By Auxiliaries, Negatives

Dear Mirium, I'm sorry for that breathless post. Are you any better now? Have you caught some Z's? You didn't misunderstand my question at all, this is what I need. I understand the meanings of this ambiguous sentence, and I was trying to analysize it from a grammatical point of view. I'm...

Pastel, I have a headache already! ~L~ Let's go step by step I agree with what you said about the first pair of sentences (me/I do). Your other example, "I don't like him as much as you" can certainly be ambiguous; the two interpretations you posted are possible. I agree with your analysis of...

Hello, Pastel "I won't do the homework like the way he did." This sentence can be improved. Actually, it is not completely correct. You could say, for example: "I won't do my homework like he did (his)." "I won't do my homework in the same way he did (his). You said: ==>'did' is not used as...

1) "I have a pen." 2) "I have my good reasons for that." 3) "I have to go there." I'm often in doubt about how to put in the interrogative and negative forms the verb "to have". The easiest case is when "to have" is used as an auxiliary verb: "I have (I've) gone to Paris" > "Have you gone to...

Of course I don't mind your asking I don't know what your first language is, but in my country, Spanish speakers find it difficult too to understand that the "s" is necessary to form the simple present of a verb for the 3rd. person singular. The reason is that we associate the addition of an "s"...

Miriam, The book is by Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey Pullum. The capital letters in square brackets refer to a list of criteria on the preceding page concerning auxiliary verbs vs. modal auxiliaries. Here's the list: AUXILIARY PROPERTIES Primary verb negation. Subject-auxiliary inversion ...

The explanation I posted was for the teacher. They must to know themselves what they are going to explain to their students! A teacher is supposed to understand a simple grammatical explanation, then they will find the way to best explain the rule to their own students. I don't know where most of...

"He had not been ill, he might have ccome." I think this sentence should read "IF he had not been ill, he might have come." In your sentence, the conjunction that introduces the conditional clause is missing. The second sentence is fine. When a conditional clause contains one of the auxiliary...

I didn't HAVE a crush on anybody. To make a sentence negative in the simple past, you need to have the auxiliary in the simple past and the verb in the infinitive without to. The positive would be: I had a crush on him.

>>Sorry for intruding in this discussion, but your question is similar to one I was addressing a few days ago. If I may proceed... To say 'Had you a good night?' is correct because English questions must begin with an auxiliary verb - 'had,' like 'do' and 'be' is both an auxiliary and main verb,...