Messages

61

You Asked Me This Question / Re: The role of the bracket in the English system of punctuation

« on: February 17, 2013, 05:15:13 PM »

Kat seems to be arguing for the sake of arguing. And as a nonnative English learner holding high opinion of the Forum, I don't assume this is the right venue for that.

62

You Asked Me This Question / Re: Singular/Plural

« on: February 02, 2013, 01:56:36 PM »

I've failed to understand why ''they'' has been mentioned in this thread in the same breath as other indefinite pronouns. My sense is that ''they'' falls under the category of definite pronouns, pronouns used to represent a noun that has been mentioned before already.

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You Asked Me This Question / Is using the preposition "out of" grammatically correct?

« on: January 01, 2013, 05:39:38 AM »

I came across last week a sentence in the BBC's story reading ''When the house caught fire, people jumped out of windows in a desperate attempt to save their lives.'' My reaction has been that the sentence misapplies the preposition ''out of,'' and I would suggest it be replaced by another preposition ''through.'' Am I correct thinking that way?
Otherwise, all the best, Sir, in the new year of 2013! We in Tanzania are just 30 minutes into it.

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You Asked Me This Question / Superlative

« on: December 18, 2012, 04:15:25 PM »

I always have doubted the accuracy of sentences like ''This is one of the most beautiful girls in our class,'' or ''They are two of the most respected elderly men in our neighborhood'' and many other similar sentences. My sense is that a superlative should only be applied to express one noun that is the 'most' or the 'least' of all others in a given class of things or people as in ''This is the most beautiful girl in our class'' or ''He is the most respected elderly man in our neighborhood.'' But the first two sentences seem to violate this by showing that in a given group of things or people, we can well have even more than three things or people that exceed others in a certain aspect. So don't you think the strength of a superlative is diminished by distributing it to more than one thing in a group of compared things or people.   

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Lounge / Re: Once Again, How to Say “Merry Christmas” in 75 of the World’s Languages

« on: December 03, 2012, 09:18:33 AM »

''Sikukuu ya Krismasi Njema.'' That's how to say Merry Christmas in Swahili, the language spoken by Tanzanians.

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Lounge / Re: Once again, celebrate the Holiday Season with an element of surprise

« on: December 03, 2012, 09:11:19 AM »

Which country are you referring to, Sir, in this ''Don't you wish that a surprising treat like this could be replicated in our country many times over?'' My assumption is that the Forum has its members scattered all over the planet, and the possessive your, not our, might prove to be a more perfect possessive adjective accordingly.

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Badly Written, Badly Spoken / Re: SUBJECT AND VERB NOT AGREEING WHY?????/

« on: October 27, 2012, 03:26:03 PM »

Poems is noticeably a plural noun. As such, it has to take a plural-form verb ''talk.''

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You Asked Me This Question / Re: "People killed in accident"

« on: October 24, 2012, 12:02:34 AM »

I'm sorry for a late response, Sir. That was due to a terrible network outage over this past three days in this part of the globe. As to the conversion of those passive-voice sentences you've supplied into active-voice constructions, I must say confidently that I can do so with such a remarkable easiness, as opposed to what you believe. For example, letting 'Maria' to be the subject or doer in the active-voice sentences and randomly picking only one of the sentences for the sake of saving time, we will certainly get this grammatically and semantically acceptable sentence ''Maria saw the lovers kissing.''
But I'm absolutely sure that this argument wouldn't be protracted this far if I had perhaps made it in a clear and an effective way since the beginning. First of all I should maybe note that I don't contest the reality that not all active-voice sentences can be made to become passive-voice sentences, because I'm already aware of how the intransitive verbs operate in English sentences. My argument rather centers on the fact that for a sentence to qualify as a passive-voice, it has to be transformable into its logical active-voice version without any difficulty.
Now to get the sense of what I'm talking about and to improve my line of thought, let's have a look at this two outwardly similar but inwardly completely different constructions: ''He has been killed in a plane crash'' and ''He has been killed at a bus stand.'' At first blush both sentences appear to use ''be'' as an auxiliary verb, but at closer look it's the latter that so uses the verb while the former applies it a its main verb. Stated differently, the former is never a passive-voice sentence while the latter is.
That the two sentences have applied verb ''be'' in a very different way can also be proved, as I argued earlier, by finding out the possibility of each to be converted into an active-voice sentence. So if we let again Maria as our subject or doer for the active-voice sentence, the latter will change into this sensical, semantically unassailable construction: ''Maria killed him at a bus stand.'' But things never are as smooth if we attempt to do same thing on the former, in which case we'll surely end up with this impossible, semantically defective construction: ''Maria kiiled him in a plane crash.''
It is indeed the impossibility of the former to be changed into a logical active-voice sentence that accounts for the case I've been promoting that not all ''be+past-participle'' constructions falls under the class of passive-voice constructions, as you want to suggest. There are as many sentences that uses the past participle as an adjective rather than an action verb, and that's simply shown by looking at how the ''be'' behaves and at how its corresponding active-voice sentence would make sense.

