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

Re: so that, so as to, so as for

CalifJim — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 22:07:05 GMT

First of all, so as for is not a grouping. Here so means therefore, and as for goes together as a grouping meaning concerning or in regard to.

So as for leaving tomorrow, the trip is off = Therefore, [concerning / in regard to] leaving tomorrow, the trip is off.

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so that shows purpose. Basically it tells why an action is done.

Jane went and got a knife so that Mark could carve the turkey.

Jane hid the cookies so that the children wouldn't eat them before dinner.

Jane drove fast so that she would not be late.

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so as to is, as mentioned above, a variant of in order to. It also shows purpose.

I'll speak softly [in order not / so as not] to disturb you. (Note the word order so as not to.)

Laura shook him vigorously [in order / so as] to wake him up.

In this construction the subject of the sentence is the subject of the infinitive.

I speak softly. I don't disturb you.

Laura shook him. Laura wakes him up.

That's why you can change the third example of so that thus:

Jane drove fast so that she (=Jane) would not be late. >>> Jane drove fast so as not to be late.

Re: If he was lucky he'd find a cab there...

Avangi — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:00:42 GMT

Hi Jackson,

"He" is in some location, possibly unable to find transportation. Actually, "frequency" in this context is usually applied to busses. One usually calls by telephone for a taxi cab, unless one is in the city at a busy time, and can "hail" a passing cab which is unoccupied. In a remote area late at night, if he's "lucky" enough to see a cab passing by, it will most likely be occupied.

The subjunctive seems to be optional these days in this sort of sentence.

Edit. Looking at the word "there," I suspect there's some context preceding this, in which he conceives a plan to walk to some other location, where he hopes to have better luck.

P.S. a suggestion on your question: a different word order, plus the verb "be" - "What could the context for the above sentence possibly be?"

Best regards, - A.

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: Relative Clauses and Indirect Questions

Cool Breeze — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 10:19:32 GMT

Clive wrote:
The bottom line, of course, is that any of these systems is OK as long as it provides a tool that someone finds useful in learning to speak good English.

Would you call this a relative clause? I don't know where the pen is. What would you say it relates to?

When I asked this, I thought you might reply that it relates to the term or idea of 'a location'. You surprised me by answering in my grammar the clause in bold is an indirect question, not a relative clause. I don't see it as any kind of question at all. Would you also see I know where the pen is as an indirect question? If not, then what would you call it and what would it relate to?

I learned a grammar that includes categorizing clauses as noun clauses, adverbial clauses and adjectival clauses. That seems helpful to me, because it allows me to say things like this. In the sentence Mary likes cake, you can replace 'cake' by another noun, by a gerund or by a noun clause. In other words, you can use a noun-equivalent as the object. If I just talk about relative clauses, I can't say this so simply, because some kinds of relative clauses can fit as objects and others can't. eg I can't say Mary likes which is chocolate-flavoured. So, I assume that there is some way to differentiate between types of relative clauses in that style of grammar?

Hi Clive

I trust you have returned home with a refreshed mind and full of eagerness to get back to "work" on EnglishForums. I agree with you 110 percent: grammar and grammatical terminology and definitions are just a tool, and if a tool works for a person, the tool is good enough for him. I am actually not particularly interested in academic grammatical nuances. I'm very pragmatic in my attitude to grammar.

With regard to I don't know where the pen is: yes, of course where indicates a location, but that is self-evident to me and I wasn't taught to analyze language using such terms. And indeed, I was taught to consider where the pen is an indirect question even in a sentence like I know where the pen is. Of course no one is asking anything in the sentence; the term "indirect question" is just grammatical and stems from the word order. The point for me (ages ago) was to learn not to say I know where is the pen, and thus I arrived at the correct word order even though the term "indirect question" made me wonder about the logic of grammar in those early days.

I'm sure there are other terms that describe the clause with better logic but I don't want to adopt new terms for it. That might cause linguistic confusion in my head because everything relates to everything in language - or languages - and English grammar isn't the only grammar I deal with. At the moment, I think, I have everything sufficiently correctly pigeonholed in the area of my brain reserved for grammar.

I think I'll get a headache if I dig deeper into noun clauses, adverbial clauses and whatever you mention in your post because I am not used to these terms at all. I'm sure they are helpful and good but I have never used them.

I sometimes mention grammarians by name in my posts as I realize that I occasionally use terms which may be unfamiliar to some readers. This is just to stop people thinking I have made up these terms myself.

