Timeline for Is it possible to omit a verb when there’s another verb right behind it?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
14 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Sep 3 at 19:29 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Sep 3 at 14:12 | comment | added | James Mathai | @KateBunting Yes. You are right. I think without the comma only "know it" is possible. "did not knew it" sounds awkward. | |
| Sep 3 at 13:17 | comment | added | Kate Bunting | As I said, it's not so much grammatically incorrect as meaningless. "Millions saw the movie, and even those who did not know the story..." what about them? | |
| Sep 3 at 13:14 | comment | added | James Mathai | @pheno8 The comma is required after "did not" to show that (see it) is omitted. The confusion whether to use present tense or past tense is due to the missing comma | |
| Sep 3 at 13:11 | comment | added | Michael Harvey | Personally, I would punctuate like this, with a comma after 'not': Millions saw the movie, and even those who did not, know / knew the story. To choose 'know' would not make sentence 'ungrammatical', but it would make it awkward and clumsy, because of the sudden departure from an 'in the past framing. and I think that what the question is testing for. | |
| Sep 3 at 12:46 | comment | added | pheno8 | @KateBunting, I understand that the answer is ‘knew,’ thanks to the people, including you, who left replies to enlighten me. Based on the context, the answer is B. Technically, however, I still wonder if saying ‘even those who did not know the story’ is simply grammatically incorrect, because I don’t believe it is. If there’s even a small chance that it could confuse people, isn’t the test question itself flawed? | |
| Sep 3 at 12:36 | comment | added | Kate Bunting | But that isn't what the author is saying! They claim that millions of people saw Jaws in the 1970s, and even those who didn't see it knew what it was about. To end the sentence with even those who did not know the story doesn't make sense. What about people who didn't know the story? | |
| Sep 3 at 12:31 | comment | added | pheno8 | @MichaelHarvey That's right but that's what I'm missing here. I'm confused because 'even those who did not know the story' this one makes sense to me, as does 'even those who did not knew the story'. they're talking about different things but they both make sense, no? | |
| Sep 3 at 12:26 | comment | added | pheno8 | @KateBunting I find it tricky since I believe that 'even those who did not know the story' this one still makes sense. people may ask for further context, but it's not technically wrong, is it? | |
| Sep 3 at 11:58 | comment | added | Kate Bunting | Why do you find it 'tricky' and 'confusing' to use knew? The sense is not "those who did not know the story", but "even those [people] who did not [see the film] knew the story". | |
| Sep 3 at 11:53 | history | edited | Michael Harvey | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Replaced fuzzy image with actual text.
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| Sep 3 at 11:45 | answer | added | Luke Sawczak | timeline score: 3 | |
| Sep 3 at 11:42 | comment | added | Michael Harvey | The piece is all about the past. It is written using past tense verbs - hit, was, saw, did not, so you need the past tense (knew') for the final verb. That's why the verb is not 'know', not because of the shortening of 'did not see the movie'. | |
| Sep 3 at 11:28 | history | asked | pheno8 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |