ESL General English Grammar Questions

Re: Plural Noun

paco2004 — Sat, 15 Jan 2005 02:33:29 GMT

Mr P

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

You are right!

paco

Re: Plural Noun

MrPedantic — Sat, 15 Jan 2005 02:05:08 GMT

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

Re: Plural Noun

paco2004 — Sat, 15 Jan 2005 01:47:08 GMT

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

Re: Plural Noun

Mister Micawber — Fri, 14 Jan 2005 14:47:40 GMT

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.

Plural Noun

jack112 — Fri, 14 Jan 2005 10:08:35 GMT

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.