Search results for 'tag:Constructions tag:Genders' matching tags 'Constructions' and 'Genders'

Re: he/he or she

Yoong Liat — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:18:35 GMT

New2grammar
Thanks for the correction and answer, Clive

If a student is behind his/her/their class, he/she/he or she/they will normally do bad in the exams.

If a student is behind his/her class, he/she will normally do badly in the exams.

If a student is behind his or her class, he or she will normally do badly in the exams.

If a student is behind his or her class, s/he they will normally do badly in the exams.

If a student is behind his or her class, they will normally do badly in the exams. (the gender-neutral way)

Students who are behind their class will normally do badly in the exams. (Using the plural does away with the awkward constructions.)

Re: Please check my grammar

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 05:23:27 GMT

If this sentence originated in the U.S., then failure to make the number (that is, the singularity or plurality) of the pronoun (in this case "their") match the number of the noun (in this case ''seller") is the result of what is termed "political correctness." Because of this flawed concept, many poor writers now use this grammatical construction in their efforts to avoid refernce to gender, even though they know that the proper grammar is to use "his" or "her." Their thinking is that pointing out that the seller is male or female might have bad consequences of some sort. I have never understood why such ridiculous delicacy came to be standard practice, and I think such perversion of English is the result of muddy thinking promulgated by badly educated businesspeople. Your doubt is perfectly valid. -- An American English speaker from birth, and a proffreader by profession

Kindly check the essay

Redalert — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 18:45:44 GMT

THE PLACE OF WOMEN IN OUR SOCIETY

Human beings are social animals who live together and by their nature canât isolate themselves in the place where they dwell which is called society. The society whose inhabitants we are is of two types: the rural society and the urban society.

By gender, a human being can either be a male or a female. Male are more stronger, energetic and dominating. Females are weak physically, less dynamic and can be overwhelmed. Both men and women lead their lives together in the society where they live.

The rural society of our country has unfortunately always underestimated women in all walks of life. They are being subjugated. On account of their physical weakness women are abhorred, detested, the other reason is the lack of education in the rural society of our country where men feel pride of their masculinity and canât tolerate women moving with them; let alone the idea of encouraging moving ahead than them. To keep women under their firm control; men use all the uncivilized mean to pressurize women, torture them and if ever a woman musters up the guts to speak of against such unethical behavior they are abused and sometimes killed. The story does not end here; in order to solve a dispute girls of opponent sides are exchanged, raped and sometimes girls are coerced to get married with an aging man.

The urban society no doubt, gives good treatment to the fair sex. Women are not mistreated on the basis of their sex, rather they are encouraged to move forward with men. This is because of the face that the inhabitants of the urban society are educated and can understand the importance of women. Women in the urban society are encouraged to make the most of all the avenues to impart themselves with education and adopt a career of their own choice. Men in this part of society now prefers marrying an educated girl to uneducated ones because the former one can understand the mental horizon of mean and in times of need can help him in supporting his family by working; supplementing him enough money to lead a quality life and help their children growing up without facing any financial hardships.

Dear Grammarians,

Thank you very much for taking the pain to read this essay. I have been asked to write an essay of 350 on this topic. However, I was unable to be precise enough in writing down upto the required number of words for which I was being told.

As English is not my mother tongue. But I am enthusiastic in learning this language.
I have got few queries to ask:
â¢After reading this essay, how would you find my grammar, punctuation, vocabulary and sentence construction ability?
â¢What rating would you give to the text?
â¢How can I ameliorate my weak points?

Re: he will do/does?

rishonly — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 17:42:01 GMT

Pravinth wrote:

Thanks i have one more ... become/becomes

so it must be "He will become ...." and not "He will becomes...." or just "He will be ...."

what is the differenec?? Please

Hi Pravinth,

"He will become.." is the valid construction, and "will becomes" & "will be become" are wrong. As I mentioned earlier, the auxilliary "will" takes base form of the verb--in the case of active voice sentences.

He will run

I will sleep

She will drink.

I will become a political leader.

In the above (active voice) sentences , the underlined verbs are in the base form regardless of the number (singular or plural), gender (masculine or feminine), and person (I or II or III person) of the subjects.

