Friday, February 15, 2008

Elaborate On

I'm in Manila as of the moment but I'm leaving for Cebu in a few hours. Since I'm rushing, this will be a quick post.

One of the students I met in Baguio kept saying, "Ma'am, could you please elaborate the question?" I had to correct her right away. The expression is elaborate on. We always say, "Could you please elaborate on the question?"

I'm not sure why the preposition on is necessary. It's just the way it is! If you want to use another expression when you want to say something similar, just say "could you please explain further?"

Have a nice weekend!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

There are two kinds of English verbs, vt. and vi. A vt. can take a noun or pronoun as its object directly while a preposition is needed to connect a vi with its object. That is what I have been taught.