During the last two lectures we’ve focused on pronouns and adverbs. When working with pronouns, I found it TREMENDOUSLY useful to repeat the difference between subjective and objective case in sentences. I didn’t know how or when to use “whom” before it was explained during class on Tuesday. It’s used when asking about the objective in a sentence, i.e. “Whom are you calling”. In this question, “you” is the subjective case because “you” is calling, while whom is the objective case because it is referring to who the subject is calling to. Another example is “The tiger ate whom?” The “tiger” is the subjective case while “whom” is the objective case.
Adverbs are describers which modify verbs, adjectives or other adverbs. The word-class which it is often confused with, adjectives, modify nouns and other adjectives. To determine whether a word is an adjective or adverb, check if it can be moved around in the sentence. “The soup was hot” can only be written that way. If I try to move it around “Hot was the soup”, or “The soup hot was”, it becomes what was referred to in class as “Yoda syntax”, after Yoda from Star Wars. Adverbs, on the other hand, can be moved around. “THE MAN CLIMBED EFFORTLESSLY TO THE TOP” (Effortlessly, the man climbed to the top. The man climbed to the top effortlessly. The man effortlessly climbed to the top). This demonstrates how the adverb “effortlessly” –which describes the verb “climbed” –can be moved around in the sentence.
In last weeks blog I was unsuccessful in my attempt of incorporating the parenthetical dash into a sentence. The sentence does not make sense when I remove the dashes, which is a criterion for using it. A correct way of using the parenthetical dash is “During WWII, Norway was occupied by Germany–
I don’t fully understand the use of colons; does the content before the colon have to be a complete sentence, but what comes after does not? I remember it was discussed in class, but I don’t remember the specifics. Further, why is a comma not strong enough to splice a complete sentence?
Hey Paul!
ReplyDeleteFrom what I understand, what comes before the colon must be a complete sentence and what comes after it CAN be a complete sentence but does not necessarily have to be. I also think that commas can be strong enough to break up sentences, dashes are just used in place of commas when a writer wants to place more emphasis on what he or she is saying. I hope this helped!
Paul,
ReplyDeleteAmy is correct in her colon explanation.
As you wonder why a comma alone isn't strong enough to separate two complete sentences, also remember that the function of a coordianting conjunction is to "connect" grammatically-equal words, phrases, or sentences. Also remember that we have created all our written grammar rules--none of them are intrinsically correct or incorrect--and it may help to keep in mind that we simply use a comma and coordianting conjunction together to join two separate sentences.