In Nouns^x, Conversations^x, Noun phrases^x

Fronting the direct object is much more common in conversation than most people realize. It's definitely not restricted to writing. I think people just start a sentence thinking the first noun phrase is going to be the subject, and then suddenly a different verb comes to mind than they...

A phone conversation: A: I hope...(trails off) B: What do you hope? A: I hope to see you soon! B did not say "How do you hope?" B said "What do you hope?" It requires an object - it's not an intransitive verb in this case. So the infinitive is a noun phrase, and is...

The dialog starts with a greeting formula. Hi, Mark! starts a conversation with a known acquaintance, a friend. How often do you approach a friend and say 'hello' and then ask your friend how long he has lived there? Does that sound like the first question you would ask a friend...

Kooyeen wrote: Hi, I don't think grammar in writing is different from grammar in speech at all. You can write the way you speak and speak the way you write. So... what is that QCA really doing? Nothing, I guess. Playing cards instead of working, LOL. I agree in some part,...

1. Neither of my friends are rich. 2. Neither of my friends is rich. My inclination would be to use #1; though #2 is fine. The OED seems happy with "neither of" + noun phrase + plural verb, and gives an example: 3. Neither of us are the proper judges. It also seems to be acceptable in...

Hi Believer, It's my setence, I know, and it sure looks silly without the entire conversation, doesn't it? I have been thinking about this. Another example of how a native speaker just "knows" it - and I'm sure one of the teachers of English as a second language can explain this better. In...

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...

CalifJim wrote: You are compounding the problem here, however, by using "number of" together with "there is/are", which, at least in relaxed style, can almost always be "there is" no matter what the grammatical number of the following expression. So, "there is" can be used, but not in very...

The prescriptive rule has it that 'neither' and 'either' take the singular verb, so "Neither has windows" ('neither' is the subject) and "Either one of them has it" ('one' is the subject). In everyday conversation, however, it is quite common to hear the plural verb with 'neither' if a plural...

Hello Roro Excellent writing! I believe you are an advanced English learner, at least a learner much more advanced than me. Anyway, what I feel about the problem you have now is that it rather come from your misunderstanding the tense relation in a sentence using the time connective word ....