WHEN we were children and just beginning to learn English grammar, many of us were taken aback by the strange failure of some ...

Normally there is no change in meaning if we switch from one to the other. In the examples you quote, Ivo, the meaning is exactly the same and we can choose either formulation irrespective of the ...

To recall, intransitive verbs are handicapped by their inability to take a direct object. Another way of saying this is that a subject cannot perform the action of intransitive verbs on a direct ...