Help with One-paragraph essay [MERGED]

In My Humble Opinion
41

It seems like no one here has actually addressed the purpose of the exercise–that is, the degree to which you actually correctly employed the three rhetorical modes–and instead everyone has simply fixated on your usage.

No, it’s not “incorrect” to assign possessive determination with waste time, but it serves a different purpose, (and I’m sure someone will come along to explain it). But as for the assignment itself, I’d give you a high score, with the caveat that in the “real world” you probably wouldn’t simply throw those three things together like that. I’m guessing you realize that, right? And that your book makes that clear?

42

This is an example of how English is a screwed up language.

Ideally, the use of the word time in different idioms would match. But it doesn’t. Usually we speak of time as if it is an abstract quality: I save time; I make time; I kill time. But sometimes we speak of time as if it was a personal possession: I do something with my time; I waste my time; I take my time.

As far as I can see, there’s no rule about it.

43

Ok then, This is the case I used in my writing when I wrote, .. with the help of her laptop she can save her time … , here time is not in general , this is the Julia’s time.

44

Sure. Now I realize that I shouldn’t have posted my essay like that. Let me make it crystal clear by the following example:

Suppose that you are teaching a baby how to say Daddy. Then you encourage and demonstrate how to do it by wanting her to repeat only , Da Da Da Da Da Da, why? To make sure that she can articulate the first part correctly and then in the end expect her to fully speak out Daddy.

What I did was not a full Daddy, but three Da, Da , Da.

45

Once again, I should thank all of you for helping me improve my English. :slight_smile:

46

There is a subtle difference between a mass noun and a collective noun. I think it was described in the link I provided.

It is not *incorrect *to say “she can save her time.” It is grammatically correct, but that is not how English is usually written. It is more natural to say

she can save time

or perhaps

she can save herself time

47

And also we don’t say, “organize your time”? , “Hey you should organize your time, otherwise you won’t meet the deadline.” " 10 ways to organize your time"

How many sentences I’ve read here and there with the format, "your time, his time, their time.

So, they are not grammatically correct.

48

I seem to spend most of my time on the phone.

When you spend your time, you can save it [ your time ] too. :slight_smile:

49

Regarding my post # 25, I wanted to correct it but it seems that the time for editing is limited - that’s the part I don’t like it about here, what’s the reason by the way? -

Previously told : So, they are not grammatically correct.

Correction : So, they are grammatically correct but don’t sound natural.

And, would a dictionary bring an example - as written in post # 27 - which doesn’t sound natural? I’m dubious, since I’ve heard how carefully and selectively they collect and print the examples at the words’ entries in a dictionary.
Thanks for your time and attention. I’m just discussing it to make things clear, and I’m happy about it. :slight_smile:

50

You also have to keep in mind the very large difference between “correct” written American English and “colloquial” written American English.

“Julia’s got a lovely laptop now. She simply breezes through those data piles.”

“Julia now has a lovely laptop. Her work on data samples is done much more quickly and with less frustration.”

Neither of those are incorrect, but the first one would be an example on a message board, a social or informal internet site, or in private correspondence. The second one would be found in informational or technical writing.

Personalizing time is colloquial - why? I dunno, it just is.

ETA - the time limit for edits is to prevent people from dramatically changing the information in their posts after there has been a good chance that others on the board have seen and replied to it.

51

I want to emphasize the difference between what is “considered an error” and what is “the way most people talk and write.”

It is very common when speaking of ill-spent time to say, “Don’t waste your/my/his time.” But when speaking of saving, nobody says, “He saved his time by driving.” They say, “He saved time.” However, in second-person imperative you would very often say, “I saw that movie but it was terrible. Save your time.”

This type of thing is very difficult to find in any books. It is simply descriptive of usage from someone who has been a native English speaker for 50+ years and writer for a few less than that :slight_smile:

52

It’s affect marking, and as such, it’s a question of register. That is to say, it’s non-conventional for academic discourse, because of the “subjectivity.”

Actually, it is in the literature; it’s something that has been written about quite a bit. See, for example: Ochs & Schieffelin: Language Has a Heart, Text 1989 and Besnier: Language and Affect, Annual Review of Anthropology, 19, 1990. It’s similar to things such as adversative passive with get, or emphatic reflexive pronouns.

It seems like it’s not in the books only because the vast majority of usage and grammar references deal only with the representational dimensions of language.

Anyway, Reza, you could get bogged down in things like this forever without ever getting to the point of the exercise you’re doing, which still hasn’t been addressed in this thread.

53

And don’t ever lose your Longman’s. It’s your best friend!

54

I’ve been thinking about this “saving time” conundrum for two days now. I know instinctively that “I save my time by using a computer” sounds wrong. But I’ve had a hard time trying to figure out exactly why.

