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E-Prime (short for English-Prime or English Prime, [1] sometimes É or E′) denotes a restricted form of English in which authors avoid all forms of the verb to be.. E-Prime excludes forms such as be, being, been, present tense forms (am, is, are), past tense forms (was, were) along with their negative contractions (isn't, aren't, wasn't, weren't), and nonstandard contractions such as ain't ...
This is referred to as the habitual aspect of the verb "to be". In AAE, use of be indicates that a subject repeatedly does an action or embodies a trait. In General American English , however, the use of (an inflection of) be means only that an individual has done an action in a particular tense, such as in the statement "She was singing" (the ...
When the affirmative already uses auxiliary verbs (I am going), no other auxiliary verbs are added to negate the clause (I am not going). (Until the period of early Modern English, negation was effected without additional auxiliary verbs: I go not.) Most combinations of auxiliary verbs etc. with not have contracted forms: don't, can't, isn't, etc
However, these were generally much better guides to the then-pronunciation than modern English spelling is. [opinion] For example, /ĘŚ/, normally written u , is spelled with an o in one, some, love, etc., due to Norman spelling conventions which prohibited writing u before m, n, v due to the graphical confusion that would result.
Subjunctive clauses use a bare or plain verb form, which lacks any inflection. For instance, a subjunctive clause would use the verb form "be" rather than "am/is/are" and "arrive" rather than "arrives", regardless of the person and number of the subject. [4] (1) Subjunctive clauses: a. It's crucial that he be here by noon b. It's vital that he ...
English has a number of ergative verbs: verbs which can be used either intransitively or transitively, where in the intransitive use it is the subject that is receiving the action, and in the transitive use the direct object is receiving the action while the subject is causing it.
The first English grammar, Bref Grammar for English by William Bullokar, published in 1586, does not use the term "auxiliary" but says: All other verbs are called verbs-neuters-un-perfect because they require the infinitive mood of another verb to express their signification of meaning perfectly: and be these, may, can, might or mought, could, would, should, must, ought, and sometimes, will ...
The ASL verb for "see" (V handshape), moves from the subject to the object. In the case of a third person subject, it goes from a location indexed to the subject to the object, and vice versa. Also, in German Sign Language not all verbs are capable of subject/object verb agreement, so an auxiliary verb is used to convey this, carrying the ...