I am researching syntactic idiosyncrasies of verbal communication and am interested in a construction in which a noun is reiterated with a pronoun. As children, we're all taught to avoid constructions that introduce a subject and follow it with a pronoun. But while this is forbidden in prescribed grammar, it is also ubiquitous in spoken English.  My friend Jane, she ate half the cake in one sitting.  This example is a simple one, where the speaker places the pronoun &quot;she&quot; after &quot;my friend.&quot;  But this construction appears more frequently in complex forms.  It's not hard to find examples in speeches by public figures.  They’re saying the obstructionists, how do we get them to vote for us?  In this example quote, the message conveyed is as follows.  They're saying, how do we get the obstructionists to vote for us?  This is not as simple as the example in the question, where the pronoun comes immediately after the noun.  But the concept is the same, in that the noun is introduced first, and then referred to with a pronoun later.  It seems similar to the difference between these sentences.  The obstructionists, they will vote for us. The obstructionists will vote for us.  Is there any term for this bit of verbal linguistic flair or any sort of analysis that explains why it is common in speech and taboo in prescriptive grammar?
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Is placing a pronoun immediately after its antecedent in a sentence valid grammar?  Is there a term for this construction?  Some examples are:   President Obama, he gave a speech last night. The speech, it was about the financial system.   I hear this on the Planet Money podcast at least once per episode.
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Lately, something has struck me.  I've been hearing several expressions in English, some clearly borrowed from French and preserving their noun-adjective form.  Some examples are:  Attorney General Secretary General Court Martial Notary Public   I suspect there are more that I have missed.  However, in each of the 4 cases listed above, I feel 'OK' saying them the 'English' way; that is, adjective-noun, which is the way we almost always do things except for these borrowed phrases.  One might receive a statement from the General Attorney, or be sent to a Martial Court.  My father is actually a lawyer and does indeed describe himself as a Public Notary.  Doing things this way makes the plural sound a lot more sensible in English, too; which sounds better: General Secretaries, or Secretaries General?  How common is it for people to flip these borrowed phrases around and say them the more standard English adjective-noun way?  Might it be clearer in the long run if we did so?
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What are the rules of parallelism? I've been reading a lot about it since yesterday and all I encounter is "They must have the same grammatical form"? What does this exactly mean?  I know how to make parallel sentences with gerunds. The things get trickier when it comes to using modifiers.  For example:     I love using the phone that you bought me and the computer.   On the left side of the conjunction there is a noun phrase that consists of an article + noun + another modifier and on the right side there is an article + noun.  They are both noun phrases but the first one has additional modifier. Is that still considered a parallel sentence?  Another example:     I like to swim and to feel good.   Here on the right side of the conjunction there is an infinitive and on the left side there is an infinitive + complement? Is that parallel?
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In this sentence:     The commission commanded that work on the building should cease.   Why isn't the used before the word work? It seems that the work is specified by on the building.  Another example is,     Construction of the building will start next week.   I understand construction here is something like putting up the building, and so the construction isn’t general in meaning. But the definite article isn’t used here, either.  I’ve asked about this several times, but none gave me a good answer.
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You're too clever a man to imagine this.   The above sentence was , a man of excellent rhetorical skills.   Since he said it, I doubt it's wrong, grammatically. But, I wonder if there is an explanation for this. Because adjectives always come after the article not before it. e.g. You're a clever man.   How could this be, grammatically?
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I know that one can use "they" / "them" / "their" in place of "he" / "him" / "his" or "she" / "her" / "hers" when the subject's / direct object's gender is not known; for instance, just looking at the default user's about me section on Stack Exchange sites:     Apparently, this user prefers to keep an air of mystery about them   My question is what happens when someone wants to reference the subject using a pronoun instead.  Should the verb be conjugated accordingly to the pronoun? E.g.:     Apparently, they prefer to keep an air of mystery about them   Or should the conjugation be retained? E.g.:     Apparently, they prefers to keep an air of mystery about them   The former looks unclear because it wouldn't allow the reader / listener to understand if the writer / speaker is talking about a single person or about a group of people, however the latter sounds very weird, at least just to the non-native speaker which I am.
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Take the following sentence:     And even if the program inputted one token and then invoked newLine(), wouldn't it input a blank?   I've been told that this sentence has a clear pronoun reference. Why? Couldn't it refer to either program or token?
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I'm not sure I understand what establishes a mood. Does a sentence have to establish a mood at the begining or can a mood be established in a clause at the end?     And, that's if he could get elected after 35% of Americans turned out in opposition to both parties and a new popular movement was seeded.   Or,      And, that's if he could get elected after 35% of Americans turned out in opposition to both parties and a new popular movement were seeded.   In both of these we're talking about a scenario that doesn't exist. The top one clearly sounds more right to me.
