New answers tagged grammar
-1
Should “will” be used before each verb in an “if” construction that makes multiple following-up predictions?
Since your question invites a prescriptive perspective, then I will offer a prescriptive answer: Yes, as in your answer number 3, which seems to me to be the best-written option.
Although in colloquial usage the use of "will" in every one ...
1
In the first quoted example sentence, which reads
Yet legislation encoding this deal has yet to be written, much less passed
the first Yet does have the meaning of being a "contradiction", as in however (meaning on the other hand) and this usage employs Merriam-Webster definition 3 for the word yet.
The second yet has the meaning of up to now; so ...
6
Up and down are adverbs. If an adverb (or adjective) fronts a clause, historically, this was followed by inversion: "Dearly do I love thee." "Bravely spoke he." ("Long was the road.")
In broad terms, other than as a poetic or literary device, this convention is now only used with locative adverbs and adverbial phrases: "...
19
You do not need a "collective equivalent", albeit is a conjunction that means although (Cambridge). So it is not a relative pronoun that would need agreement in person or number.
The word comes
From the Middle English expression al be it (that), itself shortened from althagh it be that (“although it be that”), and thus composed from al (“...
0
Yes. Not only is it OK to leave off the unnecessary adverbs, I find it preferable to avoid useless words. The exception would be when the adverb is important. For example, if you are going to continue the sentence about your dog usually sleeping under the bed with a story about a time he didn't, then using the word "usually" would play an important ...
1
I'll start by clearing up some terminology; Improve your Grammar's comment is as clear as mud.
(1) 'Athletics', like 'mathematics', 'scissors', 'apples', 'news', 'oxen' 'data' but not 'staff', is plural in form.
(2) This hints fairly strongly, but certainly does not demand (think of 'the news is not good'), that a plural verb form should/must be used. But ...
0
Which of the following file extensions is called X
is the correct sentence. Which is here an interrogative pronoun asking you to identify one OF at least two or one part of a whole. It means
What particular one or ones of a number of things or people:
Which part of town do you mean? (AHD)
Whether it can be followed by a noun in the singular or in the ...
1
Is it really wrong to say “I'm hearing”?
The simple and continuous forms of all verbs have their respective nuances and you should decide what you want the sentence to mean, and then choose the appropriate form.
All simple forms of the verb indicate an action as a whole - from start to finish.
The simple form of the verb can indicate a habitual or regular ...
0
The one realtive word that most commonly starts a sentence in modern English is which.
He was a product of his environment. As the twig is bent so grows the
bough and so forth. His twig had been bent nicely by the military
boarding school into which he had been stuffed as a small child.
Which, for some unknown reason, he still thought well of although every ...
2
If I had gone back... suggests that you wish that, at that time, you had returned to some unspecified place.
I think what you are probably trying to say is If I could go back to the year when I was unemployed... I would invest my time...
1
English conditional tenses are not particularly suited to talking about time travel. The way I would express this sentence is:
If I could go back to when I was unemployed for one year after my graduation, I would invest my time in many productive works.
The problem is that if you can go back in time, the hypothetical period when you've gone back in time is ...
0
This answer is yet one more that will take up some of the points already treated in this original question, in another duplicate, and finally in a third would be duplicate question put to the site some eight years later. None of the answers is specifically an answer to this third question, but there is no other spot for presenting an answer that keeps to ...
0
is it grammatically possible to put a relative pronoun at the beginning of the sentence in modern English?
No. In the context in which “whose” is being used, it is a relative pronoun that is part of a relative clause.
A relative clause is an adjectival clause and as such cannot be the subject of a verb.
“You (referent and subject), whose dog is barking (...
1
According to my understanding, both sentences (2c, 2c') are grammatical and express two different notions. I make out the respective meanings to be as follows.
We have not learned what is important to learn from the past.
(The things are important from the point of view of learning; the focus is on the things. "What" is the subject of "is&...
2
Since the phrase is headed by with, uncontroversially a preposition, the whole phrase falls into the category of prepositional phrase. That is its form.
As for the function in clause structure, it is best analyzed an adjunct of reason. That is to say it is a grammatically non-essential part of the clause which adds optional information - in this case an ...
