Search results for 'tag:Prepositions tag:Abbreviations' matching tags 'Prepositions' and 'Abbreviations'

Help on Predicate Nominatives, Object of Prep, and DO!

Anonymous — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:12:15 GMT

Hello.

I'm in 8th grade and am homeschooled. In my English class, I have recently been learning about diagraming subjects, appositives, direct objects, object of prepostitions, and predicate nominatives.
It would be easy, if I was still understanding the major parts. So I've been doing some research here on the net about the three that I still don't understand: Predicate nominatives, Object of Preposition, and Direct Object. In abbreviation, DO, OP and PN.

I think I'm starting to catch on, but any excess help would be greatly appreciated.

So far, I've taken these notes:

Direct Object: A noun that recieves the action of the sentence but that is not the subject.
Object of Prepostion: A noun or pronoun that follows a preposition & completes the prepostional phrase.
Predicate Nominative: A noun or pronoun that appears in the predicate of the sentence, following a linking verb and refers to the same person or thing as the subject of the verb.

Did I get all of my notes correct?

As said earlier, any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

- Melissa.

Re: what does CA mean here?

AlpheccaStars — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:11:09 GMT

The only word I could imagine would be "circa".

Here is the definition from Dictionary.com:

âpreposition, adverb about: (used esp. in) approximate dates: The Venerable Bede was born circa 673. Abbreviation: ca, ca., c., c, cir., circ.

A Little Help with Capitals

angel_tristan0409 — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 10:07:10 GMT

A Little Help with Capitals

This handout lists some guidelines for capitalization. If you have a question about whether a specific word should be capitalized that doesn't fit under one of these rules, try checking a dictionary to see if the word is capitalized there.

Use capital letters in the following ways:

The first words of a sentence

When he tells a joke, he sometimes forgets the punch line.

The pronoun "I"

The last time I visited Atlanta was several years ago.

Proper nouns (the names of specific people, places, organizations, and sometimes things)

Worrill Fabrication Company

Golden Gate Bridge

Supreme Court

Livingston, Missouri

Atlantic Ocean

Mothers Against Drunk Driving

Family relationships (when used as proper names)

I sent a thank-you note to Aunt Abigail, but not to my other aunts.

Here is a present I bought for Mother.

Did you buy a present for your mother?

The names of God, specific deities, religious figures, and holy books

God the Father

the Virgin Mary

the Bible

the Greek gods

Moses

Shiva

Buddha

Zeus

Exception: Do not capitalize the non-specific use of the word "god."

The word "polytheistic" means the worship of more than one god.

Titles preceding names, but not titles that follow names

She worked as the assistant to Mayor Hanolovi.

I was able to interview Miriam Moss, mayor of Littonville.

Directions that are names (North, South, East, and West when used as sections of the country, but not as compass directions)

The Patels have moved to the Southwest.

Jim's house is two miles north of Otterbein.

The days of the week, the months of the year, and holidays (but not the seasons used generally)

Halloween

October

Friday

winter

spring

fall

Exception: Seasons are capitalized when used in a title.

The Fall 1999 semester

The names of countries, nationalities, and specific languages

Costa Rica

Spanish

French

English

The first word in a sentence that is a direct quote

Emerson once said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

The major words in the titles of books, articles, and songs (but not short prepositions or the articles "the," "a," or "an," if they are not the first word of the title)

One of Jerry's favorite books is The Catcher in the Rye.

Members of national, political, racial, social, civic, and athletic groups

Green Bay Packers

African-Americans

Anti-Semitic

Democrats

Friends of the Wilderness

Chinese

Periods and events (but not century numbers)

Victorian Era

Great Depression

Constitutional Convention

sixteenth century

Trademarks

Pepsi

Honda

IBM

Microsoft Word

Words and abbreviations of specific names (but not names of things that came from specific things but are now general types)

Freudian

NBC

pasteurize

french fries

italics

Re: Distinguishing an object and a separate noun

CalifJim — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 20:30:50 GMT

Here's the relevant definition from that first link.

intr.v. verged, vergÂ·ing, vergÂ·es

To approach the nature or condition of something specified; come close. Used with on: a brilliance verging on genius.

