Grammar Blues

[RoCKiTcZa]

My English teacher gave us this sentence and instructed us to fill in the blank with the proper verb tense (chosen from the words inside the parenthesis):

Uncle Al _____________ cattle before he retired. (raised, has raised)

He says the right answer is "has raised" but I need some confirmation... Please help!!!

[barbara0207]

If my students wrote "has raised" here, I would mark it as wrong.

It is an action completed in the past which is in no way related to the present. Thus the past tense ("raised") seems right to me.

[Poetess]

I second what Barbara said! I wonder why your teacher chose the second alternative?

[Poetess]

ummm maybe the teacher meant that Uncle Al was raising the cattle before being retired, and now that he is retired, he`s still raising the cattle? hummmmm

[barbara0207]

Doesn't really make sense, does it?

[RoCKiTcZa]

this is what he told my classmate when she approached him for consultation:
"has raised"-- structurally wrong but grammatically correct
"raised" -- structurally correct but grammatically wrong
He mentioned quite a lot of things regarding the event happening prior to other events... and that Uncle Al continued to raise...???? Well this is so confusing!!!:brickwall
I wonder???

[barbara0207]

Never ever in my life have I heard an educated speaker or writer use the present perfect in a main clause when the sub clause starts with 'before'.

And what does your teacher mean by 'structurally correct, grammatically wrong' and vice versa? Could it be he's trying to hide the fact that he has made a mistake by filling you up with things he knows you won't understand?

But may be there are knowledgeable teachers here who will prove me wrong.

[kilted exile]

Just another reason why you should never listen to teachers.

It should be raised. The other possibilities I suppose would be "had raised" or "previously raised"

[barbara0207]

Thank you, kilted, for seconding.

But I'm a teacher. What does that mean?

[kilted exile]

But I'm a teacher. What does that mean?

It means I should rephrase to "you should never listen to your own teachers" (possibly:p )

[barbara0207]

Don't tell my students - please! :D

[SleepyWitch]

yep, I agree with barbara and kilted it's either "raised" or "had raised", otherwise it would mean he's still raising cattles at the time of speaking, which doesn't go together too well with "before"....aaaargh

I'm studying to be an English teacher and simple past/past tense came up in an exam preparation course only a couple of months ago.. in fact I took that exam only a couple of weeks ago and I'm absolutely positive you can't use "raised" in this sentence.

what's that nonsense about "structurally wrong but grammatically correct" and "structurally correct but grammatically wrong"?

isn't grammar said to deal with the structure of sentences? so "structurally" and "grammatically" should mean roughly the same in this case?

[RoCKiTcZa]

It's rather vague, but he came up with this sort-of "grammatical timeline,"

past-------------------->|present--------------------->|so on...................
Sometime in the past Uncle Al raised cattle as a continuing action
sometime in the present he retired, but....

Ohhhhh, yes, it is confusing... simply complicating things in order to come up with a "rational" explanation to something that can be done the easy way:sick:

[SleepyWitch]

It's rather vague, but he came up with this sort-of "grammatical timeline,"

past-------------------->|present--------------------->|so on...................
Sometime in the past Uncle Al raised cattle as a continuing action
sometime in the present he retired, but....

Ohhhhh, yes, it is confusing... simply complicating things in order to come up with a "rational" explanation to something that can be done the easy way:sick:

ah.. i know what you mean.. my teacher gave us a similar timeline.. I've got it somewhere... I'll make a drawing of it in 'paint' and post it in a minute

[SleepyWitch]

timeline 1 is on it's way:

http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o120/SleepyWitch/grammartimeline1.jpg
hope you can read it. it's adapted from A Student's Grammar of the English Language by Sidney Greenbaum and Randolph Quirk (renowned linguists from the UK)

there's one more term missing: tense

Tense is a grammatical category that is realized by verb inflection.
??? this means when something that expresses time relations is expressed by an ending attached to the verb stem then it's a tense.
in English there are two such tenses:
present tense: he likes...
past tense: I/he/she/they... liked

the important point here is, that it's only called a tense when the time thingy is expressed by an ending and nothing but an ending.
the present perfect e.g. is expressed by have plus and ending (-ed), so it's not a tense according to this definition (Greenbaum and Quirk)
in LATIN the perfect would be a tense, since it is expressed by and ending without the help of a word like have, e.g. laudavi= perfect of laudare without any auxiliary verb

