New answers tagged syntax
4
votes
Can someone share with me an article that studies the decline of by-phrases in the passive?
This thesis studies the history of passives and as part of the study looks at the instance of by-phrases, in the journal American journal of botany, grouping articles into three historical clusters – ...
- 66.5k
3
votes
Why do languages evolve to make a certain marker obligatory?
In the comments, jlawler linked an excellent discussion of definiteness. The short version is that all languages do something to mark information status, and a definite article is one way of ...
- 50.9k
4
votes
What happens when a bilingual uses a grammatical subject with a different number system than the verb?
If a bilingual English and Arabic speaker would have to use an English subject with an Arabic verb, it is fully up to the speaker, no matter which language the context is in, to choose which form ...
- 65
Top 50 recent answers are included