Ajay plays the big, black grand piano. Teagan watches television. Some verbs do not need an object to make sense. These either: Work alone, as in, ‘Connor screamed.’ Describes a ‘state’ as in, ‘Maire ...

Like the subject, the object is usually a noun (‘the piano’) or a noun phrase, (‘the big, black piano’). Verbs that take objects describe some kind of action rather than a state of being.

THE ancient notion of English grammar was one of certain categories of words, and certain rules for their proper use. This is still the idea implied in most of the dictionary definitions of the word.

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It may seem from some of my recent newsletters — championing “they” as a singular pronoun and “me” as a subject pronoun — that there’s something about being a linguist that makes one strangely ...

“I’ll dress warm,” I wrote to friends recently in a group email about a get-together on the patio of a local café. What happened next will sound familiar to every careful user of the English language: ...