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Updated on
5 Jun 2019
- Simplified Chinese (China)
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English (US)
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Japanese
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Question about English (US)
How do you say this in English (US)? What’s their complete structures?E.G. 1. How loudly she speaks. 2.How slowly he walks. Can you help analyze them in Grammar
How do you say this in English (US)? What’s their complete structures?E.G. 1. How loudly she speaks. 2.How slowly he walks. Can you help analyze them in Grammar
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5 Jun 2019
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- English (US)
@Sidney666 Mother-tongue speakers of English don't actually think of themselves as omitting any kind of cue/clue words here. I added them because sometimes a little variation can help one pick up a second language's structures more easily. Instead of "hear," I could have used "Listen to," or "Notice" or even "I'm amazed at (how fluently he speaks)" or "It's astonishing ...."
I'd call them exclamatives, and in short versions, the exclamation mark would be more common punctuation than a period. "How hard she tried!" is an example in the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. They're NOT inverted these days: the subject still precedes the verb. No one today would say "How hard tried she!" as an exclamative. Four hundred years ago, yes. Shakespeare has Cleopatra say "How heavy weighs my lord!" meaning "It's amazing how heavy my lord weighs!" The line that Cleopatra actually says is inverted: the verb comes before the subject. But even in Shakespeare's time, inversion wasn't necessary, as the following quote shows, where the subject precedes the verb in normal, non-inverted order:
This young gentlewoman had a father — O that “had!”, >>>how sad a passage
’tis!<<< — whose skill was almost as great as his honesty
Note, by the way from that example, that the structure needn't be "How + adverb," but can also be "How + adj + det + noun." ("Det" here means the determiner: the article "a.")
The CGEL does have examples with inversion, but it's typically triggered by an auxiliary:
How often had he regretted his impetuosity!
There are tons of examples of the "how + adjective" structure in Shakespeare. How careful was I when I took my way ... How heavy do I journey on the way ... How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame ... and scores, perhaps a hundred more. But it's a thoroughly modern and common structure in modern English. The CGEL mainly discusses it in chapter 10, specifically 10.8. One of my daughters' favorite story books when they were young girls was called "Cranberry Thanksgiving." It includes the following lines, as the three characters are eating some pie together:
"How delicious," said Maggie.
"How delightful," said Grandmother.
"How about another piece?" said Mr. Whiskers.
There's also a variation on exclamatives that uses "what" instead of "how": "Oh, what a piece of work is man!" Or "What a good player she is!" A well-known Christian hymn includes the lines "What a wonder!" Common examples might be "What a disaster!" or "What a show-off! (s/he is)," and so on. "What a fuss she made!" "What a difficult problem (this is)!"
Finally, there's even an option sometimes to omit the verb:
What nonsense! How wonderful! What a rude thing to say!
I was tempted at the outset of this to go looking for examples in the British National Corpus or the Corpus of Contemporary American English (or of soap operas), but the examples above are probably enough.
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- English (US)
In general, sentences like that — how (adverb-ily) S V’s” (where S is a subject and V a verb) are the equivalent of “S V’s very adverb-ily,” or “S V’s very adverb-ily, doesn’t S?” Look how gracefully she walks! Hear how fluently he speaks! See how well he writes!”
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- Simplified Chinese (China)
@MishaTr Thank you so much! Your native speakers just omit the cue words or clue words which actually exist in these kinds of sentences.
Hear how fluently he speaks!
Or Listen how fluently he speaks.
Why did you use hear rather than listen here?
Which one is more common ‘cue words’ or ‘clue words’?
Are these kinds of sentences ‘Inversion’ or ‘Emphasis’ or both of them?
Hear how fluently he speaks!
Or Listen how fluently he speaks.
Why did you use hear rather than listen here?
Which one is more common ‘cue words’ or ‘clue words’?
Are these kinds of sentences ‘Inversion’ or ‘Emphasis’ or both of them?
- English (US)
@Sidney666 Mother-tongue speakers of English don't actually think of themselves as omitting any kind of cue/clue words here. I added them because sometimes a little variation can help one pick up a second language's structures more easily. Instead of "hear," I could have used "Listen to," or "Notice" or even "I'm amazed at (how fluently he speaks)" or "It's astonishing ...."
I'd call them exclamatives, and in short versions, the exclamation mark would be more common punctuation than a period. "How hard she tried!" is an example in the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. They're NOT inverted these days: the subject still precedes the verb. No one today would say "How hard tried she!" as an exclamative. Four hundred years ago, yes. Shakespeare has Cleopatra say "How heavy weighs my lord!" meaning "It's amazing how heavy my lord weighs!" The line that Cleopatra actually says is inverted: the verb comes before the subject. But even in Shakespeare's time, inversion wasn't necessary, as the following quote shows, where the subject precedes the verb in normal, non-inverted order:
This young gentlewoman had a father — O that “had!”, >>>how sad a passage
’tis!<<< — whose skill was almost as great as his honesty
Note, by the way from that example, that the structure needn't be "How + adverb," but can also be "How + adj + det + noun." ("Det" here means the determiner: the article "a.")
The CGEL does have examples with inversion, but it's typically triggered by an auxiliary:
How often had he regretted his impetuosity!
There are tons of examples of the "how + adjective" structure in Shakespeare. How careful was I when I took my way ... How heavy do I journey on the way ... How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame ... and scores, perhaps a hundred more. But it's a thoroughly modern and common structure in modern English. The CGEL mainly discusses it in chapter 10, specifically 10.8. One of my daughters' favorite story books when they were young girls was called "Cranberry Thanksgiving." It includes the following lines, as the three characters are eating some pie together:
"How delicious," said Maggie.
"How delightful," said Grandmother.
"How about another piece?" said Mr. Whiskers.
There's also a variation on exclamatives that uses "what" instead of "how": "Oh, what a piece of work is man!" Or "What a good player she is!" A well-known Christian hymn includes the lines "What a wonder!" Common examples might be "What a disaster!" or "What a show-off! (s/he is)," and so on. "What a fuss she made!" "What a difficult problem (this is)!"
Finally, there's even an option sometimes to omit the verb:
What nonsense! How wonderful! What a rude thing to say!
I was tempted at the outset of this to go looking for examples in the British National Corpus or the Corpus of Contemporary American English (or of soap operas), but the examples above are probably enough.
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- Simplified Chinese (China)
Thank you so so so much for your complete and helpful information.
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