Search results for 'tag:Pronouns tag:Word order' matching tags 'Pronouns' and 'Word order'

Re: This is.. these are

AlpheccaStars — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 19:59:35 GMT

I have taught English as a Second language to new learners.

The question/answer pair "What is this?" / "This is a ..." Â is lesson 2 (after introductions "Hello, my name is...", "What's your name?")

t teaches students how to ask for vocabulary words.Â

It teaches that English uses a change in word order to make a question from a statement.

It is a basis for teaching the word order for adjectives:

"This is a pencil."

"This is a red pencil."

"This is a yellow pencil."

The question/answer pair "What are these?" / "These are..." Â is the next step.Â

It reinforces the idea of word order, and the question word "what".

It teaches subject/verb agreement for the most important verb in English, making plurals by adding -s, dropping the article "a" in the plural, and that adjectives are not inflected.

"These are pencils."

"These are red pencils."

"These areÂ yellowÂ pencils."

That's a lot of grammar for one lesson!!

Later on, you can teach more complex rules such as the difference between this (something near) and that (something far) and pronouns such as "it" and "they".

Re: Correct or Not

Eimai_Anglos — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:42:56 GMT

"why was late reply" is not a sentence. It has no meaning. In English a sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with a punctuation mark (. ; : ? !)

In addition, you seem to have omitted a definite or indefinite article or a possessive pronoun and mixed up the word order.

"Why was his reply late?"

"Why was the reply late?"

Re: Him killed I!

Huevos — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 19:32:13 GMT

Anonymous
Is that correct? it seems wrong

It's not wrong. Normally in English sentences are ordered "Subject (S), Verb (V), Indirect Object (IO), Direct Object (DO)" but can run OSV, and, where pronouns are used in substitution of either the subject or object (e.g. your sentence) there are no word order constraints so OVS is possible. That said, such a construction is pretty unusual and almost certainly would be limited to use in literature for effect.

Re: They,you and he are good students.(?)

Viceidol — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 12:01:49 GMT

May I bother you with one last question about this?

In "You, he and I are classmates.", the first person pronoun "I" is the last one to mention, but in "We, you and they are tall.", the first person pronoun "we" become the first one. If the word order is about politeness, why does the first person pronouns have different positions in the above examples? I'm sorry to keep asking questions about this, but I really think you had explained this far better than all my grammar books.

Thank you!

Re: indirect question

Cool Breeze — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:22:36 GMT

Hi NG

You are right. Indirect questions fall in three categories.

1. There is a word that can begin a clause but the word is not the subject.

What did he say? - Tell me what he said.

2. There isn't a word that can begin a clause. If or whether must be used.

Did he come in time? - Tell me if/whether he came in time .

3. A question word - in Scandinavia we call them interrogative pronouns - is the subject or a part of the subject.

What is wrong with this? - Tell me what is wrong with this.

Whose friend saw it? - Tell me whose friend saw it.

Because the interrogative word is the grammatical subject of the clause, there is no change in the word order.

Re: sell out vs sell out of

Yankee — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 12:49:43 GMT

Hi Hoa Thai

There 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 the sentence begin with that which was sold, or does it begin with the person who did the selling?)
- If the word 'all' was used, how exactly? (i.e. as a noun? pronoun? adjective? adverb?)

To me, there is more that needs to be considered than just the question of whether 'all' or 'all of' is better or more typical.

She then commented that 'sell out all our stocks of T-shirts' wasevent more awkward. But for this example, she made a slightchange in the sentence by adding 'of' - 'sell out all ofour stocks of T-shirts', then said that one should not to use both 'out'and 'all of' together because of redundancy. (NOTE: Right there, I completelymissed the connection. Why did she add the preposition âofâ then went on aboutredundancy?)

There are a couple of problems in that quote:

- Neither you nor I used the word 'stocks' (i.e. plural)
- You have ignored the beginning of the sentence, but I didn't.
Though I did indeed prefer 'all of' in the phrase "all of our stock of T-shirts", the focus of my comment about the sentence as a whole. I was not focused on whether 'all' or 'all of' was better. My comment focused on whether 'all' (or 'all of') should be used at all in combination with the way 'sold out' was used.

