In “The X extended all the way up to Y”, extended is the simple past tense or the past participle of the verb extend, whose principle meaning is to increase in extent, or to cause to increase in extent. Thus, if you are describing a circumstance where some spruce, fir, or pine trees suddenly grew tall, all the way up to the sky, your original sentence would be perfectly appropriate. If that's not what you mean to say, and want to guard against perverse readings, consider a form like “The X reached clear to Y” or “The X stretched up to Y”. (Of course, like extended in your original sentence, the verbs reached and stretched might be interpreted as expressing active growth, instead of meaning spanned; but such readings with the latter two verbs are slightly less likely than with the first one.)
Thursday, 18 June 2015
grammaticality - Analysis of "There is something it is like to be us"
This construction is grammatical, but awkward.
there is something [that] it is like to be us
In other words, [to be us] is like [something], as opposed to to be us is like nothing (= being us is meaningless). The relative clause [that] it is like to be us has as its antecedent something. The use of like is the same as in please tell me what it is like to be a bat.
Another way to rephrase this while keeping the relative clause is: there is something that "to be us" is like. Both in this form and in the original, that is governed by the adjective-preposition like.
Note that dummy/appositive it is often used to replace an infinitive phrase (an infinitive with arguments) when the infinitive phrase is the subject: this is what it means to be conscious. In relative clauses, this it is even more common, as even simple infinitives are somehow felt to be awkward when they would precede the finite verb; we wouldn't write *this is what to be conscious means. We would either use dummy it, or replace the infinitive with a gerund: this is what being conscious means.
In philosophy of mind, this phrase has unfortunately become popular. A different phrase would have been more transparent and easier to parse, such as:
being "us" is not a meaningless statement
Or:
The subjective aspect of existence is not the same as the objective aspect of it
grammar - Would you mind me / my opening the window?
There is a difference. According to another website, saying "my opening" puts more emphasis on opening, so "Do you mind opening the window?" is the same as "Do you mind my opening the window?" except in the second one it's the person speaking that wants it to be opened.
The former sentence puts emphasis on the person speaking, so the former sentence asks if the second person is ok with the first person opening the window. Say the person that wants to open the window is bad at opening windows. So the person is really asking if it is ok. Let me quote what it said to explain it better.
Do you mind my marrying your daughter next month? = Is next month a good date for us to get married? In other words, you are putting emphasis on marrying.
Do you mind me marrying your daughter? = Yes, I am poor now, but I will work hard and make enough money to take care of your daughter. In other words, you put emphasis on the word me.
TL;DR:
It depends on what you mean. The former asks if the person can open the window because the person is bad at opening windows or needs permission to open it up but the latter asks if opening the window is fine, and the second person doesn't care who opens it.
Why did the Doctor think he was going to die in "The Time of the Doctor" even though he saw Capaldi in "The Day of the Doctor"?
TL; DR: Yes, it's possible that during Time of the Doctor, the Eleventh Doctor has forgotten his future self's involvement in the saving of Gallifrey.
To add to the answer by Hypnosifl and to answer the specific part of your question "Could he have just forgotten?", remember that the War Doctor and the Tenth Doctor (and by extension, the Ninth) don't retain the memories because of the muddled time streams, but the Eleventh does, because it's his present. Capaldi's appearance, though, would be from his future, and so it's entirely likely that he doesn't remember it for the same reason.
Maybe it's that Time Lords can't generally retain memories of interactions with their future selves. This is a consequence of the Blinovitch Limitation Effect shown with the Brigadier in Mawdryn Undead -- the younger version can't remember the interaction with the older. It also explains why the Fifth Doctor doesn't recall being pulled into the Death Zone in The Five Doctors despite having been there three times previously. (I say "generally" because it seems like the Second Doctor remembers the events of The Three Doctors during his conversation with the Brigadier in The Five Doctors. However, since the Time Lords deliberately brought the three incarnations together, they may have had some way to circumvent the effect.)
Granted, the events of Time Crash seem to contradict that since it implies that the Fifth Doctor would remember watching the Tenth fix the TARDIS, but that could be explained by the memories of the younger simply being suppressed until he "catches up" with the future events. So he does remember, he just doesn't remember that he remembers until he's on the other side of the conversation; that is, when he's Ten.
