Do you agree with this statement? "Native-speaker intuitions are not always dependable. Being a native speaker does not automatically give us a conscious, clear and comprehensive picture of our language in all its contexts of use ..read more

You are more than welcome . What part of speech is "more" in the sentence above? Is it a determinative, an adverb, or pronoun ..read more

Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado said it was a "red line" for her, but not everyone in the Freedom Caucus is united on whether to make that a hard line. From CNN. Is the interrogative clause "Does everyone have to make that a hard line?" a counterpart of the interrogative content clause "whether to make that a hard line" in the paragraph above ..read more

In these states, the AP can use results from AP VoteCast, a survey of the American electorate aimed at determining why voters voted how they did, to confirm a candidate's victory. From the Associated Press. In the sentence above, is the verb "did" a lexical one or a dummy (the way the "do" works in questions and negations ..read more

Engaging helps one feel out the other party over time and figure out where they will and will not yield when the times come for an actual substantive negotiation. From msnbc.com Is the complement of the predicator "helps" ( one feel out the other party... ) a non-finite clause in the sentence above ..read more

Hello, I have a little inquiry, regarding a curious sentence from a local textbook, which looks like this: (1) It was very complicated to understand. For your information, the pronoun it here refers to a Matisse. And I assume the intended meaning was, 'the painting was so complex that it was hard to understand. My question is, is the adjective complicated one of those that license such movement of an NP from the position of the direct object of a subordinate clause to that of the subject of the matrix clasue? Thank you in advance for your insightful answers ..read more

Old English books or papers from the latter half of the eighteenth century seem to have a different alphabet for 'S', probably Latin, and it seems at the start of the nineteenth century they adopted at once the use of modern alphabet for 'S' instead. Were the alphabets in use got changed at the turn of the nineteenth century? Otherwise these eighteenth century books seem quite readable and the language understandable - not so with the seventeenth century English books ..read more

I'll throw out the question and then give my thoughts about a potential answer, which I am not convinvced are correct. Where does the phrase "right on the money" or "on the money" come from? (I thought I was wrong after being second-guessed, but it turned out my answer was right on the money.) The phrase has an equivalent meaning to "on the mark," "on target," "on the spot," &c. My intial thought was that this phrase comes from horse racing vernacular. When a horse finishes in a position high enough to provide a pay-out to a bettor, it said to have "run in the money." Similarly, when the h ..read more

hi generative gramamr is the concept of Chomsky but then what is generativism? Can somebody guide me on this? Good wishes! collegia ..read more

Why does the English language have differences between orthography/spelling and pronunciation e.g. silent letters, combinations of letters that are sometimes pronounced and some other times not like "enou gh " and "thou gh " ...etc? could the answer be typed and the information you give could be stated in points e.g. 1. 2. 3. i wish to reply as soon as possible. thanks > ..read more