134
votes
Syntactical problem? Musk's tweet "I Am Become Meme, Destroyer Of Shorts"
It is a parody of I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.
Constructions such as "I am come", "He is become X" were used in English several centuries ago but are now obsolete in ...
- 49.4k
62
votes
Accepted
Syntactical problem? Musk's tweet "I Am Become Meme, Destroyer Of Shorts"
"I am become" is an archaic perfect (= "I have become"). Here Elon Musk's phrase parodies a quote by Oppenheimer.
Background to Parodic Reference
Robert Oppenheimer was an ...
- 23k
32
votes
Accepted
I hate mushrooms. How can you agree?
You use the form, not the negative meaning.
Me too
So do I.
Either of these would be acceptable.
Also
He hates mushrooms, doesn't he?
You would normally say this when you thought he ...
- 7,994
28
votes
The grammar of "Stop Asian hate"
The difference between "Stop Asian hate" and "Stop white terrorism" isn't one of grammar, it's one of semantics.
"Stop Asian hate" and "Stop white terrorism" ...
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25
votes
Is "The two men Savchenko, an Iraq war veteran, was convicted of helping to kill were . . . " grammatical?
The sentence is difficult to parse because it has a long relative clause with no wh-word. In addition, the relative clause has an extra phrase in the middle. It may help to think about the sentence ...
25
votes
Accepted
Grammar behind "Whatever what is is is what I want."
Whatever happens. Whatever
what is is is what
I want. Only that. But that.
Whatever "what is" is, is what I want.
(Second cup of coffee to the rescue.)
Although is appears three times ...
- 121k
24
votes
The grammar of "Stop Asian hate"
If you drive in the UK, you'll see road signs that have one word on them - STOP - and this is perfectly acceptable. English learners are sometimes taught as a "rule" that a simple sentence ...
- 96k
21
votes
Accepted
“as would a calm dog whose yard…”
When she opened her eyes she saw a harbor seal, twenty feet in front
of her, staring at her as would a calm dog whose yard she'd walked
into.
There's nothing missing from the basic construction.
Your ...
- 15.8k
21
votes
Syntactical problem? Musk's tweet "I Am Become Meme, Destroyer Of Shorts"
Also, another question is what does "destroyer of shorts" mean？
TLDR: Elon does not like people who short sell stocks (aka "shorts" or "shorters") and is happy to ...
- 860
17
votes
Can "Wow!" be a sentence?
Short answer:
Yes, these are minor sentences. They consist of a single clause that's usually categorized under "minor clauses".
Examples of minor clauses are optatives, conditional fragments, ...
- 7,351
15
votes
Accepted
"Her this behavior" vs "this behavior of her"
You should omit 'this' in the first sentence
I don't like her behavior
but that would be about her behavior in general.
I don't like this behavior of hers.
(note the extra 's' at the end – it's a ...
- 14.7k
13
votes
Accepted
Can "Wow!" be a sentence?
This question is anything but clear. It's muddled by design. :^) But I'll take a shot at it.
NOAD defines sentence like this:
sentence (n.) a set of words that is complete in itself, typically ...
J.R.♦
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13
votes
“as would a calm dog whose yard…”
The seal was staring [in the same way] as a calm dog would [stare] when she had just walked into its yard.
You are expected to 'understand' the missing words, which have been left out to make the ...
- 49.4k
13
votes
The grammar of "Stop Asian hate"
This isn't a matter of grammar, but of context. Grammatically it is ambiguous, and could mean either "stop hatred directed at Asian people" or "stop hatred perpetrated by Asian people&...
- 3,033
13
votes
Accepted
Is it correct to say "how-many-day a tour was it"?
"How many days was the tour" is the only option there that is correct.
I'd still definitely prefer to use "how long was the tour".
Edit: as Jack said, option 2 "How many days ...
- 957
13
votes
What does "though somewhat dated, as, to a greater extent, are those..from the same decade" mean in this sentence?
Jack's various essays from the 1950's are still readable, though somewhat dated, as, to a greater extent, are those by Neville Braybrooke and Christopher Hollis from the same decade.
Jack's essays ...
- 12k
12
votes
Grammar behind "Whatever what is is is what I want."
Grammatically, this can be summed up neatly by some ungrammatical use of parentheses:
(Whatever (what is) is) is what I want.
Each phrase in parentheses is a noun phrase and can be substituted by ...
- 221
12
votes
Syntactical problem? Musk's tweet "I Am Become Meme, Destroyer Of Shorts"
I think Musk is referring to a quote made famous by Robert Oppenheimer. Upon witnessing the detonation of the first atomic bomb, Oppenheimer recalled a line from the Hindu sacred text "Bhagavad-...
- 131
11
votes
Entry Was Gained
There are (at least) four reasons to use a passive construction.
One, because you don't know who or what performed the action. "Entry into the house was gained through the basement." Perhaps we don't ...
- 62k
10
votes
Accepted
Why so many verbs in this sentence in the published book?
'come' here is not a finite verb, but a past participle used as an adjective modifying 'nightingale'. The original sentence could be expanded as:
There's a bird on the lawn that I think must be a ...
- 2,198
10
votes
Accepted
How to understand "…you like it the shape it is"
It is syntactically analogous to the way it is.
I like it the way it is.
That is, "as it is (now)".
If you like the present shape of your nose, butt out.
Would you like some more milk to cool ...
- 121k
9
votes
Is "have to" a modal verb?
Have to is not a modal verb, it is not even an auxiliary verb.
In the have to structure have is a main verb:
Examples:
Declarative sentence:
I [do] have to go
Questions:
Do I have to go?
...
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9
votes
Why so many verbs in this sentence in the published book?
In this case come is not a finite verb but a participle. If you want to paraphrase the clause it heads as a relative clause you should cast it in the perfect construction:
. . . a nightingale ...
- 175k
9
votes
Accepted
What does "though somewhat dated, as, to a greater extent, are those..from the same decade" mean in this sentence?
Jack's various essays from the 1950's are still readable, though somewhat dated, as, to a greater extent, are those by Neville Braybrooke and Christopher Hollis from the same decade.
Parse 1: Jack's ...
- 41.1k
9
votes
Accepted
Why, in one simple sentence, there are two verbs?
In this case, open isn't a verb, it's an adjective. "The door is open" is like "the door is green", it's describing the state of the door, not an action.
"Jerry kicked the ...
- 2,615
8
votes
Accepted
"Nothing is available, is anything?" Tag questions for negative sentences
The Original Poster has the right idea about the grammar here. When we have negative sentences, the question tags must be positive, not negative.
One small, but important point though: usually, we ...
8
votes
What is the subject in the sentence "Rice is being cooked by Mary"?
I thought that the subject is that which acts, and the object is that which is acted upon.
This is often true in an active-voice sentence, but not in a passive-voice sentence.
That which acts/is ...
- 175k
8
votes
Accepted
Is "I bought it because it costed ..." an idiomatic and grammatical phrase?
The reason you found so few results is most likely because cost is an irregular verb. The past simple (and the past participle, too) of cost is still cost, so the correct phrase would be:
Naomi ...
- 674
7
votes
"I want to understand what my options are" or "I want to understand what are my options"?
"I want to understand what my options are" is fine and sounds more natural to me.
This version: "I want to understand what are my options" really stands as two, so could be separated by a full stop, ...
- 363
7
votes
Accepted
grammar difference between "to make dry dishes" vs "to make the dishes dry"
The usual place for an attributive adjective is before the noun it modifies.
When one appears elsewhere that's a signal that something else is going on, and
it's probably not an attributive adjective, ...
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