62
votes
Accepted
Is there a sentence that begins with “them”?
Fronting the object for focus, by converting an SVO sentence into an OSV one, is a common enough syntactic pattern in English:
Contest Rules
Submitting ungrammatical sentences is of no use here.Them ...
62
votes
60
votes
Accepted
What is the term for a sentence which reads same forwards and backwards?
They are still called palindromes, but are qualified by the term word-unit.
There are also word-unit palindromes in which the unit of reversal is the word ("Is it crazy how saying sentences ...
56
votes
Is there a sentence that begins with “them”?
At the risk of stating the obvious:
'Them' is the word that starts this sentence.
If that's a little too meta:
'Them' is my favourite movie.
42
votes
Is there a sentence that begins with “them”?
This form (using a gerund, or noun phrase) hasn't been mentioned yet, and is grammatical albeit awkward:
Them being able to come up with such unusual sentences was a surprise to some but not to ...
25
votes
Is there a sentence that begins with “them”?
Them was Van Morrison's band in the 60's.
Them Again was the name of their second album.
Them In Reality was the name of their 1971 album.
At least four sentences on the linked wikipedia page ...
24
votes
Framing a question whose answer is an ordinal number
English doesn't have a standard way of framing a question whose answer is an ordinal number. (Although, which and what can be used but they don't cover all the cases. Some familiar examples are: What ...
18
votes
Is there a sentence that begins with “them”?
Have you never seen a Western? Typical dialogue:
“Them there critters are mighty jumpy tonight”
And here is a real example from The Legend of Barry Claw
“Them there Injuns sure won’t never ...
13
votes
Framing a question whose answer is an ordinal number
Navigating the complexities of modern families with English semantics and syntax can generate a bevy of interesting question and answer combinations. An excellent foundation for the queries posted ...
13
votes
Is there a sentence that begins with “them”?
Them and meth are anagrams.
This is a sample sentence.
11
votes
Accepted
how many conditional sentence types are possible?
Last time I counted them, I found two hundred and seventy-seven English conditionals. There are of course others.
See this answer for details.
I: If he will jump, you will not have to.
...
9
votes
Framing a question whose answer is an ordinal number
Preface
Given how important the ordinal birth number would be for birthrights, especially where the concept of primogeniture was involved, I thought that would be a good place to start research. ...
9
votes
What is the term for a sentence which reads same forwards and backwards?
Chiasmus, would be my response.
Taken from literarydevices.net:
Chiasmus is a rhetorical device in which two or more clauses are balanced against each other by the reversal of their structures ...
9
votes
Accepted
Is this just an error or am I missing something?
I suspect the intended meaning is, "As the farmers, we provide all our teas with a Tea Passport..."
The producers are saying that they have farmed the tea themselves, rather than bought it ...
8
votes
Accepted
This book reads easily vs this book is reading easily
They are forms of middle-voice, in that they are neither the active or the passive voice. To reiterate those voices first before examining the middle, the active voice is where the subject is the ...
8
votes
Accepted
Trivia quesiton logic
"Ago" means "earlier than the present time" or "before now". It is not used to talk about time before future events. Jane is twelve years old. For the answer to be eight, the riddle would be "In two ...
8
votes
Is there a sentence that begins with “them”?
‘Them bones, them bones, them dry bones’ are lyrics from a spiritual, where they originally appear as 'dem', that also appear as 'them', in a song by Alice in Chains.
http://www.metrolyrics.com/them-...
7
votes
Framing a question whose answer is an ordinal number
I've done some research:
What cardinal number child are you ? sounds off-putting
This question is perfectly fine, but sounds unpleasant in a conversation.
What number child ...
7
votes
Accepted
an "X is an X is an X" what does this mean?
It usually means an X is an X and will never be anything other than an X - reinforcing the idea with repetition. If you look only at the number of words and think all repetitions are tautological (...
7
votes
Is there a sentence that begins with “them”?
My grandmother, who lived through the depression as a sixth child in a hardscrabble mining family, had a saying - "Them that has, gets."
6
votes
Accepted
What is the correct usage of "the question of ..."
My subjective impression is that "the question of how to do X" sounds more natural than "the question as to how to do X." An Ngram chart of the phrases "question of how" (blue line) and "question as ...
6
votes
Is there a name for this type of sentence: "The higher the temperature, the higher the pressure"?
There are several names for it listed in a page on the subject here, which favors the term comparative correlative, since it asserts correlation by using comparative forms of two adjectives:
The ...
6
votes
Accepted
Using synonyms to improve text readability ("elegant variation")
This is a matter of style, on which people disagree. In the past, people in English-speaking countries, just like the OP, have been taught that such ‘elegant variation’ is desirable, that it makes ...
6
votes
Accepted
What are the differences between the following?
The sentences mean slightly different things.
I did this for the first time in Tibet.
This implies that this is the first time you've done it ever.
I did this in Tibet for the first time.
This ...
6
votes
Accepted
What's the syntactic explanation in "Mistakes are likely to happen":
As pointed out in comments, (be) likely is a Raising predicate. That means that the noun phrase subject of be likely with a following infinitive complement is not really the subject of likely, but of ...
5
votes
Accepted
"Now is the time to" or "Now is time to" – Which is correct?
Now is the time to
is correct.
Compare it to something like this:
Tomorrow is the day to
or
Tomorrow is day to
Although, you could edit the second option to:
Now it is time to
5
votes
Through a Glass, Clearly / A Scanner Darkly / In a Mirror, Darkly / etc
The phrase through a glass darkly originated in the 1560 Geneva Bible translation of The First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, Chapter 13, verse 12. But, the phrase's popularity correlates with ...
5
votes
This book reads easily vs this book is reading easily
IMO, the correct sentence is this book reads easily.
Such verbal constructions are derived basically from a transitive verb....
...and are called middle constructions.
This oven cleans ...
5
votes
Accepted
How to express "I hope" in "it is" sentence pattern?
"It is my hope" is not unusual. A quick search with Google gets over 7 million hits on that exact phrase.
The less personal "It is to be hoped" is also common.
5
votes
Accepted
Usage of "reply": Please reply to me or reply me (used in formal tone)
I don't know where you see "reply my mail". I don't encounter that in America.
Some dictionaries show reply as only an intransitive verb (one that does not take a direct object).
Some mention a ...
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
Related Tags
sentence-patterns × 356syntactic-analysis × 86
grammar × 72
sentence × 67
grammaticality × 36
meaning × 17
word-choice × 15
phrases × 15
word-order × 15
word-usage × 13
questions × 13
expressions × 10
complex-sentences × 10
terminology × 9
verbs × 8
adjectives × 8
conjunctions × 8
meaning-in-context × 7
usage × 7
writing-style × 7
sentence-starts × 7
repetition × 7
prepositions × 6
punctuation × 6
conditionals × 6