Periods Meeting Quotes

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Re: Frank Apisa (Post 5044986)
Are you under the impression that I think anyone here is an idiot? And if you are, why are you?

In your expert opinion Frank, is YOUR second sentence here a fragment?

I mean I feel like something of a petty little idiot for pointing it out...

...- but I'm just curious as to whether you've changed your stance on that grammatical point of contention ( whether or not it's okay to begin a sentence with a conjunction).

Re: Frank Apisa (Post 5044484)
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Forget the contraction for a moment...and have the sentence stand uncontracted.

To my ears, "There are a few steamers over in the beer tent, Joe" sounds infinitely better than, "There is a few steamers over in the beer tent, Joe."

Does the contraction make the difference?

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Yes indeed, Frank, the contraction makes all the difference in the world.

See,

WHEN "THERE'S" ISN'T "THERE IS"

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002447.html

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@Frank Apisa,

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Aidan: And then there'd even be more nuance and differentiation depending upon if your speaker was white, black, hispanic, a debutante, etc., etc.

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I would like, however, to ask the "experts" here about your use of "was" in that sentence.

EXPERTS: Is "was" correct...is "were" the proper verb...or are both correct?

There is no subjunctive mood in Aidan's sentence, Frank.

The subjunctive mood is the 'if' of irrealis/the impossible/the highly unlikely/... .

If I were/was you

If she were/was to come


Note that all 'ifs' do not signal that end of the conditional scale where irrealis if/unlikely 'if' lies.

Lot's of 'ifs' are used to describe the reality end of the conditional scale;

I'll pay for your plane fare if you come to my party.

If Frank replies to this post, we shall have a fine discussion on conditionals.


Those reality 'ifs' can even morph into 'whens', if the situation slides further toward the reality end of the scale.

I'll pay you for your plane fare when you arrive at my party.

When Frank replies to this post, we will have a fine discussion on conditionals.

Aidan's 'if' is so distant from the irrealis/subjunctive end of the conditional scale that it is actually a 'whether/if'.

And then there'd even be more nuance and differentiation depending upon if/whether your speaker was white, black, hispanic, a debutante, etc., etc.

We can see just how far to the reality side of the conditional scale this is, not just because it can be changed to a 'whether' but also by adding, for example,

And then there'd even be more nuance and differentiation depending upon the times when/those situations where your speaker was white, black, hispanic, a debutante, etc., etc.

Perhaps, Frank, you thought that the 'would', in there'd was denoting a condition/conditional that was getting close to the irrealis end of the conditional scale.

But it is interesting that you have brought this up, Frank. The subjunctive/conditionals have been so poorly described to American students [yes, others too] that they immediately [when they are in a fevered pedantic mode] see a subjunctive/irrealis where none exists.

This leads them to hypercorrect. Had you advised Aidan, in the same manner that you advised H20man, you would have been hypercorrecting in addition to being prescriptive. But in this case you would have been incorrect even by prescriptive standards, which, I guess one could say, describes an out to lunch analysis that is out of this universe.

"There are disappointingly few steamers in the beer tent Joe" seems okay to me. Colloquially "there'r".

when I mentioned that Spendius' sentence was a fragment, I was busting his balls

That was never as clear to me as it was to him

"Few" is a noun in my original. Fowler has half a page on the word.

I never felt a thing Frank.