always will

Hi,

-These shoes are cheap, and always will be.

-These shoes are cheap, and will always be.

Can you please tell me the position of 'always' is possible in these senteces?

Thanks.

aysaa said:

Hi,

-These shoes are cheap, and always will be. This is correct.

-These shoes are cheap, and will always be cheap. Now this is correct, too.

Can you please tell me the position of 'always' is possible in these senteces?

Thanks.

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Sorry for the long wait, I've been watching this thread since last night. I knew how to make the correct sentences but I can't explain exactly why and I was hoping another teacher would do it. ;-) Hopefully someone will come along and check my work.

There's an inversion that happens in these tags at the end of a sentence: "I do something and so does he." The first clause is subject + verb and the second clause is verb + subject. And so it feels like (this means I haven't looked this up so I may be wrong) this inversion is the reason the adverb is in a different position. In your second sentence, once you have an object the word order is regular again.

There is no inversion in either sentence.

-These shoes are cheap, and (they) always will be.

-These shoes are cheap, and (they) will always be.

Like Mr_Ben, I have been trying to think of an explanation for why the first sounds more natural, but I haven't come up with one yet. The second is not incorrect but, as Mr B suggested, it is more natural with the adjective following.

5jj said:

There is no inversion in either sentence.

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I knew I'd get something wrong.

I'm trying to figure out where to look for this. I'm looking through Grammar for English Language Teachers by Martin Parrot; ellipsis seems like the right track but there's nothing about the position of adverbs of frequency.

A related question (for me) is, why would aysaa's sentences be incorrect without "be"? We can't say "These shoes are cheap, and they always will." But Elvis can sing, "Oh my darling, I love you, and I always will." :-?

Mr_Ben said:

We can't say "These shoes are cheap, and they always will." But Elvis can sing, "Oh my darling, I love you, and I always will." :-?

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It's because we do not use auxiliaries with BE.

I love gin and so does my wife.
I am drunk and so [STRIKE]does[/STRIKE] is my wife.

My wife works hard and she always will.
My wife is ugly and she always will be.

The underlined auxiliaries 'contain' the idea of the lexical verb. BE is self-sufficient.

billmcd said:

I hope your wife doesn't review your posts.

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and never will. :-D

I've spent most of this post wondering how a pair of shoes which was cheap could ever be anything but cheap. I was hoping that perhaps the pile of cheap shoes in my wardrobe might suddenly have become expensive Jimmy Choos overnight.

Then I realised what it meant. Ah well.