“To his great astonishment and mortification, Sticky saw his parents begin trying less and less to find him, instead devoting their time and energy toward the proper disposal of their newfound riches” So I stumbled upon this sentence and the part which usually confuses is keeping the consistency of the tenses and my english teacher … Read more
I have just finished reading an extremely long thread on the above mentioned subjects on this site: (https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/demand-request-suggest-that-bare-infinitive-subjunctive-indicative.384237/) Although a lot of things cleared up to me, I still have a little confusion about these two sentences : I’d rather that he be on time. I’d rather he was on time. I found the first … Read more
I came across the following old proverb in which I noticed that a bare infinitive verb is used after a singular subject. Devil take the hindmost. My question is: was it normal at that time to use a bare infinitive verb in such constructions? Answer ‘The Devil take the hindmost’ in the early sixteenth century … 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
In technical documentation (I am mainly referring to the documentation for the source code of a computer program), this pattern seems quite common: function MakeNFrobbers(int n): Construct a list of 10 Frobbers. However, someone recently claimed that this was not proper English and changed “Construct a list…” to “Creates a list…”. The reasoning they gave … Read more
I work for a large nonprofit org with a very talented marketing and writing team. That said, I constantly see the verb "support(ing)" in our blog posts and articles, followed by a bare infinitive. Example: "We support farmers scale their operations," vs. "We support farmers to scale their operations," or "We support farmers in scaling … Read more
I need help in identifying the grammar category. Why is Past Participle used after the word "helped" and what grammar category to refer to understand? "In August 2017, Elijah Mayhew, 15, of Florida died of a gunshot wound there.Weeks earlier, he had told his mom that he wanted to be an organ donor. As such, … Read more
Which is correct: I am excited to see these guys growing up. or I am excited to see these guys grow up. Having hard time figuring out how to use gerunds in a sentence. Answer They’re both acceptable, and largely interchangeable. In this case, there’s a slight difference of emphasis in that growing up shows … Read more
I have some problems when it comes to the usage of "to" vs "ing" to express the infinite form like in: [1] To avoid wasting time trying to figure out …" [2] To avoid to waste time trying to figuring out …" what is the right way to start the sentence and why prefering "to" … Read more
For example, why I saw him eat/eating pasta. but I asked him to eat pasta. or She asked him to leave her. but She saw him leave her. I saw some articles about the topic that told you to remember the exact verbs. Moreover, another article — another set of verbs. Can someone explain to … Read more