I'll explain about the present perfect, simple past and past perfect in a separate post :)

[SleepyWitch]

"present perfect" is adapted from the Student's Grammar, Past Perfect from A Grammar of Present Day English by Friedrich Ungerer et. al. (not the best of all teaching grammars, but it will do for the moment)
http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o120/SleepyWitch/presentperfecttimeline.jpg

http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o120/SleepyWitch/pastperfecttimeline.jpg

let's look at your sentence again:
"before he retired" expresses a definite point in the past. i.e. Uncle Al used to work in cattle-raising in the past, but he retired at some definite point. E.g. "Uncle Al retired last year. Before he retired he...."

this means his cattle-raising times are over. they have been over since the moment he retired. i.e. the time frame in which the cattle raising happened is no longer relevant to the present. right? he can no longer raise cattle because he quit this job.
maybe the exact same cattle he raised are still around and doing fine, but that's not really the point. what matters is that his cattle-raising time was finished at some point in the past.
now up to that point in the past, he raised cattle. --> you can use either "raised" because the "before" already expresses that it happened before that point, or you can say "had raised" if you want to make the time relation (something happening before something else in the past) extra clear

hope it helps
say hello to your teacher:flare:

[Whifflingpin]

Spot on, Sleepywitch.

Except for the definition of "tense" maybe.

I'd say that "past perfect progressive" is an adjectival phrase, not a noun phrase. If I'm right, then there must be a noun understood. I think that noun is "tense." If not, do your authors state what the noun is, or do they say that "past perfect progressive" is a noun?

[SleepyWitch]

Spot on, Sleepywitch.

Except for the definition of "tense" maybe.

I'd say that "past perfect progressive" is an adjectival phrase, not a noun phrase. If I'm right, then there must be a noun understood. I think that noun is "tense." If not, do your authors state what the noun is, or do they say that "past perfect progressive" is a noun?

noun phrase?
what kind of noun phrase are you talking about? Chomskian ones as in

S(sentence)--> NP+VP etc?

the London School (Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Jeffrey Leech, Ian Svartvik and others) don't do syntax analisis that way, if that's what you mean..

Their first level of analysis is the "elements of clause structure": Subject, Verb, Object (direct or indirect), Complement (subject complement or object complement), Adverbial
...
oops, I think I got your question wrong...

they make a distinction between tense and aspect. tense is marked by inflection on the verb, like in my example; ..can't think of a clear definition of aspect right now (something along the lines of "seeing events related to time"). when you combine the "-en" (-ed) ending with have/has you get
a present with a perfective aspect, e.g. He has known this for a long time. when you combine this ending with had you get a past with a perfective aspect He had known this (before)
hurumpf, that was an impromptu explanation... gotta look it up somewhere

what was your question?:bawling:

[barbara0207]

Hi, Sleepy!
If you want to go into teaching, you may forget about the Quirk definition. For practical purposes all finite verb forms are called 'tenses' in pupils' textbooks. :D

But otherwise you did a very good job, I think.

[Whifflingpin]

Thanks, Sleepywitch.

I think that "aspect" was the answer to my question.

.

[SleepyWitch]

Hi, Sleepy!
If you want to go into teaching, you may forget about the Quirk definition. For practical purposes all finite verb forms are called 'tenses' in pupils' textbooks. :D

But otherwise you did a very good job, I think.

yep, barbara, I know about that :) probably I'll stay at univ anyway...
well, in this case I think it's a good idea to stick to the text books, but lots of times they are plain rubbish :)
thanks :)

[RoCKiTcZa]

sure :) Thanks, everyone! SleepyWitch, especially, who PMmed me to let me know how this thread was going. And Barbara too. And of course to everyone else who gave time to share their opinions and help me through this predicament of mine. The aspect of grammar has definitely become wider and somehow a lot more complex ever since I started out in this school (cheers for pisay!!! pshs in more formal terms:p )


However, there is another problem. My teacher (who calls himself a grammarian and acts like one indeed) sure loves timelines and tenses, and he's driving us bananas with them. He gave us another question, which most of us also messed
up in:

Two statements were given:


I started speaking Mandarin two years ago.
I still speak the language up to now.

