In Determiners^x, Constructions^x

Anonymous wrote: Please answer the following questions: 1. Why the word 'police' does not have a determiner in front of it when my dictionary noted that it could be a singular noun? ... identified by police and parents as the day-care center owner... 'the' could be used, but is often...

Please answer the following questions: 1. Why the word 'police' does not have a determiner in front of it when my dictionary noted that it could be a singular noun? ... identified by police and parents as the day-care center owner... 2. Is the following adjectival construction acceptable? ......

What is the word sucks in "Homework sucks"? Is it a verb or an adjective? If it is a verb, what does homework suck?This brings up an excellent point, and a wonderful opportunity to discover the beautiful syntactic structure of the English language. The question at hand is "Does an English verb...

Sources of simple examples to be examined from the viewpoint of grammatical constructions need not be cited. Cite the source when the material quoted is part of your argument for or against some point of view. As for your question about "mustn't", the more idiomatic phrasing is "When you...

Pradeep_tp wrote: Hello english world, I have been facing difficulty in understanding the usage of the words 'that ' and 'which'. I have no clear understanding of which word is more appropriate in what situation. 'Which' and 'that' overlap when it comes to relative clauses. In this specific...

Nouns like "pants", "gloves", "glasses" are almost always used in plural forms, because the things expressed by them are useful only when they are paired. I feel this kind of noun is bit different from usual countable nouns in the choice between the two expressions "this kind of" and "these kind...

Anonymous wrote:A sentence recently came to the attention of my family, and we never did come to agreement on the correct form: "Nov. 12th is my brother's birthday, and my mother will admit to his being a Valentine baby. (Grammar question: is it HIS being or HIM being?) 'his...

And hello yet again, Hela! In the sentences in your first post there is only one adjective phrase: "very little", in sentence # 3. An adjective phrase is a construction that has an adjective as its "head" (the most important word. In "very little", "little" is the head -it's an adjective- and...

In relation to the previous post by one, let me re-quote from rvw's material (because I'm interested in it, sort of): ┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈ The determiner 'much' in the partitive construction 'much of a': 　(7a) Fred is not much of a hero. 　(7b) John did not stand much of a...

From rvw's reference (I didn't know this): The determiner 'much' in the partitive construction 'much of a': (7a) Fred is not much of a hero. (7b) John did not stand much of a chance. Notice that omission of 'not' in these sentences leads to illformedness.　(i.e. this use of 'much' is polarity...