Plural Noun

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jack112

#67582 Fri, 14 Jan 05 10:08 AM

What do these mean?
1. These cars have a engine. (Does it mean all these cars have ONE engine? Like one engine for ten cars?)
2. THese cars have engines. (Each car has a engine?)

3. Warning; Hard drives are a sensitive instrument. (This is the one I saw on the packaging. How can many hard drives be ONE senstitive instrument? If it does not mean that, how do you know what it means then? )
3. Warning; Hard drives are sensitive instruments. (Each hard drive is a sensitive instrument?)

Thanks.

jack112

Joined on Thu, Jul 22 2004

Regular Member (715)

Plurals

Mister Micawber

#67611 Fri, 14 Jan 05 02:47 PM

I think we have discussed this before, Jack.

Plural nouns normally take plural modifiers, while singular normally take singular. Mixing number is acceptable only when there is no confusion.

Your (1) has a mistake with the article again, but is possible, since of course there is not only one engine for ten cars, and you should not even consider the possibility (why did you?)

(2) is fine and means what you think it means.

(3) Packaging (especially if it originates in a country whose native language is not the same as that on the packaging) can often be grammatically incorrect-- even hilarious-- and this first sentence is incorrect. Here we are dealing with a copulative, and the subject and complement must agree in number.

Mister Micawber

Joined on Wed, Aug 4 2004

Yokohama

Veteran Member (21,213)

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master-- that's all.'

Articles, Plurals, Nouns, Numbers

paco2004

#67700 Sat, 15 Jan 05 01:47 AM

I often see sentences where the object noun or the predicate noun is in disagreement with the subject in number. In most case this kind of imbalanced singular noun is followed by a sentence or clause that explains it. I feel this disagreement would be intentionally used by writers to attract readers' attention to the noun, and I call it "focusing singular", though no mention is made about this in any grammar book.

Some examples I found in web sites:
(EX) Elephants have a long trunk. They lift their food with this trunk and put in into their mouths.
(EX) Giraffes have a long neck that allows them to reach food other organisms cannot reach.
(EX) Jets have a special engine that mixes air with fuel. Then it burns the mixture to make hot air.

paco

paco2004

Joined on Wed, Nov 17 2004

Senior Member (4,095)

In Japan today even dogs are learning how to bow-wow in English.

Grammar, Plurals, Clauses, Nouns, Numbers, Predicates, Singular nouns

MrPedantic

#67704 Sat, 15 Jan 05 02:05 AM

Hello Paco

Curiously, all those examples seem to me to have the air of 'explanations for children'. It would be interesting if the 'focusing singular' were especially common in simple explanations.

Number 2 troubles me (the giraffes). Entire tree-top-dwelling ecosystems counted as nothing.

MrP

MrPedantic

Joined on Tue, Oct 12 2004

Veteran Member (12,051)