This also accounts for Eleven's line in Day of the Doctor, "This is where I come in." That implies that he remembers meeting his future self when he was Ten, in spite of explicitly saying that Ten won't remember. The memories are still there, just inaccessible until the most forward point in the timeline. At the point where the time streams cross, Eleven suddenly has access to the memory his past self made, leading him to remark, essentially, "Oh, right! This happened. I'd forgotten."
Wednesday, 17 June 2015
grammaticality - Seem small clause
It is said that the omission of "to be" is allowed only when the adjective (phrases), noun (phrases), or prepositional phrase comes after the to be like this:
a He seemed (to be) angry about the decision.
b This seemed (to be) of great importance.
c She seemed (to be) a great player.
But I found some strange things about it. For example, this.
d He seemed excited by the news.
Well, excited by the news is definitely not an adjective phrase. Were the to be inserted in it, it would describe the action like this: the news excited him. So "excited" would be a past participle used as a verb after an auxiliary verb, not an adjective.
Like in a passive voice where the participles after the "to be" are considered verbal, or stative, participle phrase when not considered a pure adjective.
e He was bored by the music. <- bored by the music is not an adjective phrase but a stative, or verbal, participle phrase.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_passive_voice#Stative_and_adjectival_uses
So why is it possible to say sentence d when "excited by the news" is a stative phrase not an adjective phrase? Wouldn't it be equivalent to deleting to be with present participle like this : He seemed doing the job.
Edit: What I referred to as stative past participle is known as dynamic passive by many. I think Wikipedia had some problem.
http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2008/11/stative-seeking.html
offensive language - What term describes enjambment alluding to a taboo word?
First of all, 'enjambment' is a technical word used when describing poetry.
In poetry, enjambment or enjambement is the breaking of a syntactic unit (a phrase, clause, or sentence) by the end of a line or between two verses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enjambment
An example of a Mind Rhyme is given in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_Rhyme
One very hot day in the summer last year
A young man was seen swimming round Brighton Pier;
He dived underneath it and swam to a rock
And amused all the ladies by shaking his
Fist at a copper who stood on the shore,
The very same copper who copped him before.
For the policeman to order him out was a farce,
For the cheeky young man simply showed him his
Graceful manoeuvres and wonderful pace...[3]
The missing word in the first verse is of course - cock - and in the second verse - arse.
The missing word, which is a rude word is not spoken out loud. So it is a way of saying something rude without saying something rude.
Subverted Rhyme
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SubvertedRhymeEveryOccasion
Para: We are villains who like to rhyme...
Dox: In fact, we do it all the time.
Para: You may think it's rather crass...
Dox: But you can stick your cards right up your nose.
Para: ...You were supposed to say "ass," brother. I thought we rehearsed this.
Again, the rude word is 'ass' or 'arse'.
trope [trəʊp]
n
1. (Literature / Rhetoric) Rhetoric a word or expression used in a figurative sense
2. (Music, other) an interpolation of words or music into the plainsong settings of the Roman Catholic liturgy
To answer the question
Is "Miss Susie" a mind rhyme?
Yes and No
I am not particularly familiar with Miss Susie. I think part of a idea is that people are already thinking of different versions when they hear the first version.
Is there a literary or poetic term for this usage of enjambment?
If I was a Moderator I might consider doing something with this question. Because it is not really a question at all, but more of an excuse for the person asking the question to show off their knowledge.
Enjambment is a literary or poetic term. What more do you want?
A mind rhyme based on enjambment.
It is a mistake to imagine there is a corresponding single word to describe everything that exists in the known universe.
Monday, 13 October 2014
biochemistry - How crowded is the bacterial cell?
Composition of E. coli (dry weight): 55% protein, 20% RNA, 10% lipid, 15% other
Protein concentration is about 100 mg/ml or 3 mM. From the size of an E. coli cell, 1 nM is about 1 molecule/cell. This is ~1000 molecules/cell for HeLa cells.
Diffusion coefficient for an "average" protein: D ~ 5-15 microns^2/s, or ~10 ms to traverse an E. coli. For reference, a small metabolite in water diffuses about 30-100x faster.
Reference: Cell 141:1262, Key Numbers in Biology