Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The English modal auxiliary verbs are a subset of the English auxiliary verbs used mostly to express modality, properties such as possibility and obligation. [a] They can most easily be distinguished from other verbs by their defectiveness (they do not have participles or plain forms [b]) and by their lack of the ending ‑(e)s for the third-person singular.
The adverb well may be used in colloquial BrE only with the meaning "very" to modify adjectives. For example, "The film was well good." [37] In both British and American English, a person can make a decision; however, only in British English is the common variant take a decision also an option in a formal, serious, or official context. [38]
Lexemes may be inflected to express different grammatical categories. The lexeme run has the forms runs, ran, runny, runner, and running. [3] Words in one class can sometimes be derived from those in another. This has the potential to give rise to new words. For example, the noun aerobics has given rise to the adjective aerobicized.
The 'must' in this sentence thus expresses epistemic modality: "'for all we know', Agatha must be the murderer", where 'for all we know' is relative to some knowledge the speakers possess. In contrast, (2) might be spoken by someone who has decided that, according to some standard of conduct, Agatha has committed a vile crime, and therefore the ...
According to Agar, culture is a construction, a translation between source languaculture and target languaculture. Like a translation, it makes no sense to talk about the culture of X without saying the culture of X for Y, taking into account the standpoint from which it is observed. For this reason, culture is relational.
A description, study, or analysis of such rules may also be known as a grammar, or as a grammar book. A reference work describing the grammar of a language is called a reference grammar or simply a grammar. A fully revealed grammar, which describes the grammatical constructions of a particular speech type in great detail is called descriptive ...
A literate reader knows the object-language's alphabet, grammar, and a sufficient set of vocabulary; a culturally literate person knows a given culture's signs and symbols, including its language, particular dialectic, stories, [1] entertainment, idioms, idiosyncrasies, and so on. The culturally literate person is able to talk to and understand ...
In some cases it may be preferable to split an infinitive. [11] [13] In his grammar book A Plea for the Queen's English (1864), Henry Alford claimed that because "to" was part of the infinitive, the parts were inseparable. [14] This was in line with a 19th-century movement among grammarians to transfer Latin rules to the English language.