By Possessives, Adverbs

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...

Could you please explain the terms "determiner" and "modifier"? (Note how to ask this kind of question. ) Determiners are those small words which come before nouns, like articles (a, an, the), possessive adjectives (my, your, his, ...), demonstrative adjectives (this, that, these, those), and...

Hello everyone, I like to do sentence analyses, so if you could sometimes send us some exercises on the matter they will be very welcome. A/ Here is MY analysis: 1) She is so pretty a girl. a) parts of speech: she = nominative personal pronoun is = fintie verb so = adverb of...

Hello Casi Hats off to your analysis! Very nice work indeed. Your notion of is something of an enigma. It is the most obviously dangly of structures, when it does dangle; yet its form is seemingly ambiguous. Again, hats off to your analysis! Some fine disentangling. MrP

Hello MrP History of English Gerunds (quoted from OED) The most notable development of the verbal nouns in form of -ing is its use as a gerund, i.e. a substantive with certain verbal functions, particularly those of being qualified by an adverb instead of an adjective, and of governing an...

Hi tknjhall, I did really well on the grammar test. B is correct GuruNet.com USAGE NOTE Good is properly used as an adjective with linking verbs such as be, seem, or appear: The future looks good. The soup tastes good. It should not be used as an adverb with other verbs: The car runs well...

Consider the following: "Dave leaving on Karen's arriving worries me." Is that correct? Is "leaving" a gerund without a possessive before it? Is it possible to use an adverb with a gerund as it works as a noun: "my carefully planing"? Is there any reason to use a gerund instead of a common...

Hi, Maitha I often see native speakes of English (in chatrooms or forums) confusing those two words; but they are very different. "Their" is the possessive adjective that coresponds to the pronoun "they": "The children left their books on the desk." (their books= the books that belong to the...

Aileen -- many thanks for your comments, and for providing the site for the Cambridge Grammar book. I'm on the third chapter and have have found it fascinating so far. Miriam -- here's another example I'd like you to take a look at. Consider this sentence: I can't stand his drinking...

I’m not a teacher, and oh my goodness, now I know why English teachers are worth their salt. I just can’t explain this in a simple way! I thought this question would be easy to answer but it’s not easy at all. Just because a word is commonly used and short doesn’t guarantee that it’s easy to...