Re: "should you have any question"

milky — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 06:41:51 GMT

CalifJim wrote:
Is there anything to be gained by researching this question from a generational point of view?

My father used "If ... should" quite often. I never use it. Something from your posts, (but just an inkling), Mr. P., tells me that the same kind of thing may have happened in Britain. Anyone care to comment?

CJ

I imagine/would imagine that the result of such an enquiry would show that the construction is used far less these days by all speakers. There seems to have been a reduction in formal language over the years. For example, the use of "may" for asking for/granting permission has been overtaken by "can" in most circles.Also, if one takes the statement below into account, one might have to extend one's research into areas of social class, gender, educational background, etc.:

"Both the data and the theoretical model suggest that formality increases when the distance in space, time or background between the interlocutors increases, and when the speaker is male, introverted or academically educated."

(Formality of Language: definition,measurement and behavioral determinants

FRANCIS HEYLIGHEN & JEAN-MARC DEWAELE)

.....

Here, the British National Corpus (BNC) shows the spread of "if * should" over the most common registers:

REGISTER

SPOKEN 44

FICTION 220

NEWS 29

ACADEMIC 46

NONFIC MISC 46

OTHER MISC 122

If one makes an search of each entry above, one may find which age groups presently use "should" in the ways mentioned in this thread.

Re: Grammar Mistakes & Ambiguities

Danyoo — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 20:48:19 GMT

Good questions Rishonly...

(1) Is 'often wondered' a wrong construction?
It's not wrong but it implies that 'wondering' was in the past and now you no longer 'wonder.'

(2) Reason for 'might attend only fewer phone calls' being wrong?
Actually there is only a very subtle difference, if at all. A person may or may not get to do an assigned task because of a circumstance beyond his/her control. Whereas a person might or might not do the same task, possibly due to his/her laziness or forgetfulness. More significant correction is attend --> attend to. It's a phrasal verb meaning to deal with something or help someone.

(3) Reason for using 'may attend' in the first sentence and 'might get' in the second sentence?
If your follow up argument is negative, it's better to say "....might...but he will only handle easy calls." If your follow up argument is positive, it's better to say "...may..but he will deal with a lot more complex issues requiring longer times to resolve."

(4) Is 'many phone calls' grammatically wrong , or is it a preference?
It's grammatically correct. Just a preference.

(5) "but he may not handle any complicated cases". I think changing the subject from 'Customer' to 'he' carries an implication of gender bias. Doesn't it?
Traditionally it has been acceptable to use 'he' in these situations to mean both genders. But lately it has become more common place to see the usage of he/she. But I think the correct way to say it is he and/or she, which then gets to be too long and cumbersome. Personally I think picking either 'he' or 'she' is fine...so is saying 'customer.' Your call.

Re: Grammar Mistakes & Ambiguities

rishonly — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 02:41:48 GMT

Hi Danyoo,

Thanks for the correction. Would you mind explaining the reason for following mistakes?

(1) Is 'often wondered' a wrong construction?

(2) Reason for 'might attend only fewer phone calls' being wrong?

(3) Reason for using 'may attend' in the first sentence and 'might get' in the second sentence?

(4) Is 'many phone calls' grammatically wrong , or is it a preference?

(5) "but he may not handle any complicated cases". I think changing the subject from 'Customer' to 'he' carries an implication of gender bias. Doesn't it?

Sex vs. Gender

khoff — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 16:23:55 GMT

My niece, who is expecting a baby, raised the following question regarding the choice between "the baby's sex" and "the baby's gender" and I told her I would post the question here. I don't have strong feelings about it one way or the other, but I probably tend to use "gender" just because the word "sex" has so many other implications. Opinions, please? Would you ask about the baby's "sex" or "gender"? (Of course, once the baby is born it would be most natural to ask "Is it a boy or a girl?" But before birth, the question is usually "are you going to find out (or, are you going to tell people) the * of the baby?")

I know the words "sex" and "gender" are often used interchangeably and have multiple definitions that overlap, however, I have always thought that the word "sex" refers to someone's physiological reproductive organs that they were given at birth, whereas "gender" refers more to a social sexual identity that might change throughout a person's lifetime. Therefore, I always refer to the "sex" of a baby, but use gender when I'm referring to more social constructions of sex and sexual identity. Some dictionary definitions I've found support this theory, see below, and yet others seem to provide virtually the same definition for both "sex" and "gender."

