Search results for 'tag:Grammar tag:Predicates' matching tags 'Grammar' and 'Predicates'

wanted hide his money

Abil — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 11:33:54 GMT

I was reading a website on English grammar. I cameÂ across a sentence which reads:"The old man wanted hide his money, for he feared his children would steal it from him."

MyÂ quesitonÂ is,Â whyÂ thereÂ isÂ noÂ "to"Â afterÂ "wanted"?Â WouldÂ someoneÂ shedÂ someÂ lightÂ onÂ it?
..

Compound Sentences
1. Use a Comma and a Joining Word.
[Joining Words (coordinating conjunctions): For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, and So]

The teacher lectured for over an hour, and his students slept soundly.
The old man wanted hide his money, for he feared his children would steal it from him.
The student had a test the next day, so she studied all night long.

Pattern: Sentence, joining word sentence.
Subject + Predicate, joining word Subject + Predicate.

2. Use a Semicolon.

The teacher lectured for over an hour; his students slept soundly.
The old man wanted hide his money; he feared his children would steal it from him.
The student studied all night long; she had a test the next day.

Patterns: Sentence ; sentence.
Subject + Predicate ; Subject + Predicate.

ht***tp://w***w.mccd.edu/faculty/pirov/compound.htm

Re: one-legged

khoff — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:46:47 GMT

To me, there is nothing indecorous about "one-legged," but it sounds more natural preceding a noun than after "he is..." In other words, I would say "A one-legged man came into the room." but "He has only one leg" rather than "he is one-legged."

Sorry, I don't remember the grammar terms for the two different positions of adjectives. My guess is that the adjective after "he is" would be a predicate, but I'm really not sure.

Re: calories are/is

Huevos — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 13:08:52 GMT

optilang
Yodaspeak
What is it?

Yodaspeak

Yoda quotes

Grammar Geek
No, do that not.

On second thoughts I believe Yoda would say: "My friend, Maria is." (OSV). Does that mean the predicate nominative is some kind of object? Sorry to be asking such stupid questions but this parser thing really has really baffled me by saying "my friend" was the subject.

Re: calories are/is

Huevos — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 08:27:47 GMT

Grammar Geek
Maria is my friend.

Maria is the subject.

my friend is the predicate nominative.

So what happens if we were to reverse it: "My friend is Maria", are we also reversing the roles? And what if we were to add a comma: "My friend, is Maria" is that the same? Or is it now an inversion or some kind of Yodaspeak?

Re: calories are/is

Grammar Geek — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 14:33:42 GMT

Maria is my friend.

Maria is the subject.

my friend is the predicate nominative.

My faith and my morning coffee are my salvation.

My faith and my morning coffee is the subject.

my salvation is the predicate nominative.

The verb agrees with the subject.

Five dollars is not a lot to pay for such a great show.

Five dollars - a quantity considered as a single entity - is the subject and takes the single verb.

(See the difference between that and "I had ten one-dollar bills on the table and now five dollars are missing!" That is referring to five one-dollar bills, as individual dollars, not the amount of $5.)

For more on the predicate nominative, see here: http://grammar.uoregon.edu/nouns/predicateN.html or here: http://www.dailygrammar.com/101to105.shtml

Re: phrasal adjectives, chains of meaning, and hyphenation

shaved — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:06:07 GMT

Grammar Geek
See this: http://englishplus.com/grammar/00127.htm - They say that well respected man is incorrect, and that well-respected is correct.

actually, after examining this page, I'm convinced that they're drawing a secondary distinction.....

they say that phrasal adjectives functioning as 'predicate adjectives' do not recieve hyphenation. I completely disagree with that opinion.

example:

a text-based website (phrasal adjective, they would agree with the hyphen)

a website that is text-based (phrasal predicate adjective, they would disagree with the hyphen.. and they are clearly wrong about that imo)

Am I wrong again? It seems like there is a whole world of poorly thought-out conventions regarding the phrasal adjective.

Re: Question about the phrase "I have things to do"

miriam — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:58:49 GMT

Hello, Twinkletoes.

No, that's not what I'm saying. "things to do" is the direct object of "have", the main verb of the sentence. "To do" would be a clause (a non-finite one) even if "things" weren't there or if it had some other type of complementation/modification. In this case, inside the clause, "things" is the subject and "to do" is the predicate.

"Have" is the main verb of the sentence; "to do" is the main verb in the subordinate clause "things to do".

I don't know if every single grammarian in the world would analyse the sentence in the same way, but I certainly know of some who do. What I posted before appears in grammar books. It doesn't mean that everyone has to agree with it, though. Disagreement is often the basis on which new thories are developed.

Anyway, let me give another example of what I said in my first post here:

"She wanted him to call her."

Here, "him to call her" is another to-infinitive clause (with a subject of its own) acting as direct object of the main verb "wanted". "Him" is the subject of the clause (in non-finite clauses, when they have a subject and if that subject is a pronoun, it will be in its "objective" form), "to call" is the main verb of the clause, and "her" the direct object inside the clause.

I'm sorry if that was confusing.

Miriam

Re: Transformational Rules and Subject-Verb Agreement

miriam — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 09:01:07 GMT

In response to the questions posed in the first post of this thread, "the officer" is NOT the subject of the sentence regardless of whether the sentence is active or passive. "The officer" is undoubtedly the doer of the action in both sentences, but it is the subject only in the sentence with the active verb.

In the sentence with the passive verb, it can only appear in the predicate as "agent". It is still the doer of the action but no longer the subject of the sentence.

