By Word order, Tenses

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...

My take:

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...

Hi there. I think that your first publication is very very good. Where are you from? Where do you want to publish it? But some things seems suspicious, i meant using tenses and grammatical constructions. Do You know what? - use do is necessary, but in informal way of writing skipping is...

Hi NaderI'm not quite sure I understand what you mean. Has he talking? is wrong. You could say: Has he been talking?If you are asking whether a have or has question can always be formed by changing the word order, the answer is no. It is safer to use do in the present tense:Does he have...

Yankee wrote:I agree with Goodman but would like to add that this word order would also be very common:I was wondering what the difference between a planet and a star was / is. Hi allStrictly speaking, this is the only grammatically correct sentence but I accept all the others as well because...

Hi HazmaI agree with Goodman but would like to add that this word order would also be very common:I was wondering what the difference between a planet and a star was / is.

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...

Eeuw! Melted brains are so unsightly! You said that "loved" can refer to the present. Can it also refer to the pastYes. There is always an end to the backshift process -- the point where you run out of tenses that refer to an even more distant point in time! In this case I wouldn't feel...

I always thought it was a remnant of the French (Norman Invasion, 1066). There is a handful of verbs in French conjugated with "to be" rather than "to have" in the passé composé (past) tense. Rise, born, arrive, leave, go (all "coming and going" verbs) are some examples. We also sing "He is...