Hi I’m working on a software project for work that inflects english words into their various derived forms. e.g. work (verb) -> works, working, worked. My main problem at the moment is that I need to standardize some naming conventions or categories for each inflection type in my program, and then funnel scraped data from … Read more
I don’t know what’s going on with me lately. I’ve never had this question before and it was never an issue for me while writing something but two weeks ago I started to think about whether I should use verbs with or without -s after third person pronouns. First, let’s analyze an example in the … Read more
Can all country names be pluralised in English? There are some countries which have a plural form, although such name is, for obvious reasons, not used – for example, Sicily – Sicilies (I know Sicily is not a country & the reason it has a plural form of its name), Malta – Maltas, Italy – … Read more
Consider a lexicon where you look up the words ‘jump’ and ‘dance’. You would often see something like this: jump -s -ing, etc. dance -s -ing, etc. I reckon this notation (is there a name for it?) is somewhat standardised. Most people will easily see that the present participles are ‘jumping’ and ‘dancing’. But wait! … Read more
In this interesting answer to a 4 year old question (which, ironically, I found by browsing unpopular questions on Meta), we find this tidbit: Just as in Japanese, not only is the “non-native” stratum considered more erudite than the native one, there are grammatical differences between the strata (although fewer than there are in Japanese). … Read more
The title explains it all. I had an argument with my English teacher; she gave us a task to convert nouns to their corresponding adjectives and verbs. She gave us belief as the noun and told us that its corresponding adjective should be believable. I think that’s true, but I thought that believed should also … Read more
I recently found out that the reason we say ”if I were…” and not “if I was…” (though some argue both are correct) is because “to be” is irregular in the subjunctive past. Are there any other verbs that are irregular like this? Edit: By irregular, I mean different words for simple past and subjunctive … Read more
For a proper noun, in this case let’s say Morty, would one replace the “-y” suffix when using the plural case with “-ies” or keep it as an unaltered “-ys”? Answer You would never use the “ies” rule with pronouns: use “-s”, or “-es” if the word ends in an s. Also, referring to “Mortys” … Read more
We are taught that in "type 0" and "type 1" conditional sentences, the tense of the condition clause (aka the "if" clause) should always be the normal present tense, as in: "Type 0" conditional: If you heat ice, it melts. "Type 1" conditional: If he wins the lottery, he will spend it all on charity. … Read more
Watching a game review, I’ve noticed a phrase whose meaning confused me. The reason why I got confused is that the author used a base form of the verb "to explore" in pair with the singular subject "friend". The question is, is it correct to do this? I will write below two more options as … Read more
