December 2022

Hi, Andrew, In your text: both "it" and "this" have a sentential antecedent. "It" refers back to "the possibility of the authorities' stopping the shadow libraries," while "this" refers back to "people's ability to continue using such libraries (in spite of the authorities' efforts)." I'm not sure "unwinnable" is correct because it changes the perspective within the same sentence — it is unwinnable for the authorities, while "this" refers to people's success in securing the use of those...Read More...

Thank you very much for the brilliant explanation. I appreciate your help so much!Read More...

Thank you so much!Read More...

A related question about things referred back to other things. See here: It’s true that the authorities actually arrested two people associated with Z-Library, but a 23 November 2022 piece says that those two Z-Library people “made things easier for the FBI” and seemingly failed to make “the slightest efforts to conceal their identity online or to cover their tracks” —in sharp contrast, “Anna stated in an interview with Torrent Freak they are doing all they can to conceal their identity or...Read More...

Hi, Andrew—I agree with your perspective that the comments in a video of an interview seem to belong to the past rather than to the eternal present, the video recording being like a technicolor memory which can be accessed at will. You like to talk about Chomsky. He's someone who has certainly been interviewed on TV plenty of times. Compare his great-granfatherly appearance now to the pipe-smoking Chomsky of the 1960s. What did he say then?Read More...

Hi, Andrew—There is nothing to rule that out as a possible interpretation.Read More...

Thanks a lot GustavoRead More...

Hi, duaiekan, You should have used the verb transitively: - He approached the destination at last.Read More...

Hi, duaiekan, You should have asked a follow-up question here . That way, forum members can conveniently see the whole discussion in a single thread. The meaning of that sentence is: It is perfectly fine to have a few extra calories that help them enjoy the experience. The use of singular or plural depends on whether you think of the existence (singular) of a few extra calories or of the extra calories themselves (plural). With a relative clause ( that help... ), you need the verb to be in...Read More...

Yes, your sentence is grammatical. It needs a heavy object, though. The reduced example that I gave, with only "it" as the direct object, is not kosher with the "as"-phrase fronted. I gave that example only to illustrate the syntactic relationships.Read More...

Hi, Moon Le—Yes, you can use "statistic" in the singular in the way you have used it in your example. Here is the relevant definition from the Oxford English Dictionary. Some good examples are given underneath the definition:Read More...

Here you go, Moon Le: https://www.english-corpora.org/coca/ . I believe that the corpus can still be used free of charge, depending on the number of searches you want to do in a given amount of time.Read More...

I was playing with you, Me_IV. You never thank us for helping you but are invariably argumentative in your replies, so I decided to have fun with you and dish you up a sample of the very construction you were asking about.Read More...

Hi, Andrew—Yes, it is clear that "also" performs its additive function here relative to "outlines" rather than to anything in the intervening sentence, which simply expands on the "Baker outlines . . ." sentence. Because the intervening sentence builds on the "Baker outlines . . ." idea and has a different subject, and because the "He also . . ." begins a new paragraph with the same subject, the reader knows immediately what "also" relates to.Read More...

Hi, duaiekan—Yes, (2) and (3) are wrong. The only time you can use a relative pronoun in an infinitival relative clause is when the relative pronoun functions as the object of the preposition and that preposition is fronted in the clause.Read More...

Both of them are fine, duaiekan, but "how" and "why" have different meanings.Read More...

Thanks a lot.Read More...

Thanks David!Read More...

Hello, duaiekan—Only "We recovered very quickly" is possible there. "We were recovered very quickly" reads as a passive construction, and that makes no sense there, because nobody recovered them. To use "were recovered," you need to change the sentence a bit, so that "recovered" can be an adjective: Soon afterwards, we were recovered.Read More...

Hi Gustavo, Your comment is greatly appreciated. EricRead More...

Hi, Azz—All the responses are grammatically acceptable, but I prefer (b) and (c) because they indicate that the extra bit of information is just that: an extra bit of information (nonrestrictive). I recommend: " It was Tom—every week ."Read More...

Ahmed's explanation is good from an ESL standpoint. I'd just like to clarify that "my" is not an adjective; it's a determiner. Adjectives must follow it (viz., " my big brother " vs. " big my brother ") and other determiners can't be used before it (viz., " the big brother " vs. " the my brother "). "Yours" functions as an entire noun phrase with ellipsis. Compare: " Bob's brother gets along with John's [___] ."Read More...

Thank you so much, ahmed_btm for your help.Read More...