Sex - The property or quality by which organisms are classified as female or male on the basis of their reproductive organs and functions.

Gender - Sexual identity, especially in relation to society or culture.

Re: JTTs point on using I or me.

rhetor — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 22:15:02 GMT

http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/1994_01_24_thenewrepublic.html

Probably no "grammatical error" has received as much scorn as "misuse" of pronoun case inside conjunctions (phrases with two parts joined by [and] or [or]). What teenager has not been corrected for saying [Me and Jennifer are going to the mall]? The standard story is that the object pronoun [me] does not belong in subject position -- no one would say [Me is going to the mall] -- so it should be [Jennifer and I]. People tend to misremember the advice as "When in doubt, say 'so-and-so and I', not 'so-and-so and me'," so they unthinkingly overapply it, resulting in hyper-corrected solecisms like [give Al Gore and I a chance] and the even more despised [between you and I].

But if the person on the street is so good at avoiding [Me is going] and [Give I a break], and even former Rhodes Scholars and Ivy League professors can't seem to avoid [Me and Jennifer are going] and [Give Al and I a chance], might it not be the mavens that misunderstand English grammar, not the speakers?

I doubt it. The ultra elitist snob Pinker might just have to accept the fact that Rhodes Scholars and Ivy League professors simply havenât been taught correct English grammar. As a matter of fact, this has been the case for many years.

The mavens' case about case rests on one assumption: if an entire conjunction phrase has a grammatical feature like subject case, every word inside that phrase has to have that grammatical feature, too. But that is just false.

Whatâs false is Pinkerâs understanding of traditional grammar. His notorious chapter, âThe Language Mavensâ from his book âThe Language Instinctâ is a compendium of errors regarding the assumptions of traditional grammarians.

[Jennifer] is singular; you say [Jennifer is], not [Jennifer are]. The pronoun [She] is singular; you say [She is], not [She are]. But the conjunction [She and Jennifer] is not singular, it's plural; you say [She and Jennifer are], not [She and Jennifer is.] So a conjunction can have a different grammatical number from the pronouns inside it. Why, then, must it have the same grammatical [case] as the pronouns inside it? The answer is that it need not.

There are so many errors in this silly paragraph, itâs hard to know where to begin.

1. Phrases (conjunctive or otherwise) donât have case. A phrase can never be in the nominative, possessive, or objective case.
2. A copulative conjunction like âandâ does not allow one to distribute the meaning of the verb to the individual members. âJack and Jill went up the hillâ does NOT mean âJack went up the hill and Jill went up the hill.â The latter compound sentence may be true, and it may express a similar truth as the former, but it does so in a different way. There is NO distribution of the predicate to the individual members. If there were such a distribution, the verb would be singular. This is easily shown by using an explicitly distributive adjective like âeachâ before the subject terms. In such sentences, we can force the predicate to be applied to the elements of the subject-phrase individually, rather than reckon the elements of the subject-phrase jointly. For example:

âEach leaf and each flower IS proof of Godâs handiwork.â

The distributive adjective âeachâ allows us to apply the predicate (i.e., the verb+all-that-follows-it) to the elements of the subject-phrase individually. The meaning is âEach leaf IS proof of Godâs handiwork, and each flower IS proof of Godâs handiwork.â Notice that if we started with the compound sentence and coalesced it into a simple one, we would NOT change the verb from singular to plural; it remains singular. Conversely, in the sentence âA leaf and a flower ARE proof of Godâs handiwork,â does not mean âA leaf is proof of Godâs handiwork AND a flower is proof of Godâs handiwork.â Both sentences may be true, but they are not interchangeable. The latter expresses two separate thoughts in two separate clauses; the former expresses a single thought: we are asked to consider a leaf and a flower jointly. Obviously, thatâs different from considering them separately..

Subject terms joined by âorâ are distributive: âJack or Jill went up the hillâ means âJack went up the hill or Jill went up the hill.â

A conjunction is just not grammatically equivalent to any of its parts. If John and Marsha met, it does not mean that John met and that Marsha met.

