Search results for 'tag:Pronouns tag:English grammar' matching tags 'Pronouns' and 'English grammar'

Grammar point, please help clarify this

Anonymous — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:17:42 GMT

Hi, I need help with this grammar point.

I was preparing myself for an English Grammar test, the material I'm studying to prepare for the test says that there are 7 words, namely 3 articles (a, an, the) and 4 possessive pronouns (my, our, your, their), are always "adjectives". What?! Could someone be kind enough to explain the logic or reason for that? I just simply can't wrap my head around that concept. Thanks.

Raen

Re: gerund or verbal noun with an article?

Anonymous — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 12:36:08 GMT

hi,
i've been struggling with coming to grips with the differences between verbal nouns and gerunds.
e.g. John's singing the national anthem bothered me. or John's singing of the national anthem bothered me.
which is correct, and in the second case is 'singing' a gerund or verbal noun?

The beginning of the book is better than the middle or end sections.
The beginning of a new book is always the most rewarding part. (beginning here meaning starting to read)
the first case is rather clear, i am not speaking of an action and it must be a verbal noun, but you can see where the problem lies.

The writing of a book is always an ambitious undertaking. (writing is the verbal noun)

from an article on verbal nouns on wikipedia,

The gerund is like the participle ..frequently modified by a possessive noun or pronoun.

taken from An English Grammar by W. M. Baskervill & J. W. Sewell

i am really confused as to what makes a gerund a gerund, and when a verbal noun is a verbal noun. any help in this matter would be really appreciated.

Re: Differences between English and your native language

Kooyeen — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 17:38:51 GMT

Hi CB,
I wouldn't know where to start! English grammar is pretty different from Italian grammar. However, there are a lot of similar words (one example: government - governo), and several similar structures and idioms. The problem is that there are also several false friends, and lots of features that are very confusing because they wouldn't make sense in Italian.

One example is prepositions: on the net, on a pc, in a movie, in a dictionary, in a newspaper... in Italian you could use either "in" or "on" (nel, nella, etc / sul, sulla, etc.), and no one would notice (I hope so, lol). I always have to be careful to use the right prepositions in English, in Italian I pick one at random, lol.

Then there are tricky words like "any" and "some", which in Italian are both "del, delle, etc.", so you don't have to choose. The same is true of "few" and "little" (=un po'), and for "already" and "yet" (=giÃ )... and many other things I don't remember right now.

And there are a lot more tricky things, like negative questions (we use negative questions to sound "casual" and "polite", but in English they sound completely different), genderless pronouns (in Italian it's so simple, it just depends whether the noun is masculine or feminine, so death is a "she", and hate is a "he"), etc.

Anyway, don't think Italian is simple... it's really a mess. And there are a lot of regional differences, REALLY a lot. Just think that I hardly ever speak Italian, so I wouldn't say my Italian is very good at all.

Re: I/me

Tanit — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 15:21:59 GMT

Yankee

Does that answer your question?

Yes, I think it does. Let me try to recap and to make general statements (I know, this is pretty dangerous when talking about English grammar!)

If the verb is intransitive there's no ambiguity, irrespective of the pronoun used: the meaning of I run faster than he (form.); I run faster than him (inform.); I run faster than you is clear.
If the verb is transitive,

ambiguity certainly arises when the pronoun is "you" (eg. "I love her more than you") because we cannot differentiate subject and object (unless the context makes it clear which is which, as Kooyeen said);
if the pronoun is other than "you", strictly speaking there is no ambiguity (eg. "I love her more than he" is different from "I love her more than him"). However (in informal speaking only) me/him/her/us/them can replace I/he/she/we/they, which makes the sentence ambiguous again (I'm obviously not taking the context into account, and considering the sentence as a stand-alone).

Hope it's fine
Thank you!

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

personal pronouns

Teo — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 22:00:31 GMT

The normal sequence of personal pronouns is as follows:

singular: [you, (s)he and I]; plural [we, you and they]

However, according to Treasury of English Grammar, when we want to express something unpleasant,

the sequence of personal pronouns is as follows:

singular [I, (s)he and you]; plural [they, you and we]

For example,

I, he and you will be punished for being late.

