For those of us with deipnophobia—a fear of dining and dinner conversations—literally anything is more pleasant than a meal with friends.

“Good idea. The boy seems to be coping quite well, although I had a feeling he wasn't too happy about spending half term in Crete with his old grandpa."

Usually a fad diet will take one idea that research has shown to be somewhat beneficial and take it to the extreme. A good example of this is the statement “Eat seaweed at every meal.”

Using the same type of distributional criterion, we could argue that only a Verb (in its base form) can occur in the position marked — in (23) below to complete the sentence: (23) They/it can — … Conversely, the only type of word which could be used to begin a three-word sentence such as (25) below: (25) — I be frank? is a Modal: cf. …