As Henry Higgins observed in Pygmallion, the best grammarians are often those who learned English in school as immigrants. My parents, who were first-generation Americans in the early …

Oct 1, 2015 · At the linguistics conference, there were no / not / non- native speakers of Esperanto. They're all grammatically "valid", but they all mean different things - and …

You can certainly say . . . it's not OK to not learn from them. However, bear in mind that there are still people around who mistakenly believe that such a construction is a split infinitive and …

Sep 26, 2020 · I brought my luggage but I didn't bring my passport. Which one of the following is equivalent? I brought my luggage but not my passport. I brought my luggage but my passport.

The sentence with not between to and the verb (do in this case) is a special case of the split infinitive construction. According to CGEL, 2.3 Secondary verb negation, p. 803, these two …

Oct 22, 2017 · The "Be not" construction is simply more poetic. It hearkens back to lines like "Death be not proud" from John Donne in the 17th century, or Shakespeare's "Be not afraid of …

Apr 1, 2013 · A frequent variant is Not to say that, which allows one to say something while denying one did. Not to say you're wrong, but did you compare the figures with the chart?

11 "not uncommon" is not necessarily the same as common. Compare the following examples: 1-0 is a common final score in soccer (it happens all the time) 8-7 is an uncommon final score in …

The NOAD defines nor as: used before the second or further of two or more alternatives (the first being introduced by a negative such as neither or not) to indicate that they are each untrue or …

Oct 22, 2012 · I won’t and I’ll not are both short forms of I will not. Both are used in English. Are there any situations where one is preferred over other?