4
votes
"He fought in World War II as an infantryman" - does 'as' change 'fought' into a linking verb?
That is a reasonable way of thinking about it.
With the fall of the Roman Empire, cities were abandoned as centers of administration.
My grandfather fought in World War II as an infantryman.
With ...
- 44.5k
2
votes
Is "went off in search of her hedgehog" a VP, and can it be broken down further?
In traditional grammar the term "verb phrase" refers strictly to verbal forms. Here are verb phrases of all possible lengths for "to sink" (finite verb forms, at most four ...
- 18.8k
2
votes
Can a single adjective be an appositive for the clause?
There are several definitions of "appositive" out there, but what they have in common is that the two things in apposition stand in the same syntactic relationship to the rest of the ...
1
vote
Can a single adjective be an appositive for the clause?
The only possible reading seems to be by taking frustrated as modifying the cab. It is then a bit of a metaphor, a personification or similar.
frustrated, the cab leapt forward a foot or so, only to ...
1
vote
How should this English sentence be parsed linguistically?
Syntactically, both readings are possible and correct. But semantics only allow the second reading.
Your first reading would give the following meaning, in paraphrase:
the world is independent of how ...
1
vote
How should this English sentence be parsed linguistically?
He denies that we have any grasp … that is not based on our minds’ construction of our experiences. Grasp of what? Of the way the world is. In other words, he asserts that any grasp of the way the ...
- 1,485
1
vote
the use of "as" in "as likely to'
First, undoing the conjunction reduction, this sentence is:
[He] allows for one third of women as likely to have a taste for masculine pursuits, and he allows for one third of men as likely to have a ...
- 13.9k
1
vote
"As good a deal as you'll ever get"
The construction isn't all that "messy" pace Van Eynde et al.
It is saying that something, an instance of class X, is not likely to be less [adjective] than any other instance of class X, ...
- 2,416
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