Re: About the meaning of "where"

Velimir — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 22:11:58 GMT

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 had similar declension of nouns then the nouns following the prepositions "in" and "at" would be in the locative case.The presence of the preceding preposition is obligatory when the noun is in the locative case.

But,if the verb indicates motion,or in plain english,if you are :
going to, flying to, traveling to..

like in the question given in the opening post,then the noun will be in the dative case.This case you can connect with the nouns following the preposition "to" although the preposition is not necessarily present.The word "dative" derives from latin "dare" which means "to give" and the usage is most obvious on the example of that verb:

I gave my girlfriend a flower.

If you translated this in serbian,"girlfriend" would be in the dative case.Indirect object is in the dative case.The direct object ("a flower") is in the accusative case.

"Cases play a major part in determining a noun's syntactic role in the sentence, so word order is not as important in Latin as it is in other languages, such as English. Because of noun cases, words can often be moved around in a sentence without significantly altering its meaning, though the emphasis will have altered" (from a Wikipedia article on the latin language)
Btw,changing nouns,adjectives,pronouns and numbers to different cases is pretty tough area of the language with more cases,and is often lifelong mistery for many natives,and I know that well.Luckily,english is not a case-sensitive language.

Best regards

Re: will see...

Grammar Geek — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 18:51:22 GMT

Neither is correct because you need another pronoun (or noun).

Will you see what they will require from me?

However, in terms of word order, "what they will" instead of "what will they" in this type of construction.

Re: that which VS what

Clive — Sun, 27 May 2007 21:59:20 GMT

Hi guys,

A In the process of writing them, they are reconnected with that which they have lost.

B In the process of writing them, they are reconnected with that they have lost.

C In the process of writing them, they are reconnected with what they have lost.

All are correct, right?

What one is most common? (I guess C. I saw A in Chicken Soup)

When I agreed, I didn't elaborate on A and B. A obviously has no problems.

However, B is trickier. I perhaps should have commented that it sounds very unusual, even archaic, and rather literary or even poetical. But unlike CJ, I wouldn't go so far as to say it is wrong. In 'That they have lost', 'that' is a pronoun. You might argue that it just represents 'that which . . . ' with 'which' omitted. It's like saying 'the one they have lost' or 'the thing they have lost'.

You can change the word order to eg 'That they have lost (ie the thing they have lost) is a pearl beyond price.' I made this example sound a bit biblical or literary, because that's how I feel about this form of words.

I think this is related to constructions like 'I bought a table like that owned by my friend' ie 'I bought a table like that my friend owns'.

I imagine that the usage I'm trying to describe here is what was in the mind of the writers of the American Heritage Dictionary. However, I have never taught or recommended this to learners of English.

Learners should note that English native speakers can sometimes disagree about features of their native language. On a personal note, it doesn't bother me that CJ, whose views I respect, doesn't agree with me about this. What does bother me is that my wife, who is also an excellent teacher of English, disgarees with me about this.

Best wishes, Clive

Re: indirect speech

Clive — Sun, 27 May 2007 16:47:39 GMT

Hi again,

Do you agree:

Who is your favourite rock band?
This question asks for a subject. Rolling Stones(=Subject) is my favourite rock band.
In such a case, when forming a double question, the word order goes two possible ways:

It's not a double question. 'Could you tell me . . .' forms the question. '. . . who your favourite rock band is' is a noun clause.

Consider a simpler form, eg Could you tell me your name'. We see here that what follows 'Could you tell me . . ' needs to be a noun, or a noun equivalent like a noun clause.

Consider also the non-question form of the answer, 'Sorry, I don't know who my favourite rock band is'. Again, we see this is not a question but simply a noun clause.

Could you tell me who is your ...?
or
Could you tell me who ... is?

What is the time now in New Zealand?
Answer:
The time is x. 'x' is a subject complement, so the question asks for a subject complement.
Usually there is only one possible word order:
Could you tell me what the time is now in NZ?
and not
*Could you tell me what is the time now in NZ?

When a noun clause is formed from a question, the subject noun or pronoun comes before the verb. ie Can you tell me what that man's name is?

However, it's acceptable in informal English to place the subject after the verb if it is long, ie Can you tell me what is the name of that tall, handsome man who is talking to the woman who is wearing the red hat?