69

You Asked Me This Question / Re: People killed in accident

« on: October 20, 2012, 12:58:22 PM »

Sir, do you have any particular passive-voice sentences that can't be converted into active-voice forms? By showing me them, it would make your case more believable to me that not all active-voice constructions can be changed into passive-voice.

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You Asked Me This Question / Re: People killed in accident

« on: October 20, 2012, 05:48:18 AM »

Sir, my contention that ''killed'' in the sentence ''Five people have been killed in a plane crash'' is naturally a past-participle adjective rather than a past-participle aspect is based on the fact that that sentence can't in any way be able to be converted into its active-voice form when one tries to do so. As I perceive it, a legitimate passive voice construction should smoothly be changed into its active-voice form by putting the doer at the beginning of the sentence and eliminating the preposition ''by'' from it. So we can see, for example, ''The ball was kicked by John'' can be changed without any difficulties into ''John kicked the ball'' or ''The decision was made by them'' into ''They made the decision,'' But attempting to convert ''Five people have been killed (by XXX) in a plane crash'' into its active voice sentence will definitely create the thoroughly ''out of line'' construction ''XXX killed five people in a plane crash,'' which means the doer doesn't fit not only in an original passive-voice sentence but also--and so terribly--in a resulting active-voice sentence.
Now to show that sentence has taken on a state of being verb instead of an action verb, I will attempt as follows to break it up into its major components:
1) ''Five people'' = Subject
2) ''have'' = Auxiliary Verb
3) ''been'' = Linking Verb acting as the Main Verb of the sentence
4) ''killed''= Past Participle acting as a Subject Complement
5) ''in a plane crash'' = Prepositional Phrase acting as an Adjective Complement. Have+Been forms what's known as a ''verb phrase'' for the sentence, contradicting your argument that the sentence becomes verb-less if we regard ''killed'' as a past-participle adjective.
I hope I've managed to make my case clearer this time.

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You Asked Me This Question / Re: People killed in accident

« on: October 17, 2012, 07:08:57 AM »

After completing a couple of months in the Forum and coming across a number of similar cases, I've come to find out that ''killed'' in the sentence ''Five people have been killed in a plane crash'' is a past-participle adjective modifying the sentence subject '' five people.'' I'm totally in a state of disbelief, Sir, that you didn't realize this at once and that you were instead so inclined to describe ''were killed'' as acting as a passive verb in that sentence. 

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You Asked Me This Question / Is it correct for a ''because'' clause to act as a subject complement?

« on: October 13, 2012, 06:23:25 PM »

I would like to know if it's accurate to complement a sentence's subject with a because adverb clause as in ''The reason she didn't turn up at the party is because her strait-faced parents denied her permission to do so,'' in which case the subordinate clause ''because her strait-faced parents denied her permission to do so'' is patently acting as the noun predicate for ''reason.'' I always have an opinion that such sentences are unreservedly imperfect, but my listening yesterday to a remarkable BBC anchor making a sentence constructed in that way has made me start to think that perhaps I have been wrong with my perception.

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You Asked Me This Question / Re: Can a participial phrase be used along a perfect-tense verb?

« on: October 13, 2012, 01:56:19 PM »

Thank you! Before this I had a belief that apart from modifying  subjects, participial phrases can as well express the sense of time the action has taken place. That led me to think that ''a present participle'' only modifies a subject that carries out an unfolding action at a particular time rather than an already completed action.

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You Asked Me This Question / Can a participial phrase be used along with a perfect-tense verb?

« on: October 10, 2012, 02:09:38 PM »

I'm wondering whether  sentences like this one are grammatically perfect: ''Working in cooperation with three midwives and one theatre nurse, I have successfully carried out a surgical operation on a pregnant woman with history of obstructed labour.'' 

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Use and Misuse / Re: Commas and conjunctions

« on: October 09, 2012, 08:20:23 PM »

Is there any compelling reason for joining the sentences in the first place. If yes, my instinct is to make away with a full-stop mark after 'vessel' by employing a resumptive-modifier technique as follows: ''It includes a 3,000-tonne supply ship and a patrol vessel, a vessel that will spend the next five to 10 days fishing in the area.''