By Clauses, Conversations

(Mr M forgot to log in again!-- MM) It is a matter of natural sentence flow and stress for meaning. Let's write it like a prose sentence: I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree. Spoken in conversation, sentences carry several levels of stress, not just stressed and...

I am not clear on this, Pinenut-- the omission of restrictive relative pronouns is accepted, at least informally, in many other cases as well: OMITTED RELATIVE, CONTACT CLAUSES These two terms are used, along with others, to describe the common and perfectly...

Dear Clive, Thanks for recommending the google hits. I actually have looked at them. In fact, a few of the hits are conversations in which I am taking part or documents I have created. Actually I have quite a few grammar books related to Pali and Sanskrit too (with which Pali shares...

Sorry, Anon-- we ended up having a lengthy email discussion about this. My opinion is that, according to the rules, commas go inside. Therefore, the comma is innermost: Although Maria said, "I heard Bob said, 'I don't like him,' " I wasn't sure if I should believe her. This kind of...

I think your examples of question tags, ellipsis in interrogatives, semi-preconstructed phrases, and complex clauses and ellipsis are more likely to appear in spoken English than written. As to whether they stem from spoken or written grammar, I think they stem from informality, contextual...

Summarising: Three ways of looking at it. Extracts from the Geoffrey Leech article, " />English Grammar in Conversation. View 1: Spoken English has no grammar at all: it is grammatically inchoate. (That view) ...does not need to be taken seriously, although it is surprisingly persistent in the...

Hi, 1) I couldn't deny__plausible excuses. a) him having made c) that he has done b) he has made d) his having made the answer is D,of course.But how about C,i wonder,any problem with ''that clause' after ''deny''? Yes, you don't 'do...

Hello Davkett I'm envisaging a conversation like this: "Do you have any tissues?" "There should be some in the glove compartment." "Are they clean?" "Of course they're clean!" "Are you sure?" "Well, no, I'm not 'sure'. But if they weren't¹ clean, they'd be in that bijou little garbage...

1. If I'm an actor in my next life, I will decide carefully on the movies I'm going to play in.2. If I were to be an actor in my next life, I would decide carefully on the movies I'm going to play in.3. If I'm an actor in my next life, I think I'll be a bit more careful about the kind of films I...

You know well the first one in both two pairs is a correct collocation. The 'it' is what grammarians call as "preparatory it"("prep it"). It is very difficult to explain this prep it grammatically in some cases where the 'it' represents a wh-clause. Isn't IT amazing how well he plays football?...