New answers tagged grammaticality
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Policies for Growth
You could say this as
Institute policies that allow for more higher-paying jobs.
Instead of "allow for", you might say "encourage" to make it more active in causing these jobs.
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(Rather than) as a conjunction
John Lawler commented:
Yes. And here's where the multi-word character of rather than comes in handy; you can split them up and put rather in an adverbial position: I would rather tell her than she ...
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Is "There danced a man in the hall" a grammatical alternative to "A man danced in the hall"? What verbs are possible here?
The Once there [was/were] (in the past tense, traditionally used for storytelling) and There [is/are] (present tense, used to state that things exist) structures are pretty common and the use of There ...
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Is "There danced a man in the hall" a grammatical alternative to "A man danced in the hall"? What verbs are possible here?
The function of there in this kind of sentence is to introduce a new topic. Because of this, it is usually followed by a form of the verb to be, but looking at Google Ngrams, it's also often followed ...
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Is "There danced a man in the hall" a grammatical alternative to "A man danced in the hall"? What verbs are possible here?
You are asking the wrong question. A sentence can be grammatically correct without being something that people would say in real life, or even without making sense.
There is nothing grammatically ...
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Is "There danced a man in the hall" a grammatical alternative to "A man danced in the hall"? What verbs are possible here?
It sounds archaic. It's the same pattern as "there once lived a man..." but we don't really use this anymore, with the exception of "there was" or "there is."
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Conditional structure – “hadn't have gone”? “hadn't have met”?
This double perfect is common in spoken English but not as yet taught as correct, please follow this link to a previous answer.
(Is 'had have + past participle' a correct grammatical form?)
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syntactic function of word "if"
BillJ commented:
Traditional grammar treats conditional "if" as a subordinating conjunction introducing, in this case, a non-finite clause. Like most non-finite clauses, it is subjectless, ...
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Comparisons: "so [adjective/adverb] as" or "as [adjective/adverb] as"
The rule as I learned it from an anecdote about Walter Lippmann's anger when a writer failed to follow it is this:
Use "as" in positive comparisons, "so" in negative comparisons.
...
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Accepted
Can the adverb "perfectly" modify the verb "to be"?
The verb that perfectly is modifying here is actually a phrasal one: to be at home with. That means the author's wording is perfectly grammatical; whether or not one can split a phrasal verb is a ...
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Parsing "…including a problem…, in a characteristically diffident aside, he noted his own 'fleeting vain attempts' to resolve it"
The very last chunk should read
—including a problem that continues to vex them a century and a half after he had noted, in a characteristically diffident aside, his own “fleeting vain attempts” to ...
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Parsing "…including a problem…, in a characteristically diffident aside, he noted his own 'fleeting vain attempts' to resolve it"
There is a sense, though, not to be left unremarked in a prologue, in which this book most properly belongs to Bernhard Riemann, who, in a short life
blighted with much misfortune, gave to his fellow ...
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2
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Parsing "…including a problem…, in a characteristically diffident aside, he noted his own 'fleeting vain attempts' to resolve it"
The parse is:
There is a sense, though, not to be left unremarked in a prologue, in
which this book most properly belongs to Bernhard Riemann, who [,
in a short life blighted with much misfortune,] ...
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2
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"More so" or moreso?
more (adv.)
I.1.f. With ellipsis of the word or sentence modified. Now frequently with
anaphoric so (see so adv. & conj. I.4a) in more so (also,
chiefly U.S., moreso). (all) the more: the rather, ...
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2
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"More so" or moreso?
This Grammarphobia article discusses the etymology of "more so" and "moreso" at length; it's by far the best resource I've found, and it gave me the direction I needed to write ...
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Have got + adjective (Present Perfect)
Yes. As Ngram shows, while it's gotten worse is far more common than it's got worse in American English, it's got worse is more common in British English. That said, gotten has rapidly gotten more ...
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Is it grammatical to say "... is both popular and has presented ...'
Sample: This trend is both popular and has presented a variety of challenges.
Answer: Yes, it is grammatical.
A be verb (is) as copular followed by active verb with direct object. That is not ...
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Accepted
Is it grammatical to say "... is both popular and has presented ...'
As Huddleston & Pullum (2002) note, while both and either typically occur at the start the first coordinate in a coordination, they don't necessarily do so (p. 1307). They give the example:
...
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Is this awkward reuse of a verb between subjects correct?
Or maybe that "tended to ____" behaves like a single compound verb, and the tended part cannot be reused?
No, there's no grammatical rule of that nature here preventing reuse of tend. This ...
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Is this awkward reuse of a verb between subjects correct?
The only problem with
Patients tended to perform for the camera and doctors [tended] to record the
most photogenic [patients].
is that it lacks a “comma of clarity” as shown in
Alice cooked the ...
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Is this awkward reuse of a verb between subjects correct?
There's nothing incorrect about the sentence; to me it sounds at most mildly awkward. Indeed, in their discussion of gapping, Huddleston & Pullum (2002) give this example (p. 1338):
Kim was ...
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2
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Accepted
Which is correct? "I suggest mum (to) invite my auntie"
I suggest Mum to invite... is not idiomatic.
We usually say I suggest that [something should happen], so that Mum invites. You could be saying this to someone else - "It would be a good idea if ...
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Which is correct? "I suggest mum (to) invite my auntie"
"I suggest mum invites auntie for dinner" might be preferable.
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Is it grammatical to say "a request met with refusal"?
To be "met with" describes how someone or something was welcomed or greeted. The expression can be used literally of an actual welcoming, or figuratively to describe how something was ...
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Is it grammatical to say "a request met with refusal"?
The employer issued the refusal against the incoming request, and the two collided with each other; each met the other. So we can say the request met (with) the refusal.
The very similar phrase met ...
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Is it grammatical to say "a request met with refusal"?
There are two forms that may be used:
From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English:
meet with somebody/something [phrasal verb] ...
(also be met with something) to get a particular reaction or ...
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Is "What courses is everyone taking?" grammatical?
What courses is everyone taking?
This is technically grammatical, even though it may sound odd to a non-negligible amount of people. "What courses" is not a grammatical subject in this ...
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