Daily Grammar – Week 4

DAILY GRAMMAR (DG) 22-03-2018

1a. The abducted girls have being released. (No)

The abducted girls have been released. (Yes)

1b. The case is been investigated by the police. (No)

The case is being investigated by the police. (Yes)

(You can only use the past participle of “be”, “been”, after “has”, “have”, “had” and “having”. Besides, you only use its present form, “being”, after the other forms of the verb “be” such as “am”, “is”, “are”, “was”, “were” and at the beginning of a clause/sentence or after a preposition. For example, “I have been vindicated”; “I am being honest with you”; “they are being unfair to us”; “having been found worthy, I recommended him”; “she is not used to being pushed around”, etc.)

2a. His rudeness bothers on his immaturity as a lecturer. (No)

His rudeness borders on his immaturity as a lecturer. (Yes)

2b. He is so corrupt that those who know him border/ boarder about his future. (No)

He is so corrupt that those of us who know him bother about his future. (Yes)

(To “bother” a person is to cause him a minor inconvenience or to have a sense of worry; e.g., “something is bothering you”. This is different from “border”, a line demarcating two areas or countries or “border on”, meaning, “to come near to”; e.g., “his frequent errors border on sheer incompetence” or “boarder”, a person who lodges in a place or a student who lives in a “boarding school”.)

3. I have visited you severally this year. (No)

I have visited you several times this year. (Yes)

(“Severally” means “separately”, “individually”, “distinctively” or “each in turn”. For example, “the Council members were severally elected”; “I confer these honours on you all collectively and severally”. However, “several” is used to describe a repeated or frequent action or as an alternative to “many”.)

Did You Know?

A monepic sentence is the one that contains a single word (e.g. stop!) while the opposite of “postpone” is “prepone”, meaning “to bring something forward in time”.)