In Nouns^x, Expressions^x, Accusative^x

" Between " is a preposition . Pronouns that follow prepositions are always in the accusative case, not nominative. It's a rule, not a matter of opinion. Here are some examples that wrongly use the nominative. He wrote a book about she. The girl passed between he and I. The...

Hi, I'm really enjoying this. You're making me think. I'm going to take your points out of sequence. I think I'm still replying to your post; if I misrepresent what you're saying, please correct me. First, the summary of what I'm going to say: A lot depends on theory,...

Hello GG I feel the English expression "superior to me" comes from a Latin phrase "me superiorem (elder than me)" where "me" is the ablative case of the pronoun for the first person singular but incidentally the same in form as the accusative "me". On the other hand "my superior" might have its...

Hello Anon I'm a mere English learner from Japan and my role here is rather an asker than an answerer. But if you don't mind, I'd like you to read my ideas about your question. I take "school" in "go to school" or "church" in "go to church" as an uncountable noun. As you suggested, "school"...

Hi I understand "anytime" is a word proper to AmE. In OED, there is no entry for "anytime". OED contains 466 quotes using "any time" but only 9 quotes using "anytime". I believe the most formal expression in BrE is "Call me at any time". But "Call me any time" is also possible. In English, time...

Hello Roro I’m now in my office and so I can't log in by my own ID Why am I frustrated? I feel the use of bare NPs as temporal adverbials is a linguistic phenomenon common to many languages. But no English grammar book gives us this sort of information in a detail enough to make us...

Many English nouns and noun phrases can be used as adverbs. They are called "adverbial objectives". From the standpoint of word order, an adverbial objective is put as if it were an objective of a verb, but actually it works as an adverbial modifier of the verb. This sort of constructs comes from...

Hello MrP History of English Gerunds (quoted from OED) The most notable development of the verbal nouns in form of -ing is its use as a gerund, i.e. a substantive with certain verbal functions, particularly those of being qualified by an adverb instead of an adjective, and of governing an...

Komountain san, could you allow me to throw my two cents worth about the second question? English has peculiar adverbial phrases called "adverbial accusatives". The adverbial accusatives come from Old English where nouns in accusative case were often used as adverbs. And they are still used...