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

Re: When -s forms should be used ?

AlpheccaStars — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 19:22:11 GMT

Panesh:

Sunrise (one word) is a noun.In your sentence, the word "rise" is a verb, not a noun. Every sentence must have a verb.

English used to be a highly inflected language. Over the centuries, the inflections have been changed or lost. The addition of -s in third person singular, present tense is one of the verb inflections that still remain in the language

Also the ending 's and s' is used to mean possessive case (nouns), and the ending -s (nouns) to mean plural.

Mary cooks dinner. (cook is the verb)

Mary Cook's dinner (Mary Cook is her name. It is her dinner. This is not a sentence, because there is no verb.)

Joe's Cars (a business name) gives good deals to the customers. (the verb is give, deal is a noun in the plural)

Joe deals in cars. This site deals with various topics. (deals is the verb, present tense, 3rd person singular)

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: 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: Need an advise!

Cool Breeze — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 15:55:21 GMT

I think you mean the sentence Never listen to fear, right? Listen is an imperative and no inflection is ever used in English imperatives. Imperatives like this look like infinitives, which should make it easy for you to learn English. Except for certain fixed phrases and idiomatic expressions, the is not used with nouns when nouns are used in a general sense and the reference is not to anything specific.That's why fear has no article.

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

Verbs

ganesh77 — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 09:38:41 GMT

The list isn't meant to be exhaustive or carefully arranged. Any additions, corrections or further examples would be welcomed.

1 main verbs; lexical verbs (all verbs which are not auxiliaries or modals)

2 action verbs; event verbs; dynamic verbs (a verb which can be used in continuous tenses) i.e. eat, run, talk

3 state of being verbs; existence verbs; state verbs; stative verbs; static verbs (a verb which describes a state and is not usually used in a continuous tense) i.e. be, own, know

4 regular verbs (a verb that has four forms and follows the normal rules)

5 irregular verbs; strong verbs (a verb not following the normal rules for inflection)

6 auxiliary and modal verbs (which make up verbal phrases) â 23 in total

7 linking verbs; copulative verbs; copulas (a verb which links the subject and complement of a clause) i.e. It is warm today.

8 transitive verbs (a verb used to talk about an action or event that involves more than one person or thing, and so is followed by an object) i.e. Sheâs wasting her money.

9 intransitive verbs (a verb used to talk about an action or event that only involved the subject and so has no object) i.e. She arrived.

10 multiword verbs

a type 1 â intransitive [phrasal verbs; adverb particle

b type 2 â transitive (inseparable) [prepositional verbs; preposition particles]

c type 3 â transitive (separable) [phrasal verbs; adverb particle]

d type 4 â transitive (with two inseparable particles) [phrasal-prepositional verbs; first particle is an adverb, second particle is a preposition]

11 compound verbs

12 delexical verbs (a verb which has very little meaning in itself but is used with an object to describe an action) i.e. She gave a small cry.

13 ditransitive verbs (a verb which can have both a direct and indirect object) i.e. She gave me a kiss.

14 ergative verbs (a verb which can be used transitively to focus on the performer of the action, or intransitively to focus on the thing affected by the action) i.e. He boiled the water. The water boiled.

15 reporting verbs; performance verbs; performative verbs (a verb used with a quote or a reported clause to describe what people say or think) i.e. suggest, say, wonder

16 reciprocal verbs (a verb which describes an action involving two people doing the same thing to each other) i.e. They met in the street.

17 reflexive verbs (a verb which is typically used with a reflexive pronoun) i.e. Donât cut yourself with that knife.

18 defective verbs (a verb without all the inflected forms of a regular verb) i.e. modals

19 finite and non-finite

a infinitives

b gerunds; verbal nouns

c participles

20 catenative verbs (a verb that takes other verb forms as objects; found at the head of a series of linked constructions) i.e. We agreed to try to decide to stop eating snacks.

21 causative verbs (a verb that designates the action necessary to cause another action to happen) i.e. The devil made me do it.

Re: some/a few; regarding/regarding to

Avangi — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 20:15:01 GMT

Anonymous wrote:

What is different between "some" and "a few" when referring to countable nouns? Nothing.  Both mean "a small number of", although only "few" = "small" by definition. (some can be used for both countable & uncountable   -   I guess you knew that!)

e.g. I have stopped taking the pills for some days./ I have stopped taking the pills for a few days. In this example, voice inflection could be used to make some a bit more than a few.
Is there any other word carrying similar senses, both formal and informal, that we can use to make our writing and speaking more natural? I have several pills left. There is/are only a handful left. This is figurative. You can actually say, "There are only a handful of cars left in the lot." (Don't use is here   -   is makes it less figurative.)

How do you use "regarding" and "regarding to"? Any difference? haven't heard "regarding to"   maybe you've heard "according to" or "in regard to"

Thanks for your help.

Have you heard anything about/regarding/in regard to my job application?

According to the weather report, we're in for some snow.

Re: Spelling of Plural noun /vs/ the Third-person-singular verb inflection.

CalifJim — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 07:07:21 GMT

All the rules for adding S are the same for plurals as for third-person singular present tense verbs, including the words that end in y.

That said, there are a few exceptions that you will encounter from time to time, for example, words that end in f or fe. There are so few that you can just make a mental note of them when you encounter them.

Noun: loaf, loaves
Verb: loaf, loafs
Noun: knife, knives
Verb: knife, knifes

CJ

Re: Spelling of Plural noun /vs/ the Third-person-singular verb inflection.

Loojka — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 01:42:06 GMT

Digger36 wrote:

But what about the SPECIAL cases of the inflection on the 3-rd person singular;
      it seems less obvious, as in these cases ..
    he destroys / ~~destroies~~         sand dunes
    he ~~trys~~ / tries                  jumping high
    he ~~carrys~~ / carries            the load
    he ~~emptys~~ / empties        the glass of milk
    he ~~finishs~~ / finishes         the task
    he ~~flys~~ / flies                  the airplane
    he loafs / loaves                on the couch
would appreciate reasoned choices in the above and some rule(s).

Thanks,,

Change y into ie only when it ("y") is preceded by a consonant.
Add es when a word ends in s, sh, ch, x or o.

Re: Spelling of Plural noun /vs/ the Third-person-singular verb inflection.

Marius Hancu — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 23:38:07 GMT

See (for nouns)
Special cases
on this page at this grammar site:

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/plurals.htm