WHEN we were children and just beginning to learn English grammar, many of us were taken aback by the strange failure of some ...

When a sentence uses a transitive verb to describe an action, it’s necessary for the subject to take a direct object and to act on it: “The woman spurned her suitor last week.” “Her suitor found a ...

If an action concerns only one person or thing, you mention only the person or thing that carries out the action (the subject) and the action itself (the verb). Verbs which describe such actions are ...

This question originally appeared on Quora. Answer by Thomas Wier, assistant professor of linguistics at the Free University of Tbilisi: Short Answer: Yes, but not in English. What do we mean by ...