How many kinds of noun clauses are there in English? A Russian member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum who goes by the username Ivan Ivanov asked me this question recently, observing that as far as he ...

Teresa Lee from Taiwan writes: Would you please give me some more examples of the formulation noun + to-infinitive, such as permission to enter in the sentence: We were refused permission to enter the ...

1. Relative clauses are “embedded” grammatical structures, contained inside other grammatical structures. 2. Relative clauses play a central role in English discourse. 3. Relative clause knowledge is ...

The reason I’m writing this is because it may be helpful. See anything wrong with that sentence? Some will. The issue here: “the reason is because.” Many people say that “because” should be “that”: ...

Last week’s column discussed the two general forms of noun clauses in English, namely finite noun clauses and nonfinite noun clauses. A finite noun clause is a subordinate clause in which the ...