ELISA ENGLISH's Blog 英語園地

Gerund vs. Infinitive :  何時使用動名詞 vs. 不定詞

(1) To pass the test is important.  (O)

Anyone vs. Everyone?

Anyone is used when you don’t know who the person is/will be or how many people are/will be.  Usually used in a negative sentence or in a question.

請問要如何分辨何時要用不定詞何時用現在分詞來當形容詞?

不定詞及現在分詞當作形容詞來使用 are not always interchangeable.  It depends on the situations.  Usually infinitive is used to describe a future event, and present participle is used to describe a current or past event. 

A tag question is a statement turned into a question, when asking for confirmation or disconfirmation of that statement. They can be an indicator of politeness, emphasis, or irony. They may suggest confidence or lack of confidence; they may be confrontational or tentative.

These are the structures.

“Get a life” 過你自己的生活 (美國嘲諷的習慣用語)

I saw this question at Yahoo Knowledge today.  I was about to answer but found out that there were people already providing pretty good answer.  Since it is too long for me to post this as a comment to that question, I decided to post it here for your reference. 

請問各位大大

Appositive - 同位語

An appositive is a noun, noun phrase, or noun clause which follows immediately right after a noun or pronoun and describes or renames it.

馬克吐溫  Mark Twain

An average English word is four letters and a half. By hard, honest labor I've dug all the large words out of my vocabulary and shaved it down till the average is three and a half. . . . I never write metropolis for seven cents, because I can get the same money for city. I never write policeman, because I can get the same price for cop. . . . I never write valetudinarian at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents; I wouldn't do it for fifteen. – By Mark Twain

一個英文詞彙平均是四個半字。努力的,我將我的詞彙減至三個半.

Elisa’s Grammar – Elisa的文法

Table of Content (Work in Progress) 

Causatives - 使役動詞

使役動詞大多要接不定詞. Let, make, have  例外.