By Prepositions, Word order

Re: What makes English so difficult to learn?

As a native English speaker (well perhaps not entirely native, I was born in Russia and immigrated to the U.S. at the tender age of 7) I would have to say that apart from the obviously difficult aspects of the English language such as tenses, an unorthodox phonetic system employed in the language...

Re: sell out vs sell out of

Hi Hoa ThaiThere were a number of details that I considered in my last post. These included the following:- Sold out used strictly as a verb vs sold out used like an adjective - Verb tense- Using sold vs sold out (particularly in combination with the word 'all')- Word order (i.e. Does...

Re: About the meaning of "where"

I'll try to give some information on this as a non-professional.This is how it looks like in the serbian language,and I suppose,it is very similar in all other slavic languages and also the latin language.For indicating a location the locative case of a noun is used.If the english language...

Could you please enlighten me... (followed by what?)

Hi everyone! I got stuck with this one... If I begin with "Can you please enlighten me...", what's the preposition that follows? I suppose that it depends on what you are asking. If I wanted to ask about the registration process on a website, for example, should it be:Can you please enlighten me...

Re: Grammatical Cases and the English Language

There are precious few relics of the Dative case remaining in Modern English. The word whom is currently in its death throes and has been for 100 years or so; and in serious (and possibly fatal) decline during the last fifty.But it must be remembered that whom is not a resident purely of the...

Re: Proficiency alongside "poverty".

Hi ForbesThank you for your long reply. I do appreciate it. I would just like to say that I my opinion is based on the knowledge I have of the Germanic and Romance languages and it is of course very subjective. I fully understand that not everyone agrees with me and what I consider easy may be...

Re: Proficiency alongside "poverty".

Hi Cool Breeze I thought that might be what you were getting at. I think it is a mistake to equate complexity solely with the degree of inflectional morphology of a language. I have never studied Finnish, but I would be willing to bet that at least one of the following is true: 1. that a...

Re: preposition at the end

From which university you did graduation? From which university you have done graduation? Anon, there are two problems here: 1) Word order - although you can use your tone of voice to make a question out of this, usually in a question, you invert the verb-subject. Did you graduate? 2) We...

Re: Differ between a preposition and an adverb in a phrasal verb.

They set a riot off seems acceptable, even though our preference seems to be for They set off a riot. (Note the article.) Here it is the selectional criteria that may be interfering. Substitute bomb for riot, and both They set off a bomb and They set a bomb off are fine, neither seeming to be...

Re: Differ between a preposition and an adverb in a phrasal verb.

They set a riot off seems acceptable, even though our preference seems to be for They set off a riot. (Note the article.) Here it is the selectional criteria that may be interfering. Substitute bomb for riot, and both They set off a bomb and They set a bomb off are fine, neither seeming to be...