WHEN we were children and just beginning to learn our English grammar, most of us no doubt would be taken aback by the strange failure of some verbs to work in certain sentence constructions. Perhaps while watching a magician make a rabbit disappear, we might have exclaimed "He gone the rabbit!" and our parents promptly told us off for our bad grammar.

We'd probably correct ourselves by saying "OK, he disappeared the rabbit!" but get chastised again for yet another grammatical gaffe. Of course, the magician would routinely make the rabbit reappear so we'd confidently say "Now he appeared it again!"—sure this time that we could no longer be wrong. But as we might have learned to expect, that sentence would also be incorrect!

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