Teacher Discussion Forums

I would be surprised if 50% of college students knew what "cuckold" means. I doubt that there is a comparable word for females. Some Chinese girls once asked me if there was an English word for a man who always cheats on his girlfriend. I was pleased to tell them the word "playboy" basically had tha...

I think the strategy of using visual and kinesthetic prompts is good. When Chinese students invariably use "he" for "she" or vice versa, I always overreact with an expression of surprise indicating that I'm the one who has made a mistake in identifying someone's gender, before I get them to acknowle...

There's a wonderful article about the 50th anniversary of The Elements of Style at http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i32/32b01501.htm . The author Geoffrey Pullum points out that this celebrated standard of grammatical instruction contains a significant number of flaws and errors. This reveals a lot abo...

"living on her own" is an adjectival participial phrase. It can modify the subject in several positions. "miserable" is a predicate adjective.

Living on her own, she is miserable.
Susy, living on her own, was miserable.

Bobby, who is living on his own, is miserable.

Forty to fifty years ago, you would say steady boyfriend to indicate a serious relationship. I would say that the phrase serious boyfriend is now more common, but google turns up more results for the former. Regardless, I would advise you to use the direct translation. The meaning is clear, and I do...

"into custody" is a verb complement. Predicate adverbs normally follow objects. e.g. Put the money "in a safe". Give the book "to me". Say something "to her". Passive voiced versions of these double complemented predicates show that the predicate adverb can directly follow the verb. The money was pu...

Fluffy, I suspect Brian did not realize that he had asked such a complicated question. Most grammars define complex sentences as containing two clauses in which one is subordinate to the other. By that definition, his example sentence is complex. However, he's not going to find a grammar book which ...

No, it's not a complex sentence. Multiple non-finite clauses can occur in simple sentences. In contrst to your sentence, the sentence "Mary says Peter is walking his dog." is complex because both verbs are finite.

I agree that "have" is correct because "you" is the antecedent of the relative pronoun "who". When the antecedent is 3rdps, then so is "who", "He who laughs last, laughs best." http://www.bartleby.com/59/3/hewholaughsl.html I think the idea is rendered more correctly with an adverbial dependent clau...

Why do you think the colour coding is better than a tree for those who know what they are doing? Doesn't a tree represent hierarchy better? (How about a coloured tree?) Hierarchy is just one aspect of sentence structure. Tree diagrams rely on phrase labels because different sentence structures can ...

On the contrary, you seem to have just done a very good job of taking the colours thing much too far! Why would top-notch linguists need it? Because they wouldn't be "top-notch" if other linguists using a superior visualization system could communicate grammatical relationships more accurately. Lik...

Are you suggesting complexity is always superior to simplicity? :roll: I think their language probably reflects their shared experience in certain respects. If there is a grammar gene, then it implies that genetics would explain the difference in Piraha, but I doubt that it would. I think that compa...

This is a new book, but it's old news. I think Everett first published his research at least one or two years ago. I would be interested to know what responses TGG linguists have made about the Pirahã's language. I think it's noteworthy that they don't have a written script or numbers larger than 10...

The question is whether "for" is an immediate constituent of "plead" or "bail-out". Because we can ask, "Are you for the bail-out?", and say "They pleaded their case for the bail-out.", I would say that it is an immediate constituent of "bail-out". In other words, "for bail-out" is a prepostional ph...

"How do I do what?" There is an odd relationship between the literal and implied meaning in expressions of phatic communion. Consider the good in "good morning" or in "goodbye". Some speakers might think they are expressing a wish that the listener will have a "good" morning or a "good" departure. "...