SHC Round 4 Instant Replay Thread (SPOILERS)

[BoK]

Minor nitpick on Day 3 #10. Sidon is the great-grandson, not grandson, of Noah. I doubt that deserves a RQ though.

[Ivan]

Thanks for both Mom and Dad of Twins for wonderful clues on R4D3!

The language (SID) category was OK for me as there was a number of answers that sound the same everywhere. Unfortunately, I missed a wonderful 4-pointer. Just didn't manage to invent the word I've never heard before.

The history category was pretty much about basics and for that reason relatively easy. However, I submitted the Battle of Poitiers as my responce for a 9-pointer. DoT, is it good enough. At least the battle in question is named this way in Russian tradition and Britannica Online says^

Battle of Tours, also called Battle of Poitiers, (October 732), victory won by Charles Martel, the de facto ruler of the Frankish kingdoms, over Muslim invaders from Spain. The battlefield cannot be exactly located, but it was fought somewhere between Tours and Poitiers, in what is now west-central France.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/top ... e-of-Tours

[cinemaniax7]

Oh my gosh. Going back to review my answers, I just realized I made a terrible math error on the 6-pointer. I TOTALLY knew the TOM, I promise! My math doesn't even make sense, but that's really all it was! ::Jeopardy cred destroyed::

Not to worry, when you win three games on the show, your cred is good for a lifetime on these boards.

[Woof]

Oh my gosh. Going back to review my answers, I just realized I made a terrible math error on the 6-pointer. I TOTALLY knew the TOM, I promise! My math doesn't even make sense, but that's really all it was! ::Jeopardy cred destroyed::

I did worse: I misread the freakin' farkin' question and answered "Greek Orthodox" thinking that he was asking for a particular Eastern Orthodox church (though of course, the Eastern Orthodox underwent a later schism to give us the present-day configuration) ARGGGGH!

[bengland]

No, "they can stand" is not merely a .zip file that, when uncompressed, reveals its full contents to be "that they can stand". Rather, both "they can stand" and "that they can stand" are clauses, they are different, and the difference is that the latter includes the optional subordinator "that".

Well, we’re really just quibbling over definitions here, but I maintain that the elided subordinator is still part of the clause. Suppose I reply to your original assertion, I say they can stand, with

They cannot.

Is that a sentence, or is it not? Of course, we both agree that it is; yet it doesn’t quite satisfy the usual definition, because it lacks a complete verb. Cannot is not a verb but merely a verbal auxiliary, incomplete without a complementary infinitive following it. The sentence qualifies as a sentence only because it is understood to include an (elided) infinitive:

They cannot stand.

(To be sure, cannot constitutes a complete verb in some other languages; in French,

Elles ne peuvent pas.

would be a complete sentence in its own right, with no further infinitive needed. But this is English we’re speaking.) My reply fulfills the definition of a sentence only by virtue of the elided infinitive stand.

As to this:

[T]here is a difference between eliding grammatically necessary parts of a sentence for stylistic effect ("Well, I'll be ---!", "What the ---!?") and omitting optional words or phrases ("that" in this case, "or not" following "whether", etc.).

Adding or not following whether is not only not optional, it is usually downright wrong. Whether introduces an indirect question or an assertion whose truth is in doubt. Whether or not means that the truth of the assertion doesn’t matter; it’s equivalent to no matter whether.

Look out the window to see whether it’s raining or not.

is an incorrect sentence; it should properly be simply

Look out the window to see whether it’s raining.

A proper use of whether or not would be something like

To be on the safe side, take your umbrella whether it’s raining or not.

Or so I claim, whether you agree or not.


—OSC
 

Give it up Steve. It's a mug's game.

[DadofTwins]

"Battle of Poitiers" is good.

[Vanya]

I submit that the correct answer to day 4's 12 pt question is "stimulus."

[Turd Ferguson]

I was thinking that the response to R4D4's 10-pointer would be my reaction to the whole set, though it seems that I read the 9-pointer too quickly - saw "demand" (as well as "limited") in the clue, and sort of assumed "supply" would be the response... "scarcity" would seem to be a more correct response, though. Oh well.

[reddpen]

We'll need a ruling from reddpenn as to whether there's any such thing as a "dangling gerund."

Brain fart on Messina/Palermo. RQ coming.

Awwww, thanks, Dad! I like my rulings succinct, so...

No.

That's based purely on experience, not research... and the trouble I had with the conjunction question may weaken my cred.

[Peggles]

I misread the 12-pointer as payments to government, and not from government, and so I came up with the idiotic answer of surtax.

I want to start scoring, but Dad hasn't sent me the correct answers yet. I've gone through lots of your responses, and I'm okay with answers for all questions except the 9-pointer. There seems to be a fairly even split between supply and scarcity. I think supply fits because of the reference to demand, but I'll wait for Dad's ruling. In the meantime, I'll start scoring and save the 9-pointer for later.

[gnash]

No, "they can stand" is not merely a .zip file that, when uncompressed, reveals its full contents to be "that they can stand". Rather, both "they can stand" and "that they can stand" are clauses, they are different, and the difference is that the latter includes the optional subordinator "that".