Then we were to choose among the four choices the most appropriate way of combining the two into one direct statement:
a. I have been speaking Mandarin for two years now.
b. I have started speaking Mandarin two years ago.
c. I have been speaking Mandarin since two years ago.
d. I have spoken Mandarin.

Most of us answered a.
He says the right answer is c.

There may be a timeline to prove it,
but a still seems more correct,
and even the letter c can stand as a better choice than b.

What do you think?

<Answers/comments/replies to the Uncle Al issue mentioned earlier will continue to be accepted and will always be welcomed by us!!!:D >

[SleepyWitch]

hey Kit, I agree with you. a sounds most natural. but I'm not a native speaker... still, a sounds best because both have been speaking and for two years express the same idea, i.e. over a certain period of time. I think you could say since 2005 but not since two years ago
hang on, I'll go check it in the BNC (http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/) (British National Corpus) and Cobuild (http://www.collins.co.uk/Corpus/CorpusSearch.aspx) (Collins Birmingham University International Language Database)

[NikolaiI]

Well at first a sounds better, but thinking about it a little more c does sound a little better. Hard to say.

On the original question, "raised" sounds better but still not perfect. Wouldn't you need a "since" to use "has raised"? "He has raised cattle since before he retired"? Otherwise, maybe "he used to raise cattle before he retired"?

And if the first is structurally wrong, is there anything wrong with "He brushed his teeth before he left the house", or am I missing something? I would ask why it is wrong, but also this grammar is beyond anything I've taken in a class.

Although, it would also seem better to say "He raised cattle before he was retired" or something like that, since retired seems to have more with his being retired then his retiring, but maybe I am missing it here. :)

[SleepyWitch]

done.

What are BNC and Cobuild?
I'll briefly explain what BNC and Cobuild are: they are electronic corpora (singular corpus), that is electronic databases of authentic language material. that is lots and lots of texts and records of spoken language were fed into the computer and linguists wrote programmes with which they can search those datebases.
BNC contains 100 million words of British English.
Cobuild at one time contained 700 million words of British and American English, but it's been downsized to 400 million words.
the Cobuild interface is a free trial version which displays only 40 hits, whereas the BNC interface has no such limitations, i.e. it will find whatever the full version would find.
Corpora like these are used by linguists to find out how native speakers use the language. The advantage of corpora is that you have huge masses of data at your fingertips and don't need to rely on subjective judgements.

Results from Cobuild
I've done a search for since+2years+ago in Cobuild.
the 2 year does not mean "two" but it stands for "two intervening words". the search pattern translates as "since followed by two intervening words (i.e. two or three or four plus another word could occur here) followed by years followed by ago

there are a few finds with something like two years ago occurring together in one sentence, BUT those are quite different from the ones your teacher gave you:
That's the largest decline for the index since three years ago when the stock market crashed.

as you can see, the since three years ago is followed by a clause starting with when which specifies what happened three years ago.
Also, the main verb in the first clause is is ( That is the largest decline). It is in the simple present not the present perfect. Plus, this verb is describes a single event ("right at this moment we have the largest decline"), not a continuous action like I have spoken....
Both is and since three years ago when... describe fixed points in time, so they can be combined.

was to look at using the tense model that I've used since many years ago working with XX on this to
here we've got a present perfect (I've used) together with since and ago. However it's not since two/three/... years, but since many years ago working with.., i.e. "I've used this model ever since I worked together with... many years ago." That means the since doesn't go together with the many years but with working together..
---> it's different than since two years ago

Results from BNC
I used a client software to search the BNC and it found only one example of
since followed by two/three/four, followed by years, followed by ago

The nearest he has come to an England place since was three years ago when he broke a thumb within 24 hours of being selected to face India.
but here since and ago don't belong together at all. Here the point in time that since refers to must have been mentioned in another sentence before this one. E.g. He won the cup in 1970. The nearest he has come to an England place since (=since 1970) was three years ago..

so, all of this indicates that your teacher is wrong. If there was a sentence like c in the corpus, I would have found it.

where are you from Kit?
I hope my explanations aren't too complicated, but I think it's much more helpful to think about grammar than just to parrot what it says in school text books, because sometimes they can be misleading.

