The usage of may and might is currently in flux.
This sentence is kinda unclear to me. Does that mean that traditionally people use might as past-tense and may as present tense? I think there should be more details in this paragraph to avoid misunderstanding.
This set of verbs differs from other auxiliaries in the following ways:
What is the better way to labeled the modal verbs? Type of auxiliary verbs or subdivision of auxiliary verbs?
My wife fed the dog Tuesday morning
In that sentence can we say that there is an implied ON between DOG and Tuesday? We would My wife fed the dog ON Tuesday morning
Later we will find still more ways in which BE is an exceptional verb.
I've read somewhere that the verb TO BE is the most protean of the English Language. It is so flexible. Then i can understand why it can be labeled as an exceptional verb!
Linguists try not to privilege the language of one group over another just because that group has the prestige in society. That distinction is social, not linguistic.
In Haiti for example French is privilege over Creole. Even tho the constitution explicitly mention that the country has 2 official languages. However, most of the official documents are in French, schools are being taught in french. Since a large part of the population does not have access to education, that group is often discriminated because they can't speak french.
This group is not an organized body; rather it consists of anyone in a position to influence how other people use language: authors, editors, journalists such as William Saffire, writers of grammar textbooks and dictionaries. But those who have perhaps the greatest influence on the general public are classroom teachers. They are the ones who enforce the rules they believe are important when they correct student writing and speech. Even people who claim they don’t remember, or never learned, any grammar in school can usually recall teachers with grammatical pet peeves who consistently criticized students for violating some rule or other.
From that angle, can we say that a language evolves (new words, new rules...) with the people that use it and not specifically with a governing bodies that decide how the language should be used (prescriptivism) or how the language is being used (descriptivism).
if you break prescriptive rules of language use, you will still be understood, but some may put you down as uneducated.
It is something that i feel related with. Because I am not a native english speaker, sometimes i feel like people don't take what i'm saying seriously. When you have an idea or an opinion but you can't express it clearly people might indeed think that you are not educated.
(4) The stone used in this building comes from Italy(5) The stone that broke the window was lying on the floor.
Can I say that the nouns in column 5 like stone, i would add paint or flavor to it, could refer to the quality of something?
For example: The paint used in this room The flavor of the juice
Is that correct?
The proper noun does not need to be the head of the proper name. For example, in the United States of America, the head is states.
That principle is the same in the french language. In "The United States of America" which means "Les Etats Unis d'Amerique" in french, the proper noun (America / Amerique) doesn't need to be the head of the proper name which is a composition of one adjective UNITED, one common noun STATES and one proper noun AMERICA.
Both tree and Reed-Kellogg diagrams are unreasonably awkward to use in certain contexts, for example in an e-mail or on-line posting where graphics may not be available.
Are diagramming sentences really necessary to learn or to understand a language?
Reed-Kellogg diagrams have many limitations. One drawback is that to understand these diagrams, you need to learn the significance of a relatively wide variety of different symbols.
I tried to use the Reed-Kellogg system with some sentences I also realize that it is very difficult to understand the result I got specially for long sentences.
Pronouns are words like he, she, or you that let us cross-reference another entity somewhere else in the discourse or in the real world. Traditional grammars state that pronouns replace nouns, but it would be more accurate to say that they replace noun phrases. (12a) [The airplane parked on the tarmac] appeared damaged.(12b) It appeared damaged. In (12b), the pronoun it does not replace just the word airplane of (12a); it replaces the entire string of words, the airplane parked on the tarmac. Replacing only airplane with a pronoun yields an ungrammatical sentence: (12c) *The it parked on the tarmac appeared damaged.
This section mentioned that it is more accurate to say pronouns replace noun phrases instead of nouns. However, I feel like pronouns replace nouns as much as effectively than noun phrases. Is the idea of accuracy, in that case, a matter of correctness or because they simply use pronouns to replace noun phrases more often the nouns?
to
I think when a single word like TO or THE is mentioned in the text they should in quotation mark, italicized or bolded to ovoid confusion and help for a better reading.
I think every English teacher should also change their approach about teaching grammar to students. Coming from a country where english was not the first language, the overall mindset about english was to learn and memorize words, study grammar rules, and learn how to use verbs.
Linguists are not very interested in this sort of bossiness
Since there is no English Academy to, so to speak, regulate the language, can we think of the linguists as the Guardians of English?!
In fact, English is now changing in exactly the same ways that have contributed to making it the rich, flexible, and adaptable language so popular throughout the world today.
From what I’ve understood after our first class meeting and the course description, is it that approach we are going to take for the class?!