Timeline for Grammar: sentence structure
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 28 at 16:06 | comment | added | Eugene | @FumbleFingers Thank you very much for having attended to my question. | |
| Feb 28 at 11:55 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | Yes, "What colour is the carpet in the bedroom in your new home?" is fine, though I'd probably reduce it to "What colour is the bedroom carpet in your new home?". Bear in mind both of those might tend to imply there's only one bedroom in the new home, which implication could be avoided by shifting the possessive: "What colour is your bedroom carpet in the new home?" | |
| Feb 28 at 8:41 | comment | added | Eugene | If I get off "there", would it be grammatically correct to say: "What colour is the carpet in the bedroom in your new home?" | |
| Feb 28 at 8:40 | comment | added | Eugene | @FumbleFingers Thank you. I had been turning over the construction "There is/are X in the Y" and possible ways of asking questions about the colour, size etc. of X considering the presense of an adverbial modifier. It seemed interesting to me how could "What colour is the X?" transform if an adjunct (of place, for example, were to be added)? "There are carperts in the living-room and in the bedroom in my new home". Someone wants to ask a question about the colour of the carpet in the bedroom. | |
| Feb 28 at 0:01 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @Eugene: Expanding on the implications of James' response, "What colour carpet is there in the kitchen?" would be "unusual" - it presupposes that the questioner is interested in knowing the different colours of various carpets in the relevant context (your house?), and it specifically presupposes the questioner knows you have carpet in your kitchen. In the real world, it's difficult to imagine #1 being asked as a natural question, but syntactically / idiomatically, it's fine. None of your other suggestions are idiomatic, mainly because of the ways they use the word "there". | |
| Feb 27 at 21:01 | comment | added | James K | Who has carpet in the kitchen? | |
| Feb 27 at 20:48 | comment | added | Eugene | @FumbleFingers Would it be possible to put up such interrogations as: 1."What colour carpet is there in the kitchen?", 2."What coloured carpet is there in the kitchen?", 3."What colour is the carpet there in the kitchen?", 4."What is the carpet's colour there in the kitchen?", 4.""What is the colour of the carpet there in the kitchen?". Thank you. | |
| Aug 5, 2020 at 13:07 | vote | accept | Mohamad Mohseni Ahuii | ||
| Aug 5, 2020 at 12:55 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | It's worth pointing out that the second form is mainly restricted to contexts where the two-word collocation hair colour is being treated as a "category" for matching purposes. So What is her hair colour? can be lumped together with What hair colour is she?, same as, for example, What shoe size are you?, What fuel type is your car?, etc. (where it's also okay to reverse those elements and query what colour hair, size shoe, type fuel.) These "noun attribute" versions typically occur in the context of hairdressers, shoe salesmen, auto mechanics, etc. | |
| Aug 5, 2020 at 12:06 | history | answered | James K | CC BY-SA 4.0 |