Hi, everyone. Today when I was reading an article on anti-plagiarism software, I came across the structure of "a ... amount of + the plural form of a countable noun". The whole paragraph in which the structure appears goes as follows:

I went there for the purpose of (gerund) I went there (infinitive) I think it's archaic, but it persists as a regional colloquialism and, as you note, in folk poetry: Simple Simon went a-fishin' For to catch a whale. But all the water that

A bit late. Sorry. Sean O'Leathlobhair wrote on 14 Jul 2004: It's quite common in the lower registers of AmE. It ... confirm that "stolen on me" is common enough in left-pondia. I have a sense that 'x on me' is not

A bit late. Sorry. Sean O'Leathlobhair wrote on 14 Jul 2004: I have never heard a native say: "I can't drive ... that is because of the "on me" at the end. It's quite common in the lower registers of AmE. It may not be

Donna, are you claiming that there are people who say ... I'm not aware of ever hearing any examples of this. Yes. For example, the first four hits in Google Groups (a better place for colloquialisms than the Web) under "I could give a

Hi, I'm trying to help a friend with one of her essays in linguistics. She needs to classify a large number (hundreds of thousands) of English words as, for instance, formal, informal, slang, vulgar, curse, colloquialism, abbreviation, etc.