
http://kdictionaries.com/kdn/kdn21.pdf
> http://pdev.org.uk/#about_cpa
Not sure how valuable it will be compared to say the COBUILD Grammar Patterns (it's messier for a start, and looks somewhat idiosyncratic), but thought people would be interested to at least know about it. |
Could be good. Thanks, fluff.
twowheel |
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fluffytwo
Joined: 24 Sep 2016
Posts: 139
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| Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2016 1:05 pm Post subject: |
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Heh, you're very welcome, twowheel!  |
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fluffytwo
Joined: 24 Sep 2016
Posts: 139
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| Posted: Mon May 22, 2017 11:07 am Post subject: |
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7) From page 16 of English Grammar: Understanding the Basics (Altenberg & Vago, CUP, NY 2010):
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And one more sentence type with sugar:
15. The sugar that works best in this recipe is brown sugar.
Here, sugar, while not pluralized, could be pluralized and refers, in fact, to a kind of sugar. For example, you could say: The sugars that work best in this recipe are brown and white sugar. For these reasons, sugar here is being used as a count noun. |
Some uncountables may be capable of being counted (though any explicit addition of a partitive would place the countability on the partitive rather than the noun), but they can't be both at the same time, right? That is, surely the textbook should deal just with what the given example is showing, or am I the only one confused by A&V's reasoning here? |
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fluffytwo
Joined: 24 Sep 2016
Posts: 139
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| Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2017 2:27 pm Post subject: |
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8. Is there any good reason why the example Where's he right now? should be considered incorrect? It was an item (since removed LOL) on some web grammar quiz that someone emailed me about.
My take is that it's a question of where the stress and necessary informational focus falls. Given */?Where's he? the primary stress has to fall on the verb (or perhaps possibly on the Where, but obviously not the he as pronouns are too known to query), hence the verb needing to be uncontracted: Where IS he?.
In Where's he right now? meanwhile, the main stress is likely on the RIGHT NOW, and the verb being contracted thus much less frownable or hardly the rightful focal point. |
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scot47
Joined: 10 Jan 2003
Posts: 15343
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| Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2017 3:25 pm Post subject: |
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| The use of the weak form of "is" in this context seems wrong to me. |
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fluffytwo
Joined: 24 Sep 2016
Posts: 139
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| Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2017 10:24 pm Post subject: |
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What more proof do you need though Scot than the following excerpt from Mary E. Twomey's Trap (ebook available, £3.39): "My help? I thought you made it clear you didn't need me or my help anymore. You've got Von. Where's he right now in your hour of need? What need was so desperate that you came here without an escort?".
Hell, there's even an example of just "Where's he?" in Arpit Vageria's You are My Reason to Smile (£0.70):
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...Adah looked perplexed and she cried. "You can't take my love away from me. Reehan exits [sic - FH] and he's right here in this room. He made this beautiful heart of candles with my name in it. If you say another word against him, he'll take you outside and beat you to death."
..."Where's he? We can't see him," Lakshya said. "Let VJ introduce us to Mr Reehan."
...VJ seemed unsettled, confused, and under-confident. |
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papuadn
Joined: 19 Sep 2016
Posts: 131
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| Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2017 5:15 am Post subject: |
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| fluffytwo wrote: |
| ... meanwhile, the main stress is likely on the RIGHT NOW, and the verb being contracted thus much less frownable or hardly the rightful focal point. |
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| The use of the weak form of "is" in this context seems wrong to me. |
I agree.
It's a gotcha question a native speaker might flag as non-standard usage, yet "correct" in "grammatical" terms that serve a subject/verb inversion to indicate a question. And common enough. I've seen examples from proprietary measures using stress/prosody to discriminate.
I'd argue the examples in print are not a transcribed utterance, but a sloppy praxis of orthography. Maybe I'm wrong and someone can cite an idiomatic example of unstressed inversion, but the examples given are not a vernacular or particularly stressed by a dialect.
Consider the demonstrative complement: Where's he right now? There he's! |
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A Token of My Extreme
Joined: 14 May 2004
Posts: 76
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| Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:26 pm Post subject: |
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| Straight from the horse’s mouth, “Where’s he punching dogies? There he’s!” |
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