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I have 3 questions regarding she/her and my logic is posted below:   Only one of the contestants was chosen, she/her.   I think the answer is "she" and here's my logic:  This sentence is written in the passive voice so the subject no longer "does" an action or "is" something, but rather is acted upon. "One" is the simple subject here despite the fact that she is not choosing.  And I believe the "she/her" is an appositive that's placed at the end of the sentence instead of placed right next to the word it's describing; therefore, the proper pronoun here is "she" because subjects take the nominative case. If I place the pronoun right after "one of the contestants", "she" would be the appropriate appositive here in formal language.   "Only one of the contestants, she, was chosen"   Was it she/her you hoped to find?   I think it's "she" because "she" is a predicate nominative here so it takes the subject form in formal language. If I mess with the syntax, I can get the following:   "It was she you hoped to find."   In this rearranged sentence, "she" is the predicate nominative and takes the subject case, while "you hoped to find" is just some adjective clause describing this woman.    Congratulations on beating everyone else in the Pokemon League...but there's still one more opponent left--me!"    I'm assuming the "me" part is shortened for "It is me" In that case, I would go with "I" because it's the predicate nominative of the clause.  Do we choose "me" or "I" in this sentence? "Me" sounds better, but is there some rule here I'm missing?  -  I'm not sure if my reasoning is entirely correct. Thanks in advance.  Link on Predicate Nominatives:
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I've been taught that in &quot;Reported Speech&quot;, the subordinator &quot;that&quot; is a signature of &quot;indirect speech&quot;. For example: He said, &quot;I will be late.&quot; (Direct Speech) He said that he would be late. (Indirect Speech) But, it is wrong to say or write that: He said that, &quot;I will be late.&quot; (Wrong!) However, I occasionally see counterexamples such as this Wikipedia Article:  In 2000, Robert Scheer created the website New Age Journal, which states that &quot;We are not affiliated with any magazines printed on paper.&quot; ()  Is this a correct usage of the conjunction &quot;that&quot; in Direct Speech? Does it depend on the reporting verb and with some verbs, such as &quot;to state&quot;, we can use the conjunction &quot;that&quot;?
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I have asked the same question in ELL stackexchange, but unfortunately haven't received enough answer/comment. The one answer I got is not satisfactory. So that's the reason I am asking it here again. .  I have seen in some cases prepositions are omitted before some noun phrases. And it's explained that those phrases are actually an adverb phrases. But I know a simple thing. If the head of the phrase is a noun, it's a noun phrase. If the head of the phrase is an adverb it is an adverb phrase. For example -   Look both ways before crossing the road. [both ways is a noun phrase, where the head is ways, but still there is no preposition.]  He approached me in a friendly way. [a friendly way is a noun phrase, where the head is way, but as expected unlike sentence #1 it's preceded by the preposition in. And I have never seen this phrase is used without a preposition. I believe dropping the preposition is wrong, according to the grammar.]  She made a pickle a different way from her mother. [a different way is a noun phrase, where the head is way, but strangely there is no preposition before it. But I have seen examples of a different way used both with prepositions and without prepositions. I think the preposition here is optional.]    Now from these example sentences I have tried to demonstrate my problem/confusing area. My question is - 1. When a noun phrase is used as an adverb phrase? 2. When before a noun phrase the placement of preposition is obligatory (like sentence #2)? And where it's optional (like sentence #3)? And where placing the preposition is wrong (like sentence #1)?
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"The new laws are seen as an attempt to gag the press." In this sentence why the definite article 'the' is used before 'laws'(noun). I always get confused when to use 'the' and when not to. My teacher taught me, it is used when both speaker and listener are aware of what they are talking about i.e. both of them are familiar with that(noun). Can someone please clarify this? I have a feeling that I should've used 'the' before 'speaker' and 'listener' in the above sentence. Am I right?
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Reading some books and posts I noticed that there are some semantice differences between constructions described in the title of this post. Could someone help me to find out what are the real difference and in which situations are better to use appropriate constructions?  I would be very grateful to hear the correct answer.
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I want to talk to someone about the house that my wife and I own.  Saying, for example, "My wife's and my house is awesome," sounds a bit funny to me.  What's the best way to express this?  Clarification  I'm asking specifically about the grammar of multiple nouns in possessive form.  I'm particularly curious if it's possible to do this with a first-person pronoun (me).  I am capable of rephrasing this in other ways - my question is not how to express the idea, but about this particular grammatical construction, if it is even legal.
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Examples:   "She said you were here and saw everything."   "She said WHAT?" "They are going to Swaziland in November."   "They are going WHERE?"   People stress the interrogative pronoun usually because of surprise, indignation, or even doubt about having heard the right word.
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What's the name for a part of speech which is not quite rhetorical, but not expected to be answered directly, either? I know the word exists, it refers to greetings such as "How are you" and similar. There's a very specific term for those greetings and I cannot recall it.  It's not perfunctory or pro forma; it very specifically refers to a common query that isn't really a question but a conversation opener. Might be from a specialized field like linguistics.  Frustrating!
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Does the use of "[s]he" as a gender-neutral pronoun prompt eye-rolling in the reader or is it generally accepted? I know it cannot be pronounced, but it seems to me a helpful contraction in written speech. Of course the sentence can be restructured, one can use formations such as "he or she," etc. but are such machinations necessary?