February 2023

Hello, Gustavo, Perfectly understood. Thank you so much for your time.Read More...

Hey, f6pafd , I totally agree with you. Thank you so much for your answer.Read More...

A similar noun is, I think, "address": What is your address? / My address is 123 Pitt St LA. Sorry about that. I guess what led me to think "will be" could remain together was the possibility of "what" being the subject, as in: The LA Hotel will be the venue of the meeting.Read More...

Thank you so much!!!Read More...

Hello, Ahmed Imam Attia—As Gustavo explained above, "would [verb phrase]" requires a past-time reference point or context in order to express a past habit. The same holds true with your new example. Only (a), with "used to," can be used to talk about doing fitness training as a past habit—unless there is a context in which a past-time reference point is presupposed: A: What would you do when they were at soccer practice? B: I would do fitness training. Since it would be unfair for a...Read More...

Appreciate again.Read More...

Hi, Subhajit—Why do you think there is any sentence or pair of sentences that is incorrect?Read More...

Hi, Subhajit, The best and most usual sentence is (2). In negative sentences, "or" forms a pair with "not," the result being equivalent to but less emphatic than "neither ... nor." In sentence (1), "who they are and why they are crying" forms a unit. This could be used, for example, as an echo reply to a question like: Do you know who they are and why they are crying? Sentence (3) could be used emphatically to mean: I don't know this and I also don't know that.Read More...

Hi, Azz—In neither (a) nor (b) does "help him going out" have meaning (1). In (b), "help him going out" can mean (2), or it can mean (3) the speaker cannot help him while he or she is going out. In (a), it can only mean (3), supplied by me.Read More...

Hi, Subhajit—"Either . . . or . . ." and "neither . . . nor . . ." are correlative conjunctions, which require grammatical parallelism: each part of the correlative should introduce a phrase of the same grammatical type. (1a), (2a), and both (3a)s are grammatically parallel. The other examples are not.Read More...

Hi, Subhajit and Gustavo—I agree with you, Gustavo, that "how" cannot grammatically modify "better." In this example, however, "better" can alternatively be parsed as a fronted adverb in the embedded question. One problem will remain, though and that is the perfective infinitive ("to have handled"). In my native-speaking experience, we don't use perfective infinitives in infinitival embedded questions. But a nonperfect infinitive is fine: (1a) I don't know how better to handle that. (1b) I...Read More...

Thank you, sir. I thought the past simple "destroyed" set the time frame of the past.Read More...

Excellent explanation, Gustavo – thank you! I especially like the nuance you highlighted in the second part (particularly "palpable" when one thinks of actions such as buying ice cream or praising someone's work...).Read More...

Of course it attaches to "interview." Even without the em dash it would. But why do you want to stick 22 words between the verb and its direct object? The following is more elegant, and ditches the em dashes (another virtue): And in a 13 November 2019 interview with an organization that I happen to find extremely problematic but that does some good interviews, Bob makes some interesting observations.Read More...

The meaning is different. So is the parsing. Can you see the difference?Read More...

Hi, Andrew—What you have described is not paraphrasing. It's quoting. You are introducing quotations with clauses of attribution or transitions. To paraphrase is to put an idea expressed by someone else into your own words (i.e., different words) without changing the meaning, adding to it, or subtracting from it.Read More...

Of course. You can say: Attached to this email, you can find ...Read More...

Thanks so muchRead More...

Hi, Subhajit, (a) "The" + noun + to do something is used to mean the (exact) resources/courage/knowledge/money required to that end. (Please note that we say "knowledge to fly a plane.") (b) Used in the affirmative, zero article + noun + to do something is similar to (a) but no reference is made to the exact amount required for that. I have the money to buy a car (perhaps, not more than that) vs. I have money to buy a car (as well as other things) (c) "(Not) any" + noun + to do something is...Read More...

I think that Ahmed means that some of his interviews' being good is logically compatible with all of his interviews' being good, because all of his interviews' being good logically entails that some of his interviews are good. Well, it is possible to read a sentence like " She bakes some good cookies " as saying that all of the members of the subset of cookies that are baked by her are good. This takes "some good cookies" as referring to some of all the good cookies in existence . (All of...Read More...

Thanks I got it.Read More...

The idea is that any language that lacks the WOG in audio-translation is a language that needs the WOG in audio-translation, since, without an audio-translation of the WOG in that language, not all speakers of that language will have access to the WOG. By translating the WOG into a language that lacks it (hence needs it, according to the relevant religious belief), the organization sees itself as performing an important service for speakers of that language. I know you want to believe that...Read More...

Thank you. Although "context-free" is at first sight immediately related to "presented," if you want to eliminate any ambiguity, unlikely as it is, and even if the result may not be as journalistic as the original, you might want to change to: - I find it incredibly disturbing to see how XXX's actions are presented to people context-free... or perhaps: - I find it incredibly disturbing to see the context-free presentation of XXX's actions in the public eye / to the public opinion...Read More...

No. "(Not) trying" (= his failure to try) is a gerund and "approach" is a noun, so both components are syntactically equivalent.Read More...