Grammar Nazi, I need your help.

Clad in Sky · l33t Joined: 04 May 2007 Posts: 657 Location: Germany

What? No-one's answered, yet?

Grammatically, the sentence is correct. The question is, is "to run a command" idiomatic?
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notageek · Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2012 2:52 pm Post subject:

Clad in Sky · l33t Joined: 04 May 2007 Posts: 657 Location: Germany

Neither do I, I'm not a native speaker.
For me "Yes, that's the only command I use." sounds better, but when you think about it, it really is not. You issue a command. A friend of mine, who is a linguist, would argue that the original sentence is pragmatically correct, since you do understand what is meant, even if it doesn't necessarily follow any rules you might have learned or is not quite logical.
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Kali Ma
Now it's autumn of the aeons
Dance with your sword
Now it's time for the harvest

notageek · Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2012 3:15 pm Post subject:

Yes, that is what I think too.
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Clad in Sky · l33t Joined: 04 May 2007 Posts: 657 Location: Germany

What, too? That it's correct as long as it is intelligible or that saying "to run a command" is a bit strange for the reasons I posted?
_________________
Kali Ma
Now it's autumn of the aeons
Dance with your sword
Now it's time for the harvest

pjp · Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2012 3:51 pm Post subject:

I didn't respond earlier because I wasn't 100% certain it was grammatically correct. It sounded slightly odd, but probably only because you asked if it was correct. Or maybe because it was out of context.

At the same time, I think it is probably idiomatically correct. To "run a command" is correct.

The main issue is probably using "only command." Obviously ever using only a single command is almost certainly incorrect. However, Q: "To perform the backup, foobar is the only command you run?" A: "Yes, that's the only command I run." would be correct.
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notageek · Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2012 4:10 pm Post subject:

notageek · Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2012 4:15 pm Post subject:

patrix_neo · Guru Joined: 08 Jan 2004 Posts: 344 Location: Svedala

I have a phrase for you from the book 'flowers for algernon'

But I guess that one is already 'learned' by you.

I blame the intern...al gore for my bad ingrish.

[edit] I hate ruint a thread. Did I (do) something wrong? Do tell.

juniper · l33t Joined: 22 Oct 2004 Posts: 756 Location: EU

what's wrong with it?

patrix_neo · Guru Joined: 08 Jan 2004 Posts: 344 Location: Svedala