Well, we’re really just quibbling over definitions here,

That's one way to describe it - depends on the meaning of "different"... I prefer the plain, obvious definition.

but I maintain that the elided subordinator is still part of the clause. Suppose I reply to your original assertion, I say they can stand, with

They cannot.

Is that a sentence, or is it not? Of course, we both agree that it is;

It is.

yet it doesn’t quite satisfy the usual definition, because it lacks a complete verb. Cannot is not a verb but merely a verbal auxiliary, incomplete without a complementary infinitive following it. The sentence qualifies as a sentence only because it is understood to include an (elided) infinitive:

They cannot stand.

(To be sure, cannot constitutes a complete verb in some other languages; in French,

Elles ne peuvent pas.

would be a complete sentence in its own right, with no further infinitive needed. But this is English we’re speaking.) My reply fulfills the definition of a sentence only by virtue of the elided infinitive stand.

This is, of course, all correct on substance, but semantically slippery. It is not a "complete" - I believe the precise term is "canonical" - sentence. But it obviously is a sentence. (Sentences can be entirely without a verb, even an auxiliary, if they are replacement phrases answering a question.) More pertinently in the context of the discussion, your sentence, still elided, can be expanded to be the main clause of a compound sentence:

They cannot because they are not complete.

So, supposing for a moment that I accepted your argument entirely, we would have to conclude that some main clauses could not stand on their own as sentences - again reaffirming my main point that it is not a defining property of subordinate clauses. Either we agree that some subordinate clauses can stand on their own as sentences, or that some main clauses cannot. I see no other way.

By the way, let's look at my last example again:

Why cannot they?
Because they are not complete.

Aha! Now we got a subordinate clause complete with the subordinator to stand on its own as a sentence (albeit a replacement phrase, not a canonical sentence). (I owe this example to Huddleston & Pullum, which I am consulting as I am writing this response.)

Adding or not following whether is not only not optional, it is usually downright wrong.

I won't argue with that. I don't know if I would quite call it wrong, but I certainly dislike the unnecessary insertion of "or not". However, I have seen people - whether misguided or not - insisting on its necessity.

[dhkendall]

I'm sure a few people are thankful for the wheelhouse in the second set of questions in D4. (Econgator comes immediately to mind. I think this is in gnash's wheelhouse too).

I am not one of them.

[gnash]

Just so we don't lose the big picture, the issue was that "it cannot stand on its own as a sentence" was not a proper defining characteristic of a subordinate clause. So what is a proper definition, then? I would say a clause is subordinate if it functions as a complement or a modifier to a word or phrase in the same sentence (but outside the clause - if this qualification is not redundant, which I think it is). I'll try to remember to look up how Huddington & Pullum define it.

Well, H&P say: "Subordinate clauses characteristically function as dependent within some larger construction." That's it. At least that's it in The Student's Introduction to English Grammar. I don't have the Bible, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language.

BTW, as I looked through H&P, I found an interesting example pertinent for the other grammar discussion we've been having:

'Tis given out that, sleeping in mine orchard, a serpent stung me.

Yup, that's Hamlet, by the Bard himself. To dangle or not to dangle...

[gnash]

I'm sure a few people are thankful for the wheelhouse in the second set of questions in D4. (Econgator comes immediately to mind. I think this is in gnash's wheelhouse too).

I am not one of them.

Wheelhouses can be dangerous, but the questions were very decent. I wouldn't call supply a "factor" and some subsidies are designed as incentives (so some performance may be "expected" in a way), but those hardly even rise to the level of minor quibbles.

[bengland]

Bengland: go jump in the lake.

Sorry, no can do. From Hell's heart, etc.

[Peggles]

Bengland: go jump in the lake.

Sorry, no can do. From Hell's heart, etc.

KHAAAAAAAN!

[seaborgium]

Ha! I thought the Bon Jovi song was called "Dead or Alive," but I was just unsure enough to add "Wanted" to the front of my response. Glad I did.

[barandall800]

Sigh. I completely talked myself out of my answer for the 10-pointer today. I thought I was remembering it from somewhere else, forgetting that it was also in the Bible.

Me too, actually. I think I recall from another post that you're LDS (or that you went to BYU, from which I made the obvious inference)--I am too. Google tells me that this particular answer is also a place name in the Book of Mormon. I'm guessing that's why I chickened out, even though I didn't specifically recall the reference. Same for you?

Yep, that's exactly what happened. It was my first thought, but then I remembered the Book of Mormon, then I thought it might be in the Bible too, then I decided it probably wasn't, and that was that.

[dhkendall]

Ha! I thought the Bon Jovi song was called "Dead or Alive," but I was just unsure enough to add "Wanted" to the front of my response. Glad I did.

Huge Bon Jovi fan. No way I was missing that one. ("Wanted: Dead or Alive" was my favourite song when I was about 15 or 16)

[barandall800]

THAT was the Bon Jovi song? That steel horse TOM threw me for a loop...and OH MY GOSH I just started singing the song in my head and the steel horse line was the first I thought of. Wow. This is awkward...