Note the abbreviation intr. This means intransitive. That is, the verb does not take an object. (A transitive verb can take an object.)

In the second link, three kinds of objects are described. The first two (direct and indirect) are objects of verbs; the third is the object of a preposition. Now the verb verge, we see above, cannot take an object, so the only object possible in your example is the third type -- object of a preposition. And the preposition is on.

verged - on - greatness = verb - preposition - object of the preposition on.
verged - on - disaster = verb - preposition - object of the preposition on.

In that second link, the term "prepositional object of the verb" is very confusing. If I were you, I would not take this terminology too seriously. This is a term sometimes used for the complement of a "prepositional verb", that is, a combination of verb and preposition which is fairly fixed in meaning and acts as a unit, like 'listen to'. It is an open question whether 'verge on' can be considered such a verb.

In that link, the introduction of this advanced bit of specialized information in the middle of a simple explanation of the three types of objects serves no purpose except to confuse, and the author would have done better to omit it.

I hope this helps.
CJ

Grammar Ninja

KWarp — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 08:28:25 GMT

Grammar Ninja is an educational game where the player identifies parts of speech in rapid succession. Correct answers help you advance; wrong ones blow up in your face. The game is modeled after Brain Age's CalculationsX20 exercise. Grammar Ninja is my final project for my Independent Study in Game Design.

Currently the game is a work in progress and will be completed next week. I'm posting here to find people to stuff the game with grammatically accurate sentences.

You can play the game here (click).
(ultimately all three modes will have 20 questions per run)

Content:
Flash canât accept external data from txt files in the way that I need it, so all the sentences the game uses must be created beforehand. Itâs very easy for anyone to create a sentence:

//Sentences are defined like this
asen000 = new Array(new Word("Joe", "N"), new Word("is", "V"), new Word("hungry.", "ADJ"));

If the formatting confuses you, donât worry, you only need to worry about the stuff between the quotes (ââ). Itâs simplest to illustrate.

new Word("The word you want to include", "The part of speech the word isâ)

The part of speech is an ALL CAPS abbreviation of the word. It MUST BE one of the following:
Noun = N
Verb = V
Pronoun = PRO
Adjective = ADJ
Adverb = ADV
Preposition = PREP
Conjunction = CONJ
Interjection = INT
Article = ART

The number of words in the sentence will be exactly the number of words you put in, separated by commas. To illustrate again:

//separate each word by a comma, keep making as many as you like
//hower it gets unreadable around 35 words
new Array(word, word, word);

I want at least 50 sentences each for the easy, medium, and hard modes, and thereâs no way can do it alone in a week. Please please help me by contributing some sentences!!!

As guidelines
Easy questions have between 2-6 words
Medium questions have between 6-15 words
Hard questions have between 15-30 words

Keep the content appropriate for all ages, quote whatever you want as long as it makes grammatical sense. If you want to add something like â~Ernest Hemmingwayâ make it one big word and label itâs part of speech âNâ. No slurring words (donât, wonât arenât) or whatever it is.

Please be accurate, or at very least review the accuracy of others.

A BIG THANKS to anyone that helps out.

Study guide.

Matrix4583 — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 02:03:02 GMT

Hey, i'm new here. My name is Tim and I got this forum from a friend of mine. He told me that this might help me with the problem i got. I have a brother that is 16 years old and i'm 23( in the US Army). He needs help with his english. The teacher gave him the study guide, but no answer on it. So i ask him to give the study guide to me and i'll help him with it. Well, since i'm busy soo much on school and my job, it's impossible for me to do this. I was wondering if you have some time and help me with this problem. I really appreciate it. Here's the problem.

