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

Please Check My Answers

Blondie024 — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 20:08:36 GMT

1. The possessive of a plural noun ending in s is formed by adding:

A. another s and an apostrophe. B. another s only. C. an apostrophe only. D. none of the above

I think the answer is C.

2. Which of the following shows the correct possessive form of a plural noun?

A. three dogs bowls B. three dog's bowls C. three dogs' bowls D. none of the above

I think the answer is C.

3. In a contraction, the apostrophe replaces:

A. missing letters. B. using an s. C. a unit of measurement. D. none of the above.

I think the answer is A.

4. Which of the following is a correct contraction of "they would"?

A. they'ld B. they'd C. they'wld D. none of the above

I think the answer is D.

5. Which of the following shows the correct possessive form of "children"?

A. childrens B. childrens' C. childrens's D. children's

I think the answer is A.

6. A preposition connects a (n):

A. subject and verb. B. object and modifiers. C. subject and predicate. D. adjective and adverb.

Re: Comes in colours.

Alan.es — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 11:34:49 GMT

Yes, I'll and we'll are contractions of I shall and we shall.

Yes, teaching whom does irritate me a little but it's not tested as much so minor irritation only.

I accept and use shall in my own conversations and writing but then I learned my grammar when you couldn't end a sentence with a preposition nor could you split an infinitive.

Google is very useful but I don't accept its use as a means of proof for correct usage in English.

Let's not argue about the disappearance of shall from the English language. It will be with us for many years yet but its use in everyday English has declined enormously already.

The same is true for whom.

Re: question with preposition at the end

Anonymous — Fri, 19 May 2006 16:46:49 GMT

Moijelesuis wrote:
technically, the sentence should be phrased "with whom is he going out?",

This is not a technical issue. It is an issue of antiquity. Some people still believe that the antiquated and outdated whom is still "techically" superior to actual and ubiquitous usage seen today.

but you may die of old age before you hear someone actually say this.

As you do recognize.

nevertheless, "whom" being an object pronoun, should not be effected by moving the preposition to the end: "whom is she going out with?". again, as mentioned in other threads, the use of "whom" is in decline.

If a person were to use whom, then I would recommend inserting the preposition prior to whom. When who is used, as is common nowadays, then I would insert the preposition at the end.

as for the example "where is he at?", the final word is compltely superfluous and serves no purpose whatsoever.

I disagree. I consider this a valid contraction for "Where is this located at". I think that it is very casual, but not worthless in all circumstances.

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: Questions on past particple?

paco2004 — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 07:54:32 GMT

"Compared with ..." was originally derived from the contraction of an adverbial clause "when something is compared with ...", but it is now used as a kind of a compound preposition. So, as I told in the first reply, you'd better not analyze it too much grammatically.

    (EX) Most Bermudian beaches are small compared with ocean beaches in the States
    (EX) This loss was nothing compared with what had been expected by the farmers
    (EX) I value them little compared with the beauty you have given me.
    (EX) This represents an overall cash increase of 5.9 per cent compared with 2005-06
    (EX) Compared with Bill Clinton, George W. Bush is certainly no workaholic

paco

Re: Grammar in context exercise

CalifJim — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 15:54:37 GMT

Dear Joe,

Sorry it 1) has taken me so long to reply to the letter you wrote 2) in May. The trouble WAS (can we put âISâ here ?yes) it 3) arrived 4) in the middle of the summer exams and I 5) was just too busy to write back. That 6) is my excuse anyway.

7) On Friday, thatâs 8) in three daysâ time, we 9) a) ARE GOING TO BREAK UP / b) ARE BREAKING UPeither OK 10) FOR (?)OK the holidays. I canât wait. My friends and I 11) have a great weekend planned. 12) On Friday evening we 13) ARE HAVING a party to celebrate the end of the school year. Then, we 14) ARE STARTING our mini adventure. 15) On Saturday morning, we 16) a) ARE GETTING UP / b) ARE GOING TO GET UP either OK early to catch the ferry 17) to France. The boat 18) LEAVES 19) at 9.30 and 20)) GETS 21) to Calais a few minutes 22) before / after 11 oâclock.

