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Elviajero Posted 21 years ago
Grammar

"that", "if" and "to" - questions on usage

0 Please help me in determining which of the above sentences are grammatically okay. Thanks!! 02br
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00People once believed that the earth was flat and they might fall off the edge if they ever got there. 02br
00People once believed that the earth was flat and THAT they might fall off the edge if they ever got there. 02br
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00Which of these is correct? Or, are both of them okay? 02br
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00Do you know if she is around and is going to be in this meeting? 02br
00Do you know if she is around and SHE is going to be in this meeting? 02br
00Do you know if she is around and IF SHE is going to be in this meeting? 02br
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00Stan will call you and provide you with the details. 02br
00Stan will call you and WILL provide you with the details. 02br
00Stan will call you, and HE WILL provide you with the details. 02br
00Stan will CALL AND PROVIDE you with the details. 02br
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00He has been asked to open the door when the bell rings and see who is at the door. 02br
00He has been asked to open the door when the bell rings and TO see who is at the door. (Doesn't sound right! but still wanted to check with any of you.) 02br
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00Thanks again.. 0-
  

Top answer

0 Hello ElViajero 02br 02br 00This question is very interesting. Though I myself am not so sure about this grammatical issue, let me try to answer. 02br 02br 00I understand the basic rule for "X and Y" is that X and Y should belong to the same category of syntactic constituents.

— Paco2004

  • 0 Hello ElViajero 02br 02br 00This question is very interesting.
  • Though I myself am not so sure about this grammatical issue, let me try to answer.
  • 02br 02br 00I understand the basic rule for "X and Y" is that X and Y should belong to the same category of syntactic constituents.
  • 02br 02br 00[OK] People believed that the earth was flat and they might fall off the edge if they ever got there.
  • 02br 00[OK] People believed that the earth was flat and that they might fall off the edge if they ever got there.
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29 Answers
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0 Hello ElViajero 02br
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00This question is very interesting. Though I myself am not so sure about this grammatical issue, let me try to answer. 02br
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00I understand the basic rule for "X and Y" is that X and Y should belong to the same category of syntactic constituents. 02br
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00[OK] People believed that the earth was flat
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0 Paco - This is one of those cases, I fear, where the intuition of a native speaker does not necessarily correspond to the grammar books. 02br
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00I don't know about the grammar rules, but none of the sentences you have marked with [*] sound "wrong" to me. In fact, in the group about Stan, I like the shortest sentence the best. 02br
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00And in this
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0 Hello Khoff (and moderators) 02br
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00My judgment I put in my previous post was just on the grammatical validity. As for the interpretation of " Do you know if she is around and if she is going to be in this meeting?", your daughter may be right. If we take into account the writer's intention of using two "if"s, it would be reasonable to take it as an indirect interrogat
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0 Hello Teachers 02br
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00Could you please help me to clear up my doubts? 02br
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00paco 0-
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00I would like to hear moderators' opinions about these things. 12blockquote
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00me too, Paco! Sentences [A] and [C] continue to sound perfectly normal to me. 0-
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0 1,3,4 sound OK to me (re Khoff's post) 0-
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0 Hello Khoff and Pianne 02br
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00Thank you for the postings. I guess the reason Pieanne disagrees to [2] is that it sounds redundant because of the doubled "she"s. Right? 02br
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00"Coordination" is connecting two things equal as a syntactic constituent to economize words. It is like math's sign "+". "***(B+C)" or "(B+C)*A" is OK only when B and C ar
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0 Wow! This discussion is interesting. Thanks very much to all of you, Paco, Khoff and Pieanne for your contributions. 02br
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00Though I also felt the same as Paco about the last example in the last three sets of sentences, I thought I would get it clarified since I have seen many native speakers use these forms. But then, when you are a native speaker, you don't have to
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0 Paco - I would agree that [A]"he loves and wants to live with you in Paris" is not a good sentence, probably because there is no obvious object of "love." However, I think "He loves 01b00you02b00 and wants to live with you in Paris" is fine. What do you think about ? 02br
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00As far as [C]"He is a student and going to school," the only thing I fi
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0 Hello Khoff 02br
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00I think it is quite useful to have a talk with you about this matter. We ESL students learn English mostly through books written by linguistic scholars and 'understand' English in a way somehow similar to the way we learn mathematics. We learn English sentences mostly in written forms logically analyzing what word has what function and what word is c
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