Please explain me.

Moderator:JackFrost

Perceptor
Posts:24
Joined:2014-05-26, 7:54
Real Name:Nicolas
Gender:male
Country:RURussia (Российская Федерация)
Re: Please explain me.

Postby Perceptor » 2019-02-12, 9:33

Hi Can you help me to understand a part of a song, I understood most of it and still have unclear moments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9uvr187gMs (0:43-1:02)
"I know that you feel it
No, I'm not (playing deep for that)
If you say (we can never go back)
I know that you mean it
But it's just (the way I planned)
I'm thinking that we're going too fast".
As well as I want to understand the construction of the phrase from the the diffrent song:
"I'm spending my time, watching the sun go down" - Why there's no "es" after "go"? I've heard smth like this but i still do not understand.
Thanks in advance!

User avatar
linguoboy
Posts:25540
Joined:2009-08-25, 15:11
Real Name:Da
Location:Chicago
Country:USUnited States (United States)

Re: Please explain me.

Postby linguoboy » 2019-02-12, 15:37

The title of the thread should be "Please explain (this) to me". "Please explain me" means "please explain what kind of person I am".

Perceptor wrote:As well as I want to understand the construction of the phrase from the the different song: "I'm spending my time, watching the sun go down" - Why there's no "es" after "go"? I've heard smth like this but i still do not understand.

This is a construction which is often called a small clause though some syntacticians consider it a form or infinitive clause. Either way, you're not dealing with a finite verb.

An example of the same sentence rewritten with a full subordinate clause: "I'm spending my time watching as the sun goes down." Note the presence of the conjunction as.
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

Perceptor
Posts:24
Joined:2014-05-26, 7:54
Real Name:Nicolas
Gender:male
Country:RURussia (Российская Федерация)

Re: Please explain me.

Postby Perceptor » 2019-02-12, 16:11

linguoboy wrote:The title of the thread should be "Please explain (this) to me". "Please explain me" means "please explain what kind of person I am".


Thank you! I I have known this for over 5 years but I'm always forgetting to fix it. :)
I completely forgot to ask an another question. Is it possible to use "have" after "anyone" or smth like this and why? (if it's possible) Cause in Roxette's song "Anyone" all of sources that I could find approved that there's the first phrase "anyone who have a love close to this" but the sanity tells me that I'm right and I hear "anyone who ever loved close to this" and it's fine to me grammatically.
Thanks!

User avatar
Dormouse559
Language Forum Moderator
Posts:6939
Joined:2010-05-30, 0:06
Real Name:Matthew
Gender:male
Country:USUnited States (United States)

Re: Please explain me.

Postby Dormouse559 » 2019-02-12, 17:49

Perceptor wrote:
linguoboy wrote:The title of the thread should be "Please explain (this) to me". "Please explain me" means "please explain what kind of person I am".


Thank you! I I have known this for over 5 years but I'm always forgetting to fix it. :)
I completely forgot to ask an another question. Is it possible to use "have" after "anyone" or smth like this and why? (if it's possible) Cause in Roxette's song "Anyone" all of sources that I could find approved that there's the first phrase "anyone who have a love close to this" but the sanity tells me that I'm right and I hear "anyone who ever loved close to this" and it's fine to me grammatically.
Thanks!

The lyric is "Anyone who have a love close to this". "Anyone" can take plural agreement when it's understood to refer to more than one person. It's somewhat marked for me, but not incorrect. I believe some prescriptivist standards do disallow plural agreement there, so I'd avoid it in formal contexts. In the context of the song, the plural makes it sound like the speaker is talking about couples, rather than individual people. (None of the other "any" words — anything, anywhere — can take plural agreement in my dialect, though.)

EDIT: It is interesting that she uses singular agreement immediately afterward. The sentence continues "Anyone who have a love close to this knows what I'm saying". The lyric sounds like natural, informal usage to me.
N'hésite pas à corriger mes erreurs.

User avatar
linguoboy
Posts:25540
Joined:2009-08-25, 15:11
Real Name:Da
Location:Chicago
Country:USUnited States (United States)

Re: Please explain me.

Postby linguoboy » 2019-02-13, 17:47

Dormouse559 wrote:"Anyone" can take plural agreement when it's understood to refer to more than one person. It's somewhat marked for me, but not incorrect.

It sounds terrible to me. The only exception I can think of is informal questions like "Anyone have a recommendation?" But this isn't true agreement because have here is a non-finite form and anyone actually agrees with an elided singular form. That is, the full form of the question is "Does anyone have a recommendation?" *"Do anyone have a recommendation?" sounds absolutely ungrammatical to me.

I'm curious to hear examples of what you consider to be colloquial examples of plural agreement with "anyone".
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

Perceptor
Posts:24
Joined:2014-05-26, 7:54
Real Name:Nicolas
Gender:male
Country:RURussia (Российская Федерация)

Re: Please explain me.

Postby Perceptor » 2019-02-17, 3:37

Perceptor wrote:Hi Can you help me to understand a part of a song, I understood most of it and still have unclear moments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9uvr187gMs (0:43-1:02)
"I know that you feel it
No, I'm not (playing deep for that)
If you say (we can never go back)
I know that you mean it
But it's just (the way I planned)
I'm thinking that we're going too fast".
As well as I want to understand the construction of the phrase from the the diffrent song:
"I'm spending my time, watching the sun go down" - Why there's no "es" after "go"? I've heard smth like this but i still do not understand.
Thanks in advance!

It seems I've understood it!) He sings: "I know that you feel it, no I'm not ready for that, you can say it but you never don't break".

User avatar
Johanna
Language Forum Moderator
Posts:6679
Joined:2006-09-17, 18:05
Real Name:Johanna
Gender:female
Location:Lidköping, Westrogothia
Country:SESweden (Sverige)

Re: Please explain me.

Postby Johanna » 2019-02-17, 4:35

Perceptor wrote:Is it possible to use "have" after "anyone" or smth like this and why? (if it's possible) Cause in Roxette's song "Anyone" all of sources that I could find approved that there's the first phrase "anyone who have a love close to this"

I can pretty much guarantee that it's a mistake by a songwriter who's not a native speaker. I actually very much doubt that anyone who worked on this song was, which explains why it wasn't caught by someone before it was way too late to change.

It's a pretty common one for Swedes to make, we don't conjugate our verbs for person so it's fairly easy to forget in other languages, especially in English, which only really does it in 3rd person singular in the present tense. It's harder to forget when you have to do it all the time, like in Spanish or German.
Swedish (sv) native; English (en) good; Norwegian (no) read fluently, understand well, speak badly; Danish (dk) read fluently, understand badly, can't speak; Faroese (fo) read some, understand a bit, speak a few sentences; German (de) French (fr) Spanish (es) forgetting; heritage language.


Return to “English”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 4 guests