jwxh:

Plse helP:


Grandfather shared wistfully with Tom, \"Gone __________ the days when meals cost less than a dollar.\"
1) is
2) are
3) was
4) were

Answer sheet shows \"2\". is it correct? tks

Yes, \"are\" is the best choice.

XXXX:

grammartots:

[quote=\"jwxh\"]hi, would appreciate if anyone could help and explain. Tks


Daniel, my brother, is more intelligent than _________.
(1) me (2) her (3) mine (4) I

Anyone who _________ the newspaper will know about the robbery yesterday.
(1) read (2) has read (3) reading (4) had been reading

The correct answer is choice 4, \"I\".

The argument for the subjective \"I\" comes from ellipsis:

(1) Daniel, my brother, is more intelligent than I am.

The \"am\" is ellipted. (I've written about this topic at http://grammartots.blogspot.sg/2012/10/than-me-or-than-i.html)

Additionally, if you look at the choices, both \"me\" and \"her\" are object pronouns. So if you accept \"me\" as the answer, you also would have to accept \"her\".

So if there are two girls, you prefer
\"she is more intelligent than she\" to
\"she is more intelligent than her\"?

\"Traditionalists still believe that in formal English, “than” is a conjunction and not a preposition, and that the following pronoun should be in the nominative case – “he,” not “him.”

But English is a living language, and the traditional view of “than” has shifted. Usages like “than him” are no longer regarded as incorrect – merely less formal.

This often happens. Over time, a natural usage tends to win out over an unnatural one, and to many people, “than he” is stuffy and unnatural.\"

For those interested you may read more here:http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2008/12/is-she-smarter-than-him.html

Of course the important thing here is to know what the examiner wants, but please bear in mind that what you are learning and teaching formally is sometimes not how the language is spoken and written in practice.[/quote]My personal opinion is that spoken language, by virtue of its spontaneity, is prone to grammatical errors. As such, one should be careful when referencing actual usage from spoken language. For instance, you would agree with me that \"There's lots of people\" is more commonly spoken than \"There're lots of people\", but that doesn't mean the former should be taken as correct usage.

While \"than me\" may be more common in spoken or informal contexts, the preference is for \"than I\" in formal settings (which is the case in teaching and learning). This fact is borne out by Google's ngam comparison of \"than me\" vs \"than I\" http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=than+me%2Cthan+I&year_start=1800&year_end=2013&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=.

jwxh:

hi, would appreciate if anyone could help and explain. Tks


Daniel, my brother, is more intelligent than _________.
(1) me (2) her (3) mine (4) I

Anyone who _________ the newspaper will know about the robbery yesterday.
(1) read (2) has read (3) reading (4) had been reading

The correct answer is choice 4, \"I\".

The argument for the subjective \"I\" comes from ellipsis:

(1) Daniel, my brother, is more intelligent than I am.

The \"am\" is ellipted. (I've written about this topic at http://grammartots.blogspot.sg/2012/10/than-me-or-than-i.html)

Additionally, if you look at the choices, both \"me\" and \"her\" are object pronouns. So if you accept \"me\" as the answer, you also would have to accept \"her\".

For question (2), the answer is \"has read\", choice 2. The noun \"yesterday\" modifies \"the robbery\", and does not affect the verb within the \"who\" clause.

(2) Anyone who has read the newspaper will know about the robbery yesterday.

We use the present perfect \"has read\" to show that there's some connection between the robbery that took place in the past and the present time - people react to it today.

If you wanted \"yesterday\" to modify the verb \"read\", we could rewrite sentence (2) as follows:

(3) Anyone who read the newspaper yesterday will know about the robbery.

WNWLJL:

Can anyone help to explain why the answer to this question is run and not runs or ran?


Question: John watched the athlete ______down the path.

Thanks.

The most common explanation is to say watched is a sense verb and after a sense verb, the verb can only be the infinitive or -ing form. Thus, run or running would be possible.

Another way is to look at the structure. First, I would rewrite the sentence as follows:

1) John watched him run down the path.

That is, I've changed \"the athlete\" to \"him\", an object pronoun (without altering the meaning of the sentence).

In English, a subject pronoun that occupies a subject position determines the verb, an object pronoun doesn't:

2) He runs. (not him runs)

That explains why you can't have runs after him in sentence (1).

