5
votes
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 ...
- 24.3k
3
votes
Should we say "insisted that we attended" or "insisted that we attend"?
In A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, Quirk et al. have a footnote on p.157 about the verb insist:
The use of the subjunctive after insist depends on meaning. When
the verb introduces ...
- 19.6k
3
votes
A linking verb or a part of the verb phrase?
First of all, in both cases, were is a part (in fact, head) of the verb phrase. The question then becomes: what is its complement, a past participle (i.e. a verb) or an adjective?
There are a couple ...
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2
votes
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."
- 29
2
votes
How common is ellipting '(that/which has) to do'?
It's difficult to rule out a plethora of false positives in a Google ngram analysis.
A raw Google search for "Book to do with" - "book having to do with" (note that this is an ...
- 80.6k
1
vote
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 ...
- 87.7k
1
vote
Accepted
Verb tense in academic writing
It depends on what you're trying to say.
If you use the past tense, it will be understood as referring to the time immediately after both studies. In other words, neither study provided a clear ...
- 19.8k
1
vote
What's the difference between "looked" and "had a look", which uses a delexical verb?
In "I had a look around the room," had is a light verb, one whose contribution in terms of meaning is small in comparison with that of its complement look; typically this complement is ...
- 15.8k
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