“Has he come yet’” vs “Has he not come yet?”

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

There is no question that you will not misunderstand this sentence

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

History of Neither Nor – Negative Meaning with Negative Verb Structure

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

Which “not” is not in the proper place: “Not only does (not) she (not) know, but also …”

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

Grammaticality of “Don’t let’s get you cheap”

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

How do I use proper grammar in the negation of “have not” for the following sentence translation?

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

double negative – no one ~ who hadn’t also

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

Either or Neither in sentence with another negative

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

Understanding the purported ambiguity in “Every boy didn’t run”

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