WHEN we were children and just beginning to learn English grammar, many of us were taken aback by the strange failure of some verbs to work in certain sentence constructions. For instance, perhaps ...

When a sentence uses a transitive verb to describe an action, it’s necessary for the subject to take a direct object and to act on it: “The woman spurned her suitor last week.” ...

"Turn off the TV" is an example of a phrasal verb, which is a verb that has a base verb and one or two particles. Credit: MikeSleigh/Getty Images A ‘phrasal verb’ is a verb that has a base verb and ...