The mark of fluent English-language writers or speakers is the way they effortlessly do away with words mandated by formal grammar — which only impede the quick delivery of their ideas. Nonnative ...

MY two preceding columns answered tough grammar questions sent to my personal messages box in Jose Carillo’s English Forum by member ESL-GUY. The first was, “Does a post-noun modifier in an ...

A small clause is the syntactic equivalent of the basic proposition. Small clauses occur in sever constructions. Some examples are shown below. The small clauses are enclosed in square brackets. The ...