The authorities must do something about the traffic congestion.
John’s not here yet. He must be stuck in traffic.
To understand the difference in meaning of these two examples it’s best to look at modal verbs using the words intrinsic and extrinsic which are often used to describe modal verbs.
Go and do can be used as verbs that are not as important as the nouns they are used with. We call these verbs delexical verbs.
Go
Do you want to go swimming tomorrow?
We went for a long walk in the park yesterday
Do
I have to do the shopping this morning.
She does the cooking, she’s a better chef than me.
When we use ‘reported speech’ we are reporting something said or thought in the past, which is why we usually use the past tense:
Last night he told us that he was leaving for America next winter.
In some situations the present tense is used
When we want to report what many people say.
Everyone says the decision to fire Martin was a bad one.
When we are not sure if what we are reporting is true.
They tell me you’ve decided to leave for America.
When we want to tell someone what someone else said we can do this in two ways:
‘Will you marry me?’ Chris asked Sandra.
‘I am moving to Boston.’ Peter said.
Today's lesson is by Tristan, English teacher at EC Malta
This is the word order we saw previously:
I gave her a gift.
The indirect object, ‘her’ is placed before the direct object ‘a gift’.
But it is also possible to put the indirect object in a prepositional phrase which comes after the direct object:
I gave a gift to her.
The relationship between subjects and verbs and objects can be quite complex. Here we are looking at the relationship between verbs with a subject and a direct object, and verbs with an indirect object.
When the subject of a verb is also the object we use a reflexive pronoun.
She looked at herself in the mirror.
‘She’ is the subject and also the object in this sentence so ‘herself’ is used.
The reflexive pronouns are:
Singular – myself, yourself, himself, herself and itself
Plural – ourselves, yourselves, themselves
‘in spite of’, ‘despite’ and ‘although’ are all used to show contrast and are used for the same meaning. The only difference is the way they are used; the structure in which they are used.
