eslHQ
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is this sentence structure often used?

Posted by wendy3 · June 26, 2012 · 2 replies

several sentence I found in 18-century essays:

It was observed of the ancient schools of declamation, that the more diligently they were frequented, the more was the student disqualified for the world, because he found nothing there which he should ever meet in any other place.

It may be observed of Gonzalo, that, being the only good man that appears with the king, he is the only man that preserves his cheerfulness in the wreck, and his hope on the island.

It is observed of The Tempest, that its plan is regular.

is this sentence structure still often used? in newspapers I can hardly find. what do English people think?

2 Replies

susan53

To see if something is still current, try checking with a concordancer. Go to eg Lextutor. In this case,

1. Type observed of into the Keyword box, leaving the box to the left on "equals"
2. Go to the "Choose a corpus" box. Click on Brown if you want US English, BNC written/spoken if you want British English, or "All of the above" if you want a mix. (For this search choose "All of the above")
3. Click on "Get concordance". If a lot of examples come up, you know it's current and common. If only one or two come up, it's used currently, but is rare. If none come up it's probably not current English.

Try it. What happens in this instance?

wendy3 OP

Zero Hits.

but I wonder why this can be used? On what does this website based?

Internet users' tying?

(it is a good tool. but to recommend to other non-English users maybe I have to explain to them. many thanks.