By Tenses, Inflections

Englishuser wrote: A non-native speaker who has immersed himself or herself with highbrow literature written in a foreign language could very well have a more vivid vocabulary and a better knowledge of the grammar of the language than the average native speaker. At least as far as the 'standard...

Hi C (or Cs): Complementizers: Words which introduce the sentence complement are termed complementizers. CP: Complement phrase. Matrix clause: the construction in which the complement phrase is embedded is called matrix clause. Infl: Sentences have their own heads. They take an abstract...

Drewauerbach wrote:Here is another stylistic sin that you can and should avoid:9) in order to + conjugated verb vs. to + conjugated verb Simply put, there is never a reason to insert "in order" before an infinitive. It's verbose, and should always be dropped. Example: WRONG: In order...

FYI The second form is the one I see 99% of the time in professionally edited grammar books. Sometimes boldface type is reserved for a lexical item that takes various inflections, e.g., there may be a reference to be -- the italicized form then being used for the specific inflected forms,...

hi greetings from the philippines !!! I need your help on the following. I don't think my English is all that bad, but I frequently get confused when trying to use the following verbs. A detailed description with examples is as follows: She has to go. (Present) She had to go....

Hi Forbes, I'm not taking sides but just want to clarify a few things. Chinese is such a totally different system, whatever English speakers see in "translation" may not give them an idea what Chinese is like. Each Chinese character is monosyllabic. But since we have a "rigid" writing system...

I presume that you have gone onto the wrong track. There literally exist 2 verb phrases here. What I mean is that one is given 'inflection' (ie. Subject Agreement + Tense + Aspect) and the other only given 'Tense' (and all that goes with it: Tense, Agreement with Object, etc.) To make it down...

MrPedantic wrote: What are we to make of the fact that adult native speakers often "self-prescriptivise"? Example: "Oh, hello, MrP. MissQ was just telling Randy and me – Randy and I – about L1 acquisition." MrP I read your question wrong... oops. Um, I think that does not resemble...

Alright, so modals are not inflected... That should mean they are non finite. How come they do not work in nonfinte contexts such as infinitive clauses then? If you argue that the form of the verb is what marks an inflection, how do you explain that put is the past form of put? No inflection...

Hello Japan I'm interested in the topic you raised. I am now living in Tokyo and on my way to work I can see an English-like phrase on the signboard of a jewelry store, that reads 'Well come!'. You may feel it's funny, but I don't think that use of 'well come' is not so rare in Japan. Actually...