Search results for 'tag:Inflections tag:Verbs' matching tags 'Inflections' and 'Verbs'

Re: adjective or adverb ? - by N88 -

Nokia88 — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 21:30:04 GMT

Cool Breeze
Nokia88

The axe will fall the heaviest in its financial services division, which includes banking, wealth management and insurance operations.

The heaviest = adjective or adverb?

An interesting point, Nokia! In some languages, including my mother tongue, both an adjective and an adverb could be used in your sentence - and they would be different in form. Comparison is a vague and inexact form of art in English. Logic says that it makes no actual difference whether we consider the heaviest an adjective or an adverb. Its grammatical form suggests that it is an adjective. Heavy is a disyllabic adjective ending in y, and adverbs are formed by using the ly inflection from such adjectives. Examples:

(A): It rained heavily today. It rained even more heavily yesterday. It rained [the] most heavily last week.

(B): Heavier and heaviest are adjectives: My brother is heavier than me/I. He is the heaviest man I know.

CB

Dear Cool Breeze,
I am sorry!
I didn't know what had happened to me that day when I was reading your perfect post. I must have been over tired that I comprehended the two sets of examples just opposite.
The first set you wrote:
(A): It rained heavily today. It rained even more heavily yesterday. It rained [the] most heavily last week (adverb modifies verb).
(A): I misunderstood it as (adjective modifies noun).
The second set you wrote:
(B): Heavier and heaviest are adjectives: My brother is heavier than me/I. He is the heaviest man I know (adjective modifies noun).
(B): I misunderstood it as (adverb modifies verb).

Great Post!
Thank you very much!
Best regards, Nokia88

Re: imperative mood in the third person?

Cool Breeze — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 07:08:05 GMT

Tanit

Now I am curious. How does Finnish tackle the issue of expressing the imperative mood in the third person? Do you have an inflected form of the verb for it?

Hi Tanit

I'm very pleased someone takes an interest in my mother tongue. Finnish must be one of the most inflected languages in the world. It has an inflected imperative form for both third person singular and third person plural. The inflection isn't the same for all verbs; the choice depends on the phonetic form of the verb, and some letters are omitted from the infinitive of the verb before the inflection is added. There may also be other changes in the middle of the verb as the inflection is added. In informal Finnish people often use the third person singular inflection even for the third person plural. I suppose this phenomenon can be likened to the English way of saying there's books on the table.

There is also an imperative for the passive. I'm not quite sure what would be the best way to express that in English. Perhaps:

May this be written twice! This be written twice! Let this be written twice! And of course: This must be written twice!

I know these don't all sound very good and natural. I hope a native speaker will suggest one or some of them, or something different. The idea is that someone is giving an order whereby he wants something to be written twice but he doesn't indicate who should write it. In other words, Write this twice! is wrong.

Re: adjective or adverb ? - by N88 -

Cool Breeze — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 13:32:26 GMT

Nokia88

The axe will fall the heaviest in its financial services division, which includes banking, wealth management and insurance operations.

The heaviest = adjective or adverb?

An interesting point, Nokia! In some languages, including my mother tongue, both an adjective and an adverb could be used in your sentence - and they would be different in form. Comparison is a vague and inexact form of art in English. Logic says that it makes no actual difference whether we consider the heaviest an adjective or an adverb. Its grammatical form suggests that it is an adjective. Heavy is a disyllabic adjective ending in y, and adverbs are formed by using the ly inflection from such adjectives. Examples:

It rained heavily today. It rained even more heavily yesterday. It rained [the] most heavily last week.

Heavier and heaviest are adjectives: My brother is heavier than me/I. He is the heaviest man I know.

Re: gerund or verbal noun with an article?

Cool Breeze — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:32:42 GMT

Anonymous

Why do you think RayH seemed to have said this has to be "the fearful wailing"?

1)He heard a fearful wailing of a dog

I think he said it has to be:
2)He heard the fearful wailing of a dog

I think RayH is correct but I also think no. 1 can be correct under a right situation. I think it would have been better if the sentence had a plural noun after "of" like this:
He heard a fearful wailing of dogs

You'll have to wait for RayH's explanation for his preferences. He heard a fearful wailing of a dog is fine grammatically but it does suggest that you may hear different kinds of wailings of a dog and therefore the sentence may sound odd to some. The plural dogs simply indicates that there were at least two dogs, nothing else. No grammatical difference, really.

Grammatical terms cause confusion even among experts, so you have nothing to worry about! This is because not all grammarians and usage experts use them in the same way. There are people who don't use the term "verbal noun" at all. They regard what I consider a verbal noun as a gerund. Examples:

The speaking of English is easy. (A verbal noun and because speaking is a noun, the is posible before it. Even an adjectival attribute can be used: The correct speaking of English is easy.)

