By Constructions, Analogies

Hello, I'm sorry I have more than one question today, and I will post them all here because I'm supposed to hand this part in on Sunday. Help me explain what's in red please: A) The implications 1 for parents and educational policy makers is to realize that intense intellectual input and...

Rishonly wrote: Danyoo wrote: Approaching a stranger in a foreign country, and hoping to be able to communicate with him or her in English, we say "Do you speak English?" I would agree. And the reason is because 'do you' sound more polite than 'can you'. Hi Danyoo, One quick point: The ...

O, I thought you were, as your quote is in Chinese. Yes, L(x) is a function indicating whether a language is 'native' or 'foreign' to a person. It is not restricted to Language Acquisition though, as it is widely used in such topics as Language Teaching (see for example, Eric Hawkin's...

Another kind of illegitimate argument is based on analogy between one area of grammar and another. consider yet another construction where there is variation between nominative and accusative forms of pronouns: , where the subject has the form of a coordination of pronouns. This shows us not...

You are right, Paco. The word 'problem' is definitely a countable noun. That's why when I first encountered the expression 'have x problem -ing,' perhaps decades ago, I thought it's a rather unusual construction. This peculiarity compelled me to memorize the expression by rote then. Along the...

Hypercorrection is -a construction or pronunciation produced by mistaken analogy with standard usage out of a desire to be correct, as in the substitution of I for me in on behalf of my parents and I. -the production of such a construction or pronunciation. - a grammatical, usage or...

Mr Pedantic wrote: Grammar isn't everything, K. It's always worth considering the context of a phrase. In this instance, the context includes the fact that while perfectly grammatical, and commonly used, it will sound strange or flabby or sloppy to some people, since (as CJ has demonstrated) it...

AHD: http://www.bartleby.com/64/C002/024.html A traditional rule holds that the construction "the reason is because" is redundant, and should be avoided in favor of "the reason is that". The usage is well established, however, and can be justified by analogy to sentences in which so that...

I would learn this one as an idiomatic usage of "champion". An analogy might be "She became Catholic in 1964", which can also be said as "She became a Catholic in 1964." Similarly, "She's Italian" for "She's an Italian". It's the abstract, uncountable quality (champion-ness, Catholic-ness,...

People sometimes refer to the CGEL on this site. Conveniently, some sample chapters from this publication are now online at CGEL sample chapters The preliminary chapter includes the odd lapse of logic. This is one of the first. Apologies for the fairly lengthy quotation: Another kind of...