I didn’t come to offer help. As far as I can tell, this is how I would analyze this sentence from a grammatical perspective. I = pronoun didn’t = aux. verb with “not” for negation. come = zero infintive verb. to offer = infinitive acting as an adverb modifying the verb come. help = ? … Read more
I understand it’s not the present tense, else it would be “goes”. Is the sentence grammatically correct? If so, does it mean “you are seeing that it is going away”? Answer Verbs of perception (see, hear, notice, etc.) are followed by an unmarked infinitive — technically a present infinitive, but the past infinitive can’t be … Read more
Watching a game review, I’ve noticed a phrase whose meaning confused me. The reason why I got confused is that the author used a base form of the verb "to explore" in pair with the singular subject "friend". The question is, is it correct to do this? I will write below two more options as … Read more
"For her to lose the election would make me very happy." What I think is that here "For her to lose the election" is an infinitival non-finite subordinate clause & "for" serves as a marker for this clause, and ‘her’ (which is in objective case) refers to the understood subject of the infinitival clause. Am … Read more
“Heard me [infinitive]” vs. “heard me [present participle]” At that time, you wouldn’t have heard me talk about it. At that time, you wouldn’t have heard me talking about it. At that time, you wouldn’t have heard me condemn it. At that time, you wouldn’t have heard me condemning it. Which one of the above … Read more
I have seen them grow up. I have watched them grow up. Though the intended meaning is conveyed in both sentences, I want to know which in this case is a better fit, see or watch. Answer (text lifted from John Lawler’s comment – he probably won’t post it himself, but it’s solid stuff) The … Read more