[kilted exile]

I would use a

c just reads wrong. To use "since" I believe you would either have to rearrange the sentence to "It is 2 years since I started speaking Mandarin" which changes it to the passive voice (something which for some reason has gone out of favour with many teachers) or, to keep using the active voice, you have to use a date eg "I have been speaking Mandarin since 2005"

[SleepyWitch]

hehe, kilted, It's two years since I started speaking Mandarin is not a passive :) I'm not sure what it's called but I think the It is called a dummy-subject because it doesn't really refer to anything. I think this structure might be called "raising" or "fronting" since the two years bit is moved to the front of the sentence

if it's not that then it's something similar to a cleft or pseudo-cleft sentence :)

[barbara0207]

Awesome research work, Sleepy! :thumbs_up

Good to see that your results confirm my opinion (correct sentence: a).

Kit, I would like to have a talk with your teacher!

[SleepyWitch]

Awesome research work, Sleepy! :thumbs_up

Good to see that your results confirm my opinion (correct sentence: a).

Kit, I would like to have a talk with your teacher!

hehe, I'll try the BNC again tomorrow though. most of the time that stupid client thingy doesn't do what I want it to do, so my query might have been wrong and there might be more sentences containing since and ago,.. on the other hand there will be any like the one Kit's teacher said...

[hedbanger]

Your english teacher must be shot. That is the only solution to this.

[bluevictim]

Your english teacher must be shot. That is the only solution to this.Seriously! Who is your English teacher, Jackie Chan?

[AuntShecky]

My English teacher gave us this sentence and instructed us to fill in the blank with the proper verb tense (chosen from the words inside the parenthesis):

Uncle Al _____________ cattle before he retired. (raised, has raised)

He says the right answer is "has raised" but I need some confirmation... Please help!!!

Actually, there are two ways to write the sentence:
Uncle Al raised cattle before he retired.
OR
Uncle Al HAD raised cattle before he retired.

I don't see how "has" would fit unless it is written in the present tense:
Uncle Al has raised cattle, and now he is ready to retire.

[BEXsezThAt]

I'm new to litnet, but I think I know what RoCKiTcZA is talking about. Maybe the teacher was just copying from a book, so it might not be his entire fault that the entire literary world is turned against him. In that case, it is the book that is at fault. :lol:
English is really confusing, isn't it?


"What is truth, but a set of lies agreed upon?":D

[BEXsezThAt]

RoCKiTcZa, I wanna make a correction. That is NOT what the teacher said. He said something like this:

"Uncle Al ____ cattle before he retired. [raised, has raised]"
"The ideal answer is "had raised", but since it's not in any of the choices<????????>, then we have to use the process of elimination to get the answer."
"RAISED is OK, but STRUCTURALLY, it's incorrect. There cannot be 2 verbs in the same sentence that both use past tense." <draws big Xmark on RAISED>
"So now that we have eliminated RAISED, the only remaining answer is HAS RAISED, and that, in this case, is the correct answer." :P

My brain hurts.....

[BEXsezThAt]

Uhm, corrections again for RoCKiTcZa... He didn't say c was right, he said it was wrong bcoz it sounded awkward <but then again, english is an extremely awkward language>. He said the correct answer was b <?>, but then a classmate spoke up, "doesn't that mean that he started speaking 2 yrs ago, and he's still starting to speak now?" I agree with him[my classmate, not the teacher :D], but I'm tired of contradicting my teacher. You can't win over authority w/o an army supporting you :P

<above post is about the Speaking Mandarin question>

[SleepyWitch]

RoCKiTcZa, I wanna make a correction. That is NOT what the teacher said. He said something like this:

"Uncle Al ____ cattle before he retired. [raised, has raised]"
"The ideal answer is "had raised", but since it's not in any of the choices<????????>, then we have to use the process of elimination to get the answer."
"RAISED is OK, but STRUCTURALLY, it's incorrect. There cannot be 2 verbs in the same sentence that both use past tense." <draws big Xmark on RAISED>
"So now that we have eliminated RAISED, the only remaining answer is HAS RAISED, and that, in this case, is the correct answer." :P

My brain hurts.....

