TASK DEFINITION: Generate the answer for a given question. The question requires common knowledge of English. Make sure that the answer is in detail, long, consistent with the context, and requires general knowledge of English. To be less repetitive, please vary your language for each question. Give a proper explanation to answer, and if necessary, provide the definition of various terms. And conclude your answer if it's long. If you have used other resources (e.g., Merriam Webster's.) to answer the question, include citations in your answer. You don't need to paraphrase the context of your resources, but make sure that your answer is consistent and complete.
PROBLEM: I overheard my manager asking 'What are you up to?' What does that idiom mean? Is it an informal/negative way of asking??.

SOLUTION: 'What are you up to?' means 'What have you been doing lately?'. If you add an adverb to the end of the phrase, for instance, 'What are you up to tonight?' or 'What are you up to this summer?' it can be interpreted as 'What are you planning to do tonight?' or 'What are you planning to do this summer?'.

PROBLEM: Possible Duplicate: 'Alternately' or 'alternatively' What is the difference between alternate and alternative? For example, I have two versions of the same software and I want to write one of the following: Software Name (alternate version) Software Name (alternative version).

SOLUTION: In British English, an alternative version is one that can be considered as a possible choice, while an alternate one changes places at regular intervals with another version. However, I understand that in American English 'alternate' is an alternative to 'alternative'.

PROBLEM: The nuns in the 1965 movie 'The Sound of Music' are singing about Maria, who is difficult to deal with: How do you solve a problem like Maria? Being non-native (and only seeing a still frame of the scene) I thought it meant 'How does Maria solve problems?'. Somewhat similar to 'What would Jesus do?'. Can 'solve a problem like [someone]' also be understood in this way? Edits: I am aware of the context. It would be silly to think the singing nuns hold up Maria (Julie Andrews) as a role model. I checked my Quirk/Greenbaum grammar but have trouble finding anything conclusive concerning this usage of [like] and its validity. I do have to admit, that I didn't look very thoroughly. I am a bit like Maria, in this way.

SOLUTION:
You're right: 'How do you solve a problem like Maria?' is syntactically ambiguous. The phrase 'like Maria' can modify either a preceding noun phrase ('a problem') or a preceding verb phrase ('solve a problem'). Both of these usages are recognized as valid by traditional prescriptive grammars (Fowler 1926 describes 'He talks like an expert' as an 'unexceptionable' usage of like, where 'like is equivalent to a prepositional adverb'p. 325 in republished 2009 edition). Prescriptive grammars have traditionally condemned a third use of like, the use 'as a conjunction' where it is followed by a clause (e.g. 'like Maria does') rather than by a noun phrase. However, as the comments point out, that construction would allow you to express 'How do you solve problems the way that Maria solves problems' without ambiguity. Many modern linguists analyze like as a preposition when it takes a bare noun phrase like 'Maria' as its complement (although like is not always a preposition, and even when it is, it doesn't always behave exactly the same way as other prepositions). The same kind of ambiguity is seen with many prepositional phrases, as illustrated by the joke 'One morning, I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know,' which relies on this ambiguity. You can see further examples and discussion in the answers to Does 'I am eating vegan cheese in my underpants' really imply that the vegan cheese is inside my underpants? (the 'shot an elephant in my pajamas' joke is mentioned in JoeTaxpayer's answer there).