I referred to the Michael Swan’s Practical English Usage, regarding the use of yet as an adverb (chapter 539.3 yet). The following examples are given below: The postman has not come yet. Has the postman come yet? Is supper ready yet? He explains that yet is used in the negative sentences and positive questions. He … Read more
The MacMillan Dictionary has the following definition for the phrase ‘there is no question that‘: used for saying that something is definitely true It gives the example: There is no question that she has a great voice. In other words: It is definitely true that she has a great voice. Therefore it appears that the … Read more
In an online discussion I have used a phrase “Could you not go there?”, in the sense of asking a person not to go there. Someone pointed out to me that the expression is completely wrong, which startled me a bit. A cursory Google search made it clear that the phrase indeed is not really … Read more
I know that neither–nor yields a negative meaning if used in a sentence that has a positive verb structure. That is, when we say: Neither George nor James goes to school. we mean: George does not go to school and James does not go to school. By positive verb structure, I mean the usage of … Read more
I know that whenever we bring “not only” at the beginning of a sentence, what comes after it has to be in question form. Now, I’m having a problem with the negative form of this question. Which one of the following sentences is correct? Not only doesn’t she know, but also … or Not only … Read more
I have come across a sentence in one of my textbooks with which I seem to have some problems. One just needs to translate it, paying attention to the verb “hold” used with the appropriate particles. Here it is: “That’s right, Bill. Hold out against it. Put out your strength. Don’t let’s get you cheap”. … Read more
I’m translating a DIALOUGE sentence from Japanese to English, and I’m having issues with keeping the negation of the verb “have not” in my translation while following proper English grammar, or avoiding the sentence reading awkwardly in English. Below is the original Japanese sentence and underneath that are the individual segments parsed out with their … Read more
No one would want to be famous who hadn’t also, somewhere in the past, been made to feel extremely insignificant. Is the sentence a double negative? Is “who” a relative pronoun which modifies “one”? Is the subjunctive mood be used in the above sentence? Answer Yes, “who” relates back to “no one.” To illustrate, I’ll … Read more
I am writing something where I want to say the following: I have never visited either Scotland (n)or England. I couldn’t find information about this on either this site (n)or any other site on Google, including the other questions I found on this site, to answer this question specifically. Most other sources never touch on … Read more
I am a computer science professional. I am reading the book Natural Language Understanding by James Allen where he writes: “Every boy didn’t run” which is ambiguous between the reading in which some boys didn’t run and some did and no boys ran. As I am not a native English-language speaker, I couldn’t understand the … Read more