2
I
"Have" is a verb that has both stative and dynamic meanings, all well established; in this particular case of use with "meeting" "have" means "to do".
(OALD) 16 have something to perform a particular action
♦ I had a swim to cool down.
♦ (British English) to have a wash/shower/bath
♦ We had a very interesting ...
1
No. There are a couple of mistakes here.
"Whom" refers to a person. In your sentence it can only refer to "God", not "things". For "things", you should use "that" or "which".
You have two different pronouns ("whom" and "them") for the "things". Your structure uses a ...
1
We may say that "speed" is a variable name and "11" is the value, then a variable name doesn't need an article before as in the question.
But I often see 'the radius r', 'a distance d'.
"The radius 'r'" and 'a distance d' are shortened versions of
"The radius, which, for the sake of brevity, we will call 'r'/which, for ...
0
In your first sentence whereas indeed shows contrast (or change) and can be replaced by compared with the fact that; but (Cambridge).
Your second sentence looks strange, I don't think it makes sense. No recorded meaning of where licenses such a use.
I considered replacing whereas with when in your sentence, but that doesn't work either. "When" can ...
2
Both exist but are not particularly common. I will start with the second which is more used than the first.
To dupe somebody out of something is not recorded as a set phrase in the dictionaries, but you can find examples with it:
It is alleged to have duped some 5,000 people out of as much as $40 million. (Collins)
This local police site says:
A warning ...
2
Those are resultative constructions in which the result is expressed by a prepositional phrase; they do sound natural, but they are either not quite idiomatic (the first) or not attested in the dictionaries (the second).
The first construction is extremely rare, and in fact I find nothing for "out" (ngram). The unique case concerns the preposition ...
1
Proper use of language is a reflection of whether a reader will be helped or hindered by the style. All of the proposed solutions above are more or less acceptable -- I wouldn't touch your grade on any of them. Still, looking over earlier comments I would say that the point about parentheticals is a useful thought. One way to check whether a form is a ...
1
Both "in" and "on" are used with "selected topics" (ngram) and as well with "seminar" (ngram).
If the topic treats of some part of history "in" should be used because a part is always considered to be in the whole and never on it. If the topic is not historical but instead is about history, as for instance a ...
3
You're looking at it wrong. This is not a string of words. And it's not "noun of noun". The of sometimes appears and sometimes doesn't; it's just extra machinery.
The important part is that this is a noun phrase, which has a structure, basically
Determiner(s) + Adjective(s) + Noun + post-nominal modifiers
What you're calling a noun is actually a ...
4
In the case of
(A) of (B) VERB ...
Though it is typically the first noun (A) that the verb agrees with, there are cases of what the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (p502-3) refers to as number-transparent nouns where the verb agrees with a plural (B) instead of singular (A). Consider:
A number of spots have/*has opened up.
Here the verb agrees ...
4
*You need stay at home is an ungrammatical sentence.
Need, like dare, is a semi-modal verb. That means it can act like a Modal Auxiliary verb in certain situations, of which this is not one. When it does act like a modal auxiliary verb, it can take an infinitive without to; that's what modal auxiliary verbs like must, can, and would do:
You must stay at ...
2
Your verb should agree with the "core" of your noun.
In your example, "train" is the core and "of thoughts" acts as a complement to train, so your verb should agree with "train". Note that as mentioned in the comments, "train of thoughts" is not exactly idiomatic, so I'll offer the reverse example to ...
1
The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language by H&P (Page 444) defines "attributive modifiers" as follows:
Internal modifiers in pre-head position are realised by DPs, AdjPs, VPs with past participle or gerund-participle heads, and nominals in plain or genitive case:
Among which let's focus on AdjPs and nominals:
ii a. his wry attitude b. ...
0
Appeal against is or was British English and appeal without the preposition American English, which now dominates in Britain as well. Appeal has two meanings, one of seeking redress in legal English and one of attraction (The job appeals to me).
I do not fully agree that the preposition "against" here is in itself redundant or unnecessary. The noun ...
0
Get rid of and be rid of mean two different things.
In this instance get rid of means:
(MW.com)
to do something so as to no longer have or be affected or bothered
by (something or someone that is unwanted)
Get in this phrase is non-copular. "I got sick" has copular get. This is not like that. Instead, it's an action. get rid of is the phrasal ...
