Is this sentence grammatical?

Question

Hello, everyone,I  have been wondering if the below  is grammatical:"I agree children under the age of 16 should be restricted  to use mobile phones."In this sentence  , verb 'restrict' is used    correctly ?Thanks in advance,Gooday!

Case Assigner · Accepted Answer

I am not a native speaker, but somehow I have the impression that this sentence is ambigous in this case. It sounds like they are allowed to use mobile phones, but nothing else. Am I correct? This is probably not much of a help atm .... To restrict something, doesn´t it mean that only a specific set of something is allowed, rather than everything, hence does not have the same meaning than "to forbid" or "to prohibit"

TasmanTiger · Answer

You sound like a native speaker! Maybe more than that!

I do agree with you.

We should tell 'restrict' from 'prohibit' but most of people around me

are insisting that the two verbs are the same meaning.

They won't listen to me stubbornly!

We are studying English as a foreign language:

Our people spend a lot of money studying English but

the result has been poor, standing last in English fluency level.

By the way,

Can I ask where you are from?

How have you studied English?

Can you explain to me the secret method?

Excellent!

Case Assigner · Answer

Hi,

I am German and I live in Germany. I have studied linguistics at the university of Wuppertal, which mainly deals with syntax, based on Chomsky´s theory of GB (PPT) and the Minimalist Program. However, that does not make me a better speaker of a specific language, I am sure that there are millions of people outside which are much better than me, especially those who have English as their native tongue.

Coming back to the problem of "to restrict" and "to forbid": The only thing I can suggest is the following: Whenever you are not sure about the semantics of a word and nobody is around to help you, or the dictionary is not that precise, take a look at this website: http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/

That´s a corpus, consisting of millions of words of the English language. Check the collocations for restrict and forbid. In some cases, you can see a difference in usage between these two words. We have done that with lend and rent, and observed a difference in meaning (rent is often used with movable objects and so on...) Maybe your findings help you to convince your friends. On the other hand, it might be that the result helps your friends to convince you.

I am not really sure about the semantic difference between these 2 words and I didn´t put much effort into that topic. Nevertheless, I am interested in an answer. In my opinion, a native speakers answer to this problem would be the easiest solution.

So far.... have a nice day

TasmanTiger · Answer

Thank you for your kind advice,

I think you are a graduate student who majors linguistics.

A long time ago I studied English including Chomsky, Jesperson ,Onions and so on.

I'm happy to hear those things, which reminds of good old days.

In restrospect, I should have worked harder!

Your advice will help me to get good information.

Gooday!

Is this sentence grammatical?

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