different than
The major candidates in the presidential election in the United States are more different than the candidates in the primary elections for their respective parties.
could of
Most pre-teens cannot drive, but Emily alone could of the students in her middle school.
needs cleaned
Emily had all of her clothing that she needs cleaned.
(This one can also be interpreted as a sentence in which "to be" was ungrammatically removed.)
Post more grammatical puzzlers.
could of
Most pre-teens cannot drive, but Emily alone could of the students in her middle school.
Are you not supposed to put a comma in the "x could, of the y group"?
In the same way as you need when the sentences are reversed: "Of middle-aged men, very few find no signs of becoming bald".
Also, you could edit and put an introductory text in your post explaining that those are usually incorrect but in those particular examples, they are correct. To prevent someone carelessly looking it up and seeing "oh, 'could of' is right" without checking the context. (As the context is not immediately apparently.)
I made this thread to be funny; in reality I hate the use of "needs past participle" without "to be" between those two words, even though a similarly annoying construction ("must needs" as "must" or "needs to") was common in the time of Abraham Lincoln.
In general, when you have a sentence in the form "<subject> <verb> <object>", you can expand the subject so that its last word doesn't "match" with the verb, but it doesn't need to because the verb is not referring to it.
For example something like "doors is closed" is easy to construct: "That shop which sells doors is closed." (The verb refers to 'shop' and not 'doors'.) Likewise "I are here" -> "my friend and I are here", and so on.
I don't think you can get more "ungrammatical" than "different of".
Also, "ungrammatical" sounds very… ungrammatical. That is, grammatically incorrect.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
"I" and "me" have a huge gray area (Me and Alice vs. Alice and I, for example).
Here's one I hate: "I read where" used instead of "I read that". The only correct use would be as a clarifying question in response to being told you read in an unlikely location.
"Before the amnesia, you were a stunt reader. You once read on the wing of a plane in flight."
"I read where?"
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
From what I understand, issues with the "xxxx and I" vs. "xxxx and me" can be resolved by removing the "xxxx and," to see which of the two choices sound more correct. Take the following two examples, both (hopefully) grammatically correct:
- Ben and I went to the store. (I went to the store)
- James went to the store with Ben and me. (James went to the store with me).
That's how I was taught at least.
I'd usually just start off with the me
"Me and Ben went to the store"
This is actually wrong, though.
It should be "I and Ben went to the store" because the same rule of "what would the sentence be if the other person was removed?" applies.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 2687
Location: Seattle, WA
Well, the I and Me problem arises from the fact that one is the subject of the sentence while the other isn't. "Me" can't act, since it isn't a subject (or is it object?), but "I" can act.
To me, 'different than' doesn't sound grammatically incorrect. I think enough people just lack bloody common sense for it to sound so unnatural.
Normally "than" is used to introduce the object compared to by a comparative adjective or adverb.
I should mention that in British English "different to" is commonly used instead of "different from"; meanwhile I would only use "different to" in the sense of "The new Opera user interface looks different to me."
I was taught that was not grammatically incorrect, but slightly impolite. It's more polite to mention the other person first, and then yourself. (If you mention yourself first, it sounds like you are the main character there, and the other one just hangs along. Mentioning the other person first makes him more important and is thus a humbler way of saying it.)
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
Blublu wrote:
lewisje wrote:
Post more grammatical puzzlers.
Okay.
your owned
Try to fit that into a grammatically correct sentence. It probably can't be done.
Edit: Okay, go.
I can see that in a poem, describing something someone owns:
"Introduce your owned car"
Of course, owned would have to be pronounced "owe-ned" to fit the meter of the poem.
