Grammar

The correct sentence is “He has already gone to school.” It’s in present perfect tense. Let's consider the grammar points governing the sentence. First, both “has” and “have” are auxiliary verbs;...

Three-term descriptions of vowel sounds are made up of three components: open or close, front or back, and round or spread. All of these distinctions refer to where the tongue moves in the mouth...

The only preposition that actually goes properly with this is "over." This is not the only preposition that would be grammatically correct, but it is the only one that properly completes the...

There are many ways to use the verb "know" to fill in the blank above in a grammatically correct way. First, you could use one of the many varieties of past tense that exist in the English...

Before we talk about the difference between a marked and an unmarked theme in linguistics, let's take a moment to define a couple terms. First, a clause is a group of words that contains at least a...

A verb phrase is made up of the main verb and any helping (or auxiliary) verbs. For example, in the sentence "The cat is walking across the piano," "walking" is the main verb, while "is" is the...

I will show the stress in or emphasis on each of the words you have listed in your post. In the word photographer, the second syllable, tog, is emphasized. In the word photography, the second...

"How is your studies?" is not grammatically correct. Studies is a plural noun and is is a third-person singular verb, so the sentence lacks subject-verb agreement. I understand the misunderstanding...

Here are what I think are the most likely correct answers for the blanks in the sentences above: on from This one could be either "with" or "at." To whom "around" makes the most sense, though I...

Yes, this sentence is 100% grammatically correct. You can end sentences with a main verb or an auxiliary (helping) verb. You could also write, "Waverly is not as smart as June is," or "They are not...

Dessert is spelled with two esses (ss) because you always want more of it!! (As opposed to a desert full of sand, of course.) Just another few words about semi-colons. Any time there is a list...

It might be helpful to consider to put on in contrast with its opposite: to take off. Putting clothes on involves a physical action. When it is time to get dressed, I put on my shirt. I slip it...

One would have to know the context in order to choose an appropriate preposition to fill in the blank. Here are some possibilities and their meanings: in: to say someone is deficient in common...

The prefix in the word "impossible" is "im". Prefixes are placed in front of the root of the word and change the meaning of the word. In this case, the root of the word "impossible" is...

To determine which syllable of a word is stressed, try saying the word aloud and listening for which part you emphasize most. In this case, both nouns have stressed first syllables while both verbs...

1. by 2. since 3. on 4. by my 5. against Prepositions can be difficult in English if you are a non-native speaker. They are words that show a relationship or connection between two other words....

"What is that?" Father asked Miranda in wonder. Quotation marks go around the speaker's exact words. Those words are a question, requiring a question mark. Quotation marks go after end mark...

The phrase should be "English teacher" with a capital "E" as the term "English" here refers to a language of national origin/affiliation. The names of languages are, as a rule, capitalized as in...

I do not know that this is really a question of grammar. To me, it is really just a question of usage. There is no grammatical reason that a person should be "in" mathematics as opposed to being...

The words used with grammar can sound tricky in themselves, so it's important to bare down the question and look at the surrounding context in questions of grammar. The speaker is looking backward...

If written correctly, the household sign would read “Welcome to the Smiths’.” The apostrophe is indicating possession, and as there is more than one member of the Smith family, it also needs to...

You asked if the quotation used at the beginning of a sentence was proper grammar. The answer is yes. However, the serious error in your sentence is caused by not including the source of this...

Language is made up of components or building blocks that are used to make meaning. The building blocks of language are: phonemes, morphemes, lexemes, syntax, and context. These components or...

Pure vowels articulate a single vowel phoneme. Dipthongs articulate combined vowel phonemes. According to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), there are eight dipthong vowels. These are...

"Knowing that" has only to do with the fact that a person knows "what" happens or has happened. "Knowing how" implies that the person understands the mechanism that makes something happen. For...

In grammar instruction, two prevailing ideas guide how one should teach. Inductive and deductive reasoning refers generally to how one comes to an understanding of what is true or probable. In...

The distinction between these two quantity adjectives is the distinction between countable quantity vs. bulk quantity. The rule: If the noun being modified can be counted (“tins of tomatoes”—how...

Structural Grammar: A grammar intended to explain the working of language in terms of the functions of its components and their relationships to each other without reference to meaning....

In simple terms, a parenthetical clause is a group of words that has been separated from the rest of a sentence, adding extra information without changing the meaning of a sentence. The Oxford...

Typically, a decision to use a comma following the introductory word in a sentence such as this depends on the meaning of the word and what article of grammar it is. In the cases you laid out...

Category differs from function because category denotes what a word is while function denotes what a word does. What kind of [sentence] constituent is this? — This question denotes...

The most correct would be to use the present progressive tense, "We have been studying English for five years." That tense indicates that the action began in the past, but is still continuing. You...

There are plosive consonant sounds—p, t, k, b, d, and g—which, in order to make, we must briefly stop the flow of air using our lips, teeth, or palate, and then suddenly release the air. There are...

"Simple" and "simply" are different parts of speech. They are related - kind of like members of a family - but can't quite do the same jobs. "Simple" is an adjective. That means it describes a...

The two listed sentences are both grammatically correct. There is not a problem with word order, capitalization, and/or punctuation, so in that regard, the sentences are good. Unfortunately, a...

"Leading" and "leadership" have "lead" as their base word. "Lead" is a present tense verb meaning to cause someone or something to come along, or to be in control of. The past tense of this verb is...

Active voice: The voter has cast the vote. Passive voice: The vote has been cast by the voter. In a sentence using active voice, the subject of the sentence performs the action expressed by the...

The above answers do a good job, but it is good to start with definitions. Lexical verbs express action, state of being, or predicate meaning. In a word, they are the main verbs of a sentence. An...

A full or correct sentence must include a subject and a predicate. The one apparent exception to this is a sentence in which the verb is in the imperative mood, which is indicated in English by the...

Before we can talk about the difference between compound and complex sentences, we have to discuss the difference between independent and dependent clauses. An independent clause can stand alone as...

1. The basketball team is playing Northwestern High School tomorrow. The nouns in this sentence are "team" and "Northwestern High School" (which is a proper noun). "Basketball" is generally a noun,...

The influence of French on the English language wouldn't make any discernible difference between British and American syntax, considering that the French influence occurred centuries before there...

Cardinal vowels and pure vowels are very different categories of vowels with no overlap in the definitions of the eight primary cardinal vowels and the seven primary pure vowels. DefinitionsPure...

Noun clauses are dependent clauses, meaning that they are sentence fragments. They can function as predicate nominatives, objects of prepositions, subjects, appositives, direct or indirect objects....

When trying to figure out if "who" or "whom" is correct, there is a handy trick that I like to follow. Replace the word with "he" or "him." If it sounds better with "he," then use "who." If it...

The sentence is not correct. "Same" is a subject complement. A subject complement is a word that follows a linking verb and says something about the subject of the sentence. In this sentence,...