Language Art:

A. apostrophe
B. Synonym
C. noun or pronoun
D. quotations mark
E. Adjective
F. verb or verb phrase
G. abbreviation
H. antonyms
I. root word.
J. proper nouns
K. Verb
L. action and linking
M. gerund
N. adverb
O. gender
P. subject
Q. Nomniative, object and possessive
R. Predicate nominative
S. Present, past and future
T. direct object.
U. prepositions
V. appositive
W. Object of a preposition

1.____ The subject of a sentence may be what part of speech?
2.____ States what the subject does, is or has in a sentence.
3.____ Sometimes called the simple predicate
4.____ The main part of a without any affixes.
5.____ Two kinds of a Verb.
6.____ What moddifies noun or pronoun?
7.____ What follow a linking verb or action verb?
8.____ The simple tense of verb.
9.____ Follow a preposition.
10.____ Tells more about another noun.
11.____ Answer "what?" or "whom?"
12.____ who or what the sentences about.
13.____ The three cases of personal pronoun.
14.____ personal pronoun have number, person and what?
15.____ Usually modifies a verb, but can sometimes modify an adjective.
16.____ show relationship between it's object and some other word in a sentence.
17.____ A participle that end in "ing" and functions as a noun.
18.____ needed to form possessive nouns and contractions.
19.____ Capitalized because they are particular person, places, and things.
20.____ A short way of writing a word consisting of some of the letters in the word followed by a period.
21.____ Used to show where the exact word of a speaker begin and end.
22.____ Opposite meaning.
23.____ A word that is similar to another in meaning.

That's it. Hoooha.

Study guide.

Matrix4583 — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 22:08:35 GMT

Re: "Like so": formal or informal?

Casi — Tue, 08 Feb 2005 10:50:48 GMT

It's fine, not to mention clear, and user friendly.

EX: Put it here, like this or like so (e.i., as I am doing it).

Use "as" before a (subject) + verb sequence, and use "like" before a nominal. "like" functions as a preposition in our example, and it takes "so", a nominal as its object. "so" generally functions as an adverb, but here, in our example, it functions as an adjective e.g., Leave it exactly so (i.e., the same way as shown).

Alternatively, you could leave out the phrase, and italicize the example, like this,

In US addresses, the state postal code abbreviation precedes the zip code.

PA 3400, USA

You could also use, "like this".

Re: How Curious

rommie — Sat, 21 Feb 2004 13:11:20 GMT

Yes, of course. That's what WHL was saying. But they follow a pattern, and so that patten must have had a history, an evolution. Whole sets of phrases like that with parallel structure don't just appear out of nowhere. Something must have existed before it, and whatever it was, it probably complied with the rules of grammar at the time. I'm just interested in such anomolies, that's all. Maybe it won't squeeze into today's rules, but I'd put good money on the notion that it did, once upon a time.

In any case, I've now got some new sentences for us to consider:

I always knew what an idiot he was.

I always knew how interesting it could be.

NOW we can get serious - these are not idomatic phrases, they are real sentences, even in today's world (thanks to maj and Chameleon for the idea). Now my question becomes: What role to "what" and "how" play in these sentences?

I can tell you what they're not. "What" is NOT an abbreviation for "that which". It is not being used as either a determiner or a pronoun, either reflexively or interrogatively. "How" normally means "[by] which means", but it doesn't mean that here (- in fact, it seems to be acting as a preposition). My suspicion is aroused by the fact that both of these situations involve question words, and now, I'm starting to wonder whether other question words may play a similar role?

Why, it's Mr Smith. How good to meet you. What a pleasure.
(But let's focus our attention on the examples above, which I assume we can agree are sentences).

Rommie

Different from America

rommie — Wed, 18 Feb 2004 14:31:13 GMT

In another thread (Prepositions) Chameleon made reference to the difference between "different from" and "different to". For what it's worth, here's my take on it. DIFFERENT FROM is correct. All else is ... less correct. Here's why:

Why is "different from" correct?

