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BStheGreat
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 Posted: Wed Mar 02, 2011 2:20 pm Post subject: Grammar Question |
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I have a pen-pal that I write with who is learning English, and she emailed me with a question that stumped me. She was reading the following sentence and had a question about it. | Quote: |
They justify deceiving the suspect on two grounds. if he is innocent, it is important that he think the machine will make no mistake... |
She wanted to why it is 'he think' and not 'he thinks.' My only guess would be that it is sort of implied to be in the future since it is a conditional sentence, or that this sentence is incorrect. Both 'he think' and 'he thinks' sound right to me hear, but that could be because I am over analyzing it. Is this sentence written correctly? If so is there a specific rule about it?
If you need more context, here's a link to it.
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Last edited by BStheGreat on Sun May 22, 2011 2:45 pm; edited 1 time in total
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| Posted: Wed Mar 02, 2011 8:22 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | They justify deceiving the suspect on two grounds. if he is innocent, it is important that he think the machine will make no mistake... |
They justified (accused) the deceiving suspect on two grounds. If he is innocent, it is important that he think the machine will make no mistake.... "a.k.a= lie detector."
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Thunderbird
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Crunchyfrog
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| Posted: Thu Mar 03, 2011 12:41 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | She wanted to why it is 'he think' and not 'he thinks.' My only guess would be that it is sort of implied to be in the future since it is a conditional sentence, or that this sentence is incorrect. Both 'he think' and 'he thinks' sound right to me hear, but that could be because I am over analyzing it. Is this sentence written correctly? If so is there a specific rule about it? |
Yes, the sentence is written correctly, and yes, there's a specific rule. 
This is the subjunctive form, and is used to express a hypothetical scenario.
For example:
He thinks - is the indicative form
It is important that he think - is the subjunctive form.
Here are a couple of links on how the subjunctive works, which might help explain why it was written that way.
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/subjunctive?view=uk
http://www.englishpage.com/minitutorials/subjunctive.html
Hope this helps!
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BStheGreat
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| Posted: Thu May 19, 2011 8:18 am Post subject: |
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I don't believe I ever thanked you, thanks.
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