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 #32 (permalink) Sun May 25, 2008 17:31 pm Grammatically correct? (It is the only reason I stay on here.) |
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| Yankee wrote: |
| Molly wrote: |
| Did you misss Jamie's turnaround? |
I didn't notice any 'turnaround' at all. That's apparently your own misinterpretation.
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Hm, interesting. |
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Molly
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Joined: 12 Feb 2008
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| #33 (permalink) Sun May 25, 2008 23:47 pm Grammatically correct? (It is the only reason I stay on here.) |
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| Molly wrote: |
If one searches for the most common examples of "the reaon why * *" in the BNC, one sees that "the reason why it's not" and "the reason why so many" are tops, with 11 examples per 1 million words each. If one then searches those combinations without the "why", one gets:
etc.
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But presumably you don't intend to infer a general assessment of the relative frequency of the two versions (with and without "why") from those two particular phrases?
MrP |
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MrPedantic
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Location: Southern England
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| #34 (permalink) Mon May 26, 2008 7:43 am Grammatically correct? (It is the only reason I stay on here.) |
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| MrPedantic wrote: |
But presumably you don't intend to infer a general assessment of the relative frequency of the two versions (with and without "why") from those two particular phrases?
MrP |
If I didn't infer such from the intuition of one native speaker, why would I infer such from two examples. The search goes on.
BTW, would you infer the same as this commetator?
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| I doubt that any of us really know which is more common in formal English. |
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Molly
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 12 Feb 2008
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| #35 (permalink) Tue May 27, 2008 0:37 am Grammatically correct? (It is the only reason I stay on here.) |
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| Molly wrote: |
BTW, would you infer the same as this commetator?
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| I doubt that any of us really know which is more common in formal English. |
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Infer it from what?
MrP |
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MrPedantic
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Location: Southern England
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| #36 (permalink) Tue May 27, 2008 9:22 am Grammatically correct? (It is the only reason I stay on here.) |
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| MrPedantic wrote: |
Infer it from what?
MrP |
From usage. |
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Molly
I'm a Communicator ;-)
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Posts: 4017
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| #37 (permalink) Tue May 27, 2008 22:58 pm Grammatically correct? (It is the only reason I stay on here.) |
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Would I infer "from usage" that no one really knows which is the more common?
I'm not sure that's an entirely reasonable question. It's a little like asking whether, from my experience of eating fruit, I could infer that no one really knows if apples or pears are the more common. So no, I wouldn't.
But I suspect that Jamie's statement was based, not "on usage", but on the fairly safe assumption that no one has the numbers.
MrP |
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MrPedantic
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Location: Southern England
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| 'forget' vs 'forget about' | What do we call the noise that crickets make? |
