By Negations, Clauses

Hello Amandine Thank you for the information. It's really helpful. Yes, I agree we had better front an adverbial clause, especially in speaking, to avoid the ambiguity of negation scope; "Because he was rich, she didn't like him" rather than "She didn't like him because he was rich." But I often...

Hi Paco I hadn't known either the importance of punctuction until I took a grammar class a couple of months ago. here is something that can be useful to remember: when a adverb clause precedes an independant clause ,a comma is used to separate the clauses. When the adverb clause follows, usually...

Hello Taka I know you get unpleasant with this, but please allow me to put my two cents on your question. "He learned to smoke" If we compare this with "He learned English", we see "to smoke" here is working as a noun phrase. If we negate the action "smoke", we get a sub-surface collocation...

Let's try, shall we? I don't think he's American. I think he's not American. He's not, I think, American. He's, I don't think, American. He's not American, I think. He's American, I don't think. Well, in this case, transferred negation does not work at all if the main clause is not initial,...

I tried to describe what was still confusing me in this sentence in a post above (namely, the one “Posted: 02-08-2005 12:39 AM”) but it was addressed to Just The Truth so perhaps you didn’t read it. It went like this: “There seems to be no problem with using two Simple Pasts in this sentence;...

Hello Mr Pedantic. The sentence is “But I didn't stop until I had reached the top”. If I get it right, you opinion is that the negation belongs not to the first clause but to the whole sentence, like this: “It is not true that “I stopped until I had reached the top””. But taken separately, the...

Hello JTT Thank you for the clear explanation. I think now I've understand the nuance of "I don't think that ..." has. The structure is used when the speaker wants to weaken the strength of the negativity of a negative statement. Right? If it is so, I can agree to your explanation that "I...

I see. By the way, This is called 'transferred negation', Taka, and is common with verbs of opinion (think, believe, appear, seem, expect, etc.) So it is not a matter of the modal, or of any particular verb in the subordinate clause, but a matter of the verb in the main clause. Yes, I know...

This is called 'transferred negation', Taka, and is common with verbs of opinion (think, believe, appear, seem, expect, etc.) So it is not a matter of the modal, or of any particular verb in the subordinate clause, but a matter of the verb in the main clause. The meanings are for all practical...

If you SAY that you DID NOT do something, it the same as if you DENY that you DID do it. He said, "I didn't steal anything". Using the reported speech formula, where we change from direct quotation to indirect: He said that he hadn't stolen anything. Now if he said that he hadn't, then he...