By Pronouns, Word order

In English you have an fixed word order, except in interrogatives and exclamations. It looks as this: Subject + verb + object/complement - this is how an affirmative sentence looks like, normally. From this your sentence 4. Max cleaned up it, is correct but since it is a verbal phrase...

CalifJim wrote:OK, Pinenut. Now I'm with you. It has to do with "leaving a trace". If the trace would be immediately in the same position as the relative pronoun, you can't omit the pronoun. It the trace is farther down the string of words, you can. It seems to me I have read about this...

If you know the name of the person you are addressing - e.g. if you started the letter Dear Mr... then you should end the letter Yours sincerely,... If you do not know the letter of the person you are addressing - e.g. if you started the letter Dear Sir or Madam or To Whom It May Concern, you...

Hi Zig, and welcome to English Forums. A bit of a mess, eh wot? who says what what anyone says In both clauses, the 'what's are the verb objects, while 'who' and 'anyone' are the subjects. BUT: It doesn't matter who says what It doesn't matter what anyone says The objects (or...

Hello Katsudon Hello Guest. G: ? I'm a Japanese student and learning English in school. ? {questionable, possibly ungrammatical} K: One has to be very careful in the deployment of these 'rules' you learn. I'm sure you've learned that you can drop the subject in coordinated clauses, but you...

Good question, lemon. One definition of 'as' is 'like'! I think what is probably slightly wrong with your sentence "I wrote such sentences like.." is the word order. It would be better to say: I wrote, "sentences such as ..." or "I wrote, "sentences like ...." LIKE is similar to a...

As to this, I'd like to put my two cents. When English retained cases explicitly, the subject noun and the complement noun linked by a linking verb were both in nominative cases. So, "I " in the normal word order. However, in Old English, inversion easily took place between the subject and the...

Having fun with us Spanish speakers, uh? Oh, well... I admit I also laughed at those lexical problems. There are some cultural explanations, too. Some Spanish speakers wrongly use "pile" because they "imported" the French word instead of the English one (pile instead of battery). In my...

I agree with Lib--when the subject of your sentence is actually the interrogative pronoun, you don't change the word order. For example: "What does it mean?" "What does it mean?" is the direct question, "Do you know what it means?" is the indirect question. You invert the word order because...

Hello again, Mask. I musunderstood your question, but I see what you mean now. Just like many other English words, "than" belongs to more than one class. It is a preposition in sentences like "She is taller than me", and it is a conjunction in sentences like "She is taller than I (am)." In other...