Since we can't have runs, which is a finite verb, we also can't have ran because both runs and ran occur in a finite clause:

3) John runs. (singular, present tense)
4) John ran. (past tense)

(A finite verb shows agreement with a subject and is marked for tense.)

In other words, the clause after watched in sentence (1) is non-finite and thus only the infinitive or the -ing form of the verb is permissible.

5) John watched [non-finite clause]

buds:

Share your answers? :please:


Grammar Cloze question

I am feeling very happy. My parents are bringing my brothers and ________________ for a family holiday tomorrow. We are going on a cruise.

Comprehension Cloze question

After several weeks, the tadpoles' legs start to develop. Their tails get shorter and ________________ disappear. Although they can still swim well, adult frogs live on land.

I would change the verb \"bringing\" to \"taking\" in the question.

As for the answers:

1) me
2) gradually, eventually (and other suitable words)

KRR:

Hi,

Can somebody hel;p me with this question.

My mum was too sad to say anything.
Answer: 1. My mum was so sad that she did not say anything.2. My mum was so sad that she could not say anything.3. My mum was so sad that she woould not say anything.
Which of these answers is correct and why?

Thank you very much,
KRR

Choice 1 is correct.

The (transformed) sentence \"My mum was too sad to say anything\" has two basic sentences:

a) My mum was very sad.
b) My mum did not say anything.

You can also rule out choices 2 and 3 because both contain modal verbs, respectively \"could not\" and \"would not\", as opposed to choice 1, which doesn't.

kaka:

Osman ____ home in time and so ______Perlin.

1) reached ..... did
2) reached ..... had

Answer key is 2) why not 1) ?

TIA

I'm going with option (1) as option (2) seems wrong to me.

KRR:

Hi grammartots,


Your explanations were SO CLEAR. Thank you very much.

Can I get help with this question.

1.\"Are you living here?”
She asked me _________________.
Given answer: She asked me if I was living here.
Why can't it be - She asked me if I was living there.


2. “Don’t smoke here!”
He told us __________________.
Given answer: He told us not to smoke there.

When does the word 'here' change to 'there' and when does it not change.
Please help.

Thank you very much.
KRR

Welcome

Generally, the backshift version with \"there\" for both questions is acceptable.

The version with \"here\" is acceptable if, say, the speech is reported soon after it is spoken:

(3) Janet asked, \"Are you living here?\"

If I report that utterance to someone and I'm still at the location where Janet spoke, then, yes, the \"here\" version is possible:

(3a) Janet asked if I am/was living here.

KRR:

Can you please help me with the following grammar questions.


4. The courageous boy ________ on the thief.
(will spring, springs, sprang, spring) Given ans: sprang

There is no word in the question that indicates that the sentence must be in past tense, then why is 'sprang; the answer.

Skyed:

I think the past tense is implied because the fact that you say the boy is courageous means that he must have done something to make you say that.

Yes, \"sprang\" is the correct answer.

Here's an alternative explanation:

Verbs like \"spring\" are called dynamic verbs. Dynamic verbs are often called action verbs. With dynamic verbs, there is often an implied sense of beginning and end. For this reason, the action of \"spring\" is understood to have completed in the question you provided, reproduced below:

4) The courageous boy sprang on the thief.

We thus use the past tense form \"sprang\" to indicate the action has completed, even though there's no time indication.

It's uncommon to use the present tense with dynamic verbs because it would suggest on activity that's factual or habitual:

5) ?The courageous boy springs on the thief.

Unless sentence (5) is used as a narrative present, it's odd (as indicated by the ?) because the sentence means the boy does the springing regularly.

Dynamic verbs are contrasted with stative verbs. These verbs describe a state and have undefined duration. So, we often see the present used with stative verbs:

6) The courageous boy knows all our names.

Notice that no time is indicated, yet the present tense is acceptable because the duration of \"knowing\" is a state rather than an action and thus is not bounded in time.

CayennePepper:

grammartots, many thanks for your response

It's really frustrating that there seems to be various acceptabe answers for S&T! Wish there're clearer guidelines.

Having more than one acceptable answer is fine, because sometimes there's more than one way to rewrite (transform) the given sentence or sentences. What's bad is when not enough flexibility is exercised (by tutors or teachers) and a perfectly legitimate answer is marked wrong. I've come across cases like that, yes, even for exams.

Yes, having clearer guidelines would really help.