VERBS – CONDITIONALS

The types of conditional sentence can be read below:

VERBS – WISHES

- Present wishes are expressed in the past tense.

  1. Ralph wishes (that) he had $1000,000.          (but he doesn’t)

  2. Mary wishes (that) she lived in New York.    (but he doesn’t)

  

VERBS – TENSES

The following are common verb-tense problems:

1. Present perfect. Remember to use the present perfect only when the action has started in the past and still relates to the present.

I have been in the United States for six months.

She has played the piano since she was a child.

Semantic Relations

A verb is related in various ways to the constituents in a sentence. The relations depend on the meaning of  the particular verb. For example the NP the girl in the girl found a red brick is called agent or ‘doer’ of the action of finding. The NP a red brick is the patient or ‘recipient’ of the action. Part of the meaning of find is that its subject is as an agent and its logical object is a patient. That fact is reflected in the entry for find in the lexicon.