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 ...

If an action concerns only one person or thing, you mention only the person or thing that carries out the action (the subject) and the action itself (the verb). Verbs which describe such actions are ...

The past week witnessed the frequent occurrence of the words ‘resign’ and its derivative ‘resignation’ in the print, electronic and social media, thanks to LK Advani who stunned the BJP with his ...

AS we took up in this column last week, intransitive verbs like "gone" and "disappear" are of the kind that can't pass on their action to a direct object. This is why sentence constructions like "The ...

There are three basic kinds of verbs plus many subclasses. Here we cover only the three basic types. Initially, verbs are divided into main verbs and auxiliary verbs. Then auxiliary verbs are divided ...

I ran into my friend Lou at the farmers market on Saturday, and she looked troubled. This wasn’t because the sweet corn wasn’t in season yet, but because it’s graduation season, and she had a very ...

We often see the frequent occurrence of the word resign and its derivative in the print, electronic and social media thanks to politicians who hand in resignation letters. Look at these news headlines ...