I expect we 23) WILL STOP 24) for something to eat in a little cafÃ©, and then we 25) a) WILL DRIVEyes / b) ARE DRIVINGI'd say no - not with "expect" 26) to Amiens. We 27) are not quite sure how long it 28) WILL TAKE. You 29) a) ARE probably WONDERINGyes / b) probably WONDERno why we 30) ARE GOING to France at (is this a preposition ?) yes all. Well, the thing is there 31) a) IS / b) WILL BE (possible ?no) a Slur (what is this ? name of a group?) concert in Amiens 32) in the evening â 33) at a place called Megacity â and it 34) SEEMED like a really exciting idea. It is 35) at 9 oâclock, so as long as we 36) keep driving, we 37)) WILL GET there 38) in good time.

We 39) WILL probably SPEND Sunday and Monday 40) looking around that part of France, and then 41) catch the Tuesday morning ferry back 42) to Dover.

I 43) WILL SEND you a postcard if I 44) have time.

Hope you 45) a) HAVE yes / b WILL HAVE no a good summer. 46) a) ARE you DOING / b) WILL you BE DOING either OK anything exciting? Write soon.

Love, Sue

Comment: The whole thing would read more smoothly if you used contractions "we're", "we'll", "I'm", "I'll", and so on.

CJ

Re: Confuse personal pronouns

Mister Micawber — Sun, 17 Oct 2004 02:55:23 GMT

Hi Happy,

This area is a very contentious one, so it is not surprising that you find different pronouncements within and between grammar books. Here is my opinion on the examples you present:

(1) 'Who did it ?' Not I.'

The pronoun stands in parallel to the subject 'who', and is a shortened form of 'I didn't do it.' As such, it is formally correct, but 'Not me' is common and acceptable in spoken English.

(2) 'It is I telling you to go out.'
'It is them I spoke to.'

In the first of these two sentences, 'I' again stands in subject apposition to 'who'-- '(who is) telling'-- while in the second sentence 'them' stands in object apposition to 'whom'-- '(whom) I spoke to' ['I spoke to them']. In informal English, however, 'It's me telling you to go out' is common and acceptable.

(3) 'Let you and me go out.'
'Let her and him do the work.'

Both of these sentences are imperative, with the understood subject 'you', so that, (ungrammatically) extended, they would read:

'(You) let you and me go out.'
'(You) let her and him do the work.'

Now it is obvious that 'you, me, her and him' are objects of the main verb. Having said that, as you will see from the additional references I quote below, 'you and I' has become so common a collocation that it is becoming acceptable in any position: 'Let's you and I have a picnic'-- in spite of the fact that 'let's' is the contraction for 'let us', which is clearly and rigidly petrified in the objective case.

(4) 'If I were a millionaire, I would buy you a car.'
'If he were a millionaire, he would buy a car.'

Both are conditional and formally take the subjunctive form 'were' in all persons; that is simply the nature of English-- one of the uses of the subjunctive mood is to express hypothetical situations. Again, however, 'if I was' is becoming increasingly acceptable in spoken English. Another sign of the slow death of the distinct subjunctive forms in the language.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some additional references:

(1) From the Columbia Guide to Standard American English:

"Most speakers of English tend to put nominative case pronouns at the left-hand side of the clause, in âsubjectiveâ territory before the verb, and objective case pronouns at the right-hand side of the clause, in âobjectiveâ territory after it. Apparently the pressure of this habit is so great that it overwhelms the Standard Formal pattern for the special class of verbs called linking or copulative verbs, wherein It is she is required, at least by rule, rather than Itâs her, or where This is he is needed, not This is him. The primary use of the objective case pronoun after linking verbs is in the first person: Itâs us, Itâs me. With third person, singular and plural, many Standard speakers will retain the nominative, even at lower levels of speech and in Informal uses. (And of course with second person you, the nominative and objective are indistinguishable.) But Itâs me and Itâs us are both Standard in all Conversational and most Informal uses, perhaps in part because they occur almost exclusively in speech anyway. Consider the way you answer the phone if the caller asks for you. To a stranger youâll respond (if youâre a Standard speaker), This is she [he], not This is me, or youâll dodge the issue entirely and say Speaking. If you know the caller well, though, Itâs me will serve. In Oratorical speech and Formal writing, however, Standard English demands the nominative: It is we who must shoulder the burden. It is us just wonât do in that sort of context."

