parts of speech and grammar

hi Mr gentel and associates

I have finished the second part of my assignment if you could have a look at it and note any errors. thanking you kindly for your time and patience.

1)We can’t say “I have been there yesterday”, because the present perfect tense is used with an unspecified time in the past so you would not use it with a specific time such as yesterday. You can however use it with a specific time that is not completed as they still have a connection with “now”. So you can use “today”, “this week” or “this month” but you cannot use “yesterday”, “last week” and “last month”
So you can say “I have been there today”

2)The difference between “I stopped smoking” and “I stopped to smoke” is that in the first sentence, the "ing functions as a noun and so it is a gerund with “stop” indicating what is stopped. In this case “I stopped smoking”= I don’t smoke anymore
In the next sentence, “to smoke” is the infinitive and together with “stop” indicates why another action or thing was stopped. I stopped to smoke= I stopped something else (eg walking) in order to smoke.

3)We can say “She was frightened” and “She was frightening” but not “The film was frightened” because, Only living beings can be 'frightened,' and this word acts as an action verb, just as only living beings can laugh, cry, eat, etc.
The word "frightening" is not a verb; it's an adjective. Therefore, a movie can be frightening, just like it can be sad or old or interesting, but it cannot be frightened, because that is a verb.

4) The difference between “I live in Joburg” and “I’m living in Joburg” is that, “I live in Joburg” is in present simple tense and it implies that this is a permanent state whereas “I’m living in Joburg” is in the present continuous tense and implies a connection with ‘now’. It could mean that I am temporarily living in Joburg or that I have recently began to live there.


5) The difference between “The room is too big” and “The room is very big” is, that “Too big” is a degree of being excessive and means bigger than necessary. In this case there would be no concept of space. So ‘too’ implies that there is a problem and ‘very’ is simply stating a fact that the room is just very big. It is very big but you won’t get overwhelmed by its space.
Another example of this is: The hamburger is very big! This is a good thing as I am hungry.
vs.
That hamburger is too big. I can't eat it all.


6) We can’t say “It’s absolutely cold” but we can say “It’s absolutely freezing because we use “absolutely” with mostly extreme adjectives such as freezing. This is because the word ‘freezing’ is a strong word whereas the word ‘cold’ is weaker and considered as weak or base adjective and therefore we would use the word ‘very’. So ultimately it would make better sense if we say “It’s very cold”.


7) You cannot say “I‘ve been knowing him for 2 years” because “know” is just one of a number of verbs that is not used in the present continuous tense as it is a state verb. State verbs such as ‘know’ describe a continuing state so do not usually have a continuing form. The verb ‘know’ can not be used here because the process of knowing something is expressed in a phrasal verb (get to know). So if one wants to refer to an ongoing action, it should be used correctly by saying, “I’ve been getting to know him for 2 years”.

8) You cannot say “I’ve been studying English since 5 years ago” because we have to use ‘for’ rather than since in the sentence for it to be grammatically correct. The reason for this is that ‘since’ requires a precise moment of time as it is a point up to now eg, since Monday or since 9am. 5 years ago is not a specific time as it is a period or duration of time from start to end so therefore we would use the word ‘for’ here instead of ‘since’. eg for 4month or for 2 centuries. So the sentence should be “I’ve been studying English for 5 years.

9) You can’t say “ I have many money” because, we use “many” only with countable nouns. These are nouns that can take both singular and plural form and therefore can be counted. Since money is not a countable noun in the context of this sentence we cannot use the word “many”. The sentence should be, “I have a lot of money.

10) The difference between “I’m seeing Joe next week” and “I’m going to see Joe next week” is that the second sentence is not in the present continuous tense as it has its own structure. ‘going’ is not part of the tense of ‘see’. It has its own structure. This is ‘Going’ is not part of the tense of ‘see’ and is an idiomatic expression used to express one’s intention or to predict a future event. It is used with the infinitive of what is intended or predicted.

11) The word order is different in “He usually arrives late” and “He is usually late” because usually is an adverb of frequency and most of these adverbs appear before the verb as in the case of the first sentence but in the second sentence, the verb is “be” so the rule is that the frequency adverb will appear after the verb.

12) Why do we say ‘on’ Christmas day but we say ‘at’ Christmas. We say on Christmas day because with prepositions of time, ‘on’ is used before days and dates, so in this case the day is Christmas day. ‘At’ is used for a precise time and in this case Christmas is the precise time.

13)We can say “prettier” instead of “beautifuler”, because the rule of comparatives and superlatives states that when two or less- syllable adjectives end in “Y” we can add " ier and "iest at the end. The word “pretty” has two syllables and so can end with "ier and "iest but the word beautiful has three syllables and does not end in “Y”so we cannot add -er after