In Pronouns^x, Constructions^x

The woman is a TV reporter who is standing in the hotel elevator There s nothing wrong with this sentence Detective I m looking for two suspects one is a man the other a woman Here are their photos Have you seen them Helpful Janitor Sure The man is an executive who is sitting in the lobby The...

2 They is becoming in writing the accepted 3rd person singular pronoun of unknown sex it is already accepted in spoken English A careful writer would avoid this however by casting the clause in the plural when riders panic before they crash http www crossmyt com hc linghebr austheir html...

The derivational source of 1b is a double object construction not a dative construction and wh movement is disallowed Doesn t a double object mean a dative object and an accusative object Is there a special terminology called dative construction which only includes structure with the preposition...

Hello Casi OED tells about the appositional use of both like this 2 In apposition with a plural n or pronoun When referring to the subject of a sentence both was in early ME usually separated from it and placed after the verb or whole predication This is still common dialectally In the literary...

In She wasn t impressed She seems to be the subject Can you explain null subject Are you talking about theta roles No i m not talking about theta roles But it would be useful to bring it in at this juncture The null subject is an syntactically empty subject For example in imperatives the second...

Thanks Paco I d forgotten about that thread Since we re discussing passive constructions who was given the book rather than active constructions to whom did you give the book it might be easier to take an example whose active version doesn t contain an indirect object 1 Who was killed subject...

Mr P Could you reconsider whether the for in I was worth X ing for is a required element of the idiom I ve been reading this thread with interest and it occurs to me that the for is an artifact of the verb choice for X not part of the idiom itself The for may go with the verb it follows not with...

Hello everybody How can I talk about neutral inanimate objects and abstract nouns First I read about possessive constructions to find out what types of nouns can possess Here is what I read online from The American Heritage Book of English Usage A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary...

English passive construction is a problem to me There are many reasons why I feel it difficult to acquire A English rather mandates to choose an active construct when the animate agent overtly appears This rule seems rather rigorous especially the agent is a personal pronoun We have not such a...

People sometimes refer to the CGEL on this site Conveniently some sample chapters from this publication are now online at CGEL sample chapters The preliminary chapter includes the odd lapse of logic This is one of the first Apologies for the fairly lengthy quotation Another kind of illegitimate...