Whats it to you.
I don't get irritated that easily about petty things, such as a person's grammar; however the biggest grammatic error I've seen from these forums is the spelling of loser. I see "looser" too much so I felt like saying it out loud. (Also, this could be mispunctuated)
William Labov. Study up.
William Shakespeare. Study up.
lol
Shakespeare proves my point.
Anyway, call a woman looser, you'll be a loser. Hope that clarifies matters. :)
=)
... Trucking, cashed in have I gotten my chips. Keep Trucking, in the manner of the do-dah man. Together, more or less in line, just on keep trucking...
I love chess.com because I can learn chess and grammar. ha?
I notice they didn't change this in the last round of upgrades...
Topics I have posted in
Subject: I
Verb: have posted
Object: topics
Adverbial phrase: in ... (In? In what?)
The parsing above clearly demonstrates the grammatical inaccuracy of the sentence under review. The sentence is incomplete.
Didn't read this whole thing (yeah, that's short for "I did not read this entire set of postings"), so somebody else may have already said this, but in my experience almost nobody understands what the word "only" means. As in, "I only played one game" or "I only had two eggs" -- certainly very common structures. Phrased in this manner, the only excludes everything other than "played" or "had" -- I had the two eggs, but nothing more. Did not eat them, cook them, look at them, purchase them, digest them, ... Clearly, the intention is to exclude numbers beyond two, so it should read "I had only two eggs".
I only had two eggs might also mean I, but nobody else, had two eggs.
Aw look what you done, now he ain't never gonna to write no more posts here.
GeoffreyBernardo wrote: I only had two eggs might also mean I, but nobody else, had two eggs.
horas non numero nisi serenas: 'I number none but shining hours' ( an inscription on a sundial).
This is just silly.
Geoffrey,
You are incorrect. "In" is not the beginning of a prepositional/adverbial phrase. This is the particle of a phrasal verb, and thus does not introduce an unfinished phrase. The entire phrasal verb is " to post in".
For example... "I threw the garbage out" What is out? Clearly not a preposition.
Yes 'tis. The fact that you've arranged the the sentence so that the object of the preposition ("garbage") precedes the preposition itself changes nada.
there is perscriptive grammer where the convention is rigid and descriptive grammer which describes what people actually do and use.
Lingusitically neither is more correct, as long as a large group of people use and understand "Improper grammer" Linguists will argue there is actually nothing improper going on. You could get a english phd to debate it with a linguist phd and they would be arguing weather the evolution of language through usage is correct or the rigid scholastic system is correct.
Ever hear of old english?
No deepgreene. Sometimes the object can split the main verb from its particle. Open any generative sytax book and it will tell you this. It is not a preposition.
Yeah, I realized the gaffe after my response, but was rather hoping you'd step into an elevator shaft before seeing my response. You win this round, redwood. This.. Round..
Also, "particle"?
It is not correct to begin a sentence or paragraph with a conjuction (And or But) either. However, there are 10's of thousands here on Chess.com whose first languages are not English. In the interest of pragmatism and practicality the general population here should not need to bother with the rules of English grammar. They can pay attention if they have an interest in doing so, or if their college major is the English language. If English is one's first language then we should always stand ready to learn without exception. There seems to be a lot of nit picking amongst the posts and topics though. Some people have that personality, and that is not a crime either.
this is one of my favorite threads! please. Carry on~
But it *is* perfectly acceptable for a sentence to begin with a conjunction, despite what some have told us throughout our formative years.
Prescriptive grammarians may try to impose their rules but so what? The grammar as constituted by usage determines how the language can be used. Descriptive grammar.
As was noted above, english would not look like it does today if the users weren't able to change it through different "rule breaking" usage over time. Old english looks nothing like middle english which is very different from modern english.
In the end we have a very elastic and modern language with relatively few rules. Still a very expressive one in no small part due to a very large and eclectic vocabulary.
This simplification is typical as languages age and remain used by large populations. Chinese, they say, is simple as can be, while the most modern languages, like Flemish, are chock full of layers of grammatical controls.
I also studied Old English grammar as part of my linguistics study at University. Those rules of old grammar aren't being broken nowadays; they are in effect extinct, yet we seem to be doing just fine.
All that being said, I'd hope anyone would be fluent in their mother tongue of a somewhat formal usage. It's just handy to not be thought an idiot at times. "Duh hey yo mister president yo!"
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