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Jerry Chen
Joined: 26 Jan 2006
Posts: 115
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 Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2009 4:54 pm Post subject: Need help from English native speakers(Grammar questions) |
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Hi,
Could you please help me with the two questions?
1. Are the two sentences similar in meaning?
Tom helped Mary with her homework.
Tom helped Mary do her homework.
As for "Tom helped Mary do her homework," is it that Tom did the homework for Mary (Mary just sat doing nothing) or that Tom taught Mary about the questions Mary couldn't solve (Mary still had to do her homework herself) ?
2. We know that "keep" is usually followed by a "V-ing" form. For example, "He keeps talking." Is the V-ing form a present participle or a gerund? Is it a subject complement?
Thanks for your explanation!! |
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pugachevV
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Posts: 2295
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| Posted: Mon Sep 21, 2009 6:58 am Post subject: |
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They mean the same thing.
Both of them mean that Tom helped Mary to answer any questions that she found difficult, or simply that he read over her homework and suggested things she could do to improve it.
It might be something as simple as translating a phrase into a foreign language, or checking the accuracy of calculations. In any case, Mary would be the one who actually did the homework.
If Tom did Mary's homework for her, it would not be considered as helping her, but rather as cheating. |
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dragn
Joined: 17 Feb 2009
Posts: 450
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| Posted: Mon Sep 21, 2009 7:40 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
1. Are the two sentences similar in meaning?
Tom helped Mary with her homework.
Tom helped Mary do her homework.
As for "Tom helped Mary do her homework," is it that Tom did the homework for Mary (Mary just sat doing nothing) or that Tom taught Mary about the questions Mary couldn't solve (Mary still had to do her homework herself) ? |
This is a little slippery, because in neither case does Tom do all the work. We know this because of the word helped. If Tom actually did all the work, I would say:
Tom did Mary's homework for her.
In both Tom helped Mary do her homework and Tom helped Mary with her homework, Tom gave Mary assistance, but probably didn't do all the work. Off hand, I would say that do suggests a greater degree of assistance than with, but that's just my opinion as a native speaker. It's not based on any rules; it's based on hearing such sentences 10,000 times and judging from the actual situations involved.
| Quote: |
| 2. We know that "keep" is usually followed by a "V-ing" form. For example, "He keeps talking." Is the V-ing form a present participle or a gerund? Is it a subject complement? |
First, I wouldn't say keep is usually followed by a v-ing. Keep can be used in several ways, one of which is with a v-ing, of course. But that's beside the point.
In the sentence He keeps talking, I would say talking is a participle. It's not a gerund, since it is not being used as a noun. Nor is it a subject complement. If it were a subject complement, it would have to tell as what the subject is. It doesn't�it tells us what he continues to do...not the same thing. Note that keep can be used as linking verb and be followed by a subject complement in a sentence like the following:
He keeps quiet.
The difference is that here the adjective quiet basically tells us what the subject is: He is quiet...and he remains that way. At least that's my take on this. It's not a trivial question.
Hope this helps.
Greg
P.S. You just beat me, PugachevV! Oh well, at least we agree on the first part.  |
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