By English grammar, Auxiliaries

Do existed in Old English more than a thousand years ago as a regular verb and meant to cause. It is impossible to say who introduced it to English. It's use as an auxiliary in questions and negations was established in Shakespeare's day when it was correct to say bothI know not himandI...

I belong to a country where English is used as a second language, so it is not my first language. A few days ago I appeared in an interview for the post of English Teacher. I want to share a few points of that interview for your worthy comments. I use A for interviewer and B for myself. ...

Milky wrote:<To my mind, the articles are the trickiest part of English grammar> And modals?They are similar to other Germanic languages in structure and as there are only two infinitives in English (and in Swedish, for that matter), the modals or defective auxiliaries are very easy and...

Inchoateknowledge wrote:What does (simple) future tense mean in this sentence? The grammarian (it is a grammarian, isn't it?) you're quoting would probably tell you that there is no future tense. Many linguists claim English has only two tenses: Past and Non-past (sometimes called present)....

I always thought it was a remnant of the French (Norman Invasion, 1066). There is a handful of verbs in French conjugated with "to be" rather than "to have" in the passé composé (past) tense. Rise, born, arrive, leave, go (all "coming and going" verbs) are some examples. We also sing "He is...

Thank you to all those who have posted their suggestions to my little imagination game. Some have taken it very seriously thinking they would have to relearn English after the 'changes'. This was meant to be just a game, not for those wo take everything seriously, and of course in this game...

Alienvoord, I appreciate you're constructive criticism. Allow me to rebute:1) Comprehensible, yes. But many expressions are comprehensible even without being gramatically sound. The nuances I try to reveal in this post are to help you write better gramatically, not to sound or to write...

Soylista wrote:I am confused with this expression, "will be going to + Vb". eg. I will be going to visit Aunt Carol tomorrow.To me, this expression is sort of redundant. Why do you need to use both "will" and "be+going to"? I somewhat understand the differences between future meaning...

Hello CJI have four English grammar books. Two are written in Japanese and both treat an agentless passive as a kind of passive, although one of them introduces the concept of "stative passive" to explain the usage of agentless passive. English-written grammar books are Quirk's CGEL and...

Tearsofjoy wrote: Choosing the correct auxiliary verbs when there's an "either... or..." or "neither... nor..." in the sentence. Here are a few correct sentences that I picked up from Wren and Martin(probably the best grammar book I have ever seen). 1) Either he or I am mistaken. 2) Either...