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

Re: Pronoun Case. Please Help.

CalifJim — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 23:39:41 GMT

Eddie88
here is a post which I thought slightly contradicted your point:

Yes. I thought you asked again because you were puzzled by my overly long reply the first time.

I didn't know which kinds of cases you wanted to know about -- the preposition immediately after the pronoun or the preposition after the pronoun with any number of words in between.

No words in between:

They threw him out the door. (Here him has nothing whatsoever to do with out.)

Words in between:

The man whom we bought the gift for is on the train. (Here whom goes with for because the uninverted form is for whom.)

The man [We bought the gift for him] is on the train. becomes

The man [We bought the gift for whom] is on the train. becomes

The man [whom we bought the gift for __ ] is on the train. becomes

The man whom we bought the gift for is on the train.

Only the specific word whom has this property.

Eddie88
could the pronoun ever be the subject of the sentence, but have a preposition preceding it?

Never, never, never!!

Eddie88
how is the contraction isn't written in full? For example, 'this is the right book, isn't it?

Is this written like this: 'this is the right book, is it not'? So, does it and not switch order in formal academic prose?

isn't = is not

However, in modern English a negation (not, n't), can only be moved to the left of the subject if it is expressed as n't. It must stay to the right of the subject if it is expressed as not.

It is. It is not. It isn't.

Is it? Is it not? Isn't it?

So you can't have forms (in modern English) such as Is not it? or Is it n't?

Same here:

It does. It does not. It doesn't.

Does it? Does it not? Doesn't it?

Not Does not it? or Does it n't?

It has nothing to do with academic prose.

Re: in any/whatever sense

Palinkasocsi — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 05:53:12 GMT

Dear Clive,

In this case it really does not matter how many opposites a sentece has. I just wanted to ask how to put such a sentence together to be grammatically correct. CalifJim got the point.

Anyway, Clive. Some sentences could have one or more opposites. Read a bit of my paper:

"(11) Oscar Wilde is not a genius.
(12) Oscar Wilde is no genius.

By Oakleyâs (2005) account, a speakerâs choice for not or no is a matter of virtual comparison or virtual contrast. The former presupposes an act of conceptual matching, in which two or more entities are brought together from the perspective of admitted similarity traits. Hence, the use of not is to sever the connecting links (of similarity) between entities considered to be similar or identical. Virtual contrast, on the other hand is trying to reinforce a commonly held view, rather than attempt to overturn it. Thus, as Oakley (2005) argues, no âimplies greater conceptual distance between the entities because the linguistic meaning of the governed noun profiles its objective, role-denoting properties rather than subjective, idiosyncratic qualities.â
To examine (11) and (12) from Oakleyâs perspective, it is obvious that while the descriptive negation in (11) challenges the veracity of an admitted opinion about Oscar Wilde (that he is a literary genius), the metalinguistic negation in (12) dismisses or ridicules the very opinion itself. Under such analysis, the opposite of Oscar Wilde is a genius could have at least two interpretations."

P.

Re: Grammar rules - check for correctness - a kind teacher please :)

Angle1 — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 22:30:38 GMT

Here are some examples

The main point is to explain the correct answer
The sentences are little-bit childisch ;they are some modified sentences. I am afraid that my explanations seems to be a little childisch, too. So please help me how to turn it into the right explanation.

Mary was real angry because Jack didnÂ´t show up

Real >> really - we use an adverb to determine the adjective

Fewer of the passangers is sick today

Fewer >> One - the verb is refers to singular, so we need to use singular pronoun

I asked my brother whom was on the phone

Whom >> who â Whom i sused in object case and with pronouns â we need a subject for the verb in the second clause

Jorge doesnÂ´t have no bullets in his rifle

No >> any - we should avoid double negation in written English. We could use either has + no or negation + any

I am just a little confused whether or not to go on exam.

Whether to be or not to be â I know how it should be, but I cannot explain it :/

Having be a dancer myself, I have excellent posture

Having be >> beeing â but how to explain it ???

I never did like these kind of exercises

These >> that â but could it be also this if I were pointing at it?

Kind is singular, so we need a singular demostrative pronoun

You telling the truth is ..