Okay, let's start with some logical reasoning. See - it all starts with the verb "to differ". This is an intransitive verb, so you can't say "A differs B". You can, however, use it reciprocally, as in "A and B differ from each other". "To differ" has two acceptable prepositional forms, each with a different meaning - "to differ FROM", and "to differ WITH".

1. To differ FROM something is "to be unlike or distinct in one or more respects or characteristics" or "be unlike in nature or form" - these definitions are from Merriam-Webster, which is of course an American dictionary, but the definitions agree with the British ones, so everyone's happy.
2. To differ WITH someone is to disagree with them - in the words of M-W: "to be of unlike or opposite opinion : disagree in sentiment".

In other words, if I differ FROM you, then I am not the same as you; if I differ WITH you, then I disagree with you. Both America and Britain are happy to agree on this usage.

Now, the word "different" is derived from "to differ" in just the same way that "conformant" is derived from "to conform", or "indulgent" is derived from "to indulge". So you might suppose that we ought to be able to say that to be different FROM something is to not be the same as it, and that to be different WITH something is to disagree with it. However, the latter meaning does not carry over into the derived form - this is because WITH already has a positional meaning, and so the sentence would have otherwise became ambiguous. (When we say "It's different WITH her", we mean "It's different when I'm with her". We can similarly say "It's different FOR you", meaning "It's different when it's you instead of me"). So this leaves us with only "different FROM" transferred from "to differ FROM".

Why is "different to" incorrect?

"Different to" is incorrect only in the sense that it does not logically fall out of the above argument. However, there is still some formal justification for it. It could be argued that "different to" is merely employing ellipsis - that it is an abbreviation for "different (compared) to", or "different (in relation) to", and so on. There are any number of phrases you could insert to make it make sense, and since doing so does not introduce any real ambiguity, it is hard to argue that this usage should be outlawed. Consequently, though the formal position remains that "different from" is the axiomatically correct version, "different to" is quite acceptable in spoken English.

Why is "different than" incorrect?

Quite simply because "than" is not a preposition at all - it is a conjunction. Compare these sentences:

1. I like him more than her.
2. I like him more than she.

Both are correct, but they mean different things. In full, they mean:

1. I like him more than (I like) her.
2. I like him more than she (likes him).

Clearly, the entire phrase "more than" is acting as a conjunction - this is evident from the objective case form (2). A preposition, on the other hand, would demand subjective case. (In fact, "different" may never take an objective case because it is intransitive). So "than" is a conjunction, and its correct use is in phrases such as "more than" and "less than".

Is it ever correct to say "different than"?

It can be. Both of the following sentences are sound. Sentence (1) is okay for fairly obvious reasons, but (2) might require some explanation.

1. I am more different than she.
2. The working day ends at a different time for you than it does for me.

Sentence 1 would not be formally correct, had it said "her" instead of "she". It is correct because THAN goes with MORE, not with DIFFERENT. We are in effect saying "I am more different (from something) than she (is)".

Sentence 2, surprisingly, is actually acceptable, perhaps because lots of respectable writers have done this sort of thing over the centuries. This usage is actually fairly simple to explain - here, "than" is being used as an abbreviation for "from that at which". In other words, the fully expanded sentence should be: "The working day ends at a different time for you FROM THAT AT WHICH it does for me." This version of the sentence is long and cumbersome - the version with THAN is smoother and easier to follow. In general, the rule is that "different from that ____ which" (where "____" is any preposition) may be replaced with "different than", even in British English. This does not, however, justify replacing "different from" with "different than" in all instances.

So why do Americans say "different than" all the time?

Who knows? Usage is usage. If they keep doing it for long enough, this usage will eventually become historical, and then eventually it will become formally acceptable. Usage drives the rules - if the usage is used consistently and for long enough. The American usage is by now well established - at least in America. It's not going to go away, and the Americans prefer to say "different than" over and above either of the other forms. So perhaps, in time, "than" will change its classification and become a preposition after all. Only time will tell.

Best advice? In formal writing, use "different from". In speech, use "different from" or "different to" in England, "different than" in America.

Rommie