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Asked on March 12, 2021 in Word choice.
We want to specifically focus on the use of in and inside as prepositions that denote location, so I’ll come up with some minimal pairs.
- He said something to guards on R’shiel’s door that Brak didn’t catch then went inside.
- Why he was saying something so to the guards on R’shiel’s door that Brak didn’t catch then he went in.
- Once inside Kalandia refugee camp, we were collected by minibuses.
- Once in the Kalandia refugee camp, we were collected by minibuses.
- Which means he started standing around uneasily without wanting to go back to his game of solitaire while I was still inside. He ended up already back playing around inside.
- I waited for a while for him to appear, and ended up so bored that he kept on avoiding me. He then went for a walk and refused to return to his solitaire game as I was still in the room.
Looking at Zwarts and Winter, 2009., they seem to conflate the two for the purpose of analysing locative prepositions that are never the same! Even semanticists can’t make a distinction between semantics and semantics.
When I turn to corpus data from COCA, instead of contrived examples (that’s too bad; the above examples are taken and derived from specimens in Collins’ UK), unfortunately, gives us no assistance, as there isn’t yet an effective way to search for inside when it’s being used in a locative sense.
If a location is enclosed in some form, such as a bowl or rings, it’s not much a preference for in over inside.
The notion of grammaticality – that is, whether or not in and inside can be used alone, as a complement, u00e0 la :
- The doctor is in.
- The doctor is inside. This is pure magic.
What I’m
- staying at tonight?
- I’ll be staying inside this evening.
… is unlikely to provide useful guidance, as these examples are highly idiomatic.
Is the particular construction always allowed by the common man, but not because of idiomaticity? Or should someone come up with an argument?
The only other question on ELL is related. StoneyB tells us:… in formal discourse, especially if you
are possible of ambiguity, you should use the narrower term inside.
The argument that one person is more emphatic than the other has been defeated.
I find your examples to be perfectly natural and idiomatic except for the last, The doctors found two bullets inside his body.
Forced to intuit an answer, I would say that it’s to do with the indeterminacy of in as opposed to the specificity of inside :
- A bullet was found inside his body.
- When someone jumped upon his vehicle they hit a bullet that made an explosion. What did the guy say?
- How did you find the bullet in the heart of a child?
- In a house shot was found in the heart.
- After stealing the brain of a teenager, a bullet was found inside his brain. What have you done?
- No one can stop a bullet in the brain. He has suffered a serious injury.
I find each of these pairs to be equally idiomatic, except for the first two.
Is
- it common for someone to have walked into our house and walk over to our office?
- Someone was in our house. And I was just watching them. I want to catch the news.
- Someone was in our home. I can never have peace with them.
- Someone was inside our home on Saturday night.
Has the second pair of glasses been more marked?
But there’s one small vegetable inside and there’s fruit within. If at all.
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- How many banana’s or other fruit in the bowl?
- What happened if I jumped from a pool?
- I jumped inside the pool thinking I had broken my leg.
I wouldn’t expect the (second) construction – the pool example is somewhat more acceptable, but not by much. I didn’t expect the latter construction – the pool example is somewhat more acceptable, but not by much. On the other hand:
- There’s fruit within an open container.
- What are some fruits that can be stored in an open container?
- Is there jam inside an uncovered jar?
- What’s left of jam in that jar?
In the above examples, inside works.
Is there a constraint on the use of inside, where it can refer to a prototypically enclosed space – house, box, room – even where that space is open through modification? Why do I think that not using int’l space?
References
Zwarts, J., & Winter, Y. (2000). Health and Wellness Practice, Vol. 3, Issue 1, No. 3, No. 1. A model-theoretic analysis of locative prepositions. A textbook for vector space semantics. Journal of logic, language and information, 9 (3), 220-223.doi:10.1372.
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- He said something to guards on R’shiel’s door that Brak didn’t catch then went inside.
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Asked on March 1, 2021 in Grammar.
This is logical. Do not permit our competitors to know our plans.
This is advisable that don’t permit our competitors to know our plans.
Why is this imperative? If you are a foreigner presently living in the USA, you must renew a passport or visa after the entry of your country and leave this country.
Have you just got updated to your passport?How do I solve a broken third form? If you wish to use the subjunctive to express a command with no commander (person giving the command), you can only ever use It as the subject of the matrix (outer) clause.
In modern English, a clause embedded by that must have a subject, a finite verb, and objects/obliques if necessitated by the verb.
Although you may mean the person you are writing for/to or addressing, it can stand for “one”, and is probably more idiomatic than “one” in modern English. Since you is number-agnostic, it is safe to use.
I would also consider that the first and third sentences are unusual in their Themes-New structure – you refer to this but you introduce this in the next sentence. Can you tell me who made the reference to cataphoric reference?
For example, don’t permit our competitors
know our plans. And then don’t do anything about them. In order to make your own decision, be sure that you don’t give up!
We always encourage our competitors to follow our plans. Can you kindly tell other customers while doing so?
Do you have to change your passport before moving to the USA? Is there a need for this clarity?
Passport renewal: should we renew our passport soon?
In modern English, the subjunctive isn’t really as productive as it is in other languages – the
- only verb that obligatorily conjugates differently in such constructions is be,and even this is phasing out.
Alle others verbs can take the infinitive (minus to ), but it is perfectly acceptable to use the declarative in these senses. (For instance, either We demand that Tom hires her immediately or We demand that Tom hires her immediately could be said,) - These “subjunctive” clauses are everyday, straightforward declarative clauses – they have a subject and finite verb like any other.
- Why do some people think of imperative clauses as express mandates? I would argue this is true only to the extent that the meaning can be imperative. Imperative clauses, however, generally don’t have finite verbs or subject in the standard English language (except that let’s and third-person subjects: chocolate lovers rejoice! What are some of the benefits of blogging. (What do you mean by doing so/what is it?
- In short: it may be easier to think of these constructions as merely two clauses – clause + clause – since they don’t need any special treatment. Subjunctive makes things confusing, and is a relic of the past (or analogised from other languages), and has little or no place in today’s English.
What is best if I didn’t get a free pass?
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- only verb that obligatorily conjugates differently in such constructions is be,and even this is phasing out.