Unanswered Questions
358 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
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How can I distinguish between supplements and modifiers as proposed in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CGEL)?
In CGEL, the authors use the term 'adjunct' as an umbrella term to cover an element that is either modifier or supplement. On page 1350, the authors explain the properties of supplements to ...
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4
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1
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How should I hyphen decimal numbers written in letters (that contains the word "point" and "and")?
All the wesites I've looked at says to hyphen numbers when you are describing compound numbers between 21 and 99 (except 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 and 90). A compound number is any number that consists ...
3
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What happens when a sentence and an aside require different sentence structures?
How do you handle when an aside -- a parenthetical or a dashed aside -- doesn't fit with what follows, but since the aside is the "closest" thing, the original thing doesn't fit either.
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3
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Structure and usage of the construction - BE of
I have seen various sentences like this:
The availability of two reasonably complete mammalian genomes is of great help to gene finders. - The New York Times
I do my utmost to dress the actors very ...
CommunityBot
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"The number of Xs" - why no article?
Looking at Why not add ‘the’ before the last ‘steps’ word? as recently asked on ELL, I was struck by the realisation that it's very difficult to find contexts where we would include both articles in ...
- 143k
3
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55
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Analyzing the verb “to head”
This is both a usage question and a grammatical analysis question. I am familiar with complex transitive verbs, such as "to place", where one has to have at least one complement, besides the ...
- 175
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Doesn't Swan's example sentence violate adjunct island constraint?
After I posted the question Can relative clauses be combined with adverbial clauses other than if-clauses? and got no answer, I realized that this might be something to do with adjunct island ...
CommunityBot
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In a sentence when two people are mentioned, would 'and' refer to the first person, or the second person?
In this sentence, would the 'and' be associated with Harry or Paul?
Harry hid in the trees until Paul arrived and picked the flower he had planted in the soil.
I feel like it's Paul (which is as ...
- 29
2
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Grammar of “In Meditations, Aurelius wrote about ways to live a Stoic life, asserting that humans should aim to live a virtuous life to be happy”
Below: a photo of a learner's textbook exercise page with a reading passage about a Stoic Roman emperor, with punctuation issues – and a question about punctuation, with rejoinders. "A" (the ...
- 67.9k
2
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4
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"and has as one of its Healthy People 2020 goals to “create social and physical environments that promote good health for all.”"
I would like to ask you about the bold-faced part in the following sentence:
(1) The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines social determinants of health as “conditions in the places ...
CommunityBot
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What do the adverbs modify?
They crashed the ship three years later.
They crashed the ship three years ago.
In these sentences, do “later” and “ago” modify “crashed”? Also does “three years” modify “ago” and “later” since it ...
- 138k
2
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229
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Can I really follow the theoretical framework proposed in the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language?
In the book 'the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CGEL)', the authors propose the theoretical framework used to describe the English sentences as shown below:
Text version:
Clause:
...
- 67.9k
2
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1k
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Syntax for placeholder text
Sometimes we need to write a sentence with a placeholder for a missing bit of information, which the reader needs to fill out when reading the text. This may be a number, or a word, or a sequence of ...
- 141
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Dangling modifier and the order of the modifier and the referent
Somewhere else on SE I came across the phrase "As an engineering prof, let me try to guess..." that felt like it had a dangling modifier. I suggested an edit, moving "let me" to the beginning of the ...
- 238
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'Paper is used for writing on' or 'Paper is used for writing', which one is grammatically correct?
Paper is used for writing on. or Paper is used for writing.
... which one is grammatically correct ?
Chopsticks are used for eating. or Chopsticks are used for eating with?
This desk is used for ...
- 89.6k