Hi BEX, welcome to litnet.
I agree with you that in most cases you have to use had raised etc to express that something happened even before the past. but when there is a word like before in the sentence that expresses this time relation in itself, you can use two verbs in the simple past.

[SleepyWitch]

I agree with him[my classmate, not the teacher :D], but I'm tired of contradicting my teacher. You can't win over authority w/o an army supporting you :P

yep, I agree with you BEX, probably it's a good idea to sit tight and just wait till you get a new teacher. on the other hand, maybe not every one's English is as good as yours and Kit's, so the teacher might actually succeed teaching some of your classmates things that are just plain wrong...

anyway, Kit if you want to do more grammar exercises in your own time I'd recommend Advanced Grammar in Use (http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_ss_w_h_/203-0099007-4115104?initialSearch=1&url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=advanced+grammar+in+use&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=Go) by Martin Hewings. It's got exercises on all major areas of grammar (with answers!) and the explanations are really straightforward comparatively easy to read.

[kilted exile]

hehe, kilted, It's two years since I started speaking Mandarin is not a passive :) I'm not sure what it's called but I think the It is called a dummy-subject because it doesn't really refer to anything. I think this structure might be called "raising" or "fronting" since the two years bit is moved to the front of the sentence

if it's not that then it's something similar to a cleft or pseudo-cleft sentence :)

This just provides more evidence of why listening to teachers is a bad idea:p I was taught by my english teacher that that was passive (course I also failed English twice:D )

[hedbanger]

Seriously! Who is your English teacher, Jackie Chan?

HAHAHAHA. Chinaman joke.

[BEXsezThAt]

[QUOTE=SleepyWitch;428445]yep, I agree with you BEX, probably it's a good idea to sit tight and just wait till you get a new teacher. on the other hand, maybe not every one's English is as good as yours and Kit's, so the teacher might actually succeed teaching some of your classmates things that are just plain wrong...

HEHE, yeah, he's new to this teaching stuff, he only started teaching in our school last year.... but that's still not an excuse for the wrong things he's teaching us.

Oh well...

[RoCKiTcZa]

Absolutely not an excuse! (Hey, Bex, guess what, your username sorta reminds me of the manner Sir Alf calls on you in class...)
By the way, thanks for correcting me on a lot of stuff, Bex... you know I'm not so good in retaining stuff in my head. But anyway if he said B was right then why did he mark me wrong?!:confused: What a great grammarian he is then. Not that I want to kill him or anything, however I have had other teachers much better than he is and I just wish they were here to teach us clear stuff - yet none of these have a lovelife a colorful as his! ;) Ah, so sad to know you've tired of contradicting my teacher, I'm still pretty much in the mood to do so and it's kind of grown into me like a hobby since I was in elem.:)

[BEXsezThAt]

REALLY??!! He marked you wrong? Well, maybe you got the sequence wrong....

I just talked to my english teacher friend today. I directed her to litnet, just so she knows what I'm talking about ;). I told her about the many "quirks" of sir Alf <call them what you will, I'm just trying to be nice here coz he might read this>, about how he doesn't consider our answers much, even if he says "I'll think about it," and she said, "maybe it's not so much about grammar; maybe he just doesn't want to admit he's wrong". Maybe, just maybe, therein lies the problem. Maybe he's not yet that sure of himself that he can bend the rules a little. If that's what's going on, then we're never going to get him to "consider" our answers. In the classroom, what the teacher says, goes.

She <my friend> said that those tenses, the ones in the Uncle Al problem & the Speaking Mandarin question, are rarely used that way. She also said that in their department, they don't teach so much rules as usage, because there are exceptions to rules. Well, maybe it'e different for her, she teaches Eng10, but I think their way makes more sense. Suddenly, the idea for having Sir Joey as a teacher doesn't seem so scary.

