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An -ing form is termed gerund when it behaves as a verb within a clause (so that it may be modified by an adverb or have an object); but the resulting clause as a whole (sometimes consisting of only one word, the gerund itself) functions as a noun within the larger sentence. For example, consider the sentence "Eating this cake is easy."
A sentence consisting of at least one dependent clause and at least two independent clauses may be called a complex-compound sentence or compound-complex sentence. Sentence 1 is an example of a simple sentence. Sentence 2 is compound because "so" is considered a coordinating conjunction in English, and sentence 3 is complex.
The sentence can be given as a grammatical puzzle [7] [8] [9] or an item on a test, [1] [2] for which one must find the proper punctuation to give it meaning. Hans Reichenbach used a similar sentence ("John where Jack had...") in his 1947 book Elements of Symbolic Logic as an exercise for the reader, to illustrate the different levels of language, namely object language and metalanguage.
The phrase originated in the Age of Exploration, when ships would return to port with their flags ("colours") either raised or lowered to signify that the ship had either been successful or defeated, with raised flags indicating success and lowered flags indicating defeat. Thus, "with flying colours" literally means that someone has completed a ...
'The Schmied smith hämmert hammers das the Metall metal flach. flat.' Der Schmied hämmert das Metall flach. 'The smith hammers the metal flat.' Verbal resultatives This sort of resultative is a grammatical aspect construction that indicates the result state of the event denoted by the verb. English does not have a productive resultative construction. It is widely accepted that the be ...
If the verb in question does not use the progressive aspect, then the plain past perfect is used instead (see examples in the previous section). The past perfect progressive may also have additional specific uses similar to those of the plain past perfect; see § Conditional sentences , § Dependent clauses , § Expressions of wish , and ...
The first of these sentences is a basic zero conditional with both clauses in the present tense. The fourth is an example of the use of will in a condition clause [4] (for more such cases, see below). The use of verb tenses, moods and aspects in the parts of such sentences follows general principles, as described in Uses of English verb forms.
In linguistics and grammar, a sentence is a linguistic expression, such as the English example "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." In traditional grammar , it is typically defined as a string of words that expresses a complete thought, or as a unit consisting of a subject and predicate .