Natalie,
A number of the ESL textbooks I've used have adopted the rather
memorable term "quasi-modal" for terms like "have to" and "ought to."
They do, however, resist the urge to provide example sentences involving
Notre Dame.
--- Bill Spruiell
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Natalie Gerber
Sent: Monday, October 22, 2007 6:01 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: a few grammar questions
Dear all,
The following topics have come up in my grammar course, and I would be
grateful for your analyses.
The verb-phrase structure of "Experience had to be part of the
difference" (from a sports article): Is "had to" in this case a
semi-modal qualifying "be" with "part of the difference" serving as a
subject complement and would the voice then be a variant of the
conditional or of another form, i.e., "Experience must have been part of
the difference"? Or, what seems less intuitive, would you say that "had"
is the primary and main verb with a nonfinite object "to be part of the
difference"?
The plural possessive forms of proper last names ending in -es, as in
Jones? Would the proper form be the Jones's [dog] or the Joneses' [dog].
I suppose what is throwing me in this case is the existence of
well-known phrases like "keeping up with the Joneses": are those
exceptions based on fixed collocations?
Finally, related to the last question, I have not found in my textbooks
(Longman or Hacker) a rule explicating why when proper names end in -y
as in Zabrodsky, the plural would be Zabrodskys and not Zabrodskies. If
the first analysis is correct, is it then fair to say that the rules for
forming plurals have reference to the underlying nominal category? Or am
I confusing matters here?
Thanks,
Natalie Gerber
SUNY Fredonia
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