Why is this sentence ungrammatical? There put a student an amazing answer to the test. Answer It’s not ungrammatical. It’s simply a marked order rather than the normal order. The normal order of English is subject–verb–object (SOV) for transitive verbs and subject–verb–complement (SVC) otherwise. The important thing is that normally English is SV, not VS. … Read more
“Along one wall stood a low chest so richly brown as to appear black”. Is this sentence right? As I know a subject is always followed by a predicate but in this sentence, the predicate is followed by the subject. Answer This sentence structure is called a locative inversion, where a prepositional phrase of location … Read more
I’ve recently come across the following sentence: Round the corner walked Hannah, and nearly bumped into Louise. The first clause sounds clumsy to me. I think the example above should be written like this: Hannah walked round the corner, and nearly bumped into Louise. Is it ever right to put the subject at the end … Read more
The gardens stretched back to some reasonable-looking pasture land on which grazed a few cattle and sheep. Why is this inversion valid here? I would expect maybe "on which there grazed" (as in "there comes a time") if an inversion were to be happen. Answer Subject-Verb Inversion 1. After expression of "some place" Five beach … Read more
