Hi, Abe clearly wants to know the state of Carol's affections, so Bill should answer with #2. #3 would be OK. Clive Thanks Clive: That is indeed what I thought. Right on. Your note "Yes and no would be OK", I surely hear this a lot.

Situation: Abe asked his class mate Bill this question about Carol who is also their class mate: Do you know whether Carol likes me or not? Bill, the respondent who is about to answer this question, knows that Carol does not care for Abe, and is

Probably not. There may be a better way to finesse this with a different wording. Yes, but from the viewpoint of the authors and the teacher, this may be considered a harmless "white lie". Out of curiosity, does the book actually use the

You'll probably notice that, statistically, existential there usually goes with an indefinite expression, and locative there usually goes with a definite expression. Your three examples that you wanted to call exceptional are actually members

Here's an example I think is perfectly ok: What's in your garage? - Oh, nothing. There's an old car... and there's the old bike you sold me, remember? Hi, Kooyeen. In your garage example, if you're sitting in your living room

Really? ,,, Reeeeally. I just wanted to give your cat a big hand because she sits so nicely for the camera ... clap clap clap ... (Blue Ball is on 322 - it depend where you were coming from whether you'd drive through it.) ,,, You can get to

I used to learn from those books and listen to teachers who teach those "rules" too, until I literally got mad and decided I'd had enough of that cr... garbage. Thanks Kooyeen. (Queen! I just figured that out!) I dig your garage

Bird-in-Hand. Those Amish!) jazzmaster - just say "what crap" not "what a crap."

A few grammar books carried by ESL students suggest that "there is" only takes indefinite articles such as "a/an", as in "There is an apple". Anything else, such as "the, my, our, his", is not supposed to

My advice is that there are two senses of "there is," and the rule applies to only one of them. (I'm not an expert on what ESL students carry, although I'm working on it.) The first one means something like, "This thing