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There is currently a question posted on both ELL and EL&U as "an experiment" in the words of the poster of one of the questions:

I have plariarised your question, kind of, here. It's really an experiment to see whether the answers here are much better than the answers on ELU!

There is a bounty associated with one of the questions, on EL&U. Both questions are recent, and open, with no accepted answers.

On ELL, see “and build upon that, but build they have”: Should that 2nd “build” be “built”? The corresponding question on EL&U is "Wrote it I did" Is this grammatical?

I found it rather confusing to read comments on EL&U referring to "Pazzo's answer" when there was no answer by Pazzo on EL&U but rather, on ELL. Similarly, there is an entire discussion on EL&U about an answer by F.E. on ELL and the answer's use of CGEL. This would have been (and was!) completely opaque, if I were not to have done a search on ELL to understand what the basis for it was.

Is this acceptable? It is not allowed according to StackExchange rules.

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    There are a number of previous questions on this topic both here and on Meta.SE, and the answers to those questions, both accepted and upvoted, tend to be dominated by "No, don't do that". I find this particular case even more off-putting because it sets up a uncalled-for and potentially divisive competition between ELL & ELU.
    – Dan Bron
    Apr 28, 2015 at 18:10
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    @F.E. I find your last two comments unnecessarily antagonistic.
    – Dan Bron
    Apr 28, 2015 at 20:55
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    @DanBron No more so than this whining thread and your first comment, as your first comment was unnecessarily antagonistic. EDITED: This from your comment: "I find this particular case even more off-putting because it sets up a uncalled-for and potentially divisive competition between ELL & ELU."
    – F.E.
    Apr 28, 2015 at 20:56
  • @F.E. I don't see how you could interpret my first comment that way, nor Ellie's meta question here. But all this is telling me is I should vote on this question and leave he debating of it to others.
    – Dan Bron
    Apr 28, 2015 at 22:34
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    @F.E. You have succeeded in calling two out of three people on this question's comment thread "whining". That is gratuitously antagonistic, and certainly not the best way to make a positive contribution.
    – Ellie Kesselman
    Apr 29, 2015 at 0:10
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    Hmm, how does one cross-post non-simultaneously?
    – Araucaria - Him
    Apr 29, 2015 at 23:24
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    @Araucaria Non-simultaneously: When the question is open on one SE site, but answered or closed on another SE site
    – Ellie Kesselman
    Apr 30, 2015 at 2:32

1 Answer 1

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A really good question got posted on ELL about why some present perfect sentences on the internet have preposed verb phrases that don't use past participles (main verbs that have been moved to the front of the sentence that aren't past participles even though the auxiliary verb is have). Here's the example:

  1. Of course, they had the considerable advantage of being able to see what worked well and what didn't work so well in Java, and build upon that, but build they have.

It's quite a sophisticated question, really, definitely one worthy of any linguist or serious enthusiast of English language. However, there was an even more interesting type of similar example that sprung to mind for me:

  1. They said that I wrote it, and wrote it I did.

In this example, if it's grammatical, we see the verb form wrote as a complement of the verb did. As in the example before, it has been preposed. Normally, when we see another verb as the complement of did, we expect to see a verb in the plain form. Here, it's in the past simple form.

Now, while there are vetted grammar sources which talk about the first type of example, there are none that I know of, or have been able to find, that talk about the second, so I wanted to know what other linguists thought about this example. So I posted a question here on EL&U.

However, in a way, my question derives from Cookie Monster's question (they're the poster on ELL). Here's a picture of them so that they get the recognition they deserve:

enter image description here

Anyhow, to let them know about the question I was posting here, to pep them up, I left a tongue-in-cheek comment to make them feel good (which they deserved to do) under their post. After all, why wasn't I posting the question there on ELL? The answer is that I think this particular question (not the original) needs the attention of some dedicated linguists or language enthusiasts.

I am sorry for making warm and friendly tongue-in-cheek comments to learners on ELL, especially if it offends the linguists on this site, and never again will I joke about ELL posters being even better than EL&U ones - because that wouldn't be funny for an ELL learner who's trying to learn English. Sorry.

I'm going to stand in the corner and flagellate myself with whips twisted together from medieval Latin dictionaries.

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    Obviously this is hyperbaton, isn't it? And the correct answer to your question is already here: Why is this a hyperbaton?, is it not? :D
    – F.E.
    Apr 30, 2015 at 0:25
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    Oh, I forgot. What is the correct answer to your first example again? Is it built? Or was it build?
    – F.E.
    Apr 30, 2015 at 0:26
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    The answer is simple: It is Yoda speak, and it is very recent and became popular since Star Wars. No one really speaks or writes that way. It is not correct English.
    – F.E.
    Apr 30, 2015 at 0:31
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    It is good that you are going to reacquaint yourself with Latin dictionaries. For we all know that today's correct English uses Latin grammar. And we all know that the best grammar information is in dictionaries. And so, obviously the best resource to rely on will be Latin dictionaries!
    – F.E.
    Apr 30, 2015 at 0:41
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    Oh, is your 2nd one an example of a double preterite? Similar to "If he had had known better, he wouldn't have had done it""?
    – F.E.
    Apr 30, 2015 at 1:48
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    On a serious note: For #2 "wrote it I did", it might be interesting to see how it could be represented in deep structure, since it seems to require two tense thingies, one for each preterite. Is there any syntactic theory around that would support that two-tense thingie with transformations?
    – F.E.
    Apr 30, 2015 at 8:21
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    @Mari-LouA I had no problem with your comments, but I was a bit upset that you weren't willing to explain them, given that you said that I was being mean to other posters in my post here. That's quite a claim. Nothing in my post could be translated as such. What would make you think so?
    – Araucaria - Him
    May 1, 2015 at 0:24
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    The answers, not people. BIG difference. But comments have been deleted, so it's just my word against yours.
    – Mari-Lou A
    May 1, 2015 at 10:25
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    Apparently "I had no problem with your comments" is untrue. Look, I don't want to argue. I don't care. It's not that important. You've read my comments, and that's what counts. You disagree, fine. I've said "my impression" twice now. I think that's pretty clear. I've explained better what I meant, but you're getting all iffy and worked up over nothing. It's nothing. I'll delete everything the offending comments. Let the record stand with this comment.
    – Mari-Lou A
    May 1, 2015 at 10:31
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    +1. @Araucaria This is a great idea, and an important grammatical question! I've wondered about this myself. Sorry to see your downvotes.
    – user50720
    May 5, 2015 at 19:06

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