You >> your â telling is a gerund, gerunds are used like nouns. We need a possessive pronoun

The bakery depends on meal beeing delivered without delay

Meal >> mealÂ´s â beeing is a gerund, and meal refers to this gerund. We need to use a genitive form with âÂ´sâ

Re: Standard spoken English

Anonymous — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 09:00:04 GMT

Something to chew on:

THE NOTION OF STANDARD SPOKEN GRAMMAR

The term âstandard grammarâ is most typically associated with written language,
and is usually considered to be characteristic of the recurrent usage of adult,
educated native speakers of a language. Standard grammar ideally reveals no
particular regional bias. Thus âStandard British Englishâ grammar consists of items
and forms that are found in the written usage of adult educated native speakers
from Wales, Scotland and England and those Northern Irish users who consider
themselves part of the British English speech community.

The typical sources of evidence for standard usage are literary texts, quality
journalism, academic and professional writing, etc. Standard grammar is given the
status of the official record of educated usage by being written down in grammar
books and taught in schools and universities.

Spoken transcripts often have frequent occurrences of items and structures
considered incorrect according to the norms of standard written English. However,
many such forms are frequently and routinely used by adult, educated native speakers.

Examples of such structures are split infinitives (e.g. We decided to immediately sell it),
double negation (e.g. He wonât be late I donât think, as compared to I donât think he will
be late), singular nouns after plural measurement expressions (e.g. Heâs about six foot
tall), the use of contracted forms such as gonna (going to), wanna (want to), and so on.

Standard spoken English grammar will therefore be different from standard
written English grammar in many respects if we consider âstandardâ to be a
description of the recurrent spoken usage of adult native speakers. What may be
considered ânon-standardâ in writing may well be âstandardâ in speech.
Speech and writing are not independent. Although some forms of spoken
grammar do not appear in writing (unless in written dialogues), there is
considerable overlap and there is an increasing range of forms appearing in
informal written texts which previously were only considered acceptable in
speech. In 120 the presence of typically spoken grammatical forms contexts as emails and internet chat-room exchanges is discussed.

From: The Cambridge Grammar of English (GCE)

Re: Bilingual

Cool Breeze — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 16:06:07 GMT

Anonymous
Websters is more of a descriptive dictionary. Cambridge and Oxford are prescriptive. I think that explains why Webster's has it as a noun. As our language evolves (becomes degraded), the more we'll find things in Websters that aren't widesly accepted by grammarians.

I agree with your analysis regarding the character of the two dictionaries. If change equal degradation, English was ruined hundreds of years ago. There are countless examples of that: the use of the auxiliary do in questions and negations, the use of s as a nearly universal plural ending, the use of which and who as relative pronouns etc. Also, more than 99 percent of modern English spellings are incorrect compared with what they were 1200 years ago. The language is completely corrupt if we accept the premise that change equals degradation.

The funny thing is that most people don't consider past changes bad, only those that happen in their lifetime. I fail to understand the logic behind that reasoning.

Re: Proficiency alongside "poverty".

Cool Breeze — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 09:58:49 GMT

Anonymous
In that respect, I would like to know when and how the auxiliary "do" appeared in English. What kind of people introduced it into the English language?
I would like to know who decided about the value of tenses of the Past. They do not correspond to the value of the tenses of the Past in latinoÃ¯d languages. Who can give me answers ?
In this debate, I do not think there is an evolution towards simplicity nor towards more complicated structures. The
communities of native speakers of a language constantly change the rules and the meaning of words (although the main core remains more or less stable for facility reasons.)
Ethnic languages are tools of inclusion and mainly exclusion (internal and external). That is why there are so many exceptions.
No ethnic language is that easy to learn. When I say "to learn" I mean to learn it to be on equal footing with a native speaker of the language. There will always be a difference, a discrimination.
From what I have experienced ( I am very interested by languages), there is no easy language. All has been done by training.
There is no natural language : everything has been constructed by Man.
I invite the readers to learn an interlanguage such as Esperanto, compare it with your mother tongue and with languages you have studied later. 90% to 95% of the time is spent to the learning of exceptions. That is why a language without exception such as Esperanto is ten to twenty times faster to learn than ethnic languages.
It is fascinating to see how a universal congress of Esperanto works and to compare it with an international congress in only one language. Many prejudices fall.
Maybe I am opening new interests in the debate..
George/Belgium

Do existed in Old English more than a thousand years ago as a regular verb and meant to cause. It is impossible to say who introduced it to English. It's use as an auxiliary in questions and negations was established in Shakespeare's day when it was correct to say both

I know not him
and
I do not know him.

