Test

English grammar questions, answered by Alan

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Rustamsher
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Test

Post by Rustamsher »

I suggest she ... a car with the money she'd won.

(a) should buy
(b) buy
(c) bought
(d) buys

I came across the test above on some forum recently. I think this test is flawed.

1) All the answers are grammatical except for (d);
2) (a) is used mainly in BrE;
3) (b) is used mostly in AmE;
4) (c) is the least formal among correct answers.

Dear teacher, are my inferences are correct?
Could you please add some info?

Many thanks.
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Alan
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Re: Test

Post by Alan »

You are mostly, but not completely, correct.

All are acceptable to some extent, but note that
1. (d) is BrE only (a common equivalent of (a))
2. In(c), 'suggest' has a quite different meaning from the other 3 cases, i.e. 'I submit (as a hypothesis, etc.)' and thus relates to a possible past event.
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