September 2022

Hello David and Gustavo, Thank you for your answers, that was clear. I will definitely study and practice those patterns. They seem to be very crucial in learning English. I am happy to spend today a month among you. The forum and your answers are very constructive. Thank you for your efforts and your time.Read More...

Hi, David. I'm just considering, on the basis of my rusty knowledge of formal semantics, that interrogatives pattern with indefinites since both involve a variable in their semantic representations. Moreover, from a cross-linguistic perspective, interrogatives are closely related to indefinites, as the book excerpt says: The occurrence of one and the same set of proforms as indefinites and interrogatives in many languages, and the derivation of indefinites from interrogatives in many others...Read More...

Thanks for your confirmation. I ask because there has been a discussion elsewhere, among non-native speakers. They found various reasons supporting the use of "decide", which I think is just a silly slip.Read More...

Hi, David, you're right. Now I see another typo. Appreciate your additional explanation.Read More...

Beautiful! Thanks! I'll do that!Read More...

Sweet! I will; he actually said it's OK to do so! But is it common for people to go overboard with the hedging language and is it the norm for people to go too far in hedging things?Read More...

Makes sense! Thanks!Read More...

I don't think that is a mistake, Sundaran. Popularizing something (i.e. making something popular) does not mean discovering it. For example, European conquerors and sailors who came to the Americas popularized the consumption of potatoes when they came back to Europe, but the edible nature of potatoes had been discovered by American aborigines long before.Read More...

Thank you for the explanation David.Read More...

Actually my next sentence also has potential ambiguity (in this case I don't want it to be interpreted as "the rise in wheat and the rise in other commodity prices", since "wheat" is supposed to attach to "prices"... I know that this is probably an absurd worry and that the NYT evidently doesn't seem to worry about such things, but I'm just checking about the potential ambiguities on these fronts ): But the latter primarily affects Europe and not the US, while the rise in wheat and other...Read More...

Hi, Navi, In answer to question (2), the preposition "to" introduces nouns, and gerunds are nouns. See these two sentences: They have to weigh the alternatives to fighting a war . (“to” introduces the circumstance for which alternatives need to be considered.) They have to weigh the alternatives to decide if war is the best choice. (= in order to decide ...) I see "to" in sentence (2) as similar to: 2') This was a long way to the offering of condolences ...Read More...

Hi, Sundaran—When you see a form of the verb "be" followed by "being" and then by a past participle, you are seeing the passive progressive, which corresponds in meaning to the progressive in the active voice: He is repairing the car. --> The car is being repaired. They are considering him as a batter. --> He is being considered as a batter.Read More...

Thank you SirRead More...

Hello, Abo Hamza—Please review our Guidelines page (see Guideline #3) .Read More...

Andrew, I disagree with your notion that the comma in question is performing two functions. Even if I did agree with you about that, however, I see no reason why that should be considered a problem. I'd love it if you could produce a sentence, or find one, in which a comma is genuinely performing two functions at once. Then we could debate whether that makes the sentence bad or incorrectly punctuated. Consider the following (excerpted from your noun-complement clause): There is no society,...Read More...

Hello David, You confirm my presumptions. Thank you for your answer.Read More...

Hi, Subhajit—The sentence is awkward and mispunctuated, whether you use "it" or "that." ("Do so" would be better.) Consider the following. It uses ellipsis: Listen, Shelly, just because you always abuse someone doesn't mean I have to.Read More...

Thanks a lot Ahmed and Gustavo.Read More...

Thank you Ahmed. That was easy to understandRead More...

I understood clearly. Thank you so much for your explanations, Ahmed.Read More...

Thanks for the note. Have a nice day!Read More...

Hi, Basant and David, I completely agree with David's answer. I would like to refer to two comments I have read about this point. Martin Parrott in 'Grammar For English Language Teachers', page 80, says: "We also sometimes choose to use more and most with one-syllable adjectives to make a specific contrast with less." A: Did she say it was less cold in the north of the country? B: No. She said it was more cold. Thus, you can use 'more easy' in a conversation like the following one: A: The...Read More...

Hi, Omar Ahmed, You are right that only 'a' is the correct one to use. 'B' doesn't work because the time frame is totally related to the past. - I haven't seen my friend since 2019. (Until now). - I hadn't seen my friend since 2019. (Until last week).Read More...

Yes, I got it. the explanation of the book was a bit confusing though. Thank youRead More...

In that example, "being used to having it delivered by the butcher all ready to cook" is a participial clause modifying the second independent clause ("he was not much good at skinning rabbits or cutting up meat"). It is called a participial clause because it is introduced by a present participle: "being" is the present participle of "be." Participial clauses have no tense, so "being" does not equal "was." That said, if we were to rewrite the participial clause as a separate finite (tensed)...Read More...