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Just back from a walk. It's -5ºC and snowing and I've blown my nose clear of any impediments to my judgement. But I just don't get it. It's nothing personal, as I'm sure you understand, nor is it a dig at AmE in general. I suppose it is AmE: http://www.eslcafe.com/grammar/conversational_language16.h...

Almost all the time I rejoice in the diversity of English and champion usage over prescription. But there are limits ( such as "didn't used to") and I have to say that "Me either" is well up the list of things that I'm bound to accept on the grounds of usage but that at the same grate on some part o...

My innate modesty and unwillingness to brag do not allow me to tell you my 'score'. Though "score" may be a clue!

Sorry, yoda, it's obviously not something I can help you with.

I think I've got a pretty good handle on the rules governing how modals behave, but thanks for the exhaustive link all the same. Between your assertion that modal stacking is not a feature of Southern American English and: Boertien, Harmon. 1986. “Constituent Structure of Double Modals,” in Language...

You may be right. I'll concede that your friend B is an off-duty inspector for the "Good Lakes Guide" who is not a bit pompous. Well, slightly.

The problem is that your 3) and 4) sound like a slightly pompous inspector from "The Good Lake Guide".

The original sentence is missing an "out".

There is nevertheless a subtle difference between a spelling change with a small pronunciation difference: burned/burnt learned/learnt (leaving aside "my learnéd friend") and so on and a whopping great difference in pronunciation: leaned/leant dreamed/dreamt leaped/leapt/lept. The verbs in the first...

Either Google is a bit strange or I'm stupid. For "results were obtained to be" it says 691.000 but there are only three pages at the bottom plus when you start scrolling it gives up at 21 hits. "Values were obtained to be" taps out at 49 although initially claiming 400,000 hits. You can get it to 1...

Do you think that this is tolerable?

"He said he would punish me if I didn't be quiet"


By "tolerable" I mean "How much does it make you wince?" not "Is it right?" and:

"I'll punish you if you don't be quiet"

?

I think it's an echo of "Don't be ____!", which makes us drop our guard a little.

"Do-support" became almost completely ubiquitous from around the 16th to the 18th century so what you can remember probably predates or imitates a time before its prevalence. What most obviously held out against it were modal verbs and less obviously some verbs, all modally in meaning, like "I hope ...

Heath, there's certainly no Standard English that accepts double pasts, but they are widespread in other Englishes, the ones which are "wrong" if you like. Your point about the two forms of an open question is interesting, Macavity. It must be something to do with marking, Theme/Rheme and may be con...

Me too. But I wonder if I wouldn't almost always favour "burnt toast". It's worth pointing out that /l/ and /m/ and /n/ don't have unvoiced equivalents so you can't ruin the pronunciation of the final consonant of the root by pronouncing spelled, spoiled, spilled, learned and burned with a final /t/...

Well, modal stacking is said to be a feature of Southern American English. The very first google hit for "modal stacking" is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_American_English and for something more reputable there are references here http://www.utm.utoronto.ca/~halldani/hall.generals.2001.pdf a...

Coming across "might ought to" gave me pause for thought. Firstly it's particularly useful as a tentative suggestion that something is a very good idea. Secondly it's staggeringly widespread: Guess how many Google hits it gets before you look. Don't cheat. And very few of them are from lists of moda...