Timeline for Is "Bananas grow in a tropical climate" grammatically correct?
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| Apr 13, 2017 at 12:38 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| Jan 21, 2016 at 12:38 | comment | added | CowperKettle | @GoDucks - thank you, I'll revisit John Lawler's work! Should it disprove my answer? | |
| Jan 20, 2016 at 21:40 | comment | added | GoDucks | Consider Fred likes to drive a sports car as often as he gets the chance which is sentence (30) in Chapter IV of Lawler's dissertation. Compare with (54) Fred likes to drive sports cars... but the ungrammatical (per Lawler, p 114) Fred likes to drive the sports car... I guess a particular person can't drive the prototypical sport car. | |
| Dec 11, 2015 at 14:59 | comment | added | user20792 | -1 because of the points I have raised. | |
| Dec 11, 2015 at 11:06 | comment | added | CowperKettle | @NES - The OP: "Isn't a tropical climate also right?". I explained why, while being grammatical, this is not suited well for their particular context (a textbook problem). "Self contained" = requiring no additional information. As Quirk et al. write, generic noun phrases have different shades of meaning. Thus, the sentence with "tropical climates" could be described as "more generic". I do not feel myself obligated to always use technical terms. I feel that my answer contributed to the thread, and I've no prejudice against "thinking aloud". If I strayed too much.. not a big deal. | |
| Dec 11, 2015 at 4:47 | comment | added | user20792 | The OP's test has a sentence to correct: "Bananas grow in in a tropical climates" and there were three mistakes in it: two ins, a before climates and, per the OP, tropics was misspelled. I doubt the test asked the user anything about which context would the resulting sentence work best in. So, I honestly do not know what you are doing here with this answer except thinking aloud. So what if one type of generic NP answers one question better and another type answers another better. The test asked about errors in a specific sentence; the test was not about what makes the best generic NP. | |
| Dec 11, 2015 at 4:33 | comment | added | user20792 | You took out "per se." But the rest of your statemen: is off the mark ...it does not fit well as a "self-contained" sentence in the way the sentence with tropical climates does. The sentence with tropical climates is "more generic". You have used two phrases here in quotes that are not technical terms and are not realities. There is not "more generic", there is just generic. And I've no idea what a "self-contained" sentence is. I know what you are trying to argue, but I don't agree. I have already shown one context in which a indef generic NP is grealy preferred to a definite generic NP. | |
| Dec 11, 2015 at 1:56 | comment | added | Senjougahara Hitagi | I think this is nearly correct. This is my understanding: "bananas grow in tropical climates". This is a fact about our bananas and tropical climates on planet earth, in reality. "bananas grow in a tropical climate" this is a fact about tropical climates in the abstract. It's somewhat hypothetical. The latter sentence pairs well with modals like "can" and "will". | |
| Dec 11, 2015 at 1:42 | comment | added | J.R.♦ | @NES & CopperK - My sentence was meant to be an offshoot from the Christmas special Frosty the Snowman, when Frosty (afraid of melting) says, "Snowmen don't like red thermometers." | |
| Dec 11, 2015 at 1:36 | comment | added | CowperKettle | @NES "So your remark about the OP's sentence not being ungrammatical, per se is misplaced." - thank you, fixed it. | |
| Dec 11, 2015 at 1:21 | history | edited | CowperKettle | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 10, 2015 at 23:54 | comment | added | user20792 | Now, there are some contexts in which an indefinite generic NP works as a so-called "stand alone" sentence or so-called "self-contained" sentence, where the def generic would be ungrammaticalish. Vlad says to his wife Rasa: "I have an idea: how about we buy young Boris a laptop for Christmas." Vlad says this over breakfast in July and no one has been talking about Christmas presents or any kind of presents, and no one has been talking about Boris, and no one has been talking about laptops or anything of the sort. It's straight out of the blue. NB also that the indef NP is not the subject. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 23:19 | comment | added | user20792 | "A snowman is..." makes a better start to an entry than "The snowman is..." (because indef generics work great as definitional statements). But "The snowman is..." would not be ungrammatical. It's also true that "Snowmen are widespread in a cold climate" probably works better with a plural generic NP: in cold climates. But the indef generic NP is not ungrammatical. At worst, it is unfortunate. So your remark about the OP's sentence not being ungrammatical, per se is misplaced. Then the third sentence, "there are different methods..." is fine, for the same reason the first one is. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 18:39 | comment | added | CowperKettle | "A snowman is a antropomorphic figure made of snow. Snowmen are widespread in a cold climate. There are different methods for making a snowman.." -- Would this be a nice start for an encyclopedia article? | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 18:27 | comment | added | J.R.♦ | A mild climate is a mild climate; I don't read too much into the indefinite article there. Snowmen don't like a tropical climate doesn't seem any more unusual than, say, Yesterday was a rainy day. But I wouldn't delete this answer. I may not agree with it 100%, but there are some interesting kernels to think about. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 16:07 | comment | added | CowperKettle | My feeling is that in tropical climates creates the "most generic" version of this sentence. "Viniferas grow in a mild climate". Hmm.. Is this "mild climate" generic? Or could it be a specific climate? Or maybe there's some missing information, which we might get from neighboring sentences. This sentence carries an air of "some information missing" for me. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 16:01 | comment | added | CowperKettle | @J.R. - thanks for the comment! What if we delete best and most? "Viniferas grow in a Mediterranean-type of climate." Would this work as a standalone generic sentence? This was my point. Maybe I failed to get it across. Or maybe I was wrong, then I'll ditch the answer. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 16:00 | history | undeleted | CowperKettle | ||
| Dec 10, 2015 at 16:00 | history | deleted | CowperKettle | via Vote | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 15:56 | comment | added | J.R.♦ | I won't downvote this, but it seems like you're overanalyzing it. I have no problem with Bananas grow in a warm climate anywhere in an article; that's just a normal way of using the word climate. Other examples (from books): Most viniferas grow best in a Mediterranean-type of climate with long, relatively dry summers and mild winters; “Cool-season” cereals (wheat, rye, barley, and oats) grow best in a moderate climate; These trees grow in a temperate climate; Several orchids which usually grow in a warmer climate will also thrive in the warmer parts of the intermediate orchid house. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 15:51 | history | edited | CowperKettle | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 10, 2015 at 15:49 | comment | added | CowperKettle | @Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. - if there are no downvotes for some time, I'll write one. (0: | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 15:47 | comment | added | M.A.R. | I. Demand. A. TL;DR! | |
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| Dec 10, 2015 at 7:08 | history | deleted | CowperKettle | via Vote | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 7:08 | history | answered | CowperKettle | CC BY-SA 3.0 |