Dear A Z:

You wrote:
> I was going to Harry’s place and I was pretty worried.
>
> a. The last time I had been there he had insulted me.
> b. The last time I had been there he insulted me.
> c. The last time I was there he had insulted me.
> d. The last time I was there he insulted me.
>
> Which of the sentences from a to d could (or should) follow the first
> sentence?
>
Most native English speakers most of the time would use “d.” It is the cleanest and least complicated.

While using the past perfect in the first clause (as in “a” or “b”) is OK because the time frame is relative to the time in which you are revisiting Harry’s place, it makes less sense. The reason is that the clause begins “the last time” which suggests a single point in time, and it modifies the verb you are using. So looking at the second sentence alone, you would have to say “I was”: How could you do something once and talk about it as though it had happened before the time it happened?

A similar logic applies to the second clause. Using the past perfect in the second clause, as you do in “c,” is OK relative to the visit you are making in the first sentence. This would or could be used in some cases, particularly if this is a complicated narrative. However, “d” would be the most commonly used and most direct. You were there at a certain point in time and, while you were there, Harry did something.

The verb tenses do show a subtle difference in emphasis–are they relative to the first sentence more than to the information in their own sentence? Most speakers most of the time would use “d.”

Dear N:

You wrote:
> Suppose one is asked a question like:
> -What is Harry doing?
> with the present continuous tense.
>
> If things are happening very fast, could he use the simple present tense
> in his reply, as in:
> -He breaks the window, jumps out and runs behind the car.
>
He could, but he would give himself away as not being a native speaker. 🙂

If things are happening very fast, he would put the first two items in the past tense (since they have already happened) and the third in the progressive (or continuous) tense:

He broke the window, jumped out, and is running behind the car. Or more likely, he would put it into two clauses:
He broke the window and jumped out, and now he is running behind the car.

Unless the three things happen simultaneously, the tense helps to show the progression of the action.

Dear B J:

You wrote:

> Many uses are out of style, but still gramatically
> correct; doing toefl exercises i found it is not
> correct to use inversions in 1st conditional, such as:
> ‘Wow, can he make the audience laugh!’, ‘Has he more
> money, he will buy a house’; the first sentence sounds
> ok to me; the second one, although somehow out of
> style, could be grammatically permissible, and that’s
> my problem; is it also grammatically correct?

The first example is still standard English. The second makes no real sense in English, though I suspect it might in other languages that retain the subjunctive. Now the sentence would make sense if the main clause were in the conditional and the first clause in the past tense. (That is the case because historically the conditional originally was the past tenses of “will,” “shall,” and “can,” so even today they only “sound right” with the past.)

No native English speaker would ever say, “Has he more money, he will buy a house.” It makes no sense in the indicative. It does make sense in the conditional: “Had he more money, he would buy a house.” This is not commonly
used, but it is still understood. In virtually all cases people use “if” instead of the inversion: “If he had more money, he would buy a house.” Notice that even here the past tense goes with the conditional.

Another possible way of saying it might be “If he were rich, he would buy a house” or “Were he rich, he would buy a house.” Again, even with the verb “to be,” the first clause is in the past tense and the main clause is in the conditional.

Note the use of the perfect tenses in the following sentence: “If he had had money, he would have bought a house.” It is also possible to say, “Had he had money, he would have bought a house.” The important thing is that the tense match the conditional tense, which is either past or past perfect. There is no “future conditional,” since the conditional already suggests something that might be possible in the future.

Dear P G:

You wrote:
> I am confused. Here is one sentence…
> “A Bunch of Scientists ____ (is/are) discussing the
> results of the experiment.”
>
> Which is the correct verb to be used ? Is there any
> special consideration because of the word
> ‘Scientists’?
> Kindly help regarding this.
>
> Thank you.
>
This is something grammarians have quibbled over for a long time. The problem comes with the collective noun. In the U.K. standard practice is to treat collective nouns as plural, e.g., “the government are investigating.” In North America, the standard practice to treat collective nouns as singular, e.g. “the government is investigating.” In practice, the North Americans often follow the British if the collective noun is followed by a preposition with a plural object.

This sounds wishy-washy, but either usage is OK, and in everyday speech you will probably hear “are” more than “is” when you have a “bunch” of people or objects.

Dear N T:

You wrote:
> They were both working on Rousseau’s lesser-known text
> “The Origin of Language”.
>
> Doesn’t this mean that Rousseau had only written two
> texts?
> Shouldn’t it be “one of his lesser-known texts”?
>
Yes, you are correct. Unless there was an established context, the example would suggest that there were only two texts. To qualify it properly, your example is standard.

Dear Kim:

You wrote:
> Is it:
>
> None have wings.
> or
> None has wings.
>
> (i.e.–none of the birds have wings–or–none of the birds has wings)
>
> Thank you for your time. I really appreciate the help because it is one of
> those things that has been bothering me for some time now.
>
Either is acceptable. Since “none” is a contraction of “not one,” there are some who insist that “none” must be singular. When writing formally, you may want to take that into consideration. However, I personally did a study on this which showed that virtually all writers in English from Chaucer to Shakespeare to Twain, including translators of virtually every Bible translation, sometimes used “none” in the plural. In other words, practice is different from the “rule.”

For a lot more on this, see the study at https://englishplus.com/news/news1008.htm.