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Originally Posted by M56 Interesting. Would you then say that these are grammatically unsuitable?
Mary speaks English fluently.
Yes, she does. It's because she studied for many years.
IYO, do I need to add "is able to speak" to both of those? |
No, you don't need to do such a thing at all.
The reason why I added "be able to" to that sentence was that, beyond a linguistic context, the idea of "ability" is inherently present in "If I hadn't studied English for many years, I wouldn't speak English fluently."
To put it differently, the deep structure of this sentence, in my view of it, is as follows:
"I spent many years studying English and that brought to me the ability to speak English fluently."
or
"My current ability to speak English fluently stems from the very fact that I studied English for many years."
In much of a logical approach, "spending some time studying English" does not lead to "speaking English fluently" but, rather, to "
the ability to speak English fluently."