Thursday, March 19, 2020

How lizards evolved into snakes essays

How lizards evolved into snakes essays Many millions of years the planet was dominated by lizards great and small. It was a place ruled by the laws of natural selection where the only way to survive was to be able to defend yourself with what you had. It was a constant struggle for food, shelter, and supremacy. It was about survival of the fittest, because only if you were best suited to your environment would you have a chance at living to reproduce. Sometimes adapting to one's environment could create a whole new species altogether. During the time when dinosaurs walked the earth smaller lizards had to be creative to insure their survival. The dinosaurs, because of their size where the bullies of the earth. If lizards wanted food they had to some how sneak around the big dinosaurs in order to avoid becoming food themselves. A species of lizard known as the Ear-less Monitor seemed very well adapted to counteract this problem. Their eyes had a clear protective lens which allowed them to go into the water in search of food and bypass the land roaming One major problem soon faced the Ear-less Monitors in their quest for nourishment. It seemed that the sea dwelling creatures had begun to catch on to the fact that these lizards were invading their territory for food. The sea dwellers reacted by praying on the lizards who came into the water to eat. After many deaths at sea one smart little Ear-less Monitor decided to try another approach at obtaining food. This particular Monitor was picked on by all of the other Monitors because he and his family had arms and legs that were shorter and smaller than everyone else's. The would tease him and his family saying that their gene pool had little genetic variation. But he did not let that get him down. He figured that with his stubby arms and legs that he could burrow under ground to find food. He used his clea ...

Tuesday, March 3, 2020

Preceding a Gerund with a Possessive

Preceding a Gerund with a Possessive Preceding a Gerund with a Possessive Preceding a Gerund with a Possessive By Maeve Maddox A gerund is an -ing verb form that is used as a noun. Like any other noun, a gerund can function as the subject or object of a verb, or as the object of a preposition: 1. Gardening is my favorite hobby. (noun, subject of is) 2. He likes shooting skeet. (noun, object of likes) 3. He loves to talk about hunting. (noun, object of the preposition about) 4. Do you mind my asking a question? (noun, object of mind) This post is about the use of my in the fourth example. Why precede the gerund asking with the possessive adjective my? Why not write, â€Å"Do you mind me asking a question?† In this sentence, the word asking is a gerund. A gerund is a noun. Nouns are modified by adjectives, not by other nouns or pronouns. Consider: Because some people don’t like animals, I ask a guest, â€Å"Do you mind my dog?† I wouldn’t say, â€Å"Do you mind me dog.† Ergo, I wouldn’t say, â€Å"Do you mind me asking?† That’s the reasoning and the rule. Then there’s popular usage: If you don’t mind him calling you at work, give him your business card. If you don’t mind them losing your possessions, then this is the hotel for you. You should take out the garbage without me asking. H. W. Fowler calls the construction of preceding a gerund with a noun or accusative pronoun a â€Å"fused participle† and devotes several tetchy pages to it in Modern English Usage. He illustrates the problem with three sentences: 1. Women having the vote share political power with men. (This example is grammatically correct: having is a participle modifying the subject women.) 2. Women’s having the vote reduces men’s political power. (This example is grammatically correct: having is a gerund modified by the possessive women’s.) 3. Women having the vote reduces men’s political power. (This example is ungrammatical.) Fowler points out that because the verb reduces is singular, women cannot be its subject. Yet, having can’t be the subject because that would leave women â€Å"in the air† without a grammatical function. He says the construction is a compound notion that fuses the noun women with the participle having. He calls this construction a â€Å"fused participle,† denouncing it altogether as â€Å"grammatically indefensible.† Modern grammarians still prefer preceding the gerund with a possessive in formal usage, but do not uniformly condemn the fused participle as Fowler did. A writer at a site about legal prose observes that sometimes a fused participle is the only idiomatic choice: There are exceptions–sentences in which idiom simply demands that a participle be fused, or else the sentence rewritten altogether.–Lawprose.org/. Some of the exceptions cited as being accepted by â€Å"respected usage commentators† are: The likelihood of that happening is nil. He frequently felt a chance of this happening. He disapproved of politicians still in their prime writing memoirs. Blindly following the rule with these sentences would produce the following unidiomatic constructions: The likelihood of that’s happening is nil. He frequently felt a chance of this’s happening. He disapproved of politicians still in their prime’s writing memoirs. Careful writers will continue to think carefully about which word precedes a gerund in formal writing. Even in informal speech and writing, a construction like, â€Å"I hate my husband being passed over at work† is to be avoided. As the speaker does not, presumably, hate her husband, the better choice is, â€Å"I hate my husband’s being passed over at work.† Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Grammar category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Math or Maths?"Confused With" and "Confused About"Using "zeitgeist" Coherently