Is it valid to say about change "Describe what change consist and from what it is derived."?

Question

How will native speaker say.

What is better?

What does change consist?
What does change contain?

How we could explain from what is change?

Change is derived from ...
Change is resulted from ...

For example somebody put such description "Order changed is because of price change or absence of dish".

How to ask about description - "Describe what change consist and from what it is derived" to get answer - I can write "Describe change" but want to ask for reason of change also - the 2nd will be to short.

I want translate Polish phrase "Opisz na czym polega zmiana i z czego wynika.".

score 8 · Answer 1 · answered May 01 '13 at 18:10

8

Most simply put, you can say, "What changed and why?" and your example can be said this way, "The description change is due to . . . "

Hope this helps!

answered May 01 '13 at 18:10

Kristina Lopez

437
5
11

Very short/nice translation! Can I say Describe what changed and why? – Chameleon May 02 '13 at 08:58
@Chameleon, sure, that's acceptable too. – Kristina Lopez May 02 '13 at 10:53

James Waldby - jwpat7 · Answer 2 · 2013-05-02T14:58:24.440

5

I presume you intend for sentence (1) to be directions to a person who is filling out a form. Sentence (2) is my understanding of what you intend as the meaning of (1). Sentence (3) is a more-verbose way of saying the same thing as (2), and is natural English but because of its verbosity is less suitable than (2).

(1) * Describe what change consist and from what it is derived.
(2) Describe the change and the reason for the change.
(3) Describe what the change consists of, and the rationale for making the change.

The sentences above are couched as directives to the reader. The form that Kristina Lopez suggested, “What changed and why?”, should elicit the same information, indirectly rather than imperatively.

The asterisk in (1) is standard notation to mark an example as incorrect. This usage is well-attested (1,2,3,4). In the first link, for example, Assignment 1 of Linguistics 101 at the University of Pennsylvania (1996) says:

An asterisk (*) is used to mark sentences which are ungrammatical. Grammatical sentences are unmarked. [... where “grammatical” means] “well formed according to consistent rules in the dialect of [a] speaker...”

edited May 02 '13 at 14:58

answered May 01 '13 at 18:10

James Waldby - jwpat7

7,500
1
22
27

2

+1 We have been asked to footnote the use of symbols like your asterisk, which may not be familiar to most learners. – StoneyB on hiatus May 01 '13 at 19:16
@StoneyB Huh, just learned something new. From just reading the answer I would have thought all three sentences were being described as correct (though I could of course clearly see #1 was not). Thanks for your comment, which should help others from misunderstanding! – WendiKidd May 01 '13 at 20:44
@WendiKidd, it didn't occur to me to mark the so-obviously-wrong (1) with a star; it's a good thing FumbleFingers edited and added the star. – James Waldby - jwpat7 May 01 '13 at 22:09
@jwpat7 Yes is is for a person who is filling out a form. (2) is exactly what I want to say - for Polish is strange the reason for we rather use the reason of/. Same with consist of we use consist in this case. Thank for help. – Chameleon May 02 '13 at 09:03
@WendiKidd I think that stars is not need the content explain what is valid what not by have to be read before any remarks. You can not understand without reading and analysis what was read. It is very clear for me with or without start - maybe wrong should be marked with red and good with green but is future. – Chameleon May 02 '13 at 09:07
@Chameleon, I've added some references about use of asterisks in linguistics to denote not-well-formed items. Perhaps green and red would communicate right and wrong more rapidly, but asterisks are easier to write. – James Waldby - jwpat7 May 02 '13 at 15:01
@jwpat7 Is it possible to use colors in stackexchange - how to do it? – Chameleon May 02 '13 at 17:13
@Chameleon, I think changing text color isn't available except via images or via code highlighting, which works on some stackexchange sites other than ELL. You can ask in [meta]. Also see What HTML tags are allowed on Stack Exchange sites?, Formatting Sandbox, How to change text color and format code while posting questions, and Markdown editing help – James Waldby - jwpat7 May 02 '13 at 19:25

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 08 '16 at 23:07

When I used translate.google.com, I got

Describe what is changing and with what results

In this case, it would seem that the desired phrasing would be more like:

Describe what is changing, and the anticipated effects of the change

The original Polish you provided seems more interested in the results of the change rather than the reason for making the change.

Is it valid to say about change "Describe what change consist and from what it is derived."?

3 Answers3