I fell kind of bad talking about sir Alf behind his back..... :(

[SleepyWitch]

This just provides more evidence of why listening to teachers is a bad idea:p I was taught by my english teacher that that was passive (course I also failed English twice:D )

maybe one of the reasons your teacher didn't know too much about grammar terminology is that English teachers in the UK don't really have to study English Language or Linguistics? As far as I'm aware they take a B.A. in English Lit and then go on to do a PGTC (is that the right abbreviation) Post-Graduate Teaching Certificate or something along those lines)? I don't know how much grammar and linguistics this actually involves, but I assume it's mainly practical teacher training plus some Education/Psychology etc theory?

[RoCKiTcZa]

About my teacher...his qualifications don't seem dubious, though he's never told us of, yet the only thing we know is that he's currently taking his master's degree in a good private university (famous too), the one he received his bachelor's degree from.

[muhsin]

maybe one of the reasons your teacher didn't know too much about grammar terminology is that English teachers in the UK don't really have to study English Language or Linguistics? As far as I'm aware they take a B.A. in English Lit and then go on to do a PGTC (is that the right abbreviation) Post-Graduate Teaching Certificate or something along those lines)? I don't know how much grammar and linguistics this actually involves, but I assume it's mainly practical teacher training plus some Education/Psychology etc theory?

Sleepy, I think you are correct because I once heard something like this story you told about UK based English teachers.

[BEXsezThAt]

What's more practical: teaching Grammar, or teaching Literature?

[SleepyWitch]

What's more practical: teaching Grammar, or teaching Literature?
???
what I said was, they don't necessarily learn about grammar during their studies because what they study is English Literature, but then they are expected to teach grammar

[RoCKiTcZa]

I'll be more straightforward this time... and I'm telling you it's literature, I believe. You can be really good in lit without necessarily being good in grammar, which seems a lot more practical because lit is not at all about the rules, it's mostly about freedom of speech; after all bending the rules once in a while is what makes a work original ;)

[papayahed]

I'll be more straightforward this time... and I'm telling you it's literature, I believe. You can be really good in lit without necessarily being good in grammar, which seems a lot more practical because lit is not at all about the rules, it's mostly about freedom of speech; after all bending the rules once in a while is what makes a work original ;)

But you have to know the rules before you can bend them.

[SleepyWitch]

what are you guys on about anyway? :confused:

[RoCKiTcZa]

uh-oh, this seems to be growing into a debate... ;)

[AuntShecky]

Hi, everyone. I am willing to wager that schools in the U.K.
do a much better job of teaching grammar than we do in the States. Some teachers refuse to teach it -- they believe correcting grammar hurts the little ones' self esteem. But you can see the fruits of the teachers' negligence all over the Web. I make grammar mistakes myself, and I am supposed to be "educated. Improving one's grammar and usage is a live-long task, but a worthy one!
Auntie

[BEXsezThAt]

Subject change here. I've got another grammar question:
Is "Neither Carl nor Maria finshed their homework." a simple, compound, or complex sentence?

My teacher (yep, the same one) said that structurally, it's a simple sentence, but the meaning is compound in that it has two subjects. I was taught in my previous school that it was compound because it could be split up into 2 sentences: "Carl did not finish his homework" and "Maria did not finish her homework". What is it really???!!!:sick:

[Niamh]

Kit your teacher is an idiot. How are you ment to learn english if he cant even teach you grammar correctly?

[SleepyWitch]

Subject change here. I've got another grammar question:
Is "Neither Carl nor Maria finshed their homework." a simple, compound, or complex sentence?

My teacher (yep, the same one) said that structurally, it's a simple sentence, but the meaning is compound in that it has two subjects. I was taught in my previous school that it was compound because it could be split up into 2 sentences: "Carl did not finish his homework" and "Maria did not finish her homework". What is it really???!!!:sick:

I'd say it's totally pointless to bother pupils about questions like this, because knowing whether this sentence is simple, compound or whatever doesn't help you speak English at all.
I not sure about the answer, but I think formally (what your teacher calls structurally) it's simple because it only has one subject (neither). he's right that it could be split up into two sentences (in which case it would be a compound sentence), but since it is not split up I'd still call it simple.

