Why is “I see a few trees” grammatically correct but “I see a many trees” not? I notice that “I see few trees” and “I see many trees” are both grammatically correct, since “few” and “many” are both determiners. “I see a few trees” has two determiners. Why is it grammatical in the case of … Read more
In this earlier thread titled ‘Can I precede a noun with more than one determiner?‘, the most-voted answer by Barrie England says: Yes, more than one determiner can precede a noun, but they do so in a particular order. All, both and half come before articles, so your example would have to read I saw … Read more
I need to interpret simple imperative sentences. Certainly (a) “Drink the milk.” is a legal imperative sentence, as are (b) “Drink a milk.” and “Drink the milks.,” (but with a different “milk” noun). Is “Drink milk.” a legal imperative sentence? If so what does it mean? My concern in the “declarative” feel to “Drink milk.” … Read more
Is the sentence below correct? I want to say I can’t merely rely on self-learning in order to become proficient in my career, and I need better resources. Although self-learning is an essential factor of success for any career, I believe it isn’t enough to achieve full mastery in them. Or do I have to … Read more
As far as I know, the adjective “various” always requires a plural noun; however, the English word “information” does not have any plural form. My question is therefore as follows: Is the phrase “various information” grammatically correct or should one instead use something like “various types / kinds of information”? I already did some research … Read more
I’ve read this thread and while it does seem to give me the answer I am looking for, I still wanted to ask a related question. Let’s take the following sentences as examples: "He lives in a flat, and she lives in his same flat." "He lives in a flat, and she lives in his … Read more
I am reading a book that contains the following text. A square matrix P is said to be a permutation matrix if each row and each column of P contains a single element 1, and the remaining elements are zero. My questions are: why is “contains” used? why not “contain”? Since there is a “and” … Read more
I have a problem where I cannot decide on whether to use the a/an determiner or not in the following sentence. Do you have [a] healthy contact with your environment? If I remove the adjective healthy from the sentence, to me it is a no-brainer and I would not use the determiner. Do you have … Read more
Considering the following sentences: Don’t listen to those other people. You should always use prefixes with your table names. I have even started using them in normal writing. See how effective it is? People can understand your writing better. I am prefixing these words with abbreviations marking their parts of speech as a demonstration of … Read more
Consider the following sentence. Yet I still enjoy making ____ (an/the) effort to bake at home from time to time. Here, what is the difference between an and the? Is effort here a specific or common noun? Answer I doubt OP’s cited speaker "literally" enjoys making a/the effort to do home baking. More likely she … Read more
