Is This Grammatical To You?

[vokzhen]

* I don't know how has he done that.
* Can you tell me how far is the train station from here?
* Do you know where's he gone?
* I don't know who's that guy.
* I just can't understand why's he done that!

"Can you tell me how far's the train station from here?" works for me. It looks clearly wrong written but I don't think I'd give it a second thought spoken.

[sucaeyl]

Hey guys, what do you think of these sentences? How else could these be said?

a. The flavor of cantaloupes is beautiful.
b. The flavor is beautiful of cantaloupes. (Sounds good to me, but a little funky to my dad.)

a. Of what is the flavor beautiful? (Sounds archaic, I've never heard such a construction in modern speech)
b.? What is the flavor beautiful of? (Sounds right to me, my dad maintains that it is totally wrong.)

He agrees that the first question sounds Shakespearean. For me, 'What is the flavor beautiful of?' is subtly different from 'What has a beautiful flavor?', though I'm not sure in what way. Thanks!

[Matrix]

I think that question b is wrong because statement b is also wrong.

[vokzhen]

a. The flavor of cantaloupes is beautiful. Perfectly fine
b. The flavor is beautiful of cantaloupes. I might not even be able to parse what was being said here, without knowing from the first sentence. It's of the same structure as "the flavor is reminiscent of/reminds me of cantaloupes" or "the flavor is beautiful, like cantaloupes" and likely how I'd try and interpret it. Thinking a while I might be able to come up with "The flavor is of cantaloupes, and is beautiful," but even that's not particularly idiomatic.

a. Of what is the flavor beautiful?
b.? What is the flavor beautiful of? I wouldn't even know what you're trying to ask with these two. "What has a beautiful flavor?" or a similar construction is how I'd need it in order to understand what you're saying. Unless there is something more to it than what I'm understanding.

[Shm Jay]

Sentence b is not grammatical now, if it ever was, so question b is just nonsense. Question a is grammatical but very stilted in an Ollendorffian way. You ask this question now as "The flavour of what is beautiful?"

[CaesarVincens]

Hey guys, what do you think of these sentences? How else could these be said?

a. The flavor of cantaloupes is beautiful.
b. The flavor is beautiful of cantaloupes. (Sounds good to me, but a little funky to my dad.)

a. Of what is the flavor beautiful? (Sounds archaic, I've never heard such a construction in modern speech)
b.? What is the flavor beautiful of? (Sounds right to me, my dad maintains that it is totally wrong.)

He agrees that the first question sounds Shakespearean. For me, 'What is the flavor beautiful of?' is subtly different from 'What has a beautiful flavor?', though I'm not sure in what way. Thanks!

Statement b doesn't work for me in a fluent way. It parses, but only just.
Question b doesn't work unless reworded to "What is the flavor of beautiful?"

[Astraios]

I think I'd ask whose flavour is beautiful, or the flavour of what is beautiful.

[zompist]

The first is grammatical (but weird— sounds like a non-native-speaker); the others no.

In general I think this kind of raising doesn't work:

The size of these rats is incredible.
??The size is incredible of these rats.
*Of what is the size incredible?

Normally you'd have to rephrase: What's of incredible size?

[Civil War Bugle]

Statement A is questionable to me for semantic reasons (I wouldn't call a flavor beautiful) but it seems grammatical on syntactical grounds. The others don't seem grammatical.

[sucaeyl]

Statement and question b are totally wrong/nonsensical

That's crazy! For me, sentence b is even slightly preferred to sentence a!! Although I'll admit it sounds better with a demonstrative: 'The flavor is beautiful of these cantaloupes'. And question b is totally fine. If I may ask, where are you guys from/what dialect do you speak? I'm a teenaged speaker from Southern California. Are these idiolectical? I could've sworn my peers use these constructions, but I can't say I've recorded any specific instances...

To Zompist's example, 'The size is incredible of these rats' is perfectly grammatical, as well as the accompanying question (which, because of the semantic content, I can only imagine being asked in a case of mishearing): 'What is the size incredible of?'

[Matrix]

Yeah, I think you just have a weird idiolect. I'm a native English speaker, also living on the west coast.

[linguoboy]

A sign on a building near me reads "EXCITING NEW RETAIL ANNOUNCED SOON". Does this work for any of you? IMD, you can't just drop to be from a construction like that, not even in "headline style".

