PREVIOUS GRAMMAR QUESTION

Pauls always been borrowing his red stylish sporty-looking newer car to his brother who’s lending it while his old battered rust-spotted white vehicle is in the garage for repairing.

1. Name: For some of you, the name “Paul” is unfamiliar, and you didn’t recognize that there is no “s” on the end; It doesn’t make sense to make this an apostrophe s because neither the verb “is” or “has” works here and there is no following noun that would make it possessive.

2. Word confusion: lend and borrow--someone lends to you; you borrow from someone else.

3. Verb tense: Given that the first verb should be “lend” and not “borrow” and there is a sense of repetitive action up to and including the present, use either the simple present tense--lends--or the present progressive “is lending”. If you use the present progressive, then the adverb “always” places between the two parts of the verb.

4. Adjective word order: The rule for adjective word order is opinion, dimension, age, shape, colour, origin, material: this produces 1) stylish, sporty-looking, newer, red car; 2) battered, old, rust-spotted, white vehicle. Some of you were more creative and grouped adjectives and then combined the groups with a coordinating conjunction. That’s another good way to solve the problem.

5. Verb tense: whether or not the simple present or present progressive tense is used for the verb in the first clause, in the second clause, the verb which should be “borrow” needs to be in the simple present tense (borrows). This means there is no apostrophe s attached to “who”.

6. Word form: after “for” do not use the gerund, use the basic noun form either singular or plural.

Sample answer: Paul always lends his stylish, sporty-looking, newer, red car to his brother who borrows it while his battered, old, rust-spotted, white vehicle is in the garage for repairs.