What is the purpose of having different auxiliary verbs (“is”, “are”, “am”) for different pronouns (“He”, “You”, “I”…) instead of simply using “is” for all pronouns? It seems like the pronoun always exists in a sentences where the auxiliary verb that relates to it appears, so, to me, having different auxiliary verbs seems to serve … Read more
Think about the following sentence. A culture in which the citizens share similar religious beliefs and values is more likely to have laws that represent the wishes of its people than is a culture where citizens come from diverse backgrounds. I have 2 questions regarding this sentence. 1) Is that highlighted is a main verb … Read more
I realise ‘who saw you’ is probably more common, but is ‘who did see you’ wrong? This is with respect to why who-questions don’t need ‘do’-support as an aux verb. Answer Word order with question word as subject (from PEU by Michael Swan): When who, which, what or whose is the subject (or part of … Read more
I am very confused with usage of could and could have +p.p. For example, do these sentences mean the same: I couldn’t come to college last week. I couldn’t have come to college last week. I couldn’t have come to college last week because I was working. I know that could refers to ability to … Read more
I am interested in subject–auxiliary inversions when the sentence begins with an adverb or an adverbial phrase. If the adverb is not negative (for instance, “not only” or “never”), can we invert the usual word order of subject + verb? For example, can we turn “It faded slowly” into “Slowly did it fade”? Answer Verily … Read more
According to the site Study And Exam, passive constructions cannot be used with verb forms such as: the present perfect continuous construction the past perfect continuous construction the future continuous construction the future perfect continuous construction But according to this other site, English Page, (which I think is the right one) such constructions can for … Read more
http://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/Shall Shall is primarily in the present, and in our mother tongue was followed by a verb in the infinitive. I’ve been doing some research to figure out how shall would be considered to be in the present tense (as opposed to in the future tense). This is primarily in reference to II Timothy 3:1 … Read more
This question arises from a debate between friends about what is "technically" more correct in this sentence: "You don’t happen to have read <book name>, do you?" Should the question be "do you" as in "You don’t happen…, do you?" or "have you" as in "have you read"? (I understand that there are better ways … Read more
I found some text, which has weird (for me) usage of auxiliary verb – do: Although C# doesn’t strictly speaking have a pre-processor, it does have conditional compilation symbols which can be used to affect compilation. I cannot understand correctness of this phrase. I thought that correct variant is: it has Answer “it does” is … Read more
Which one is correct, “if you ever did it again?” or “if you ever do it again?” The act has already been done once by a character A, much to character B’s dislike. Now, if B warns A not to repeat the act anytime in the future, what would be the correct way? Here B … Read more
