It often irritates me when people use if when they could have used whether. What annoys me? It is the fact that using if in those cases can cause ambiguity. That is because in English if has 2 meanings: as a synonym for whether expressing a condition In many cases the context makes it clear…… Continue reading I don’t know if ‘whether’ can survive
Tag: Complementizer
Addicted to ‘right node raising’
In this post, I look at a construction that I often saw in drafts of documents I was reviewing. Although the construction is grammatical and concise, readers find it difficult to process. I explain what this construction is and why it is difficult. I also summarise a published review of some of the vast linguistics…… Continue reading Addicted to ‘right node raising’
Don’t put one relative clause inside another
Readers and listeners can find it very difficult to process sentences that embed one clause in the middle of a 2nd clause and then embed that 2nd clause in the middle of a 3rd clause. In this post, I review an example that embeds one relative clause inside another. Sentence with no embedding Let’s start…… Continue reading Don’t put one relative clause inside another
What is a preposition?
Traditional grammars define prepositions as always being followed by a noun phrase (a phrase headed by a noun). However, Huddlestone and Pullum (2005) argue for a broader definition of prepositions. Their wider definition also captures some items traditionally viewed as subordinating conjunctions or adverbs. Table 1 illustrates some problems caused by the traditional classification. It…… Continue reading What is a preposition?