[Niamh]

Can i just point out that i grew up learning and speaking English and i dont remember having to learn and assess my grammar the way you guys are. We did do grammar of course but not to a major extent, seeing as a lot of our grammar was learnt from daily speach.

[RoCKiTcZa]

I kind of agree with you, Niamh. However, in a science institution it seems as though every subject, even those falling under Humanities, must be taught with a scientific approach...

[SleepyWitch]

Can i just point out that i grew up learning and speaking English and i dont remember having to learn and assess my grammar the way you guys are. We did do grammar of course but not to a major extent, seeing as a lot of our grammar was learnt from daily speach.

foreign language learning doesn't work that way, though, as desirable as that would be.
plus, it's not even true that children learning their first language (mothertongue) don't get any instruction in grammar. we tend to forget this, but little children as young as 3 or 4 actively seek information about grammar. my grammar teacher recorded the following conversation with his son (it was in German of course, and I'll use 'sheep' as an equivalent for the German word, which had an identical singular and plural)
son: I seed three sheeps.
dad: You saw three sheep?
son: no, three sheeps!
dad: hmmm, sheep is a strange word, we say three sheep.
son: but it was many of them, when it's many we say sheeps!
dad: yes, that's right, but with sheep we don't do this.
son: why?
dad: I don't know.
son: that's weird. ok, three sheep.


i totally fail tho see how learning about simple, complex and compound sentences helps you learn English. grammar should only be taught as far as it helps pupils understand and speak/write the foreign language. more than that is nonsense

[Niamh]

What i meant was we learnt grammar but not the way you have learnt it. We learnt it as we grew up as our language knowledge expanded. When i studied French in School i dont think we got that technical either.....

[Virgil]

I wasn't sure where to post this, but i thought it was grammar related. It shows how idioms form and enlarge meanings of words, especially simple every day words.


You lovers of the English language might enjoy this:

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is "UP."

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?

We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car. At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stirUP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special.

And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP . We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP ! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP , look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UPalmost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions. If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP , you may wind UP with a hundred or more. When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP . When the sun comes out we say it is clearingUP .

When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.

When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP.

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP , so............ Time to shut UP .....!

[AuntShecky]

Is "Neither Carl nor Maria finshed their homework." a simple, compound, or complex sentence?

It is only one independent clause (one combination of subject and predicate or noun + verb.)

A compound sentence contains two or more independent clauses.

A complex sentence contains one or more independent clauses plus one or more dependent clauses ("subordinate") clauses.

Can you transfer to another teacher's class?

[BEXsezThAt]

Replying to Aunt-, no, I don't think we can transfer to another teacher's class, but even if we could..

I don't want to! This english teacher's so damn interesting! We suspect something fishy going on :D. Well, the teacher's interesting, but the subject's not..

Why does english have to be so damn complicated?!

[AuntShecky]

English truly isn't all that complicated, especially when compared to other languages with inflections (several genders and declensions.) There are only a few general rules in English:
One of the most important of the rules is Word Order. The subject (the person place or thing doing the action) usually precedes the verb. In other languages, Latin for instance, the ending of the word (inflection) tells you what the part of speech is, and the word order isn't as
important.

Speakers of English as a second language have always told me that the most difficult part of learning English is the extensive vocabulary. We have many, many synonyms for similar words, but most of them have shades of meaning, nuances. Also, idioms can be tough.

It seems to me that the more you read, the better you will
appreciate and know the language.

Auntie

[RoCKiTcZa]

Waaaaahhhhh!!!!!:bawling:

Final exams start tomorrow, and now I'm losing my mind...

Why have conjunctions suddenly become too complicated? And what in the world are those terms... Coordinating, subordinating, correlative... no wonder I didn't fare well in the long test. Much worse, my teacher hasn't any plans to lend us a helping hand—we are to take this challenge completely on our own.

Grammar doesn't really stink, does it? Taken too technically, however, it reeks like rotten eggs. At least that's what I'm led to believe. English class had never been this hard until I came to this school, and I guess it never should be. Oh well...

The test is tomorrow and I still don't know what to do!

---

By the way, which of these two sentences is more correct?