[CaesarVincens]

A sign on a building near me reads "EXCITING NEW RETAIL ANNOUNCED SOON". Does this work for any of you? IMD, you can't just drop to be from a construction like that, not even in "headline style".

Without the to be I have difficulty reconciling the semantic future of "soon" and the grammatical not-future of announced.

[alynnidalar]

The part that bothers me more is the use of "retail" instead of "retail store" or "retail opportunity" or whatever it's supposed to mean.

[Salmoneus]

I'm... confused as to where 'to be' is meant to go there. I assumed you were talking about the use of 'retail' as a noun.

I assume then that you think it should be 'new retail to be announced soon', but that seems quite odd to me - first because it suggests that you're in a position of authority (the government could say that, or the guy who owns the shops maybe, but a newspaper couldn't really, because it's not up to them), and second is harder to explain but I think it's because 'to be X' is so strongly a nominal-phrase thing that I read that as talking about a type of retail called 'retail to be announced' ("our stock of retail to be announced has increased 10% this annum").

"New retail announced soon" is definitely the less-marked option for me. If I needed an explicit temporal verb, I'd probably go with "New retail will be announced soon" or "new retail (is) going to be announced soon".

[linguoboy]

"New retail announced soon" is definitely the less-marked option for me. If I needed an explicit temporal verb, I'd probably go with "New retail will be announced soon" or "new retail (is) going to be announced soon".

Really, the use of "announced" is odd of itself. The consecrated wording for such signs is "Coming Soon". But I guess that would be a lie since they don't actually have a specific agreement with anyone yet. At least, that's what the awkward wording suggests to me. That would make it unusually truthful for a developer's window sign.

"Retail" as a noun isn't odd to me in the least. I've been seeing and hearing it in real estate contexts for most of my life.

[zompist]

The weirdness for me is that "announce" is a performative. That is, if they say "We're announcing that the store is opening", then that is an announcement. If they say 'We're soon announcing that the store is opening", it sounds to me like they don't quite know what "announcing" means.

(With some caveats: you could validly say "We will announce soon when the store is opening", as the statement itself doesn't give that information.)

[linguoboy]

(With some caveats: you could validly say "We will announce soon when the store is opening", as the statement itself doesn't give that information.)

That's why I read it as, "We can't yet announce that a store is opening here because reasons but we plan to make that announcement soon." It makes it sound like they're in negotiations (otherwise they'd have a "For Lease" sign) but don't have anything inked (otherwise "Coming Soon").

[din]

I'm with Sal; it sounds fine to me.

I think what they're going for is: 'We don't have any details yet, but there will be an announcement soon, so keep an eye out if you're interested in new retail opportunities'

[Neon Fox]

a. The flavor of cantaloupes is beautiful.

Perfectly grammatical.

b. The flavor is beautiful of cantaloupes.

I know what it means, but it doesn't sound like something a native speaker would say unless they got halfway through the sentence and realized they hadn't mentioned the source of the flavor. Or, like, they were in a debate between cantaloupes and honeydew melon or something. It sounds like some other language's syntax making the order of clauses change.

a. Of what is the flavor beautiful?

Old fashioned, highly formal, or otherwise marked, but grammatical.

b.? What is the flavor beautiful of?

I might say it but I'd never write it except in dialogue. ("Up with which I will not put") If I wanted to ask the question, I'd say, "What has a beautiful flavor?"

[linguoboy]

I'm with Sal; it sounds fine to me.

What about:

More information sent soon.
Organ recital given tomorrow.
Coconut documentary filmed next month

[din]

If they sound unusual at all, it would be because for the first two, I would drop the verb altogether in "headline style" announcements. The 3rd one sounds perfectly okay to me.

[Astraios]

I was talking to someone online and realised I've never heard an American say "[place] way" as a reply to "where do you live" or "where are you from". Does it occur?

[KathTheDragon]

I think I've sometimes said that. It certainly sounds like something I'd not be surprised to here round these parts.

[2+3 clusivity]

I was talking to someone online and realised I've never heard an American say "[place] way" as a reply to "where do you live" or "where are you from". Does it occur?

... what? Haha. That needs an example.