Speaking English is easy. (A gerund, which to my mind is neither a verb nor a noun but a little bit of both. The is not possible before a gerund, nor is an adjectival attribute and these two things are a clear sign (to me) that a gerund is not a noun: Correct speaking English is easy. (WRONG!!!)

Because there are hardly any inflections in English, there is bound to be occasional confusion as to the exact meaning of every word ending in ing as your example (beginning) in another post shows.

I can't remember what I have written about these things before but if you are interested, you may wish to read these posts that deal with the gerund, verbal nouns and participles and their differences:

subject of gerund gerund v present participle gerund v verbal noun

Re: have vs has question

Clive — Mon, 19 May 2008 23:21:11 GMT

Hi,

An enemy that is being detained does not (have/has) any rights. The writer of this sentence needs to have a look at the Geneva Conventions.

Have = plural

has = singular The inflection is in the auxiliary 'does'. Use 'have ' as the base verb..

Does the -have- refer to the rights or the enemy as the subject? The subject is 'an enemy'.

Also my second question, what is the difference in

1. An enemy that is detained When they catch him, 'he is detained (by his captors)'. After that, he is in a state of 'being detained'.

2. An enemy that is being detained

Best wishes, Clive

Re: readed?

Zerox — Sat, 17 May 2008 13:05:06 GMT

Google also gives many hits with words like 'taked' and 'gived', and the horrendous 'its' vs. 'it's'. Irregular verbs and their inflection can be hard especially for foreigner, hence the 'popularity'.

Remember that just because something is on the Internet, doesn't necessarily mean that it's correct.

to conjugate? to inflect?

anglista2008 — Tue, 06 May 2008 09:54:05 GMT

Hi there,

What question one might aks if one wants to ask for inflection of the verbs to be, to have, to do for persons?

1. Can you conjugate the following verbs FOR persons?
2. Can you inflect (?) the following verbs FOR persons?

I'm not sure whether inflect can be used as a verb, as well?

Thanks,

Mistakes made by Chinese Learners

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:30:26 GMT

Hi everyone

I just wondered if anyone could help - I have to write a profile of a chinese learner of English (completely made up). In it I must put any difficulties that the learner has in learning English as an L2. I have got so far:

Intonation transfer from L1 may cause them to be perceived as rude/inconsiderate, more serious transfer may affect comprehensiveness.
No inflections in L1 - tenses difficult to learn in L2 as L1 has no true tenses and concept of time is expressed by adverbs/implicit or contextual assumptions.
Difficulty distinguishing [r] & - Does anyone know why this is as I can't find a reason?!!
Prepositions such as 'on', 'in' & 'at' have one chinese translation in many contexts, 'zai' - may be confused resulting in phrases such as 'on Taiwan' instead of 'in Taiwan'.
Use of awkward gerunds e.g. 'no noising', excessive use of verbs ending in 'ing' e.g. 'do not climbing', confusion of 'ed' & 'ing' verbs e.g. 'i am bored' vs 'i am boring' --- all of these errors occur because verbs are not conjugated in chinese, for tense or pronoun.
No equivalent word for 'the' so may be used excessively when not needed e.g. 'The China' or missed out when needed. May also be confused with 'a'/'an'.
Confusion over countable and uncountable nouns, use of 'how much?' vs 'how many?' - leads to phrases such as 'I want a soup' & 'a lot of shoe'. This is due to there not being plurals in chinese - no inflections.

Switching between 'he' & 'she' - Does anyone know why this is?

If anyone can think of anymore it would be greatly appreciated or if anyone knows the answers to my questions about gender switching and distinguishing [r] & this would also help a lot!!

Thank you in advance.

Shannon

Re: English teaching sites

Yoong Liat — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 03:56:28 GMT

Guest
How do you explain what a irregular verb is to entry 1 esol students?

Main Entry:	irregular verb
Part of Speech:	n
Definition:	any verb whose past tense and past participle are not formed by adding -ed, -d, or -t to the present tense, a verb that does not follow the general rules of inflection

Examples of irregular verbs are sing (past tense sang); feel (felt); and go (went).

Re: Britney Spears

Cool Breeze — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 17:57:08 GMT

Thanks for your comment, GG. I find English tremendously fascinating just because of all these exceptions, irregularities and oddities. And because there are so few inflections and verb forms, even educated people sometimes disagree on correct usage in cases that seem very clear to me. (The subjunctive is a good example.) Then I read their posts and realize that if I look at the matter from a British or American standpoint, maybe my choice isn't the only one I should think right.

CB