Homework question

[Jonathan Lighter]

Sounds like a really ill-conceived assignment to the undersigned..

JL

Ed Keer <edkeer at YAHOO.COM> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Ed Keer
Subject: Re: Homework question
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The context is a little complicated. The teacher gave
them a bunch of sentences with missing verbs and some
verbs to choose from. The kid did not understand that
he was allowed to add tense suffixes, so he tried to
fit the verbs as best he could. He was given both
'know' and 'knew', but 'knew' only worked in one of
the other sentences.


--- Patti Kurtz wrote:

> Without a context, it's hard, but perhaps the
> teachers expected it to be
> past tense, as in "I knew you would do well on the
> math test." The
> "know" combined with "would" sounds a little odd to
> my ear, though not
> ungrammatical. For me, the meaning of "I know you
> would do well" is "If
> you took the test I know you'd do well" whereas the
> second one "I knew
> you would do well" means "You took the test and did
> well as I knew you
> would."
>
> Not sure if that's even close, just my take on it.
>
> Patti Kurtz
>
> Ed Keer wrote:
>
> >---------------------- Information from the mail
> header -----------------------
> >Sender: American Dialect Society
>
> >Poster: Ed Keer
> >Subject: Homework question
>
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >A friend's child was told the following sentence is
> >ungrammatical:
> >
> >I know you would do well on the math test.
> >
> >It sounds ok to me. Any insight into what's wrong
> with
> >this?
> >
> >Ed
> >
> >
> >
> >__________________________________
> >Discover Yahoo!
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> >
> >
>
> --
>
> Straker - Good. Let me give you a piece of advice
> Paul. Don't ever judge
> a situation by the end of a conversation.
>



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