Express Publishing ELT

A few thoughts on grammar

Is the sentence at the top of the page grammatically correct? Well, it follows the rules about combining words (adjectives + noun + verb + adverb) in the right way, but does it mean anything? Only by a tortuous stretch of the imagination. Something cannot be both colourless and green. It’s hard to imagine sleeping furiously (unless you are violently tossing and turning in the bed). Can an idea sleep? I suppose you could have green ideas if you are thinking of green meaning ecological. The only possible meaningful paraphrase I can think of is something along the lines of: dull ecological ideas don’t result in action, despite all the angry talk. But taken literally, Chomsky’s famous sentence is lacking in the second part of a definition of grammar, which is that the correctly combined words should form acceptable units of meaning within a language. The form must have a function. So, you can be perfectly grammatical but say nothing meaningful.     read more >>

“Never use the passive when the active is possible” – George Orwell

This is being written by me on the computer which was bought by me recently with the money won by me last week. The lottery had been played by me and my number was appeared in the newspaper. At last some luck was had and myself was seen living in luxury for the rest of my life. Such good fortune had been being waited for by me all my life. Unfortunately, it was just 1000 euros, which somehow wasn’t seemed enough to change my life.

I think it can be agreed that the above doesn’t sound quite right, but students are so often asked to do active – passive transformation exercises that they might be forgiven for thinking that these two voices are interchangeable.     read more >>

It’s interesting that the most common verbs in many languages are irregular. Be, have, do and go often also serve as auxiliaries, combined with other verbs to express tense and other grammatical information, as in He is jogging, He has jogged, He didn’t jog, He is going to jog. Many language scientists believe that the meanings of these verbs – existence, possession, action, motion – are at the core of all verbs, if only metaphorically. For example, the mind treats telling her a story as causing the story to go to her resulting in her having it, and treats dying as going out of existence.     read more >>

(Much virtue in “if” – Shakespeare – As you like it)

If I ruled the world, every day would be the first day of spring.
If a picture paints a thousand words, then why can’t I paint you?
If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
If Cleopatra’s nose had been longer, the whole history of the world would have been different.
If you know your onions, you’ll never be confused.

We’re familiar with our text book categorisations of conditionals into the zero, first, second and third, as exemplified above. We allow the mixed (past condition with present result) – If I’d passed, I would be happy.

Now, how do you feel about these?     read more >>