3
The term Constituent marks a particular kind of syntactic unit, one that has a coherent structure. It doesn't apply to just any string of words.
Constituents include sentences, clauses, and various kinds of phrases, like noun phrase, verb phrase, and prepositional phrases. They can be nested inside one another -- a sentence can contain a clause that can ...
4
It may not be possible to define a rule here. What matters is what is idiomatic.
In English, to be sent to market means to be offered for sale on the market. This is an abstract concept. The market has no physical location. This may occur in multiple places. "Around 85% of ducklings would survive this eight-week rearing process to be sent to market.&...
0
According to Britannica:
Zora Neale Hurston (born January 7, 1891, Notasulga, Alabama, U.S.—died January 28, 1960, Fort Pierce, Florida), American folklorist and writer associated with the Harlem Renaissance who celebrated the African American culture of the rural South.
Zora Neale Hurston was a scholar whose ethnographic research made her a pioneer writer ...
3
It's a postpositive adjective, poetically reversed from its noun. It's essentially the same as:
the entire garden field
There's nothing else entire could really be modifying here.
The collision with little makes it awkward in its normal position (the entire, little garden field), since it's such a different function from the other adjective. One is ...
1
The song involves countable and uncountable noun phrases and a pun:
"Heart of oak" is an uncountable noun phrase in which "heart" = "heartwood" and describes the literal construction of the ship.
OED
Heartwood: 2. The dense, inner part of the wood of a tree trunk, yielding the hardest timber, often darker in colour and more ...
0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_Oak states that 'heart of oak' is the wood from which ships were constructed at the time the song was written (1759). It is the wood from the centre of an oak tree and this is the strongest part of the tree. It's understandable that, over the years, some versions should have evolved into 'hearts' as the reference is to ...
1
Here are some examples of mentioning name in a sentence:
named
A man named John answered the door.
They named their son John.
John was named after his grandfather.
He was named as the executor of the will.
namely
We studied the cat family, namely, lions, tigers, and related animals.
It was another color, namely red.
He suggested that these so-called ...
4
I can't find authoritative endorsement here, but I'll give a reasoned answer.
(1) As an adjective, 'double' is usually used attributively. I can't find an example sentence in a dictionary where it is used predicatively.
(2) One can readily find well-written examples on the internet of the form
Prescription Drug Benefit: If a person chooses to buy two ...
4
It's not so much what is grammatically correct as which term is most commonly used. In this case google ngram searches of published writing can be useful.
I ran an ngram search for the phrases writer's block, writer block, artist block and artist's block and found that writer's block is so much more common than the other three that it makes comparison ...
0
"Enjoy to" does not exist in English - of the three sentences that you proposed, the only one that is a valid English sentence is: "I enjoy playing the piano."
In other words, "enjoy" does not work the same way that "like" works. The following two sentences are both valid and mean the same thing: (1) I like to play ...
1
You may indeed find it more readable with a preposition:
This certificate is presented to in recognition of his contributions to e-Tendering, and to strategic changes in 's procurement process.
0
The verb to be, when it acts as a copulative, has no lexical value. In broad terms it is the same as the mathematical "=".
Traditionally, the first NP is assumed to be the subject, and the second the complement: The verb agrees with its subject.
"What is most important is good customer relations.*
or
*Good customer relations are what is most ...
1
Both are acceptable, as @BillJ said in his comments. And to prove him right, I will just quote American Heritage Dictionary that addresses this problem in a long usage note for "what"(especially point 3):
Clauses with what as either subject or object may themselves be the
subject of a sentence, and sometimes it is difficult to decide whether
the ...
0
There's no doubt that the subject of these sentences is what's most important, not good customer relations. If the speaker had intended to express the subject as plural, they should have said what are most important instead, in which case the subject should have been followed by are good customer relations:
What are most important are good customer ...
-2
I think real distinction is just the utterance these two cases represent. In my mind they are distinct utterances
A comma, in the second case, after difficult, if you will.
0
This is where the distinction between restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses comes into picture.
The proper way to write 1) is:
Alaska is one of the states of America which/that is located on the border side.
Note the absence of comma above: the restrictive relative clause which/that is located on the border side is essential, because it provides necessary ...
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