Month: May 2018
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Agent
Just remember this: the agent of a sentence is the one doing the action of the verb. Consider the following sentences: (1) The car struck the fence. (2) The fence was struck by the car. In both (1) and (2) it is the car that is doing striking, even though in (2) it is NOT the subject.…
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The linguistic sign
Saussure pointed to that language is mistakenly thought of as a matching of a thing to a name. To him the link is between a concept (signified) and a sound pattern (signifier). The signified is its meaning and the signifier is the “container”. The two together makes the linguistic sign. The linguistic sign has two characteristics.…
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The origin of English words
Source: Thomas Finkenstaedt; Dieter Wolff (1973). Ordered profusion; studies in dictionaries and the English lexicon. About 85% of words in the English language are from three languages – Germanic, French and Latin. 12% are from Greek and other minor languages like Chinese and Japanese. About 4% are proper names. Different languages had influence on English…
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Active vs. passive sentence structures
One of the reasons (there are many reason but this is just one) why we would like to change an active sentence into a passive one is because we would like to bring the object of the sentence into focus. Consider these sentences: My brother was hit by a car. A car hit my brother.…
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