IN OR ON A TREE?

In or on a tree?

YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED by FADZILAH AMIN

I WOULD appreciate it if you could explain the following sentences in Ladybird’s Key Words books. 

1. Ladybird Book 2b

Here is a tree. Pat looks into the tree. He looks for Peter and Jane. They are in the tree.

(Why is it in the tree and not on the tree?)

A. The kite is in the tree or on the tree.

B. The bird’s nest is in the tree or on the tree.

C. The owl is in the tree or on the tree.

2. Ladybird Book 3a

Some boys and girls come to tea.     

A. My friends came to tea with me this afternoon. 

B. I went to tea with Nicole this afternoon / yesterday.

C. I’m going to have tea with Chloe tomorrow / next Monday.

D. My aunty came to lunch with me this afternoon.

(Do the above sentences use correct grammar?)

3. Do you have story books suitable for adult (above 12 years old and below 20 years) and published by Ladybird? (Is this the correct way to ask when we go to a book shop?) – Chinese educated

  1. “In a tree” is more commonly used than “on a tree”. I can’t give a reason for that – it is how the language is used. Generally, if someone or something is among the branches and/or leaves of a tree, he or it is said to be “in the tree”. If someone or something can be seen on a branch of a tree, he or it is said to be “on the tree.” But this is not always the case.

Peter and Jane must be hidden among the leaves of the tree for Pat to have to look for them, so “in the tree” applies here. As for A, B and C, you’ll have to look at the pictures in the book to decide whether it is better to use “in” or “on”.

I am attaching two photographs and their descriptions: one of a leopard “on a tree” and the other of a panda “in a tree”. The first photograph comes from the site of the Natural History Museum in London, and the second from a BBC website.

2. “Come” is used for movements to a place where the speaker or the person spoken to is, while “go” is used for movements to other places.

In A, the sentence is correct if the speaker’s friends came to tea at his house, and the sentence is spoken in the evening or on the night of the same day.

In D, the sentence is correct if the speaker’s aunt came to lunch with him at his house, and the sentence is spoken in the evening or on the night of the same day.

In B, the sentence can be written either as i) “I went to tea with Nicole this afternoon.” OR as ii) “I went to tea with Nicole yesterday.”

Sentence i) is correct if it is spoken in the evening or on the night of the same day, and the speaker went to tea with Nicole at a place other than his house (“went” is the past form of “go”).

Sentence ii) is correct if it is spoken on the next day and the speaker went to tea with Nicole at a place other than his house.

Sentence C is grammatically correct, whether you end it with “tomorrow” or “next Monday”. This is because the future tense is used in the form of “am going to” before the main verb “have”. The distinction between “come” and “go” does not apply here.

3. It would be better to say: “Do you have Ladybird storybooks suitable for people between 12 and 20 years old?”

Be and being

I WOULD appreciate it if you could explain the meaning of “be” in the following sentences. Is it an auxiliary verb?

1. Be back soon.

2. Be right back.

3. He doesn’t welcome being made up to. What is the meaning of “being” here?

4. Your name ring me a bell. (Is this sentence correct?)

5. Mary upstairs or Mary is in the upstairs.

6. In Mind Our English on Nov 19, the answer given was: “It was Hari Raya Aidilfitri, so my parents had made their preparations to celebrate it. Why does preparations have an “s”?

Is “had” an auxiliary verb? What tense is it? – MOE reader

1. “Be back soon.” is just an informal way of saying “I will be back soon.” “Be” is the main verb here, not an auxiliary verb.

2. “Be right back” is similar in structure to 1) and is an informal way of saying “I will be back very soon.” Again, “Be” is the main verb.

3. “Being” is the present participle (or –ing form) of “be”. “Being”in your sentence is part of a passive verb. The active verb is “making up to” (= praising someone and treating them well in order to get something from them).

“He doesn’t welcome being made up to.” uses the passive form of “making up to”. A passive form of a verb consists of “a be verb (here it is being to go with making) + past participle of the main verb (here it is made up to, the past participle of make up to).

We can rephrase the sentence by using the active verb in the second half of the sentence to make: “He doesn’t welcome anyone making up to him.”

“Being” has at least three other meanings, but they are all nouns. You can look these up in an Advanced Learner’s dictionary, which will give you examples of their usage.

4. The correct expression is: “Your name rings a bell.” This means “Your name sounds familiar – I seem to have heard it before.”

5. Both are wrong. It should be: “Mary is upstairs.”

6. The word “preparations” there is a countable noun, usually used in the plural, and means “things that you do to get ready for something” (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary).

“Had” in “had made” is an auxiliary verb used with the main verb “made” (past participle of “make”) to form the past perfect tense. The other tense in the sentence is the past simple tense in “It was Hari Raya ...” The use of these two different tenses in the same sentence is to indicate that the writer’s parents had made preparations before Hari Raya came.