In Present tenses^x, Past simple^x

3a) A cat ate the small animal. 3b) A cat is a small animal. The syntactic analyses of the two sentences are differents. In the sentence 3a) we have (s, v, do) while, in the second sentence 3b) we have (s, v (copular), sP). In 3a) “a cat “is noun phrase (a is determiner...

I came across the following explanation:The Present Simple is used to give life and colour to the telling of a story. The Past Simple does not have the same dramatic effect. That is why jokes are often told in the present.

Ellisa: This is a very long passage, and your other post seems to be even longer. The editor at this web site makes it difficult to make corrections to long passages. Also, many teachers do not want to devote a long time working on a single post. If you post only one paragraph at a time, then...

A Myriad of Grammar Problems... :(I have absolutely no idea how to do these, can someone tell me what's going on here, Ive looked up many pages on the web but still am stumped on these:Exercise 9 Rewrite the following in the PASSIVE voice. E.g. 1. My wife wrote the letter. --> The letter...

Hello everyone! I need your help. One of my books contains the following examples of the reported speech:1) "Why is the world round?"asked the little girl.The little girl wanted to know why the world was round.2) "Smoking is bad for you", the teacher told us.The teacher...

Hello Goodman. «- I presume the "they" you refered to is the chefs, am I right?» Right, and I wondered what _you_ referred to with the "they" in your sentence... Now I see it were the take-outs! «2. But eating from a "box" an hour after it has been cooked is not...

Hi Mr Liat,I said earlier that the presence of "myself" in "I lay myself in bed" makes the verb transitive. Hence, "lay" here is the present tense of lay (laid, laid) and NOT the past of lie (lay, lain) because the latter is intransitive and cannot take any direct...

Good Time of Day! Well, I just read the list of members online and found this: -- In the past 3 days, the most popular thread for everyone has been "Sample of formal letter writing". The post with the most views is "Live chat room". The most replies ...

Hi Guys, I'm really happy to join your forums .. and I hope to spend useful and fun times with you My question is .. Can we ask a question in simple present tense which its answer is in past simple? For example, I may ask a question that is to be true either in the present or the future...

Verb = swim Swam = past simple tense. Refers to actions/events in past time. "She swam a kilometre yesterday." No connection with present time. Swum = past participle. Used to form the pefect tense with auxiliary verb "have" - have/has/had + past participle = perfect tense. Note the...