Michael Hall’s blog

Test question

2008-02-29T16:18:31Z

On the test we had to identify: The adviser keeps tabs on her students (or something like that). I said this was an idiom because you can't modify it as in: keeps many tabs on; nor can you change it as: keeps files on. To me this would make it los...

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Metaphoric Phrases

2008-02-29T16:08:53Z

I was talking with a classmate about the exam and we were discussing Idioms and Metaphors. We've learned that one of the aspects of metaphors is that they translate well into other languages. I am now studying Spanish and have learned some metapho...

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Michael Hall - Fri Feb 22 13:16:58 2008

2008-02-22T18:16:41Z

I don't know if this is exactly relevant to what we are studying but I find it odd. I have friends that say "I am going to the Walmart" or "I am going to the Kroger". To me this is just completely wrong. I would never add "the" in a sentence like ...

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Mass nouns and "is/are" uses.

2008-02-22T16:24:29Z

While discussing this topic in class on Thursday I was trying to think of way to use "are" with the sentence "my family is/are _______." So the only thing I could come up with was: "my family are constituents of _____" or "my family are members of...

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Berra-isms

2008-02-15T01:43:17Z

I don't know if everyone knows who Yogi Berra is but he is the master at making mistakes that are great examples of what is discussed in Ch.12. Yogi Berra is a legend in Major League Baseball for his accomplishments on the field, and rightly so. B...

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Lexical gaps

2008-02-15T01:12:37Z

As I was reading Ch. 10 and Cruse was discussing body parts I was thinking about the lexical gaps we have when talking about our toes. For our fingers we have: index, middle, ring, and pinky finger, but for the toes we only have: big toe and pinky...

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Even the "experts" can be wrong!

2008-02-15T01:07:02Z

Cruse says, in chapter ten, that in English there is no equivalent for the Turkish word ense (the back of the neck), a lexical gap. But he is very mistaken because the word nape denotes exactly that. Just wanted to clear that up because it was bug...

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Synonyms

2008-02-08T15:37:50Z

On the same topic as my first post how would you all label the words "stream, brook, and creek?" I think there is something about these words in the book. I am interested in knowing if they denote different bodies of water to you or do you use the...

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Zeugma?

2008-02-08T15:32:38Z

I was in my American English class yesterday and taking notes on our discussion. I guess I lost focus for a moment and when I looked back up I saw the sentence "The three streams remained separate to the Mississippi River." Of course if one read t...

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