呵呵,关于这个问题,我去年问了英语沙龙的加拿大编辑,希望对你有帮助
下面第一封信是我写给他的,第二封是他的回信
From: 我住平房 [mailto:iskb@vip.qq.com]
Sent: Monday, February 20, 2012 5:12 AM
To: askbrad
Subject: Ask for help
Hi Brad:
Hello again and problem again^-^
This time is the problem about nominative and accusative. My daughter asked me a multiple choice question that appeared on her test paper this morning.It is "Who is taller, you or______? A she B her"
I told her, the answer is A. 'cause here "you or she"is short for "Who is taller, you are or she is?" But i'm not sure about it. Am I right or not? Would you please tell me?
Best wishes
Sun Kebing
P.S. Ha-ha, my honey found I was writing to you ,and she asked one more related problem. "I am younger than ______ A he B him" Which is right?
I know in this letter, there must be several grammatical mistakes, please correct them if you are free. Thank you very much.
他的回复
Hi Sun Kebing:
It’s always good to hear from a father who is helping his daughter with her homework. English is a difficult language and your letter, is almost perfect. The only corrections I would make relate to spacing. You should always leave a space after a punctuation mark such as a period, comma or question mark but you should never leave a space before such a mark. Other than that, your letter is fine.
You are correct in both sentences and you have also correctly identified the way to determine which form of the word should be used. In English, as you obviously know, there are often words that are left out of sentences and when you put them in it makes the form of the sentence more obvious. In the case of the first sentence the missing word is “is” and when you insert it the form of the word to go into the blank becomes obvious. Interestingly, this phenomenon of the missing words causes a lot of problems for native English-speakers and many would say “you or her”. They would be easily understood and it’s a very common mistake but they would be wrong.
Similarly, in the second example, the word to go into the blank is “he” because the complete sentence would become “I am younger than he (is)” with the “is” understood but not spoken.
I hope this answers your questions and I look forward to hearing from you again. Please wish your daughter good luck with her English studies from me and if she, or you, have more questions I’ll be happy to discuss them with you.
Best wishes,
Brad |