Just now I had an insight. Forget about “time” for a bit. The word “save” is the key here. Let me give you an example. A preacher might get up in the morning and turn his eyes toward heaven and say “Lord, I will save you souls today.” (“You” is the indirect object of “save.”) Later in that day the preacher confronts a group of sinners and proclaims to them “Brothers and sisters, I will save your souls today.” See how the first sentence uses “you” and the second sentence uses “your.”

Let’s say a gardener sees your roses are turning brown. He will tell you “I will save your roses.” But if you call a florist and tell him you want to order some flowers for later, he will say “OK, I will save you roses.”

What’s the difference between the sentences? The Lord does not yet own the sinners’ souls. But the sinners do. The preacher is doing the saving for the benefit of the Lord. You do own the roses in the garden, but you haven’t paid for the ones in the florist shop yet. The florist is holding the roses for your benefit.

I want to avoid using the word “her” because “her” is both the objective case of “she” and the adjectival form of “she.” I found her because her dog barked.

So let’s look at the sentence “I save my time by using a computer.” If it were unclear for whom was being saved, the sentence might be reformulated to say:
“I save myself time by using a computer.” (“I save me time” is just wrong, but that’s another discussion.)
“I save him time by using a computer.”
“I save my boss time by using a computer.”

If it is abundantly clear whose time is being referred to, you can just drop the indirect object and say “I save time by using a computer.”

Time is a more abstract quantity than roses are. You can see whose hand the roses are in, but not so much with time. That makes it more difficult to explain. And since I just thought of this, I may not even have a coherent explanation. When you used the computer, you saved something you did not yet own for your benefit so that might might be able to obtain it in the future. You finished your tasks earlier so that you might have other use for the time yet to come. Instead of finishing your tasks at 2:00, you finished them at 1:00 and could look forward to the time you were about to get, but hadn’t yet gotten (you could die at 1:01). The time you saved was not yet yours.

You know what amazes me? A ten year old native speaker probably makes this distinction automatically, but a group of adult native speakers can’t figure out why.

And if that is clear, you’ve probably heard about:
in the morning
in the afternoon
in the evening
at night.

Contemplate these two sentences:
“A vision came to me at night.”
“A vision came to me in the night.”

55

Actually, no, these sentences don’t sound that great, especially the first one. Organizing + time is a weird combination of words. Usually people will say organize your schedule, organize your work, organize your desk – organizing is for concrete nouns. You can also “get yourself organized.” You can’t really organize time. Time is abstract and it always does what it does, outside of human control (not to get philosophical). I would forgive the second one, because it is a headline, and headlines have their own style.

The problem, with colloquialisms, is that you cannot extrapolate from one to the other. While I may waste my time, I don’t save my time. The latter is not good usage, the former is fine.

Similarly, there are many words in English that exist only in the negative. You can be hapless but you cannot be hapful. You can be disgruntled, but never gruntled. Uncouth, but not couth. Innocuous, but never nocuous.

The reason for the 5-minute time limit, is so that in discussion, people cannot change their answer and later claim they “never said that.” Nor can they delete their post totally, making everyone confused about the content of the exchange. In the past, there was no editing at all, actually!

56

Are these scholarly works for linguists, or intended as writing guides? It would not surprise me if this topic were address by linguists, but I don’t think it’s in the Chicago Manual of Style.

57

Alley Dweller,

Thanks for the encyclopedic comment. I can really understand the points you made. And, this time I have a different conception.

When you say in “save her time”, in fact we are talking about a “time” which is not available yet and is due to come, I think this could be applied when we use Spend + Time, as in " You shouldn’t spend most of your time on computer games", don’t you think even here in this context this “time” has not come yet, and when John wakes up and sits at his computer in the morning [ 8:30 for example ] , following sentences can be conversed:

1- Again, are you going to spend your time on these useless computer games?

2- Tom, I think you shouldn’t spend your time on computer games today and go help daddy in the garden.

Here, we are talking about a “time” which is not available yet and the boy could die at 9:30 and never have a chance to play the rest of the hours after 9:30 !

I understand what you and others told about the “usage”, and I completely agree with that. AS, we may say a Big Problem, but simply because gigantic is a Synonym / word family of “Big”, we can not say a Gigantic Problem!
This issue exists in any language.

58

Nah, I’m enjoying myself, and I appreciate everybody’s comments and replies. My question was somehow addressed and I learned or got reminded of useful things.

59

I understand. I restricted my comments to usage of the word “save.” I couldn’t think of any examples where we would make the same fine distinctions with words that aren’t synonyms for “save.” Also, I cannot think of any reasonable sentence where “spend” would have an indirect object.

There’s no general rule against saying “my time” and you cite some very good examples of its proper usage. “I save my time” is not one of them. I’m afraid I have no further insight into the question.

60

Thank you for your time and attention. Please feel free to correct and comment all of my posts, even the most delicate errors.