Just because you look like him doesn't mean you can play better than him.

or

Just because you look like him doesn't mean you can play better than he.

:)
Good evening/night/morning/afternoon...
Have a nice day.
Wish me some luck!

[SleepyWitch]

coordination:
when two clauses (a stretch of language that contains a subject and a verb) or two phrases that could be expanded into clauses are connected by and, but, or or.
these three are called coordinating conjunctions
examples:
Jack and Nora went to the store.
Jack is a noun phrase and Nora is a nounphrase. but you can make two clauses out of these: Jack went to the store and Nora went to the store.

Jack went to the store | but | it was closed.
here we have two clauses. I've marked them in blue and green. the conjunction is not part of the structure of the sentence as such. it neither belongs to neither of these two clauses.

each of these clauses could stand on it's own: e.g. Jack went to the store.
It was closed.

subordination:
when two clauses are linked together and one of them could not stand on it's own.
E.g. Jack went to the story, after he had lunch.
after he had lunch couldn't really stand on its own.
there are lots of subordinating conjunctions, e.g. after, before, because, when ...
but you have to be careful here: often the same word can be used eitehr as a conjunction or a preposition. it's called a conjunction, when there is a clause ('sentence') after it, like in after he (he=subject) had(verb) lunch(object).

when there is only a nounphrase after it, it is analysed as a preposition:
After the film, jack went to the store.
the film, is a nounphrase not a clause ('sentence')

correlative??? never heard of it. can you give an example? want me to look it up in my big fat 2000 p grammar?

[RoCKiTcZa]

Correlative conjunctions travel in pairs and join various sentence elements that should be treated as grammatically equal. (Grammatical equality?!:confused: I don't quite understand. Eng and Math Blues... what a mix!) Anyway, here are some examples I managed to look up:

She led the team not only in statistics but also by virtue of her enthusiasm.
Polonius said, "Neither a borrower nor a lender be."
Whether you win this race or lose it doesn't matter as long as you do your best.

[SleepyWitch]

Correlative conjunctions travel in pairs and join various sentence elements that should be treated as grammatically equal. (Grammatical equality?!:confused: I don't quite understand. Eng and Math Blues... what a mix!) Anyway, here are some examples I managed to look up:

She led the team not only in statistics but also by virtue of her enthusiasm.
Polonius said, "Neither a borrower nor a lender be."
Whether you win this race or lose it doesn't matter as long as you do your best.

ah I see.. it's not that complicated..
I suppose your correlative conjunctions here are not only...but also, neither...nor and whether...or

grammatically equal just means that those elements have the same function in the sentence (are used in the same way) and have the same form (they are made up of the same kinds of words)

She led the team not only in statistics but also by virtue of her enthusiasm.
here we have two prepositional phrases (form) that are used as adverbials (function)

Polonius said, "Neither a borrower nor a lender be."
two nounphrases (form), never mind their function :)

Whether you win this race or lose it doesn't matter as long as you do your best.
two clauses

[AuntShecky]

Just because you look like him doesn't mean you can play better than he.

This is the correct one. It is "he" (nominative case) rather
than "him" (objective case.) You are starting a dependent clause, which calls for a subject. The verb ("is") is understood, though not spoken.

[RoCKiTcZa]

Hey guys. Got through with the test. *Whew!* Finally. It wasn't as difficult as I thought, though I was not sure with two numbers.

First, is there a comma splice in this sentence? (Take note, this is not the exact sentence which appeared in the test this morning, yet I have decided to post a similar one)

Andres Bonifacio led the revolt against the Spaniards bravely and directly, therefore, he should be named our National Hero.

2. Which of these three sentences is correct?
a. Canseco can be a klutz in the outfield, for example, he's been known to drop easy fly balls.
b. Canseco can be a klutz in the outfield, for example he's been known to drop easy fly balls.
c. Canseco can be a klutz in the outfield; for example he's been known to drop easy fly balls.

I believe the answer to this is not in any of the choices, as the correct way of writing this sentence is Canseco can be a klutz in the outfield; for example, he's been known to drop easy fly balls.

[AuntShecky]

You can use a comma to separate two clauses.
A comma "splice" is a mistake because it separates the
subject from the verb.