Psychologists, who breathe statistics as a salamander breathes fire, love to count things. They count and classify words to determine what books children should read, what children’s classics should ...

A teacher of English has sent in this query: “The participles of certain verbs function as adjectives in sentences. Many students find it difficult to distinguish between the adjectival and verbal ...

Before 2006, I never gave much thought to nominalizations — noun forms like “beauty” and “the scheduling” that at heart are really adjectives like “beautiful” or verbs like “to schedule.” I was ...

Adjectives and adverbs are words that we use to describe or modify other words. Adjectives are used to tell us about nouns or pronouns. They give us information about what someone or something is like ...

The March issue of The Walrus, Canada’s leading general-interest magazine, features an ad for a speech by a blond, smiling young man named Eric Termuende. His talk is entitled “Connecting the Dots on ...

Happy is the main lexical predicate here. It takes one argument: an experiencer--John. Tall takes one argument: a theme: Mary. (12) *John is being tall. (13) *Mary is being fond of red roses. (14) ...

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 ...