They, you and we should leave there at once.

Can any native speaker tell me whether the above rules are true or not?

Re: He insisted on my/me singing a song.

Cool Breeze — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 16:31:40 GMT

Grammar Geek wrote:
Singing is a gerund, a noun, so it takes the possessive my.

This is rather peculiar, I think. I have encountered the same thing on these forums many times. Native speakers say: "A gerund is a noun." Do they teach it that way in American schools and universities? Grammatical terminology varies greatly from country to country but I have yet to meet a grammarian who says a noun can have an object:

I insisted on his speaking English.

Furthermore, all nouns can have an adjectival attribute; in other words, we can put an adjective before them:

He likes old books.
Merry old England fascinates me.
Little Mary wanted to go out.
Useful information was given to everybody.

So, if gerunds are full-fledged nouns, the following is correct:

Correct speaking English is easy.

Few consider it correct. A gerund is neither a noun nor a verb; it's a cross between them. It has some qualities characteristic of nouns and some that are characteristic of verbs. It resembles a verb in that it can take an object, for instance.

Therefore, "I insist on him speaking English" and "I insist on his speaking English" are equally grammatical. In the first sentence, him is used due to the influence of the preposition on, which is normal English grammar. In the second sentence his is used because speaking is a noun to an extent, even though it's not a complete noun. It has long been customary to consider possessive forms (my, his, our) of personal pronouns better than the object forms (me, him, us) as subjects of a gerund. It also used to be common to consider the basic or common form of other words better in this position:

I insist on John Smith speaking English. (Also: John Smith's)
I insist on everybody speaking English. (Rarely: everybody's)

In the past 30 or so years I have noticed a tendency in American magazines and newspapers to prefer the genitive even in cases where it sounds and looks ludicrous. I assume this can be ascribed to rising standards in education. Nevertheless, there has never been a grammatical justification to consider one of the alternatives better. The tendency to consider the possessive form the better seems to me to stem from grammatical ignorance rather than a good knowledge of it. There is no grammatical or historical justification for preferring either form.

Cheers
CB

Re: Is it correct or not?

Clive — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 17:06:28 GMT

Hi,

I wonder whether my writing is correct or not.
There seem to be so many questions..
The followings are questions about English grammar.
please answer me..

1 Which is correct or better ?
(1) See you tomorrow, same time, same place. This is more common
(2) See you tomorrow at the same time and the same place.

2 Which is correct?
(1) Whose is a possessive adjective.
(2) Whose is a possessive.

Both are OK. Put quotes around 'whose'.

3 Which is correct?
(1)The present form in ~~the~~ direct speech is changed to the past form in ~~the~~ reported speech.
(2) The present form in ~~the~~ direct speech changes to the past form in ~~the~~ reported speech.

Both are OK. #2 is perhaps just a little more informal.

4.Is it correct?
Relative pronouns can function as conjunctions and pronouns in the same sentence.

Best wishes, Clive

Is it correct or not?

Darcy — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 14:25:20 GMT

Hi ..
I wonder whether my writing is correct or not.
There seem to be so many questions..
The followings are questions about English grammar.
please answer me..

1 Which is correct or better ?
(1) See you tomorrow same time same place.
(2) See you tomorrow at the same time and the same place.

2 Which is correct?
(1) Whose is a possessive adjective.
(2) Whose is a possessive.

3 Which is correct?
(1) Present form in the direct speech is changed to the past form in the reported speech.
(2) Present form in the direct speech changes to the past form in the reported speech.

4.Is it correct?
Relative pronouns function as conjunctions and pronouns in the sentence.

Re: Hypercorrection

Alienvoord — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 16:05:08 GMT

I don't think "between you and I" can be blamed entirely on hypercorrection. It's been attested since at least 1596, before English grammar was taught in school. Nowadays it might be partially due to hypercorrection, but I think something else is going on, namely something to do with how conjoined pronouns interact with case.

The same with "whom" in subject position, which is found in Shakespeare, before English grammar was formally taught.