Again, this is usually true for copulative conjunctions like âandâ; it is untrue for disjunctive ones like âor.â Itâs also true to say that âThis is a secret between me and youâ does not mean âThis is a secret between me and this is a secret between you.â

If voters give Clinton and Gore a chance, they are not giving Gore his own chance, added on to the chance they are giving Clinton; they are giving the entire ticket a chance. So just because [Al Gore and I] is an object that requires object case, it does not mean that is an object that requires object case.

First of all, if voters give Gore or Bush a chance, they are giving Gore a chance or they are giving Bush a chance. Second, âAl Gore and Iâ is a phrase, and phrases donât have case, any more than they have person, number, or gender. In the sentence âGive Al Gore and me a chance,â the two object-terms are taken jointly; the direct object of âgiveâ is a compound. They are BOTH object terms and should therefore BOTH be in the objective case. Pinker seems to think that phrases can somehow override the normal syntactic rules governing individual parts of speech; as if a phrase were a kind of âmacro-wordâ that has grammatical veto power over the elements it comprises. This is completely untrue, and it was certainly not the belief of most traditional grammarians in the 18th and 19th centuries.

âJennifer and I are studying grammar.â The subject is a compound; the terms are meant to be taken jointly with ONE predicate (âare studying grammarâ) applying to both. Since both are subjects, both should be in the nominative case. Pinker â like many psychologists and many linguists â is a mystic. He believes that thereâs a separate, invisible entity called a âphraseâ that is in the nominative case, and that this invisible entity is like a container with elements clanking around in it. Those elements, he claims (âJenniferâ and âIâ) need not conform to the case of the invisible container. The invisible container, claims Pinker, has a different case from those of the elements within it. All right. If it has a different case from those of the elements within it, why shouldnât it also have a number from those of the elements within it. The elements within it are plural â there are two of them â but the phrase is a single entity, with one case, performing the function of subject. By the logic of grammar (as Pinker is fond of saying) the phrase âJennifer and Iâ or âMe and Jenniferâ should take a singular verb, not a plural one. We should really be saying âMe and Jennifer is studying grammar.â âMe and Jenniferâ is a single phrase in the nominative case, singular number. Or is Pinker saying that the phrase may have a different case from the elements it comprises, but not a different number? If so, why?

The linguist, Joseph Emonds has analysed the 'Me and Jennifer/Between you and I' phenomenon in great technical detail. He concludes that the language that the mavens want us to speak is not only not English, it is not a possible human language!

Thereâs not single linguist who would actually try to publish an article with constructions like âMe and Noam Chomsky was talking one fine day,â or âThis was a secret theory between Chomsky and I.â

Pronouns and Adjective Possessives for Objects

spoonfedbaby — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 07:03:59 GMT

Hello everybody,

How can I talk about neutral inanimate objects and abstract nouns?

First, I read about âpossessive constructionsâ to find out what types of nouns can possess. Here is what I read online from âThe American HeritageÂ® Book of English Usage. A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.â
>>In English the possessive case is used to show not only simple possession but also a variety of other relationships between the noun marked for possession and the noun that follows:
>>Johnâs car, the senatorâs aide ----------------------(possession or belonging)
>>the tideâs ebbing, Amyâs presentation ------------(subject of an action)
>>the companyâs owners, the heroâs betrayal------(object of an action)
>>learnerâs dictionary, a womenâs college----------(description or type)
>>my fatherâs gentleness, the characterâs greed---(attribute)
>>the birdâs wing, the bookâs cover------------------(a constituent part)
>>Beethovenâs symphonies, grandmotherâs letter--(origin)
>>a dayâs journey, an armâs lengt--------------------(measure or amount)

As you can see, the first case "Johnâs car, the senatorâs aide" is the only real possessive case.

The adjective possessive âitsâ is used for a noun of neutral gender, like a dog. So, I can say âa dog and its toy.â The adjective possessive "their" isn't it used for human possessors only? Should I say âthe dogs and their toysâ or âthe dogs and its toys?â How about a table? Can I use the adjective possessive âitsâ for table even though a table cannot possess? Can I say âa table and its four legsâ or âa book and its cover?â How about âtwo tables and their eight legs?â Can I say âI look at themâ for âI look at the tables?â Can "them" be used for inanimate objects?

Thank you for your coming answers