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Originally Posted by Casiopea Deviations for the Standard are acceptable. I'm a descriptivists: a sentence is "unacceptable" only iff it lacks meaning; that includes informal and formal language. When it comes to the TOEFL, though, Standard Rules all the way.
Deviations from the Standard that I have noticed:
Phonology: e.g., supposu*bly
Morphology: e.g., poor spelling (pick an example), PPs (I *drunk beer).
Syntax: e.g., adverb order (I *sometimes have been known to watch TV.)
Ah, yes, but it's "a growing".  I'd mention that to my students 'cause they're bound to come across it, as did you. [/i] |
I'm not quite sure why you think there's something wrong with placing "sometimes" after the subject and before the auxiliary "have". That's not where it typically goes, but in conversation I think adverbs can be quite unpredictable. I think placing "sometimes" after "have" in that sentence would sound somewhat emphatic, though the speaker would probably not be aware of it.
With "drunk", I'm not so sure the mistake is with spelling.
suppos*ubly - I've never heard that.
Maybe the speaker was just trying to be funny?
I'm not quite sure why you think there's something wrong with placing "sometimes" after the subject and before the auxiliary "have". That's not where it typically goes, but in conversation I think adverbs can be quite unpredictable. I think placing "sometimes" after "have" in that sentence would sound somewhat emphatic, though the speaker would probably not be aware of it. Well, anyway, I don't think it's worth giving much attention.