In Nouns^x, Conversations^x, Clauses^x

I have always heard in conversation - that must be him / her on the phone. Of course we say:He is on the phone now. Grammatically, "that must be him" it is not strictly correct, since the case of a pronoun after "be" is nominative. However, in this case (must be ***), we...

The whatever phrase needs a relative clause to complete it. ... whatever type of approach you prefer will do. Occasionally, people do leave out the relative clause, but I don't recommend it. It's not the standard use of whatever + noun. Whatever approach will do. (Sometimes heard in...

I have underlined some problem areas: The Woman Within the Doll The Baltimore Sun wrote that back in 1879, “A Doll's House” by Henrik Ibsen “shocked and offended people wherever feet” (1031). This might have caused him to become the “half-drowned” kind of man, as he...

Each of the following sentences contains a faulty comparison . Rewrite each sentence to eliminate the error. a. The word-processing equipment in the direct-mail department op­erates more efficiently than the customer relations department. b. The production manager expressed greater...

If you want to research this topic on the Internet, the following terminology may be useful to you: To leave the word "that" out in a sentence is called that-omission. As far as I know, this happens in two particular instances, restrictive relative clauses and that-clauses (a type of...

Swagatalakshmi wrote: OK - consulted couple of grammar books. "Participles" (verb+-ing or verb in past participle form) ALWAYS modify nouns. If you see a verb +-ing used as a stand-alone phrase (noun) which is not modifying anything, it must be a gerund. There is nothing called "adverbial...

Hi, In the sentence, " Don't do anything but eat during dinner time/lunch time/break time ," is the word "time" an uncountable or a countable. uncountable If it is an uncontable noun, then can you put "the" if a context exists to warrant that or if a phrase or clause restricts it to also...

I am not clear on this, Pinenut-- the omission of restrictive relative pronouns is accepted, at least informally, in many other cases as well: OMITTED RELATIVE, CONTACT CLAUSES These two terms are used, along with others, to describe the common...

I think your examples of question tags, ellipsis in interrogatives, semi-preconstructed phrases, and complex clauses and ellipsis are more likely to appear in spoken English than written. As to whether they stem from spoken or written grammar, I think they stem from informality, contextual...

Summarising: Three ways of looking at it. Extracts from the Geoffrey Leech article, " />English Grammar in Conversation . View 1: Spoken English has no grammar at all: it is grammatically inchoate. (That view) ...does not need to be taken seriously, although it is surprisingly persistent...