On several occasions these past four years, I have pointed out that the pronoun “they” rather than “them” is the correct form of the subject complement in this inverted sentence: “The winners of the ...

Sometime ago, a student in Cambodia preparing for a special English-language scholarship test sent me an e-mail expressing puzzlement over these two sentences: "Particularly unfortunate was my failure ...

Subject-verb agreement means that your verb must be conjugated, or changed, to fit (or agree) with the subject. Subjects can be singular or plural. Think of singular and plural as mathematical ...

IN last week's column, we looked at how inverted sentences allow us to abandon the normal subject-verb-complement (S-V/C) sequence so we can deliver the verb or its complement wherever we feel it 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 ...

Until recently, linguists assumed that the subject of the sentence was generated in the position immediately dominated by S. The node 'S' plays no role in the x-bar theory. Here, we will replace S ...