(2) Observations from Greenbaum & Quirk, A Student's Grammar of the English Language:

"Case in personal pronouns involves a distinction absent from nouns, marking broadly the grammatical roles of subject and object. . . . The choice of subjective and objective forms does not depend solely upon the strict grammatical distinction between subject and object. Rather, usage shows that we are concerned more with subject 'territory' (the pre-verbal part of a clause) in contrast to object 'territory' (the post-verbal part of the clause). In consequence of the latter consideration, it is usual in informal style to find objective forms selected in such instances as the following:

His sister is taller than him.
It wasn't me.

Many people are uncomfortable about such forms, however, especially in writing, though the subject variants are almost equally objectionable in seeming unnatural. Where an operator can be added, of course, the problem of choice satisfactorily disappears:

His sister is taller than he is.

Note: In contrast with 'except', which is always treated as a preposition and therefore followed by the objective case ('Nobody except her objected.'), there is vacillation over prepositional 'but', many people preferring the subjective form if it is in subject 'territory'. Thus:

Nobody but she objected.

Even in object territory, 'but' can be followed by either form, as with 'as' and 'than':

Nobody objected but she/her.

The frequency of the coordination 'you and I' seems to have resulted in a tendency to make it case-invariant, though such examples as the following are felt to be uneasily hypercorrect:

Let's you and I go together then."

Re: Correcting mistakes

migo — Sun, 04 Jul 2004 22:46:09 GMT

"I am not understanding" isn't wrong, it's just uncommon and awkward. "I am understanding" is present continuous and "I don't understand" is simple present. In some contexts "I am not understanding" could be more correct than "I don't understand" as the latter implies a lack of capability in understanding while the former just implies a current inability to understand. That's something you'd have to explain to them on a case by case basis, that colloquially "I don't understand" is used instead of "I am not understanding" because grammatically there isn't anything wrong with it. You could also explain that the sentence as constructed expects but doesn't explicitly require some form of qualifying completion, so "I am not understanding what you are saying/talking about/telling me" would be expected in most cases but not all.

"He's from Riverpool" is a contraction of "He is from Riverpool", which unless Riverpool isn't the name of a place is completely correct. I'm assuming "Riverpool" is actually "Liverpool"

"The life is good" would usually be said "Life is good", but depending on context "The life is good" could be correct - it would have to be in response to something. So without the context that it was used in it's going to be hard to pinpoint what the problem really is. It's another case of it being correct but uncommon usage.

"I've met him yesterday" is also correct, although again uncommon. "I did meet him yesterday" and "I met him yesterday" would be more common usages. "I've met him" would be used in the context when the question "Have you met him?" would be used. In this case "Yesterday" is pre-empting the question "When?" It's a giveaway that the student's a non-native speaker but grammatically there isn't anything you can correct, you just have to explain that it's not what is used.

"He is happy despite he is poor" looks like they just learned how to say "despite" as "He is happy although he is poor" is correct. So depending on the students existing vocabulary it could simply be a problem of assuming that despite means the same thing or works in the same way as although or even though. Despite is a preposition and requires an object, while although is a coordinating conjunction, the student is using despite as if it were a coordinating conjunction.

I hope this helps.

Re: question with preposition at the end

moijelesuis — Fri, 05 Sep 2003 18:11:10 GMT

good clarification raul! on further reflection, i think that sentences such as "where is he at?" come from a general tendancy to make contractions - and would always be pronounced "where's he at?" (never as four distinct words, the "is" being melded with "where"). as a two-syllable expression, "where's he?" (minus the "at")... it just does not work, since the stressed part of the sentence is the verb. how on earth the "at" came in to play, when "where IS he" is a perfectly valid stressed sentence, who knows. i have no idea where that comes from... i mean, i have no idea from where that comes... after all, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which i shall not put. (here we have an extremely bizarre hypercorrection of a common expression rendered nearly incomprehensibe by grammar "rules")

last word: if better vocabulary were used rather than resorting to monosyllabic verbs bolstered by prepositions, much of this debate would be moot! (ex. "tolerate" rather than "put up with") i love the variety of english, but the "old rules" do not always comform to new usages.