The subject, in a sentence with a monotransitive verb such as "capture" is always the "receiver" or "undergoer" of the action, and it will change from subject to direct object in an active sentence.

If we have a look at the post before mine, we will see "The officer has been captured by the subjects", which is untrue if we consider the sentences in the first post correct. The subjects have been captured, not the officer.

"The subjects" is not only the grammatical or formal subject of the passive verb, it is also the notional subject or whatever other name you might wish to call it. The subject of a sentence is not necessarily the doer of the action, and that fact doesn't make the subject in question any less "logical" than it should be. Actually, it'd be illogical to make "the officer" the subject of the passive verb if what you mean is precisely the opposite.

The officer, whether as agent or subject (from a syntactic point of view) will always be the "agent" of both sentences, the active and the passive, from a different perspective, from that of thematic roles. Perhaps analysing the sentence in terms of thematic roles will help you see the diferences between active and passive constructions more clearly. In this type of analysis, the agent (not a syntactic function) is the doer of the action regardless of whether the sentence is active or passive and also regardless of the position the construction occupies in the sentence. The direct object of an active sentence, and the subject of that sentence in the passive voice, are called "patient" if a living entity, and "theme" if it's a non-living entity. Again in this case, it shows that places are not always what define a function.

Leaving that aside and coming back to transformational grammar, Chomsky and his theories aren't the easiest to understand. But it is important to remember that an active sentence and a passive one require different mental processes and that, according to Chomsky, when you think of a sentence there are choices you must make before actually coming up with an utterance. One of those choices has to do with the sentence being active or passive. If you decide on a passive sentence, that will dictate a number of sub-processes needed in order to make adjustments to produce a grammatical sentence. Chomsky says that the choices concerning a sentence in the passive voice are made at the very beginning, at the moment you decide your sentence will be in the passive voice instead of the active. All this usually happens without us being aware of our own mental processes, but it seems we make decisions such as subject-verb agreement the very moment we decide what type of sentence we wish to produce. In his first book (Syntactic Structures, 1957, Chomsky made the rules for the passive voice appear as "optional". Later, in 1965, when he was already closer to becoming a rationalist or mentalist, and farther away from structuralism, he saw that the rule couldn't possibly be optional and that they should appear at the level of the phrase structure rules; in other words, before the "transformational" stage.

I hope this makes sense. I tried to put it in very few words, but I'm not sure it was a good idea.

Miriam

Re: i need help from grammar experts

Anonymous — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 04:31:48 GMT

a.Noun.
b.Relative pronoun
c.Article
d.Regular adjective
e.Pronominal adjective
f.Regular adverb
g.Preposition â single word
h.Preposition â group of words
I.Conjunction â single-word co-ordinate
j.Conjunction - subordinate
k.Verbal - gerund
l.Verbal - infinitive
m.Appositive
n.Expletive
o.Predicate - smiple
p.Complete subject

Taking a correspondence course involves a great amount of self-discipline on the part of the student.
When someone studies at home, there are always distractions to overcome: telephone calls from friends, favourite soap operas on TV, or sunny days beckoning outside the window. People who need to interact with their teacher on a daily basis may not wish to study a course on their own.

However, there are also definite advantages to studying âby mail.â A student may progress as rapidly as he or she wants to, instead of moving along at the same pace as a classroom full of people. A few missing high school credits can be picked up quickly, so the need to spend an extra year in school is eliminated. Instructors, or markers, are available to answer questions by telephone or e-mail.

Here are some of my answers: ( I'm having a tough time with this exercise... I need some help)

a.Noun. : home, window
b.Relative pronoun: who
c.Article: a
d.Regular adjective: sunny
e.Pronominal adjective: their
f.Regular adverb: quickly
g.Preposition â single word : on, from
h.Preposition â group of words: on the part of/instead of
I.Conjunction â single-word co-ordinate: so, and, or
j.Conjunction â subordinate: when
k.Verbal â gerund : taking/studying
l.Verbal â infinitive: to spend, to answer, to study
m.Appositive: telephone calls from friends, favourite soap operas
n.Expletive: there (and it ) , there (are also)
o.Predicate â smiple: involves a great amount of self discipline
p.Complete subject: Taking a correspondence course

Hope this helps,

Visnja

Re: i need help from grammar experts

Cool Breeze — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 20:01:07 GMT

Gramatical terminology varies from country to country and I have never heard some of the terms in your list. However, as I see it, most - if not all - of your answers are probably correct. I have never heard of "regular adjectives" but sunny certainly is an adjective. "Pronominal adjective" beats me; there's no such thing in the terminology I am familiar with. Perhaps they want their, which, as far as I understand, is called an adjective in some countries. We always call it a possessive pronoun, which isn't a very good name either because it doesn't replace a noun.

For "preposition - group of words" - I would say in front of, but it isn't in the text. And even then front is a noun, and therefore the term seems unpalatable to me. So is a co-ordinating conjunction in the text and when is a subordinating conjunction.

Beckoning is a present participle in the text, but taking, the first word, is a gerund. Your infinitives are right. Wish (May not wish) is an example of an infinitive without to, called either a plain infinitive or a bare infinitive owing to the absence of the particle to.

Markers is an appositive. The expletives are correct. The term predicate is used completely differently in Scandinavia from the Anglo-Saxon world, and my idea of what it is is the same as yours but I don't think your teacher wants that if he/she wants the English version. I won't venture a guess at all. The same goes for "complete subject", which baffles me.

I hope my comments help you. Perhaps a native speaker who knows the terms used in the Anglo-Saxon world can provide more information and better answers.