Cheers
CB

Re: Writing a sentence with an Indirect Object.

Clive — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 16:39:16 GMT

Hi,

I need to write a sentence in the following pattern, and I don't see how it's possible.

The pattern is: adjective + direct object + helping verb + subject + verb

No articles allowed?

So, something like 'Great strength did he use'. This kind of odd word order seems very literary or poetical. This doesn't seem like a typical every-day English grammar exercise.

If you can add other parts of speech, you could look at normal questions, eg Which red sweater did she buy?

(As regards your thread title, this is not really an exercise that deals with indirect objects)

Best wishes, Clive

Re: Usually - Position

CalifJim — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 16:48:22 GMT

I think you all are missing one thing; it's the very basic question. The definition of operator. Up till now no one has defined what operators actually are.

Operators are verbs with special properties as explained in the article I cited for you above.

Some authors just call them auxiliary verbs, but that leaves out the cases where be or have is the main verb and still "operates" the same as an auxiliary with respect to negation, inversion, etc. So other authors prefer to use both terms in order to focus on the slight differences.
_________

With regard to adverb placement (word order) and the terms marked and unmarked, see this site:

http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:aYNuGzv8DNAJ:www.anglistik.uni-bonn.de/staff/ofiles/
GLC2-Sum01-Gram.pdf+grammar+operator+inversion+negation&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=8

CJ

Re: the kinds of tenses

Anonymous — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 01:27:47 GMT

Believer wrote:
In regard to No.2, I can almost swear that I have heard some English professionals saying that there is an implicit word "to" there and whenever you hear the sentences without it, just remember it is to be included for a sentence to be a correct sentence.

While I recognize that some people will make this claim, I contend that it is counter productive to rely on the implicit existence of the word to.

The indirect object is not native to Indo-European languages. In the simplest scenario of their usage, these nouns had to be marked because word order alone was insufficient to identify the function of such nouns within the clause. With the evolution of English to the use of prepositions, the indirect object marker evolved in two distinct manners. When the direct object follows the verb and the indirect object is last, the earlier usage, the indirect object must be marked with a preposition, and to was selected for this purpose. When the indirect object follows the verb and the direct object is last, the newer usage, word order alone is sufficient to mark the function of the indirect object and no preposition is required.

I consider that it is not useful to get hung up on an arbitrary marker of the indirect object, the preposition to, and to believe that without its presence we must somehow devolve to the recognition that it must be there because it is required under other conditions.

Re: use of which

MrPedantic — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 23:20:36 GMT

Exciter wrote:
Hi people. Please consider the following sentence: I bought a car, colored green, which is nice. As far as I know, "which" refers to the term just preceding. In the example it is the green color. However, if I would like "which" refer to the car, how can I do that without changing the order of words in the sentence? Thank in advance, With Regards.

Hello Exciter

I'm not sure you can make it entirely unambiguous.

I'll change your example a little, if I may:

1. I bought a car, with a sun roof, which is nice.

â This parallels your original example. "Which is nice" may refer to the buying of the car, or the fact that it has a sun roof, or the attractiveness of the sun roof. (In speech, if you meant the latter, you might be able to indicate it by your intonation.)

2. I bought a car with a sun roof, which is nice.

â Here, most people would assume that you meant it was nice to own a car with a sun roof. However, it's possible it could relate to the attractiveness of the sun roof.

3. I bought a car with a sun roof which is nice.

â Here, "nice" refers to the sun roof.

So I'm not sure how you could force the listener to attach the "nice" only to the buying of the car, without changing the word order.

MrP

She always has to... or She has always to...?

Anonymous — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 11:35:35 GMT

Hi, I'm really confused about the correct word order in sentences with 'have to':
Which one is correct?

She ALWAYS has to hurry in the morning.
She has ALWAYS to hurry in the morning.

And, by the way, 'She must always hurry in the morning' would also be correct, right?

Thanks!

Regards,
Gari

Re: word order

CalifJim — Sun, 11 Sep 2005 08:37:31 GMT

I don't feel there is any difference in meaning between the two versions, no particular emphasis on one thing or another. It's just that your version seems to illustrate the more standard word order - at least to my ear.

The difference is similar to the difference between these:

Give him the pen. Give the pen to him.

These are simply free variants, and nothing changes with regard to meaning.

CJ