meta user
network profile
| bio | website | caxton1485.wordpress.com |
|---|---|---|
| location | United Kingdom | |
| age | 71 | |
| visits | member for | 1 year, 8 months |
| seen | 12 hours ago | |
| stats | profile views | 5,933 |
I have spent most of my career in government service, much of it abroad. I have a degree in English Language and Literature from the University of Oxford and the Diploma in English Language Studies from the UK's Open University, and am qualified as a teacher of English to foreign learners. I have studied several other languages including French, German, Latin, Arabic and Old and Middle English.
My blog, Caxton, is mostly, but not entirely, about the English language.
Elsewhere on the web I have attempted to write in the constrained style of the 'Ouvroir de littérature potentielle' (OULIPO) in Variations on an Incident in Paris and in Variations on Jane Austen. I have also created a full set of 256 Syllogisms by figure and mood and showing which are valid and which are not.
|
Apr 12 |
answered | “[adjective] and [adjective] [noun]” — Should the noun be singular or plural? |
|
Apr 12 |
comment |
Present perfect with to be I suspect the OP is interested in when the use of auxiliary be can be used in place of auxiliary have. (Zahra is a female name in Arabic (it means flower), so it’s quite likely that ‘she’ is appropriate.) |
|
Apr 12 |
comment |
Will the sentences be correct? @TimLymington. They're meant to be the same. |
|
Apr 11 |
answered | Will the sentences be correct? |
|
Apr 11 |
comment |
Is the construction, “He is a great player, is Tendulkar” grammatical? @ryan. Sorry. Problems of discussing this sort of thing in comments. What I mean is, yes,it's just as much a 'head' as my example. Other constructions within the utterance are incidental. I'm sure 'tails' must exist in American English as well. For example, 'He's really great, that guy.' If so, it does seems as if it's the inversion that is uncommon in American English. |
|
Apr 11 |
awarded | Nice Answer |
|
Apr 11 |
comment |
Is the construction, “He is a great player, is Tendulkar” grammatical? @Dan Neely. Is it just the inversion that you haven’t heard in the US, or do you mean that you haven’t heard words placed at the end of the clauses in this way at all? |
|
Apr 11 |
comment |
Is the construction, “He is a great player, is Tendulkar” grammatical? @ jk. Inversion is incidental to the concept of tails, but it may well be a regional variant of ‘He is a superb timer of the ball, Cook is.’ |
|
Apr 11 |
answered | Is the construction, “He is a great player, is Tendulkar” grammatical? |
|
Apr 10 |
answered | Is “workflow” a word? |
|
Apr 10 |
answered | To write or to write to? |
|
Apr 10 |
comment |
Is the structure “can have verb-ed” possible? @John M. Landsberg. There it expressess possibility. Well, actually, impossibility in this case, because it's negative, and perceived or imagined impossibility at that. |
|
Apr 10 |
revised |
Is the structure “can have verb-ed” possible? added 22 characters in body |
|
Apr 10 |
answered | Is the structure “can have verb-ed” possible? |
|
Apr 9 |
answered | Can a double negative be used to express caution or uncertainty? |
|
Apr 8 |
comment |
“Has received” in past tense sentence? @onomatomaniak. I chose my words with care. Undeniable failure 'in this respect' = in respect of winning the Nobel Prize. |
|
Apr 8 |
comment |
As good as it gets- grammar An impersonal verb is one that has an unspecified subject. A good example is It’s raining, where it has no real reference but is used just to give the clause a subject. That is not the case with He got angry, because he refers to an actual person. It is also probably not the case with It gets red. |
|
Apr 8 |
answered | As good as it gets- grammar |
|
Apr 8 |
answered | “Has received” in past tense sentence? |
|
Apr 7 |
answered | “The doors is closing” — correct? |
