--- title: Grammar puzzles, part one — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Grammar puzzles, part one», a lesson of the language course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Grammar puzzles are like maths puzzles with words: each has an exact answer, and the trick is to look at the job each word does in this sentenc --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/11-grammar-puzzles-part-one/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/) / Grammar puzzles, part one # Grammar puzzles, part one Lesson 11 of the language course of Mova's primary school: 16 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/language/11-grammar-puzzles-part-one/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/11-grammar-puzzles-part-one/0/) — Grammar puzzles are like maths puzzles with words: each has an exact answer, and the trick is to look at the job each word does in this sentence, not at what it usually is. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/11-grammar-puzzles-part-one/1/) — The classic trap: "The old man the boat." It looks broken until you see that "the old" means old people and "man" is the verb (to crew a boat): old people crew the boat. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/11-grammar-puzzles-part-one/2/) — To find who a verb agrees with, find the real subject: in "Each of the boys has a bike", the subject is "each" (one at a time), so it is "has", even though "boys" stands right next to the verb. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/11-grammar-puzzles-part-one/3/) — Some sentences have two meanings and grammar alone can't choose: "I saw a man on a hill with a telescope" (who has the telescope?); the fix is to rewrite it. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/11-grammar-puzzles-part-one/4/) — A comma can rescue a dog: "My hobbies are cooking my dog and reading" sounds terrible, but "My hobbies are cooking, my dog, and reading" is a happy list. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/11-grammar-puzzles-part-one/5/) — In "The dog chased the cat into the garden" there are three nouns: dog, cat and garden. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/11-grammar-puzzles-part-one/6/) — In "The old man the boat", "man" is the verb meaning to crew; a sentence that tricks you into reading it wrongly at first is called a garden-path sentence. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/11-grammar-puzzles-part-one/7/) — Many yes/no questions are made by moving the helping verb in front of the subject: "The cat is sleeping" becomes "Is the cat sleeping?" - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/11-grammar-puzzles-part-one/8/) — In "She quickly ate the green apple", green is the adjective (it describes the apple) and quickly is the adverb (it says how she ate). - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/11-grammar-puzzles-part-one/9/) — The plurals of child, foot, box, baby and leaf are children, feet, boxes, babies and leaves. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/11-grammar-puzzles-part-one/10/) — "Each of the boys has a bike" is correct, because "each" is the subject and means one at a time. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/11-grammar-puzzles-part-one/11/) — The pasts of bring, teach, swim, fly and eat are brought, taught, swam, flew and ate; all five are irregular. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/11-grammar-puzzles-part-one/12/) — "I saw a man on a hill with a telescope" is ambiguous: the telescope could be yours or the man's. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/11-grammar-puzzles-part-one/13/) — Commas in a list separate the items; a comma before the last "and" is called the Oxford comma, and British writers often leave it out. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/11-grammar-puzzles-part-one/14/) — "I can sing and I will dance" has four verbs: can and will are helping (modal) verbs, sing and dance are main verbs. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/11-grammar-puzzles-part-one/15/) — With "neither ... nor", the verb agrees with the closer subject: "Neither the cat nor the dogs are hungry." - ← previous: [Plurals that make no sense: mice, sheep and geese](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/10-plurals-mice-sheep-and-geese/) - next →: [Spelling traps: their, there, they're and friends](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/12-spelling-traps-their-there-theyre/) - ↑ back to [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/)