WHEN we were children and just beginning to learn English grammar, many of us were taken aback by the strange failure of some verbs to work in certain sentence constructions. For instance, perhaps ...

Talk to most people about grammar and you’re likely to hear a lot about little issues that are, essentially, language trivia — matters like when to use “whom,” how to use “between” and whether you can ...

Ajay plays the big, black grand piano. Teagan watches television. Some verbs do not need an object to make sense. These either: Work alone, as in, ‘Connor screamed.’ Describes a ‘state’ as in, ‘Maire ...

WE all know that when a sentence uses a transitive verb as the operative verb, it's absolutely necessary for the subject to take a direct object and to act on it: "The woman spurned her suitor last ...

Recall that arguments are not ordered in proposition structure. Lexical insertion does not assign the order and the exact position of an argument. Syntax established the word order of complement to ...

Dave in Elkland, Pa., wrote to me recently about pronouns ending in “self” — myself, yourself and so on — and how annoying they can be at times. “‘Myself,’ in particular, drives me near distraction,” ...