Some grammar questions

Some Grammar Questions

I can’t find simple answers to these questions in the CMS or via web pages.

Here they are:

– would vs will
Let’s say you’re discussing a plans for a party or a law that may or may not actualize but you’re describing what they will entail.
Would you say “the party would” or “the law would incriminate people who blah blah blah”
instead of “the party will” or “the law will”?

I’ve noticed in some newspapers the use of “will” even about laws and ordinances that are being proposed or voted on.

–,which is.., or not?
I notice “which is” is occasionally omitted in writing.
For example, “She was referred to Teen Court, [which is] an early intervention program of the Visalia Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse.”

When is it ok to omit the “which is” ? Is there a rule here?

– When do you say “said that” or merely “said” when using attribution at the beginning of a sentence?

– Why is “had” needed in the following sentence from an Times article?

“Federal authorities said Tuesday that they “had” cracked
the largest case of identity theft in U.S. history,…”
And is the “has” needed in the following sentence from another times article:
“DSW also “has” sent notification letters to affected
customers whenever possible…”

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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Tags: grammar, Questions

One Response to “Some Grammar Questions”

dollhaus:

May 17, 2010 at 8:00 pm

Looking first at will/would:

The primary use of ‘would’ is to form a conditional statement – something that ‘would’ happen if something else were different. ‘Will’ , on the other hand, is simple futurity – something is going to happen in the future. To use the example of a new ordinance, while it is being debated/voted on, it WOULD effect XXX. After it is passed (although not necessarily in effect yet), it WILL effect XXX. Newspapers are not always the source of proper grammar.

Which is:

Here, you have two different grammatical techniques, both of which are correct and fitting. In your example, if you include the ‘which is’, you have a clause modifying Teen Court. If you leave it out, you have an appositive. Teen Court = program (the adjectives and the prepositional phrase are just along for the ride). An appositive is a noun or noun phrase that renames another noun immediately beside it. If those two conditions are met, you do not need the complete clause, although it is not incorrect to use a clause.

Said that/said

In most languages, a relative pronoun is always necessary, but English is a little odd in that respect. The relative pronoun may be suppressed in an essential clause that is not the subject of the main sentence.

This is the house Jack built.
This is the house that Jack built.

Take your choice.

Had and has:

For the ‘had’ one, the context is necessary to be sure, but I’m guessing that the article contained something about another action that occurred in the past – something like: Three New York residents were arrested today. Federal authorities said that they had cracked….’ The thing that triggers the past perfect (had) is the sequence of tenses. If someting happened in the past and another, separate event happened at an earlier point in time, that second event has to be described in a tense farther back in time. For the past tense (were arrested), that would be the past perfect tense (had cracked).

The ‘has’ is the present perfect tense. That’s an odd one, and hard to explain. It is used to describe a past action referred to from the present state of the subject. Another way to look at it is that it is something that happened in the past that is having a present effect. DSW did something, and that something is involved in a present situation.