It is very common that the usage of tenses varies from language to language, especially if the languages are not closely related. No reasons can usually be given for this. You might just as well ask why the usage of tenses in the Romance languages differs from that in English. Linguistic changes are often shrouded in the past and there is no knowing why they occurred.

All words and grammatical structures people are not used to sound wrong and/or odd and therefore people usually object to changes that are about to happen in their lifetime and think the language is deteriorating. This is true about all languages, not just English. People tend to think a language is at its most beautiful right now and any change will just make it worse.

English grammar has become so simple over the centuries that I cannot envisage it becoming any simpler without the risk of English becoming even more inexact than it is now. However, not all changes have made the language simpler in structure. In Old English there was just one relative pronoun and it had only one form. That made communication with relative clauses very awkward and it wasn't a great surprise that who, whom, whose, what and which began to be used as relatives to facilitate communication.

CB

Re: Is "There is not any student that knows the answer. " correct?

CalifJim — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 07:32:07 GMT

Yoong Liat,

No. Not necessarily better, but it's another way of expressing that thought which is equally grammatical.

I've observed that the negation is quite often on the verb when the noun in question is concrete. Leaving the verb in the affirmative and negating the noun with the determiner no is quite often the pattern when the noun is abstract. For this reason, I would leave this one as given in the first post -- with the negation on the verb -- and I would reserve the negation of the noun for cases like There is no challenge we cannot face / (There are no challenges we cannot face) / There is no peace without justice / There was no enthusiasm in her voice.

(But either pattern is fine with either kind of noun. You can be sure of that.)

CJ

Re: None for me. / Not for me.

Marius Hancu — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 20:34:50 GMT

1. None for me. The negation is in the pronoun. You negate (wanting) the object.

2. Not for me. The negation is in the verb. You negate the action of giving the object to you.

Re: I used not to play football.

CalifJim — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 18:47:53 GMT

If he asks why there is no justification, what should the "critic's" answer be?

In the case of flowers reds, I imagine the answer is that in English the adjectives come before the noun and are not inflected for plurality. Or put differently, nobody says it that way.
In the case of the football example, the grammatical justification is then as I outlined above, not being the negation of the following infinitive structure. Other examples of the same structure are: I [decided / resolved / promised] not to play football. used is highly idiomatic in that position, but the structure is the same.

CJ

Re: Proficiency alongside "poverty".

Cool Breeze — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 08:49:45 GMT

MrPedantic wrote:
It interests me that some modern languages have at least the appearance of greater simplicity (e.g. the loss of inflection) than their counterparts of 900 years ago. This seems counter-intuitive: you would expect a language to evolve towards (not from) complexity.

Hello MrP

As far as English is concerned, the loss of inflections is largely due to massive foreign influence that lasted for centuries. Even native speakers of English began to drop inflections that could be dispensed with when they heard nonnatives use these uninflected forms. Learning a foreign word is always easier than learning to use it grammatically. Many Italian men know little about Finnish grammar but when they say I love you in broken Finnish to a fair-haired Finnish woman, she understands immediately.

If a language can't fulfil its needs, it will grow more complicated with time. That has happened to English as well. There was only one relative pronoun in Old English - and it was uninflected - and that clearly wasn't enough for seamless communication. Therefore people began using which, who and what as relative pronouns in addition to the original that. This way a handy genitive (whose) appeared. Unfortunately it is considered stilted by many in some contexts despite its neatness.

Another development, this time inexplicable and totally useless, towards complexity was the appearance of the auxiliary do in questions and negations. In Shakespeare's day it was possible to say Know you him? or Do you know him? and the modern usage became the norm after his death. As there is nothing similar in other Germanic languages, learning to use do correctly is a minor hindrance to learners in the early stages of language acquisition.

Cheers
CB